Category Archives: Empire

As The OPCW Is Accused Of False Reporting U.S. Propaganda Jumps To Its Help

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Source: Moon of Alabama

An international organization published two false reports and got caught in the act. But as the false reports are in the U.S. interests a U.S. sponsored propaganda organization is send out to muddle the issue. As that effort comes under fire the New York Times jumps in to give the cover-up effort some extra help.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) manufactured a pretext for war by suppressing its own scientists’ research:

OPCW emails and documents were leaked and whistleblowers came forward to speak with journalists and international lawyers. Veteran journalist Jonathan Steele, who has spoken with the whistleblowers, wrote an excellent piece on the issues. In the Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens picked up the issue and moved it forward.

Under U.S. pressure the OPCW management modified or suppressed the findings of its own scientists to make it look as if the Syrian government had been responsible for the alleged chemical incident in April 2018 in Douma.

The public attention to the OPCW’s fakery lead to the questioning of other assertions the OPCW had previously made. With the OPCW under fire someone had to come to its help.

To save the propaganda value of the OPCW reports the U.S. financed Bellingcat propaganda organization jumped in to save the OPCW’s bacon. Bellingcat founder “suck my balls” Elliot Higgins claimed that the OPCW reports satisfied the concerns the OPCW scientist had voiced.

That assertion is now further propagated by a New York Times piece which, under the pretense of reporting about open source analysis, boosts Bellingcat and its defense of the OPCW:

The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the war in Syria from a laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while caring for his infant daughter. In 2014, he founded Bellingcat, an open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen staff members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games, which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.
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Bellingcat journalists have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups like the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars are a significant source of revenue for Bellingcat, a nonprofit organization.

It seems that the New York Times forgot to mention an important monetary source for Bellingcat. Here is a current screenshot of Bellingcat’s About page:

Porticus, Adessium, Pax for Peace and the Postcode Lottery are all Dutch organizations. Then there is the notorious Soros organization the New York Times mentioned. But why did the NYT forgot to tell its readers that Bellingcat is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy which itself is to nearly 100% funded by the U.S. government?

Could that be because the NED, which spends U.S.government money on more than 1.600 U.S. government paid Non-Government Organizations, is a Trojan horse, a cover for the CIA?

Spurred by Watergate – the Church committee of the Senate, the Pike committee of the House, and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years.
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What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name – The National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.
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“We should not have to do this kind of work covertly,” said Carl Gershman in 1986, while he was president of the Endowment. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60’s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.”And Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.

The fact that the NED is doing the CIA’s work is likely the reason why the NYT puff piece about Bellingcat forgets to mention its payments and also why it jumps to Bellingcat’s and the OPCW’s help:

Some journalists and activists hostile to what they characterize as Bellingcat’s pro-Western narratives have criticized some of its coverage of the war in Syria.At issue is an April 7, 2018, attack on Douma, Syria. Bellingcat reported, based on an analysis of six open-source videos, that it was “highly likely” that Douma civilians had died because of chemical weapons. In March, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reported that there were “reasonable grounds” to say that chemical weapons had been used in the attack.

Critics of Bellingcat have pointed to an email from an investigator with the organization, saying that it raised questions about the findings. WikiLeaks published the email on Nov. 23. In a response, Bellingcat defended its reporting, saying the final report on Douma from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reflected the concerns of the investigator whose email was published by WikiLeaks.

By playing video games Elliot Higgins learned to identify chemical attacks in dubious video sequences published by terrorist affiliates. If true it is an admirable capability. Still his assertion that the OPCW report “reflected the concerns of the investigator” who criticized it is, as Caitlin Johnstone demonstrates, utterly false:

Bellingcat simply ignores this absolutely central aspect of the email, as well as the whistleblower’s point about the symptoms of victims not matching chlorine gas poisoning.

“In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms,” the whistleblower writes in the email. “The inconsistency was not only noted by the [Fact Finding Mission] team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to [Chemical Weapons] agents.”

Bellingcat says nothing about these revelations in the email, and says nothing about the fact that the OPCW excluded them from both its Interim Report in July 2018 and its Final Report in March 2019, the latter of which actually asserted the exact opposite saying there was “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

Bellingcat completely ignores all of these points, …

In its defense of the OPCW report Bellingcat wrote:

[A] comparison of the points raised in the letter against the final Douma report makes it amply clear that the OPCW not only addressed these points, but even changed the conclusion of an earlier report to reflect the concerns of said employee.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens did not concur with that paragraph:

Apart from the words ‘a’, and ‘the’, everything in the above paragraph is, to put it politely, mistaken. Bellingcat have been so anxious to trash the leak from the OPCW that they have (as many did when the attack was first released) rushed to judgment without waiting for the facts. More is known by the whistleblowers of the OPCW than has yet been released …

Caitlin and Peter should play more video games. I have read in the NYT that they are the true path to learning and to the factual assessment of alleged chemical attacks.

On April 7 2018 terrorists of the Jaish al Islam group ruled in Douma. They killed 40 civilians. The bodies were shown in videos along with chlorine gas canisters to pretend that the Syrian government had killed those people. The OPCW’s fact finding team analyzed the evidence and found that the canisters had not been dropped from the air but were manually placed. The symptoms the victims showed were inconsistent with a chlorine attack and chlorinated substances were only found in extremely low concentrations. There were absolutely no “reasonable grounds” to say that chemical weapons had been used in the attack.

But the OPCW management, under U.S. pressure and despite the protests by its own scientists, put out a report that said the opposite. As the manipulation came to light the U.S. funded Bellingcat made a perfunctory attempt to muddle the issue. Thus another propaganda organization, the New York Times, had to jump in to save Bellingcat and the false OPCW claims.

It is not going to help. There will soon be more evidence that the OPCW management published two false reports on Douma, and likely even more on other issues. There will be a public recognition that the OPCW has failed.

Establishment media’s mass deception

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: Intrepid Report

On major geopolitical and other issues, mass deception overrides truth and full disclosure in establishment media print editions and daily broadcasts—wealth, power and privileged interests served over peace, equity and justice.

The NYT is Exhibit A. Its Friday edition featured Iran-bashing disinformation, saying the following: “Iran has used the continuing chaos in Iraq to build up a hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq [sic], part of a widening effort to try to intimidate the Middle East and assert its power [sic]”—citing unnamed US intelligence and Pentagon officials,” adding that the US built up “its military presence in the Middle East to counter emerging threats to American interests [sic], including attacks on oil tankers and facilities that intelligence officials have blamed on Iran [sic].”

Iranian missiles “pose a threat to American allies and partners in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and could endanger American troops…”

Fact: Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi debunk phony claims about IRGC missiles in Iraq, saying that the accusations are “false, meaningless and ludicrous. What has been raised and published by some infamous cells and certain media about the transfer of Iranian missiles to Iraq is a nonsensical statement and sheer lie.”

They’re all about maliciously vilifying Iran to create a nonexistent threat, wanting its Iranian relations with neighboring countries undermined.

Iranian military advisors are in Iraq and Syria at the behest of their governments, Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani earlier explained—adding that they’re there to help combat US-supported terrorism.

The US and its key allies are “the main creators and sponsors of takfiri terrorists,” he earlier stressed.

Fact: Iran was falsely blamed earlier for attacks on regional oil tankers and facilities it had nothing to do with—no evidence suggesting otherwise. The incidents were false flags staged to wrongfully blame Iran for what happened.

Fact: Iran threatens no other countries. Claims otherwise are bald-faced Big Lies, part of establishment media supported US propaganda.

Fact: The US and its imperial allies threaten humanity. Needing enemies to unjustifiably justify its imperial agenda, they’re invented because no real ones exist—none since WW II ended.

Fact: Iran’s nuclear program has no military component, never did in a nation abhorring these weapons, wanting them eliminated everywhere.

Fact: Iranian defense spending is solely for self-defense, its legal right under international law. It’s ruling authorities haven’t attacked another nation in centuries—what US-dominated NATO and Israel do repeatedly, their hostile actions supported by the Times and other establishment media.

Instead of reporting “all the news that’s fit to print,” Times’ editions feature managed news misinformation and disinformation.

Times and other establishment media columnists are what famed journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) called “prostitutes of the press.”

They’re propagandists, scam artists and charlatans—paid to lie, distort, misinform, and blame victims for US high crimes committed against them, while supporting monied interests over popular ones.

In his latest disinformation piece, Times columnist David Brooks “cheer[ed] (predatory) capitalism, now and forever,” adding, “I came to realize that capitalism is really good at doing the one thing socialism is really bad at: creating a learning process to help people figure stuff out… It has a competitive profit-driven process to motivate you to learn and innovate, every single day.”

Fact: Diogenes called education “the foundation of every state.” Horace Mann said: “The common [public] school (socialized education) is the greatest discovery ever made by man”—calling it the “great equalizer” that was “common” to all.

In 1862, the Morrill Act established land-grant public colleges and universities on a tuition-free basis.

For the next century, many US state and other public colleges and universities charged no or nominal tuition and other fees to attend—socialized higher education, affordable to millions that worked as intended.

Attending today entraps millions of students into debt bondage because of exorbitantly higher education costs—at a time when career opportunities are a shadow of what they were post-WW II

Fact: New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society program helped millions of Americans avoid poverty—social programs that worked, eroding and disappearing today.

FDR’s Great Depression social programs built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7,800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1,000 airfields, and other infrastructure projects—including much of Chicago’s lakefront.

Fact: The post-WW II (GI Bill) Servicemen’s Readjustment Act provided college or vocational education for 7.8 million returning vets.

Fact: Another 2.4 million got VA-backed low-interest, no down payment home loans at a time when their average cost was under $5,000—letting millions of families afford them.

Studies later showed the GI Bill was one of America’s soundest investments. It paid for itself seven times over. It also helped millions readjust successfully to civilian life.

The State University of New York (SUNY) system, the nation’s largest, was tuition-free until 1963. The University of California system had free tuition until the 1980s.

Today, SUNY tuition, room, board and fees are around $14,000 annually. At UCLA, it’s around $34,000 annually for state residents, at UC Berkeley over $36,000, for non-state residents about $63,000 annually.

Facilitating free or low-cost higher education and home ownership in the US post-WW II with VA-backed low-interest loans helped created post-war prosperity.

In the 1940s and 50s, strong unions and well-paid factory jobs elevated millions of Americans to middle-class status, what’s fast eroding today.

The economy then grew annually at around 3.5%. By 1960, blue-collar workers were the biggest buyers of many luxury goods and services, including homes and autos.

Socialism works as intended when unobstructed by foreign interference. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was Latin America’s fastest growing economy.

The country prospered until devastated by US economic terrorism, harming the nation and its people.

According to the Times’ resident neocon Bret Stephens, “NATO is full of freeloaders [sic],” falsely adding the alliance is “how we defend the free world. Europe without American protection is a continental disaster waiting to happen.”

Fact: US-dominated NATO threatens world peace and humanity’s survival. After Soviet Russia dissolved in December 1991, NATO became an alliance for aggression, not deterrence, its current US-controlled mission.

As long as NATO exists, endless US-led wars will continue, world peace and stability remaining unattainable—the ominous threat of nuclear war by accident or design possible.

Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist’s Favorite Online Tactic

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

If you’re skeptical of western power structures and you’ve ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you.

You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who’s promulgating a dubious mainstream narrative, whether that be about politics, war, Julian Assange, or whatever. At some point they make an assertion which you know to be false–publicly available information invalidates the claim they’re making.

“I’ve got them now!” you think to yourself, if you’re new to this sort of thing. Then you share a link to an article or video which makes a well-sourced, independently verifiable case for the point you are trying to make.

Then, the inevitable happens.

“LMAO! That outlet!” they scoff in response. “That outlet is propaganda/fake news/conspiracy theory trash!”

Or something to that effect. You’ll encounter this tactic over and over and over again if you continually engage in online political discourse with people who don’t agree with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re literally just linking to an interview featuring some public figure saying a thing you’d claimed they said. It doesn’t matter if you’re linking to a WikiLeaks publication of a verified authentic document. Unless you’re linking to CNN/Fox News (whichever fits the preferred ideology of the establishment loyalist you’re debating), they’ll bleat “fake news!” or “propaganda!” or “Russia!” as though that in and of itself magically invalidates the point you’re trying to make.

And of course it doesn’t. What they are doing is called attacking the source, also known as an ad hominem, and it’s a very basic logical fallacy.

Most people are familiar with the term “ad hominem”, but they usually think about it in terms of merely hurling verbal insults at people. What it actually means is attacking the source of the argument rather than attacking the argument itself in a way that avoids dealing with the question of whether or not the argument itself is true. It’s a logical fallacy because it’s used to deliberately obfuscate the goal of a logical conclusion to the debate.

“An ad hominem is more than just an insult,” explains David Ferrer for The Quad. “It’s an insult used as if it were an argument or evidence in support of a conclusion. Verbally attacking people proves nothing about the truth or falsity of their claims.”

This can take the form of saying “Claim X is false because the person making it is an idiot.” But it can also take the form of “Claim X is false because the person making it is a propagandist,” or “Claim X is false because the person making it is a conspiracy theorist.”

Someone being an idiot, a propagandist or a conspiracy theorist is irrelevant to the question of whether or not what they’re saying is true. In my last article debunking a spin job on the OPCW scandal by the narrative management firm Bellingcat, I pointed out that Bellingcat is funded by imperialist regime change operations like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was worth highlighting because it shows the readers where that organization is coming from. But if I’d left my argument there it would still be an ad hominem attack, because it wouldn’t address whether or not what Bellingcat wrote about the OPCW scandal is true. It would be a logical fallacy; proving that they are propagandists doesn’t prove that what they are saying in this particular instance is false.

What I had to do in order to actually refute Bellingcat’s spin job was show that they were making a bad argument using bad logic, which I did by highlighting the way they used pedantic wordplay to make it seem as though the explosive leaks which have been emerging from the OPCW’s investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria were insignificant. I had to show how Bellingcat actually never came anywhere close to addressing the actual concerns about a leaked internal OPCW email, such as extremely low chlorinated organic chemical levels on the scene and patients’ symptoms not matching up with chlorine gas poisoning, as well as the fact that the OPCW investigators plainly don’t feel as though their concerns were met since they’re blowing the whistle on the organisation now.

And, for the record, Bellingcat’s lead trainer/researcher guy responded to my arguments by saying I’m a conspiracy theorist. I personally count that as a win.

The correct response to someone who attacks the outlet or individual you’re citing instead of attacking the actual argument being made is, “You’re attacking the source instead of the argument. That’s a logical fallacy, and it’s only ever employed by people who can’t attack the argument.”

The demand that you only ever use mainstream establishment media when arguing against establishment narratives is itself an inherently contradictory position, because establishment media by their very nature do not report facts against the establishment. It’s saying “You’re only allowed to criticise establishment power using outlets which never criticize establishment power.”

Good luck finding a compilation of Trump’s dangerous escalations against Moscow like the one I wrote the other day anywhere in the mainstream media, for example. Neither mainstream liberals nor mainstream conservatives are interested in promoting that narrative, so it simply doesn’t exist in the mainstream information bubble. Every item I listed in that article is independently verifiable and sourced from separate mainstream media reports, yet if you share that article in a debate with an establishment loyalist and they know who I am, nine times out of ten they’ll say something like “LOL Caitlin Johnstone?? She’s nuts!” With “nuts” of course meaning “Says things my TV doesn’t say”.

It’s possible to just click on all the hyperlinks in my article and share them separately to make your point, but you can also simply point out that they are committing a logical fallacy, and that they are doing so because they can’t actually attack the argument.

This will make them very upset, because for the last few years establishment loyalists have been told that it is perfectly normal and acceptable to attack the source instead of the argument. The mass hysteria about “fake news” and “Russian propaganda” has left consumers of mainstream media with the unquestioned assumption that if they ever so much as glance at an RT article their faces will begin to melt like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. They’ve been trained to believe that it’s perfectly logical and acceptable to simply shriek “propaganda!” at a rational argument or well-sourced article which invalidates their position, or even to proactively go around calling people Russian agents who dissent from mainstream western power-serving narratives.

But it isn’t logical, and it isn’t acceptable. The best way to oppose their favorite logically fallacious tactic is to call it like it is, and let them deal with the cognitive dissonance that that brings up for them.

Of course some nuance is needed here. Remember that alternative media is just like anything else: there’s good and bad, even within the same outlet, so make sure what you’re sharing is solid and not just some schmuck making a baseless claim. You can’t just post a link to some Youtuber making an unsubstantiated assertion and then accuse the person you’re debating of attacking the source when they dismiss it. That which has been presented without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, and if the link you’re citing consists of nothing other than unproven assertions by someone they’ve got no reason to take at their word, they can rightly dismiss it.

If however the claims in the link you’re citing are logically coherent arguments or well-documented facts presented in a way that people can independently fact-check, it doesn’t matter if you’re citing CNN or Sputnik. The only advantage to using CNN when possible would be that it allows you to skip the part where they perform the online equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and humming.

Don’t allow those who are still sleeping bully those who are not into silence. Insist on facts, evidence, and intellectually honest arguments, and if they refuse to provide them call it what it is: an admission that they have lost the debate.

US Again Complicit in an Illegal Coup, This Time in Bolivia

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Pen and watercolor of Bolivia’s Evo Morales. (Flickr/Arturo Espinosa)

By Marjorie Cohn

Source: Consortium News

Once again, the United States is complicit in an illegal coup d’état in Latin America, this time in Bolivia. On Nov. 10, a right-wing, anti-indigenous group seized power after the Bolivian military’s removal of President Evo Morales, who had declared victory in the Oct. 20 presidential election.

The United States’ fingerprints are all over the coup. Advisers from the U.S. Southern Command have been stationed on Bolivia’s border with Argentina, Ivanka Trump made a surprising visit to an Argentine province near the Bolivian border in September, the pro-U.S. Organization of American States (OAS) cast unfounded doubt on Morales’s election victory, and the U.S.’s National Endowment for Democracy provided suspicious grants to Bolivia.

At least 32 people have been killed and hundreds injured since the coup began. Sacha Llorenti, Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, told Democracy Now!, “We are going through not just a coup d’état, but a violent one.” Indeed, it has resulted in “the rise of a far-right regime of terror,” professor Gabriel Hetland wrote in The Washington Post.

Morales — Bolivia’s first indigenous leader in a country where 65 percent of the people are indigenous — received 10 percent more votes than Carlos Mesa, the second-place candidate who has close ties to the U.S. government. Mesa was in regular communication with U.S. officials who were trying to destabilize Morales, U.S. government cables published by WikiLeaks reveal.

The day after the election, the U.S.-funded OAS sought to delegitimize the election results. “The OAS Mission expresses its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls,” it stated.

But the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published a comprehensive statistical analysis on Nov. 8 that found no evidence of fraud or irregularities in the election and determined that the results reflected highly similar patterns from past elections. Other research conducted by CELAG (Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica) confirmed CEPR’s findings and identified insufficient evidence to support the assertions in the OAS statement.

CEPR Co-director Mark Weisbrot noted in an op-ed for Market Watch, “The OAS isn’t all that independent at the moment, with the Trump administration actively promoting this military coup, and Washington having more right-wing allies in the OAS than they did just a few years ago.”

The OAS was established during the Cold War to prevent the proliferation of leftist governments. USAID considers OAS a critical tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” such as Bolivia.

The Nov. 10 military coup led to the forced resignation of Morales, who received asylum in Mexico. Right-wing politician Jeanine Añez declared herself interim president, and Donald Trump immediately recognized her illegitimate claim to the presidency. Añez then issued a decree immunizing the military from criminal liability “for carrying out necessary actions in their legitimate defense while performing their constitutional duties.” Morales supporters accused Añez of giving soldiers “carte blanche” to shoot demonstrators. Bolivia’s human rights ombudsman and reporters have documented widespread injuries and fatalities from gunshots.

U.S. Involvement

During Morales’s nearly 14 years in office, his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party reduced poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent. It cut unemployment by 50 percent and nearly tripled the per-capita G.D.P. “It’s indisputable that Bolivians are healthier, wealthier, better educated, living longer and more equal than at any time in this South American nation’s history,” Anthony Faiola wrote in The Washington Post.

There was discontent about Morales seeking a fourth term among some sectors in Bolivia, who thought there should be space for new leadership. But Morales had a strong record of establishing policies to help the people of Bolivia, which angered the U.S. government, Western corporations and the corporate media, “who function as ideological shock troops against leftist governments in Latin America,” Alan MacLeod wrote at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

The U.S. and Argentine governments helped to engineer the Bolivian coup, Stella Calloni reported in Resumen: Latinoamerico. She cited the presence of advisers from the U.S. Southern Command on the Argentine border with Bolivia.

Calloni also documented “the surprising trip of Ivanka Trump” to the Argentine province of Jujuy near the Bolivian border on Sept. 4-5. Accompanied by 2,500 U.S. agents and Undersecretary of State John Sullivan, Ivanka Trump was ostensibly there to “visit” a small NGO dedicated to furthering women’s rights, and she delivered an “aid” package of $400 million for “road works.” Alicia Canqui Condori, national representative of MAS, said that, “in Jujuy Donald Trump’s daughter had met with Gov. Gerardo Morales to plan what happened in Bolivia.”

Moreover, according to Calloni, Bolivian Gen. Williams Kaliman, who “suggested” that Morales resign after the election, traveled to the United States 72 hours after the coup began and he received $1 million from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia. Like many Latin American strongmen over the years, at least six of the top military leaders involved in the coup, including Kaliman, were trained at the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Months before the coup, Bolivia concluded a $2.3 billion deal with a Chinese consortium to mine lithium. Bolivia has 70 percent of the world’s supply of lithium, which is used in car batteries, electronic devices and weapons systems. “The idea that there might be a new social compact for the lithium was unacceptable to the main transnational mining companies,” Vijay Prashad wrote. U.S. and Canadian companies sought to make a lithium agreement with Bolivia but they could not meet Morales’s conditions. “Morales himself was a direct impediment to the takeover of the lithium fields by the non-Chinese transnational firms,” according to Prashad. “He had to go.”

Meddling in Latin America

U.S. complicity in the Bolivian coup follows in a sordid tradition of meddling in the political and economic affairs of Latin American countries. “For many years, the US government has provided overt financial support to opposition political parties and civic groups, including to many of the groups that have been engaged in violent insurrections and coup plotting since at least 2008,” Thomas Field wrote in Jacobin.

One key vehicle that the U.S. government uses as a cover for its imperialist policies is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). After disturbing revelations of covert CIA operations in the second half of the 1970s, NED was established under President Ronald Reagan. “The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities,” William Blum wrote in 2005. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein concurred, stating in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Although ostensibly a private, nonprofit organization, NED is largely funded by the United States. “In effect,” Blum noted, “the CIA has been laundering money through NED.”

Peter Haberfeld, a retired lawyer and labor organizer who has studied the “Pink Tide” governments in Latin America, documented NED grants in Bolivia. He told Truthout that “between 2016 and 2019, NED gave grants to over 30 organizations for ‘democracy promotion’ in Bolivia. The grants total $3,209,887.”

Haberfeld said the grants were officially earmarked for “lofty objectives such as expanding participation by women, youth, media and entrepreneurs in a vibrant political process, particularly in connection with elections,” but cautioned “it is wise to be suspicious.” Haberfeld cited author Neil A. Burron, who wrote in “The New Democracy Wars: The Politics of North American Democracy Promotion in the Americas,” that “democracy promotion is typically formulated to advance commercial, geopolitical and security objectives that conflict with a genuine commitment to democracy development.” Burron noted, “For the U.S., the political manipulation of democracy promotion in support of a North American-led regional order is a continuation of long-standing forms of intervention [that have been] used as a license to meddle in the domestic affairs of others.”

NED was complicit in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, manipulated the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, heavily funded the 2002 failed coup attempt against socialist President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and supported the opposition to progressive President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in the 1990s. Between 1990 and 1992, NED donated a quarter-million dollars to the Cuban-American National Foundation, the violent anti-Castro group based in Miami.

In 2018, under the guise of “democracy,” “human rights” and “entrepreneurship,” NED funneled more than $23 million to opposition groups in Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton called Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua the “Troika of Tyranny” in November 2018. A few months later, in April 2019, the U.S. government orchestrated another unsuccessful coup in Venezuela. Juan Guaidó, Washington’s chosen puppet to seize power from President Nicolás Maduro, was funded by NED.

Trump not only took aim at the progress President Barack Obama had made toward normalization of relations with Cuba, he has escalated the U.S. economic war on Cuba and unleashed untold numbers of lawsuits that threaten to destroy the fragile Cuban economy.

The Obama administration, led by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, supported the 2009 coup in Honduras. The fraudulent election following the coup was financed by NED and the State Department, ushering in a repressive and militarized regime. Conditions deteriorated, leading to the exodus of thousands of Honduran children fleeing north.

U.S. Complicity Is Illegal

U.S. complicity in the coup in Bolivia is illegal under both U.S. and international law. The United Nations Charter prohibits the use of or threat to use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another nation. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to self-determination.

The Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the U.S. is a party, forbids any country from intervening in the internal or external affairs of another country. The OAS charter declares that, “Every State has the right to choose, without external interference, its political, economic, and social system and to organize itself in the way best suited to it, and has the duty to abstain from intervening in the affairs of another State.”

The Foreign Assistance Act forbids the United States from assisting a country “whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”

There has been global condemnation of the coup. Sixty-four organizations of jurists, lawyers, NGOs, social movements and trade unions from around the world, including the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the National Lawyers Guild, sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, urging her to strongly condemn the human rights violations resulting from the coup.

Fourteen members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying they were “deeply concerned” about the contribution of the Trump administration to the “escalating political and human rights crisis” in Bolivia.

Over 800 scholars, activists and public figures published an open letter demanding that the United States and the international community halt all support to the right-wing, anti-indigenous regime that took power after the military coup.

Veterans For Peace condemned the racist coup in Bolivia and demanded an end to U.S. intervention in Latin America:

Veterans For Peace stands in solidarity with the Indigenous majority in Bolivia who are resisting the racist, right-wing takeover of their democracy. We demand that the coup be stopped and democracy restored in Bolivia. As military veterans who have been used and abused in too many unjust wars, we demand an end to 200 years of U.S. intervention in Latin America.

The situation in Bolivia is volatile and there is danger it could devolve into civil war. This is the time to urge senators and Congress members to end all U.S. support for the illegitimate regime, demand free and fair elections with all political parties represented, and insist that fundamental human rights of all Bolivians are protected.

Impeachment hearing opens with Democratic Party blast against Russia

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By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

The House Judiciary Committee opened its first formal hearing on the impeachment of President Trump Wednesday with a statement by committee chairman Jerrold Nadler that confirmed the right-wing character of the Democratic campaign.

Nadler openly declared that the effort to impeach Trump for withholding military aid from Ukraine was a continuation of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections in support of Trump.

He first recounted Trump’s withholding of military aid to browbeat Ukraine into opening an investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, an action that Trump hoped would benefit him in the 2020 election. Nadler then said, “Of course, this is not the first time that President Trump has engaged in this pattern of conduct.”

He continued: “In 2016, the Russian government engaged in a sweeping and systematic campaign of interference in our elections. In the words of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, ‘the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.’ The President welcomed that interference.”

In invoking the bogus claims of massive Russian intervention in the 2016 elections—and raising the even less credible suggestion that Ukraine’s actions could play a major role in the 2020 elections—Nadler revealed the essential falsehood that underlies the entire Democratic impeachment campaign over Ukraine.

The United States is not the victim of global efforts to subvert its electoral processes. The reality is just the opposite. The US government is the most active and aggressive saboteur and manipulator of democratic processes all over the world, routinely intervening to ensure that pro-American regimes are placed in power. Its intelligence agencies regularly organize political overturns, up to and including bloody military coups, in those cases where the people of a targeted country vote the “wrong” way, from the perspective of Washington.

Ukraine is one of the most prominent recent examples of this, as the CIA and State Department backed a right-wing coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, viewed as too sympathetic to Moscow. US agencies financed and mobilized ultra-right and neo-Nazi forces who spearheaded the uprising that drove Yanukovych into exile in 2014. Since then, the US and its NATO allies have been preparing feverishly for a war with Russia in which Ukraine would serve as a key battlefront, even though such a conflict would bring with it the danger of nuclear conflict.

The Judiciary Committee’s opening hearing took testimony from a panel of four law school professors on the legal and constitutional requirements for a legitimate impeachment proceeding. This was an effort to mimic the initial hearings that began impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon in 1973-74 and Bill Clinton in 1998-99.

The three professors chosen by the Democratic majority all testified that Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses. Each cited historical instances to demonstrate that those who drafted the US Constitution were deeply concerned about the possibility of foreign intervention into US elections, particularly as it related to the election of the president, the chief executive of the new government.

Citing these 230-year-old concerns of a small and newly independent country, in a world dominated by powerful foreign empires, only underscores the contradiction with today’s power realities. The United States is the most powerful imperialist nation. It is Ukraine that has been the target of a two-decades-long campaign of subversion and manipulation by Washington, aimed at transforming the country into a base of operations directed against Russia.

As several witnesses in the previous round of hearings held by the House Intelligence Committee asserted—and as reiterated in the Democrats’ 300-page impeachment report released Tuesday—the United States’ client regime in Kiev is already engaged in a “hot war” with Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine.

The campaign to transform Ukraine into a US subject state and military staging ground against Russia, on which the CIA, State Department and Pentagon have expended more than $10 billion, was threatened by Trump’s withholding of military aid. It was this action that sparked the retaliatory “whistleblower” complaint by a CIA officer formerly assigned to the White House, which then became the pretext for the launching of the impeachment inquiry.

Again and again, throughout the eight-hour hearing, Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee returned to the theme of alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections and the ongoing US military-diplomatic operations directed against Moscow.

Eric Swalwell of California, for example, declared, “We’re here because of this photo,” while having a photograph displayed on a huge television screen showing President Volodymyr Zelensky dressed in combat gear in eastern Ukraine, where he stood on the “front line against Russia.” Swalwell added that the US was aiding Zelensky to fight Russia “so that we don’t have to fight them here,” as though Russian soldiers were about to parachute onto the streets of Washington DC.

The anti-Russian hysteria was combined with claims that Trump’s conduct in relation to Ukraine bore comparison to Watergate. One of the legal witnesses, Noah Feldman of Harvard University Law School, flatly stated, “Richard Nixon sent burglars to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. This president just made a direct phone call to the president of a foreign country asking for his intervention in our election.”

Another witness, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina Law School, went even further, declaring in his opening statement that Trump’s conduct was far worse than Nixon’s in Watergate—because Nixon used American operatives against his political rivals, while Trump resorted to foreign ones.

These comparisons collapse as soon as one considers the stark difference between the current political crisis and the situation that led to Nixon’s resignation in Watergate, as well as the crisis that shook the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. In both these cases, the president engaged in criminal conduct in order to pursue unpopular and illegal wars—in Nixon’s case, the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; in Reagan’s case, the “contra” war against Nicaragua.

It was the massive popular opposition to these imperialist wars that led the president in each case to resort to criminal actions. Nixon approved the formation of the “plumbers” unit of ex-CIA agents to spy on his political opponents and collect information by illegal methods, including, ultimately, the burglarizing of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex.

Reagan authorized his National Security Council, with Lt. Col. Oliver North taking the lead, to organize the sale of weapons to Iran to obtain funds that could be routed to the “contra” forces engaged in CIA-backed terrorist attacks in Nicaragua, in direct violation of the Boland Amendment, which prohibited such aid.

In the case of Ukraine, it is not Trump but his Democratic opponents who are demanding a more aggressive pursuit of illegal and militaristic foreign policy objectives, including the arming of the regime set up in the Ukraine by the CIA-backed “Maidan Revolution” of 2014. In this, the Democrats are acting as political attorneys for the CIA, Pentagon and State Department, as was made clear in the parade of national-security officials who defied Trump’s orders and testified before the House Intelligence Committee.

This embrace of the CIA-backed overthrow of an elected government in Ukraine makes nonsense of the Democrats’ claims that their concern in bringing charges against Trump is to defend democracy in America.

There would be no lack of grounds for a legitimate political indictment of Trump on charges of anti-democratic criminal actions: the forced separation of parents and children by his border Gestapo, the illegal diversion of congressionally appropriated funds to build the border wall, the “Muslim ban” on travelers from targeted countries, or Trump’s incessant appeals to racist and fascist forces.

The Democrats choose not to raise these issues because their invocations of democracy are entirely false and hypocritical. Trump’s drive towards fascism cannot and will not be fought by appealing to the CIA and State Department. These are merely two different roads to the same end: the establishment of an authoritarian regime in America.

The hypocrisy of the Democrats is demonstrated in the choice of the witness who led off the impeachment hearing. Professor Noah Feldman is not just a Harvard Law School professor. He has a long and noxious record as an apologist for American imperialist intervention, most notably serving in 2003 as a political adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council, the provisional administration set up after the US invasion.

After helping the Bush administration set up its puppet regime in Iraq at the onset of an imperialist war that has cost the lives of more than a million people and set in train a series of catastrophes in the Middle East, Feldman is hardly in a position to posture as an expert on the defense of democratic rights and constitutional processes.

Similarly, Pamela Karlan from Stanford University Law School, the second legal expert to testify, served in the Obama administration’s Department of Justice in 2014-2015, at a time when this agency was spearheading the attack on Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes and mass surveillance, and when Chelsea Manning was serving a 35-year prison term for her leaks of classified information detailing these crimes.

Hunting for Hunter: Evidence Reveals Biden, Burisma Ukraine Bond Scandal, Tied to U.S. Firm

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By Sergey Belous

Source: 21st Century Wire

“Are we going to be sending massive amounts of money to a country and they’re corrupt and they steal the money and it goes into everybody’s bank account?”

This was the infamous rhetorical question posed by President Donald Trump which set off a hurricane of criticism from his political opponents on Capitol Hill. Immediately, the President was accused of “exaggerating” Ukrainian corruption, which, let’s remind ourselves, has triggered the Democrat-led House impeachment proceedings against Trump. According to Democrats, Trump is alleged to have pressured the newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in order to urge Kiev authorities to start an investigation into American Hunter Biden’s involvement in corruption schemes – in exchange for prompt military and financial aid. This wouldn’t normally have garnered so much attention, if not for the fact that Hunter Biden is the son of the ex-US Vice President and 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden. Hence, Trump is being accused of soliciting a ‘Quid Pro Quo’ from a foreign government in order undermine his supposed political rival in the upcoming 2020 election. But it’s only part of the story.

For some reason, many in the US remain unaware that this very same investigation was actually initiated three years earlier by the General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO) of Ukraine, who had been forcibly backed-off looking into Ukrainian gas and energy firm Burisma Holdings as a result of an ultimatum laid down by none other than Joe Biden. Back in 2016, during one of his many official visits to Kiev in 2016, former US Vice President Biden threatened to revoke the decision to allocate $1 billion of credit and loan guarantees if then General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who initiated the investigation, was not fired immediately.

Amazingly enough, Joe Biden himself had no scruples about meddling in such a direct and harsh way into Ukrainian government affairs, and even openly bragged about it during a Council on Foreign Relations discussion panel in Washington on January 23, 2018:

“And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from [the President of Ukraine] Poroshenko and from [ex Prime Minister of Ukraine] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Why is this case so important? The original corruption inquiry three years ago was focused on the illicit activities of one of the biggest private gas-producing companies in Ukraine – Burisma Holdings, owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, the former Minister of Ecology, under the gaze of then President Viktor Yanukovich, where the licenses for new gas deposit developments had been issued by the very ministry headed by Zlochevsky. However, the most significant fact here is this: soon after the February 2014 Maidan coup’ d’etat in Ukraine, Hunter Biden was installed on to the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, supposedly as the head of its legal department, taking home the tidy sum of $83,000 per month. Note that this sum is four times more than the salary of his father as US Vice President.

Another amazing coincidence: at the same time son Hunter is moved into position at Burisma, father Joe comes to Kiev for an official visit, where he urged Ukrainian government to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas supplies. For whatever reason, the Obama White House chose to ignore what was an obvious conflict of interests. As is obvious from the recent Impeachment Hearings, this denial of any conflict of interest continues to this day by Democrats.

Nevertheless, it was not only the Vice President’s son, who had his finger in the pie of Burisma Holdings. A close friend of John Kerry’s stepson, Devon Archer, was also in the company’s Board of Directors.

If what Serhiy Leschenko, a journalist and former Ukrainian MP, wrote, is anything to go by, after the shift of power in Ukraine the coterie of the General Prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, handed over to Trump’s personal attorney Rudolf Guiliani, a document that claimed that in March of 2014 the ex-Minister of Ecology Mykola Zlochevsky suggested to then US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden, that the profits from Burisma Ltd were to be shared by them and the payments received via Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. In return Zlochevsky actually obtained patronage of the top US officials, and the reputation of his company owing to such “respectable” composition of its Council of Directors, as its reputation rapidly grew in the eyes of its partners, competitors and state bodies.

Not surprisingly, the activities of Burisma Holdings had soon attracted the attention of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. The company was suspected in tax evasion, money laundering and embezzlement of state funds. Soon after, in January of 2015 the General Prosecutor’s Office, headed by Vitaliy Yarema, put the company’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky on the wanted list. Later, Yarema’s successor in office, Viktor Shokin, continued with the Burisma case, with the aim of mounting an inquiry into corruption allegations, and even started a separate investigation into the activities of the firm’s Board of Directors, which included Hunter Biden. However, you already know the end of the story: after Shokin was fired, the search for Zlochevsky was ended on September 13, 2016, and the criminal cases closed by Yuri Lutsenko. Everything was settled with a payment of $7.5 million in taxes and penalty charges. Thus, Zlochevsky’s initial plan to hire Biden and Archer to provide “cover” worked: his patrons fulfilled his expectations.

Readers should be reminded here, that Washington’s supposedly “solid” nominee for General Prosecutor has made a notorious reputation for himself in Europe due to his drunken brawls in German airports, and who did not even have a law degree, normally a requirement for the country’s top legal enforcement position. The Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) even had to adopt a specific law annulling this job requirement in order for him to assume the post. How this passed by the supposed ‘anti-corruption’ mavens at the US Embassy in Kiev would have been a good question for Congressman Schiff’s panel of inquisitors.

There has been a new development in this case recently in Ukraine – with the General Prosecutor’s Office filing new charges against the owner of Burisma on November 14th. Non-aligned MP Andriy Derkach presented the issue (with colleague Oleksandr Dubynsky from the ruling Servant of the People Party) at their joint press-conference on November 20th. Particularly, Derkach said, “According to the charges filed by the GPO against Zlochevsky, Biden and his partners received $16.5 million for their services in regard to Burisma activities. Biden was given money that originated not from successful activities of Burisma, and not from any brilliant business ideas or recommendations. It was obtained by criminal means. This is what GPO claims.”

Indirectly, the MP’s claim were confirmed by prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk, who was in charge of Burisma investigation, who stated in one of his recent interviews:

“The funds that entered Burisma’s accounts, had illegal origins. Those two companies were managed, used, by a man close to Taras Kozak. So, the funds that entered Burisma’s accounts had illegal origins, and later, according to the evidence we have, they were transferred to the accounts of four persons, including Hunter Biden’s.”

More interestingly, in an earlier interview with The Hill newspaper in April of 2019, Kulyk revealed another key piece of information: at the time, when the Burisma investigation was underway, then US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had blocked the visas of GPO officers, in order to disrupt their working visits to the USA where they hoped to share the case files with their American colleagues. “We were supposed to share this information during a working trip to the United States,” said Kulyk, before adding, “However, the [U.S.] ambassador blocked us from obtaining a visa. She didn’t explicitly deny our visa, but also didn’t give it to us.”

More specifically, they had evidence of illicit dealings on the part of Ukrainian businessmen from the inner circle of former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich. According to prosecutors, these businessmen had siphoned off embezzled Ukraine state budget funds with the help of an American financial – a firm with connections to high-ranking members of the US Democratic Party establishment.

“This bridge between Burisma and Biden demonstrates to us the ways of siphoning off money: Zlochevsky laundered it for several Yanukovich’s companies at once via his three companies in the Baltic states”, Dubynsky said, which appears to back-up Derkach’s story of how the money laundering operation was being run. “On the whole, it was a global operation which initially looting the money from Ukrainian budget, then transferring it to offshore companies, and finally investing it into Ukrainian state bonds.”  Derkach claims reflect the charges brought against Zlochevsky – that he is accused of “legalization (laundering) of the funds obtained illicitly by way of purchase by Franklin Templeton Investments of state bonds to the total sum of $7.4 billion USD.”  The MPs pointed out to the findings of the GPO investigations, according to which the criminal money that belonged to Yanukovich’s family and inner circle was transferred to offshore jurisdictions during 2013-2014, and then via Franklin Templeton Investments the money made its way back into Ukraine where it was spent on state bonds. Thus, as Dubynsky emphasizes, the beneficiaries of the scheme had first stolen funds from Ukrainian people, and then returned them to the country in the form of sovereign debt which paid bond holder a very high interest payment. This way, Ukrainian citizens were robbed twice, and all with the help of one criminal scheme with Burisma Holdings at the center of it.

It’s important to note here that Zlochevsky managed to pull it all off owing to his influential American “friends” and Board of Directors mentioned earlier. Complex financial operations were carried out with the help of Valeria Gontareva, the then head of the National Bank of Ukraine, now residing in London – she had negotiated amnesty for bonds which had been previously frozen following the regime change in 2014.

In fact, the scheme was happily picked up by Petro Poroshenko, who kept on increasing Ukraine’s sovereign debt. The algorithm of the corrupt scheme is as follows: with the help of American investment firms, the funds siphoned-off from the state budget were effectively ‘legalized’ by investing into state bonds, with pay-outs of 6 to 8 percent interest in dollars, and 15 to 17 percent in UAH (Ukraine Hryvnya currency). As a result, the sovereign debt has snowballed. Ukraine has to loan more in order to service the old debts. As a result, nearly 40 percent of the current state budget is spent on the reimbursement of the sovereign debt, including inflated state bonds interest rates. “A system of siphoning-off the country’s financial resources has been created by payment of colossal interest sums – 14 to 16 percent annually. That is, we are paying interest for money which was stolen from us. The payment of 440 billion UAH (18.3 billion USD) from state budget annually may be our final step towards default. Ukraine is being turned into a bankrupt country. This can happen either in the end of 2019, or in the early months of 2020,” Dubynsky concludes.

“We will reveal the information about the financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko. This system is still working under the guidance of the current managerial board of the National Bank, ensuring that money flows in the interest of people who stole millions of dollars, took it offshore and bought Ukrainian public bonds turning them into the Ukrainian sovereign debt,” said Dubinsky, before adding that, “in both cases of Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and companies she controls were investing the stolen funds.”

A Battle of the Oligarchs you might say, although this narrative was conspicuously absent in the mainstream media and during US House impeachment proceedings.
In the context of Trump-Ukraine scandal that is being built-up by the Democrats and their loyal media, the connection between the above mentioned Franklin Templeton fund and the Democratic Party deserves special attention:

“The son of the Templeton’s founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of the biggest donors of President Obama’s electoral campaign,” Derkach explained at the joint press conference. “One more figure with connections to the fund is Thomas Donilon, the chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the biggest shareholder of Franklin Templeton Investments. It is significant that he (Donilon) had previously served as National Security Advisor to President Obama.”

Based on this, the partisan conflicts of interests extend far beyond the Bidens.

“President Zelensky should pick up the phone, dial Trump and ask for help and cooperation in the fight with corruption, or he should fly to Washington. The issue of fight with international corruption in Ukraine with involvement of US citizens , businessmen and officials should become the key issue at the meeting of the two presidents,” Andriy Derkach emphasizes.

That is exactly what the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry appears to be trying to prevent.

In actuality, the previous phone conversation with Zelensky proved to be costly for Trump, although, judging by the above listed facts and competent accounts, the concerns of American president in regard to the corrupt character of Ukrainian state system were well founded. Ukrainians themselves are far more pessimistic though, a daily reality which is illustrated in this statement with a quote from a sarcastic Facebook post by popular Ukrainian blogger and TV host Oleksiy Durnev, written back in 2015:

“A thought is torturing me in the course of the last several days – that I cannot phone our handlers there in Europe and say: Guys, do not give us money! Our government resembles a hopeless junkie, who is telling his mom that it is better for him to hit up than to suffer from withdrawals. If you want to help us, build factories here, get us employed, pay taxes here, give our agriculture new technologies, give us experts, let our students go for your training courses, but do not give us money, please!”

 

Related Article:

Member of Ukraine’s Parliament Leaks Trove of Biden Financial Records

New OPCW Leak Further Vindicates Skeptics Of Establishment Syria Narrative

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

On the sixth of July last year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released its interim report on its findings regarding an alleged poison gas attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. The incident, which resulted in dozens of civilian casualties, was blamed on the Syrian government by the US, UK and France, who launched retaliatory airstrikes on multiple targets in that nation.

The interim report claimed that “various chlorinated organic chemicals were found” in different locations on the scene, but strangely said nothing about the levels at which those chemicals were found. The Moon of Alabama blog highlighted this suspicious exclusion on the day the report came out, noting that levels are absolutely essential in determining chemical weapons use when you’re talking about compounds which are found virtually everywhere at some level in any industrialized region.

“The preliminary OPCW report says nothing about the concentrations in which these substances were found,” MoA observed. “Without knowing the concentrations, which may be extremely low, one can not come to further conclusion.”

“The ‘various chlorinated organic chemicals’ are unsurprising,” MoA wrote. “Chlorine is widely used for water purification and cleaning and ‘chlorinated organic chemicals’ will be found in any household.”

A new addition to the body of leaks which have been hemorrhaging from the OPCW shows that such skepticism was indeed entirely warranted. A leaked email sent shortly before the interim report was published reveals that the chlorinated organic chemicals which OPCW investigators found on the scene were as low as one or two parts-per-billion, meaning, just as Moon of Alabama speculated last year, that they were found at trace quantities you’d expect to find in any industrialized area.

The leaked email, which has been published by WikiLeaks and several other outlets, was sent by an unnamed OPCW investigator to the OPCW’s then-cabinet chief Bob Fairweather, outright accusing OPCW leadership of misleading the public with the information it was omitting from the report it was drafting. Those who’ve been following this scandal closely may remember Fairweather as the man who journalist Jonathan Steele recently reported was responsible for calling investigators into his office to be intimidated by unknown officials from the United States government.

The email was sent to Fairweather on June 22nd, laden with pointed words and phrases like “misrepresents the facts”, “selectively omitting”, “highly misleading”, “disingenuous”, “inaccurate”, and “a major deviation from the original report.” Less than two weeks later, on July the fourth, the investigators were reportedly called into Fairweather’s office for a disturbing meeting with US officials which deeply rattled them.

“On July 4 there was another intervention,” Steele’s report reads. “Fairweather, the chef de cabinet, invited several members of the drafting team to his office. There they found three US officials who were cursorily introduced without making clear which US agencies they represented. The Americans told them emphatically that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack, and that the two cylinders found on the roof and upper floor of the building contained 170 kilograms of chlorine. The inspectors left Fairweather’s office, feeling that the invitation to the Americans to address them was unacceptable pressure and a violation of the OPCW’s declared principles of independence and impartiality.”

It’s worth noting at this time that the US government already has a known and established history of leveraging the ostensibly neutral and international OPCW to conform to its preexisting military agendas.

Fairweather’s intimidation ploy appears to have been a response to comments made in the email, and probably other similar internal objections made by other investigators at that time. The email reads as follows (transcript and parenthetical annotations made by Daily Mail):

Dear Bob,

I wish to express, as a member of the FFM (Fact Finding Mission) team that conducted the investigation into the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, my gravest concern at the redacted version of the FFM report, which I understand was at the behest of the ODG. (Office of the Director General). After reading this modified report, which incidentally no other team member who deployed into Douma has had the opportunity to do, I was struck by how much it misrepresents the facts. Many of the facts and observations outlined in the full version are inextricably interconnected and, by selectively omitting certain ones, an unintended bias has been introduced into the report, undermining its credibility. In other cases, some crucial facts that have remained in the redacted version have morphed into something quite different to what was initially drafted. If I may, I will outline some specific aspects to the redacted report that are particularly worrisome.

The statement in paragraph 8.3 of the final conclusions ‘The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders’, is highly misleading and not supported by the facts. The only evidence available at this moment is that some samples collected at Locations 2 and 4 were in contact with one or more chemicals that contain a reactive chlorine atom. Such chemicals could include molecular chlorine, phosgene, cyanogen chloride, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen chloride or sodium hypochlorite (the major ingredient of household chlorine-based bleach). Purposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous. It is also worth noting that the term ‘reactive chlorine-containing chemical’ used in the redacted report is, in fact, inaccurate. It actually describes a reactive chemical that contains chlorine which itself (the chlorine) is not necessarily reactive e.g. chlorophenol. The original report uses the more accurate term ‘a chemical containing reactive chlorine’.

The redacted report states that the gas was likely released from the cylinders (in Locations 2 and 4). The original report purposely emphasised the fact that, although the cylinders might have been the source of the suspected chemical release, there was insufficient evidence to affirm this. It is possible the error was simply a typo. This is a major deviation from the original report.

Paragraph 8.2 states that ‘based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives, […] detected in environmental samples’. Describing the levels as ‘high’ likely overstates the extent of levels of chlorinated organic derivatives detected. They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.

The original report discusses in detail the inconsistency between the victims’ symptoms, as reported by witnesses and seen in video recordings. Omitting this section of the report (including the Epidemiology which has been removed in its entirety) has a serious negative impact on the report as this section is inextricably linked to the chemical agent identified. It either supports or detracts from the confidence in the identity of any possible chemical. In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms. The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW (Chemical Weapons) agents.

The original report has extensive sections regarding the placement of the cylinders at both locations as well as the relative damage caused to the impact points, compared to that caused to the cylinders suspected of being the sources of the toxic chemical. These sections are essentially absent from the redacted report. This information was important in assessing the likelihood of the ‘presence’ of toxic chemicals versus the ‘use’ of toxic chemicals.

A feature of this investigation and report was the robust and extensive scientific basis for sampling plans and analysing the data collected. A comprehensive bibliography of peer-reviewed scientific literature was attached to support and enhance the credibility of the work of the mission. This has unfortunately been omitted from the redacted report.

By singling out chlorine above other equally plausible substances containing reactive chlorine and presenting it as a fact in isolation creates, I believe, a level of partiality that would negatively impact on the perceived credibility of the report, and by extension that of the Organisation. I am requesting that the fact-finding report be released in its entirety as I fear that this redacted version no longer reflects the work of the team. The original report contains facts and observations that are all equally valid. The fact that inconsistencies are highlighted or observations not fully understood does not justify their omission. The inconsistencies and observations are based on the evidence and data collected. Further information in the future may help resolve them but the facts as they stand at present will not alter and need to be reported.

If the redacted version is to be released, I respectfully request to attach my differing observations, in accordance with the spirit of paragraph 62 of part II of the Verification Annex of the CWC.

Yours sincerely

The OPCW’s final report published March of this year continued the pattern of crucial omissions even more egregiously than the interim report.

“Regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in Douma, the evaluation and analysis of all the above-referenced information gathered by the FFM provide reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018,” the final report claims. “This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

Again, the information complained about in the leaked email remained omitted.

The unfolding scandal about the US and its allies once again deceiving the world about yet another military intervention in yet another Middle Eastern nation is a major story, and hardly anyone’s been on top of it.

Back when I published an article about the first OPCW whistleblower this past May it was shared by actress Susan Sarandon on Twitter, who captioned it with the question, “This is really important. Why aren’t we talking about it?” Click on the tweet and read through the comments if you want to see the platoon of blue-checkmarked narrative managers who converged on her post telling her I’m a crazed conspiracy theorist who mustn’t be listened to. I got this story right, and everyone who’s been ignoring it or dismissing it has made an ass of themselves.

So congratulations to me. Congratulations to Moon of Alabama for getting this story right from day one. Congratulations to Piers Robinson, Tim Hayward, and the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media who published the first OPCW leak back in May of this year in the face of numerous obnoxious smear pieces from the mainstream media. Congratulations to Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté and the handful of other alternative media figures who’ve been keeping this story alive while all the “reputable” mainstream news outlets tried to let it die.

We were right, they were wrong. Maybe going forward people should listen to us a bit more and listen to them a bit less.

Bolivia’s New Puppet Regime Wastes No Time Aligning With US Foreign Policy

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

The Washington-recognized interim government which just ascended to power via US-backed military coup in Bolivia is already shifting the nation’s foreign policy into alignment with the US-centralized empire, severing important ties with two governments which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob.

“Bolivia’s caretaker government isn’t wasting any time overhauling its foreign policy, announcing Friday that it will expel hundreds of Cuban officials and break ties with longtime ally Venezuela,” The Miami Herald reports. “In a series of statements, Bolivia’s new foreign minister, Karen Longaric, told local media that about 725 Cubans — including doctors and medical staff — would begin leaving Bolivia on Friday.”

“In that same interview she also said she’d be recalling Bolivia’s diplomatic staff from Venezuela,” Miami Herald adds. “Later, asked if she would maintain ties with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, she said, ‘Of course we’ll break diplomatic relations with the Maduro government.’”

Of course they will.

This news comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. US foreign policy is essentially an endless war on disobedience, in which governments that refuse to bow to US interests are toppled by any means necessary and replaced by governments who will.

International affairs are much easier to understand once you stop thinking in terms of separate, sovereign nations and start thinking in terms of alliances and empire. What we are witnessing can best be described as a slow-motion third world war between what amounts to an unofficial globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States and its military on one side, and all the nations which have refused to be absorbed into this empire on the other. Nations which allow themselves to be absorbed are rewarded with the carrot of military and economic alliance with the empire, and nations which refuse are punished with the stick of invasions, sanctions, trade wars, and coups, with the ultimate goal being total unipolar global domination. The bigger the imperial blob grows, the stronger and more effective it becomes in undermining the interests of unabsorbed nations like Venezuela and Cuba.

Nothing takes precedence over this agenda of unipolar hegemony. As long as a nation remains loyal to the empire, it can fund terrorists, butcher Washington Post columnists, and create the worst humanitarian crisis in the world without fear of any retribution of any kind from the US-centralized empire. As a leaked State Department memo explained in 2017, so far as the empire is concerned human rights violations are nothing more than a strategic narrative control weapon with which to attack unabsorbed nations, and to be ignored when they are perpetrated by absorbed nations.

It should therefore also surprise no one that this same Washington-recognized government installed via US-backed military coup is now murdering demonstrators who object to it.

As of this writing there have been five protesters confirmed to have been killed by gunfire in Cochabamba, where security forces are cracking down on demonstrations with extreme aggression against majority-Indigenous demonstrations in support of the ousted president Evo Morales.

The narrative managers at The New York Times are reporting on the events in Cochabamba with the obnoxious insinuation that it may actually be Morales and Bolivia’s Indigenous population who are to blame for current tensions. Here are a couple of excerpts from NYT’s latest contribution to the narrative matrix titled “Ethnic Rifts in Bolivia Burst Into View With Fall of Evo Morales” (emphases mine):

Mr. Morales’s nearly 14 years in power represented a breakthrough for the three-quarters of Bolivians who are either of Indigenous descent or identify as members of Indigenous groups. But he also reinforced his base of support with explicit appeals to racial identity that many Bolivians found threatening and polarizing.

…

“Racism exists in Bolivia; it existed before Evo, and it will never disappear,” said Michelle Kieffer, an insurance broker, as she sipped a cappuccino in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of the country’s administrative capital, La Paz.

“While Evo started an important discussion,” she added, “he also manipulated the race issue, and that has caused disunity. And now people of different races look at each other with suspicion.”

Right. Gotcha. Maybe it’s the impoverished brown-skinned people who are in fact the real fascists, and not the literal Christian fascist coupmongers whose US-backed government takeover they are protesting. Thanks, NYT.

Morales won re-election by over ten percentage points last month, and his previously-elected term wasn’t scheduled to end until January. He was commanded to resign during a current term by the military despite fully acquiescing to demands for a new internationally supervised election. Now it’s being reported that the popular leftist party to which he belonged, MAS, may be banned by the Jeanine Añez-led interim government from participating in the next elections.

Despite all this the western mass media are continuing their cartoonishly ridiculous pattern of resisting the use of the word ‘coup’ when reporting on Bolivia, except to admonish people for using that word as in the case of recent narrative management pieces by The Washington Post, The Washington Examiner, and The Economist.

“Supporters of the coup in Bolivia can’t call it a coup,” US politician Lee Carter recently noted. “The US has a law preventing us from sending foreign aid to a new government if it was installed by a coup. So they come up with absurd claims that the military forcing Evo out somehow isn’t a coup.”

And the western mass media are falling right in line with the government forces in refusing to use this word, despite the ousting of a government by the military being exactly the thing that a coup is. This is because in a plutocracy, plutocrat-owned media is functionally the same as state media. Reporters for plutocratic media know what they are and are not permitted to say without being told, so they advance narratives which favor the status quo upon which their plutocrat employers have built their respective kingdoms. This is the status quo of the US-centralized empire, which just absorbed Bolivia and pivoted its foreign policy against the unabsorbed governments of Venezuela and Cuba.