Open Letter to Dr. Jill Stein
Dear Dr. Stein,
Up to last week, you graciously provided US voters with a clear, viable, electoral alternative to the twin war parties, namely, Democrats and Republicans. Regrettably, last Thursday, September 19th, your campaign issued a statement undermining your status as the “peace candidate.”
The statement called Russian President Putin and Syrian President Assad “war criminals” for their roles resisting a US-orchestrated regime-change operation, begun in 2011 and continuing to this day, in Syria. That operation, illegal under international law, was initiated under the Obama Administration and led by his Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Under Clinton, the US created a government-in-waiting, called the Syrian National Council, which it recognized as the legitimate government of Syria, and marshalled its allies in Europe and among Arab countries, to recruit, finance, train, arm, insert, and coordinate armies of terrorist mercenaries (from Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and, later, ISIS) into Syria where they illegally invaded and occupied large swaths of Syrian territory. Through their barbaric war crimes, those de facto US foot soldiers caused terror among the Syrian population, causing millions to flee their homeland as refugees and even more to be displaced within Syria.
The US end game was to destroy an enemy of Israel and a state that opposed US hegemonic initiatives in the region. The US strategy was to balkanize the country of Syria into tiny, warring, confessional statelets and leave the country as a failed state, in the same manner that the US and NATO destroyed the Libyan government at precisely the same time and left it as a failed state.
Presidents Putin and Assad were and are not the problem. Russia was and is an ally of Syria. It long maintained a naval base in Syria at Tartus. At the official request of the Syrian government, Russia was invited to help Syria, in accordance with international law, to defend the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria. With Russian help, along with support from Iran and Hezbollah (likewise allies of Syria), the Syrian Arab Army was able to liberate most of the country from terrorist control.
During his Administration, following the strategic defeat of ISIS, Trump decided to leave US troops (who were never invited into Syria in the first place) in occupation of the eastern third of Syria, where, to this day, they (along with their Kurdish militia) continue to steal Syria’s oil and wheat resources, thus preventing the legitimate government in Damascus from using these funds for reconstruction.
And, in addition to all these flagrant violations of international law, the US, its NATO partners, and various Arab countries joined the US in imposing extremely brutal coercive economic measures against Syria, devaluing the country’s currency and destroying its economy. These economic sanctions are unilateral and illegal (not having the approval of the UN Security Council). But they reduced 80% of the Syrian population today to food insecurity and to reliance on a meager hour or two of electricity per day.
Dr. Stein, your September 19th statement has disappointed many people in the USA and around the world. You cannot be the “peace candidate” on the one hand, and support criminal enterprises, (waged by both Democrats and Republicans) such as the war which continues today in Syria, on the other. We hope you will do the right thing, which would be for you to call for the US to end its unlawful occupation of eastern Syria and to drop its brutal sanctions regime against the country. Finally, you have certainly noted that Syria has been readmitted to the Arab League and that many countries of the world have re-established diplomatic relations as well as trade and communication links with the country. We hope that you, too, will champion the ending of US hostilities against Syria and call for the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations.
Suggested Resources:
- The War Against Alternative Information, by Rick Sterling
- Attacks on Academic Freedom, The Times of London and MI6
- Syria Crucified: Stories of Modern Martyrdom in an Ancient Christian Land by Zachary Wingerd and Brad Hoff
US Republicans accuse Zelensky of campaigning for Harris
RT | September 25, 2024
Republican officials have accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of interfering in US electoral politics and “campaigning” for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, after he visited an arms factory in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro gave Zelensky a tour of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant over the weekend, where both signed 155mm artillery shells that will presumably be shipped to Ukrainian troops.
Republican officials have taken issue with the photo op, as well as Zelensky’s recent interview with the New Yorker magazine, in which he criticized former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, the party’s nominees in the November presidential election.
“Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal,” Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt wrote on X.
Pennsylvania Representative John Joyce told a local radio station on Tuesday that the visit was “a political stunt,” judging by its “suspect” timing.
A group of nine House representatives led by Lance Gooden of Texas have called for an investigation into Zelenksy’s visit. The Ukrainian leader was flown into Pennsylvania in a US Air Force C-17 military aircraft and was provided with Secret Service protection, both of which were paid for with US taxpayer money, the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch on Tuesday.
“There is concern that these resources were used for purposes unrelated to US national security or bilateral diplomacy but rather to support a politically significant visit ahead of a major US election,” said the letter, which was shared with the Washington Examiner.
Gooden questioned Zelensky’s judgment in alienating Republican voters in an interview with Fox News.
“Why is he [Zelensky] not on his knees thanking Americans, Republicans and Democrats, for the sacrifices they’ve made for his nation? And how dare he come into our nation and opine on any election, much less the presidential race?” the lawmaker asked on ‘The Ingraham Angle’ program.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, has been seen as attempting to rally the large Polish-American voter base in Pennsylvania by touting the support for Ukraine under the current administration as a way to protect Poland.
Zelensky has said he headed to the US to attend the UN General Assembly in New York and to meet President Joe Biden, in order to present him with a ‘victory plan’ to defeat Russia.
Biden’s ‘Performative’ Lecture on Democracy at UN Belies True US Role in World
By John Miles – Sputnik – 25.09.2024
Biden has made his claimed struggle for democracy a primary argument for the Democratic Party’s campaign against former President Donald Trump, but a closer look reveals the malign role of the United States in preserving countries’ sovereignty and self-rule.
US President Joe Biden spoke before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, taking the opportunity to deliver what is likely one of the final major speeches of his political career.
The yearly gathering of world leaders and diplomats, which takes place each September in New York City, has served as the backdrop for several significant moments throughout its almost 80-year history. Cuban revolutionary Ché Guevara addressed the assembly in 1964, touting Havana’s literacy campaign and assailing US intervention in Latin America. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi delivered a highly memorable speech in 2009, as did ex-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who blasted George Bush, neoliberalism, and the US War on Terror in a 2006 broadside.
The week-long event provides an important forum for developing nations, who are briefly granted equal footing with great world powers. But the General Assembly is often criticized as a “talk shop” by those who claim the recognition granted to countries is more symbolic than tangible. Author and analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Tuesday to discuss the 78th session of the annual event and break down Biden’s address before the international audience.
“He talked about democracy and how he’s committed to democracy,” said Maupin, noting that Biden touched on themes he has frequently spoken about during the 2024 presidential election season. “He talked against Russia. He talked against Venezuela. He talked against the Palestinians. He talked up support for Israel. Joe Biden made a series of remarks going over standard US foreign policy.”
“Joe Biden really likes to do these kinds of performative, ideological shows, and that’s what his summit for democracy that he bragged about in his UN speech was,” the analyst claimed. “He loves to do these little performances where he talks about how he’s sticking up for democracy and democratic ideals.”
Biden has made his claimed struggle for democracy a primary argument for the Democratic Party’s campaign against former President Donald Trump, but a closer look reveals the malign role of the United States in preserving countries’ sovereignty and self-rule. A 2015 study found the US provides military support to 73% of nations labeled “dictatorships,” with Saudi Arabia and Juan Orlando Hernández’s oppressive former regime in Honduras providing perhaps the most prominent examples.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, still lauded as one of America’s most admired and consequential statesmen, made his contempt for democracy clear in 1970, when he vowed to intervene in Chile if the country elected an anti-imperialist leader. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” said the controversial figure, who spearheaded a campaign of social and economic subversion of the Latin American country after the election of Salvador Allende.
Three years later Chile’s democratically-elected president would be removed in a bloody US-backed military putsch, ushering in almost two decades of bloody dictatorship resulting in the death and torture of tens of thousands. The model was duplicated in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina in a campaign of state terror and repression known as Plan Cóndor.
The US has worked to support coups and subvert democracy in dozens of countries around the globe, but its role in Palestine has generated perhaps the most attention in recent years. The United States has frequently undermined the influence of the UN and the force of international law in the name of defending Israel from criticism, recently downplaying the importance of a vote by the UN Security Council that called on the country to end its campaign in Gaza. The US has also led a group of Western countries in defunding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a crucial lifeline for refugees facing hunger and displacement that Israel has long viewed as an impediment.
“There is a lot of criticism that can be leveled at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency,” noted Maupin. “[With] Israel though, in particular, there is a political issue there, which is the UN frequently criticizes Israel and calls out Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians.”
“Israel considers any connection with the legitimate elected government of Gaza, which is Hamas… support for terrorism,” he continued. “If the UN set up a health care clinic and an elected official who’s part of the government in Gaza – that would be a member of Hamas – showed up and got health care, that would be considered aid to terrorism.”
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed the country’s actual views on democracy in leaked audio of comments from 2006, in which she demonstrated that the United States’ support for democratic elections is highly contingent upon voters choosing candidates in line with views and policies supported by Washington.
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” Clinton said of the ballot that brought Hamas’s armed resistance movement to power in Gaza.
“If we were going to push for an election then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she claimed, appearing to suggest the United States should have intervened to rig the outcome.
US to Sanction Former Georgian Leader Over Opposition to NATO Membership
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 24, 2024
Washington is preparing sanctions against former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili over his opposition to Tbilisi joining the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union.
A senior US official told American state media, Voice of America, that Ivanishvili’s growing ties with Russia are concerning the White House. “We have information that Ivanishvili undertook actions to develop relations with Russian oligarchs, took actions to enable Russia to gain better access to the Georgian market,” the official explained. “In fact, he took some actions at the direction of the Russian intelligence services.”
While Ivanishvili has not personally been involved in Georgian politics since 2013, his populist Georgia Dream party is gaining influence in Tbilisi. The party has increasingly found itself at odds with Washington over a foreign agents law that was passed in Tbilisi earlier this year.
Similar to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) the legalization required agencies operating in Georgia and receiving more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as foreign agents.
A source familiar with the Biden administration’s plan to sanction Ivanishvili said the move is coming out of frustration that Washington has been unable to move Tbilisi. “I think the Biden administration has been frustrated by its inability to get the Georgian government to take seriously the position they’ve put themselves in,” a source said. “The Biden people are trying to convey the seriousness and hope that somebody in the Georgian government is listening in a serious way.”
In 2008, NATO signed a pledge to one day admit Ukraine and Georgia into the Washington-led bloc. However, the Kremlin views the countries’ entrance into the alliance as a national security threat. In 2022, Moscow invaded Ukraine, in part because Kiev was becoming a de facto member of NATO.
Towards a Greater Middle Eastern War & Defeat in Ukraine
Colonel Douglas Macgregor, interviewed by Professor Glenn Diesen
Video at Odyssee
Glenn Diesen | September 24, 2024
I spoke with Colonel Douglas Macgregor about the deteriorating situation in the Middle East and Ukraine. Colonel Macgregor was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defence under President Trump, he has written several books on military strategy, and is the CEO of Our Country Our Choice which seeks among other things to challenge the bipartisan support for the militarisation of US foreign policy
The war in Gaza has now spread into Lebanon and can seemingly no longer be contained, which threatens to pull in other actors in the region such as Iran. However, leaders in the region are already facing angry populations for failing to take a more hardline position against Israel and the US. Yemen is already striking ships passing through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, while attacks have also increased on US occupation troops in Syria and Iraq. The US and Israel continue to play good cop / bad cop in which the US provides the weapons and intelligence for the onslaught, while simultaneously complaining they are not able to impose a ceasefire. Israel is in deep trouble as its military exhausts itself and there are no desirable paths to peace, which is why pulling the US into a wider war appears to be the sole solution.
In Ukraine, the situation is also deteriorating quickly as the army suffers from a shortage of manpower, armoured vehicles, ammunition, air defences, aircrafts, and a multitude of other areas. Furthermore, Ukraine’s electric grids are severely damaged, the economy falters, the public grows more unhappy with the aggressive “recruitment” of new soldiers, while political divisions are yet again emerging in Kiev. In the West, there are fewer and fewer weapons to be sent and the US is seemingly reluctant to become directly involved in deep strikes within Russian territory as it will trigger a NATO-Russia war with the possibility of a nuclear exchange. War fatigue is growing throughout the West, with the exception of the UK which remains gung-ho for more war. When the US sabotaged the Minsk agreement and the Istanbul peace agreement, the objective was to use Ukrainians as a proxy to bleed and exhaust Russia to knock it out from the ranks of great powers, and thereafter shift focus to breaking China and thus restoring US global primacy. Instead, we are seeing a Russian victory, a pending unmitigated disaster in the Middle East, while the global majority is constructing a post-American world with BRICS.
We have crossed the point of no return in terms of reaching a peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. The world is heading towards major wars – and the US is approaching this dangerous situation with empty slogans rather than a strategy.
Leaked documents reveal US intel cutout’s Iranian counter-revolution plans
By Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal · The Grayzone · September 19, 2024
Leaks expose a secret effort by retired National Endowment for Democracy leader Carl Gershman to consolidate war-hungry neoconservative control over Iran’s opposition, while channeling US government funds into his own pet regime change initiatives.
Leaked documents and emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal a seemingly covert effort by American regime change operatives to impose radical leadership on the remnants of Iran’s protest movement against the mandatory hijab, in order to topple the government of Iran.
The initiative was spearheaded by Carl Gershman, the longtime director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government-funded non-profit which advances regime change operations across the globe. Originally conceived by the Reagan administration’s CIA, the NED has meddled in elections and sponsored coup leaders from Nicaragua to Venezuela to Hong Kong, and beyond.
The leaks reveal how Gershman privately plotted to channel US State Department resources into the construction of an “Iran Freedom Coalition” composed of pro-Western Iranian activists and US neoconservative operatives who clamor for an American military assault on Iran.
While aiming to “mobilize international support” for the Women, Life, Freedom Movement, “and to do what is possible to aid [their] struggle,” the Freedom Coalition represents a clear attempt to impose an exiled leadership over the grassroots Iranian opposition which is directed and sponsored by the most belligerent elements in Washington.
Attempts by The Grayzone to reach several members of the Coalition for comment were unsuccessful. We were therefore unable to determine if those listed by Gershman had explicitly committed to participating, or had been named by the NED veteran as prospective leaders.
Regardless of the listed members’ level of participation, the composition of Gershman’s proposed Iran Freedom Coalition demonstrates how Iran’s self-proclaimed pro-democracy movement has become a plaything for the Bomb Iran lobby. Among those handpicked by Gershman to lead the initiative was William Kristol, the neocon impresario who has led a decades-long lobbying campaign for a US military invasion of Iran. Also selected was Joshua Muravchik, a flamboyant supporter of Israel’s Likud Party who insists that “war with Iran is probably our best option”
The Freedom Coalition’s Iranian members consist heavily of US government-sponsored cultural figures and staffers at interventionist Western think tanks like the Tony Blair Institute. While these figures are quoted in Western media as the leaders of Iran’s “freedom” struggle, their involvement in US government-backed campaigns like the one conceived by Gershman reveals them as little more than Persian front people for Washington warmongers.
Protests erupted in Iranian cities in September 2022 after the death of a young Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini, who was briefly taken into police custody in Tehran after violating moral codes mandating that women wear a hijab. The movement attracted the zealous support of Western governments, celebrities and feminist NGOs, which cheered it on even after it fizzled out in the streets.
As Gershman’s leaked proposal illustrates, these elements quickly hijacked the protests, inserting US government-sponsored exiles as the movement’s international face and voice, thus ensuring that their ultimate effect would be a deepening of US sanctions on average Iranians.
In an investigation published this August, The Grayzone revealed that after retiring from his longtime post as leader of the NED in 2021, Gershman became locked in a vicious power struggle with his younger, more socially progressive successors. The Iran leaks we have obtained show how even in retirement, Gershman has attempted a bureaucratic end-around, marshaling his connections in US foreign policy networks to channel government resources into his own pet regime change projects.
Seeking a cut of “illegitimate” $55 million State Dept fund
When Gershman sought to kickstart his latest Iran regime change plot, he reached out to a longtime ally who recorded a three-minute-long “retirement tribute” honoring his tenure at the NED. It was Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a Republican powerbroker of the South Florida-based Cuban American lobby. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Department of State in the House Committee on Foreign Relations, Diaz Balart had substantial influence over the pursestrings of US foreign operations.
On August 27 2023, Gershman fired off an email to Díaz-Balart and the lawmaker’s “legislative assistant,” Austin Morley, stating that one of his “retirement initiatives” was “to work with Freedom House to create a coalition of working groups.” Calling it the Iran Freedom Coalition (IFC), Gershman claimed the Coalition was already “established.” However, no trace of its existence can be found online.
Gershman explained to Díaz-Balart that his “Iranian friends were taken aback” by the guidelines of the State Department’s 2023 Iran Democracy Fund, which earmarked $55 million for proposals to “strengthen civil society engagement in electoral processes.” According to Gershman, because the Women, Life, Freedom movement driving national protests “doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the regime that will be managing those ‘electoral processes,” some of the money should be funneled to a more hardline initiative.
The Coalition was to consist “of a dozen solidarity working groups representing…women, civil society and human rights groups, parliamentarians, trade unionists, and physicians that help the injured and traumatized protesters.” Bizarrely, though the protests had been extinguished in Iran, Gershman pitched his IFC to “support…the mass uprising” in Iran, as if it were contemporary.
He suggested Díaz-Balart use his influence within Congress to “direct…maybe 10%” of the $55 million annual budget for the State Department’s controversial Iran Democracy Fund to his own NED.
“The funds could be managed by the NED,” Gershman wrote, “that has a small Iran grants program already and is in very close touch with groups in the US and elsewhere that are trying very discreetly to aid the resistance movement. In effect, this would enable NED to expand what it’s already doing. Taking such an initiative at this time would be an important act of solidarity.”
US-backed interventionists marketed as Iranian “freedom” leaders
Initially led and organized by Iranian citizens, the Women, Life, Freedom Movement quickly became a cause celebre for notorious, high-profile anti-Islamic Republic exiles. They included Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran’s eldest son and pretender to the country’s now non-existent throne, and Masih Alinejad, a prominent veteran of Western-funded propaganda efforts targeting Tehran, who has reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from the US government for her anti-Iran agitation – which includes calls for Israeli attacks on the country of her birth. In a September 2022 New Yorker interview, she claimed to be “leading this movement.” Alinejad has also called for Israel to assassinate Iranian leaders.
The Women, Life, Freedom movement’s co-optation by Western interventionists was so flagrant, activists on the ground in Iran complained their efforts had been “hijacked” by foreign forces. Protests in Tehran tapered off after a few weeks, and were forgotten inside Iran.
Yet, Pahlavi and Alinejad continued to hype the movement, earning an invite to the February 2023 Munich Security Conference, where they were presented as prospective leaders of a future “democratic” Iran. Three months later, the US government-funded NGO Freedom House presented the defunct Women, Life, Freedom movement with its annual Freedom Award.
With the introduction of his Iran Freedom Coalition, Gershman aimed to consolidate control of any future protests in the hands of the most belligerent elements in Washington, who advocate crushing sanctions, assassinations of Iranian leaders, and US airstrikes, while claiming concern for the human rights of average Iranians.
Gershman seeks US funds for defunct protest movement
Attached to Gershman’s email to Díaz-Balart was a document setting out his vision for the Iran Freedom Coalition. Touting the defunct Movement as somehow continuing to “represent momentous challenges to the Iranian theocracy and its clerics,” the file called for a “new approach to dealing with Iran.” This was considered particularly urgent in light of the coming termination of the Iran nuclear deal, and what he believed was the Islamic Republic’s “burgeoning military assistance to Russia”:
“The confluence of these factors urgently requires… a focus on building international support for the Iran protest movement and holding the regime accountable for human rights abuses and other violations of international law, as well as thwarting the regime’s ability to sustain its repressive practices and finance its malign activities inside the country and regionally… Through actions outside Iran, the Coalition will also help connect, strengthen, and mobilize constituencies within Iran, namely women, youth, trade unions, civil society, and others.”
The IFC would thus seek to “[shape] international political discourse” on Iran, “[helping] support national discussions about power and democracy.” This work might include “[coordinating] boycotts or divestment campaigns to bring economic pressure to bear” on Tehran, “denying them resources to sustain their repressive activities.” In turn, the Coalition would “bring increased visibility to the efforts of Iranians and empower them to advance change.”
Gershman wrote that Freedom House was committed to “[nurturing] the formation” of IFC, “a coalition of like-minded and influential groups and individuals working on Iran.” It would seek to “inform public opinion in the US and abroad” about “Iran’s freedom struggle,” while focusing “public and diplomatic pressure…on isolating the regime and stopping the flow of funds to the regime.”
A rogue’s gallery of regime change operatives
Gershman’s proposal also provided an accompanying list of “individuals involved or to be involved” in the IFC. Those assembled as the leaders of the longtime NED leader’s coalition represent a veritable rogue’s gallery of neoconservative chickenhawks, pro-war think tankers, and Western-backed Iranian regime change activists.
A full proposed membership list appears at the end of this article.
Mahnaz Afkhami – Afkhami was Minister of Women’s Affairs under the Shah from 1976 to 1978, at a time when the Shah’s brutal Savak security forces were disappearing, torturing and killing thousands of protesters.
William “Bill” Kristol – Kristol is perhaps the leading neoconservative demagogue in Washington, and known for his extensive history of lobbying for war with Iran. In 2010, he declared that Washington’s calamitous, bloody “interventions” in Muslim countries, of which he was invariably a top cheerleader, should be considered “liberations,” and not invasions at all.
Joshua Muravchik – One of the most virulent advocates for a US war on Iran, Muravchik declared “WE MUST bomb Iran” in a 2006 LA Times editorial. Again in 2015, Muravchik declared in a Washington Post editorial, “War with Iran is probably our only answer.” A neoconservative admirer of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, Muravchik has insisted with his usual knack for subtlety, “Israel keeps saving the world” by carrying out assassinations inside Iran.
Leopoldo Lopez – The de facto leader of Venezuela’s putschist, US and EU government-sponsored opposition, Lopez participated in a failed military coup to remove the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez in 2002, then assisted the Trump administration’s plot to oust President Nicolas Maduro which appointed a phony president, Juan Guaido, to steal Venezuela’s foreign assets, and initiated another failed military coup. Lopez is the aristocratic son of a right-wing Spanish legislator, Leopoldo Lopez Sr., and currently resides in Spain.
Kasra Aarabi and Saeid Golkar – Aarabi and Golkar both work at the Tony Blair Institute, the think tank and influence peddling operation of the pro-war former British Prime Minister. The outfit is known to have received £9 million for advising the government of Saudi Arabia. In November 2022, the Blair Institute published an extraordinary report on the Women, Life, Freedom Movement, excitedly cheering how “removal of the hijab became a symbol of regime change” in Iran. The report made a number of frenzied claims, including that the overwhelming majority of the Islamic Republic’s population are secularists, if not atheists, wholeheartedly supporting their government’s overthrow.
It went on to boast that the Blair Institute had “developed on-the-ground intelligence in Iran through a network of contacts on the streets,” which it has exploited to forecast” protest trends in Iran for the past five years, including the ongoing nationwide uprising.” While the Institute’s claim is unsubstantiated, it raises questions about whether the former UK PM’s outfit played a clandestine role in instigating the Women, Life, Freedom Movement protests.
Roya Hakakian – An Iranian-Jewish author and darling of the Israel lobby, Hakakian has denigrated protests against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza as proof that “Iran [has] arrive[d] on US campuses,” and fervently defended Israel as a robust democracy striving for peace.
Maziar Bahari – A Canadian-Iranian journalist, Bahari was the subject of Jon Stewart’s 2014 film, Rosewater, about his detention in Iran’s Evin prison. Today, Bahari serves alongside former State Department and USAID officials, and Western interventionist NGO leaders, as director of the board of Journalism For Change. As the independent outlet Noir reported, Journalism For Change receives at least 95% of its budget from the US State Department, which also funds IranWire, an anti-Tehran partner outlet that publishes Bahari’s articles.
Mariam Memarsadeghi – A self-proclaimed “Iran democracy activist” who features both the Ukrainian and Israeli flags on her Twitter/X bio, Memarsadeghi directs the Israel lobby-adjacent Cyrus Forum, which is dedicated to promoting regime change in Iran.
Despite her own flamboyant advocacy for toppling Iran’s government, Memarsadeghi conceded that Reza Pahlavi’s own campaign to dismantle the Islamic Republic floundered because “his most visible associates” were deranged far-right ultranationalists who alienated average Iranians. “[Spending] most of their time peddling distrust and attacking other opposition leaders on social media,” they also “publicly [called] for retributive violence, summary executions, the purging of leftists, vilification of human rights defenders, and antagonism towards free media outlets.”
In her criticism of Pahlavi, Memarsadeghi could have also been describing the neocon-controlled Iran Freedom Coalition to which she apparently lent her name and reputation.
Measles “Outbreak” In Maine Was Vaccine-Induced All Along
Informed Consent Action Network | September 24, 2024
ICAN’s attorneys obtained documents related to the widely reported May 2023 “outbreak” of measles in Maine. As it turns out, test results from the CDC confirmed that the measles case was “consistent with vaccine strain,” meaning there was no “outbreak” and, instead, it was the vaccine that caused the child’s rash.
On May 5, 2023, the Maine CDC reported that a child had “tested positive” for measles. News outlets immediately began fearmongering, hinting that the “outbreak” was due to low vaccination rates:
- “Measles can be serious for anyone…” (Maine CDC Facebook Page)
- “In severe cases, measles can cause pneumonia, brain swelling and death.” (Bangor Daily News )
- “The CDC says roughly one to three of every 1,000 children infected with measles die.” (USA Today ) Note: the death rate is actually more like 1 in 500,000.
- “Measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000… But vaccination rates in the US have dropped in recent years, sparking new outbreaks.” (CNN)
- “Anyone who is not immunized or does not know their measles immunization status should get vaccinated.” (Maine CDC Press Release)
The Maine CDC reported that even though the child had received a dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, it was “considering the child to be infectious out of an abundance of caution.” In the meantime, the Maine CDC indicated it had sent a specimen to CDC headquarters to determine the specific strain of measles; however, it did not mention how the child would have been exposed to the wild strain of measles, such as international travel, nor did it share how recently the child may have received the vaccine.
According to a WHO report, about 2% of those who receive the measles vaccine develop a rash, called VARI (vaccine-associated rash illness). In fact, one study recommends assuming the rash is vaccine-caused and that “testing should only be considered if exposure to the wild-type (not vaccine-strain) virus is strongly suspected.”
So, it is unclear why the Maine CDC raised the alarm and then took so long to confirm the specific strain. The child was diagnosed on May 3, but it took the Maine CDC five days to ship the sample to the CDC. It then took the CDC seven days to report the results and for the Maine CDC to announce the child was not infectious.
ICAN, through its attorneys, requested relevant records and received them. Incredibly, they reveal that the positive measles test was “[c]onsistent with vaccine strain,” which is apparently an “acceptable” form of measles because, as the Maine CDC announced, the strain that the child tested positive for was not considered “an infectious strain of the virus,” despite causing traditional symptoms of the disease. Decidedly absent from Maine’s announcement was the fact that the child got measles as a result of the vaccine. Maine and the CDC simply hid this fact from the public.
Maine’s actions make sense, however, when considering that it may have just been following a CDC marketing presentation which states that the perfect “recipe” for creating demand for vaccines “requires creating concern, anxiety, and worry” by, for example, having medical experts and public health authorities “state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)” and show “[v]isible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce)” — all things we saw implemented during this “outbreak.”
Lead Counsel, Aaron Siri, Esq. lays out the details here.
ICAN will continue to follow-up on reported outbreaks across the country. In the meantime, catch up on some of ICAN’s additional work on vaccine policy:
Democrat Senators Urge Platforms To Share Plans for Addressing “Disinformation” (Even Inside Encrypted Apps)
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 24, 2024
US Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have joined those currently publicly pressuring companies behind social media platforms and encrypted messages – they have identified 11 of the most widely used ones – to make sure they “combat election disinformation.”
Specifically, four Democrats (the letter was also signed by Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren) want to know what these companies’ censorship plans are: the senators phrase it as the need to discover what measures will be taken to “de-amplify” (and that includes removal) content and accounts seen as spreading the said type of disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
How will the tech companies know this is happening on their platforms? They will, the senators write if that content or accounts violate their policies. (That is, those same vague and restrictive policies that have been used and abused over the years.)
As far as Wyden and Merkley and others are concerned, it doesn’t matter if this content they consider to be election disinformation is AI-generated or not.
On the encrypted chat apps front, they want the companies operating them to “explain whether they have a reporting system for their users to flag unwanted election disinformation and what enforcement measures are in place.”
To cover all this the way the senators see fit, the companies and their platforms – Meta, Google (YouTube), TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon (Twitch), Discord, Signal, Telegram, and Apple (Messages) – are urged to “increase resources” needed to fight what the US lawmakers describe in terms presented as a national-level crisis.
They warn that disinformation that is allegedly now more present than ever could suppress voter participation, but also “sow doubt in US democracy and incite political violence.”
The many times repeated references are made in the senators’ letter about alleged foreign disinformation campaigns during the 2020 and 2022 elections in the US, and a note is made that this “disinformation” would at that time remain online longer if it was in Spanish.
Essentially, what Wyden and Merkley now want from the tech giants – but also companies like Signal, that bill themselves as the ultimate privacy-friendly choice – is a report, to keep them on the straight and narrow, at least the way that is perceived by four Democrat senators at the height of a presidential campaign.
“Share information about the size and capacity of their 2024 US elections safety resourcing – including personnel and technologies – broken down by language,” is the opening demand aimed at social platforms.
Time for NATO to Retire?
Learning all the Wrong Lessons from Europe’s Bloc-Politics?
By Glenn Diesen | September 24, 2024
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently gave his farewell speech. The speech was intended to be a tribute to NATO and himself, instead it revealed why the outdated military bloc should retire.[1] The speech exposed an ideological and simplistic mindset in which conflicts occur because there are bad guys in the world, and security depends on the good guys arming themselves to the teeth and confronting the bad guys. Immersed with ideology to justify a hegemonic world order, there was zero recognition of the security competition in the international system. Our weapons are good, the weapons of our adversaries are bad. Dividing the world into good and evil is dangerous as war becomes the only path to peace, or as Stoltenberg argues about the Ukraine War: “weapons are the way to peace”.
How is security measured by NATO? Stoltenberg boasted that “we have strengthened our defences”, without assessing if this has resulted in heightened security. Stoltenberg celebrated that NATO went from “having zero to tens of thousands of combat-ready NATO soldiers on our Eastern flank”, without a word about how Russia will respond to NATO militarising its borders. Expansionism was presented as an objective of its own as “Montenegro, North Macedonia, Finland and Sweden joined our Alliance. And Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before”. Given that NATO expansionism triggered the war in Ukraine, how will the end of neutrality in Europe impact peace? The failed ambition towards the end of the Cold War was to transition away from confrontational bloc politics, zero-sum politics, and Cold War mentality. Yet, the advancement of a military bloc is now seemingly the sole measurement of success for NATO.
Peacetime alliances
The modern world order is based on a balance of power in which alliances are useful to the extent they balance the hegemonic ambitions of an expansionist power. After the Cold War, NATO itself became an instrument of expansionism and hegemony. NATO preserved US dominance in Europe and the military bloc had to search for a new purpose to justify its own existence. NATO transitioned from a status-quo power to a revisionist power as its continued relevance relied on expansionism and military interventionism. The buzz phrase of the 1990s was that NATO had to go “out of area or out of business”. Today, NATO is an organisation that justifies its existence by the need to counter the security challenges caused by its own existence.
Peacetime alliances are problematic as they rely on external adversaries to preserve internal solidarity, which creates incentives for radicalising the “us” versus “them” mentality. NATO struggled with a lack of purpose when peace broke out in the 1990s, although Stoltenberg could now celebrate the renewed purpose and unity of NATO as war had returned to Europe. Peacetime alliances also create entanglements as military alliances replace a state’s right to make war with a duty to make war.[2] Military alliances also encourage smaller states to maintain their historical grievances and embolden aggressive behaviour. For example, the former Prime Minister of Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, feels comfortable calling for breaking up the Russian Federation into many smaller states as the US stands behind it. Instead of encouraging reconciliation, peacetime military alliances embrace the people who pursue historical justice and vengeance. Whenever a NATO member state considers to return to diplomacy or recognise the security concerns of the adversary, the demand for “alliance solidarity” is used to prevent peace from breaking out.
The lesson from history is that security competition is mitigated with inclusive security arrangements that pursue security with other member states, as opposed to an exclusive alliance that pursues security against a non-member. After Russia’s victory over Napoleon, Europe’s first collective security institution was established, the Concert of Europe (1815-1914), in which the defeated state France was invited to have a seat at the table. This lesson was not followed after the First World War as peace was deemed to rely on perpetuating the weakness of Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, which laid the foundations for the Second World War. However, after the Second World War, both Germany and France were brought into the same club to pursue security with each other rather than against each other.
The decision to abandon the agreements to form a pan-European security architecture after the Cold War functioned as a second Treaty of Versailles in which peace in Europe would rely on perpetuating the weakness of Russia. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defence, William Perry, recognised that NATO expansion was a betrayal of the post-Cold War peace, but his colleagues did not care as Russia was weak and kept getting weaker. George Kennan, the architect of the US containment policy against the Soviet Union, criticised the decision to expand NATO as a reversal back to confrontational bloc politics: “Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom”.[3] In an interview with the New York Times, George Kennan outlined the folly and predicted the consequences of expansion:
“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war… There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves… Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are —but this is just wrong”.[4]
The success of NATO is also measured by the ability to expand the bloc politics of Europe to the wider world. Stoltenberg applauded NATO for the “deepened relations with countries in the Indo Pacific”, which is evidently intended to contain and confront China. Bloc politics was equated to freedom as Stoltenberg argued NATO “must not make the same mistake with China” as “freedom is more important than free trade”. NATO’s lesson from Europe is seemingly not that zero-sum bloc politics was advanced at the expense of an inclusive European security architecture, rather it was that the West allowed itself to have any dependence on Russia at all. Is it possible that expanding militarised dividing lines closer to Russian borders was not a good recipe for security?
An Alternative Farewell Speech?
An alternative farewell speech should have been held by the former Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating. Last year, Keating commented on the goal to make NATO go global. In Keating’s words: “NATO’s continued existence after and at the end of the Cold War has already denied peaceful unity in broader Europe”.[5] Keating was thus fiercely opposed to expanding the model of European bloc politics and Cold War mentality to Asia as “Exporting that malicious poison to Asia would be akin to Asia welcoming the plague upon itself. With all of Asia’s recent development amid its long and latent poverty, that promise would be compromised by having anything to do with the militarism of Europe – and militarism egged on by the United States”. Regarding the man of the hour, Jens Stoltenberg, Keating opined:
“Of all the people on the international stage the supreme fool among them is Jens Stoltenberg, the current Secretary-General of NATO. Stoltenberg by instinct and by policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen… Stoltenberg conducts himself as an American agent more than he performs as a leader and spokesperson for European security.”
[1] NATO – Opinion: Transcript – German Marshall Fund event, Reflections on a Challenging Decade: A Farewell Conversation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, 19-Sep.-2024
[2] J.H. Herz, ‘Power politics and world organization’, The American Political Science Review, vol.36, no.6, 1942, p.1046-7.
[3] G.F., Kennan, ‘A Fateful Error’, The New York Times, 5 February 1997.
[4] T.L. Friedman, ‘Foreign Affairs; Now a Word From X.’, The New York Times, 2 May 1998.
[5] P. Keating. ‘NATO’s provocative lurch eastward and the ‘supreme fool’ Jens Stoltenberg’, China Daily, 10 July 2023.
The Russia-China grains corridor will completely displace the US, Canada, Australia, and France
Inside China Business | August 31, 2024
Russia and China are developing a transnational grains corridor, connecting Russia’s enormous agricultural production to export markets in China, South Asia, and the Middle East. When complete, Russian production and shipments on this network will exceed 8 million tons per year. China is the world’s largest importer of wheat and grains, and in 2023 imported over 6 million tons of wheat from the United States, Canada, Australia, and France.
Large distribution hubs are being completed in China’s Northern and Central provinces, which will further transport Russian food exports within China, and on to other Asian countries.
The proposed BRICS grains exchange enjoys wide support across the bloc, and will accelerate the decoupling of Global South markets from the Western banking and trading systems, to the detriment of farmers in North America and Europe.
Resources and links:
The Sino-Russian Land Grain Corridor and China’s Quest for Food Security https://asiasociety.org/policy-instit…
BRICS countries back grain exchange idea, Russia says https://gulfbusiness.com/brics-countr…
Russia, China agree to build new grain hub on border https://www.world-grain.com/articles/…
Visual Capitalist, Visualizing the world’s largest consumer markets in 2030 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-…
U.S. Dominance in Corn Exports on the Wane Due to Brazilian Competition https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/202…
The New Land Grain Corridor, website and infographics https://www.nlgc.ru/en/
Closing scene, Chinese rural area outside Guilin, Guangxi province
Washington’s Ukraine Obsession is Going to Get Us All Killed!
By Ron Paul | September 23, 2024
Last week the world narrowly escaped likely nuclear destruction, as the Biden Administration considered Ukraine’s request to allow US missiles to strike deeply into Russian territory. Russian president Vladimir Putin warned, as the request was being considered, that because these missiles could not be launched without the active participation of the US military and NATO, Russia would consider itself in a state of war with both NATO and the US should they be launched. It was a Cuban Missile Crisis on a massive scale.
Thankfully, permission was reportedly not granted by Washington to hit deep inside Russia, but as we have seen throughout this war, a weapons system is often first denied and then eventually granted to Washington’s proxies in Kiev. We should not rest easy even if nuclear war has been temporarily averted.
Would missile strikes deep inside Russia win the war for Ukraine? Not even the Pentagon thinks so. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin himself said earlier this month that granting Ukraine permission to launch missiles into Russia would not be a “game-changer” in the two and a half year war.
Risking nuclear destruction for no tangible purpose? Have these people gone insane?
Even the “game-changers” have changed little in this war. How many times has the pro-war mainstream media told us a weapons system would be a “game-changer” for Ukraine? Remember Javelin missiles? Leopard tanks? HIMARS? And as each one of them fails to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor, the neocons and their friends in the media only demand more.
The fact is that Russia is winning the war despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the best weapons systems from the US and NATO countries. Each new shipment of increasingly sophisticated weapons does not produce battlefield victories for Ukraine. It only produces more dead Ukrainian soldiers and more profits for the weapons manufacturers.
Even the mainstream media – which has solidly supported the Ukraine war – has begun to report on Ukraine’s huge losses and hopeless situation. Yet as more and more start to wake up about the disastrous proxy war, Washington only knows one direction when it comes to war: forward. Just over a week ago the Pentagon announced another $250 million arms package for Ukraine. Nobody believes that is going to reverse the steady gains made by Russia on the battlefield, but it will generate more profits for the US arms manufacturers who are the real force behind our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.
The unlikely duo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump, Jr., said it best in a recent editorial in The Hill : “We cannot get any closer to the brink than this. And for what? To ‘weaken Russia’? To control Ukraine’s minerals? No vital American interest is at stake. To risk nuclear conflict for the sake of the neoconservative fantasy of global ‘full-spectrum dominance’ is madness.”
They are right, it is madness to risk the future of our country and our children and grandchildren for wars that have nothing to do with us and serve no national interest of the United States. This is certainly true for the Ukraine war, and it is also true for the wars the US is supporting in the Middle East. When will the madness end? When the people speak up and demand a change.
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From the Archives
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
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