On Military Coups and Starvation: Is Western Media’s Perception of Africa Racist?

AUGUST 23, 2023

Image by Ninno Jack Jr.

BY RAMZY BAROUD

Racism goes beyond the use of certain words or the discriminatory practices of everyday life. It is also about political perceptions, intellectual depictions, and collective relationships.

Consider the way that Africa is currently portrayed in the news.

From a political viewpoint, Africa is seen as a totality, and not in a positive way, as in a united Africa.

For example, mainstream Western media coverage of the US-Africa Summit, held in Washington last December, presented all of Africa as poor and desperate. The continent, one can glean from headlines, was also willing to pawn its political position in the Russia-NATO conflict, in exchange for money and food.

“Biden tells African leaders US is ‘all in’ on the continent,” an Associated Press headline announced on December 15.

The phrase ‘all in’ – a lingo used in Poker when someone is willing to risk it all – was cited many times in the US and Western media.

Biden offered unconditional US commitment “to supporting every aspect of Africa’s growth,” AP reported. But “growth” had little to do with Biden’s offerings. He merely tried to outbid Russia’s support for Africa so that the latter may adopt an anti-Moscow stance. He failed.

When a Russia-Africa Summit took place on July 27-28, US-western media lashed out, again presenting Africans as political vagabonds, while belittling the strategic value of such a meeting for both Russia and African countries.

A CNN headline began with “Isolated Putin ..,” while a Reuters headline read “Putin promises African leaders free grain.”

Very little mention was made of African leaders spending much time discussing a possible role in finding a peaceful resolution to the horrific war underway in Ukraine.

Indeed, several African leaders articulated a sincere political discourse, rejecting imperialism, neocolonialism and military interventions.

Moreover, there was little media discussion that Africa, like Europe, can negotiate a stronger political position in world affairs.

Instead, the coverage seemed to center around the Black Sea Grains Initiative – brokered in July 2022 – insinuating that Russia is threatening food security in an already impoverished continent.

But this was hardly the case.

In a speech at the Economic Forum in Vladivostok last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that, of the 87 grain-loaded ships, only 60,000 tons out of two million reached the United Nations’ World Food Program.

Though Putin’s overall figures were contested, the UN’s Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) said in a statement published in Euronews that “Putin is correct to say only a small amount has been shipped under the World Food Program.”

Even though Western countries have been the largest recipients of grains shipped through the Black Sea, no mainstream media has made it a mission to depict Europeans as starving populations, or worse.

Additionally, Europe is hardly presented as greedy, either. Indeed, the blame is never on Europe, its colonialism, arms, and political meddling. Yet, the blame is readily assigned elsewhere.

This headline in ‘The Conversation’ is a good illustration: “Putin offers unconvincing giveaways in a desperate bid to make up for killing the Ukraine grain deal.”

The bias is astonishing.

The truth is that African leaders were not looking for ‘giveaways’ but were hoping to negotiate a stronger geopolitical position in a vastly changing global political map. Just like everybody else.

Whether Putin’s “bid” in Africa was “desperate” or not, matters little. The bias, however, becomes clear when the alleged Russian desperation is compared to the outcome of the US-Africa summit last year.

Biden’s ‘bid’ was presented as an attempt at building bridges and creating opportunities for future cooperation. All is done, of course, in the name of democracy and human rights.

The misrepresentation of Africa can also be viewed independently from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Take, for example, the way Western media dealt with the Niger military coup on July 26.

Niger is part of the Sahel countries in Africa, a stretch of nations that have all been colonized by France.

Decades after these countries gained nominal independence, Paris continued to exert strong political influence and economic control.

This is called neocolonialism. It ensures the wealth of former colonies continues to be exploited by former colonizers.

In fact, Niger’s wealth of uranium ore has helped fuel more than a fourth of the EU’s nuclear energy plants, and much of France’s.

A decade ago, France returned to the Sahel region as a military force, in the name of fighting Jihadists.

Yet, violence grew, forcing African Sahel countries to rebel, starting in the Central African Republic, then Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and, finally, Niger.

Little of that context features in the coverage of Western media. Instead, like Mali and the others, Niger is depicted as another of Russia’s lackeys in Africa.

Thus, the CNN headline, on August 2, “A Niger coup leader meets with Wagner-allied junta in Mali.” Here, CNN leaves no room for the possibility that African leaders have agendas, or political will, of their own.

The West’s problematic relationship with Africa is complex, rooted in colonialism, economic exploitation, and outright racism.

Africans are good ‘allies’ when they toe the Western line and hungry, easily manipulated, and illegitimate regimes when they reject the West’s conditions.

It is time to rethink and confront this demeaning perception.

Africa, like all other political spaces, is a complicated and conflicted region, deserving of deep understanding and appreciation, beyond the self-serving agendas of a few Western countries.

Sleepless in Beirut: A struggle of Lebanese diaspora in the 2006 war

July 30, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

The Diaspora and the 2006 July War

By Rachel Hamdoun

This is not a story of leaving Lebanon but take this as a letter from those living on the outside and looking in, incapable of acting to cease the atrocities as a result of distance, to a homeland they can only reach through a screen. 

On a plane to the US, you left behind a home you used to run around in its rooms at the age of five and the ‘dekkene’ you used to buy your favorite candy from at the age of 12. You left behind the nights in Downtown Beirut and Hamra where you would have dinner with friends or dance the night away at 18. This is Lebanon, the country to which you belong, which you call home. 

As you see the Mediterranean Sea fade away from your window seat and off you go into a new city, beautiful Beirut becomes a memory of the past engraved deep in your mind in hopes of coming back in the summer to live it all again – until the summer of 2006.

You are now part of the Lebanese diaspora, as was I. You are now a participant in the collective memory of what was once Lebanon and is now a changing definition of what is becoming home, in a time of war by the Israeli occupation in July 2006.

This is not a story of leaving Lebanon but take this as a letter from those living on the outside and looking in, incapable of acting to cease the atrocities as a result of distance, to a homeland they can only support through a screen.

The transnational world of the diaspora

On July 12, 2006, when the Israeli occupation forces declared an all-out war on Lebanon, after the Lebanese Resistance, Hezbollah, captured two Israeli soldiers to exchange them with Lebanese captives kept in Israeli prisons for tens of years, approximately 900,000 people according to UN estimates fled their homes and left Lebanon, throughout the 33-day war, in search of safety on foreign soil that extended from Europe all the way to Canada.

Just by taking the step with the intent of residing away from home, one would have entered the transnational world of the diaspora. Many of those who fled stayed and started lives outside, but a huge chunk of the 900,000, in fact, did come back only to find their homes turned to dust, farms turned to scorched ash, and streets resembling the gates of Hell – in a land that the rich came to in order to embrace a sense of heaven on earth. I refuse to call Lebanon what was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. 

For those who remained outside or were previously living outside, “it was difficult not being there” is more than an understatement. It would be a shame to portray the sentiments and psychological being of a diaspora without explaining the why of what they felt and the how of when they felt that their hearts reached more than their hands could. 

Brothers and sisters, by blood or by heart, were living opposite lives on opposite sides of the world – one lived in peace and one lived not knowing if a bombshell was right over their head. One lived in a realm of memory and a sense of belonging and one lived in a war-torn present and a loss of identity. 

Not being present to support and stand by family and friends, while being provided a stress-free standard of living, shaped a burden on the shoulders of the Lebanese diaspora whose shoulders became something to lean on, in one of the worst times for the land we call home.

Through a couple of means to provide support, the diaspora found some form of relief – financial remittance, protests in solidarity, and social attachment. 

Sending money to relatives and friends provided a feeling of not just relief but a feeling of a satisfied conscience that they’re doing the least that they can do.  

Mona Issa, 27, expressed to Al Mayadeen English, “I remember as I was watching television and seeing the bombs being dropped, I thought to myself I had to do something. Imagine, I was a 10-year-old at the time.” She added that she went into the study room to print out around “100 flyers of the brands that you should boycott, brands that support Israel.” That was her “earliest go at activism.” A year later, she moved back to Lebanon with her family. 

Funds sent after the war was over helped people go about with their daily lives as the reconstruction process was underway, mainly by the Lebanese Resistance, Hezbollah, which revived the local economy in some way while lifting the burden on those whom the war had left in a state of uncertainty and instability. 

According to Guita Hourani, former director of the Lebanese Research Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, “Once migrants donate, they are encouraged to visit to see what their contributions have done. This impacts return migration, and, hence, becomes a mechanism for migrants to not just see the physical benefits of their donations, but also to maintain transnational relations between origin and host societies.”

Emigrants, the underdog

Worldwide protests in solidarity with Lebanon against the Israeli occupation were a sight for sore eyes, as the Lebanese people from different backgrounds put aside all the differences, that would have been conflicts of interests back home, and showed unity in the face of a belligerent war hawk. 

Cities like Dubai, Michigan, Abidjan, and Algiers witnessed mass demonstrations by both Lebanese citizens and locals in support of Lebanon’s defense against the IOF aggression. Locals who did not know the true facts of the war or did not know of the war at all were now well aware with eyes wide open. 

What the Lebanese did was both spread awareness by being the underdog in fighting Western pro-Israeli media and take to the streets to ensure their voice echoed across the world.

Abdul Rahman Khalifeh, 27, told Al Mayadeen English through a recorded video from the UK, “Those days were really filled with mixed emotions… I can only begin to put them into words. I really felt this overwhelming sense of helplessness, really wishing I was there for my family, even at a young age, just like provide some support, provide some comfort if I could.” 

Western media played quite a significant role at the time of the July 2006 war, as they still do when they touch on matters that don’t match their personal rhetoric, whether their claim that the war was in “defense of Israel” or that the Lebanese Resistance was killing its own people as they relay more and more misinformation to deviate the truth.  

Global media, especially Western, gave an uncontrollable amount of leverage to the IOF and its allies during the war on Lebanon in terms of the number of kills and size of destruction, with the mere imagery of responses by Hezbollah being sufficient for the media to batter the Resistance in racist rhetoric and deep fry it in warmongering. It’s always Hezbollah that struck a “surprise attack” that is allegedly unprovoked and it’s never the Israeli forces continuously provoking and executing intimidations at the Lebanese-Palestinian border. 

Think not of the people in the diaspora as involved in homeland politics through elections and voting only. They are the unsung heroes of resurrecting a country in crisis even at times when the country’s own infrastructure could not hold it up. 

Social remittance and attachment are not to be excluded here either, for the contribution they provided to the shattered national spirit resuscitated the very heartbeat that founded home.   

Phone calls, video calls, and emails were the connecting lines transcending borders and oceans separating the host from home. The unwavering and unshakeable social ties with both the homeland and its people by emigrants and the diaspora, through the medium of technology, provided relief for both the resident and the emigrant. This transnational connection made the emigrant feel like they never left the homeland in the first place and gave unconditional emotional support to the resident. 

Meghan Itani, 28, relayed to Al Mayadeen English in a recorded video from the US, “Being away from Lebanon during the 2006 war, I remember feeling very scared and almost guilty like it was unfair that I wasn’t there going through what the people I loved were going through.” She explained that she had to attend a new school as her family believed that the war was going to be prolonged. 

She further expressed, speaking of communication, that they “couldn’t really call people unless we had an international phone card which only lasted 28 minutes on a line.”

The news didn’t help either, especially coming from the US. “All we had was the news, and it was never accurate.”

Defining home in 2006

The collective action and collective peace-building, stemming from the collective memory of the Lebanese diaspora during the July 2006 war, were the very roots of re-establishing the definition of home, identity, and belonging. 

On August 14, 2006 – 33 days after the start of the war – a ceasefire was put into place, and so were the Israelis. The war was admitted to be a loss to the Israeli occupation in the face of the Lebanese Resistance echoing until this day, as is the sense of unity and belonging among the Lebanese in every corner of the world. 

After the war was over and done with, thousands of Lebanese people came back home, many of whom returned to rebuild their homes and many of whom flew in to be held in the arms of an injured country refusing to be crumbled under the fist of a colonizer-wanna-be. 

Abdul Rahman concluded by speaking from his heart, saying that “after the war, my love for the country grew even stronger, and I hope for the day I could return to contribute to its healing and to its growth.”

From the civil war to the 2006 war and till the August 4 blast, the resilience and camaraderie of the people of Lebanon, from its South to its North, rings across the nations of the world and into the ears of its enemies – and from the hearts of its emigrants who are the very foundation of the greatness of its Resistance and its nation. 

• July 2006
• Western Media
• media
• Lebanon

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JOHN PILGER: FROM YELLOW JOURNALISM TO CHINA BASHING, THE MEDIA’S ENDURING ROLE IN PROMOTING WAR

MAY 1ST, 2023

Source

By John Pilger

In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on ‘the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists’ to discuss the ‘rapid crumbling of capitalism’ and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public, with more than a thousand turned away.

Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, and Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and writers and journalists were responsible for speaking out. Telegrams of support from Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, C Day Lewis, Upton Sinclair and Albert Einstein were read out.

The journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke up for the homeless and unemployed and ‘all of us under the shadow of violent great power.’

Martha, who became a close friend, told me later over her customary glass of Famous Grouse and soda: ‘The responsibility I felt as a journalist was immense. I had witnessed the injustices and suffering delivered by the Depression, and I knew, we all knew, what was coming if silences were not broken.’

Her words echo across the silences today: they are silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear. Let me give you one example:

On 7 March, the two oldest newspapers in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, published several pages on ‘the looming threat’ of China. They coloured the Pacific Ocean red. Chinese eyes were martial, on the march and menacing. The Yellow Peril was about to fall down as if by the weight of gravity.”

DOG WHISTLES AND AMERICAN POWER

No logical reason was given for an attack on Australia by China. A ‘panel of experts’ presented no credible evidence: one of them is a former director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a front for the Defence Department in Canberra, the Pentagon in Washington, the governments of Britain, Japan and Taiwan and the West’s war industry.

‘Beijing could strike within three years,’ they warned. ‘We are not ready.’ Billions of dollars are to be spent on American nuclear submarines, but that, it seems, is not enough. ‘Australia’s holiday from history is over’: whatever that might mean.

There is no threat to Australia, none. The faraway ‘lucky’ country has no enemies, least of all China, its largest trading partner. Yet China-bashing that draws on Australia’s long history of racism towards Asia has become something of a sport for the self-ordained ‘experts.’ What do Chinese-Australians make of this? Many are confused and fearful.

The authors of this grotesque piece of dog-whistling and obsequiousness to American power are Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, ‘national security reporters’ I think they are called. I remember Hartcher from his Israeli government-paid jaunts. The other one, Knott, is a mouthpiece for the suits in Canberra. Neither has ever seen a war zone and its extremes of human degradation and suffering.

‘How did it come to this?’ Martha Gellhorn would say if she were here. ‘Where on earth are the voices saying no? Where is the comradeship?’

“WHERE ON EARTH ARE THE VOICES SAYING NO?”

The voices are heard in the samizdat of this website and others. In literature, the likes of John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, and George Orwell are obsolete. Post-modernism is in charge now. Liberalism has pulled up its political ladder. A once somnolent social democracy, Australia, has enacted a web of new laws protecting secretive, authoritarian power and preventing the right to know. Whistleblowers are outlaws to be tried in secret. An especially sinister law bans ‘foreign interference’ by those who work for foreign companies. What does this mean?

Democracy is notional now; there is the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of ‘identity.’ American admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by the Australian taxpayer for ‘advice.’ Right across the West, our political imagination has been pacified by PR and distracted by the intrigues of corrupt, ultra-low-rent politicians: a Johnson or a Trump or a Sleepy Joe or a Zelensky.

No writers’ congress in 2023 worries about ‘crumbling capitalism’ and the lethal provocations of ‘our’ leaders. The most infamous of these, Blair, a prima facie criminal under the Nuremberg Standard, is free and rich. Julian Assange, who dared journalists to prove their readers had a right to know, is in his second decade of incarceration.

The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism,’ as you prefer. Ukraine, as modern Europe’s fascist beehive, has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy,’ which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine, and scores of statues of him and his fellow fascists have been paid for by the EU and the US, replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.

Marth Gallhorn, center, talks to Native American soldiers on the 5th Army on the Cassino Front in Italy, March 1944 during World War II. British Official Photo | AP

In 2014, neo-Nazis played a key role in an American-bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being ‘pro-Moscow.’ The coup regime included prominent ‘extreme nationalists’ — Nazis in all but name.

At first, this was reported at length by the BBC and the European and American media. In 2019, Time magazine featured the ‘white supremacist militias‘ active in Ukraine. NBC News reported, ‘Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real.’ The immolation of trade unionists in Odessa was filmed and documented.

Spearheaded by the Azov regiment, whose insignia, the ‘Wolfsangel,’ was made infamous by the German SS, Ukraine’s military invaded the eastern, Russian-speaking Donbas region. According to the United Nations, 14,000 in the east were killed. Seven years later, with the Minsk peace conferences sabotaged by the West, as Angela Merkel confessed, the Red Army invaded.

This version of events was not reported in the West. To even utter it is to bring down abuse about being a ‘Putin apologist,’ regardless of whether the writer (such as myself) has condemned the Russian invasion. Understanding the extreme provocation that a Nato-armed borderland, Ukraine, the same borderland through which Hitler invaded, presented to Moscow, is anathema.

Journalists who traveled to the Donbas were silenced or even hounded in their own country. German journalist Patrik Baab lost his job, and a young German freelance reporter, Alina Lipp, had her bank account sequestered.

In Britain, the silence of the liberal intelligentsia is the silence of intimidation. State-sponsored issues like Ukraine and Israel are to be avoided if you want to keep a campus job or a teaching tenure. What happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 is repeated on campuses where opponents of apartheid Israel are casually smeared as anti-Semitic.

Professor David Miller, ironically the country’s leading authority on modern propaganda, was sacked by Bristol University for suggesting publicly that Israel’s ‘assets’ in Britain and its political lobbying exerted a disproportionate influence worldwide — a fact for which the evidence is voluminous.

The university hired a leading QC to investigate the case independently. His report exonerated Miller on the ‘important issue of academic freedom of expression’ and found ‘Professor Miller’s comments did not constitute unlawful speech.’ Yet Bristol sacked him. The message is clear: no matter what outrage it perpetrates, Israel has immunity, and its critics are to be punished.

A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that ‘for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life.’

No Shelley spoke for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damned the corruption of the ruling class, and no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin revealed the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, and George Bernard Shaw had no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was alive then, ‘the last to raise his voice,’ wrote Eagleton.

THE RE-GREENING OF AMERICA

Where did post-modernism — the rejection of actual politics and authentic dissent — come from? The publication in 1970 of Charles Reich’s bestselling book, The Greening of America, offers a clue. America then was in a state of upheaval; Nixon was in the White House, and a civil resistance known as ‘the movement’ had burst out of the margins of society in the midst of a war that touched almost everybody. In alliance with the civil rights movement, it presented the most serious challenge to Washington’s power for a century.

On the cover of Reich’s book were these words: ‘There is a revolution coming. It will not be like the revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.’

At the time, I was a correspondent in the United States and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of Reich, a young Yale academic. The New Yorker had sensationally serialized his book, whose message was that the ‘political action and truth-telling of the 1960s had failed and only ‘culture and introspection’ would change the world. It felt as if hippydom was claiming the consumer classes. And in one sense, it was.

Within a few years, the cult of ‘me-ism’ had all but overwhelmed many people’s sense of acting together, of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political, and the media was the message. Make money, it said.

As for ‘the movement,’ its hope and songs, the years of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put an end to all that. The police were now in open war with black people; Clinton’s notorious welfare bills broke world records in the number of mostly blacks they sent to jail.

When 9/11 happened, the fabrication of new ‘threats’ on ‘America’s frontier’ (as the Project for a New American Century called the world) completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.

In the years since America has gone to war with the world. According to a largely ignored report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the number killed in America’s ‘war on terror’ was ‘at least’ 1.3 million in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

This figure does not include the dead of US-led and fuelled wars in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and beyond. The true figure said the report ‘could well be in excess of 2 million [or] approximately ten times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision-makers are aware and [is] propagated by the media and major NGOs.’

‘At least’ one million were killed in Iraq, say the physicians, or five percent of the population.

The enormity of this violence and suffering seems to have no place in the Western consciousness. ‘No one knows how many’ is the media refrain. Blair and George W. Bush — and Straw and Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld et al. — were never in danger of prosecution. Blair’s propaganda maestro, Alistair Campbell, is celebrated as a ‘media personality.’

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the acclaimed investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, ‘What if the constitutionally freest media in the world had seriously challenged George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims instead of spreading what turned out to be crude propaganda?’

He replied. ‘If we journalists had done our job, there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.’

Gen. Tommy Franks, head of US forces in Iraq, speaks with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during an interview at the Coalition Media Center in Doha, Qatar, April 13, 2003. Steven Senne | AP

I put the same question to Dan Rather, the famous CBS anchor, who gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer, who had promoted Saddam Hussein’s ‘threat,’ and Rageh Omaar, then the BBC’s Iraq correspondent, gave me the same answer. Rose’s admirable contrition at having been ‘duped’ spoke for many reporters bereft of his courage to say so.

Their point is worth repeating. Had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, a million Iraqi men, women, and children might be alive today; millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and Islamic State might not have existed.

Cast that truth across the rapacious wars since 1945 ignited by the United States and its ‘allies,’ and the conclusion is breathtaking. Is this ever raised in journalism schools?

WAR BY MEDIA

Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: ‘Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically… In the propaganda system… it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.’

One of the persistent strands in American political life is a cultish extremism that approaches fascism. Although Trump was credited with this, it was during Obama’s two terms that American foreign policy flirted seriously with fascism. This was almost never reported.

‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ said Obama, who expanded a favorite presidential pastime, bombing and death squads known as ‘special operations’ as no other president had done since the first Cold War.

According to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016, Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people and people of color: in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Every Tuesday – reported the New York Times – he personally selected those who would be murdered by hellfire missiles fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, and shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the ‘terrorist target.’

A leading Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, estimated, approvingly, that Obama’s drones had killed 4,700 people. ‘Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that,’ he said, but we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda.’

In 2011, Obama told the media that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was planning ‘genocide’ against his own people. ‘We knew…,’ he said, ‘that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte [North Carolina], could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’

This was a lie. The only ‘threat’ was the coming defeat of fanatical Islamists by Libyan government forces. With his plans for a revival of independent pan-Africanism, an African bank and African currency, all of it funded by Libyan oil, Gaddafi was cast as an enemy of Western colonialism on the continent in which Libya was the second most modern state.

Destroying Gaddafi’s ‘threat’ and his modern state was the aim. Backed by the US, Britain and France, Nato launched 9,700 sorties against Libya. A third was aimed at infrastructure and civilian targets, reported the UN. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that ‘most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten’.

When Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, was told that Gaddafi had been captured by the insurrectionists and sodomized with a knife, she laughed and said to the camera: ‘We came, we saw, he died!’

On 14 September 2016, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in London reported the conclusion of a year-long study into the Nato attack on Libya, which it described as an ‘array of lies’ — including the Benghazi massacre story.

The NATO bombing plunged Libya into a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more, transforming Libya from the African country with the highest standard of living into a war-torn failed state.

Under Obama, the US extended secret ‘special forces’ operations to 138 countries or 70 percent of the world’s population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa.

Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has since built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Africom’s ‘soldier to soldier’ doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.

It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, has been consigned to oblivion by a new white master’s black colonial elite. This elite’s ‘historic mission,’ warned the knowing Frantz Fanon, is the promotion of ‘a capitalism rampant though camouflaged.’

In the year Nato invaded Libya, in 2011, Obama announced what became known as the ‘pivot to Asia.’ Almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to ‘confront the threat from China,’ in the words of his Defence Secretary.

There was no threat from China; there was a threat to China from the United States; some 400 American military bases formed an arc along the rim of China’s industrial heartlands, which a Pentagon official described approvingly as a ‘noose.’

At the same time, Obama placed missiles in Eastern Europe aimed at Russia. It was the beatified recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who increased spending on nuclear warheads to a level higher than that of any US administration since the Cold War – having promised, in an emotional speech in the center of Prague in 2009, to ‘help rid the world of nuclear weapons.’

Obama and his administration knew full well that the coup his assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, was sent to oversee against the government of Ukraine in 2014 would provoke a Russian response and probably lead to war. And so it has.

“OUR” PROPAGANDA

I am writing this on 30 April, the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the twentieth century in Vietnam, which I reported. I was very young when I arrived in Saigon, and I learned a great deal. I learned to recognize the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.

All through that war, the propaganda said a victorious Vietnam would spread its communist disease to the rest of Asia, allowing the Great Yellow Peril to its north to sweep down. Countries would fall like ‘dominoes.’

Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam was victorious, and none of the above happened. Instead, Vietnamese civilization blossomed, remarkably, in spite of the price they paid: three million dead. The maimed, the deformed, the addicted, the poisoned, the lost.

If the current propagandists get their war with China, this will be a fraction of what is to come. Speak up.

Beyond Manufacturing Consent: A world of color revolutions

18 Nov, 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen English

By Myriam Charabaty 

Color revolutions emerged alongside the booming of alternative media platforms as influencing tools, and B2C’s manufactured consent products became the influencers.

On soft power strategies and color revolution frameworks

Western liberalism has failed, in fact, liberalism altogether has failed. It has failed its core values, it has lost the balance of its so-called democracy, and it has failed to maintain its illusion of upholding individual freedom. This failed liberalism, however, continued to play a significant role in exporting a “manufacturing consent product” that feeds on instantaneous misinformation. 

In this context, we discuss the attempts, some successful and some failed, of liberal democracies across the world to export their “anticulture” illusions under the pretexts of liberty, development, and meritocracy. These attempts have become historically known by a variety of names, from the crusades to settler colonialism, then colonization, humanitarian intervention, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and most recently, colored revolutions.

Manufacturing consent as a self-made product

While tons of literature describe the evolution of hegemony processes under various names and pretexts, such as humanitarian intervention and the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’s (ICISS) Responsibility to Protect, the literature outlines how these committees and principles have served the collective West in enforcing their unwanted conceptions of Eurocentric superiority. 

The regime changes sought by the collective-West liberal democracies have historically aimed to increase their financial needs by means of looting, through legal and illegal means, while also diminishing expenses. 

In previously-common frameworks aimed at establishing and extending hegemony, the use of hard power, such as military intervention, was coupled with the preparation of public opinion for the hard power actions, which has become known as manufacturing consent. Prior to these types of “liberal” wars against “authoritarianism”, public opinion, according to Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, was fed information that had been carefully manipulated by mainstream media (MSM) to bring people to adopt specific conclusions.

Joseph Nye, the advocate for the shift from hard power to soft power through the shift in norms and values, argued in a piece in The Guardian that:

“The countries that are likely to gain from soft power are those closest to global norms of liberalism, pluralism, and autonomy; those with the most access to multiple channels of communication; and those whose credibility is enhanced by their domestic and international performance. These dimensions of power give a strong advantage to the United States and Europe.”

However, as alternative media platforms began taking the lead in terms of manufacturing opinions across the world through the use of identity politics and circumstantial evidence, liberal governments developed a need to export the manufacturing of consent to become a product of the community, region, or nation, which they are targeting. This product then becomes the business that feeds the consumer of socio-political mobilization.

The emergence of alternative media as a tool for individual self-worth

This need primarily emerged alongside alternative media platforms that made way for independent journalists and “activists” to deconstruct the propaganda that is being fed to the masses through MSM. As a result, a generation was born into the concept of identity politics alongside a notion of individualism that made individuals feel important or superior to others based on market demand, also known as “reach and like” engagement rate, regardless of the truth of the information being shared.

This sense of heightened individual value, which is a liberal value, also put forward the notion of circumstantial evidence. This circumstantial evidence allows for a series of logical fallacies, as it would be grounded in the information that is primarily detached from the larger context of its happening, and thus, there is an act of information omission. 

Media bias and information omission could change perception frames (Source Unknown)

This media bias results in the accumulation of indirect evidence, in which one or more facts can be derived from the initial incomplete information mistaken for a direct fact, merely because an individual is related to it on a personal level.

When that happens, a person that feels unheard by their parents, for example, will want to rebel against any father figure who can be represented by a strong and determined government official for example, without any regard to the actual standards of development assessment on specific topics, such as social wellbeing, education levels, or technological advancements. 

In doing so, one’s understanding of “freedom” becomes absolute; the ultimate freedom, such as Frederich Neitzches’s Übermensch, leads to the disregarding of the social contract without any assessment of the consequences of what it actually means to break that contract, let alone offending or invalidating an entire culture and replacing it with personal pleasure. 

This is what this article will reference as the “B2C manufacturing consent product” (Business to Consumer) and the evolution from hard power to soft power, from R2P to colored revolution.

B2C manufactured consent products across the world

The first manufactured consent product was Serbia’s Srdja Popovic, who was one of the founders of the US-funded organization “Otpor” in 1998. Since the late 1990s, Popovic has gained widespread recognition as a key architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and globally. 

According to an investigation by Occupy.com, Popovic and the Otpor! spinoff CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) maintained tight relations with a Goldman Sachs executive, the private intelligence business Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the US government. Furthermore, for a year, Popovic’s wife also worked for Stratfor, the investigation noted.

These disclosures follow the publication of hundreds of additional emails by Wikileaks‘ “Global Intelligence Files.” According to the emails, Popovic collaborated frequently with Stratfor, a private firm located in Austin, Texas, which collects information on geopolitical events and activists for clients like the American Petroleum Institute, Archer Daniels Midland, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel, and Coca-Cola.

The investigation carried out by Occupy.com, as well as the emails released by Wikileaks, uncovered that Popovic helped Stratfor connect with activists all across the world. It is worth noting that Stratfor branded itself as a “Shadow CIA” and sought to use Popovic’s relationships to gather material that would then be used by its corporate clients as “actionable intelligence”.

Information provided by Popovic was related to activist mobilizations and activities taking place in the Philippines, Libya, Tunisia, Vietnam, Iran, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tibet, Zimbabwe, Poland, and Belarus, as well as Georgia, Bahrain, Venezuela, Malaysia, and other countries.

Former Stratfor Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic at one point referred to Popovic as a “great friend” of his and described him as a “Serb activist who travels the world fomenting revolution.”

When asked about CANVAS, Papic said, “They…basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;),” and then replied to a follow up to that email stating that “they just go and set up shop in a country and try to bring the government down. When used properly, more powerful than an aircraft carrier battle group.”

A functional framework

For the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), some of the campaign’s key strategic initiatives included the following in Serbia, for example (copied as-is, without change from the author of this article):

Protest and Persuasion

• Street theatre and humorous skits mocking Milosevic performed throughout the country to transform the political culture and empower widespread opposition;
• Ubiquitous postering and displays of public symbols (such as Otpor’s iconic clenched fist) and slogans on posters, leaflets, and T-shirts, and in television spots;
• Large public rallies, marches, and demonstrations;
• Electoral politics – coalition-building and campaigning;
• Holding music concerts and cultural celebrations;
• The widespread distribution of anti-Milosevic materials;
• Use of the Internet, cell phones, fax machines, and alternative media to disseminate resistance messages and organize opposition;
• Public and private communication with security and church officials, media, union leaders, municipal politicians, and others to cultivate potential allies and defections;
• Petitions, press releases, public statements, and speeches;
• Workshops and training sessions for activists, distribution of training manuals.

Noncooperation

• Strikes and boycotts by workers and students, artists, actors, and business owners;
• General strike;
• Defections by security, military, and police forces cultivated by careful communication with them and public calls for their noncooperation;
• Defections by members of the media;
• Organizing by Otpor outside of the electoral system;
• Parallel election monitors and an election results reporting system to detect and report election fraud.

Nonviolent Intervention

• Blockades of highways and railroads with cars, trucks, buses, and large crowds of people to shut down economic and political activity and demonstrate parallel sources of powers and debilitate the political regime;
• Physical occupation of space surrounding key public buildings (e.g., parliament and media), then in some cases, storming and nonviolent invasions of the buildings;
• Bulldozers moving aside police barricades (a later symbol of the resistance).

Political advertisement in the face of adversity

Color revolutions started in Serbia, however, these regime change tactics have taken place all over the world. From the attempted coups in Latin America, some of which succeeded, the “Arab Spring”, the velvet revolution in Armenia, the Orange revolution in 2014 Ukraine, as well as more complex color revolution attempts in Iran, all these examples fall onto the platform of soft power. However, this does not come to say that hard power has gone out of style, rather, it says that soft power allows more long-term and sustainable resource looting at a lower expense and with a greater influence that maintains them as superior in values, norms, and lifestyle, regardless of all the systematic inequalities and structural problematics that their societies face as part of the struggle between individualism and statism. 

Related Stories

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• Antony Blinken & color revolts: Albanian meddling and a long history

Language, objectivity, and political power

August 29, 2022

Source

by Francis Lee

Contemporary politics consists of the usual timeless formula of Machiavelli – namely: rule by force and fraud – but now with the current emphasis being on fraud, writes Francis Lee.

‘’Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, their inhabitants driven out into the countryside, their cattle machine gunned, their huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.’’ (Politics and the English Language – 1946)

‘’There is a high probability that Russia will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5 … ‘’ (Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ex head of NATO, February 2015).

It would be true to say that the language of politics and power – machtpolitik or realpolitik – is patently neither objective, nor particularly interested in the pursuit of truth. Quite the contrary in fact. If we take the above examples, the first is simply an attempt to mask what is an international war crime into a reasonable policy of ‘humanitarian’ intervention. All rather reminiscent of the language which evolved during the Indo-China wars, e.g. ‘we destroyed the village in order to save it.’ The purpose of the second assertion was simply designed to ramp up the current war psychosis in order to justify the eastern expansion and build-up of NATO on Russia’s western frontiers. Please note that Mr Rasmussen isn’t saying that a Russian intervention is possible, or even probable, but highly probable. This seems somewhat strange as Russia couldn’t wait to get rid of the Baltic states when it declared its independence in 1991, and now we are expected to believe that Russia wants to invade those same states!

It is said that knowledge is power, in fact the reverse seems more accurate. Those who control the means of communication are now able to create a virtual reality. This is nothing new. The father of modern Public Relations, Edward Bernays, postulated that ‘invisible’ people create knowledge and propaganda and rule over the masses, with a monopoly on the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen response. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” (Propaganda).

One of Bernays’ great admirers was Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels who was to apply his theories with alacrity during the Nazi ascendency 1934-1945. JG was able to convince enough of Germany’s population that ‘total war’ was really quite good fun. He and they were apparently not aware that this would ultimately involve the fire-bombing of German cities like Hamburg and Dresden. This amply demonstrates that skilful techniques of mass indoctrination are able to get people to imagine and support policies which are not necessarily in their own best interests.

In our own time this mass manipulation was identified by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky in their seminal work The Manufacture of Consent first published in 1988. The mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion.” This seems to be the most salient political phenomenon of our times.

Returning to Orwell, it was during his period in Spain during the war against Franco (1936-39) that he first became aware of the political potentialities of modern mass communications systems. Orwell was a passionate believer in truth, and that objective facts existed and could be identified. However, as a result of his experiences in Spain he discovered that mere facts were of secondary or even no importance. What counted was a propaganda narrative which was a function of political expediency. At the time he was serving in the military wing of POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity) sister party of the British ILP (Independent Labour Party) which he later joined – 1938. This was in 1937 after the Comintern’s right turn, away from the ultra-leftism of the Third Period, towards the Popular Front phase, a move from a policy of international revolution (identified as Trotskyism) to the defence of democracy through alliances with bourgeois political groups. Unfortunately for Orwell he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – this was the time of the big Stalinist push against Trotskyism, and in Spain this meant the POUM. He wrote:

‘’I must say something about the general charge that the POUM was a secret fascist organization in the pay of Franco and Hitler. This charge was repeated over and over in the Communist press … according to the Frenti Rojo (the Valencia Communist Newspaper) ‘’Trotskyism, is not a political doctrine; it is a capitalist organization in league with the Fascists, a Fascist terrorist band, and part of Franco’s 5^th column.’’

What was noticeable from the start was that there was no evidence to support this accusation; the thing was simply asserted with an air of authority.’’ (My emphaisis – FL)

Yep, sounds familiar.

Orwell’s pessimism in this respect reached its terminal stage in his disturbing dystopian novel, 1984

This manufacture of a virtual reality is now common currency in the mass media. The press in particular – including the putatively left-wing publications, (more catholic than the Pope) the Guardian and the Independent – pretty much operate as an appendage to the ‘invisible’ people or are the ‘invisible people’ identified by Bernays. A case in point being a recent snippet in the Independent newspaper which read:

‘’60,000 tortured to death in (Syrian) government jails.’’

‘’At least 60,000 people have died in Syrian government jails during the 5-year conflict, according to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) which said they died ‘’either as a result of direct bodily torture or denial of food and medicine.’’ The Observatory’s director, Abdulrahman said more than 20,000 had died in Sednaya prison near Damascus. The Observatory claimed it had been able to verify the deaths of 14,456.00 (sic) under the age of 18, since the start of the Syrian uprising since 2011.

The Independent 23-05-2106 By Tom Perry – Beirut.

Closer examination reveals that Mr Abdulrahman has lived in Coventry – a small provincial town in middle-England – since 2006 and owns a shop which he runs with his wife; nonetheless he asserts that his sources were serving officials seeking to expose what is going on.

So, we get one guy in Beirut publishing a report based upon another guy who has lived in Coventry since 2006 and who claims to have contacts at high levels in the Syrian government. Yeah, right!

Yet the Independent, which is said to be a ‘left leaning’ newspaper owned by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev who purchased it in 2010, will it seems publish extremely dubious stories without checking the sources but simply takes what they say at face value. No doubt this dishonesty serves a greater cause.

The post-modernist denial of the possibility of objective reality is now firmly entrenched in reactionary elite circles. It involves, 1. ‘Groupthink’ defined as a process where a group with similar backgrounds and largely insulated from outside opinion makes decisions without critically testing, analysing and evaluating ideas and outcomes. 2. ‘Doublethink’ where two incompatible thoughts can be carried on at the same time. It of course follows that if everyone is thinking the same then no-one is thinking at all. Finally, 3. Double standards. Describing the behaviour of your opponents as despicable, inhuman and a violation of human rights, when ‘our’ side is doing exactly the same. Of necessity this involves all of the above mechanisms. Orwell explained:

‘’Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and of course there is no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.’’ (Notes on Nationalism – 1945).

The Goebbels propaganda template was/is disarmingly simple: tell a lie, preferably a big one and then repeat it endlessly until it seeps into the popular consciousness. Taking their cue from this policy the mainstream media messages are relentless, ubiquitous, and obedient to their political masters. This was apparent during the EU referendum campaign and the geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and the South China Sea. This information war is now the primary political phenomenon of our times, and the mass media speaks with one voice.

As Orwell opined: ‘To begin with, the era of free speech is closing down, the freedom of the press in Britain has always been something of a fake, because in the last resort, money controls opinion.’ That’s the bad news. ‘… still as long as the legal right to say what you like exists, there are always loopholes for the unorthodox writer.’ (Why I joined the Independent Labour Party – 1938). With due deference to Orwell, however, those loopholes are disappearing fast.

Sad to say, however, Orwell actually ended up spying for the British Foreign Office. At the time, 1946, the USSR and Stalin were both very popular amongst the working people of the UK. The Soviet football (‘soccer’ for all our American friends) team, Moscow Dynamo, did a tour of the UK and played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (London); it was a mass sell-out where upwards of 100,000 fans spilled over onto the pitch. Chelsea won by the way, 4-1. (See below).

Members of my own family were actively involved in the war both in the army, Royal navy and merchant navy. One such, Uncle Tom, took part in convoys carrying armaments to the USSR – a rather dangerous undertaking from Scotland to Murmansk all the time being bombed and torpedoed by German aircraft and U-Boats based in occupied Norway. He was lucky to survive.

But that was then, and this is now.

———————————————————————————————————

Unfortunately, however, and according to Ben Norton of The Greyzone 2016 , the popularity of the USSR was not to the liking of the British political class and intelligentsia. Indeed!

Norton noted the following:

‘’It is fascinating seeing people in the 21st century, especially self-declared leftists, still lionizing George Orwell, the worst kind of reactionary turncoat.

For years, the cat has been out of the bag: George Orwell secretly worked for the UK’s Foreign Office. At the end of his life, he was an outright counter-revolutionary snitch, spying on leftists on behalf of the imperialist British government.

The US government also found Orwell’s work quite useful. The coup-plotting, death squad-training assassins and torturers at the Central Intelligence Agency turned Orwell’s books into a propaganda weapon. The CIA even funded the Animal Farm movie, which is now mandatory viewing in many high schools.

But that happened after Orwell’s death in 1950. What is more scandalous is that he knowingly collaborated with the UK government when he was still alive.

“Orwell’s List” is a term that should be known by anyone who claims to be a person of the left. It was a blacklist Orwell compiled for the British government’s Information Research Department; an anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War.

The list includes dozens of suspected communists, “crypto-communists,” socialists, “fellow travellers,” and even LGBT people and Jews — their names scribbled alongside the sacrosanct 1984 author’s disparaging comments about the personal predilections of those blacklisted.

The document was declassified by the British government in 2003. The leading neoliberal newspaper The Guardian reported at the time that the blacklist “contains the names of 38 public figures, from the actors Charlie Chaplin and Michael Redgrave to the author JB Priestley, whom Orwell suggested should not be trusted by the IRD as anti-communist propagandists.”

Timothy Garton Ash, the historian who obtained the document, revealed that Orwell gave the blacklist to his close friend Celia Kirwan, who worked for the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department, from his sickbed in May 1949.

Orwell had told Kirwan in April that the list included journalists and writers who “in my opinion are crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists.”

“There seems to be general agreement by Orwell’s fans, left and right, to skate gently over Orwell’s suspicions of Jews, homosexuals and blacks, also over the extreme ignorance of his assessments,” wrote legendary radical journalist Alexander Cockburn, sardonically referring to the anti-communist blacklist as “St. George’s List.”

“If any other postwar left intellectual was suddenly found to have written mini-diatribes about blacks, homosexuals and Jews, we can safely assume that subsequent commentary would not have been forgiving,” he added. “Here there’s barely a word.”

Cockburn’s The Nation article on the subject, “St. George’s List,” is difficult to find today. I have republished it in full below. The article was also expanded into “The Fable of the Weasel,” Cockburn’s foreword for John Reed’s Animal Farm parody Snowball’s Chance.

Apologists insist Orwell simply “sold out” later in life and became a cranky conservative, yet the story is more complex. Orwell had a consistent political thread throughout his life. This explains how he could go from fighting alongside a Spanish Trostkyite militia in a multi-tendency war against fascism to demonizing the Soviet Union as The Real Enemy — before returning home to imperial Britain, where he became a social democratic traitor who castigated capitalism while collaborating with the capitalist state against revolutionaries trying to create socialism.

Sure, the USSR did some objectionable things, but it was also the only large country in the entire world that supported the Spanish Republicans in their fight against fascism (excluding a bit of extra support from Mexico). The Soviet Union understood that one cannot have a revolution if one cannot even defeat the fascist counterrevolution first — a lesson many on the left still have not learned today.

Yet leftists like Orwell and his devoted followers continue to lament Kronstadt and revel in their ideological purity — while conveniently living relatively comfortable lives in Western imperialist country.’’

So, if it is the case that Orwell fell foul of some reactionary impulses in later life, then none of us is apparently immune to this type of propaganda. I think Orwell’s conversion dates back to his political period working for the British Colonial Office in India. His novels – Burmese Days, for example – as well as articles such as (Shooting and Elephant) and (A Hanging) seem to have insinuated themselves into his belief system. This was not at all unusual among intellectuals from the 1950’s onwards – with the honourable exception of C Wright Mills perhaps – who became fervent supporters of imperialism and is still the case today. The blue pill is apparently still all the rage among the decadent and fashionable elite! This much is manifest. Like the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, who in 1918 said of the political/moral degeneration of the West:

‘’The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity…

‘’And what rough beast its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.’’

(The Second Coming)

But like the carthorse, Boxer, in Animal Farm, we, the western ‘intelligentsia’ (sic! or what passes for it) must try harder.

The American Spring by American Spies: Fake News II

29 Mar 2022

Osama Eltrabolsi 

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

With some reading, eventually, you will see how they utilize big tech algorithms, fake news, and US spies who are good at lying even to their own citizens. 

The American Spring by American Spies: Fake News II

It’s amazing how fast the news cycles are in the USA. It seems as though telling the journalistic truth these days has become akin to the days of the prophets. How ironic it is that the great USA whose thumbprint is power is filled with people who are clueless and unaware of their inner spies… I described this strangeness in my first article. And for credibility sake and journalistic standards, I hold myself to the high standards of always telling the truth. If you practice this, it means that eventually the patterns, cycles, and people emerge from the unknown war machine with names, faces, and religions across the spectrums but all have one common goal: Money and Power.

Writing about the Democrats’ fake Russian Reset, I highlighted how Michael Sussman was exposed by the Americans in a government-authorized investigation. The Durham Report, which is currently in process, proved that Hillary Clinton paid for tech information while accusing Trump of espionage.

Durham’s filing says university researchers mined internet data to establish “an inference” and a “narrative” tying Trump to Russia and that they “were seeking to please certain ‘VIPs’.” Durham identified these VIPs as individuals at Sussmann’s law firm called Perkins Coie, where Sussman was a partner. The Clinton campaign was on that VIP list. Durham’s filing alleged that Trump’s residences and the White House were spied on by a tech executive aligned with the Democratic Party…”

What this implies is that, according to the West itself, there is a wide range of political schemes happening even to the American people, and those schemes look like the Arab Spring. How big a claim but only through a steady dose of truth-filled journalism can one begin to see. As a lawyer and independent journalist, with some reading and following these articles, eventually, you will see how they utilize big tech algorithms, fake news, and American spies who are good at lying even to their citizens. 

WHY IT MATTERS TO US

It matters to us because a masterful strategic identity game is played in American politics, and like a torch in an Olympic game being handed over to a teammate, these American decision-makers hand over revolutions and wars. It is important to know about the American Spring and to understand their hostile powers, their military, and their intelligence capabilities, as well as what their latest scandal affords in the chess game of politics. Did Biden forfeit a massive war machine or did he hand it to the Taliban? These consistently destructive failures have devastating consequences and what we see with US mass media, now including social media, is in direct collusion with who they claim is a terrorist. 

It means the media is flagrantly and sinister in their deflection. But In order to understand, one has to first understand this is a network of closely linked individuals who share a common goal: personal power at the expense of the whole.

In an American Spring, one would see nothing less than the complete destruction of American culture and influence. This has long happened since the days of Obama whose shady Presidency succumbed to a future promising president Hillary Clinton or President Donald J. Trump. Trump won in 2020 as a result of this decaying American influence. It sounds shocking and unbelievable, but essentially Hillary, Obama, and their allies have been positioning themselves to be the Lenin and Stalin of our time. They adopted the principles of their former enemies and have years of contradictions to prove it. How do principles change with such flexibility? They don’t. News cycles change, not values. 

This American Spring is two-fold: the subversion of American culture and its replacement with socialist values, and soon we will be seeing a weaponization of Takfirists Islamic groups again to create instability, division, and ultimately regime changes. 

The Americans are either too unaware of the dirty politics or their media are too proud to admit this. You heard the name Sussman from my writing and later confirmed by the Durham Report. However, Durham is a Special Counsel assigned to investigate the truth about the Russian Democrat-led disinformation campaign which means he is an exception and the US intelligence is no longer credible. Who are they and how do they sleep at night?

To prove my point that the intelligence apparatus of the US has failed, I digress with a NY Post article that calls a list of 51 names of intelligence officers and media pundits spies who lie: 51 ‘intelligence’ experts refuse to apologize for discrediting true Hunter Biden story. These experts chose to cover for Hunter Biden, who lost a computer which has been dubbed as the laptop from hell in which he sold “introductions to his father for 10 million dollars.” The same current news cycle and its major components are happening as we speak but in multiple areas of criminal political activity. 

Let’s look at how this intelligence scandal of the 51 is no different from what we see around the world where the US invokes regime changes and how it relates to us specifically.

Front and Center Left, John Brennan 

Remember that US officials are rotated and cycled through various government institutions distancing them from suspicion or conflicts of interest. Brennan​ in 2010 stated, “And during a 25-year career in government, I was privileged to serve in positions across the Middle East — as a political officer with the State Department and as a CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. I marveled at the majesty of the Hajj and the devotion of those who fulfilled their duty as Muslims by making that privilege — that pilgrimage.” 

This tells us two things we need to know. As he claimed:

1) Brennan admits to being a ‘political officer’ with the State Dept while simultaneously the Jeddah Station chief. The second thing here to note is 

2) Brennan has an affection and admitted pro-Islamic bias. As a political officer for the Dept of State, Brennan would be granted authority to issue visas from his CIA station.

In the West, Brennan has always been questionable by his opponents even so far as rumors claiming that Brennan converted to Islam​. It’s similar to Lawrence of Arabia, but without the charm.

As a journalist, I know what it means for a laptop to be discredited by 51 lying spies and then proven to be true, which calls the spies’ integrity into question.

The American Spring continues under the strange leadership of Biden after a very long history of race-baiting and war-mongering. The laptop being denied isn’t the main story, rather it is what is on the laptop which is the true story, and here again, we see the same characters.

The same John Brennan who was located in Pakistan with Brezinsky, Obama’s university professor, and Carter’s CIA director, who would become a main face in the Arab Spring, is now again here before us. 

History is in fact repeating itself because, despite their promises to avoid history’s mistakes, they continue to commit them. 

Front and Center Right, James Clapper 

Remember that US officials are rotated and cycled through various government institutions distancing them from suspicion or conflicts of interest. The New York Post is asking Clapper to renounce the accusation that was undergirded by fake news and American Spies as they call them. 

President Bill Clinton created a task force to study the Khobar Towers bombing and assess all threats. The Assessment Task Force was led by General Downing, and a retired Air Force Lieutenant named General James Clapper served as the head of the intelligence assessment team. The task force was not asked to do a criminal investigation but only to report instances of malfeasance to the chain of command. 

Downing reported​ that the chain of command “did not provide adequate guidance and support to the commander” who “was ill-served by the intelligence arrangement within his command…” 

Not ironically, from 1999 to 2000, he was the Chief of Staff to then-CIA Director George Tenet. 

Could the whole Russian Hoax have been to protect these people from being exposed for all their ‘malfeasance’ through their appointed careers? With Trump promising to end endless wars, this could be the only path forward. All Biden had to do was win what Hillary lost: Power & Control. Yet, as Obama warned his Democratic accomplices, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to F*** things up.” 

If it’s an American Spring, Trump would now have to be seen as heroic as the Left made Zelenski, no different than how the Egyptians see Sisi.

This American Spring very well may be interrupted if the Americans realize they do have spies amongst them and Biden’s seat of power squeaks with rust as it is upheld by them. 

The Past

To understand the Middle East today, we must know some history. The intelligence scene is very much the fuel behind these conflicts, so consider another person of question. Louis Freeh

George H.W. Bush appointed him a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 91. Two years later, he answered a call from President Bill Clinton, and he became the fifth director of the FBI in 93.

Freeh was the FBI Director during the Khobar Towers, the Unabomber, the Centennial Olympic bombing, Ruby Ridge, and Waco investigations. The Oklahoma City bombing happened under his watch.

He served from September 1993 to June 25, 2001, and was succeeded by Robert Mueller who reappears from the past to investigate Trump with the wasteful 3-year sham investigation which led to minimal prosecution compared to what was promised: Espionage. 

As it relates to the Russian Hoax, Freeh is connected to the Russian-owned money laundering firm ‘Prevazon’. Prevazon hired Louis Freeh to help settle a major money-laundering case with the US government for roughly $5.9 million. 

Prevazon is also represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with top Trump campaign officials in June 2016 at Trump Tower to lobby for repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act. This would be the meeting that was planned and orchestrated against Trump. 

Louis Freeh wasn’t used by the Democrats to ensnare Trump but is an intelligence officer with a past that Trump threatened to expose and end. 

With official charges and Trump being acquitted over and over, the loser is the American people because although no charges were brought, this infamous Trump Tower meeting “with Russians” solidified the fake narrative of unproven espionage. Did Freeh have anything to be concerned about? 

Leading us to another worthy note: Natalia Veselnitskaya was indicted for her connection to Kremlin- tied Prevazon, and American mainstream media still has no interest in correcting their false lies regarding the fake and obviously orchestrated Trump Tower meeting. Join me next week as we explore how these men have impacted the Middle East and our lives. And since the Western Media cannot expose it, I invite you to journey as we get to know who the American Spies are and how they have meticulously organized in a stealthy manner what will soon be known in the history books as the American Spring.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

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CNN’s Leading People To Their Doom By Promoting Mercenary Propaganda For Ukraine

4 MARCH 2022

By Andrew Korybko

Source

CNN’s information warfare piece that was analyzed in this analysis is a perfect example of warmongering propaganda and should be universally condemned by all peace-loving people across the world.

The US-led West is unprecedentedly censoring all contrarian narratives that contradict Washington’s “politically correct” interpretation of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine on the basis that such takes are “dangerous”, yet one of the world’s most popular Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets – CNN – is literally leading people to their doom by promoting mercenary propaganda for Ukraine. That platform just published a fawning piece titled “The Foreigners And Expats Taking Up Arms To Fight Russia”, which openly sympathizes with those who are heeding President Zelensky’s call for foreign mercenaries that the West insincerely describes as innocent “volunteers”.

The author earlier explained how “The Ukrainian Foreign Minister’s Plea For Foreign Mercenaries Shows His Desperation”, pointing to the obvious fact that US-backed Kiev’s forces quite clearly aren’t winning the war like the MSM implies otherwise they wouldn’t be so urgently calling for foreign mercenaries, not to mention calling up all reservists age 18-60 or arming civilians and even teaching them how to make petrol bombs. Zelensky announced earlier in the week that 16,000 such foreign mercenaries are entering the war zone, though it’s unclear whether such a large amount will actually do so or if that was just another of his side’s many ultimately discredited psy-ops.

What observers should be aware of is that these foreign mercenaries are almost certainly going to their doom, led there as they are by their delusional chase of riches and fame that CNN deceitfully misportrays as being motivated by some supposedly grand principles connected to “democracy” and “human rights”. This dire prediction is due to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov recently confirming that foreign mercenaries aren’t legally entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (POWs) so “At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals”, which hints that they might be shot at worst if they dare to threaten his country’s military forces and they’re forced to defend themselves.

CNN is therefore complicit in several immoral acts: promoting mercenary propaganda that aims to further destabilize a war zone; encouraging self-interested or even naïve social rogues to risk their lives fighting against the Russian military superpower; and thus being responsible for their deaths if those military forces against which they’re fighting are forced to resort to lethal action to defend themselves instead of risking their own lives to bring these foreign mercenaries to justice afterwards. These outcomes of that outlet’s latest anti-Russian information warfare campaign are indisputably much more dangerous than someone simply sharing contrarian interpretations of the crisis.

There is no realistic chance that any influx of foreign mercenaries into Ukraine will result in reversing Kiev’s inevitable loss in the face of the intervening Russian military superpower. All that this latest development will serve to do is bleed Ukraine even more before it finally surrenders, though at the very likely deaths of those same foreign fighters who might end up attempting to commit acts of terrorism against the Russian Armed Forces and thus losing their lives in the process for nothing at all. CNN’s information warfare piece that was analyzed in this analysis is a perfect example of warmongering propaganda and should be universally condemned by all peace-loving people across the world.

It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around the World to Focus on Ukraine

March 02nd, 2022

By Alan Macleod

Source

A MintPress News analysis found that in a single week Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC ran almost 1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion, two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

KIEV, UKRAINE — We are living in dangerous times. All around the world, intense military actions are taking place. Last week alone, Russia launched a huge military invasion of Ukraine; Saudi Arabia carried out dozens of strikes on Yemen; Israel launched a wave of deadly missile attacks against Syria; and the United States restarted its bombing campaign in Somalia.

These four deadly incidents happened concurrently. Yet judging by media coverage, it is highly unlikely that many will even be aware of the final three. A MintPress News study of five leading Western media outlets found that overwhelming attention was paid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while the others were barely mentioned, if at all.

In total, in the week between Monday, February 21 and Sunday, February 27, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC ran almost 1,300 separate stories on the Ukraine invasion, two stories on the Syria attack, one on Somalia, and none at all on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

The data for the study was collected using the Factiva news database, which was then cross referenced with searches on the websites of the respective news outlets’ websites, and also checked against precise Google searches to generate a final total. A chart visualizing the disparity in coverage over those seven days can be seen below.

Credit | Alan Macleod

Collectively, the five outlets published 1298 stories about Ukraine, meaning each one printed at around one per hour on average over the week studied. FoxNews.com ran the most — 308 — roughly one every 30 minutes. However, there was little significant numerical difference between the outlets, whose front pages and editorial sections were all dominated by headlines about Ukraine. In contrast, only The New York Times mentioned the Somali strike at all, while The Washington Post was the only outlet to cover the attacks on Syria. Fox News, CNN and MSNBC did not cover any of the other nation-on-nation attacks at all.

The media gets around to opposing war

Despite repeated warnings, the attack on Ukraine still came as a shock to most in the region. On the eve of the conflict, only 42% of Ukrainians believed any attack was likely, with President Volodymyr Zelensky himself criticizing what he called a destabilizing Western “panic” over the possibility.

The Russian military has occupied significant portions of the country, capturing key targets. Yet it has also united the West against the action, drawing a sharp and apparently determined response. In addition to ejecting Russia from the SWIFT system of international payments, a number of NATO countries, including the previously more neutral France and Germany, have sent arms to Ukraine. Zelensky has also signed an application to join the European Union. Inside Russia, the government’s actions sparked protests nationwide, many of which were suppressed by the police.

A sign of how seriously the media took the story is the number of editorials both The New York Times and The Washington Post ran. Editorials are articles collectively written by the senior staff on issues deemed so important that the outlet must make its readers aware of their collective position — a position that guides future coverage. Three of the four editorials the Times ran that week were on Ukraine. They denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin for his “bewildering aggression” and his “xenophobic, imperial and misguided notion that Ukraine was inherently an appendage of Russia.” Meanwhile, the Post published six separate editorials on the subject, each condemning Putin and praising President Joe Biden for his leadership.

The total rejection of violence was refreshing to many. “So this is what it looks like when the corporate media opposes war,” wrote Jeff Cohen, founder of media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, going on to make the point that the press has stood firmly behind virtually all of the United States’ recent conflicts.

Invisible Yemen

In contrast, there was almost no coverage of the latest attacks by Saudi-led forces against Yemen — a campaign that has already created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. The years-long war has intensified of late, with January 2022 the worst month for civilian casualties since fighting began in 2014.

On February 21, Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) reported that the Saudi Coalition bombed targets in Hajjah province in north-western Yemen, killing a number of civilians and injuring far more. Meanwhile, jets pummeled the coastal city of Hodeida. The next day, airstrikes and missiles hit residential areas in the provinces of al-Jawf, Marib, Taizz and Saada provinces.

On February 24, the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Yemen was hit by 37 separate airstrikes across the country, primarily in Hajjah and al-Bayda. The next day, the Saudi Coalition also shelled Saada using heavy artillery, killing at least six civilians. Saada has been a center of the bloodshed for some time now. In January, the Saudis dropped a Raytheon laser-guided bomb on a detention center there, killing 91 people and wounding hundreds more.

This is just a taste of the violence, information about which is not easy to come by in the West. In a 24-hour period between Thursday and Friday, the Coalition is accused of violating the ceasefire agreement on 147 different occasions and locations.

These latest attacks were not covered at all by Fox News, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post or MSNBC. Yemen has never been a war that has interested American media. Indeed, on MSNBC, there has been more in-depth coverage of Ukraine in one week than of the Yemen conflict since it began in 2014.

This is despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died, the UN estimating that the death toll reached at least 377,000 by the end of 2021. Furthermore, the United States is a direct participant in the violence. A recent MintPress study revealed that the U.S. has sold at least $28 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia alone, and provides training and support for Riyadh, both militarily and diplomatically, helping the Coalition to continue the bloodshed.

There was some coverage of Yemen in The Washington Post. However, it all centered around Yemeni aggression towards Saudi Arabia and its allies, who were presented as the victims. This included an article on how the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on the so-called “Houthi rebels” and a story about a low-tech drone attack on a Saudi airport, in which it also noted that “Fighting in the strategic city of Marib in past months has led to increased Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.” What the Post failed to tell readers is that Marib is not in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, but in Yemen – a fact that undermines the narrative about who is the aggressor. (Inside Yemen, many consider referring to the de facto government as “Houthis” as derogatory and delegitimizing what they see as a coalition of many different groups into the political party Ansar Allah, rather than a Houthi insurgency.)

https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1498338405477847042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498338405477847042%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpressnews.com%2Fukraine-russia-war-media-bias-study%2F279847%2F

Somalia yawn, Syria shrug

Last week, the U.S. resumed its bombing campaign against Somalia, Africa’s second poorest

nation. Using a reaper drone, the military carried out an airstrike near the country’s capital, Mogadishu. The Tuesday strike also failed to make media waves, despite the military issuing a press release about it. The only outlet of the five studied to cover it was The New York Times, which released a story headlined, “U.S. Carries Out First Airstrike in Somalia Since August.” Far from condemning the act as bewildering aggression, as it had done with Putin, the subheadline immediately justified it, claiming that, “the strike targeted Al Shabab militants who had attacked allied Somali security forces.” Thus, a drone strike on a country on the other side of the world was framed as a necessary, defensive move. Indeed, the Times even included the phrase “collective self-defense” in reference to the strike. Two other news round-up articles in the Times mentioned the strike in a single sentence, linking to the story. That was the extent of the coverage.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to escalate its attacks on Syria. At around 1 a.m. on February 23, it fired missiles from the Golan Heights into Quneitra province in south-western Syria (Israel has occupied Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967). The next day, it launched a missile attack on Damascus, killing at least three soldiers who were stationed on the capital’s outskirts. As a way of justification, Israel claimed that the Syrian army had been working with Hezbollah, carrying out a leaflet drop across southwestern Syria publicizing the assertion. In recent weeks, the Israeli military has hit Damascus a number of times, its jets reportedly breaching both Syrian and Lebanese airspace to do so.

In these efforts, illegal under international law, Israel is helped by the United States, which supplies it with nearly $4 billion in military aid yearly. U.S. forces currently occupy significant areas of Syria, including the oil-producing regions in the northeast, and constantly coordinate actions with their Israeli ally.

The only outlet to cover these actions was The Washington Post. But even then, it merely republished two dry articles from the newswire service the Associated Press, adding no commentary or background. Thus, the attacks were treated as business as usual and worthy of almost no attention.

“First major war between civilized nations”

Although the disparity in quantity of coverage is stark, it is also important to note the huge differences in tone and outlook. Media is festooned with pictures of the targets of Russian aggression. For the first time, we are being invited to view the war from the side of the victim. Furthermore, the coverage is not dry and matter-of-fact, but emotive and full of outrage. This is virtually unheard of when reporting on Western wars, and is a conscious decision taken by those at the top.

Weeks after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, for example, the chairman of CNN sent a memo to all staff advising them in no uncertain terms to downplay the suffering of Afghans, stating that it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.” Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for releasing images of victims of U.S. wars. Yet Russia’s victims are front and center, with media even going so far as to approvingly report on Ukrainian civilians making and using Molotov cocktails on Russian forces.

This, for Palestinian journalist Mohammed El-Kurd, was a revelation. “It is insanely surreal to realize that mainstream news outlets — and settler politicians alike — possess the linguistic capacity to call occupation by its name. A capacity that is made staggeringly absent in the context of occupied Palestine, often under the guise of objectivity,” he said, adding:

‘Hypocrisy’ doesn’t describe this adequately. The appropriate word is psychosis. They live in a parallel universe where Europeans, who take up arms to defend their lands and families, are called resistance fighters but Palestinians doing the same damn thing are ‘terrorists.’ There is a separate set of rules for different people.”

War is terrible anywhere and everywhere but it is not more terrible just because it is in Europe.

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) February 24, 2022

For many, this disparity is simply about racism. “Ukraine is not the worst act of war since World War II. It’s not even the worst war going on right now,” wrote Sri Lanka-based journalist Indi Samarajiva, referring to Syria and Yemen; “It’s just the worst to happen to white people.”

Certainly, there has been a shocking amount of casually racist commentary on corporate media. “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen,” said CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata from Kiev.

Al-Jazeera English presenter Peter Dobbie made similarly Orientalist remarks, expressing his concern for wealthy Ukrainian refugees fleeing, while also demonstrating his contempt for poor non-white people in the same circumstances, stating:

What is compelling is that just looking at them, the way they’re dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people, these are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa; they look like any European family that you would live next door to.”

Others made similar remarks. “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed,” said Ukraine’s former Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, while talking to the BBC, which did not challenge him on the statement. “The unthinkable has happened…This is not a developing, third-world nation; this is Europe!” exclaimed ITV News reporter Lucy Watson in a tearful explanation as to why we need to help the refugees. “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking,” wrote former Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. “War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone,” he added.

Summing up the orgy of casual prejudice was Daily Wire journalist Michael Knowles, who tweeted, “It just occurred to me that this is the first major war between civilized nations in my lifetime.”

English-language media’s racist double standards are on full display. #Ukraine #Russia #NATO pic.twitter.com/2RFxLEqAbI

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) March 1, 2022

The sheer number of media personalities expressing their shock at seeing “civilized” people in this predicament led a number of press associations from the Global South to release statements of protest.

“This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected,” wrote The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association.

“The idea that war is a thing that happens in lands outside of the West is beyond myopic. It is a gross misrepresentation of the entirety of human history. People who are not white are not more innately prone and habituated to violence and suffering,” added the Foreign Press Association, Africa.

All comes down to whose ox is getting gored

While racism is clearly a factor in the coverage, it should be remembered that the bombing of Yugoslavia — a white nation comparable to Ukraine — was celebrated, not rejected. This was in large part because it was NATO itself that was the aggressor.

Media theory scholars have long argued that victims of Western aggression are largely ignored but those of the West’s enemies will be given center stage. In 1988, academics Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky developed their theory of worthy vs. unworthy victims in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” Together, they compared the coverage of two concurrent genocides, one in Cambodia (an enemy state) and one carried out by the Indonesian military (funded and armed by the U.S. government) in East Timor. While the savagery of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge became worldwide news, as the genocide in East Timor reached its peak, coverage fell to literally zero in major media outlets. This and other examples led them to conclude that both the quantity and quality of the coverage of atrocities is dependent almost entirely on two factors:

1. Who is the perpetrator
2. Who is the victim

If the perpetrator is our enemy, and there is political capital to be made from highlighting their crime, then the media will deem the victim “worthy”  — especially if the victim is a pro-U.S. figure. If, however, you die at the hands of the U.S. or its allies, you can expect little sympathy or coverage from the media, especially if you are a Communist, Muslim, or any other designation that renders you unworthy of media attention.

In the Ukraine case, the perpetrator is an enemy state (Russia) and the victim is a pro-Western government seeking to join both the European Union and NATO. However, in the other three cases detailed here (Israeli strikes on Syria, Saudi attacks on Yemen, and U.S. attacks on Somalia), the aggressor is either the U.S. itself or its close allies, while the victim is an enemy actor. Hence the complete lack of coverage. Therefore, there will be few — if any — think pieces denouncing the U.S. for its barbarity, nor any calls to create a military alliance to counter Israel, or to take in hundreds of thousands of Yemeni refugees.

A NYT headlines circa 2003, left, and a NYT editorial from 2022

Turning the outrage tap on and off is a key way in which media manufacturers consent for U.S. foreign policy, hiding certain atrocities from our gaze and placing others on our screens. To be clear, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine should, of course, be making headlines around the world, and victims should be mourned and perpetrators condemned. However, the vast qualitative and quantitative disparity between coverage of the attacks on Yemen, Somalia and Syria and the attack on Ukraine, which received almost 400 times the attention of the other three combined, is another stark example of how the media is outraged at war only when it wants to be.

While the Israeli attack on Syria and the U.S. strike on Somalia were relatively minor occurrences in comparison to Russia’s invasion, and could therefore be said to deserve less coverage, the continuing Saudi war on Yemen is not. And while the Ukraine attack is new, the beginning of the Yemen conflict received scant attention at the time. Furthermore, all three are a direct result of American policy and could be stopped immediately if the public were sufficiently aware and engaged, thus rendering coverage of particular importance to U.S. audiences.

Americans are united in rejecting Russia’s attack on Ukraine. A recent poll found that only 6% of the public consider its invasion justified, as opposed to 74% against. This suggests that if the media covered U.S. imperialism in the same way it covers its Russian equivalent, then those wars would end immediately. But they do not. And the Ukraine coverage underlines that this is a choice they are making every day.

Le Monde’s circus invite: ‘France is a leftist country which votes right’

January 27, 2022

By Ramin Mazaheri

In less than three months France will have a presidential vote, and I haven’t written much about it because I’ve been too occupied with what I humbly hope will be the authoritative book on the Yellow Vest movement. The working title is France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values.

It will be published for free in serialised form, like my books on Chinese socialism and Iranian Islamic socialism (but buy a copy anyway!), and it should start getting published soon. As I’ve worked on it I’ve realised how interesting it is to determine the Yellow Vests place in French and global political history, and especially when the alternative is to analyse April’s elections.

In fact, the election is interesting, but not at all in the ways described by the Mainstream Media. After all, Emmanuel Macron is 100% a revolutionist – the 2016 book which laid out his campaign platform was titled (quite unironically) Revolution – but he’s the type of revolutionist only a royalist could love.

And France has many royalists, still. And with guns, money, lawyers and spin doctors the French government certainly supports many hardly-working royals worldwide. But this is mixing too many complicated matters for the Mainstream Media, so rather than using just a bit of logic – such as making actual political structures, slogans and policies the basis for which one can define a country to be “leftist” – let’s play along with their tortured illogic by looking at a new column from France’s paper of record titled, “France is a leftist country which votes right”.

It’s a self-flattering idea which explains less than it confuses, and is only useful for how we can examine it to show that “Western leftism” truly is rather rightist. Let’s look at how Le Monde defines what a “leftist country” is:

“… : a right-wing France, tempted by its extremes, which doubts democracy. We need to take a closer look. And do not confuse the sociological reality of the French with its polling, media and political representations. There is no shortage of visible signs of the progress of democratic values: LGBT tolerance, homosexual marriages, record of inter-ethnic marriages and assimilation of foreigners, feminist movements, increased sensitivity to inequalities and injustices, attachment to the republican motto, etc.”

Le ugh….

After covering the US 2020 election I can say this: For two countries which loudly insist on their exceptionalism the political lives of both nations are so very, very boringly similar. I wouldn’t doubt that the mainstream media of both nations are owned by the very same people (or investment management firms), such is the similarity between their mainstream political discussions.

I am analysing this Le Monde article because I assume you don’t speak French, but Anglophones will easily recognise that the French are describing (or their media owners compel them to describe) the exact same problems:

“democratic fatigue”, “crisis of representation”, “society of individuals”, “refusal to vote or a vote of refusal” (well-put!), “society of communication”, “the verticality of institutions” (“verticality” may be too complicated a concept for the US media), “an openly xenophobic media group”, “menace to democracy”, “climate (change)”, “how to reconcile civil society with (Western-style) representative politics”, and with the same exact Salafist answer, merely “return to our forgotten origins”, in the French case Rousseau instead of America’s Founding Prophets-Fathers.

I respond with the ultimate dagger one can thrust in French society: It’s not interesting.

Yet France’s election matters, even if it will be a lesser Cirque du Soleil to America’s 2020 election circus extravaganza, which was truly The Greatest Show on Earth.

Le Monde and the other French MSM are basically pushing quiet-yet-prideful acceptance of the fact that the four leading presidential candidates are all on not just the right but essentially the far-right on either political, economic or cultural issues (or on all three).

This is even though the country saw massive support for a Yellow Vest movement whose essential list of demands was quickly recognised to be traditional West European leftist, and remarkably similar to the platform of the leftist party La France Insoumise, led by Jean-Luc Melenchon. Now that is something which we would like to see the French MSM explain rather than confuse, for a change!

Allow me to skip to the end as quickly and painlessly as possible:

Just like with America, we’d be wrong to accuse the average Frenchman of being an intractable reactionary… even though polls show that leftist voters are outnumbered here 2 to 1 by rightists and equalled in number by independents (who to actual leftists would be called right-wing). Leftism rests upon a fundamentally positive and loving view of humanity: The People have long been denied honest education and instead have been spoon-fed elitist-supporting nonsense, and this historical fact is what leftism must methodically work to overcome.

“We too often forget that democracy is born from the recognition of the individual released from the community shackles.”

“No longer the equality of individuals through similarity and having, but a more-demanding equality through the singularity of being particular. Beyond any condition, belonging or identity, everyone feels more and more the equal of the other by their own ‘originality’.”

What we see here is the replacement of both class politics (“having”) and even mere fake-leftist identity politics (“similarity”) with the Western Liberal Democratic emphasis on hyper-individuality, adored by their self-adoring elite.

However, historically and politically the aim of both democracy and leftism was to reduce the power of the monarch, i.e. to place some shackles on the over-empowered individual, both monarch and noble. This is what produced the calls for constitutions and votes and ends seigneurial (feudal) rights, after all.

But in Western Liberal Democracy – or democracy with Western characteristics – “democracy” means protecting what we can call the “over-rights” of the elite – whether you want to call that elite the 1%, the neo-aristocracy, the bourgeois or maybe les seigneurs. Whatever you call it the point is that in a fundamentally disunited “society of individuals” the modern-day lords will always win the maintenance of the current status quo due to their superior resources. The entire point of Western Liberal Democracy’s war on Socialist Democracy has been (and will be) to keep it this way.

There isn’t much more to say than that. I need not quote you the second half of the column, which is a litany of Western grievances with “this way”, i.e. their own system, i.e. that list of societal logjams I bomb-dropped 12 paragraphs above.

They all amount to an admission that Western Liberal Democracy fundamentally rejects class-equitable representation in the halls of political power, and that this power imbalance is brutally enforced by “liberal strongmen” like Macron in “rubber bullet democracies”. Western civil society and the middle and lower classes are thus rendered apathetic, wary of cooperating and de-politicised, and even in a formerly-revolutionary culture like France.

Socialist democracy – i.e., the evolutions in politics represented by the advances from 1917 onwards – are certainly not permitted as an option for discussion in Le Monde, thus the author can only suggest France re-study Jean-Jacques Rousseau. That’s a fine idea, but not if we don’t also study the histories, lessons and ideas around Marx and Mao, Castro and Khomeini, Sankara and Sandinista.

A far more interesting article, by a journalist and not a sociologist, can be found in the current issue of the long-form monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, which has total editorial autonomy from Le Monde (and it shows): “If the working classes were listened to”. A quick recap of the surprising things their interviews with the working class found:

• They don’t care about rising salaries because the cost of goods will just rise commensurately. Who says you need to be an economist to understand how capitalist economics works, LOL? What they want is price controls on essential goods, which France ended in 1987.
• Public debate on education is centred around austerity cuts to government budgets, but what’s driving the average person crazy is the multiplying costs centered around school or outside of school: nurseries, camps, after-school programs, cafeteria food, school supplies, etc.
• The price of entertainment, or should everyone just study/work all the time? Leisure expenses are so high there’s only room in the budget to watch Netflix again. So all three are purchasing power, which has been the number one complaint of French voters since I’ve been here, but – hey – prior to corona the Eurozone’s problem was not enough inflation, right? Sure.
• The alignment of salaries between manual labor and intellectual labor, of which there is zero public discussion in this “leftist” country. It’s another case of unions and other working-class representatives pushing so-called solutions which are fundamentally right-wing. For tough jobs, one worker noted, what’s the point of union discussions of lowering the retirement to 60 – one’s body is already wrecked at 50. Try explaining that to your average French sociologist.
• Getting social welfare deposited directly into the bank accounts of those deemed to deserve it. Tortuous paperwork leads to unclaimed sums for 1 in 3 French families totalling €10 billion, or the total monetary concessions of 2018’s failed effort to buy off the Yellow Vests.

Now that’s a good article, and unlike the Le Monde column it doesn’t totally ignore the biggest development in French politics in decades – the Yellow Vests.

But to a committed Western conservative human politics are based on natural, unregulatable laws, and not on a science of history or reason. Thus your average French voter – which insisted to me prior to 2017’s round 2 that Macron was a “centrist” – gave up on me long ago! “Our top four candidates essentially on the far-right? Ramin, you misunderstand modern Western conservatism!”

Save that for the book – I promise such political explorations will be far more fruitful than this Le Monde column.

********************************************************

List of articles covering the 2022 French elections

Catastrophe since 2017: How to cover France’s presidential election? – November 22, 2021

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

Who Wants Some Ukraine?

November 25, 2021

by Dmitry Orlov, posted with permission of the author

On Tuesday, 23 November, Russia’s most senior military general, Valery Gerasimov, had a “deconfliction” phone conference with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, in which the two discussed “pressing issues of international security.

” Actual details of what they discussed are not available; what is available is Western media speculation, which in recent days has included false reports of Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and supposedly getting ready to invade. What Western media has studiously ignored is an actual massing of Ukrainian troops on the borders of the Donbass region—the industrialized temporarily Ukrainian region that has been de facto independent since the Kiev putsch of 2014.

Following that putsch, and the refusal of the Donbass (along with Crimea) to recognize the new US State Department-installed Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians made attempt to recapture the Donbass by force. This attempt failed, and Kiev managed to avoid all-out defeat by signing the Minsk agreements of February 2015, but has clearly had no intention of ever fulfilling them. Instead, ever since then, Ukrainian forces have been shelling the no man’s land between Ukrainian-held territory (which is mostly open prairie) and Donbass (which is urbanized and thickly settled), killing small numbers of civilians and local militia members and causing considerable property damage. Although Western press has continuously reported on “Russian forces” in the Donbass, they are yet to present any evidence of it. And although Western press likes to describe the Donbass using the hackneyed epithet “war-torn” it is actually more prosperous and stable than the rest of the Ukraine, integrated into the Russian economy and essentially functioning as a Russian region.

Turning down Western media noise, a Russian military effort to capture the Donbass, never mind the rest of the Ukraine, is exceedingly unlikely. Russia already has everything it wants. Unlike Crimea which in its 2014 referendum produced a 97% vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83% voter turnout, in a similar referendum in the Donbass (held against Moscow’s wishes) only 27.5% of the 74.87% who turned out voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation. Based on this result, Moscow chose to soft-pedal the Donbass situation, providing humanitarian aid and diplomatic support, granting Russian citizenship to those who want it and gradually integrating the region socially and economically. In other Ukrainian regions, were similar referendums to be held there, the level of support for joining Russia would in all likelihood have been even lower, and now, seven years later, would be lower still. From this, a conclusion can be drawn: other than Crimea (which was part of an independent Ukraine for just 23 years), none of the Ukraine was or is a candidate for inclusion within the Russian Federation. The Russians living there will receive some amount of Russian support and are, of course, welcome to move to Russia, but that is really it.

Having ruled out that which is exceedingly unlikely, let us turn to that which is quite likely; and that is a provocation in the Donbass staged by the authorities in Kiev and by their State Department, Pentagon and CIA handlers, designed to deflect the blame from the truly disastrous economic situation that is unfolding there in the hopes of being able to maintain political control of the situation. In blundering into the Ukraine and converting it into a sort of anti-Russian bulwark, the US gained a brazenly corrupt and unruly dependency. Unable to stop its inexorable slide into failed-statedom and political and social disintegration, the US is faced with the prospect of another Afghanistan-style rout, with desperate left-behinds running after US transport planes hastily taking off from Kiev’s Borispol Airport, after which point even the mental laggards who run the European Union will be forced to admit that American security guarantees are an utter joke and will start getting ready to walk into the Kremlin on their knees to kiss the gem-encrusted felt slipper.

Given this unwelcome scenario, the US is quite eager to control the optics and to make it look like it is all Russia’s fault. Since merely jumping up and down and screaming “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” is no longer doing the trick, they are looking for something—anything!—that will make the Russians show up and put up even a tiny bit of a fight so that CNN and MSNBC can broadcast staged photos of a bloodied baby blanket and US Congress can then harrumph-harrumph about “Russian aggression” and impose sanctions on Russian baby blanket manufacturers. That “anything” is called a provocation, and what better place to stage it than the Donbass, which is an existing bleeding sore they’ve been picking away at for seven years now. Of course, they will do this in great trepidation of an escalation they would be unable to control, hence the hasty “deconfliction” conference with General Gerasimov: “Look, we go pew-pew, then you go pew-pew, then we declare hostilities over and toast each other with vodka and caviar; OK?”

Given that a provocation of some sort appears to be very likely, it is worth pondering what it would look like and what the outcome of it might be.

First, here is some background. The Ukraine (which is Russian for “borderland”) has always been less a country than a heterogeneous, endlessly disputed territory, tossed back and forth between Russia, Turkey, Poland, Austria, Germany and even, very briefly, Sweden. It mostly borders Russia (Crimea, Krasnodar, Rostov, Voronezh, Belgorod, Кursk and Bryansk regions). It also borders Belarus (short for “White Russia”) which is a whole lot like Russia. It has smaller borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova and the unrecognized, Russian-defended Transnistria. It also borders Donetsk and Lugansk regions, collectively known as the Donbass, which is short for “Donetsk Coal Basin,” and which was formerly part of the Ukraine but de facto independent for the last 7 years and economically integrated with Russia.

Of these, the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were quite recently part of the USSR while the rest were part of the Warsaw Pact allied with the USSR. For most of them, those were the good days; for reasons incomprehensible to rapacious Western imperialists, Russia lavished a great deal of attention and investment on its ethnically heterogeneous periphery, not only building a great deal of social and industrial infrastructure and enterprises there but also staffing it all with relocated Russians. This, most Russians now realize, was a poor choice. This lesson is continuously reinforced by observing just how poorly the former Soviet republics have performed since they gained their independence. The Ukraine is a case in point, losing as much as a third of its population (exact numbers are impossible to ascertain) and steadily degenerating from a prosperous, highly developed region to the poorest one in all of Europe.

The Ukraine aspires to NATO and EU membership, but this prospect appears exceedingly unlikely since it is much more of a liability than an asset: destitute, bankrupt, politically unstable and not in control of its own government or its own territory—a failed state, essentially. Plus, the EU and NATO are themselves perhaps not too long for this world, the EU having recently lost the United Kingdom and NATO having just fabulously failed in Afghanistan, and not really capable of accepting new members. Sensing their own weakness, and projecting onto Russia their own instincts to engulf and devour all that they can, they automatically assume that Russia will exploit this weakness and reconquer the Ukraine and perhaps some other parts of Eastern Europe as well. But this is all it is—a projection, because the contemporary Russian project is something else entirely. Russia does periodically move its troops around its own territory, thereby keeping the West in a constant state of nervous agitation bordering on outright panic, but from the Russian perspective that is just a pleasant side-effect of regularly scheduled training exercises. There was a recent hysterical outburst in Western press over Russian tanks massed on the Belorussian border, for instance. Russia is always “about to invade,” on Tuesdays especially, but somehow never gets around to it.

That is not because Russia lacks the means or the opportunity; but it does entirely lack the motive. Does it need more land? Certainly not! Does it need a restive, alienated population that will then demand to be fed, hospitalized as needed and kept safe and warm all the while resisting assimilation? Not at all! Does it need the reputational losses from unprovoked aggression? Again, no. Quite the opposite, Russia is most eager to draw the line somewhere—a notional Great Wall of Russia, with the stable, economically liberal and socially conservative Orthodox/Moslem/Buddhist Russian World on one side and an alien, increasingly bankrupt, culturally degenerate, sexually deviant and permanently hostile Europe on the other. This will give Russia the peace and stability it needs to continue developing. The problem is that, because of the messy way in which the USSR broke up, many Russians were left stranded on the wrong side of previously insignificant borders, and this Great Wall has to remain porous, allowing Russians to filter back in.

A point can be made that Russia’s romance with Western Europe was always destined to end in tears. Russia’s cooperative, egalitarian instincts have been developed and perfected over many centuries within the Eurasian context of a relatively small population controlling a vast but difficult land with almost infinite but rather diffuse resources. In this context, cooperation rather than competition are keys to survival. These instincts have been wasted on little Eastern European fiefdoms that have spent an eternity squabbling over their tiny plots of land. Their history has conditioned them to only understand and respect subservience and domination, causing them to see Russian largesse as a weakness to be exploited. When the USSR suddenly vanished, they swiftly switched allegiance, forgetting their Russian, learning English and eagerly welcoming American and Western European financial swindlers and thieves to come and pick them clean. And now that they’ve been picked clean and Americans are leaving, they would perhaps be happy for Russia to “reoccupy” them and resume feeding them (if it were not for their wounded pride), but Russia will have none of it.

Within this overall context, each Eastern European country has its own unique fate. Most of them—specifically, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova—are simply too small and inconsequential to matter and have been left to wither away slowly, being of little interest to the West or to Russia. Belarus stands out in that it quickly joined a union state with Russia, but this has not saved it from some fateful dalliances with the West which almost ended in disaster in the summer of 2020 when a foreign-instigated astroturf insurgency threatened to overthrow the elected government and install a Western stooge by the name of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, nicknamed the cutlet fairy. Since then, Minsk and Moscow turbocharged their integration process, producing the odd situation where the Belorussians feel free to poke their fingers in the eyes of Western leaders while hiding behind Russia’s broad back.

And then there is the Ukraine. It is the second-largest country in Europe by area—second only to Russia—and strategically located to be rather consequential. Ever since its independence, which it was awarded against the wishes of the majority of its population when the USSR was dissolved by a tiny group of conspirators, it has been ruled by a succession of swindlers and thieves who have continuously looted and robbed it until now it is a mere shadow of its former self, broken and destitute. This has made it an easy mark for Western geopolitical engineers who sought to fashion into a sort of anti-Russia, with the idea of preventing Russia from becoming an empire based on some flawed reasoning by the rabidly Russophobic Pole Zbigniew Brzeziński. Grand plans hatched by fools tend to misfire grandly, and this one is no exception. Instead of somehow containing Russia, it gave Russia everything it could ever want:

1. The fantastic level of Ukrainian political dysfunction that resulted from endless Western political meddling reduced the Ukraine from one of Russia’s major regional competitors to а major regional basket case and supplier of qualified Russian-speaking labor. The Ukraine once had strategically important industries that were essential for Russia’s military and civilian production, including large marine diesels, helicopter engines, rocket engines, aircraft building, shipbuilding and much else. All of these industries have now been relocated to Russia, often together with all of the blueprints and the technical expertise, and produce great value for both domestic consumption and export.

2. The 2014 putsch allowed Russia to return Crimea by undoing two mistakes—by Khrushchev, who gave it to the Ukraine in 1954, and by Gorbachev, who failed to get it back in 1991. It also allowed Russia to partially undo an older mistake—by Lenin, who gave the Donbass to the Ukraine in 1920. While the Donbass is strategically not too consequential, the return of Crimea provided numerous benefits. Coupled with the western enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic and new Russian hypersonic rockets, Crimea has allowed Russia to keep all of NATO’s European territory within its sphere of military dominance, providing an effective treatment for Europe’s congenital defect which causes it to periodically march on Moscow. Western sanctions imposed in response to Russian annexation of Crimea allowed Russia to claw back all of the disadvantages it incurred by joining the World Trade Organization, including bringing back agriculture and key manufacturing sectors, to find new, friendlier trading partners around the world, and to find ways to thrive within conditions of limited autarky. Crimea has also provided a very useful litmus test for political participation: automatically excluding anyone who would claim that Crimea is Ukrainian made it possible to effectively purge the ranks of all internal enemies and foreign agents. There are numerous other benefits as well, too many to mention.

3. The civil war in the Donbass, which is ongoing, gave Russia the opportunity to force through the Minsk agreements, whose implementation is mandated by the UN Security Council Resolution 2202 (2015), and which require the Ukraine to federalize, granting a high level of autonomy to its regions. This, in the Ukrainian context, equates with the end of the Ukrainian unitary state. Beyond that point, the Ukraine becomes a set of disparate, disconnected, foreign-dominated fiefdoms, each with its own pathetic little oligarchy, with Kiev retained as a purely symbolic capital and an ancient Kievan Russia museum and tourist attraction. The government in Kiev has resisted the implementation of the Minsk agreements, realizing full well that this would spell its end, but this is merely a postponement. The civil war also simplified any future anti-Nazi mop-up operation and war crimes tribunal. Whereas before various Ukrainian nationalists and krypto-Nazis might have been difficult to identify, it has forced them to not only stand up and be counted but also to commit crimes for which there is no statue of limitations, making it easy to permanently take them out of circulation when the time comes to clean the place up.

This, then, is the background to the current situation, bringing us to the present, in which the US seems to be cooking up something in a big hurry. First, the US sends the message that Kiev must fulfill the terms of the Minsk agreements. Second, the US claims that Russia is massing troops on the Ukrainian border, getting ready to invade. The Ukrainian military denies this fact. The US repeats their claim and also sends some more weapons to the Ukraine. As the Ukrainian military is still unsure what’s going on, they are summoned and told exactly what to think. And so, there is going to be a provocation. But Russia is certainly not interested in any sort of attack or invasion, so what do you suppose is going to happen? A reasonable battle plan is for the Ukraine to attack first, to preempt the Russian invasion and to take up defensive positions within the Donbass territory. That’s a brilliant plan, if I say so myself!

The most the Ukrainian military can do is launch an attack on the Donbass. Attacking Crimea across the isthmus would be stupid and pathetic; attacking Crimea from the water would be stupid and absolutely hilarious to watch. And so Donbass it has to be, again. It won’t take long for the Russians to respond using unidentified long-range precision artillery and demolish the Ukrainians’ supply lines, trapping them in cauldrons where they will run out of ammunition, food and fuel and gradually bleed out. This is what transpired before, in 2015, leading Kiev to sign on to the Minsk agreements, because their other choice was to lose their entire army. Except now there will not be another set of Minsk agreements, no terms of surrender, no cease fires and no safe corridors for withdrawal. There will just be death. To the Russians, these people are terrorists, and terrorists get to meet God before the rest of us.

And that, perhaps, may be the entire point. The US wants to close out the entire sorry Ukrainian saga, cut its losses, pull an Afghanistan and leave in a hurry, because it has a long list of countries it has to pull out of before the fuel and the money run out, and it badly needs to pick up the pace. Okinawa is on that list; Guam; Puerto Rico; Alaska. California. Texas. The Ukraine has been refusing to even start fulfilling the Minsk agreements, which start with military deescalation along the line of contact. What seems to be the problem? Perhaps, as the US has finally figured out, it has to do with the fact that the Ukraine has a military; if it no longer had any military of any sort at all, there would be nothing to deescalate and the problem would not exist. And so that may be the clever plan for the Ukraine: suicide by Russia. As an added bonus, there will be Russia to blame because, no doubt at all, it will have all been Russia’s fault. Sanctions against Russian baby blanket manufacturers are being drafted as we speak. American TV viewers will watch it, and they will like it. They will think, “Bad Russkies! America strong!”

“But what about the Ukraine?” you might be tempted to ask. Well, the correct answer to that question seems to be, “Nobody cares.” Seriously, looking at recent Ukrainian history, that seems to be the only answer that makes sense. The Americans certainly never cared, the Russians once cared but care less and less with each passing day, and the Ukrainians themselves don’t care either and have been making that point by voting with their feet. The European Union and NATO may care a great deal about having a large failed state in the middle of Europe, and they should, because that is probably just the beginning, but a very good start.

• Possible motives for a provocation against Russia

The Democratic Facade

NOVEMBER 07, 2020 BY GILAD ATZMON

by Gilad Atzmon 

On election day, countless progressive and liberal commentators throughout the entire mainstream media were foolish enough to admit that the battle at stake wasn’t really about ‘Trump or Biden’ but about the ‘American way,’ the future, so to say, of the public discourse and public life in the USA. Progressives and liberals were confident enough to believe that with nearly 100 million ballots given in before election day, Americans had already cast an unprecedented spectacle of rejection of everything that may even mildly resemble ‘conservative values.’ They were convinced that America had made its choice already. For them, I must assume, the election was just an act of formality. The battle was basically won already.

 But then just a few hours later, it became clear that the pollsters failed them completely once again. The ‘Trumpsters’ refused to evaporate. They grew substantially and even expanded demographically into some ‘unexpected’ electoral territories traditionally associated with Democratic politics.

 The clear meaning of the election is that America, like most other Western states, is divided in the middle into two opposing societies that have very little in common.  Far more worrying is the clear fact that the two sides of the divide cannot tolerate each other. 

As much as the Left, Progressives and Liberals are convinced by the absolute validity of their way of thinking, to the point that they insist to dictate them by authoritarian and tyrannical measures, at least as many people do not buy, follow and even reject those values.   Many Americans do not accept the identiterian shift. Many Americans are not convinced at all that gender isn’t binary. I assume that most disappointing and worrying for the DNC is the fact that members of ‘diverse minorities’ as the Democrats call them, have switched sides. They became vocal Trump supporters.

Watch a Cuban fusion band sings “I will Vote for Donald Trump” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HpwNRSE4nM

This is very easy to explain. The Democratic Party offers Blacks, Gays, Latinos and so called ‘diverse minorities’ to be marginalized forever in an amalgam of ‘Others United’.  The GOP is offering those people an immediate integration as ordinary people into the American realm. All you need to do is get yourself a red Trump baseball cap and join your next local Trump rally. It is this most basic existential togetherness that was so vivid within the Left revolutionary discourse, but only materialized into a populist sustained tsunami of political resistance within the contexts of right-wing populist politics. 

In the upside-down world in which we live. The Republican party has become the party of the American working-class people. People who are defined by their adherence to family values, the church, hard work and see themselves as the ‘Americans.’  The Democratic party that claimed to be the voice of those working people, has gradually morphed into an urban identiatrian conglomerate.  A collective of ‘as a’ people: humans who insist to identify with their biology:  ‘as a Woman,’ ‘as a Gay,’ ‘as a Trans,’ ‘as a Black,’ ‘as a Jew.’

In the upside down world in which we live, the Left ended up adopting the most embarrassing and problematic Hitlerian ideological aspect: Unlike Italian fascism that adhered to the concept of ‘socialism of the Italian people,’ or early Nazism that pushed for the idea of ‘equality of German speaking people,’ Hitler insisted upon ‘socialism of one race.’ Hitler believed that people’s politics is intrinsic to their biology. As opposed to traditional inclusive Left thinking that was class oriented, the contemporary Left pushes people to identify politically on biological terms: ‘as a woman,’ ‘as a black,’ ‘as a gay,’ ‘as a trans’ etc. The GOP on the other hand, is coming closer and closer to universal class politics.  

On the morning of the 3rd of November, the liberal press was ready to announce that the ‘as a’ philosophy had won. But as things stand right now, this  battle between the ‘as a’ people  and the ‘Americans’ may escalate into a real violent conflict as there is no one in America or anywhere else who knows how to unite the people into a simple concept of peoplehood. Again, this is hardly an American phenomenon. The exact same division and the lack of a political unifying prospect is currently apparent in every Western State.

On Thursday, Wall Street rose substantially. Naturally, many commentators believed that our oligarchs and financial tycoons were excited by Biden’s likeliness to win the American election. But it may also be possible that Wall Street was way more thrilled by the prospect of a possible civil war. When people fight each other, capitalism, mammonism and usury can be celebrated mercilessly and boundlessly. This is exactly what Wall Street is after.   

It may as well be possible that in the global universe in which we live, in a world where all existential concerns reintroduced themselves as ‘global threats’ to do with: global warming, global financial turmoil, global pandemics etc., a state of bitter civil war is exactly where global capitalism wants us the people to be. Democracy and the fantasy of political choice, as such, are just a camouflage. It is there to convey the image that the current chaos is merely our own choice or fault.  

To understand ID politics and its disastrous impact on contemporary society read Being in Time

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The Great Reset. Our way.

October 19, 2020

By Katerina for the Saker Blog

In this one, which I promise to be the very LAST of my essays, I would like, first of all, to do a short re-cap on the responses to my three previous ones – feedback so to speak. Always useful.

Although in this essay the main subject will be the reflections on a rather unfortunate current relationship between Russia and USA, in the same vein as I did in my last essay regarding England.

First, here is my brief feedback on those three essays’ commentary.

Quite a lot of comments were highly informative and also supportive in what one was trying to say; quite a few provided the necessary backgrounds and the all-important details; there were also those who were trying to show off some knowledge but unfortunately totally missed the whole point; on the other hand, we also had a few that were attempting to discredit the author by any possible means. Difficult to know what motivates and compels these people to act in such a way. Here, someone who took the trouble to analyse and then write something about the subject that concerns them, not doing a full blown historical or whatever essay, just trying to highlight some concerns and to share those with, hopefully, some intelligent readers. And immediately we will have some people here who would be vying among themselves to pull the author down. Why? What are you hoping to archive? Is it the lack of understanding, the lack of manners, the lack of self-confidence, the sheer mendacity or just trying to prove something? What is it? This site is all about analysing the current events and providing some answers. In my opinion those who can take in the offered piece of writing, understand its context and can respond with some degree of intelligence by providing some valid and knowledgeable comments, need to be here. We want to learn a lot more of what is going on in our world and this is a great forum for it. As for the rest of you, the likes of CNN, WaPo, NYT, BBC, etc would do you just fine. For the closed minds to be reinforced by daily propaganda from the above-mentioned media outlets, would be perfect for supporting your attitudes.

What is obvious with those people – if any incoming information does not fit with these ingrained attitudes, that information will be totally ignored, mocked, and dismissed. Sadly, we see it here again and again.

Let’s move on.

Here is the main subject – relations between two global superpowers. (And this one, without any doubt, will also have those commentators showing lots of their ingrained attitudes. Let’s hope some stuff might actually sink in).

For a start, those relations between Russia and USA have NOT been based on unresolvable animosity as exists between Russia and England, on the contrary, USA and Russia were firm allies in the past, right from the beginning. As I have already pointed out in one of my comments, Russia was totally behind the fledging USA in their fight for independence. Russian Tsar Alexander even sent a naval task force to block the English troops heading for America’s shores. Russia has helped a GREAT deal in America’s fight to get its independence from the English Crown. Not that you will find any of that in your “history” books now. What’s more, for a very long time that relationship was friendly and cooperative.

During WWII Russia and USA were close allies once again, this time help was coming from the other side. Russia very much needed the essential supplies in their fight with Nazi Germany and that help came at the right time from one of their closest neighbours, USA. There is only less than 90 km, about 50 or so miles between those two. That’s about the length of the Bering Strait, between Russia and Alaska. Many people forget that.

Now let’s look at the USA from the beginning of the 20^th Century. By then some of that country’s vital organs were already taken over by this Anglo Zionist cancer. The Great Depression, at the beginning, was a planned destruction by that very same Banking Cabal that I had described in my previous piece. US recovered from that horror show thanks to some outstanding Presidents that Americans were very fortunate to have at the time. After WWII, the US economy absolutely boomed, as the rest of the world was laying in ruins and needing everything they could get to recover and to re-build, USA was there to provide, but of course at the price. Some of those countries were still paying that debt LONG after the war.

In US, 50s and 60s were the GOLDEN years. It produced great stuff. Even now, when my husband and I need to buy some tool, I would first look for a second-hand one that was made in USA – these were absolutely awesome in their quality and longevity. It was then that the USA was at its best . Unfortunately, they had spoilt a lot of that with their Korean and Vietnam wars.. sadly.

Then came the 70s – the Hippy Era, with drugs and sexual freedoms and from then on, the rot has established itself and then taken hold of that great country. I am saying “great”, for despite its rather unsavoury beginning, starting with the genocide and then slavery – since then it has tried to make up for it to some degree, well, at least, tried. Blacks in USA have been given every opportunity to advance themselves, unfortunately the lack of motivation on their part was not the white Americans fault. Doesn’t matter how those blacks are trying to spin this now – the self-reflection is the hardest thing. One can only help those who want to help themselves. They haven’t shown that.

Here, for simplicity sake, I would call the US citizens “Americans”, with no disrespect to other Americans, in the south and the north.

As people, the Americans, well, the ones that I have met, were quite genuine, open and friendly, with a good sense of humour- much like the Russians in that respect. Stuff that interested them they knew very well and in depth, although they did possess a very American view on the world affairs, but willing to listen to the alternatives to these views. We had no problems whatsoever in communicating, resulting in having a mutual regard and respect.

Why is it so difficult now to do that between the two nations?!

But let’s continue.

Russia, in the 70s had largely escaped that Hippy Era, being very much under the very strict Socialist Communist control. But there were some other major developments appearing – after decades of such oppression people wanted to have some freedoms – to write and to say what they wanted, to express themselves, without being censored or prosecuted, to have some say in the matters that affected their lives, and also, of course, to see the rest of the world. In Russia that rot had set in for the ENTIRE SYSTEM that was in power at that time.

The late 70s and 80s was a strange decade. Lots of thing were obviously happening under the surface but in the visible part it was rather uneventful. No great culture-social movements, the only exception was the appearance of the ghastly Punk Era, thankfully, a short one. Music scene was also rather uninspiring with just a handful of outstanding talents, like Queen, ABBA, Michael Jackson and a few others. (Here I would probably have an avalanche of rebuttals from those for whom that was their time. That’s all right, as long as you had the good times in those days. : )

But things were happening, the mood was changing.

The late 80s-early 90s had suddenly seen the collapse of USSR, something no-one was expecting, thanks to a few traitors, like Gorbachev and Yeltsin plus some others in that power structure. After 75 years it had basically run its course and had to be replaced with something else. People wanted something different. But what? No-one knew.

Enter the USA’s willing and highly motivated “helpers”! Thousands of them poured in – company executives, “experts”, “advisers”, banking specialists, business managers, you name it –they were ALL there. Bringing Instant Capitalism!

Buying Soviet-built industry, resource production, like oil and gas, mines, etc for pennies – everything they could lay their greedy and grubby hands on was looted in this way. Aided and abetted by local scum, feverishly helping themselves to all of that as well, to become the so-called “Russian oligarchs”, with lots of them immediately running to the West with their stolen loot.

With American (read cabal) “help” the new Russian Constitution was duly written, where Russia, obviously, did not have much say in their own national interests. And, of course, the setup of the Central Bank, to control it all! For them it ALL came true at last – their old wet dream has suddenly been realised. Russia was under their control. Or so they though.

These were the terrible 90s in Russia, when it was on its knees, in the gutter, raped, robbed and abused..

In this dire and practically hopeless situation appears a relatively young man, an ex KGB Colonel, who slowly and carefully, over the years, nurses Russia back to health, being surrounded by dedicated group of Russian patriots. This remarkable man has all the necessary skills and abilities that were absolutely needed at that time. His name is Vladimir Putin.

In 90s in Russia, it was a dangerous time. The vultures were not ready to abandon their feeding frenzy – our Colonel had to be extremely careful, smart and clever among that lot and had to be well protected. The vultures sensed the threat.

Add to this the purposely instigated war in Chechnia and the destruction of the “Kursk” submarine, and the young President had an incredible lot on his plate, right from the start.

He had to make that start by seemingly playing along, to a point, with those that managed to get to some levers of power and control at the time, and then slowly, but surely he eliminated all of them from there, one by one. In the West it is known as ”draining the swamp”. He actually did that!

In Russia at present, no State Power or Control belongs to any of the so-called “oligarchs”- they are allowed to have ownership in some business enterprises (paying their taxes of course), but absolutely no power in top political structures. There are a few leftover liberals who still want to hang on to the western idea for Russia, but these people are very much marginalised now. Russia is a democracy not a dictatorship, in Parliament there are quite a few different flavours of various politicians, some quite colourful and entertaining, but the man in charge absolutely knows what he is doing.

The Russian President’s very first task was to re-build Russia’s military power, which he has done truly spectacularly. Russia is now several generations ahead of the rest of the world in its military capabilities. The Russian Constitution has been reviewed and necessary changes made through the people’s referendum. The economy is growing and so are the gold reserves. Next on the list will be the Central Bank, the globalist’s last hook that is still in Russia’s body. Believe me, VVP is working on that as we speak. All takes time. He is against a very powerful and evil entity that wants to be in an absolute control. Careful steps needed.

He is the President of the biggest country on the planet, with 11 time zones, a vast number of nationalities, with infrastructures that other countries cannot even imagine, he has former soviet republics taken over by the western interests that are trying to cause him as much headache there as they possibly can, good examples are Georgia and Ukraine. They are also trying to whip up as much Russophobia as possible, as well as doing other nefarious things, such as building Biolabs. He has an on-going military operation in Syria to eliminate the remnants of ISIS terrorists, which are still being supported and supplied by various players. He had to protect Belarus from the same fate as befell Ukraine, he has the deluded and “ the loose cannon” Turk to deal with, the pathetic EU quislings with their constant inane verbiage, and now he has another instigated war in South Caucuses.

For those who wonder why Russia is having so much trouble with the former Soviet Republics the answer is very simple. These, at the time of USSR break-up, had enthusiastically embraced their newly-found “independence from Russia” thinking that now they can be the ”little kingdoms” with their own “little king”, which is wonderful for one’s ego. Until then, as Dmitry Orlov had wryly observed, they were ”14 greedy little piglets” suckling on emaciated sow, Russia. Once that teat was taken away from them, they were left to fend for themselves and since such was obviously impossible to do – having their own “little kingdoms” and nothing to feed on, they all ran to look for a replacement teat, which was readily offered by the West. With lots of strings attached, obviously. In my previous essay I have already described what these former republics had become since then, so I will not repeat it here, but just to make a point–Russia does not interfere in their affairs, as far as Russia is concerned they are well and truly on their own. There is, of course, a high price to pay for the ungratefulness and the betrayal and that is something that all of them are paying now. Also, sometimes a hard lesson has to be learnt. I believe they are slowly learning that lesson.

At present, any Russian military involvements in these former Republics would be the absolute last resort, I have already explained what a provocation is.

On top of it all the Russian President is also facing the Anglo Zionist Cabal, with their agenda. And that agenda is to start a war with Russia; he is not giving them that chance, as the consequences for the world would be unthinkable. Through all of this he is holding steady and is in control. Meantime, he has re-built his Russia from the ruins, back to being a superpower once again.

Many in the West cannot understand or see that, as their MSM is feeding them something else with regard to Russia. Even here, on this site, we still have some people who are simply incapable of any comprehension as to what the Russian President has to deal with. To them he is either “not doing things fast enough” o,r not doing what they expected him to do, so, “he must be weak” or even some kind of the “western sell-out” then. Really!? Having closed minds has never been a great attribute.

Meantime in USA, there was a different kind of “fun and games” being played on those poor Americans by that very same Cabal. The late 80s – early 90s had also seen quite a lot of changes for US of A. This is when the cabal had decided it was the right time to take over the West’s mass media and education. The Cold War was over, Russia was not in position to be a serious opponent on the global chessboard anymore so, they made their move.

Some people, being adults in that time, no doubt will remember the sudden changes taking place in the large media organisations and what’s more, corporations, appearance of new cable networks, amalgamations, takeovers, sacking of journalists, editors, even directors – it was all happening at once, in USA, in UK, in Europe..

In schools, there suddenly appeared lots of new teachers and subjects, for example something called “social studies” and similar ones that were being introduced, and the subjects that actually gave kids some proper knowledge were taken out and replaced with this weird stuff.

Following that development, (and again some people might remember), was a sudden wave of most disturbing and strange accusations from the kids that their parents had sexually abused them in some ways. Lots of parents had been put through hell at the time. This is what THIS EVIL was doing to those kid’s brains. That was just the beginning, after three decades of such “education” we now have at least two generations of the horrendously brain/mind damaged people, unable to think objectively or even rationally, not looking for facts, unable to have a debate or even effectively communicate with each other face to face. They have been turned into something that can only be described as, yes.. sheeple or even zombies. No other words for them. Looking at them, everyone is with that phone in hand, either lost in that screen or holding that phone above the head to film something so that later they can post that on their FB or Twitter account. All of them doing that, all at the same time, as if some invisible power is controlling them. Which it is.

It is actually quite scary to think that this is the future generations that will soon be in “charge”.

For the Cabal, owing this Mass Media, it is now relatively easy for them to control and manipulate those minds, where they can get them instantly out on the streets, protesting or demonstrating against whatever, (as in “colour revolutions”), most of them probably wouldn’t even know why, but that doesn’t matter. It is that herd mentality.

Such total control of Mass Media also allows this Cabal to easily shape people’s perceptions on various situations and happenings in this world, let alone on issues back in the good old USA. How many Americans think that Iran is their enemy, that Russia is an even bigger enemy and now so is China? Unfortunately, I would say, quite a lot. Where do these perceptions come from? The MSM. All pervasive, powerful, unrelenting. The brainwashing goes on non-stop. Russia has been demonized to such an extent where it is now being made out to be some kind of caricature – on one hand, an all-powerful evil entity that can control your lives and even “influence your elections”, it is “an aggressor, invading Ukraine and annexing it’s territories”, it is planning to “control Europe through its energy supplies there”, “ it’s “bombing sick little children in hospitals in Syria”, but at the same time it is also nothing more than “a gas station masquerading as a country”, “its economy is going down the drain” and “its military is a joke” – all that sounds familiar? This Cabal must be thinking that Americans are absolutely dumb, ignorant and stupid morons, since they continue to feed them this garbage day after day. EVERY SINGLE THING they hear about Russia, or any other country that is supposed to be an enemy of US is a mind-numbing, made-up BS, which is being fed to them CONSTANTLY, and lots of them are swallowing this stinking pigswill. I assume that most of them don’t know any better and I actually feel sorry for them, being subjected to this kind of cruel mental tyranny. No other way to describe it – one can honestly feel sympathy for them as it is obviously very hard to shake yourself awake from that constant, induced, long-term stupor. We can only hope.

Here are few more words that I want to say, this time to the Americans – Russia, as I have said before, is NOT your enemy and never has been, all it wants from you is to STOP this aggressive posturing and provocations – that is not going to end well. Not for the Americans, not for anyone else in this world. Just stop it!

If this insane, deranged doctrine of “maximum pressure” and “containment” (!?) continues towards Russia, Russia will eventually respond. Those imbecilic “Dr Strangelove” characters, that should have been removed from the so-called “administration” long ago, are recklessly and stupidly provoking a very powerful, nuclear armed country and guess what is going to happen to YOUR country when that line is crossed. You, Americans, need to stop these madmen who actually BELIEVE that they can win a war against Russia!! Stop them before it’s too late. You had a great tradition of demonstrating against US instigated wars around the world – bring back that tradition. Right now this is needed more than ever!

You can also go out on the streets and demand that the mind-boggling, trillions of $ worth of military spending budget be spent on adequate health care, on crumbling infrastructure, on proper education, on re-building your economy, reducing massive unemployment (what figures you are fed there is another BS) and to reduce the hardships for the families that lots of them will be facing after this scamdemic is over. This is YOUR MONEY.

The world’s big hope is for US to get itself back to what it used to be. By that, to be once again, just another country on this our planet, the country that looks after its own interests and its own well-being, without trying to control all the others. Not being the world’s belligerent Hegemon that nobody wants and everyone hates. (You, Americans, have no idea just how much you are absolutely hated and despised around the world.)

If there is a will there is a way. Surely you must still have some honest politicians left there who love their country and who have not sold themselves to the Zionists. Commissions that can be set up to clean out your Banking and Wall Street rackets – the way it was done before. Cooperating, trading and dealing with the rest of the world in good faith and with good intentions, without any demands or impositions – you might even get some genuine allies at last, instead of having nothing but pathetic vassals. Closing hundreds(!) of your military bases all around the world and bringing these men back home to their families. Most imperative is to stop this deranged, insane and extremely dangerous “POWER PROJECTION” all around the globe. Tell us what is that all about, for Christ’s sake?! That will bring you nothing but grief.

Both Russia and China have embarked on a great journey of good will cooperation with mutual benefits, also for all of those that want to join in, and my absolute belief is that you, Americans, will do very well by joining them on that journey, as an equal partner. It is THE future for this world.

In conclusion I will repeat it once again – we ALL have ONE COMMON ENEMY, the parasite that needs to be destroyed before it destroys all of us. We must stop fighting among ourselves and concentrate our efforts towards THAT.

May God help us and give us the strength we need for the task.

China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

Japan, China and Taiwan Reports on the Origin of the Virus

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, March 04, 2020

The Western media quickly took the stage and laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of the new coronavirus which appeared to have begun in China, claiming it to have originated with animals at a wet market in Wuhan.

In fact the origin was for a long time unknown but it appears likely now, according to Chinese and Japanese reports, that the virus originated elsewhere, from multiple locations, but began to spread widely only after being introduced to the market.

More to the point, it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.

Chinese Researchers Conclude the Virus Originated Outside of China

After collecting samples of the genome in China, medical researchers first conclusively demonstrated that the virus did not originate at the seafood market but had multiple unidentified sources, after which it was exposed to the seafood market from where it spread everywhere. (1) (2) (3)

According to the Global Times:

A new study by Chinese researchers indicates the novel coronavirus may have begun human-to-human transmission in late November from a place other than the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.

The study published on ChinaXiv, a Chinese open repository for scientific researchers, reveals the new coronavirus was introduced to the seafood market from another location(s), and then spread rapidly from the market due to the large number of close contacts. The findings were the result of analyses of the genome data, sources of infection, and the route of spread of variations of the novel coronavirus collected throughout China.

The study believes that patient(s) zero transmitted the virus to workers or sellers at the Huanan seafood market, the crowded market easily facilitating further transmission of the virus to buyers, which caused a wider spread in early December 2019. (Global Times, February 22, 2020, emphasis added (2)

Chinese medical authorities – and “intelligence agencies” – then conducted a rapid and wide-ranging search for the origin of the virus, collecting nearly 100 samples of the genome from 12 different countries on 4 continents, identifying all the varieties and mutations. During this research, they determined the virus outbreak had begun much earlier, probably in November, shortly after the Wuhan Military Games.

They then came to the same independent conclusions as the Japanese researchers – that the virus did not begin in China but was introduced there from the outside.

China’s top respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan  said on January 27

“Though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China”

“But that is Chinese for “it originated someplace else, in another country”. (4)

This of course raises questions as to the actual location of origin. If the authorities pursued their analysis through 100 genome samples from 12 countries, they must have had a compelling reason to be searching for the original source outside China. This would explain why there was such difficulty in locating and identifying a ‘patient zero’.

Japan’s Media: The Coronavirus May Have Originated in the US

In February of 2020, the Japanese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coronavirus originated in the US, not in China, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed to influenza may have in fact have resulted from the coronavirus. (5)

A report from a Japanese TV station disclosing a suspicion that some of those Americans may have unknowningly contracted the coronavirus has gone viral on Chinese social media, stoking fears and speculations in China that the novel coronavirus may have originated in the US.

The report, by TV Asahi Corporation of Japan, suggested that the US government may have failed to grasp how rampant the virus has gone on US soil.

However, it is unknown whether Americans who have already died of the influenza had contracted the coronavirus, as reported by TV Asahi. (People’s Daily, English, February 23, 2020, emphasis added)

On February 14, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they will begin to test individuals with influenza-like-illness for the novel coronavirus at public health labs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City.

The TV Asahi network presented scientific documentation for their claims, raising the issue that no one would know the cause of death because the US either neglected to test or failed to release the results. Japan avoided the questions of natural vs. man-made and accidental vs. deliberate, simply stating that the virus outbreak may first have occurred in the US. The Western Internet appears to have been scrubbed of this information, but the Chinese media still reference it.

These claims stirred up a hornet’s nest not only in Japan but in China, immediately going viral on Chinese social media, especially since the Military World Games were held in Wuhan in October, and it had already been widely discussed that the virus could have been transmitted at that time – from a foreign source.

“Perhaps the US delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, and some mutation occurred to the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread outbreak this year.” (People’s Daily, February 23, 2020) (1)

China – Western China Bashing – vs. Western Biowarfare?

Shen Yi, an international relations professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, stated that global virologists “including the intelligence agencies” were tracking the origin of the virus. Also of interest, the Chinese government did not shut the door on this. The news report stated:

“Netizens are encouraged to actively partake in discussions, but preferably in a rational fashion.”

In China, that is meaningful. If the reports were rubbish, the government would clearly state that, and tell people to not spread false rumors.

Taiwan Virologist Suggests the Coronavirus Originated in the US

Then, Taiwan ran a TV news program on February,27,(click here to access video (Chinese), that presented diagrams and flow charts suggesting the coronavirus originated in the US. (6)

Below is a rough translation, summary and analysis of selected content of that newscast. (see map below)

The man in the video is a top virologist and pharmacologist who performed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explaining the various haplotypes (varieties, if you will), and explains how they are related to each other, how one must have come before another, and how one type derived from another. He explains this is merely elementary science and nothing to do with geopolitical issues, describing how, just as with numbers in order, 3 must always follow 2.

click map to enlarge

One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in Taiwan could have come only from the US.

The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US.

Korea and Taiwan have a different haplotype of the virus than China, perhaps more infective but much less deadly, which would account for a death rate only 1/3 that of China.

Neither Iran nor Italy were included in the above tests, but both countries have now deciphered the locally prevalent genome and have declared them of different varieties from those in China, which means they did not originate in China but were of necessity introduced from another source. It is worth noting that the variety in Italy has approximately the same fatality rate as that of China, three times as great as other nations, while the haplotype in Iran appears to be the deadliest with a fatality rate of between 10% and 25%. (7) (8) (9)

Due to the enormous amount of Western media coverage focused on China, much of the world believes the coronavirus spread to all other nations from China, but this now appears to have been proven wrong. With about 50 nations scattered throughout the world having identified at least one case at the time of writing, it would be very interesting to examine virus samples from each of those nations to determine their location of origin and the worldwide sources and patterns of spread.

The Virologist further stated that the US has recently had more than 200 “pulmonary fibrosis” cases that resulted in death due to patients’ inability to breathe, but whose conditions and symptoms could not be explained by pulmonary fibrosis. He said he wrote articles informing the US health authorities to consider seriously those deaths as resulting from the coronavirus, but they responded by blaming the deaths on e-cigarettes, then silenced further discussion. …

The Taiwanese doctor then stated the virus outbreak began earlier than assumed, saying, “We must look to September of 2019”.

He stated the case in September of 2019 where some Japanese traveled to Hawaii and returned home infected, people who had never been to China. This was two months prior to the infections in China and just after the CDC suddenly and totally shut down the Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab claiming the facilities were insufficient to prevent loss of pathogens. (10) (11)

He said he personally investigated those cases very carefully (as did the Japanese virologists who came to the same conclusion).. This might indicate the coronavirus had already spread in the US but where the symptoms were being officially attributed to other diseases, and thus possibly masked.

The prominent Chinese news website Huanqiu related one case in the US where a woman’s relative was told by physicians he died of the flu, but where the death certificate listed the coronavirus as the cause of death. On February 26, ABC News affiliate KJCT8 News Network reported that a woman recently told the media that her sister died on from coronavirus infection. Montrose, Colorado resident Almeta Stone said, “They (the medical staff) kept us informed that it was the flu, and when I got the death certificate, there was a coronavirus in the cause of death.” (12)We cannot ascertain the number of such cases in the US but since the CDC apparently has no reliable test kits and is conducting little or no testing for the virus, there may be others.
***

Just for information

In the past two years (during the trade war) China has suffered several pandemics:

• February 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sickened at least 1,600 people in China and killed more than 600. Many chickens killed. China needs to purchase US poultry products.
• June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chickens killed. China needs to purchase US poultry products.
• August, 2018: outbreak of African swine flu. Same strain as Russia, from Georgia. Millions of pigs killed. China needs to purchase US pork products.
• May 24, 2019: massive infestation of armyworms in 14 province-level regions in China, which destroy most food crops. Quickly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain production. They produce astonishing numbers of eggs. China needs to purchase US agricultural products – corn, soybeans.
• December, 2019: Coronavirus appearance puts China’s economy on hold.
• January, 2020: China is hit by a “highly pathogenic” strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chickens died, many others killed. China needs to purchase US poultry products.

The standard adage is that bad luck happens in threes, not sixes.

***

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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes(1) https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1180429.shtml

(2) https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-23/New-study-shows-Wuhan-seafood-market-not-the-source-of-COVID-19-OjhaHnwdnG/index.html

(3) https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930183-5

(4) http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/27/c_138824145.htm

(5) http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0223/c90000-9661026.html

(6) https://m.weibo.cn/status/4477008216030027#&video

(7) http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0301/c90000-9663473.html

(8) http://www.ansa.it/english/news/2020/02/27/coronavirus-italian-strain-isolated-at-sacco-hospital_986ff0c2-7bd6-49fe-bbef-b3a0c1ebd6f4.html

(9) Coronavirus has Mutated, Iran attacked by a Different Strain from Wuhan

(10) https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/health/fort-detrick-lab-shut-down-after-failed-safety-inspection-all/article_767f3459-59c2-510f-9067-bb215db4396d.html

(11) https://www.unz.com/wwebb/bats-gene-editing-and-bioweapons-recent-darpa-experiments-raise-concerns-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/

(12) https://www.sohu.com/a/376454525_164026

The original source of this article is Global ResearchCopyright © Larry Romanoff, Global Research, 2020

A Different Islamic Constitution; Transparent Elections and a Healthy Turnout

By Nour Rida

Tehran – With the nearing of the parliamentary elections in Iran, anti-Iranian news outlets have rushed to attack the electoral system in Iran and underscore that the disqualification of most candidates was decided based on their loyalty to the system. Mainstream media tried to put this in the context of disqualifying Reformist candidates only. This is not unprecedented. Let us remind that in June 2017, when Iran witnessed the presidential debates between the current Reformist president Hassan Rouhani and the Principalist candidate back then Seyed Ebrahim Raeesi, media outlets also rushed into suggesting that the “undemocratic” system will not allow the Reformists to win, claiming that Raeesi coming into office would mean the end of diplomacy and international relations for Iran. Rouhani won the elections.

Iran elections: a different Islamic constitution

The nationwide votes for the parliament and the midterm election of the Assembly of Experts will be held simultaneously on Friday. A total of 7,148 candidates, including dozens of Iranians from the religious minorities, are running for the parliament. There are 290 seats in the parliament up for grabs. The lawmakers are elected for a 4-year term, with no limitation for the incumbent or former parliamentarians to run again.

Parliamentary elections in Iran go as far back as 1906 and the Constitutional Revolution, calling for a Constitutional Monarchy. Post-Islamic Revolution however, Parliament is called the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and it passes laws within a very different Constitution; one based on Islamic Sharia Law.

As with the previous round, the major rivaling camps are those of Principlists and Reformists. In the last legislative elections, the Hope List comprising Reformist candidates secured relative majority at the parliament after winning 122 seats over two rounds of elections. In all, the Reformist camp together with moderate candidates took 137 seats against 120 seats that went to the Principlists.

Part of the fair elections also is that Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Armenians and Assyrians are getting ready to cast their ballots in Iran’s eleventh parliamentary elections. Under the Constitution, there are five reserved seats in the legislature for Iran’s religious minorities.

One week before Iranians are expected to head to the polls for the country’s 11th parliamentary elections, the interior minister says inspection teams assigned by the ministry are comprehensively monitoring the electoral process against any potential fraudulent activity.

According to IRNA, the observer teams have been watchful of the candidates’ electoral engagement and the behavior of those associated with them over the past month.

A healthy turnout

Western mainstream media outlets claim that much of the country’s youth, particularly in the capital Tehran, plan to stay at home, foreshadowing what’s expected to be the lowest voter turnout in years.

But this is a judgment from afar. Many young people particularly in Tehran, despite being upset with the economic situation which is part of an economic crisis swiping across the region, have said they will take part in the elections. Others said they prefer to abstain from voting, but that is part of any normal elections isn’t it?  Also, Tehran is the capital of a country of 80 million people at least, and the turnout of elections in the capital is usually 35 to 40 percent for multiple reasons. First of all the low turnout in Tehran is due to the long voting process and the lack of interaction between voters and candidates, as experts note. It is not the best way to evaluate the elections of a country by looking at its metropolis or capital. All other cities count too, especially in a big country geographically and demographically speaking. 

Also concerning Tehran, there is no real connection between the voter and the candidate, unlike other cities across the country. In addition, the lack of TV debates makes it less interesting than presidential elections, which is normal as well. Moreover, experts point out that while Reformists do not do well across the country, they do much better in the capital.

Western governments, media and think tanks do not recognize that all major Iranian factions are disgusted with the regime in Washington. The turnout of people participating in the funeral of General Soleimani and the millions who poured into the streets on a snowy day to take part in the rallies on the anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution says a lot. Simultaneously, some media outlets claim that the assassination of Soleimani will probably tilt the turnout towards Principlists, but that is a miscalculation because General Soleimani was popular among all Iranian political groups and camps and hence that will not have any impact on the attitude of the voters. Western governments topped by the American regime should end their miscalculations.

According to Iranian experts, turnout for parliamentary elections throughout the country over the past four decades has been between 50 and 70 percent. If the turnout is significantly below 50 percent then that would be seen as unhealthy.

Iran vs. US elections; transparent vs. non-transparent

The American administration also criticized the disqualification of the candidates in Iran, accusing the Islamic Republic of being “undemocratic”.

On this note, the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday urged U.S. officials to focus on fixing their own country’s “nontransparent” and undemocratic system before calling into question the legitimacy of elections in other nations.

Abbas Mousavi, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters that the U.S. system “ignores the vote of the majority of people” and said “American officials had better address questions” about the country’s elections from the US public.

Mousavi appeared to be referring to the Electoral College, the archaic system the US uses to elect its president every four years. Two of the last three presidents—George W. Bush and Donald Trump—have lost the popular vote yet won the presidential election thanks to the Electoral College.

However, the Guardian Council states that the vetting process was done fairly, pointing to the fact that both Reformists and Principlists were among the disqualified.

In an exclusive interview with Fars news agency on Sunday, the spokesman for Iran’s election supervisory body, the Guardian Council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei said, “Despite the enemies’ false propaganda, and wrong allegations by some people inside the country, elections in Iran have never been symbolic and ceremonial and the Guardian Council, as a national judge of elections…, will not enter any deal on people’s right in the face of political pressure or in order to appease [political] factions.”

Kadkhodaei also noted that the Guardian Council approves qualification of nominees only based on the Constitution and believes that allocation of quotas for various political factions lacks legitimacy.

“Definitely, the Guardian Council assures the noble Iranian nation that it has made all necessary preparations to guarantee healthy and competitive elections, and will fulfill its supervisory duties with more accuracy,” Kadkhodaei said.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called for a high turnout in the upcoming elections, saying a lively vote guarantees the Iranian nation’s security and contributes to efforts towards resolving the problems.

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How the US Regime ‘Justifies’ the Theft of Syria’s Oil

Eric Zuesse

American writer and investigative historian

October 30, 2019

On October 26^th, the New York Times headlined “Keep the Oil’: Trump Revives Charged Slogan for New Syria Troop Mission” and opened by saying that “in recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional troops to the war-ravaged country.” They closed with a statement from Bruce Riedel, retired from the CIA: “‘Let’s say he does do it,’ Mr. Riedel said. ‘Let’s say we establish the precedent that we are in the Middle East to take the oil. The symbolism is really bad.’” The propaganda-value of a ‘news’-report is concentrated in its opening, and especially in what the ‘reporter’ (fulfilling the intentions of his editors) selected to be at the very end (such as Riedel’s statement). However, is what’s wrong with taking Syria’s oil actually the “symbolism,” as Riedel said, or is it instead the theft — the reality (and why did the NYT pretend that it’s the latter)? Nowhere did that NYT article use the word “theft,” or anything like it, but that is the actual issue here — not mere ‘symbolism’.

Trump had been so lambasted by the Democratic Party’s ‘news’-media (such as the NYT) and by all the rest of the neoconservative ‘news’-media (the Republican ones), for his trying to withdraw forces from Obama’s regime-change war against Syria, he’s now switched to trying to ‘justify’ continuation of America’s invasion-occupation of Syria by his promising to steal the oil there — but the ‘news’-media almost never use that term (“theft”), or anything like it, to describe what he is promising to do, because they themselves have been propagandizing the American people to oppose withdrawal from Syria, which would mean ending Obama’s invasion-occupation of Syria. Both the Republican and the Democratic Parties, and their ‘news’-media, have been full-bore “Assad must step-down.” None of America’s ‘news’-media had stated, either, that America’s invasions-occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, have all been disasters (though they all were), and that all of them have been and are defeats for America (though they all were that, on all of America’s leaders’ lies about ‘protecting human rights’, and about ‘bringing democracy’, and about what would have been producing improved lives — instead of producing continued bloodshed — for the residents in the countries that we had invaded and occupied). It’s all lies, nothing but that; and any ‘news’-media which operate this way will find themselves increasingly trapped in their lies, like the politicians themselves are. The only way ‘out’, for any of them (including for Trump, and for both the Republican and the Democratic press) is yet more lies — and all of these lies are cover-ups, by the press and by the politicians. (This is why they’re torturing Julian Assange to death: he has seriously challenged that ongoing deceit, in which they all participate.) Unless the public stop the media from doing it — by cancelling their subscriptions, and otherwise demonetizing the ones who have been doing it — the lies, and deceits, and invasions, and destructive US national expenditures of tens of trillions of dollars (being paid to corporations such as Lockheed Martin, and not only to our soldiers) will continue. This enormous counterproductive expenditure will drain America’s abilities to fund health care, education, etc. It is bringing the US economy down, and not merely bringing America to an ethically lower and lower point. The more that America’s leaders try to continue expanding the American empire, the more that they will both embarrass, and weaken, America. This is real. It is no propaganda, at all. It’s “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

On October 24th, USA Today headlined “Pentagon planning to send tanks, armored vehicles to Syrian oil fields”, and reported that “The Pentagon is preparing to send tanks and armored vehicles to Syrian oil fields, according to a US official – a stunning reversal of President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from the war-torn country after he declared victory over ISIS.” Those oil fields don’t belong to the US, but to Syria’s Government, and their operation is vital to funding Syria’s reconstruction, which the US regime is determined to prevent; but USA Today’s ‘news’-report says nothing about any of that. The US Government is trying to steal Syria’s oil fields — but this USA Today article says nothing about that, either. American troops are invaders of Syria, unlike Russian troops, who are defenders of Syria, and who had been invited into Syria by Syria’s Government (the only government Syria has) in order to help defend Syria’s sovereignty, over Syria’s own land, including its oil wells, against the US-and-allied invasion. All of that vital context is missing from this deceptive report.

That report said “Now, Russian troops, which are in Syria to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and Turkish forces, are operating in the region previously patrolled by US and Kurdish forces.” It’s saying that, whereas the region had been “patrolled” — instead of invaded and now occupied — by US and Kurdish forces, “Russian troops … and Turkish forces … are in Syria to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” though his ‘regime’ is actually the only legitimate Government of Syria. But the US regime claims the right to force Assad to be overthrown.

This report stated that “The deployment of armor is aimed at Russia and Syria, not ISIS, said Nicholas Heras, an expert on Syria with the Center for a New American Security. … ‘Pure and simple,’ he said, ‘the Pentagon is making contingencies for a big fight with Russia for Syria’s oil.’” But Russia isn’t trying to seize Syria’s oil — the US regime is doing that, actually. Russian forces are in Syria only in order to assist Syria to defend its oil, and its land. If the US regime will go into World War III so as to steal Syria’s oil, then the likelihood of Russia’s letting this theft happen is slight: that would be Russia’s capitulation without a fight, and Russia has never given any indication it would do such a thing. (And Russian media DO refer to this as being “theft”; they’re not trying to hide the fact. Russia already is fighting the US regime in Syria. And on October 26th, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined “The Russian military described the US scheme as nothing less than ‘international state banditism’,” and reported that, “According to Russian intelligence, the illegal US-supervised extraction of Syrian oil was being carried out by ‘leading American corporations’ and private military contractors, with US special forces and air power used for protection. Konashenkov said the estimated monthly revenue of this ‘private enterprise’ was over $30 million.”) This is the territory of Syria, which is a Russian ally. The thief here is clearly the US regime, not Syria, and not Russia. It is no one else than the US regime that is aiming to steal Syria’s oil by sending in tanks. Nowhere does the USA Today article even so much as hint that this is the case.

An October 21st Wall Street Journal article reported the US Government’s theft of Syria’s oil, but it was instead headlined with the misleading, more innocuous, and less attention-grabbing “Trump Calls for Defense, Use of Syrian Oil Fields” — nothing about any “theft” — and it opened with the seemingly US-or-Syria defense-related statement (as if US troops were in Syria as defenders, instead of as attackers and thieves) that “President Trump said he is planning to keep a small number of troops in northeast Syria to protect the oil fields there and suggested that an American company might help the Syrian Kurds develop the oil for export.”

However, since when does a thief break into your residence in order to “protect” anything? And since when does such a thief have a right to sell your property, or to determine what people (such as “the Syrian Kurds”) will sell it?

Was that article news, or was it instead propaganda? It certainly misrepresents. What it reports, is reported as if this thieving operation were only being contemplated, and would be new, but the thieving is actually nothing new — it’s an already-existing, and longstanding, coordinated and international operation, by the US regime and its allies, as will here be documented.

America’s mainstream media now (such as in USA Today, WSJ, and NYT) are normalizing this theft. This normalization is being done by their propaganda, which now is for a Republican Government, but formerly was for a Democratic Government. Previously, Democrats had done the same hiding of the regime’s evil, when their Democratic President Barack Obama was the person who was perpetrating it.

This theft — and the normalization of it — are actually bipartisan, and longstanding. When the ‘news’ presents false historical context, it lies; it is propaganda, and that’s what the American nation’s mainstream ‘news’-media now are. They are deceptive garbage, regime-propaganda.

On October 20th, Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham, and Republican Maria Bartiromo of Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures,” discussed the Republican Trump’s plan to steal Syria’s oil, and they both agreed that it might turn out to be an excellent policy. This show was headlined “Sen. Lindsey Graham: I am increasingly optimistic we can have historic solutions in Syria.” It was a remarkably bold defense of the US Government’s — and of its allies’ — thefts from Syria. Already, the US Government had said that it won’t pay even a cent in order to provide restitution for the estimated $388 billion in damages to Syria from the invasion of Syria by the US and by its allies such as Al Qaeda and the Sauds, but this show presented an endorsement by those two Republicans, backing the Republican US President’s plan to steal Syria’s oil, which goes beyond merely supporting zero restitution to the invaded country. No mention was being made, by them, on this ‘news’-medium, that (as will be documented here) those thefts by the US Government, and by its allies, have, in fact, been going on ever since the invasions of Syria by them and their proxies (or “agents” — such as Al Qaeda) had started in 2012. No mention was made by them that this was the policy of Democratic President Barack Obama and that it’s merely being continued further by Trump. To the exact contrary: Trump was being praised by these propagandists for starting this program, and, so, their praise was not just evil; it was actually entirely false.

Right before the interview, Bartiromo had been pretending to be a critical non-partisan journalist instead of the propagandist that she is, and so she stated that “my biggest issue here is the strength of Iran [as if Iran had ever invaded or even threatened to invade the United States, and as if Trump’s anti-Iran policies aren’t sufficiently stringent, or maybe even are vastly too stringent, or maybe even are altogether unjustified]. And I feel like the administration had the Iranians on their heels and ruining the economy through sanctions, through this pressure campaign. And now we give up and leave Syria.” The Senator disagreed with her make-pretend criticism of the Republican President, and he said that, instead,

The big thing for me is the oil fields. President Trump is thinking outside the box. I was so impressed with his thinking about the oil. Not only are we going to deny the oil fields falling into Iranian hands. I believe we’re on the verge of a joint venture between us and the Syrian Democratic Forces, who helped destroy ISIS and keep them destroyed, to modernize the oil fields and make sure they get the revenue, not the Iranians, not Assad. … That’s why what President Trump is proposing in Syria, a joint venture dealing with the southern oil fields in Syria, between our allies, the Kurds and the Arabs who helped us destroy ISIS, is a historic change that could pay dividends for the region. And, quite frankly, we could generate revenue to pay for our commitment in Syria. … I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years, if we play our cards right.

Bartiromo replied “Wow. … You actually do see a way forward after you have spoken with the president on his plan to secure those oil fields.”

This theft is pushed by all of the US mainstream media, and Trump knows that he will need at least some degree of support from them if he is to be able to win re-election. This is the reason why he keeps contradicting himself — trying to appeal to the “No More War” crowd, while still drawing donations from the “military-industrial complex” or owners of America’s ‘defense’ contractors. (There’s a lot of crossover between the controlling owners of those firms and the controlling owners of the ‘news’-media — and of the ‘non-profit’ foundations.) America’s major ‘news’ media have always buried the truth about this long-ongoing theft.

And not only was the theft of Syria’s oil the policy of Democratic US President Barack Obama, but it was participated in by his coalition, which included both EU heads-of-state and Arab heads-of-state, and this policy began in 2011. Here’s how it, in fact, developed:

On 28 November 2012, Syria News headlined “Emir of Qatar & Prime Minister of Turkey Steal Syrian Oil Machinery in Broad Daylight”and accompanied it by video of the alleged event. (At that time, Qatar and Turkey were allies of the US arming the ‘rebels’ in Syria to overthrow Syria’s Government; so, they were part of America’s broader operation, and were also profiting from it.) But that video is no longer active. A subsequent description of that video was posted under the headline “Emir of Qatar & Prime Minister of Turkey Steal Syrian Oil Excavators – No Translation”. Another posting of the video online has lasted from 6 October 2013 to the present time, under the headline “Emir of Qatar & Prime Minister of Turkey Steal Syrian Oil Excavators – BiffiSyrien”, where it still can be viewed.

By no later than 12 December 2012, US President Barack Obama made the decision to hire Al Qaeda in Syria (called “Al Nusra”) to train and lead almost all of America’s proxy-forces on the ground in Syria to overthrow Syria’s Government. (Kurds were assigned to be America’s lead proxy-forces in far northeastern Syria.) (Obama was so determined to protect Al Qaeda in Syria as to sabotage on 17 September 2016 his own Secretary of State, John Kerry’s, just-signed Syrian ceasefire agreement with Russia, because that agreement allowed not only ISIS, but also Al Qaeda forces, to continue to be bombed in Syria by Russia. Obama was protecting Al Qaeda in Syria.)

On 22 April 2013, the AP headlined “EU lifts Syria oil embargo to bolster rebels” and reported that

The European Union on Monday lifted its oil embargo on Syria to provide more economic support to the forces fighting to oust President Bashar Assad’s regime. The decision will allow for crude exports from rebel-held territory. … The oil exports could open an important revenue stream for Syria’s opposition. …

While Syria was never one of the world’s major oil exporters, the sector was a pillar of Syria’s economy until the uprising, with the country producing about 380,000 barrels a day and exports — almost exclusively to Europe — bringing in more than $3 billion in 2010. Oil revenues provided around a quarter of the funds for the national budget. Being able to take advantage of the country’s oil resources will help the Syrian uprising “big time,” said Osama Kadi, a senior member of the Syrian opposition.

On 27 April 2013, the New York Times headlined “Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy” and reported that

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. … The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria. … Of most concern to the United States is the Nusra Front, whose leader recently confirmed that the group cooperated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and pledged fealty to Al Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy. Nusra has claimed responsibility for a number of suicide bombings and is the group of choice for the foreign jihadis pouring into Syria.

Another prominent group, Ahrar al-Sham, shares much of Nusra’s extremist ideology but is made up mostly of Syrians…

In the oil-rich provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, Nusra fighters have seized government oil fields, putting some under the control of tribal militias and running others themselves.

“They are the strongest military force in the area,” said the commander of a rebel brigade in Hasaka reached via Skype. “We can’t deny it.”…

“We all want an Islamic state and we want Shariah to be applied,” said Maawiya Hassan Agha, a rebel activist reached by Skype in the northern village of Sarmeen. He said a country’s laws should flow from its people’s beliefs and compared Syrians calling for Islamic law with the French banning Muslim women from wearing face veils.

On 1 May 2013, TIME bannered “Syria’s Opposition Hopes to Win the War by Selling Oil” and reported that

Without an embargo, European companies can now legally begin importing barrels of oil directly from rebel groups, which have seized several oil fields in recent months, mostly around the eastern area of Deir Ezzor. That would provide the opposition with its first reliable source of income since the revolt erupted in Feb. 2011, and in theory hasten the downfall of Bashar Assad’s regime, by giving rebels the means to run skeletal local governments and consolidate their control.

On 15 June 2013, Global Research headlined “Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before ‘The Arab Spring’” and Gearóid Ó Colmáin reported that

In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said:

“I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria [in other words, in 2009] on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.

This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.

Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.”

Dumas attributed it to Israel, not to the US, nor to the Sauds (who actually had always been the CIA’s choice to appoint the leaders of Syria), and he didn’t even so much as mention either of those, except to say that “this will enable it [Israel] to replace the United States as a global hegemon” (which is a crackpot idea). Though his interpretation was ridiculous, his allegation that in 2009 “top British officials … confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria” is a factual matter, which is either true or false. (Back in 2009, there is actual evidence that American’s President Barack Obama was aiming to overthrow Assad. Furthermore, Obama’s team started by no later than 23 June 2011 to plan both the coup in Ukraine which succeeded and the coup in Syria, which failed. And as the great investigative journalist Gareth Porter reported on 5 January 2017, “In August 2011, national security officials began urging Obama to call on Assad to step down,” but at that time “He wasn’t willing to go along with anything except small arms,” until CIA Director David Petraeus — who soon thereafter became a member of the Bilderberg group — persuaded him to go all-out in arming the ‘rebels’. Furthermore, “when Obama was making crucial Syria policy decisions in September 2011,” his advisors assumed that both Russia and Iran would stay out of the matter and just just let the US and the Sauds take-over Syria. Obama respected his advisors. And, then, Porter headlined on 22 June 2017, “How America Armed Terrorists in Syria”. So: this theft-operation was extensively armed by the US regime, and funded by the Sauds.)

In any case, the EU was certainly helping ISIS and other such groups to steal Syria’s oil, so as to help fund their overthrow-Assad operation. So, the participation also of UK was likely, even if not, at that time, proven.

On 14 October 2015, the Financial Times headlined ”Isis Inc: how oil fuels the jihadi terrorists” and reported that “Selling crude is Isis’ biggest single source of revenue. … While al-Qaeda, the global terrorist network, depended on donations from wealthy foreign sponsors, Isis has derived its financial strength from its status as monopoly producer of an essential commodity consumed in vast quantities throughout the area it controls.” (In other words, when TIME, on 1 May 2013, bannered “Syria’s Opposition Hopes to Win the War by Selling Oil” and said “That would provide the opposition with its first reliable source of income since the revolt erupted in Feb. 2011,” the “opposition” being referred to there was actually ISIS, not Al Qaeda. The EU was buying its black-market oil from ISIS.)

On 1 December 2015, another great investigative journalist, Nafeez Ahmed, bannered “Western firms primed to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’” and he reported:

US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.

A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain’s Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant “hydrocarbon potential” of Syria’s offshore resources.

The 2011 study was printed in GeoArabia, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP. GeoArabia’s content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.

On 28 August 2018, Abdel Bari Atwan, one of the Middle East’s most respected journalists, headlined “Carrots and Sticks” and reported that

Damascus has been inundated with secret offers in recent weeks as part of a carrot-and-stick policy, two of which are particularly significant.

The first, reported on Tuesday by the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily al-Akhbar and the semi-official Iranian Fars news agency, was conveyed by a senior US military officer accompanied by representatives of various intelligence agencies. They flew to Damascus on a private UAE jet, and were met by the head of the National Security Bureau Gen. Ali Mamlouk, intelligence chief Gen. Deeb Zaitoun, and deputy army chief-of-staff Gen. Muwaffaq Masoud. Their meeting lasted four hours. The Americans reportedly offered to withdraw all US forces from Syria in exchange for Damascus complying with three demands: to pull Iranian forces out of areas of southern Syria adjoining Israel; to guarantee US oil companies a share of Syria’s oil east of the Euphrates; and to hand over all information about terrorist groups and their members in Syria.

The second offer was revealed by Lebanese Hezbollah MP Nawwaf al-Mousawi in a discussion programme on the Lebanese TV channel al-Mayadeen, at which I was also a panellist. He said that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin-Salman sent an envoy to Asad offering to support him remaining president for life and provide generous Saudi support for Syria’s reconstruction in exchange for him severing ties with Iran and Hezbollah.

Both offers were categorically turned down by the Syrian leadership.

The American delegation was told that its troops in Syria were occupying forces which would be treated as such, that Syria could not abandon its strategic allies, and that issues such as US participation in the oil industry and exchanging intelligence could be discussed once political relations were re-established.

On 2 September 2018, the German intelligence analyst who blogs anonymously as “Moon of Alabama” headlined “Syria Sitrep – US To Stay To ‘Create Quagmires’” and he reported:

The claim that the US is there to fight ISIS is a lie. ISIS is still active in two places in Syria. Both are under US control. …

The US is not fighting ISIS in Syria. It is building semi-permanent bases, trains a large proxy force, and controls Syria’s oilfields. Its aim is still regime change, the same aim it had when it launched the war on Syria seven and a half years ago. To achieve that it will continue to sow as much chaos as possible.

As CIA and Pentagon mouthpiece David Ignatius wrote this week:

“[T]he administration has stopped the dithering and indecision of the past 18 months and signaled that the United States has enduring interests in Syria, beyond killing Islamic State terrorists — and that it isn’t planning to withdraw its Special Operations forces from northeastern Syria anytime soon.

‘Right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want,’ says one administration official, explaining the effort to resist an Idlib onslaught. This approach involves reassuring the three key US allies on Syria’s border — Israel, Turkey and Jordan — of continued American involvement.”

But what seems ultimately to endure is: Steal the oil.

On 26 February 2019 the Syrian National News Agency reported that Syria’s Government accused the US Government of having stolen from ISIS so much gold that ISIS had received as payment for oil that ISIS had stolen from Syria, so that the US Federal Reserve was enriched by at least 40 tons of gold. The accusation is that this black-marketed oil produced that gold for the US Government, and purchased “safe passage for the terrorists.”

So: Trump, and Fox News, and US Senators, etc., are planning to continue the operation that Democratic US President Barack Obama, and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the US CIA, and Britain’s MI6, and the rest of the US regime and its allies, were trying to do even before the “Arab Spring” began. As I have previously reported, Obama, even when he came into office in 2009, was aiming to take control of Syria, for it to become ruled by agents of the Saud family, and he started planning the ‘revolution’ in Syria by no later than 23 June 2011.

So: the faker Donald Trump is really just old hat, nothing at all new. He’s just trying to do what Obama was trying to do, but using different tactics to do it.

And, so, what is the ‘justification’ for this theft? It is America’s alliances:

BARTIROMO: Why are we sending troops to Saudi Arabia then?

GRAHAM: Well, because Saudi Arabia is an ally and Iran is an enemy.

And Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet. …

The official position of the US Government is that Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism and that the Sauds (whom in diplomatic cables and other internal communications the US regime acknowledge to be the biggest financial backer of Al Qaeda) isn’t even a state sponsor of terrorism, at all, but is instead a US ‘ally’.

So: that’s how they ‘justify’ it. They ‘justify’ it by the rest of the gang — the very same gang that the US regime itself leads. Their ‘justification’, of themselves, is empty. It is only propaganda, for fools to believe. Nothing more, than that. On Friday, October 26th, the Washington Post headlined “Trump decided to leave troops in Syria after conversations about oil, officials say”, and — like all of the regime’s stenographic reporting of the regime’s ‘news’ — reported the regime’s more official ‘explanation’, which was: “Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper confirmed on Friday that troops would remain in eastern Syria to prevent the oil fields from being retaken by the Islamic State.” This is just more of the same: it’s just citing ‘ISIS’ as being the ‘enemy’, instead of citing “Syria” as being that. They are asserting that they can steal Syria’s oil so as to prevent ISIS from stealing it. First, ISIS and other US allies stole it; and, then, the US seized ISIS’s gold from those sales; and, now, the US will be stealing Syria’s oil directly.

Similarly, in 2002 and 2003, the US regime, and its stenographic press, kept shifting their ‘explanation’ as to why Iraq had to be immediately invaded. Americans believed it then, and they believe it now. The American public never learn. This is now 17 years later. There has been no change, except in whom the occupant of the White House is. But fortunately, this time, there is Russia that perhaps can say no to this plan. Only time will tell if it will. And, if it does, then will Trump pull his nuclear trigger — an invasion of Russia, WW III, an aggression against the other superpower? I doubt it, but it could happen. To overestimate the greed and the stupidity of the international Deep State is hard to do. These billionaires didn’t get to be billionaires by being intelligent or being good — cunning and ruthless, yes, but that’s very different. After all, the announced highest aspiration of Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, is to send a trillion people out into space, “getting humanity established in the solar system”. Even conquering the world wouldn’t be enough to satisfy some of these individuals.

On 20 August 2018, Russia’s RT News headlined “‘Secret directive’ bans UN agencies from helping rebuild Syria until ‘political transition’ – Lavrov” and reported that Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that the Executive branch of the UN, the UN Secretariat, had issued in October 2017 a “secret directive” (violating two resolutions of the UN General Assembly — the UN’s Legislature), and that this secret directive ordered UN agencies to do nothing to help rebuild Syria unless the US first had approved of a new person to replace Syria’s existing President, and unless that person had already become installed to lead Syria.

According to the anti-Russian Haaretz newspaper in anti-Russian Israel, on 31 August 2018,

One country that is likely going to stay out of the infighting over the reconstruction process is the United States. The Trump administration has no clear policy on the “day after” in Syria, except for one principle: No American money will be spent on it.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, made that point clear at a speech she gave on Tuesday in Washington, explaining that Russia and the Assad regime “own” Syria now. “You broke it, you own it,” Haley said at a summit organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies [an organization that zionist Jews had set up in the US]. …

Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, expressed a similar view, writing in the British newspaper The Independent: “Long before any talk of providing reconstruction assistance for Syria, which in any event would require lifting separate targeted sanctions, European governments should call out Russia’s complicity in Syria’s war crimes and vigorously press the Kremlin to end these atrocities and stop underwriting Syria’s repression.”

It was the deployment of the Russian air force three years ago that tilted the scales of the war in favor of Assad, who at that time controlled only a quarter of the country’s territory. Even today, Russia maintains its military presence in Syria to ensure the regime’s upper hand.

This is similar to the policy of imperial Rome toward Carthage — a resisting city-state — in 146 BC, when the Emperor ordered the resisting city-state destroyed at the end of the final, the Third, Punic War, except that, in the present instance, the imperial ruler is (on and off, depending on his whim of the day) quitting his efforts to conquer that land, and is instead (but this being consistent) commanding his agencies never to assist to restore Syria, unless and until it finally will surrender to the empire. In that sense, Syria may be considered to be today’s Carthage. (Another difference is that Syria, unlike Carthage at that time, is no expansionist — or “imperialist” — power.) So: Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Maria Bartiromo, Barack Obama, the US Congress, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and the other agents and agencies of the US empire, are in an imperial tradition that goes back thousands of years, if not longer.

However, though Syria is an ally of Iran, and of Russia; and so the US regime want regime-change there, Donald Trump might have reached the limit of his regime-change aspirations when on 10 September 2019 he finally fired John Bolton, who (along with his predecessors) had failed against Iran, failed against Venezuela, failed against Russia, and failed against China. Trump’s most intensive regime-change effort has been against Iran (though Fox’s Maria Bartiromo thinks it’s not enough). On 5 July 2018, the excellent investigative journalist Sibel Edmonds headlined at her Newsbud site her 33-minute video “Breaking: Insiders Reveal Secret Deal to Topple Iran Government!” revealing (starting at 19:00) that ever since Trump entered office in 2017, his Administration was planning to execute an operation not only to terminate the Iran deal and re-institute sanctions but to enforce sactions so stringently against any country that would continue trading with Iran, so as to strangle Iran’s economy and thus impose such misery upon the Iranian population so that they would welcome a military coup in order to end their (US-imposed) misery. This operation had a Plan A and a Plan B. In Plan A, Iran’s generals who would participate in the coup would institute an ‘anti-American’ ‘independent’ government which would buy US-made weapons from EU countries and thus not be viewed by Iranians as a US-stooge regime (though becoming a US stooge regime); the sanctions would be lifted, and Iran’s economy would be restored. In Plan B, 3-3.5M Iranians would be killed by the bombing, and all of Iran’s generals would be among them. Plan A would be Iran’s generals ‘standing up for the Iranian people’, a ‘nationalistic’ (instead of capitulationist) coup, to remove the ‘dictatorship’. Plan B would be a much bigger slaughter of Iranians. Edmonds said (27:30) the coup “would take place, I would say, in less than six months.” (29:00) “There is a large, powerful military faction that have said Yes [to Plan A]. … How sure of this am I? 100%.” But she was wrong in this prediction; she hadn’t considered the bigger picture. What’s that? Trump was getting too close to his own re-election campaign. And not enough Iranian generals could be corrupted to become traitors; the coup didn’t occur. Bolton, etc., had been too rosy in their predictions that the threats would be enough and that the patriotism of enough of Iran’s generals could just be bought off. (Perhaps the corrupt Americans had expected Iranians to be as corrupt as they themselves were.) Plan B was thus supposed to become imposed — an outright US invasion of Iran. But what would this invasion have done to Trump’s re-election chances? The Deep State had actually suckered him. That’s why Bolton (part of the Deep State) was fired. And, so, now, Congress and the US media are finally out for Trump’s scalp, because he wouldn’t follow through with the Deep State’s plan. Maybe he’ll do it if he becomes re-elected, but they can’t trust him; they want President Mike Pence. That’s become their new Plan B: impeachment in the House, and forced removal in the Senate. His intensified effort, now, to steal Syria’s oil, isn’t enough to stop that.

The reason why Julian Assange, ever since 12 June 2012, has been under various forms of imprisonment — and now torture — without there having been any conviction for anything, and not even any trial being held in his case, is that the US and its allied regimes need to keep their secrets, and therefore need to eliminate him. To publishers, and to journalists, throughout the US-and-allied world, his case is the ultimate warning of what each one of them could face. This is how the real law actually operates, throughout the empire. Assange is simply the personification of it, for everyone. However, as might logically follow from this situation, the only country in the world where Assange — who is globally viewed more favorably than unfavorably — is widely despised, is the United States, where the handwriting against him is “on the wall,” almost everywhere. America’s ‘news’-media have been uniquely devoted to doing their job. But, of course, authentic news-media perform a different job. And Assange’s case is the most effective possible warning to whatever authentic news-media might still exist within the US empire. To call this empire a ‘democracy’ anywhere, insults that noble term.