Friday, May 29, 2015



Media's Deafening Silence Over West's and Israel's Alliance With al-Qaeda in Syria 

By John Hilley


"...care to suggest that the West and Israel are in deep cahoots with al-Qaeda in Syria and expect a sharper look of incredulity.   

Yet, two vital new articles now fully illuminate this very reality.

...We can say with confidence that the mainstream press in the West does not find it convenient to report on this scandalous alliance.



Tuesday, May 26, 2015

The Head of the GRU Accuses US and Allies of Creating the Transnational “Islamist” Terrorist Network

By The Saker

I am posting today the speech of Colonel-General Igor Sergun, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia...

It is thus interesting that on one of the very few occasions were General Sergun agreed to speak in public, he chose to focus on the risks of the so-called “Islamic” extremism and that in a relatively short presentation, he made four references to the fact that these “Islamic” terrorists are basically a creature of the West.  One might be tempted to say “nothing new here, we all know that” – but that would be missing the point. 

The point is that the head of Russian military intelligence is openly declaring that the so-called “Islamic terrorism” is not an original or indigenous phenomenon, but an instrument in the toolset of western imperialism which is used to subvert the countries which dare oppose the worldwide hegemony of the AngloZionist Empire.


The Saker

Via The Saker


EXTRACTS from the speech by Colonel-General Igor Sergun, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia. 


Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

One of the most dangerous challenges of the current times is presented by the international terrorism, which is rapidly acquiring a political nature and is being turned into a real force, striving to come to power in certain countries...


While flirting with the extremists, some Western countries seem to be sure that the so-called policy of controlled chaos in far-away regions shall not result in tragic consequences, at least, in the middle term, but I think such opinion is unsound.


It is no secret that it was at the instigation of Western ‘partners’ that since the 1980s, Islamic extremism was rapidly gaining momentum. To counter the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, there was heavy arming – with the funds from the United Stated of America and other NATO states – of scattered groups of Jihadists and Mujahideen who subsequently merged into major terrorist groups and movements. With financial and military assistance from Washington and its allies, rendered in order to eliminate the regime in Syria, unwanted by the West, the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ and ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’ were created. Military intervention in Libya by the Alliance entailed similar results...


It happens quite often that actions of Washington and the West in general in various regions of the world contribute to creation of serious problems, including drug trafficking, religious extremism and terrorism, after which Washington heroically mobilizes the international community to neutralize the problems.


In general, under the slogan of struggle for ‘pure Islam’, international terrorism is becoming a form of transnational crime. In fact, it has become a lucrative business with capital turnover running into billions, with drug trafficking, hostage taking, smuggling weapons and precious metals.


In search of additional sources of funding, jihadists purposefully develop links with nationalist organizations, pirates and separatists.

Thus, we should expect that, in the short term, the level of terrorist threats in the world would remain high enough. Scaling up of extremist groups, among others at the instigation of the United States and its allies, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia, poses a real threat of terrorism export to European countries, the republics of the CIS and the Asia-Pacific region.

Thank you for your attention.



Read the entire speech and notes, and public comments


Sunday, May 24, 2015

"...Curiously, the climate champions, the same who promote carbon credits generating billions of profits for speculating Wall Street, hardly ever mention the enormous CO2 boot-print of the wars and conflicts around the globe – and their potential for drastic reduction through peace. – Why is that?"

From:

The Suffering Is Too Great to Endure
Hope – versus Neoliberalism – an Ode to Solidarity

By Peter Koenig



...According to a recent ‘shocking’ IMF revelation, worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels are estimated at US$5.3 trillion for 2015. The institution says that the subsidies are largely accounting for the money governments have to spend to treat victims of air pollution from CO2 emission and from the loss of income due to illnesses. 


In other words, the study has for once accounted for the so-called externalities caused by the use of hydrocarbons. The subsidy counts for about 6.5% of global GDP. Based on figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) cutting the subsidies could reduce premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 50% - saving 1.6 million lives, because it is assumed to reduce the use of hydrocarbons worldwide.


So – why is no serious effort made to abolish these subsidies, by having the polluter pay the full cost of the damage he causes? The subject of hydrocarbon subsides is not new. It has been whispered about – no loud words, of course – for at least the last five years. Nothing changed. 


Because the US / NATO military war machine is the world’s largest single fossil fuel consumer. 

What fossil fuel subsidies mean is actually subsidizing Washington led invasions, wars, as well as proxy wars instigated by the hegemon’s objectives. – The entire world helps subsidizing, willy-nilly the US-driven killing machine, despite their suffering from it. – So – why should anything change?

... Mining for minerals and natural resources has skyrocketed during the past 20 years. Pristine forests and entire ecosystems are being slaughtered and plundered without scruples by international mining corporations. They are helped by the infamous threesome, WTO, IMF, World Bank, through trade agreements and draconian conditions imposed by structural adjustment type lending operations.

Resources owning developing countries are enslaved by debt. Letting their resources being exploited for a pittance, most often without any consideration for environmental protection, despite assertions to the contrary, is their only hope to loosen the noose of debt around their neck – just enough to breathe. 

And why has mining become a booming industry, mind you not for the countries that let themselves be mined, but for the mining transnationals – because the western war machine needs lots of minerals and rare earths for their ever more sophisticated electronically and technology-driven weapons and killing gadgets. 

Although there are no certain figures available, estimates have it that at least 50% of today’s mining output is used by the industrial war complex. 

Mining is one of the globe’s dirtiest, most socially destabilizing and environmentally destructive industries. But it serves the neoliberal advancement towards world domination. 

The empires chief vassals, the EU, are tormented during the last few years by an ever growing invasion of refugees from African and Middle Eastern conflict zones. Thousands are dying by attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU’s southern shores to safety –to promised heaven. 

More than 4,000 have perished at sea already this year – estimated figures for future victims are increasing rapidly as wars and conflicts – for neoliberal greed – intensify. Those who make it will be held for years in refugee camps, some returned, but few will make it up to the northern European partners.

There is no solidarity in the European Union. To the contrary, the EU Commission has just decided to fight these refugees from misery, disease and death – by military force; completely ignoring that the EU itself with its subservient complicity with Washington is responsible for the conflicts that cause the flood of refugees in the first place

Shame on you, Brussels – shame on you, every single member of the wretched band of egocentric, neoliberal EU members, devoid of any sense of solidarity, of humanity – greed is the epitome of your worthlessness!

The greed economy is everywhere. It is intricately woven into our western system of life. Reforms will hardly make a difference. They are just typical band aid remedies. The octopus loses one tentacle, but two more grow in its stead to give the monster even more ferocity. 

We are so thirsty for hope, hope for another, more just, more equitable world, we see hope in the first ‘blinking of an eye’. Hope is good. Hope is the basis for action. And action must be the consequence of hope – hope that not all is lost. 

Action to break that impasse of neoliberal all-engulfing greed must be simple. We have become strangers to ourselves. We must return to our roots, recognizing where and why we failed to diagnose the beast. Our awakened, re-kindled sense of consciousness may lead us to what we have lost – our inherent sense of solidarity.

Let’s hope together for that to happen – to happen soon, for the suffering is too great to endure much longer. We, the 99.99 % have it in our power to stop this misery and save our planet.



Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.


Saturday, May 23, 2015


Those of us who have always exposed the so-called "War on Terror" as an evil hoax serving the imperial interests of the super-rich, are usually dismissed by the mainstream propaganda media as "conspiracy theorists". 

However, the following stories should challenge anyone who still thinks the governments of the U.S. and its 'allies' are the 'good guys'. The first article is straight from the horse's mouth. . .

2012 Defense Intelligence Agency Document:
West Will Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “in Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”

By Brad Hoff


On Monday, May 18, the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch published a selection of formerly classified documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit... 


confirmation is contained in one of the Defense Intelligence Agency documents circulated in 2012: that an ‘Islamic State’ is desired in Eastern Syria to effect the West’s policies in the region...


The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.


While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria...



The newly released DIA report makes the following summary points concerning “ISI” (in 2012 “Islamic State in Iraq,”) and the soon to emerge ISIS:

  • Al-Qaeda drives the opposition in Syria
  • The West identifies with the opposition...
  • The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is “exactly” what the external powers  supporting the opposition want (identified as “the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey”) in order to weaken the Assad government
  • “Safe havens” are suggested in areas conquered by Islamic insurgents along the lines of the Libyan model (which translates to so-called no-fly zones as a first act of ‘humanitarian war'; see 7.B.)...
  • A Sunni “Islamic State” could be devastating to “unifying Iraq” and could lead to “the renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.” (see last non-redacted line in full PDF view.)

Read more, including public comments:



So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth: The U.S. government and its various allies are supporting terrorism, while pretending to fight it!





IN THE SAME WEEK, THE U.S. AND U.K. HIDE THEIR WAR CRIMES BY INVOKING “NATIONAL SECURITY”

BY GLENN GREENWALD

"...No healthy democracy can possibly function where this warped mindset prevails: we are entitled to hide anything we do that makes us look bad because making us look bad harms “national security,” and we are the ones who make that decision without challenge. ...

But even more threatening than the menace to democracy is the propagandzied public this mentality guarantees. A government that is able to hide its own atrocities on “national security” grounds will be one whose public endlessly focuses on the crimes of others while remaining blissfully unaware of one’s own nation.
That is an excellent description of much of the American and British public, and as good an explanation as any why much of their public discourse consists of little more than proclamations that Our Side is Better despite the decades of brutality, aggression and militarism their own side has perpetrated.






Posted on  by Soren Dreier

Author: Jake Anderson

In recent years, the mere notion of the conspiracy theory has increasingly been stigmatized and ridiculed by mainstream news outlets, internet trolls, and “rational” thinkers.

Yet, with powerful revelations by Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, and generations of intrepid journalists, we now know that many outlandish geopolitical and domestic “conspiracy theories” were and are cold-blooded truths of the modern world.


Here are 10 that are well-documented and profoundly disturbing…






Weekend Reviews

Stephen Kinzer's The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War



Wednesday, May 20, 2015

US Bombers to Australia
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

"...remarks made last week by David Shear, the US Defence Department’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. Before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Shear explained that Washington would “be placing additional air force assets in Australia as well, including B-1 bombers and surveillance aircraft.”...

A few trembles could be felt at this announcement in Canberra, despite the continuing fantasy on the part of officials down under that the US presence in the region somehow acts as one of stability...


While the Abbott government, like other Australian ones before it, happily endorse a form of bottom feeding lackey status, the presence of strategic bombers may have been a step too far, at least for now.  The reality remains that any country silly enough to host powerful, strategic powers is bound to be inviting itself as a target, not of stability, but concerted instability... As far as the bombers were concerned, the Prime Minister made inquiries...


What goes on in Washington tends to provide a better barometric reading as to what happens in Canberra – notably when it comes to the deployment of US marines and other military assets.  The Australian view on the subject is nigh irrelevant..."


Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  

He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. 



Behind the Media’s Assault on Seymour Hersh
By Shamus Cooke  

Obama’s lies make...media look like accomplices instead of news reporters. 
Continue



Report: Saudis To Purchase Pakistani Atomic Bomb?
By Judah Ari Gross
“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former US defense official told the UK’s Sunday Times. 

Continue




By Ben Caspit
Israel is in the midst of a somewhat secret diplomatic world war against the United States. And in this war, Israel is acting as if it is a world power. 


By Robert Fisk
In Canada – the totally pro-Israeli Conservative government of Stephen Harper intends to list the boycotting of Israel as a “hate crime”. 





Robert Parry: "raising questions of journalistic fakery"

Fake Evidence Blaming Russia for MH-17?
By Robert Parry


"An Australian television show claims to have solved the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down mystery – the Russians did it! – but the program appears to have faked a key piece of evidence and there remain many of the same doubts as before, along with the dog-not-barking question of why the U.S. government has withheld its intelligence data...


The significance of the Australian news show’s sleight of hand is that if the BUK launcher was making its “getaway” through government-controlled territory, not through Luhansk on its way back to Russia, much of the Russia-did-it scenario collapses. It also means the Australian audience was grossly misled."


Read this story, and follow the public comments:



The original Australian "60 Minutes" TV report:

http://www.9jumpin.com.au/show/60minutes/stories/2015/may/mh17/




Monday, May 18, 2015


The CIA doesn't want Jeffrey Sterling's voice to be heard. We do.



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RootsAction has been campaigning for CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling for six months. On Wednesday the New York Times published an editorial for the first time expressing any criticism of the awful way he's been treated.

You may have heard the bad news -- Sterling was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Many RootsAction supporters have stood by Jeffrey Sterling. Now we need to do more.

For the first time since his indictment more than four years ago, this week the world was able to hear Jeffrey’s voice -- and the voice of his wife Holly -- in an extraordinary short film. This powerful documentary was directed by Oscar-nominee Judith Ehrlich and produced by RootsAction co-founder Norman Solomon on behalf of ExposeFacts.

Hundreds of thousands of people have seen the film already. And we want millions more to watch soon.

Please click here to provide support with a donation (tax-deductible for taxpayers in the U.S.) so that the nonprofit ExposeFacts and RootsAction Education Fund can make this film go viral across the USA and around the world.

The CIA really doesn't want Jeffrey Sterling's voice to be heard. We do. It's that simple.

Please:
Below you will find links to articles about the CIA's vendetta against Jeffrey Sterling for being a brave whistleblower. As the Sterling Family Fund explains: "Unfortunately for Jeffrey, he became the government's primary target because he had the audacity to do two things: He went through appropriate legal channels to address his concerns about a covert CIA operation." And, "He filed a [racial] discrimination lawsuit against the CIA…"

To help amplify Jeffrey's voice -- to show that the government can lock up his body but not his voice -- click here.

To help the Sterling Family Fund, click here.

After taking action, please share this email with friends who care about whistleblowers, independent journalism and democracy.
And if you haven't already watched "The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling", click here.

Thank you!
--- The RootsAction Team



Background:



Sunday, May 17, 2015


A "most insightful, straight-talking piece" - well worth the read!


Bin Laden: What Do We Really Know?