Tag Archives: empire

US Regime Change Blueprint Proposed Venezuelan Electricity Blackouts as ‘Watershed Event’ for ‘Galvanizing Public Unrest’

Posted on by
Reply

The US-funded CANVAS organization that trained Juan Guaido and his allies produced a 2010 memo on exploiting electricity outages and urged the opposition “to take advantage of the situation…towards their needs”

By Max Blumenthal

Source: Grayzone

A September 2010 memo by a US-funded soft power organization that helped train Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaido and his allies identifies the potential collapse of the country’s electrical sector as “a watershed event” that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

The memo has special relevance today as Guaido moves to exploit nationwide blackouts caused by a major failure at the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri dam – a crisis that Venezuela’s government blames on US sabotage.

It was authored by Srdja Popovic of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a Belgrade-based “democracy promotion” organization funded by the US government that has trained thousands of US-aligned youth activists in countries where the West seeks regime change.

This group reportedly hosted Guaido and the key leaders of his Popular Will party for a series of training sessions, fashioning them into a “Generation 2007” determined to foment resistance to then-President Hugo Chavez and sabotage his plans to implement “21st century socialism” in Venezuela.

In the 2010 memo, CANVAS’s Popovic declared, “A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector.” Popovic explicitly identified the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant as a friction point, emphasizing that “water levels at the Guri dam are dropping, and Chavez has been unable to reduce consumption sufficiently to compensate for the deteriorating industry.”

Speculating on a “grave possibility that some 70 percent of the country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010,” the CANVAS leader stated that “an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”

Flash forward to March 2019, and the scenario outlined by Popovic is playing out almost exactly as he had imagined.

On March 7, just days after Guaido’s return from Colombia, where he participated in the failed and demonstrably violent February 23 attempt to ram a shipment of US aid across the Venezuelan border, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant experienced a major and still unexplained collapse.

Days later, electricity remains sporadic across the country. Meanwhile, Guaido has done everything he can “to take advantage of the situation and spin it” against President Nicolas Maduro – just as his allies were urged to do over eight years before by CANVAS.

Rubio vows “a period of suffering” for Venezuela hours before the blackout

The Venezuelan government has placed the blame squarely on Washington, accusing it of sabotage through a cyber-attack on its electrical infrastructure. Key players in the US-directed coup attempt have done little to dispel the accusation.

In a tweet on March 8, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo framed the electricity outage as a pivotal stage in US plans for regime change:

At noon on March 7, during a hearing on Venezuela at the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, Sen. Marco Rubio explicitly called for the US to stir “widespread unrest,” declaring that it “needs to happen” in order to achieve regime change.

“Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history,” Rubio proclaimed.

Around 5 PM, the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant experienced a total and still unexplained collapse. Residents of Caracas and throughout Venezuela were immediately plunged into darkness.

At 5:18 PM, a clearly excited Rubio took to Twitter to announce the blackout and claim that “backup generators have failed.” It was unclear how Rubio had obtained such specific information so soon after the outage occurred. According to Jorge Rodriguez, the communications minister of Venezuela, local authorities did not know if backup generators had failed at the time of Rubio’s tweet.

Back in Caracas, Guaido immediately set out to exploit the situation, just as his CANVAS trainers had advised over eight years before. Taking to Twitter just over an hour after Rubio, Guaido declared, “the light will return when the usurpation [of Maduro] ends.” Like Pompeo, the self-declared president framed the blackouts as part of a regime change strategy, not an accident or error.

Two days later, Guaido was at the center of opposition rally he convened in affluent eastern Caracas, bellowing into a megaphone: “Article 187 when the time comes. We need to be in the streets, mobilized. It depends on us, not on anybody else.”

Article 187 establishes the right of the National Assembly “to authorize the use of Venezuelan military missions abroad or foreign in the country.”

Upon his mention of the constitutional article, Guaido’s supporters responded, “Intervention! Intervention!”

Exploiting crisis to “get back into a position of power”

As Dan Cohen and I reported here at the Grayzone, Guaido’s rise to prominence – and the coup plot that he has been appointed to oversee – is the product of a decade-long project overseen by the Belgrade-based CANVAS outfit.

CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that worked alongside US soft power organizations to mobilize the protests that eventually toppled the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

CANVAS has been funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change.  According to leaked internal emails from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,” CANVAS “may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”

A leaked email from a Stratfor staffer noted that after they ousted Milosevic, “the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a ‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;).”

Stratfor subsequently revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005, after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.

In September 2010, as Venezuela headed for a parliamentary election, CANVAS produced a series of memos outlining the plans they had hatched with “non-formal actors” like Guaido and his cadre of student activists to bring down Chavez. “This is the first opportunity for the opposition to get back into a position of power,” Popovic wrote at the time.

In his memo on electricity outages, Popovic highlighted the importance of the Venezuelan military in achieving regime change. “Alliances with the military could be critical because in such a situation of massive public unrest and rejection of the presidency,” the CANVAS founder wrote, “malcontent sectors of the military will likely decide to intervene, but only if they believe they have sufficient support.”

While the scenario Popovic envisioned failed to materialize in 2010, it perfectly describes the situation gripping Venezuela today as an opposition leader cultivated by CANVAS seeks to spin the crisis against Maduro while calling on the military to break ranks.

Since the Grayzone exposed the deep ties between CANVAS and Guaido’s Popular Will party, Popovic has attempted to publicly distance himself from his record of training Venezuela’s opposition.

Today, however, Popovic’s 2010 memo on exploiting electricity outages reads like a blueprint for the strategy that Guaido and his patrons in Washington have actively implemented. Whether or not the blackout is the result of external sabotage, it represents the “watershed event” that CANVAS has prepared its Venezuelan cadres for.

8 VENEZUELA LIES THE US GOVERNMENT & MAINSTREAM MEDIA WANT YOU TO BELIEVE

Posted on by
1

By Makia Freeman

Source: Waking Times

Venezuela lies abound. Both the USG (United States Government) and its lapdog MSM (Mainstream Media) have been going into overdrive, exaggerating or just plain lying about the state of affairs in Venezuela. Truth is always a casualty of war, and it’s also a casualty of pre-war, as the NWO prepares the ground for military intervention by demonization and propaganda. Here are 8 lies about Venezuela which are being used to justify yet another coup in a long, long history of US coups in foreign lands.

Venezuela Lies #1: The Venezuelan People Have No Food and the Shelves Are Bare

In these videos (here and here) on the ground in Caracas, Max Blumenthal exposed one of the lies about Venezuela that is constantly repeated, i.e. that the people have no food and the supermarket shelves are bare.

Venezuela Lies #2: The US Only Wants to Send Aid

If by “aid” you mean “weapons and barbed wire for radical opposition forces,” then yes, the US only wants to send aid. However, if by “aid” you mean actual medicine, then no. This VenezuelaAnalysis report quotes a NYT reporter and USAID itself. They either don’t have medicine as part of the inventory or state outright that there was no medicine:

“According to New York Times reporter Anatoly Kurmanaev, the trucks that the opposition tried to force across the border contained “no medicine” at all, with reports that a “small” amount of medicine was being stockpiled in Cucuta not confirmed by USAID. Initial inventories from USAID made no mention of medicine, listing only basic food and personal hygiene products amongst the “aid”.”

The Venezuelan Government is accepting aid from Russia and other countries it can trust, just not the US, since US “aid” may just “accidentally” happen to contain weapons for anti-Maduro agitators (or, as the Spanish say, compradores). Hmm, wonder how those arms got in the food truck?

As I covered in the article NGOs: Choice Tool of Subversion for the New World Order, NGOs have become a weaponized tool of soft power through which the NWO expands its empire – meddling, destabilizing, toppling and installing, all the while using the NGO as a humanitarian pretext. USAID is just another in a long-line of NGOs loyal to the US Government and NWO, willing to put a nice PR happy face on their agenda of subversion.

Venezuela Lies #3: Juan Guaido Has Legitimacy in Declaring Himself President

As I covered in my previous article Is This the Most Blatant US Coup Ever?, Juan Guaido is a US-CIA stooge through and through. He’s an agent-provocateur “opposition leader” who has been carefully groomed to play his role in the coup. His claim to be interim president of Venezuela under Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution is, legally, utter nonsense, since Maduro has not abandoned the presidency and Maduro held free, open and fair elections as adjudged by outside independent parties.

Venezuela Lies #4: Many Countries Support Guaido

The US claims many nations and groups support its efforts to topple Maduro and install Guaido. In reality, these countries are basically vassal states or other nations controlled by the US that don’t want to upset the apple cart. Notice the strategy of the US: try to co-opt the United Nations HRC (Human Right Council) into following US coup efforts, and try to strong-arm groups like the OAS (Organization of American States) and the Lima Group into betraying their brother nation Venezuela.

The US tried this same trick with the Syrian War by creating and controlling a group called “Friends of Syria.” Here is what Venezuela’s Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador Jorge Valero said:

“the self-proclaimed “Lima Group” is a cartel made up of satellite governments of the imperial government to break Latin American and Caribbean unity, and, due to the failure of using the Ministry of the Colonies, which is the OAS to isolate Venezuela in this organization. The empire and its minions couldn’t approve Article 20 of Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Permanent Council of the OAS and resort to the United Nations Security Council, where they also failed. The creation of puppet governments by the US is not new.”

Venezuela Lies #5: The US Cares about the Venezuelan People (Just Like It Cares about the Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian and Iranian People)

The NWO uses the US to bring all nations into its fold, but it like to do so with the veneer of democracy so as to gain more public support and engender less resistance. Subversion, NGO soft power and covert operations are more palatable than overt control and boot-in-the-face oppression. In this vein, the USG likes to pretend it truly cares and has deep compassion for the people of nations like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and any other place it plans to subvert, invade or bomb … even though it has never professed such care in the past and will probably never again profess it in the future once its new puppet leader is installed.

Just look at the kind of lies, hypocrisy and nonsense Pence and a “deeply concerned” Pompeo tweeted about Iran when the USG set it sights on igniting a coup there in 2018:

Venezuela Lies #6: Venezuela is Only in the Condition It is Because of Chavez, Maduro and Socialism (They’re the Bad Guys)

Nothing is black and white. It is possible to look at the unfolding Venezuelan crisis and acknowledge that Maduro has mismanaged things while at the same time seeing the gross foreign interference he and his government have been subjected to. As I covered in other articles such as Venezuelan Economic Crisis: The Real Cause is Not Socialism, US-NWO foreign meddling is by far the biggest factor here. For instance, did you know that Bank of England has effectively stolen USD$1.2 billion from Venezuela by toeing the NWO line and blocking Venezuela from accessing it? Did you know that the US has effectively stolen USD$11 billion from Venezuela by freezing its US accounts? How is a small nation supposed to function as normal when such massive amounts are stolen from it?

Venezuela Lies #7: Yes, the US Has Toppled Governments Worldwide, But “This Time It’s Different”

Once you study enough history, you begin to see the lies of tyrants and empires. The lie remains the same. The US wants Venezuela’s gold and mineral reserves. It’s only 5 days from the US, whereas the Middle East is around 20 days from the US and in a very volatile part of the world. There is also the strategic acquisition of the mineral coltan. They also want to teach the successive government to Hugo Chavez a lesson after he thumbed his nose at the US-NWO Empire. This isn’t any different from other subversions and invasions. It fits the pattern exactly.

Venezuela Lies #8: It’s a “Grassroots Uprising” against a “Brutal Dictator”

This entire coup has been planned, orchestrated and executed from Washington. Period. There is no “grassroots uprising.” Ever wondered why Assad and Maduro are “brutal dictators” but bin Salman, El Sisi and other US-CIA stooges are not? It’s all about branding the enemy, marketing foreign interference and controlling perception. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy and vice versa. Al-Qaeda is bad and now Al-Qaeda is good. Were we fighting Eastasia or was it Eurasia?

Who is the brutal dictator? Who is imposing economic warfare and deprivation, starvation and misery by sanction? Who is fomenting regime change on innocent nations? Who is funding and supporting terrorists to topple any government they don’t like?

Final Thoughts: The US vs. Russia/China Proxy War Continues

Both Russia and China have invested a lot in Venezuela, including actual investments in their oil, military assistance and financial loans. They are not about to let the US get away with this – even if Venezuela is in the USA’s backyard, geographically speaking. The Monroe Doctrine, which started out in the 1800s as a policy by which the US would protect fellow American nations from European invasion, has now been turned on its head. Raving warmonger John Bolton recently mentioned the term as yet another excuse for the US to dominate whomever it wants on the 2 American continents. However, despite all the Venezuela lies emanating from Washington DC and the MSM, Venezuela is going to be a tough nut to crack, and many American and Westerners are already aware of the propaganda being used to foment war.

Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia Merger: Global Empire of Dystopia?

Posted on by
Reply

By Gilbert Mercier

Source: News Junkie Post

The nature of reality in times of universal confusion

The world and our interpretation of it are often at best an idea and, at worse, a figment of our imagination. In our full-blown Orwellian construct, the truths of some are the fake news of others. Invisible forces and undisclosed interests rule the world and its so-called leaders, who are mostly actor-puppets directed from scripted narratives. They largely live in an alternate universe where, if you repeat outlandish lies often and loudly enough, the disinformation becomes the unquestionable reality for countless people. Reality has become stranger than fiction because the conflicting narratives about what is supposed to be real are, by and large, fictional. They are cleverly crafted propaganda that manipulate by maximizing confusion. The masters of this craft have gutted familiar words of all meaning.

For example, at the heart of Oceania, the white-orange clown emperor, obsessed with walls to protect his subjects from southern brown invaders, told his adoring patrons and sycophants, “we renew our resolve that Oceania shall never be socialist!” The aging patricians gathered for the obligatory annual feast gave him a standing ovation, and loudly chanted “Oceania, Oceania, Oceania!…” This enthusiastic chanting from Oceania’s Patricians, except for the more dignified Supreme Elders and Commanders of the Praetorian Guard, repeated itself on cue at least four of five times, to celebrate the great universal superiority of the invincible mighty empire of the free and the brave! The egotistical emperor’s writers must have laughed as he served up their outstanding fictions to the empire’s docile subjects!

Schopenhauer’s relevant pessimism

In his essential book, The World as Will and Idea, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) contested the rationalist notion that reason alone gave humans the universal key to an infinitely complex, and often irrational, reality. He took the assessments Immanuel Kant had made in his Critique of Pure Reason a step further by adding the fundamental notion of sufficient reason. This was a less absolute concept of the relation of cause to effect, which he anchored in what he deemed to be four categories of human knowledge: science, morality, logic, and metaphysics. Schopenhauer’s work was in part a reaction to the overly optimistic vision of the rationalists, with Rene Descartes in the lead.

In his inherent pessimism, Schopenhauer turned out to be more realistic about the limitations of humans to grasp, not only the full elusive scope of reality, but also their own frailty and insignificance as a self. In these gloomy times of uncertainty and of a general dumbing-down effect in our impoverished global culture, Schopenhauer’s work helps to explain why most aspects of our existence, including our relationship with nature, are beyond most people’s comprehension. For most humans, the absolute reality is an extremely fragmented knowledge filtered through the prism of their perceptions.

Global empire of dystopia?

In other words, whether one lives in Oceania, Eurasia, or Eastasia, the definitions of reality and information have been tailored in these different places to different needs, but almost all the narratives fulfill opaque agendas whose main objectives are to keep people on edge and in despair. The brainwashing from most media makes nearly everybody thoroughly dazed and confused. The goal is to break the will of populations and beat their souls into submission. For this to work, dissent must be eradicated. Let’s face it, if we stay on course, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia could soon merge into the global Empire of Dystopia where 2+2=5. For example, Oceania claims that, with its satellite-vassals, the empire defeated ISIS, which it had worked to create, although it is the leader of sovereign Syria (with the help of Eurasia and the former empire of Persia) who defeated both Oceania and ISIS after seven years of war.

From one manufactured crisis to another, always in what my esteemed colleague Dady Chery calls “other people’s countries,” the mad circus goes on and on like a merry-go-round. And it works, so long as the big lies are salted with a little truth for seasoning. As world citizens, we are tasked with dismantling this monstrous global Orwellian Empire of many faces that is tightening its grip everywhere.

Empires of the past and present, which are in flux, have always extended their powers through satellite provinces and spheres of influence. Empires dislike dissent from within, as well as nearby states that are eager to stay independent and sovereign. During the simpler times of the Cold War when the United States and USSR tried to divide the world in two, some independently minded head of states, such as Tito, Nasser and Castro, refused to submit to this bipolarity and initiated the nonaligned movement. This notion must be urgently revisited, for the sake of the little that is left of smaller nations’ sovereignty.

Of course, Orwell’s cartography of the three entities of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia no longer reflects the geopolitical reality, but his principle of mass indoctrination is at play on a global scale. The narratives appear to be in conflict, but the nitty-gritty mechanics below the radar are similar. Under the surface, and despite the veneers of ideological or religious clashes, a global scheme of wealth and power concentration has been unleashed. Worldwide, the super-rich, and the corporate entities they control, are getting richer while the middle-class is vanishing and the poor are becoming enslaved. Merciless capitalism is the true god of the Orwellian Empire’s three subdivisions. Capitalism demands daily sacrifices of sweat, tears and blood. The system’s blatant contradictions do not trouble its ruling class. On one hand, pseudo nationalist-populists are the servants of a supra-national corporatism, and on the other, the so-called liberals and neoliberals can, on short notice, adopt the worst methods of authoritarian repression.

Two examples of this are unfolding that serve as valuable case studies. First, there is Oceania’s effort to grab a critical piece of what it views as its birthright continent. This is, of course, Venezuela. Secondly, in La Macronie, an eastern asset of Oceania that used to be an empire in its own right, there is the intent to create an authoritarian neoliberal regime with a metrosexual humanitarian touch, to curtail widespread popular protests.

Venezuela: Revolution is imperialism

Oceania has in its crosshair the sovereign state of Venezuela, founded by Simon Bolivar. All empires have precepts or doctrines that conveniently serve to expand their territories and influence by various means, including military invasions, organization of coups and, lately, severe economic sanctions to engineer failed states that become ripe for orchestrated revolutions. The nervous system of Oceania, in Washington DC, views Venezuela as a natural appendage, based on one of the oldest formative tenets of the empire: the Monroe Doctrine, concocted in 1823. It came about using the seemingly altruistic but false notion that the newly independent countries of Central and South America had to be protected from their old colonial masters. In time, it became a claim to all the Americas as the United States’ domain and backyard.

To topple the legitimately elected Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, whom Washington does not like, the empire is again trying to manufacture a revolution led by someone it handpicked and groomed. The name of the man who currently aspires to be Oceania’s Governor in Venezuela hardly matters. Through the years, the strategy of fake revolution following economic sanctions has had mixed results: it failed in Iran in 2009; it worked against Qaddafi in Libya, combined with a small military intervention; it partially worked in Ukraine until Eurasia stepped in; it failed entirely in Syria, where Bashar al-Assad remains in power. With Venezuela’s military still firmly on his side, this strategy is unlikely to work with the heir of Hugo Chavez.

So far the aggression against Venezuela has served as a thorough head count of Oceania’s vassals and enemies. In the Americas, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Uruguay have defied the with-or-against-us litmus test. The rest, including Canada, have aligned themselves with the imperial diktat that Maduro must go. It is the same with most of the European imperial colonies of Oceania, except for Italy and Greece. This is a clear demonstration that the leaders of most states in the European Union lack a foreign policy independent from Oceania and operate largely as governors for Oceania rather than heads of state.

Indeed, according to Mr. Temir Porras, who has worked as Nicolas Maduro’s chief-of-staff and a foreign-policy advisor to Hugo Chavez, the position of most EU countries in supporting Guaido reeks of “neocolonialist interference.” The eight-day “ultimatum to hold presidential elections before recognizing Juan Guaido is a schizophrenic and incomprehensible position.” Porras elaborates that it is “absurd to say that Juan Guaido represents a consensus with Maduro’s opposition in Venezuela,” and that Guaido from the far-right populist party, Voluntad Popular, was almost unknown in Venezuela two weeks ago.

On the opposite side, to go back to Orwell’s cartography lexicon, those that claim so far that “Maduro must stay,” besides the four Latin American countries named above, involve an interesting alliance of Eurasia, Eastasia, and the former Persian and Ottoman empires.

Gilets Jaunes: rays of sunshine on a bleak horizon

Meanwhile, in La Macronie, a beautiful land with a soil rich in its bounty of bread, wine and revolution, a real revolution is brewing from the streets. A little light flickers at the end of the tunnel of our gloomy path, it is like countless little rays of sunshine that try to brighten our dark days, it is the Gilets Jaunes movement. The little governor for Oceania, an arrogant and imperious man who might have liked to be king in a parallel universe, is trying to stop the flow of a tempestuous Gilets Jaunes river with rubber-bullet guns, riot-police shields, and repressive legislation. The disparity between his actions and his almost humanitarian discourse have lost him all credibility. In La Macronie, the governor, by curtailing the freedom to protest and freedom of the press, is testing a brand new form of oppression. It is a young elegant authoritarian regime, with a smile, that caters to the global elite of murderous capitalism. This is an important test, and many worldwide are counting on the Gilets Jaunes to prevail.

 

Editor’s Notes: Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. Photographs one, five, six, seven and eight from the archives of Jakob Reimann; two from the archive of Wackystuff; three from the archive of Philip Pacemaker; four by Daryn Moffitt; nine by Nicholas J. Potter; ten and eleven by Joka Madruga; and fourteen by Urban Nauth.

Israel Lobby Rebuts Omar’s Claims About Its Immense Influence By Exerting Its Immense Influence

Posted on by
2

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

In response to criticisms made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that US political leaders have too much allegiance to Israel and its lobbying groups, House Democrats have put forward an entire House resolution in accordance with demands made by AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League.

“The backlash [over Omar’s comments] continued on Monday, as the Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to Pelosi calling for a House resolution to specifically reject what the organization calls Omar’s ‘latest slur,’” Politico reports. “‘We urge you and your colleagues to send the unambiguous message that the United States Congress is no place for hate,’ the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote in a letter.”

“The charge of dual loyalty not only raises the ominous specter of classic anti-Semitism, but it is also deeply insulting to the millions upon millions of patriotic Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, who stand by our democratic ally, Israel,” tweeted the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Friday in response to Omar’s comments.

“I hope @AIPAC isn’t too angry that it took Democratic House leaders almost 48 whole hours to do what they’re told to condemn their own member and will instead be understanding that it was a weekend and that’s what caused the delay,” snarked journalist Glenn Greenwald in response to the news of the House resolution.

US politicians of all faiths and in both parties have indeed been falling all over themselves in a mad scramble to tell the freshman congresswoman that she is wrong and evil for suggesting that there is undue loyalty to Israel among US politicians.

“It is disturbing that Rep. Omar continues to perpetuate hurtful anti-Semitic stereotypes that misrepresent our Jewish community,” tweeted California Congressman Juan Vargas, who is not Jewish. “Additionally, questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable,” Vargas continued, inadvertently re-stating Omar’s original argument.

“But serious question: How is it anti-Semitic to question Christian Republican allegiance to Israel?” asked journalist Rania Khalek in response to the controversy. “Because it’s people like Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Marco Rubio who Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were initially called anti-Semitic for challenging on loyalty to Israel.”

It is indeed interesting that the label “antisemitism” is being pinned on an argument directed at mostly non-Jewish lawmakers and not at Jews at all. It is also interesting that the House resolution’s current text twists that reality on its head by falsely implying that the comments were directed at Jewish politicians. The most Omar-specific parts of the resolution read as follows:

Whereas the definition further includes ‘‘accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations’’;

Whereas the myth of dual loyalty, including allegations that Jews should be suspected of being disloyal neighbors or citizens, has been used to marginalize and persecute the Jewish people for centuries for being a stateless minority;

Whereas accusing Jews of dual loyalty because they support Israel, whether out of a religious connection, a commitment to Jewish self-determination after millennia of persecution, or an appreciation for shared values and interests, suggests that Jews cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors, when Jews have served our Nation since its founding, whether in public life or military service;

Whereas accusations of dual loyalty generally have an insidious, bigoted history, including (1) the discriminatory internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II on the basis of race; (2) the Dreyfuss affair; when Alfred Dreyfuss, a Jewish French artillery captain was falsely convicted of passing secrets to Germany based on his Jewish background; (3) when the loyalty of President John F. Kennedy was questioned because of his Catholic faith; and (4) the post-9/11 conditions faced by Muslim-Americans in the United States, including unfounded, vicious attacks on and threats to Muslim-American Members of Congress;

Omar’s comments have nothing to do with Jews, Judaism or Jewishness, but with the geopolitical entanglements between the US and a nation which currently serves as an outpost for US military agendas in the Middle East. It’s a basic, unassailable fact that the agenda to maintain this relationship holds immense sway in America’s capitol, which is why the only arguments you see against it are fallacious, dishonest, irrelevant, or even prove it to be true.

“It is so disingenuous of some of these members of Congress who are lining up to condemn these questioning voices as if they have no campaign finance interest in the outcome,” former congressman Brian Baird told the New York Times today. “If one dares to criticize Israel or dares to criticize AIPAC, one gets branded anti-Semitic, and that’s a danger to a democratic republic.”

Ilhan Omar has sparked one of the most interesting conversations happening in America today, and the smear campaign against her has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism, but with silencing that conversation. The social engineers are not interested in fighting religious bigotry, they are interested in shutting her up.

In an increasingly neoliberalism-weary world, the old smear tactics of labeling a dissident voice a “communist” or a “socialist” don’t pack the kind of punching power they used to, so new ones are needed. The propagandists have been field testing them for a while now, and whenever a successful prototype rolls off the conveyor belt you quickly see it shipped around the world. Smears of Kremlin servitude found purchase in the US, and it wasn’t long before we saw the BBC posing an image of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn against the backdrop of the Kremlin wearing what was made to resemble a Soviet-era hat. Antisemitism smears found purchase against Corbyn in the UK, and it wasn’t long before we saw those same smear tactics used across the pond against Ilhan Omar. If an imperial smear field tests well in our new political climate, you can be certain you’ll see it used elsewhere within the empire before long.

https://twitter.com/PrettyBadLefty/status/1102748288309231618

This bogus concern trolling about antisemitism has always been about smearing, and the smearing has always been about narrative control. If they can manipulate the public into distrusting someone who voices a dissenting narrative, they can keep that dissenting narrative from entering the bloodstream of mainstream consciousness. The need to keep a nuclear-armed branch of the US-centralized empire in the heart of the most crucial strategic location on earth is too important for our rulers to allow its fate to be left in the hands of the democratic process, so they control the narrative about it with extreme aggression and smear anyone who questions it. That’s all this has ever been.

It’s back to the future with Venezuelan ‘Contras,’ the neocons, and the CIA

Posted on by
2

By Wayne Madsen

Source: Intrepid Report

Donald Trump displayed his full neocon colors on February 18 during a speech at Florida International University in Miami. With convicted Iran-contra felon Elliott Abrams now acting as his “special envoy” in charge of overthrowing the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, Trump urged Venezuelan military officers to rise up in a coup d’état and oust Maduro, who Trump called a “Cuban puppet.”

Trump’s call for a coup in Venezuela is ironic when his most loyal supporter in the U.S. Senate, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), claimed that senior Justice Department officials who were discussing legally invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in early 2017 were trying to stage a “coup” against Trump. Coups are unconstitutional in any form, while the removal of a president under the 25th Amendment is following the U.S. Constitution to the letter.

As protesters, who carried signs with “No U.S. Coup in Venezuela” and “Hands Off Venezuela,” staged a demonstration on campus and Trump rattled sabers against Venezuela in his speech on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus, covert U.S. operators were busy at Florida airports shipping arms to Venezuelan paramilitary units in Colombia.

At the same time as Trump was threatening Venezuela with a coup, the Haitian government of President Jovenel Moise and Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant—one of a half dozen remaining allies of the Maduro government in the Western Hemisphere—was faced with an attempted U.S.-led insurrection in his impoverished nation. It is no coincidence that Moise, who was financially buoyed with $2 billion in fuel subsidies and other financial assistance from Venezuela’s state-run PetroCaribe Fund, has faced protests in his country that appear to have been prompted by U.S. “regime change” operatives. Planted in the Haitian media were reports that the Venezuelan fuel assistance funds had been pocketed by Moise and members of his government. That prompted violent protests on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, Jeremie, Gonaïves, and Jacmel that have been raging since February 7. More suspicious is that the U.S. State Department ordered all non-essential personnel out of the country following the outbreak of the protests.

On February 17, Haitian police arrested a group of eight heavily-armed men traveling in two cars in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Among the group were five Americans and a Russian, Serbian, and Haitian. The Russian and Serbian may hold permanent residency status in the United States. The Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that police discovered in the foreigners’ cars automatic rifles, 45-caliber and Glock pistols, a large amount of ammunition, drones, and satellite phones. Also found in the vehicles were a telescope, backpacks, bullet-proof vests, and various documents, including a list of names of Haitian citizens. The vehicles bore no license plates and the suspects’ passports had no Haitian visa entry stamps. The passports did show extensive travel to other countries prior to being in Haiti. Five Haitian license plates were found in the vehicles.

When arrested by police, the eight men refused to provide identification, insisting that they were on some sort of “government mission.” They did not identify the “government” for whom they were working but insisted that they did not have to talk to the police. One of the arresting police officers said one of those arrested told him, “Our boss would call your boss.” After the eight men were arrested, another vehicle pulled up with a man, who spoke French to the police. He was also arrested. There are unconfirmed reports that the eight men arrested had earlier masqueraded as Haitian National Police officers.

The U.S. corporate media has largely refrained from identifying the arrested Americans and the others. WMR is not bound by protocols with the U.S.

Intelligence Community. The men arrested in Port-au-Prince are:

  • Kent Leland KROEKER, born February 14, 1967, USA partner and chief operating officer of Kroeker Partners, a private security firm. Kroeker is a Marine Corps officer veteran who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan
  • Christopher Mark McKINLEY, born September 26, 1969, USA
  • Danilo BAJAVIC, Serbian national, born Belgrade, born May 19, 1982, visa stamp for Karasovici, Croatia, dated July 21, 2017
  • Vlade JANKOVIC, Russian national, born October 9, 1978, Russia
  • Talon R. BURTON, U.S. national, born April 9, 1967, USA
  • Christopher M. OSMAN, U.S. national
  • Dustin Daniel PORTE, U.S. national, born February 12, 1976, USA
  • Michael ESTERA, Haitian national, born October 28, 1980, Haiti

In addition to Kroeker, all of the arrested Americans have U.S. military backgrounds. Estera may be a foreign national employee of the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. It is also noteworthy that Blackwater founder Erik Prince, under investigation for conspiring with Russian, Saudi, and Emirati officials on behalf of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, employs Serbian and Russian ex-military members in his Reflex Responses (R2) mercenary firm, based in Abu Dhabi. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is education secretary in the Trump administration.

Haitian police chief Michel-Ange Gedeon told reporters that the men would be charged with violation of weapons laws and criminal conspiracy. The U.S. State Department had no comment on whether the arrested Americans had received U.S. consular assistance, to which they are entitled. The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) is in charge of the investigation of the foreigners.

The 1980s Contra wars of the Ronald Reagan administration were known for the heavy involvement of U.S. mercenaries, who operated in Central America with a “wink and a nod” from the Central Intelligence Agency and a covert coordination team in the basement of the White House, as well as the Pentagon, and State Department. The mercenaries received their orders from National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and Elliott Abrams, now Trump’s regime change coordinator for Venezuela. As the Reagan team attempted to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, they were also waging a brutal death squad campaign against leftists in El Salvador and Guatemala. In a repetition of history, the Trump administration has authorized a covert campaign to destabilize the government of Nicaragua, while assisting right-wing governments in Guatemala and Honduras to assassinate leftist journalists, activists, and indigenous leaders. Just as during the 1980s, El Salvador is due to become a staging post for a pro-U.S. rightist government under president-elect Nayib Bukele. Bukele replaces the administration led by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which was targeted by the Reagan administration during the 1980s with death squads and paramilitary teams.

At the same time the U.S. mercenaries were arrested in Haiti, Venezuelan authorities seized a Boeing 767 jet, operated by 21Air LLC, said to have been carrying arms to U.S.-backed rebels in Venezuela. The Boeing 767 took off on February 3 from Miami, the same city where Trump, championed by right-wing Cuban-Americans and exiled oligarchs from Venezuela, vowed to overthrow Maduro and “socialism” throughout the hemisphere.

The Boeing’s cargo was seized by Venezuelan authorities at Valencia airport. Included in the secret cargo manifest were 9 assault weapons, including AR-15 rifles, a Micro Draco semi-automatic pistol, and a Colt 7.62 rifle with telescopic sights, in addition to 118 ammunition cartridges and military radio antennas. 21Air LLC’s chairman is Adolfo Moreno, who, according to McClatchy News, is linked to Gemini Air Cargo, an airline involved with the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program during the George W. Bush administration and identified as such in a report made by the Council of Europe. The Boeing seized by Venezuela has been busy the last few months, making runs from Miami International Airport to Valencia and Caracas, Venezuela, and Bogota and Medellin, Colombia. 21Air claimed to McClatchy that the Boeing 767 had been chartered by another firm called GPS-Air. 21Air operates a sister firm, 21Cargo, formerly called Solar Cargo C.A.

Moreno is listed in Florida corporation records as also owning South Eastern Aviation LLC of Doral, Florida, Conaire LLC of Miramar, Florida, JW Aviation LLC of Doral; Apple Aviation LLC of Doral; Reliable Transport Logistics LLC of Hialeah, Florida; Freighter 23801 LLC of Hialeah, Freighter 23803 of Doral; Direct Warehouse LLC of Doral; Dynamic Travel LLC of Doral; Enduring Ventures LLC of Miami; and Florida Franchise Development LLC of Miramar. Florida Franchise Development was incorporated by Moreno in 2001 as a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo. That firm, along with Airline Management Group, incorporated in 1987, and Gemini Cargo Logistics Inc., the latter a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, all had the same business address of 1750 NW 66th Ave., Miami. According to McClatchy, that address is currently used by Avianca, the Colombian national air carrier. When Trump called for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government, he did so in the midst of dozens of CIA front companies that specialize in carrying out coups, murder, and mayhem.

21Air LLC was incorporated in 2014 and is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, but operates out of Miami International Airport. North Carolina was the location of other CIA proprietary airline front companies involved in the agency’s kidnapping program. These included Air Serv International; Aero Contractors Limited, operating out of Johnston County Regional Airport and the Kinston Regional Jetport; Assembly Pointe Aviation, Inc.; and Water Above Mountain Holdings, LLC of Burlington, North Carolina.

Prior to January, when Maduro was sworn in for a second presidential term, the Boeing 767 had been traveling between Miami, Philadelphia, and other continental U.S. cities.

The smuggling of U.S. weapons to Venezuelan rebels has evoked memories of Elliott Abrams’s antics during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. CIA contract airlines, including Southern Air Transport, were busy illegally flying U.S. weapons to Honduras and, via air drop, over Nicaragua, for use by the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas. One thing about neocons like Abrams and Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton is that they rarely divert from their standard playbooks. Neocons, not being very bright to begin with, find it difficult to “think outside the box,” therefore they repeat the same failed policies and maneuvering over and over again. And that is the clinical diagnosis of insanity.

 

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Thinking about American Totalitarianism

Posted on by
3

By Dan Corjescu

Source: CounterPunch

Totalitarianism evolves.

Yet what remains the same through time is the attempt at total control.

Today, control is veiled not overt.

Control weaves its way both totally and surgically into our everyday lives.

Totally, in the master narrative it weaves about “living in a democracy”.

Today, no one lives in a true democracy.

Elections, parties, political personalities are all fraudulent constructions hiding real power.

The media and the entertainment industry are focused on creating a consumerist-nationalist imaginary where shopping and waving the flag are effective daily remedies to ward off any uncomfortable existential doubts.

Both business and the nation still reign in the hearts and minds of millions as the “true Gods”.

The revolution of the “multitude” is far, far away.

Empire, American Empire, is neither setting, fading, or waning. On the contrary, its tentacles stretch throughout every conceivable path and production of biopower.

The expansion of American power that began in earnest after the Great War has continued unabated.

The world is more American now than it has ever been.

Surgically, America through its unrivaled mastery of technology, organization, and capital can pick and choose the actors and actions it wills to manipulate or eliminate.

American global networks of surveillance and suppression have grown and deepened. The threat of world revolution and terror are convenient stories to both mobilize and mesmerize the multitude.

A Hitler and/or a Bin-Laden will always conveniently appear when needed.

Consumption, in all its forms, is the only ideology and it is highly effective since it is based on basic biological processes. The pleasure centers of the brain have lent themselves to the construction of a life of bodily gratification. Thus the ideological celebration of the body has become the new ideological prison of the mind. Nietzsche’s “last man” is the middling subject of our present day totalitarianism.

The majority live their lives dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure and are of no threat or consequence. They are “well adjusted” to the “eternal” run of things. Those who are less so, can be easily handled with marginalization, demonization, psychiatry, and if all else fails, surreptitious elimination.

What are the ultimate goals of power? Its naked reproduction. Power is its own justification. The members may change, but the goal of power’s eternal maintenance remains the same.

Yes, we are allowed to talk, read, go to church, temple, or mosque and even demonstrate but any true chance at deviation from the total control of a society blinded by physical bliss and intoxicated by triumphant and progressivist narratives is precluded from the beginning.

Yet, in the end, change will come. But it will be a change that will serve the interests of those for whom total power is the ultimate aim. The world’s inherent fluidity will run and be directed through their rigid hands.

Fuck You, Dying American Empire: Reflections of an Aging Anti-Imperialist

Posted on by
2

Credit: JOEL PETT

By Jonah Raskin

Source: CounterPunch

Last year at Jamia Millia Islamia Central University in New Delhi, India I met students and teachers who thought that it was cool that I’d written an anti-imperialist book and that it was still in print nearly fifty years after it was first published. It was easy to be an anti-imperialist at Jamia Millia. After all, the students and the teachers were anti-imperialists and all worked-up about U.S. drones, U.S. air strikes and about the Syrians on the ground who had been battered and bombed.

It was also relatively easy to be an anti-imperialist in the late 1960s and early 1970s when anti-imperialism was a red badge of courage in SDS, the Venceremos Brigade, in anti-war circles and even among the Yippies, who were far more internationalist in their outlook than many on the Left assumed. Once upon a time, Jerry Rubin went to Cuba to check out the revolution, and later to Chile with singer and songwriter, Phil Ochs, to see what Salvador Allende was doing.

But here in the U.S. in 2018, is it still possible to be an authentic anti-imperialist, an anti-imperialist in more than name? I thought about that question recently when a former comrade explained that he was still an anti-imperialist and wondered if I was one, too.

It wasn’t the first time that my politics were questioned. In 1980, soon after Reagan was elected president, Professor Edward Said asked me if I was still on the Left and hadn’t drifted to the right like that former radical, David Horowitz, whom Alexander Cockburn dismissed as a “whiner.” A plain “Yes,” or a “No” answer wouldn’t do, nor a “Maybe.”

Am I now and have I ever been an anti- imperialist? It’s really nobody’s business but my own!

I don’t know anyone in my part of northern California who calls himself or herself an anti-imperialist, though friends and neighbors claim to be against racism, sexism, patriarchy and ageism.

U.S. anti-imperialism has a noble lineage. Mark Twain was an anti-imperialist and so was his friend and fellow writer, William Dean Howells. They both belonged to the American Anti-Imperialist League that was founded in 1898 to oppose the U.S. annexation of the Philippines and whose members included an odd assortment of individuals such as Jane Addams, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Henry James, David Starr Jordan, Grover Cleveland and Andrew Carnegie.

The League, which didn’t oppose U.S. entry into World War I, disbanded in 1920 just as U.S. imperialism was flexing its global muscles more than every before, though from its founding the American republic aimed to go West and become a continental empire.

Then, in the twentieth-century, the nation began to shrink the globe big time, to extract labor from peasants and workers in Asia and Africa and export American light bulbs, American Gatling guns, American lingo—“Kilroy Was Here”—and American movies.

Cultural imperialism always bugged me more than any other aspect of imperialism. I hated to see U.S. cultural commodities supplant indigenous cultures. That sight still rankles me, whether I see it in India, Mexico or the American South West. Every time I see and hear about the survival of ancient myths, legends, dances and music I’m ready to cheer.

Membership in an anti-imperialist league or organization makes sense, but to be an anti-imperialist of one in a sea of California anti-intellectualism and provincialism—“We’re number one”—has little or no meaning to me. Why be an anti-imperialist in name only? No, thanks! I don’t mean to live off past glory, though it was a thrill to meet students in India who had studied The Mythology of Imperialism and who told me it was the first book they’d ever read in which they could hear that the author was angry. That was me! I was pissed.

At 77, it’s not possible to be angry with the same intensity that I was angry at 27 when I wrote my anti-imperialist book in-between rioting in the streets, spray painting slogans at Times Square at midnight, going to jail and having the cops kick the shit out of me. I don’t know of any other way to be an anti-imperialist except the way I was an anti-imperialist during the War in Vietnam.

Indeed, it’s no easy feat to be an old anti-imperialist. Che died at 39, Lenin at 53 and Mark Twain at 74. The author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, which takes a big swipe at weapons of mass destruction, noted near the end of his life, “I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.” Thanks, Mr. Twain. I’m glad you said that.

Today, there are so many oppressive and intolerable conditions the world over, and so many different imperialisms: the Chinese, the Russian, the India, the Israeli, the Brazilian and the U.S. It was comforting in the 1960s and 1970s to recognize that the American Empire was in decline and that the Soviets, the Vietnamese and the Chinese stood up to the Pentagon. Gratifying, too, that crowds in Paris, Rome, and London denounced the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Now, who stands up to the White House, the Senate, Google, Facebook and Amazon? Precious few citizens! Empires have proliferated and reinvented themselves. The American Empire is still in decline, though as George Lucas noted in 1980 it did “Strike Back” with Reagan, and later with Bush I, Bush II, Clinton and Obama.

An empire in decline—whether Roman, British, or American—isn’t a pretty thing. It can take decades to fall apart. I saw that when I lived in England. An Empire in decline isn’t really anything to cheer about. Indeed, the fall of empire makes life miserable for migrants, serfs, slaves, refugees, prisoners, pensioners and even for aging anti-imperialists. Maybe it’s a cheap shot. I don’t care. I’ll say it here, “Goodbye and Fuck you, American Empire.”

How CNN Led Facebook To Censor Pages Of Russia-Backed Video Company And Manufactured News Story

Posted on by
Reply

Disclosure: Kevin Gosztola co-hosts the “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast with Rania Khalek, who is a contributor for Maffick Media’s Soapbox. “Unauthorized Disclosure” is entirely listener-funded. Shadowproof is member-supported and funded by reader donations.

By Kevin Gosztola

Source: Shadowproof

CNN went in search for a story about a Russian-funded digital media project that produces viral videos aimed at undermining American democracy. When CNN journalists could not find what they were looking for, they effectively manufactured the news by giving Facebook a pretext for removing the project’s pages used to share videos. Now, the cable news network had their story.

Four CNN journalists worked on the report, “Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials.” It appeared online late in the day on February 15 and broke the news that Maffick Media had their Facebook pages for three video channels suspended.

Maffick also produces In The Now, which Facebook took down as well.

Facebook never required pages to include information about their parent companies nor has the social media company ever labeled state-sponsored media, which CNN acknowledged. Yet, since the project involves funding from Russian state media, CNN believed Facebook may want to require the pages to disclose such details.

CNN contacted Facebook on February 13, and Facebook informed CNN they were “contemplating doing something about labeling state-funded media,” according to Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN reporter who worked on the story. The media organization held their story until Facebook took action.

Maffick produces three video channels—Backthen, which explores the history of Western imperialism, Waste-Ed, which covers environmental issues, including climate change, and Soapbox, which covers politics and current events.

As O’Sullivan said during an interview on CNN, “The content was pretty critical of the U.S government, of U.S mainstream media, but nothing that would be totally out of the ordinary necessarily.” Videos made a “lot of legitimate arguments,” and they “weren’t necessarily really hiding their Russian ties.”

“If you were to start Googling these pages, you could quickly work it back to see,” O’Sullivan added.

Journalist Rania Khalek, who produces videos for Soapbox, was interviewed by CNN, along with Maffick Media chief operating officer J. Ray Sparks. The interview took place in Berlin on February 11. However, CNN did not initially contact them.

“CNN was contacting peripheral employees, some of the people in the U.S., one of the camera people that I worked with. They contacted her,” Khalek shared. “And they actually lied to [this person] and told her they had already spoken to me, when they had not.”

According to Khalek, CNN seemed to be interested in whether any Maffick employees were difficult to work with, whether employees or contractors were paid decently, and whether they were leery of the stories they were asked to cover.

J. Ray Sparks contacted CNN to inform them that they were aware the news network was attempting to dig up dirt. Maffick made CEO Anissa Naouai, Khalek, and Sparks available to CNN in the interest of transparency, even though it was clear journalists were looking for material for a hit piece on the project.

Shadowproof was provided with a copy of the unedited interview that CNN conducted with Khalek and Sparks.

More Like An Interrogation By Intelligence Agents Than An Interview

The interview was conducted by CNN correspondent Drew Griffin. In February 2018, Griffin went to the home of a woman in Florida, a private citizen who supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and insisted she was duped by Russia when she ran the “Team Trump Broward County” Facebook page.

The page’s events were reportedly promoted by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll farm operated out of St. Petersburg.

“I don’t go with Russians, c’mon, give me a break,” the woman insisted, while Griffin tried to take away her independence as a campaign supporter and shame her for something out of her control.

The questions asked by Griffin collectively amounted to an interrogation. He went out of his way not to engage with answers to his questions that conflicted with the story CNN was chasing.

Also, Griffin was fishing for very private details involving the business model of Maffick that would help CNN attack the project. Sparks provided answers, despite the fact that the questions were invasive, and the vast majority of U.S. news media outlets would probably refrain from sharing such information with the public.

CNN misquoted Sparks twice. In the print report, they said Sparks claimed it was “standard business practice” not to disclose who owned a Facebook page. That made it seem like Sparks was specifically referring to Maffick and that he was exhibiting a flippant attitude to the question of who funds Maffick. However, Sparks said “standard industry practice” and was making a general point about CNN holding Maffick to a standard most media organizations throughout the world do not follow.

Griffin asked why Maffick tells employees and contractors they are funded by the Russia government but not their audience. “There’s no mention of Russia or Ruptly on the Facebook pages. Why is that?”

“Because that’s standard industry practice,” Sparks replied. “We get this question a lot, and it’s a funny question to me because why does Great Big Story not put CNN on their Facebook page? Why does CNN not put Time Warner on their Facebook page? The audience is not interested in these things.”

Sparks added, “I worked for Comedy Central for many years. No one ever knew that Comedy Central was owned by MTV, and that MTV was owned by Viacom. These were things that you had to discover as a more esoteric audience within the industry. The general audience never is interested in these things, and the standard practice is to just simply not mention them because the audience is not interested.”

Whether Sparks is right or not is insignificant. CNN used a different word so it better suited their story.

[Note: CNN later issued a correction during the weekend after Shadowproof published this report:

“The original version of this article incorrectly quoted Sparks as saying it is ‘standard business practice’ for a media outlet not to disclose its ownership on its Facebook page. He actually referred to ‘standard industry practice’ and ‘standard practice.’”]

Baselessly Accused Of Boosting ‘Kremlin Narratives’

Although Khalek and Sparks detailed their editorial independence at Maffick extensively, Griffin remained incredulous at the reality that officials working at the Kremlin are not dictating what specific stories should be covered. CNN quoted Ben Nimmo, a “senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab,” to undermine their assertions.

“They routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which portray the West negatively,” Nimmo stated.

He added Maffick’s pages are “broadly anti-U.S. and anti-corporate. That’s strikingly similar to RT’s output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.”

The Atlantic Council is a militaristic think tank that receives funding from the U.S. government. In particular, Nimmo holds himself out as some bot hunter, who is an expert at exposing “Kremlin influence networks.” Yet, as journalist Max Blumenthal highlighted in 2018, Nimmo misidentified “several living, breathing individuals as Russian bots or Kremlin ‘influence accounts.’ Nimmo’s victims included Mariam Susli, a well-known Syrian-Australian social media personality, the famed Ukrainian concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a British pensioner named Ian Shilling.”

Khalek told Griffin why her journalism challenges U.S. foreign policy and the power of U.S. corporations.

“I’m an American, right? My priority and my responsibility is to challenge destructive policies [of] the government that I pay tax dollars to. And that’s what I focus on in my videos,” Khalek declared. “I challenge war. I challenge corporate ownership of our government and of our political system. And this is one of the few places that I have where I can actually do that with complete editorial control.”

“Now, if CNN would like to give me a job to spend my time challenging the war industry and corporations, I’d be happy to do that. But that’s just not the case.”

“I have complete editorial control over my work on Soapbox,” Khalek said, prior this comment. “I get to tell the truth about war and corporations, which you don’t get to hear much about in corporate outlets, like CNN, where people oftentimes even get fired for being antiwar. You know, I’d ask, you where was Marc Lamont Hill’s editorial freedom when CNN fired him for telling the truth about Israeli occupation of Palestine?”

Griffin plowed forward as if he was oblivious to what happened to the former CNN contributor, and at no point did Griffin offer any examples, where specific Russian policies were mindlessly championed by Khalek or other Maffick contractors to boost the Kremlin.

Succumbing To Russophobia

It was the German Marshall Fund, which brought records on the ownership of Maffick to the attention of CNN. They also were the source CNN used to back up the notion that Facebook should require Maffick to disclose its ownership.

Bret Schafer, a social media analyst at the German Marshall Fund, said “that he believes most people who see content from the pages on Facebook have no idea it could be tied to Russia.”

“It should be clearly labeled,” he told CNN, “and when they don’t label them, they need to be called out on that.”

The German Marshall Fund receives funds from the U.S. government, and as it states on its website, the fund was founded in 1972 as “a non-partisan, nonprofit organization through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance.”

“GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, D.C., GMF has offices in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, Bucharest, and Warsaw. GMF also has smaller representations in Bratislava, Turin, and Stockholm.”

The Marshall Plan was a foreign policy strategy adopted in 1947 to expand American dominance in the world. It aimed to expand access to European markets for U.S. businesses and fend off the rise of communism in countries like Italy and France.

One of the German Marshall Fund’s projects is the Alliance For Securing Democracy. It was far more strident in its assessment of Maffick than CNN.

The project’s advisory council includes Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security Department chief, Bill Kristol, who was a board member of the Project for the New American Century, which pushed for the invasion of Iraq, Rick Ledgett, former NSA deputy director, Mike McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Mike Morell, former acting CIA director, John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mike Rogers, former congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, James Stavridis, a former admiral who led European Command, and Jake Sullivan, former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. (Journalist Glenn Greenwald further detailed the “marriage of convenience” between establishment Democrats and neoconservatives.)

It is the Alliance For Securing Democracy that developed Hamilton 68, a “tracker” it claimed could unearth Russian influence operations. But the individuals involved with Hamilton 68 have refused to share their methodology. They follow accounts “run by people around the world who amplify pro-Russian themes either knowingly or unknowingly,” which means any dissent deemed to be “anti-American” can draw their attention to hashtags worth tracking.

James Carden, a contributor for The Nation, wrote, “Projects like Hamilton 68 are the opposite of what one would expect in an open society like the United States: In essence, it seeks to police and narrow the scope of acceptable political discourse. The implicit message is that Americans should ignore unpleasant news so long as it comes from foreign outlets, regardless of the veracity of the story.”

“That the well-regarded German Marshall Fund has succumbed to the Russophobia now so in vogue across the political spectrum is cause for both sadness and concern,” Carden added.

“Completely In Line With What We’re Hearing From The Kremlin”

Twice Griffin pressed Khalek on her views. He maintained they are “completely in line with what we’re hearing from the Kremlin, especially on Venezuela.”

“Okay, do you have a specific criticism about what I said about Venezuela?” Khalek replied. “The U.S. right now under Trump—the president that CNN is very much against—is currently attempting to launch a right-wing coup in Venezuela and what I see from the mainstream press in the U.S., across the board, is support for that.”

“What I’m interested in is accurate reporting in Venezuela about what’s happening and what the U.S. is doing there,” Khalek continued. “And you know, that might align with this entity or that entity, but that’s not what I care about. What I care about is telling the truth. And I would like to know why CNN isn’t telling the truth about what’s happening in Venezuela.”

Khalek further outlined why this notion of “views aligning with the Kremlin” is dangerous.

Say I’m antiwar. Say that Trump right now is threatening a military intervention against Venezuela. If I oppose that, which the Russian government I think does—and so do other governments in the world. They also oppose it. But if I oppose U.S. war, does that automatically mean I’m going to be accused of being aligned with the Kremlin? And with this Russia hysteria that we’re experiencing now, I feel like this is a very, very dangerous McCarthyist tactic to start saying that leftist views, antiwar views are just the Kremlin government’s talking points.

Immediately following this statement from Khalek, Griffin said, “Business model folks and others who think there’s so much negative publicity surrounding a Russian label, especially in the world of journalistic freedom, that your company is probably purposely distancing itself from any kind of public or branding related to Russia.”

“Is that true? In terms of trying to grow this company and grow these channels, it would be wise that you did not have any kind of connection with Russia available to the public?”

Either Griffin has a lot of gall or is plainly ignorant. Khalek, Naouai, and Sparks granted unprecedented access to their work. Because it did not conform to widespread notions of state-funded media bandied about in Russia investigation coverage, Griffin and others at CNN discounted what was shared.

Griffin stuck to hyping the danger of Russian-funded media so CNN can keep profiting off the panic. So, it is stories like this one that drive media and journalists with ties to Russia underground and pushes them to engage in secrecy for their survival.

***

The key issue, which CNN deliberately avoids, is one that has been prevalent since 2014, when Abby Martin was an anchor for RT America and spoke out against Russian military aggression in Crimea. She went on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN and told Morgan that RT was no different than any other corporate media station in America.

“We’re talking about six corporations that control 90 percent of what Americans see, hear, and read, lead up to the Iraq War parroting exactly what the establishment said. I mean, you could reflect the exact same criticism on all the corporate media channels,” Martin contended.

As she put it, “RT toes a perspective of the Russian foreign policy just as the entire corporate media apparatus toes the perspective of the U.S. establishment.”

“Why do I have to work for RT to tell the truth about corporations and the U.S. government?” Martin asked. “I mean, seriously, you guys are beholden to advertisers that you cannot criticize.” That is why Martin was working for RT, not CNN.

Until journalists at U.S. media outlets, like CNN, quit projecting images on the cave wall for citizens in order to help the U.S. government maintain its global dominance and insulate government officials from scrutiny, particularly on matters of war, there will always be Americans who seek out jobs with foreign media outlets. They will seek out companies like Maffick to produce dissident journalism, which establishment media organizations refuse to support.

UPDATE: The report was updated on February 18 to reflect details from an interview with Donie O’Sullivan on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” and to include the correction CNN printed after Shadowproof published this report.