Sunday, April 27, 2014

Wars don't end when the shooting stops. . . 
Four decades after Agent Orange - heartbreaking pictures show even now babies in Vietnam are being born with horrific defects



  • * Babies in Vietnam still being born with birth defects due to Agent Orange, despite 40 years since conflict with U.S.
  • * Chemical was sprayed on crops, plants and trees by U.S. military to destroy cover for guerrilla fighters
  • * The dioxin can cause a range of birth defects as well as cancer and reproductive abnormalities
  • * Heartbreaking pictures were captured by British-born photographer Francis Wade on trip to Vietnam
  • * Said he visited the Thi Nghe and Thien Phuoc orphanages to show the devastating effects still being felt


  • Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2613038/40-years-Agent-Orange-heartbreaking-pictures-babies-Vietnam-born-horrific-defects.html#ixzz305K8JEPv 




    Some notes on the article:

    1. Although the spraying of US chemicals over southern Viet Nam may have stopped in 1971, the war did not end until 1975.

    2. Agent Orange was the most common, but only one of a kaleidoscope of toxic chemicals used by the US military as instruments of war, including Agents Purple, Pink and Green.

    3. The bodies pictured "lying on the road in Southern Vietnam after a U.S. airstrike" are actually some of the 504 civilian victims of the U.S. massacre at My Lai on June 16, 1968.

    4. A conference at Yale University in 2003 concluded that in Viet Nam the U.S. had conducted the "largest chemical warfare campaign in history."






    Better late than never...
    Whether we agree with him on everything or not, the transformation of former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's outlook on the world is to be commended. It should be studied and read carefully by everyone, in every country not just Australia, as a valuable lesson for us all.


    Malcolm Fraser: Dangerous Allies

    By Robert Manne


    Hated by progressives for his role in Gough Whitlam's dismissal and his ultra-conservative foreign policies when Liberal PM, Malcolm Fraser today believes Australia should cut all military ties to the US.

    April 27, 2014 "ICH" - "The Age" - - 

    "Everyone is familiar with the political movement of youthful leftists to the right. The alternative drift - of conservatives to the left - is far less common. 

    As I read Malcolm Fraser's new book on Australian foreign policy, Dangerous Allies, which advocates nothing less than the end of  Australia's military alliance with the United States, the career of the towering 19th-century British Liberal, William Gladstone, came to mind..."




    Saturday, April 26, 2014

    HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF THE NEWS about Ukraine and everything else:
    RULE # 1: "Assume the truth is the exact opposite of whatever Western leaders and their propaganda media tell us."  
    Follow this basic rule, and I believe you will be right almost all the time!

    Don't believe me?
    Then read this report from 'Moon of Alabama' ~


    Kerry Lies, Repeats Debunked State Department Claim

    The Russian President Vladimir Putin once famously called John Kerry a "liar".   Kerry now again confirmed Putin's claim.

    In Remarks on Ukraine U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday asserted:
    Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk.
    Pictures allegedly proving that some protesters in east-Ukraine were Russian "special operation personal" were "reported" on on page 1 of Monday's New York Times. The pictures were distributed by the State Department but originally from the Ukrainian coup-government.

    With a little open source research Internet commentators at Reddit immediately found that some of those pictures:
    • allegedly taken in Russia were actually taken in Ukraine
    • showing allegedly the same person were of two different ones
    • were intentionally lowered in resolution to disguise them while high resolution copies were available elsewhere
    • showing "Russian equipment" were of Ukrainian weapons and U.S./EU sourced equipment.
    On Wednesday the New York Times somewhat retracted and corrected the story but now only on page 9 of its print edition.

    Veteran journalist Robert Parry compared the NYT behavior with the NYT distributed lies about "Saddam's centrifuges":
    Many of the flaws in the photographic evidence were there to see before Monday’s front-page article, but the newspaper was apparently blinded by its anti-Russian bias.For instance, the article devoted much attention to the Russian skill at “masking” the presence of its troops, but that claim would seem to be contradicted by these allegedly secret warriors posing for public photos.
    Parry was interviewed on The Real News.

    TIME magazine talked with one of the Russian "special operations personal" in east-Ukraine who had been depicted as having served with Russia in the war with Georgia and found him to be a Cossack petty criminal under indictment in Russia:
    His men then gathered around to laugh at the photos of Mozhaev and the man in Georgia, slapping Mozhaev on the back as he learned that he was not only famous, but a famous Russian special-forces agent. “That guy looks more like Osama bin Laden than our Babay,” one of the gunmen remarked.
    Yesterday the New York Times Public Editor criticized the paper's handling of the story:
    It all feels rather familiar – the rushed publication of something exciting, often based on an executive branch leak. And then, afterward, with a kind of “morning after” feeling, here comes a more sober, less prominently displayed followup story, to deal with objections while not clarifying much of anything.
    The pictures from the coup government in Ukraine distributed through the U.S. State Department are obviously fakery and purely anti-Russian propaganda. 

    The story of Russian "special operations personnel" in east-Ukraine is a lie. It has been debunked as such in several U.S. publications. 

    Despite that Kerry yesterday repeated it proving himself to be exactly what Putin had claimed, a liar.



    Posted by b on April 25, 2014 at 04:55 AM Permalink



    *

    See also: 

    John Kerry’s Sad Circle to Deceit

    By Robert Parry

    Secretary of State John Kerry is framing the Ukraine narrative to make the U.S. side – despite neo-Nazis overthrowing an elected president – the good guys and Russians the bad guys. But Kerry’s strident propaganda is a sad ending to a career that began as a truth-teller, writes Robert Parry.

    "As a young man, John Kerry was thrust into the Vietnam War by old men who lied to the nation out of ideological delusions, political expediency or personal pride. Now, John Kerry has become that old man, either detached from reality or believing he has a right to mislead the American people just like those old men who sent him and so many other young Americans into the bloody jungles of Vietnam nearly a half century ago...

    ...what has gripped Official Washington and the U.S. news media is a full-blown “group think.” The facts and context of the Ukrainian events have been forgotten or bowdlerized to such an extent that the American people are being systematically misled. Whenever the fuller context is mentioned, it is dismissed as “the Russian narrative.”

    We have seen this movie many times before – as has John Kerry – when the American people were snookered into the Vietnam War via the Gulf of Tonkin deception, when we were sold on Iraq’s non-existent WMD, and when we were told “facts” about the Syrian gas attack that have since proved false, just to name a few of the times propaganda has dominated American discourse around war or peace.

    Sadly, John Kerry seems to be completing the circle of his public career by becoming as an old man what the young John Kerry bravely spoke against."



    Our internet is under attack!





    GRAPHIC: Sign here button
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    This is urgent. An Internet censorship plan is being finalized in secret meetings right now. We need all hands on deck at this crucial moment. 

    Click HERE to learn more and  to join with RootsAction, OpenMedia, and other allies in speaking up.

    Here's the situation: President Obama himself is in secretive meetings with key political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership's Internet censorship plan into place.  

    We know from leaked documents that this secretive plan will censor your use of the Internet and strip away your rights.[1] If finalized, this plan would force ISPs to act as "Internet Police" monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites.[2]

    It will give media conglomerates centralized control over what you can watch and share online.

    We urgently need your help to fight back. Add your voice right now and we'll project a Stop the Secrecy message on key buildings in Washington D.C. to ensure Obama, the media, and everyone else knows this censorship plan must be stopped.

    This is huge: covering 40% of the global economy, the TPP is being called a legal "blueprint" for the rest of the world.[3] Once key leaders finalize TPP Internet censorship plans, those plans will be used to globalize censorship. You will be affected and this may be our only chance to stop it.

    Our attention-grabbing message will shine a light on their secret plan and will make clear to Washington lobbyists that the Internet community will never accept the TPP's secrecy or censorship. The more who speak out, the larger our projection will become, and the more people we can reach.

    This is a decisive moment: we need to act right now. Join with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to shine a light on the TPP's job-killing Internet censorship plan. Let's send decision-makers and the lobbyists pulling the strings a message they can't ignore: "Stop the secrecy now."

    Thank you for being a part of history,

    After signing the petition, please forward this message to your friends.

    -- The RootsAction.org team

    P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, and many others.

    P.P.S. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please donate.

    Footnotes:
    [1] WikiLeaks: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
    [2] Electronic Frontier Foundation: TPP Creates Legal Incentives For ISPs To Police The Internet
    [3] U.S. “Bullying” TPP Negotiators Amid Failure to Agree. Source: Inter Press Service News Agency.






    Some news from ANSWER - 
    Act Now to Stop War and End Racism:


    ANSWER West Coast coordinator Richard Becker interviewed on Press TV

    Below is a transcript of an April 23 interview Press TV held with Richard Becker, Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition.
    Press TV: As the US is preparing for a possible true withdrawal from Afghanistan, what will happen to the drone program? I mean, how likely will that be scrapped too? 
    Becker: Well, it appears that the drone program, especially based on the events of the last couple of days, the drone program is unfortunately alive and continuing and maybe intensifying and so this represents a great danger to the population in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia as you mentioned.
    Press TV: And of course the fact that the drone program is internationally illegal and violates the sovereignty of the targeted nation and nations - including Yemen and Somalia and other nations - just how much can Afghanistan follow the case and sue the United States for this?
    Becker: Well, I think that we have seen that in the international bodies like the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the latter the United States refuses to join stating openly that it won’t join because its military forces could be subject to criminal prosecution if it were a member of the court.


    Agency set up U.S.-funded “Cuban Twitter” to spread rumors and unrest
    Ever since 1959, U.S. imperialism has tried to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. The recently exposed ZunZuneo scandal, the so-called Cuban Twitter, is just the latest chapter in this ongoing effort.



    End U.S. drone wars now!
    The ANSWER Coalition urges all its supporters to join these important actions against drone warfare.



    A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/ 
    info@AnswerCoalition.org National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
    Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
    San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-687-7480 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488

    click here to subscribe.


    Thursday, April 24, 2014

    VIETNAM MINE ACTION ALERT
    Wartime ordnance explosion severely injures ethnic coffee farmer near former U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh


    A comment from Chuck Searcy, Project RENEW:


    This is a tragic ​reminder that unexploded ordnance is still taking casualties in Vietnam 40 years after the war, and why Project RENEW's work remains important. 

    Some basic knowledge of how to deal with the situation this young farmer encountered could have saved his hand. 

    We have not found the funds to expand Project RENEW's risk education and explosive ordnance response units into the Khe Sanh area, so the risk in that area is still great. 


    We are pleased that in RENEW's area of operations our efforts are showing results. 

    When the project began in 2001, there were about 50 accidents a year in the four districts of Quang Tri Province where we launched Project RENEW.  In the past year, there was one accident.  That's still too many.  Our goal is to reduce accidents, injuries, and deaths to zero.


    A visit this week of Senators Patrick Leahy, Mike Crapo, Dick Shelby, and Congressmen Jim Cooper and Peter Welch, offered some encouragement that the U.S. Congress may finally put up significant funds to "get the job done" in Vietnam -- that is, to make Vietnam safe from the dangers of unexploded ordnance, and within a reasonable period of time, say five to 10 years.

    It can be done, with the political will and sufficient financial resources (and far less money than the U.S. has spent in a given month in Iraq or Afghanistan!).


    We owe it to 21-year-old farmers who were born long after the war ended, their families, their children who are still living with the consequences of a war that ended for the U.S. in 1975.

    The war has not ended for them.

    They face lethal threats every day.

    As an American citizen, and a Vietnam vet, I feel a strong responsibility for the U.S. to finally step up and do the right thing.  It's been 40 years, and more than 100,000 casualties.


    CHUCK

    ===========================================
    CHUCK SEARCY
    International Advisor, Project RENEWCo-chair, 
    INGO Agent Orange Working GroupVice President, 
    Veterans for Peace Chapter 160 (Hoa Binh)
    71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Email:        chuckusvn@gmail.com  
    Web:          www.landmines.org.vn 

    Web:          www.veteransforpeace.org
    Web:          vfp-vn.ning.com

    Blog:          chucksearcy
    ===========================================


    MINE ACTION ALERT


    Wartime ordnance explosion severely injures ethnic coffee farmer near former U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh


    Khe Sanh, Quang Tri Province (15 April 2014) – 

    Coffee drinkers love Vietnam’s Arabica coffee grown at Khe Sanh, a former battleground in the central province of Quang Tri. But they probably don’t know that to grow one of the best coffee beans in Vietnam, indigenous farmers face a deadly legacy of unexploded ordnance (UXO) even though the fighting ended nearly 40 years ago. Yesterday that legacy kept on giving.

    In a coffee field near the Ta Con Airstrip, which is the Vietnamese name for the U.S. military’s Khe Sanh Combat Base, a loud explosion seriously injured a young Van Kieu man around 3:00 p.m. on Monday.   Ho Lay was working with his brother digging holes in the ground, preparing to plant their new coffee crop. The 21-year-old man unearthed a piece of ordnance.   He picked it up and shouted to his older brother, Ho Van Linh, who was working a short distance away.

    “I heard my brother shout my name, asking me what it was,” said Linh. “I saw him start to throw the object toward me, just as it went off in his hand.”  Linh said he thought the explosive device was an M79, also known as a 40mm grenade.  Together with cluster bombs, those items have been the leading cause of deaths and injuries in Quang Tri Province since 1975.

    Linh and other members of his family used a motorbike to bring Lay to Huong Hoa District Hospital.  After he was stabilized, Lay was transferred to Quang Tri General Hospital in Dong Ha City for specialized treatment.

    With nearly 5,000 hectares of coffee now being grown in Huong Hoa, the district produces 97% of the total coffee output in Quang Tri Province.  According to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s (USDA) Vietnam Coffee Annual 2013, Quang Tri ranks number eight among Vietnam’s coffee producing provinces, with large areas of coffee under cultivation.

    For many indigenous families who have long scratched out a bare living with slash-and-burn agriculture, coffee has been the key to rising out of poverty.  Farmers who started many years ago now earn good incomes, and some are prospering.  Many others, such as Linh’s family, want to follow suit despite fluctuations in the coffee market.

    “My uncle used to grow coffee on this land many years ago, but he failed,” Linh said.  “Now we’re willing to take a chance again, knowing that the price of young coffee plants has never been so cheap.  We have grown corn and peas,” he added, “but these crops are very short-term. Coffee is long-term, and produces better income for us.”

    Linh and his brother, who graduated from high school in Khe Sanh two years ago, were planning to plant 800 young coffee plants in time for the rains which come to Khe Sanh in the next two months.  However, their effort to climb out of poverty was shattered yesterday by an item of UXO, and his brother Lay will now have to live with a disability that will be with him forever. 


    Injuries to Lay’s right hand were so severe that doctors had to amputate it. Lay’s other hand was shattered by the blast. Photo by Project RENEW.

    Despite a global coffee slump, Khe Sanh is a booming coffee town, and the areas producing coffee are getting bigger.  Providing coffee farmers with knowledge about UXO and safety guidance that covers all their work activities is essential where most of the land has yet to be cleared of explosive ordnance.   The people of Khe Sanh, who have suffered poverty and many other disadvantages, want to improve their circumstances and assert themselves as full citizens, earning good livelihoods.  To do this, they must be given the knowledge and tools to stay safe, and to report UXO when they find it.

    Lay’s brother Linh, like other coffee growers, had general knowledge of the type of UXO that injured Lay.  Linh guessed it was an M79.  However, the two brothers had never been exposed to rigorous Risk Education, to teach them exactly what steps to take to be safe and how to report the finding so a qualified EOD team can come and safely dispose of dangerous items.

    During the past five years, at least six coffee farmers have been injured by UXO in Huong Tan Commune alone.  In the same village of Tram, an explosion in February 2010 wounded four young men while they were weeding at a coffee plantation.  In October 2012 a 17-year-old boy lost his leg while planting coffee in in Ruong Village.



    ===================================
    Project RENEW
    Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing the Effects of the War



    Dự án Phục hồi Môi trường và Khắc phục Hậu quả Chiến tranh
    Project RENEW Coordination Office
    Kids First Village, 185 Ly Thuong Kiet Street, Dong Ha City, Quang Tri Province, Vietnam
    053 3858 445 tel / 053 3858 442 fax
    projectrenewvietnam@gmail.com / www.landmines.org.vn
    Ngo Xuan Hien, Communications & Development Manager, 0915 352 565 mobile
    Email: ngoxuanhien@gmail.com

      

    Wednesday, April 23, 2014

    The Obscenity of War in a World of Need and Suffering

    By Adnan Al-Daini


    "...We are too readily manipulated and outraged into diverting our resources into wars that cause death, injury and destruction. The suffering to millions of fellow human beings is kept from us by mainstream media too ready to play its role...

    The vast majority of us individually can see that there is something seriously wrong with the way our priorities are perceived. It is beyond comprehension that with so much poverty and need worldwide, that so much wealth is spent on wars and weapons of death and destruction...

    As a species we have tremendous talents. Our scientific achievements are incredible; our advances in medicine and technology are stunning. Our social development however is still almost at Stone Age level."


    Adnan Al-Daini (PhD, Birmingham University, UK) is a retired University Engineering lecturer. He is a British citizen born in Iraq. He writes regularly on issues of social justice and the Middle East.        




    “Crimes Against Peace”: Historic Class Action Law Suit Against George W. Bush

    By Inder Comar


    "An Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a class action lawsuit against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in a federal court in California.


    She alleges that these six defendants planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law by waging a “war of aggression,” as defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, more than sixty years ago...

    In its famous judgment in 1946, the Tribunal wrote,
    “War is essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
    The case against Bush is based on the conduct of members of the administration prior to coming into office as well as conduct taking place on and after 9/11. 

    Years before their appointment to the Bush Administration, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were vocal advocates of a militant neoconservative ideology that called for the United States to use its armed forces in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    They openly chronicled their desire for aggressive wars through a non-profit called The Project for the New American Century (or PNAC)...


    We need your support and attention to this case. We cannot let the crime of aggression disappear into history...

    For most of the post-war period, this notion — that leaders must be held accountable for their decisions to go to war — has gathered dust. This must change, or else the legacy of Nuremberg, and its foundation for the post-war international legal regime, will be tossed aside in favor of the state of anarchic international relations that led to the Second World War itself. 

    It is time to fulfill Jackson’s dream of a global order governed by law, not war. And it is time for accountability over the Iraq War and for the millions of people who lost their lives or who were affected by it.

    Inder Comar is counsel of record for Sundus Shaker Saleh in her case against members of the Bush Administration. The case is Saleh v. Bush, Case No. 3:13-cv-1124 JST (N.D. Cal. March 13, 2013). The firm is providing case updates at witnessiraq.com and is representing Saleh pro bono.

     Continue


    Ukraine and the Grand Chessboard

    By Pepe Escobar 

    "...
    Still the Kremlin won't be dragged into a military quagmire. It's fair to argue Putin has identified the Big Picture in the whole chessboard, which spells out an increasing Russia-China strategic partnership as crucial as an energy-manufacturing synergy with Europe; and most of all the titanic fear of US financial elites of the inevitable, ongoing process centered on the BRICS-conducted (and spreading to key Group of 20 members) drive to bypass the petrodollar. 


    Ultimately, this all spells out the progressive demise of the petrodollar in parallel to the ascent of a basket to currencies as the reserve currency in the international system. The BRICS are already at work on their alternative to the IMF and the World Bank, investing in a currency reserve pool and the BRICS development bank. 


    While a tentative new world order slouches towards all points Global South to be born, Robocop NATO dreams of war. 

    Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War(Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).                     

    Continue



    Harper on Russia: America's Useful Idiot?

    By Murray Dobbin

    "...
    Stephen Harper's acutely embarrassing behaviour regarding the crisis in Ukraine -- demonizing Vladimir Putin and upping the rhetoric -- must be welcomed in the U.S. which created the crisis in the first place and apparently believes it still has something to gain by isolating Russia. But it is not clear that Harper even realizes -- or cares -- what the larger game is.

    And that game may include a Russia-driven shift in global currency allegiance that could devastate the economies of the U.S. and Canada...

    In the meantime, the demonization of Putin and Russia is having a major influence on an issue that has barely been mentioned in the media: Putin's plan to create the petro-ruble and decouple Russia's energy exports from the dollar.

    Abandoning the petro-dollar

    It is arguable that this global issue is many times more important to the U.S. than anything that happens in the Ukraine but American efforts to isolate Russia is actually accelerating the process. 

    It is also driving Russia to look to the East instead of Europe for its future prosperity -- aligning with China as both a market for its gas and a partner in undermining the petro-dollar. China is already headed there -- its yuan is the second most used currency, ahead of the euro, in international trade settlements...

    The prospect of the U.S. dollar losing its status as the world's trading currency is far and away the greatest threat to U.S. hegemony in the world as it would turn the country's $17-trillion (not counting unfunded liabilities) virtual debt problem into a real one. 

    Until now, the huge external demand for U.S. dollars has allowed it to accumulate enormous debts without defaulting. 

    With Russia, China and the rest of the BRICSA countries (Brazil, India, and South Africa) moving in this direction the U.S. is panic-stricken...

    Indeed, plans to decouple from the dollar was a common feature of three countries which experienced the wrath of U.S. foreign policy and military intervention. 

    Libya's Muammar Gaddafi was planning a gold-standard currency for all of Africa; Iraq was planning to quit using the dollar for its oil exports, as was Iran. Sanctions against the latter had as much to do with this plan as any other issue.

    But Russia, China, Brazil and India are countries of a whole different order and out of reach of the Pentagon's threats. There is virtually nothing the U.S. can do to stop this movement, provoked in part by the massive printing of money in repeated "quantitative easings" and accelerated by NATO's adventurism...

    A New Silk Road between China and Europe

    If that were not a big enough headache for the U.S., Russia is well placed to detach Germany from the EU and U.S. efforts to isolate it. While Russia will suffer economically in the short term from sanctions, the longer term looks brighter. 

    At the same time that BRICSA is planning its new international payment system, China and Germany are negotiating another initiative that guarantees Russia a prominent role in one of the world's most ambitious economic development schemes: the New Silk Road linking China and Europe...

    So the Russian president, at record highs in public approval and now fully justified in facing East after being provoked by the West, doesn't have to act: everything is in motion for advantage Russia. 

    And our war-mongering prime minister will continue to aid Mr. Putin by demonizing him and justifying his eastern "pivot." 

    Murray Dobbin has been a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for 40 years. He writes rabble's State of the Nation column, which is also found at The Tyee.           

    Continue


    US-NATO Build-up to Cold War 2.0

    By Peter Koenig


    "...As the credibility gap is widening and people in Europe and even in the US are increasingly seeking alternative news media  to find out the truth, the lies are becoming progressively more brazen.

    The American-European public has been drilled for decades by the corporate lie-media that the world must dance to the canons of the United States of America...

    Well the wind is changing. Increasingly people in Europe and even in America are watching, listening to and reading alternative news sources...

    While John Kerry’s showed-off in Geneva with his ridiculously conceited threats, President Putin broadcast a four-hour televised Q&A session, where people from all over Russia and even from of the Russian Federate States could call in with questions and comments. 

    Most of them were referring to Ukraine and Crimea. Mr. Putin answered them frankly, without teleprompter – no pre-conceived replies.

    Mr. Putin uses facts when he refers to the ‘Kiev Nazi government’ as an illegal mob put in place with the help of Washington and its European puppets, fomenting unrest and killing in the streets. 

    The 5 billion dollar investment for ‘regime change’ in Ukraine, at that time a sovereign country – Ms. Nuland’s admission – is not reported in the western media. 

    No wonder, Mr. Putin’s rating at home is way above the steadily faltering popularity of Obama and his European cronies.

    Since WWII, Washington has been sowing unrest and death around the world – death in the millions, all for reasons of expansion, of global hegemony – Korea, Vietnam, Argentina, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Central Africa, Venezuela, Thailand, Syria – and now Ukraine — to name just a few. 

    Some of these countries were subdued by direct US military / NATO action. In others, Washington’s Assassin-in-Chief is fighting ‘proxy’ wars, using personally approved drone killings and other willing allies, like Hollande and Cameron, to do the dirty work – meaning murdering tens of thousands of people to achieve ‘regime change’, to further the emperors global dominance – dominance over resources, people and their economies.


    When it doesn’t work in a first go, there is temporary media respite, so people may forget; just to be picked up again later by the presstitute corporate information outlets to give global brainwashing no rest. – To the point, where the constant US meddling in other countries’ affairs has become an order of the day and an order of value for the Western world. It is not only accepted – it has become the norm...

    The corporate mass media, all financed with mickey-mouse dollars, printed at will, achieved from the 1960’s onward an American- European mindset that serves Washington today to continue demonizing Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, with the objective for the West to invade Ukraine with its western destructive, debt-ridden financial system and put NATO at  Moscow’s doorstep.

    Mr. Putin’s non-aggression, diplomacy and international statesmanship is certain to attract more support than do the ever twisted fork-tongued lies of Washington’s Nobel Peace Prize winning warrior.

    Besides, Russia has a huge economic leverage on the west, particularly on the US. In addition to supplying 50% of Europe’s energy, Russia and its allies, China and the other BRICS and associates could destroy the dollar by a click of the mouse. 

    Russia and China have already declared they will trade hydrocarbons in the future in their own local currencies, a measure already being carried out for general trading among the BRICS and associates. 

    In addition, the BRICS are preparing to issue a new currency, an alternative to the dollar, and an international monetary transfer system that will bypass the notorious privately owned BIS – Bank for International Settlement, under which all international payments have to transit through US banks.

     ‘Times they are a-changing…’ according to Bob Dylan– and he is right.

    Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources.   

    Continue




    Antisemitic Flyer 'by Donetsk People's Republic' in Ukraine a Hoax

    By Alec Luhn in Donetsk

    City's chief rabbi states pamphlet is fake, claiming it is meant to discredit pro-Russian protesters or Jewish community. 


    Continue



    What the 1% Don't Want You to Know 

    By Bill Moyers 

    Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming (or has become already) an oligarchy - the very system our founders revolted against.


     Continue