A really interesting essay with visual supplements is just up at Kennedys and King.
Canadian researcher Paul Bleau has put together a multi sourced piece about the connections between the CIA, the Mob and Cuban exiles that pre-existed prior to the Kennedy assassination.
And he then tries to connect those to actual players in the coup itself. This idea, of course, is not new. It goes back to Jim Garrison who explicitly voiced it in the seventies but had been playing around with it long before. Fabian Escalante is one of the foremost advocates of this concept of the case. But Paul really examines it extensively here.
The games of international chicken have been going on for decades. But this is feeling worse than the Cuban missile crisis 1962.
Quote:President Trump is so pissed off by the Stormy affair that he is likely to prefer a good old war to another humiliation. This suits his enemies and friends (though not his voters) to a tee. He has a choice of doing a difficult manly act that needs all his courage, but which one? Should he put the well-being of his country at stake and brave Russian missiles, or risk the displeasure of the elites and sack Mueller? He is tempted to do the easy thing. Thus he has been maneuvered into deep waters by a powerful coalition of Brits and Jews, the same people who delivered you the last two world wars.
His attempt to make sense and drop the Syrian hot potato ("I strongly wish for the withdrawal of our forces from Syria", he tweeted) has been rebuffed by the indomitable Mr Netanyahu. Don't even think of doing it, the big man from Tel Aviv said to Donny in the tense telephone conversation. Don't leave Syria, you still have to fight the Iranians and Russians. And don't forget the Syrian kiddies, added the man still covered with the gore of 2,500 Palestinians shot on his orders last week. The Pentagon and US intelligence agencies take their orders directly from Tel Aviv, or via AIPAC; they are already preparing for an extended stay in Syria, despite Donny's declarations.
The Jews went ballistic when they heard of Trump's intention to leave Syria. The scribes of WaPo and NY Times condemned the step as playing into Russian hands. "Washington Post columnist and CNN commentator Catherine Rampell said that "Putin must be ecstatic" with Trump's instructions to begin planning for withdrawal from the region. Forget the fact that it'd be odd for a president to base all of his foreign policy decisions on what would bother Russia why isn't Rampell focusing on how delightful it must be for American soldiers to finally reunite with their families, or how the resources this country has spent overseas can now be used domestically?", noted a media reporter. This was the cue for Mueller's raid of Cohen's office. The old fool has to be pushed, if he does not want to go by his own will, they decided.
America with its Puritan background is the only country where sexual mores are so strict that they lead to war. Clinton went to war in Yugoslavia because of a blow job, while Trump will possibly destroy the world because of a one-night stand.
An attack on Syria is likely to bring a Russian response. At the least, it will be a local conflagration, a joust, a trial of forces and wills. Who knows how it will end? This was been postponed in 2013, when the US armada sailed to Syria's shores to avenge some other alleged chemical attack. I wrote about that fateful encounter, perhaps over-optimistically, in a piece called The Cape of Good Hope.
"It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination. (We shall return to these two missiles later).
After this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can't resist the temptation. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony , supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over."
As we see now, the high noon was been postponed by five years, and now it is being re-run. The British Prime Minister Theresa May decided she does not need parliament's approval, President Trump decided he does not need an approval of Congress. So these brakes had been removed.
And now back to those two missiles of 2013. They were sent by the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim. The missiles never reached its destination, shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system, or perhaps rendered useless by Russian GPS jammers.
Fast forward to 2018. On the night of April 10, in the small hours, the Syrian air field T-4 had been attacked by eight air-to-ground missiles; five were downed by the Syrian defence, three (or two) reached their goal and killed a few personnel. For a while, it was thought this was the American attack, but rather quickly, "Russia outed Israel", as Haaretz reported. Israel tried to dissimulate, at first claiming they warned Putin and got his okay. When Putin's spokesman denied that, they said they did it by the US request. Most probably they again tried to bring the confrontation to the fore.
Now, with the US Navy in place, with the support of England and France, the countdown to a confrontation has apparently started. The Russians are grimly preparing for the battle, whether a local one or the global one, and they expect it to begin any moment.
The road to this High Noon had led through the Scripal Affair, the diplomats' expulsion and the Syrian battle for Eastern Ghouta, with an important side show provided by Israeli shenanigans. The diplomats' expulsion flabbergasted the Russians. For days they went around scratching their heads and looking for an answer: what do they want from us? What is the bottom line? Too many events that make little sense separately. Why did the US administration expel 60 Russian diplomats? Do they want to cut off diplomatic relations, or is it a first step to an attempt to remove Russia from the Security Council, or to cancel its veto rights? Does it mean the US has given up on diplomacy? (The answer "it's war" didn't come to their minds at that time).
The astonished Russians responded all right. They also expelled 60 diplomats, and they made it painful: all US diplomats engaged in the political department of the Moscow Embassy were on the non-grata list. The Political department consisted of three sections, dealing with foreign policy, internal Russian politics and military analysis; the most important centre of data collection, of liaison with Russian politicians, of military consequences, of Syria and Ukraine, of North Korea and China, experienced first-class intelligence officers and field hands all gone, including their Political Officer Christopher Robinson (POL). The Russians expelled Maria Olson, the Embassy's well-known spokesperson, and the Ambassador's interpreter. They closed down St Petersburg Consulate, an important centre for connecting, influencing and interacting with the opposition in this second capital' of Russia. The US has lost many of its Moscow hands, people who knew Russia and had developed personal relations with important Russians. It will take a lot of time and effort for the US State Department and intelligence agencies to get back to the positions they had lost. The Brits who initiated the deportations also lost about fifty of their Moscow Embassy staff. Surprisingly, the mass deportation of so many Russian diplomats had little effect on the Russian people, as this strike had been neutralised by another painful event, by the Kemerovo Mall blaze killing 64 cinema-goers including over 40 children. The blaze, even if it weren't arson (it has not been proven yet) had triggered a massive onslaught of fake news and internet trolls on the people of Russia. A million underfed Ukrainians were deployed by the Western psywar on the web to tell the Russians that hundreds of their children had been incinerated, and that their authorities lie to them. This operation revealed the level of influence and integration the Western spy agencies have in Russia.
Kemerovo was a good choice for the operation: it is the only ethnic-Russian region ruled by an old-style local hero who had outlived his wits, the only region that reported indecently (and unrealistically) high support for Putin in the recent elections, a depressive region of mines and miners with a big potential for trouble.
Putin managed it rather well by coming personally and dealing with the situation hands on. He learned the ropes since 2000, when, at the dawn of his first presidential term, the Kursk submarine went down with all hands. Putin stayed away from the sailors' families, and acted callous, people said. "It had sunk", Putin replied to the question "What happened to Kursk?" (It is said USS Memphis had fired a torpedo at the submarine, causing the disaster, while the new president had been reluctant to aggravate relations with Clinton Administration). Now, in 2018, he was very good, full of empathy and consideration, conveying strength and decisiveness. Whatever American agency carried out the psyop around Kemerovo, it was very successful, but its success undermined another operation, that of the Russian diplomats' expulsion. The Russians did not pay it sufficient attention.
The alleged reason for the expulsion, the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter, made very little sense. Even if the old spy were bumped off by his erstwhile employers, such a reaction would be excessive by all means. He was not a Napoleon (poisoned by the Brits 200 years ago), not a prince of blood, not a great inventor nor a successful spy. He was a retired ex-spy, a wash-out. Anyway he didn't die, he was just sick for a while. Perhaps he ate something in the pub that didn't agree with him. This is the opinion of his niece, Victoria, who is the only person alive who had been in contact with the Skripals since their alleged hospitalisation.
This affair is so obscure that it beats Rashomon anytime. Russian reporters went around Salisbury and noticed many incongruences. It is not certain whether Skripals were poisoned at all, and where they are. Their pets survived the deadly poison, and they had to be destroyed. This piece of black Russian humour had been forwarded a lot around the net:
Skripal had been poisoned by a most powerful poison, 2 grams will kill half a country instantly! The Russians - poisoned him in the restaurant - no, on the bench - no, in the car - No, the door handle was smeared - No, the suitcase was poisoned - No, everything in the house was poisoned. - Oh, and buckwheat was poisoned, - but they did not die instantly, but walked around somewhere for four hours, - but the policeman that discovered them almost died on the spot, - but the poison was instantly identified, - an antidote was instantly introduced, and Skripals and the policeman were saved; - The policeman had been discharged next day! - But they were in coma, and they will never recover! - but no, the daughter had recovered fast! - Oh, and dad is revived … a miracle! - and they both are quickly recovering, your strongest poison is useless. - the restaurant had been surrounded by police in spacesuits - the park had been surrounded by police in spacesuits - the house had surrounded by police in spacesuits - they are in spacesuits, since the poison is deadly dangerous, but next to them are policemen without protection … - The bench was cut down and removed: it's such a terrible poison that the bench retained its toxic quality for two weeks; - but the cat had survived in the poisoned house … the policeman had touched Skripal and nearly died, and the cat survived … and the guinea pigs would survive, but they were all forgotten, and died of hunger in the house; - and their remains were immediately burned, as they are poisoned by the strongest poison; - For two weeks they were poisoned by the strongest poison and survived, and now they had to be urgently cremated; - Only guinea pigs died, the cat survived all this poison. It was stressful and hungry, so they killed it and cremated to make it certain nobody will find the secret etc etc.
The true hero of Skripal saga is the British ex-Ambassador Craig Murray, who followed the developments and unveiled many of its inconsistencies and outright lies. You may read his articles and twits to learn the details.
Julia Skripal took a daring step: she called her cousin Viktoria in Moscow. Their conversation is an amazing document. Julia says that she and her father are in good health; she doubts Viktoria will be allowed to visit her. Indeed, the British government refused to grant her visa. The feeling is that Julia is imprisoned.
I spoke with a retired Russian counter-intelligence officer who is familiar with the subject. He told me Russia never had a Novichok toxic substance: this name was given by counter-intelligence to A-232 in order to trace the leaks. It worked: a man called Vil Mirzayanov, an administrator in the chemical labs, leaked the Novichok story, and thus he was apprehended and arrested. A-232 had been produced in small amounts in 1990s, and some of it could be stolen and sold in these horrible years, when a full colonel of Russian intelligence had to moonlight as a taxi driver to supplement his measly $46 monthly salary. In those years, the poison could be indeed made available, and in one case it was used by criminals. Theoretically it is not impossible that some of this poison could have been saved and stored by some criminals; alternatively, it was available to the Americans who dismantled the labs in 1992. Anyway we have no independent proof that Skripals were poisoned by anything at all. If they survive, if the British and the American intelligence services don't kill them, perhaps we shall know more. We can definitely exclude the possibility that Russian state agents would go to Britain to poison an old spy who had been pardoned by Russian president years ago. Even if he was active in producing Christopher Steele's Trump ("Golden Rain") file, the Russians would have no compelling reason to kill him at all, and in such an odd way in particular. "If we would kill him, he would stay killed", concluded my interlocutor.
The details of Skripal case are very entertaining, but not necessary for our understanding. The case was used to install in minds the connection between chemical poisoning and Russia. It is unfair, for Russians destroyed all their chemical poisons under the eyes of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors, but life is often unfair.
The connection between chemical poisoning and Russia had been prepared for the forthcoming event. Eastern Ghouta was an important and well entrenched location of the Syrian rebels. Being within easy reach from Central Damascus, it provided the rebels with a chance to seize power in the Syrian capital. As the Syrian army with Iranian and Russian support advanced into Eastern Ghouta, they learned of the rebel plans to stage a false flag chemical weapon attack, as they already had done a few times in past. President Putin warned of such a possibility at his joint (with President Erdogan and President Rouhani) press conference in Ankara last week, a few days before the alleged attack.
The attack had never occurred at all, but it was duly reported by the pro-Western media. Thus the game came to a close. Skripal Affair established the connection of Russia and chemical weapons, Eastern Ghouta allowed to use this connection in order to attack Russia.
We should not overestimate importance of these media events. The leading Western powers and their media refused to consider different explanations, refused an open inquiry, they went for jugular. Russia has been demonised in 2018, like Germany was demonised in 1940. It was a long and cautious labour. Have a look at this site theday.co.uk it is a site for school children and their teachers. You'll be amazed to discover its fervent hatred of Russia and Putin being pumped into hearts and heads of young generation. Such a long planning can't be dependent on an event like poisoning of an ex-spy or even on the fall of a Syrian underground fortress.
The planners of a war on Russia have utilised fear of anti-Semitism for their purposes. I called this method Anti-semitism Weaponised. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has been blocked and contained by accusations of anti-Semitism. He was the only leader able to stop Britain's descent into war with Russia. Other Labour MPs and activists have been attacked over alleged anti-Semitism issue, and what a coincidence! practically all of them were against demonising Russia; while Friends of Israel whether Conservative or Labour were viciously anti-Russian.
This is a correlation that will be discussed at another time, but it is far from obvious one. Russia has no anti-Semitism; the Russian president is friendly to Israel and to the powerful Jewish Chabad movement. Russia has no white nationalism, and little of the alt-right. However, this correlation exists. Shall we explain it by Jewish hatred of the Orthodox Church, as this Church (active in Russia, Greece, Palestine and Syria) hasn't been Jewified. Or should we prefer a more simple explanation: Jews are well integrated into Western elites, and they promote and support the goals of these elites.
However, people who can withstand accusations of anti-Semitism are the strongest enemies of the ruling power; they stand against the war with Russia and against attack on Syria, as the Haaretz newspaper explained in an article called White Supremacists Defend Assad, Warn Trump: Don't Let Israel Force You Into War With Syria . The article continues: "Alt-right calls Saturday's chemical attack in Damascus suburb a false flag operation, claiming it's an effort by Israel and globalists' to keep U.S. troops in Middle East" It quotes David Duke and other untouchables as the only people who reject Israeli narrative.
Not being a white supremacist (probably I do not qualify) I still applaud these brave men when they say and do the right thing. Sensitivity to anti-Semitism accusation is a strong vulnerability of character. Though people like Corbyn have their heart in the right place, they are weak on this point, and the enemy uses this weakness to neutralize them. There are people in the left that are not afraid of any accusation, but there aren't many who are resistant to metum Judaeorum.
Let us hope and pray we shall survive the forthcoming cataclysm.
Facebook Can't Be Fixed, It Needs To Be Broken Up
The company is a monopoly whose business model is surveillance and manipulation of users. Regulation alone won't change that.
SARAH MILLER
MATT STOLLER
04.10.18 1:27 PM ET
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is headed to Capitol Hill this week to testify on the many ways the social media titan violates its users' privacy, including the now infamous connection with a data analysis firm tied to the Trump campaign.
Zuckerberg is expected to apologize profusely and lay out new steps that Facebook will take to prevent such scandals from occurring in the future. The damage control effort is unprecedented in the company's history.
Don't buy it. Facebook is a corporate monopoly whose very business model is surveillance and user manipulation. It is a threat to our democracy and nothing short of breaking it up can protect our data and ensure that Facebook serves its users, instead of the other way around. Members of Congress and antitrust law enforcers need to investigate and address Facebook's monopoly power.
The mess related to the 2016 election is, of course, not the first time that Facebook has violated its users' privacy in ways that it only disclosed after those violations became public. In fact, Zuckerberg has publicly apologized seven times for violating user privacy since starting Facebook. And that's because such violations are simply inherent to what Facebook does; it relies on the intimate surveillance of every user to deduce how to emotionally manipulate each person in her own way, and then rents out that information to spies, con artists, racist landlords, and anyone else who will pay up.
There is no other social media company today that has the enormous global reach combined with the personal intimacy and immediate engagement of Facebook. There are more than 200 million users in the United States, with more than halfof all American adults accessing it every day, and almost 2 billion worldwide. It accounts for 77 percent of mobile social networking traffic in the U.S. Through its ownership of WhatsApp and Instagram, that reach is even greater.
Facebook is also the leading way that most Americans get their news. According to the Pew Research Center, just shy of half of all Americans get their news on Facebook far more reach than any other social media site.
Those numbers are why Facebook is such a ripe target for those who would use your personal data to various unsavory ends. And like most monopolists, Facebook prioritizes profits over the safety of its users. For instance, Cambridge Analytica, the firm involved in the 2016 election, harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook users in America. And that's just the start: Facebook last week revealed that it's possible bad actors scraped the data of every single user.
Zuckerberg Gaslights Congress
But this abuse hasn't happened in a vacuum. Facebook spends millions of dollars on corporate lobbyists, academics, and D.C. think tanks to ensure no one gets in its way at either the federal or state level. Its bottom line depends on lawmakers and regulators allowing it to operate with impunity and sell off access to your mind to the highest bidder.
Even with the spate of bad news the company has faced, Facebook executives have thus far been unable or unwilling to adequately answer how the corporation and third-party developers will stop malevolent actors from manipulating us. And it's unlikely that Zuckerberg or anyone else at the company will trot out a viable solution during their apology tour this week. Facebook's business model prevents it from solving these problems.
"Facebook's business model prevents it from solving these problems."
Instead, the government needs to step in and eliminate the source of the problem, which is the company's monopoly power.
First, Congress needs to impose strict privacy rules on Facebook immediately, perhaps using Europe's new privacy regulations as a guide. Zuckerberg has said those regulations may not applyto the company's American users, so lawmakers must force his hand.
Next, antitrust enforcers need to break up Facebook, by taking actions like spinning off WhatsApp and Instagram to create competing social networks. Then they should prohibit acquisitions by Facebook for at least five years, to give competitors time and space to grow and challenge Facebook's supremacy.
Finally, if top executives like Zuckerberg knowingly violated privacy rules, they should be held accountable and personally fined for it. There are also several other stepsregulators can take to ensure that Facebook's monopoly power is reduced and its stranglehold on Americans' data released.
No single private corporation should have as much power over our lives as Facebook does. Even if Facebook's executives are sincere in their promises and believe that they know what it takes to fix the problems outlined here, Americans deserve to be protected by law. There's simply too much at stake to allow Facebook to continue toying with our privacy based on its bottom line, rather than on what's in the interest of everyone around the world who relies on the social network.
Mr. Fish / Truthdi
g The Israeli army's wanton slaughter of unarmed Palestinians trapped behind the security barriers in Gaza evokes little outrage and condemnation within the United States because we have been indoctrinated into dehumanizing Muslims. Islam is condemned as barbaric and equated with terrorism. The resistance struggle against foreign occupation, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Gaza, sees Muslims demonized as the enemy. Muslims are branded as irrational and inclined to violence and terrorism by their religious beliefs. We attack them not for what they do but because we see them as being different from us. We must eradicate them to save ourselves. And thus we perpetuate the very hatred and counterviolence, or terrorism, that we fear.
Muslims in this age of racialized authoritarianism have been stripped of due process in our courts and are subjectas Abid Naseer and Haroon Aswat were in Britain before being extradited to the United Statesto pretrial incarceration for years. They endure police brutality and secret trials, are convicted on secret evidence they cannot see and suffer long-term detention in solitary confinement, often in clandestine prisons known as black sites. They are kidnapped anywhere in the world and taken, hooded, drugged and shackled, to the secret sites. They are tortured through savage methods such as beatings, "walling," sexual humiliation, close confinement, prolonged isolation, water dousing, electric shocks, waterboarding and so-called rectal rehydration. Their citizenships are revoked. Their communities and mosques are harassed, infiltrated and monitored by law enforcement. Muslim children are viewed as future terrorists. Muslim women as breeders of terrorists. Muslim men as dangerous. We are the maniacal Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," keeping the heads of "savages" on stakes outside our fortress and crying out "Exterminate all the brutes!"
We have declared a worldwide war on Muslims. Muslims, who read us better than we read ourselves, are rising up to resist. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Middle East have been butchered since our invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have been destroyed as viable states. Millions of Muslims have been displaced or are refugees. And when desperate Muslim families attempt to flee to Europe or the United States from the hell we created in the Middle East, they are thrown into displacement camps or turned back and branded as disease carriers, thieves, rapists, barbarians and terrorists. Islamic culture and religion in our Manichean narrative have been shorn of all nuance, humanity, complexity and depth. Islam has been replaced by a xenophobic cartoon version, an image that, to use the words of Frantz Fanon, is the "quintessence of evil." We respond to the crisis we created out of ignorance, self-exaltation and racism.
to kill
is to erase an image
off a mirror:
side-step
no body
just a gaping hole
upon an indifferent world
Israel's slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people, justified by the racism and Islamophobia that are central to Israeli identity, has entered a new, deadlier phase. No longer constrained by any pretense of respecting human rights or a peace process, Israeli soldiers, although they are not threatened, fire indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed Palestinians, killing or wounding men, women, children, the elderly and journalists. The sheer number of the dead and woundednine or more Palestinians killed by Israeli fire and hundreds injured on Friday alonetestifies to raking the crowd with gunfire. In a civilized world, Israel would be immediately slapped with sanctions, boycotts and divestmentthe only mechanism left to protect the Palestinian people from exterminationbut we do not live in a civilized world. We live in a world where murder and racism are state policy, where the oppressed are dehumanized and unworthy of life and where our mutant demagogues and despots revel in the rivers of blood they create.
This racialized authoritarianism, one that defines Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has ominous consequences for the oppressed. It is fed by a willful refusal to accept our responsibility for the social and political disintegration as well as the violence in the Middle East and, increasingly, at home. Most academics, trapped in the meaningless silo of Islamic writings on apocalyptic terrorism, contribute nothing to the debate. The press, which has turned journalism into nonstop entertainment and the celebration of nonexistent American virtues, is complicit in this perpetuation of anti-knowledge, which Tennessee Williams once called our voluntary matriculation into a school for the blind. It dehistoricizes these movements. It certifies radical jihadists, and by extension Islam, as incomprehensible. Since terrorism is incomprehensible, and since it is an intrinsic part of Islam, Muslims are worthy not of investigation but annihilation. But facts don't speak for themselves, as Edward Said noted. They require context to be understood, and all context is absent.
"You could hardly begin (in the public sphere provided by international discourse) to analyze political conflicts involving Sunnis and Shi'is, Kurds and Iraqis, or Tamils and Sinhalese, or Sikhs and Hindusthe list is longwithout eventually having to resort to the categories and images of terrorism' and fundamentalism,' which derived entirely from the concerns and intellectual factories in metropolitan centers like Washington or London," Said wrote in "Culture and Imperialism." "They are fearful images that lack discriminant contents, or definition, but they signify moral power and approval for whoever uses them, moral defensiveness and criminalization for whomever."
The pattern of persistent decontextualization traps us in an endless cycle of violence for violence. Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou in his book "A Theory of ISIS: Political Violence and the Transformation of the Global Order" writes of the now-standard response following a terrorist attack:
For every time a new radical Islamism-related attack takes place in New York, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels or Berlin, a ritual of denial of the deeper political issues plays out in an increasingly familiar fashion. The sequence is performed thus: shock gives way to fear followed by anger; security experts step up hurriedly in television studios and on social media to denounce the lack of preparation by the authorities; specialists in radical Islamism (or simply Islam) follow, declaring that IS (previously Al Qaeda) has been weakened, is on its way to be defeated and is merely lashing out with desperate attacks; Muslim communities in Western countries are called out and racist and violent attacks against them sometimes take place (hours after the March 2016 attacks in Brussels a #stopislam movement started trending, revealing the depth of bias that had come to overtake sectors of the Western world, readily associating Islam and terrorism); sympathy movements for the victims of city where the attack took place are set up (Je suis Charlie, I am Brussels, etc.); calls for tougher legislation (surveillance mechanisms, detention conditions, nationality measures, immigration procedures, travel regulations, dress codes, access to pools, prayer sites, etc.) are spoken urgently; arrests are made in neighborhoods where Muslim migrants are known to reside and bombing is redoubled in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen or Libya.
The Obama administration under counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, now a national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC, set up a database, Disposition Matrix, of terrorism suspects across the globe. It is known informally as the kill list. Those on the list are targeted by clandestine CIA extradition units, special forces, militarized drones and airstrikes. These techniques for racialized control of Muslims are drawn from the blueprint of colonialism, although the state now uses the coded language of ideology to mask its racist assault. As in colonialism, those who defy the "liberal democratic" state have forfeited all rights and deserve to be treated as beasts because they are beasts. This stance of collective criminalization of a group or race will have ominous consequences as the corporate state, beset by the growing unrest from deindustrialization and global warming, begins to view larger and larger segments of the population as hostile.
"In some sense, the figure of the terror suspect forms the testing ground upon which Western versions of democracy' and human rights' are deliberated," writes Nisha Kapoor in "Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism." "It is via the representation of these individuals that cases are made in support of summary killings, bigger bombs, drone strikes, ever more grotesque forms of torture, and clandestine and indefinite detention. It is also through the policing of such individuals that mechanisms have been put in place in Britain [and the United States] for the growing use of secret justice, the retraction of the provisions of citizenship and the move away from human rights protections."
Policies have consequences. The decision to hunt down Muslims around the globe, giving to the so-called war on terror a transnational dimension, means also that those who oppose us are not restricted by national boundaries. The terrorists who carry out these attacks are mirror images of ourselves, consumed by the same narcissism and cult of the self that define celebrity culture. They post self-indulgent videos of rants against the West and of their beheadings of captives clad in orange jumpsuits. They replicate the cultural effort to film "Life the Movie." The images we use to communicate with the world, as well as each other, infect all of their messages to us. They are not from a medieval era. They are creations of modernity. They feed to us their own versions of the pornographic violence that fascinates and deforms our culture. They know this is how you communicate with the West. And we communicate back in the same manner.
The Israeli massacre of Palestinians is a prelude to a dystopian, neocolonial world where global elites, hoarding wealth and controlling the mechanisms of power, increasingly resort to widespread bloodshed to keep the oppressed at bay. What Israel is doing to Palestiniansimpoverished and trapped without adequate food, water and medicine in the open-air prison that is Gaza, a strip of land subject to repeated murderous assaults by the Israeli war machinewill be done to desperate climate refugees and citizens who rise up to protest the pillage by global oligarchs. Those who resist will be as dehumanized as Muslims. They too will be branded as terrorists. The global elites have a plan for the future. It is visible in the killing fields of Gaza.
John Newman posted this earlier today. Others might be able to glean the import of the timeline better than I can.
Quote:In November 2017 at the Lancer conference in Dallas, and again in March 2018 at the conference in San Francisco, I gave a presentation on Antonio Veciana and his claim that Bishop/Phillips recruited and trained him in Havana beginning in mid-1960. In Volume III, ("Into the Storm") coming at the end of 2018, there are a least two major chapters on the Veciana story about his relationship with David Phillips. The attached chart is worth studying; it speaks volumes about Veciana's story and how poorly our research community handled the alleged recruitment in Cuba over several decades (the person who noticed was Cuban intelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, in 1995). I am releasing this chart now because it takes a few months just to begin understanding its ramifications. I hope you enjoy working through them.
This plan is a long time in the making and is aimed at a return to the 'Rule of the Generals'. Two top Brazilian Military men last week made public and clear that is Lula was not imprisoned, the Military would soon take control of the country again. The new front runner [was a distant second to Lula in the elections is right of Trump and a neo-fascist]....this is the plan......in one the largest and most populous nations on Earth.
Coup d' Etat in Brazil
07/04/2018
Brazil Lula's imprisonment is an offence against democracy
April 6, 2018
BRAZIL'S Supreme Court decision to send former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to jail is a nakedly political act.
The most popular president in Brazil's history is also the front-runner in polls for elections due in October. His Workers' Party government oversaw massive poverty reduction and redistribution of wealth that saw per capita household income rise 27 per cent in eight years.
When he stepped down after serving the maximum two consecutive terms, his successor Dilma Rousseff won election and re-election in the 2010 and 2014 votes on the same left-wing platform.
Both Lula, as he is universally known, and Rousseff formed part of the "pink tide" in Latin America associated most strongly with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.
As well as challenging the privileges of the rich, left governments in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina used the wealth created from natural resources to fund social programmes aimed at eliminating poverty and illiteracy rather than allowing it to be siphoned off by foreign "investors."
And they followed socialist Cuba in starting to chart independent foreign policies that took their continent out of the shadow of the United States.
Their reward was predictably to be demonised as "dictatorships" and to face a ferocious and ceaseless onslaught of misinformation, economic warfare and street violence aimed at undermining and derailing their governments.
Venezuela has, so far, managed to defend its revolution from attempted coups, deadly opposition-mounted riots and threats of invasion by the United States though it has been a close-run thing.
[URL="http://www.defenddemocracy.press/57-countries-back-venezuela-at-un-human-rights-council/"]
Read also:
57 Countries Back Venezuela at UN Human Rights Council
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So have Bolivia and Ecuador, although the growing gulf between the latter's former president Rafael Correa and his successor Lenin Moreno indicate that the ruling class is working hard on a comeback.
The election of Argentina's President Mauricio Macri in 2015 took Buenos Aires back into Washington's backyard and his government has since followed the neoliberal playbook to the letter public-sector cuts, capitulation to foreign vulture funds and attacks on working people's rights that have and are provoking massive strikes.
The total domination of Argentinian media by a single oligarchic firm, the Clarin media group which was deeply hostile to Cristina Fernandez's left administration, raises questions on how fair its democratic process can be, but at least Macri was elected.
Brazil's current government has no legitimacy whatever.
The impeachment of the twice-elected Rousseff, supposedly for violating budgetary norms relating to public spending, was entirely about protecting crooked senators from exposure in the massive Car Wash corruption scandal recordings of planning minister Romero Juca saying exactly this forced his resignation.
Rousseff's successor Michel Temer has also been caught on tape discussing hush money payments to Eduardo Cunha, the former parliamentary speaker jailed for corruption who led the impeachment process against Rousseff.
The fact that he has never been elected has not deterred him in the least from implementing a radical right-wing programme totally at odds with what Brazilians voted for in 2014, involving a 20-year freeze on public spending and the demolition of ethnic minority and women's rights.
The Brazilian elite has been shameless in overriding the popular vote in order to reverse all the gains of the Lula and Rousseff presidencies and they are equally shameless in manipulating the judicial process to prevent a left comeback at the ballot box.
[URL="http://www.defenddemocracy.press/mapuche-political-prisoners-on-the-brink-of-death-after-114-days-of-hunger-strike/"]
Read also:
Mapuche political prisoners on the brink of death after 114 days of hunger strike
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Lula's corruption conviction rests on the testimony of one convict whose sentence was reduced as a reward. Far more voluminous evidence of corruption exists against Temer and many of his associates.
Only with Lula in jail and out of the running does the Brazilian right feel it has a chance in October. His imprisonment is simply another step in the process of dismantling the democratic system that began with Rousseff's impeachment in 2016.
Labour MP Chris Williamson is right to call on our government to condemn this assault on democracy. Sadly he's also right in predicting it will do no such thing.
It would seem that the way AMMUG-1 describes the visa acquisition process, that a DGI officer would review visa requests to determine if these people were agents of a foreign government.
We came to find that TERESA PROENZA meets the "Oswald" and has to turn him over to someone who speaks English... DURAN.
AMMUG-1 tells us that "FRIENDS" will get their visas immediately while others would be asked to return....
OSWALD has documents which he shows to AZCUE (I believe we can assume AZCUE is Cuban Intelligence?)
[FONT=&]Senor AZCUE. He approaches us. The secretary normally takes care of the case. There is no need for me personally to go out to see him unless he specifically requests that I do so, as a special case, that he requests either My presence or the presence of another Cuban consul responsible. He did so. He requested my presence because when he initially formulated the application with the secretary, the secretary explained to him all of the requirements that he would have to fulfill in order to obtain the visa. And as he was carrying along certain documents which he believed would be sufficient for the visa, and the secretary could not resolve the case, he then calls upon me to see whether I, upon examination of those documents, can proceed to issue the visa immediately. I answered negatively. The documents that he submits are not enough. He is exhibiting or producing documents such as, one, attesting to his membership in the U.S. Communist Party. Also another indicating that he is a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Also another document indicating his residence in the Soviet Union, as well as a marriage certificate to a Soviet citizen. Upon presentation of these documents, he thinks that I will be able to solve his problem and grant him a visa. I at that time tell him that this is not sufficient; that I must request authorization from the Cuban Government. And at that point he agrees to proceed to fill the application out in order to process the visa. At that point, he leaves the consulate, conceivably to look for some photographs. One could think whether he returned on that very same date with the photographs; it is possible that he might have returned on that very same date with the photographs, or that he might have returned the following day. As far as the date that appears herein, and bearing in mind that I received him on three occasions, maybe it would be possible to determine that on this very same date, it is possible, I cannot fully guarantee this, it is possible that on that same day he might have made the first two visits to the consulate; one during the morning very early, and the second one a little later, bringing the photographs in order to complete the application. There is a sufficient time for such a thing. [/FONT] [FONT=&]Mr. CORNWELL. Was the first visit of this man that you have just described to us during the normal working hours at the consulate? [/FONT] [FONT=&]Senor AZCUE. Yes, without a doubt. The consulate opened at 10 in the Morning and closed at 2. [/FONT]
And herein lies the rub - unless I am reading this wrong....
The office closes at 2pm.... the following transcript from Sept 27th is from AFTER 4pm
This has been one of the most ignored areas of Kennedy's foreign policy which was subverted. To me, it is really one of the most outrageous things that the Dulles/Eisenhower/Nixon regime did. And some have said it was done before JFK was inaugurated because they knew that he would reverse the policy there.
This article incorporates the new material on the subject in John Newman's second volume of his series. What was done to Lumumba, and Congo, was an utter and complete disgrace.
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Mr. Fish / Truthdi