#Trump’s #Belligerence Could Lead to #NuclearWar

By Global Research News

Url of this article:https://www.globalresearch.ca/selected-articles-trumps-belligerence-could-lead-to-nuclear-war/5613604

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The Dangers of Nuclear Radiation: We Need to Expand the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty (NWBT) to A Comprehensive Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT)
By Eiichiro Ochiai, October 16, 2017
The US government secretly established “Manhattan project”, and the scientists and the corporations involved managed to make three pieces of such weapon, i.e., atomic bombs before the end of the World War II. One was used to test its effectiveness in New Mexico, and the remaining two were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The results were devastating, killing hundreds of thousands instantly and flattening the entire cities.

Trump’s Iran Deal
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 16, 2017
Bad deals. Very bad – unless, of course, they are minted in the United States, with Make America Great Again credentials. Hardly the stuff of presidential clout and oratorical flair, but the US president is making good his word to rain on the Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with an overbearing enthusiasm.

America had first Contemplated Nuclear War against both China and North Korea in 1950
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 16, 2017
It is important to stress that US military action directed against the DPRK was part of a broader Cold War military agenda against the PRC and the Soviet Union, the objective of which was ultimately to undermine and destroy socialism. As early as 1945, “the Pentagon had speculated that it would take a few hundred atomic bombs to subdue Russia”.

Is Trump’s “Friend” Kissinger Steering Him from Calm to Storm?

#FinancialCollapse and the #Abuses of #Neoliberal #Economics

By Global Research News

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/selected-articles-tpp-financial-collapse-and-organ-trafficking-the-abuses-of-neoliberal-economics/5494497 

Today, Global Research brings to the attention of its readers a selection of articles on how neoliberal economics is ironically philosophically liberal (i.e., organ trafficking) yet economically anti-liberal

How #Money #Strengthens the #AngloAmerican #System of #Imperial #Domination

By Guillaume Kress

What characterizes the Anglo-American imperial system is the “abundance of money” coupled with an extensive military and intelligence apparatus. 

Both conditions complement one another such that ineffective economic sanctions, for instance, can be compensated by greater military intervention, and vice versa.  In other words, the threat of military intervention supports economic objectives. Conversely, market manipulation is often used to destabilize countries, i.e. through non-military means.  

Moreover, this Anglo-American system requires that its leaders maintain a robust military-industrial complex to cover up/consolidate their economic and financial endeavours.

In this context, we bring to the attention of our readers a selection of  Global Research articles which reveal how large corporations cover up political malfeasance abroad by promoting an unsettling system of money transactions within the realm of British and American politics.

On the surface, the articles appear to be unrelated, but in reality they aren’t. If they all have one thing in common, it’s that each article deals with a political lie that is propagated by the mainstream media. 

The truth is buried under a massive pile of money, thereby allowing big companies to control the mainstream media, permeate world markets and impose strategic chaos in selected regions. 

After all, the system is run by that very same financial elite emanating from Wall Street and the City of London that funds our politicians and mainstream media

#Gold , #Silver and “ #CrashingMarkets ”

It’s Ugly if You Look Under the Hood

By Bill Holter

My plan for today was to write a very basic piece hitched to the one written yesterday “the money has to go somewhere”.  The plan was to point out that gold (and silver) will be the final destination for monies dislodged from crashing markets all over the world.  Along came the Q1 figures for U.S. GDP, a disaster on many levels.  So switching gears, let’s look at the first quarter, how quickly the economy has deteriorated and what it means in the future and in relation to the past.  I do plan to tie this together at the end because no matter how you look at it, gold is a magnet for what will be shaken loose.

Q1 GDP came in at .2% growth, this was a whopping $6 billion worth of growth for the quarter.  This number was an obvious disappointment as estimates were around 1%+.  Of course the apologists were immediately out in full force to remind us of how terrible the winter was and “weather” was to blame.  I would ask, isn’t that what “seasonal adjustments” are for?  Steve Liesman of CNBC even posed the question why seasonal adjustments are “not working”.  The obvious answer is because you can only stretch, massage and outright lie about economic numbers so far before you cannot any longer …because even the blind will see it.

 

Breaking the quarter down and looking under the hood, were it not for the biggest inventory build of any quarter in history, the quarter would have shown a negative 2.6% growth rate  .  What exactly does this mean?  It means the consumer or final user has shut off their purchases.  It means “stuff” was produced but

How #Lobbies, #Intelligence #Services and #Advertisers Dictate #Mainstream #Media Content

Support independent media

By Global Research

Recently several journalists who worked in the mainstream media (MSM) exposed its corrupt nature, weighing in on the growing mistrust it inspires. We hope the following will inspire you to support independent media like Global Research!

Former chief political commentator of the Telegraph, Peter Oborne, resigned from the newspaper because it would not publish articles on HSBC for fear of losing advertising revenues. The bank is well-known for its money-laundering for Mexican drug cartels as well as its involvement in tax evasion schemes.

In an opinion piece called “Why I resigned from the Telegraph” he wrote:

#Putin Did NOT #Assassinate #Nemtsov

Russian Opposition:

Putin Did NOT Assassinate Opposition Leader Boris Nemtsov

By Global Research News

U.S. media is quick to blame Putin for the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

But Itina Khakamada –  a top ally of Nemtsov in the opposition – said the killing was “clearly not in Putin’s interest. It’s aimed at rocking the situation.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says the the killing is aimed at “destabilizing the situation in the country, at heightening confrontation” with the West.

Gorbachev says:

The assassination of Boris Nemtsov is an attempt to complicate the situation in the country, even to destabilize it by ratcheting up tensions between the government and the opposition.

Even the U.S. government’s Voice of America states – in an article entitled  “Could Nemtsov Threaten Putin in Death as in Life?” – that Putin loses much more than he gains by the assassination:

With the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, gunned down on a Moscow street, the fiercest critic of President Vladimir Putin has been removed from the political stage. But it remains to be seen whether, in death as in life, Nemtsov will remain a threat to Putin’s rule. 
Already, city authorities have approved a mass march for up to 50,000 people in central Moscow on Sunday. The march, expected to be far larger than the scheduled protest rally it replaces, will provide a powerful platform for Kremlin critics who suspect a government hand in Nemtsov’s death. 
Even officials in Putin’s government seem to sense the danger that the former first deputy prime minister’s martyrdom might pose, hinting darkly that Friday night’s drive-by shooting may have been an deliberate “provocation” ahead of the planned weekend rally.

#Digital #Electronic #IoT

Digital Electronic 

“Internet of Things”(IoT) and “Smart #Grid Technologies” 

to #Fully #Eviscerate #Privacy

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Global Research

The “Internet of Things” (IoT) and Smart Grid technologies will together be aggressively integrated into the developed world’s socioeconomic fabric with little-if-any public or governmental oversight. This is the overall opinion of a new report by the Federal Trade Commission, which has announced a series of “recommendations” to major utility companies and transnational corporations heavily invested in the IoT and Smart Grid, suggesting that such technologies should be rolled out almost entirely on the basis of “free market” principles so as not to stifle “innovation.”[1] 

As with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the FTC functions to provide the semblance of democratic governance and studied concern as it allows corporate monied interests and prerogatives to run roughshod over the body politic. 

The IoT refers to all digital electronic and RFID-chipped devices wirelessly connected to the internet. The number of such items has increased dramatically since the early 2000s. In 2003 an estimated 500 million gadgets were connected, or about one for every twelve people on earth. By 2015 the number has grown 50 fold to an estimated 25 billion, or 3.5 units per person. By 2020 the IoT is expected to double the number of physical items it encompasses to 50 billion, or roughly 7 per individual.[2] 

The IoT is developing in tandem with the “Smart Grid,” comprised of tens of millions of wireless transceivers (a combination cellular transmitter and receiver) more commonly known as “smart meters.” Unlike conventional wireless routers, smart meters are regarded as such because they are equipped to capture, store, and transmit an abundance of data on home energy usage with a degree of precision scarcely imagined by utility customers. On the contrary, energy consumers are typically appeased with persuasive promotional materials from their power company explaining how smart meter technology allows patrons to better monitor and control their energy usage. 

Almost two decades ago media sociologist Rick Crawford defined Smart Grid technology as “real time residential power line surveillance” (RRPLS). These practices exhibited all the characteristics of eavesdropping and more. “Whereas primitive forms of power monitoring merely sampled one data point per month by checking the cumulative reading on the residential power meter,” Crawford explains, 

modern forms of RRPLS permit nearly continued digital sampling. This allows watchers to develop a fine-grained profile of the occupants’ electrical appliance usage. The computerized RRPLS device may be placed on-site with the occupants’ knowledge and assent, or it may be hidden outside and surreptitiously attached to the power line feeding into the residence. 

This device records a log of both resistive power levels and reactive loads as a function of time. The RRPLS device can extract characteristic appliance “signatures” from the raw data. For example, existing [1990s] RRPLS devices can identify whenever the sheets are thrown back from a water bed by detecting the duty cycles of the water bed heater. RRPLS can infer that two people shared a shower by noting an unusually heavy load on the electric water heater and that two uses of the hair dryer followed.[3] 

A majority of utility companies are reluctant to acknowledge the profoundly advanced capabilities of these mechanisms that have now been effectively mandated for residential and business clients. Along these lines, when confronted with questions on whether the devices are able to gather usage data with such exactitude, company representatives are apparently compelled to feign ignorance or demur. 

Yet the features Crawford describes and their assimilation with the IoT are indeed a part of General Electric’s I-210+C smart meter, among the most widely-deployed models in the US. This meter is equipped with not one, not two, but three transceivers, the I-210+C’s promotional brochure explains.[4] 

One of the set’s transceivers uses ZigBee Pro protocols, “one of several wireless communication standards in the works to link up appliances, light bulbs, security systems, thermostats and other equipment in home and enterprises.”[5] With most every new appliance now required to be IoT-equipped, not only will consumer habits be increasingly monitored through energy usage, but over the longer term lifestyle and thus behavior will be transformed through power rationing, first in the form of “tiered usage,” and eventually in a less accommodating way through the remote control of “smart” appliances during peak hours.[6] 

Information gathered from the combined IoT and Smart Grid will also be of immense value to marketers that up to now have basically been excluded from the domestic sphere. As an affiliate of WPP Pic., the world’s biggest ad agency put it, the data harvested by smart meters “opens the door to the home. Consumers are leaving a digital footprint that opens the door to their online habits and to their shopping habits and their location, and the last thing that is understood is the home, because at the moment when you shut the door, that’s it.”[7] 

As the FTC’s 2015 report makes clear, this is the sort of retail (permissible) criminality hastened by the merging of Smart Grid and IoT technologies also provides an immense facility for wholesale criminals to scan and monitor various households’ activities as potential targets for robbery, or worse. 

The FTC, utility companies and smart meter manufacturers alike still defer to the Federal Communications Commission as confirmation of the alleged safety of Smart Grid and smart meter deployment. This is the case even though the FCC is not chartered to oversee public health and, basing its regulatory procedure on severely outdated science, maintains that microwave radiation is not a threat to public health so long as no individual’s skin or flesh have risen in temperature. 

Yet in the home and workplace the profusion of wireless technologies such as ZigBee will compound the already significant collective radiation load of WiFi, cellular telephony, and the smart meter’s routine transmissions. The short term physiological impact will likely include weakened immunity, fatigue, and insomnia that can hasten terminal illnesses.[8] 

Perhaps the greatest irony is how the Internet of Things, the Smart Grid and their attendant “Smart Home” are sold under the guise of convenience, personal autonomy, even knowledge production and wisdom. “The more data that is created,” Cisco gushes, “the more knowledge and wisdom people can obtain. IoT dramatically increases the amount of data available for us to process. This, coupled with the Internet’s ability to communicate this data, will enable people to advance even further.”[9] 

In light of the grave privacy and health-related concerns posed by this techno tsunami, the members of a sane society might seriously ask themselves exactly where they are advancing, or being compelled to advance to.

Notes 

[1] Federal Trade Commission, Internet of Things: Privacy and Security in a Connected World, Washington DC, January 2015. Accessible at http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/federal-trade-commission-staff-report-november-2013-workshop-entitled-internet-things-privacy/150127iotrpt.pdf

[2] Dave Evans, “The Internet of Things: How the Next Evolution of the Internet is Changing Everything, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, April 2011, 3. Accessible at http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf

[3] Rick Crawford, “Computer Assisted Crises,” in George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana and Herbert I. Schiller (eds.) Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of Media Means for American and the World, Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1996, 47-81.

[4] “I-210+C with Silver Spring Networks Micro-AP” [Brochure], General Electric, Atlanta Georgia. Accessible at http://www.gedigitalenergy.com/app/Resources.aspx?prod=i210_family&type=1

[5] Stephen Lawson, “ZigBee 3.0 Promises One Smart Home Standard for Many Uses,” pcworld.com, November 16, 2014.

[6] One of the United States’ largest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, has already introduced tiered pricing to curb energy usage in summer months during “high demand” times of the day. http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/smartrate/index.page

[7] Louise Downing, “WPP Unit, Onzo Study Harvesting Smart-Meter Data,” Bloomberg.com, May 11, 2014.

[8] Sue Kovach, “The Hidden Dangers of Cellphone Radiation,” Life Extension Magazine, August 2007; James F. Tracy, “Looming Health Crisis: Wireless Technology and the Toxification of America,” GlobalResearch.ca, July 8, 2012.

[9] Evans, 6.

#Gaza and the Threat of World #War

Mainstream Media Propaganda: 

Breaking the Last Taboo – 

Gaza and the Threat of World War

By John Pilger

“There is a taboo,” said the visionary Edward Said, “on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free.”

For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can’t look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australian, in this epic crime.

The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.

When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine “the greatest moral issue of our time”, he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them.

Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washington’s pet fascists in Latin America didn’t concern themselves with moral window dressing. They simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have compared with te genesis of genocide.

Nothing has changed since the Zionists’ infamous “Plan D” in 1948 that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of the Times of Israel were the words: “Genocide is Permissible”. A deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to what she calls “little snakes”.

For years, reporters have watched Israeli soldiers bait Palestinian children by abusing them through loud-speakers. Then they shoot them dead. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian women about to give birth and refused passage through a roadblock to a hospital; and the baby has died, and sometimes the mother.

For years, reporters have known about Palestinian doctors and ambulance crews given permission by Israeli commanders to attend the wounded or remove the dead, only to be shot through the head.

For years, reporters have known about stricken people prevented from getting life-saving treatment, or shot dead when they’ve tried to reach a clinic for chemotherapy treatment. One elderly lady with a walking stick was murdered in this way – a bullet in her back.

When I put the facts of this crime to Dori Gold, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, he said, “Unfortunately in every kind of warfare there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. But the case you cite was not terrorism. Terrorism means putting the cross-hairs of the sniper’s rifle on a civilian deliberately.”

Ukraine: Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Fascism Join Hands

Ukraine’s Sickness and Europe’s Cure: Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Fascism Join Hands

By Eric Draitser

The situation in Ukraine is evolving by the hour.  Right wing ultranationalists and their “liberal” collaborators have taken control of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and deposed the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, President Yanukovich.

Former Prime Minister, and convicted criminal, Yulia Tymoshenko has been freed, and is now making common cause with Noe-Nazi Right Sector, Svoboda, and other fascist elements, while the opposition’s nominal leaders such as Arseny Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko begin to fade into the background. 

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly watches with anxiousness.  In Washington, Victoria Nuland and the Obama administration rejoice.  However, perhaps the most critical development of all is soon to emerge in Europe, as the forces of Western finance capital prepare to welcome Ukraine into the fold.  They will come bearing the usual neoliberal gifts: austerity and “economic liberalization.”

With the overthrow of the Yanukovich government, the $15 billion of promised Russian financial assistance to Ukraine is in doubt.  According to Moody’s rating agency, “Ukraine will require $24 billion to cover a budget deficit, debt repayments, natural gas bills and pension support just in 2014.”  Without Moscow’s continued bond purchasing and other forms of financial aid, and with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe and the IMF with all the usual austerity conditions attached.

In exchange for European “aid”, Ukraine will be forced to accept the driving down of wages, significant cuts to the public sector and social services, in addition to a rise in taxes on the working class and slashing of pensions.  Moreover, the country will be compelled to accede to a liberalization program that will allow Europe to dump goods into the Ukrainian market, deregulation and the further opening up the country’s financial sector to predatory speculation and privatization.

It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict these developments.  One merely has to look at the wave of austerity in European countries such as Greece and Cyprus.  Furthermore, Eastern European countries with similar economic and historical conditions to Ukraine – Latvia and Slovenia specifically – provide a roadmap for what Ukraine should expect.

Terrorism with a “Human Face”

Terrorism with a “Human Face”: 

Syria Al Qaeda “Freedom Fighters” are “Not Killing Civilians”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

The attacks by opposition forces largely integrated by Al Qaeda terrorists can no longer be denied.

What is now occurring is a re-branding of the various terrorist formations covertly support by Western intelligence.

The latest slur of media disinformation consists in providing a “human face” to Al Qaeda.

While the media acknowledges that the Al Nusrah front is integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated rebels, the  Islamist rebels affiliated with the New Islamic Front –which has received Washington’s ascent– are now portrayed as “freedom fighters” involved strictly in para-military operations.

Media Fabrications

According to the media reports:

1. The opposition rebels are predominantly Syrian nationals.

2. They are not targeting innocent civilians.

3. They are acting in a responsible fashion. They are no longer involved in terrorist acts.  They are targeting government forces and the pro-government National Defense Force militia, set up in towns and villages across Syria.

The attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama

A Reuters report pertaining to a recent rebel attack on an Alawite village in the province of Hama suggests that civilians deaths are few in number, largely the result of “collateral damage”, attributable to  “neglect” pertaining to the government evacuation programs from the areas of combat.

Read carefully (emphasis added). The Reuters report casually denies the atrocities committed by US-NATO-Saudi sponsored terrorists:

Islamist fighters battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces seized control of an Alawite village in the central province of Hama on Sunday, part of an offensive to try to cut off supply routes from Damascus to the north of the country.

The report denies, despite ample evidence, that the “freedom fighters” killed civilians. Detailed government data on civilian casualties are dismissed;

But the government said the dead were mainly women and children and accused the fighters of committing a massacre on the eve of the resumption of peace talks in Geneva.”

Reuters prefers to quote the “evidence” provided by the fake UK based Syrian Observatory. Those killed were part of the government’s militia forces:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the Islamists killed 25 people in the village of Maan, mainly from a pro-Assad National Defence Force militia.
Residents of Maan, around 5 miles east of Syria’s main north-south highway, are from the same Alawite minority as the Assad family which has ruled Syria for the last four decades.
…
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014

The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian national

The Reuters report fails to acknowledge something which is amply documented by media reports and official data: most of the rebels are mercenaries recruited in Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, not to mention several European countries including Britain and France.

The “freedom fighters” are “overwhelmingly” Syrian nationals according to Reuters:

Rebels fighting to overthrow Assad are overwhelmingly from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Islamist and jihadi fighters from across the Islamic world.
“Video footage released on Sunday showed a rebel fighter performing Muslim prayers on top of a municipal building after the seizure of Maan, one of several sites in Hama targeted by the rebels in recent days. Another video showed the dead body of a pro-Assad fighter.
The Observatory said most women and children had been evacuated from the village before it was taken over.
(Reuters report Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2014

Canadians Apologize to Haiti

Ottawa Actively Participated in Haiti Coup d’Etat: 

Canadians Apologize to Haiti, Ten Years after the Coup

By Global Research News

 We sign this statement to tell the world, and especially the Haitian people, that we are ashamed and outraged by the Canadian Government’s active participation in the February 29, 2004 Coup d’Etat that toppled the duly-elected Government of Haiti led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

 

On behalf of all Canadians, the great majority of whom are kept ignorant of this Coup and its aftermath, we sincerely apologize for the terrible, lasting damage it has caused.

An RCMP officer training Haitian National Police recruits in 2005.

Unelected coup Prime Minister Gerard Latortue speaks to Canadian soldiers.

Ten (10) years after the Coup, we sign this statement because there is disturbing and compelling evidence that:

1) Canada was centrally involved in planning the Coup. A year in advance, on January 31 and February 1, 2003, Canada hosted the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti. This controversial meeting was held at the Meech Lake Government Resort, near Gatineau, Québec, to plan and consolidate the Coup.

2) Canada took an active part in the actual forced removal from Haiti and exile to Africa of President Aristide. Canadian soldiers, notably those serving in Joint Task Force 2, were assigned by Canadian government leaders to join local paramilitary mercenaries and U.S. troops illegally deployed to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to conduct the Coup d’État.

A Canadian soldier at the Port-au-Prince airport on February 29, 2004.

Records of the Canadian Parliament show that on March 10, 2004, ten days after the coup, Stockwell Day, then-foreign affairs critic for the Conservative opposition, declared in Parliament: “… we have an elected leader Aristide. We may not have wanted to vote for him… But the (Canadian) government makes a decision that there should be a regime change. It is a serious question that we need to address. That decision was based on what criteria? We must have this discussion…This was clearly a regime change. Whether we like to admit it or not, we took part.”

3) The Coup was followed by several documented massacres and arbitrary arrests of pro-democracy activists. It dismantled Haiti’s entire elected government structure, and U.S.-appointed post-coup regimes — backed financially, militarily and diplomatically by Canada — are marred by serious human rights abuses.

4) One of the most disastrous consequences of the Coup and subsequent U.N. tutelage is that Haiti, a country with no known cases of cholera for the past 100 years, now has one of the worst cholera epidemics in the world. The cholera death toll has already reached 8500 and as of January 2014, more than 700,000 have gotten sick from the deadly bacterium.

Media Journalists and the CIA

Don’t be Fooled by Mainstream Media Journalists, “Independent” Experts and the CIA

By Global Research

Image: Anthony Freda

“Under CIA manipulation, direction and, usually, their payroll, were past and present presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica, “our minister of labor”, “our vice-president”, “my police”, journalists, labor leaders, student leaders, diplomats, and many others. If the Agency wished to disseminate anti-communist propaganda, cause dissension in leftist ranks, or have Communist embassy personnel expelled, it need only prepare some phony documents, present them to the appropriate government ministers and journalists, and – presto! – instant scandal.” (William Blum, CIA Manipulation: The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee, Anti-Empire Report 27 June 2013)

Independent media outlets are increasingly challenging the powers that be and, thanks to social media, the truth about what is really happening in our world can be shared at the click of a button.

Sadly, the imperial war machine continues to rear its violent head in exponential proportion under the guise of democracy and “War on Terrorism”.

This war machine is promoted by the mainstream media who cannot be trusted for many reasons. It is a well documented fact that the CIA has used journalism as a cover for its agents and has planted stories in the media.

Syria: Media Disinformation and Corporate Media’s “Independent Bloggers”

Syria: 

Media Disinformation, War Propaganda 

and the Corporate Media’s “Independent Bloggers”

By Phil Greaves

A glaring example of one of the major pitfalls emerging in supposed “new media” has arisen during the conflict in Syria. Most notably in the form of YouTube blogger, and self-proclaimed weapons expert Eliot Higgins, aka “Brown Moses”. The clique of highly ideological analysts, think-tankers and journalists Higgins’ regularly works with and consults – alongside the dubiously funded western NGO’s he receives payment from – provide a stark indication as to the factions within the corporate media circus this supposedly independent blogger is operating in unison with.

Higgins has provided the western corporate media apparatus the opportunity to present its war-propaganda as having a “new media” facade of impartial legitimacy. Yet it is the same capitalistic “old media” apparatus endlessly promoting his work – consisting of scouring Jihadist war-porn and agitprop on YouTube for tidbits that may bolster corporate media narratives – as an invaluable tool in tracking human rights abuses, arms trafficking, and risk-free coverage of fast evolving conflicts. Yet contrary to the innocuous portrayal of an unemployed YouTube addict in Leicester becoming a credible analyst of a conflict in the Middle East; Higgins’ blog has been thrust into the foreground not through the benefit of impartiality or public appraisals, but through corporate “benefactors” with vested interest operating alongside the same “old media” organisations and stenographers.

US, Saudis, Qatar Attempt “Arab Spring” Retread in Sudan

Old Dog, Old Trick: US, Saudis, Qatar Attempt “Arab Spring” Retread in Sudan

Protests are smokescreen for unfolding US-Saudi-Qatari backed violence seeking regime change in Sudan.

By Tony Cartalucci

The Associated Press reveals that recent and ongoing “Arab Spring-style” unrest in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum is led by Sudan’s Western-backed opposition, the National Umma Party, and the various faux-NGO’s and “independent media” organizations created by the West to prop it up. This reveals yet another Western-engineered uprising designed for regime change in favor of a new, Western friendly client regime.

The AP article, “Sudanese protesters demand the regime’s ouster,” first claims:

Activists acknowledge they have no unified leadership or support from political parties but express hope the spontaneous nature of the current round of protests means they’re gaining momentum.

However, AP then admits [emphasis added]:

One of Sudan’s most prominent opposition leaders, Sadiq al-Mahdi of the National Umma Party, told worshippers at a mosque in the district of Omdurman that al-Bashir has been spending the state’s budget on “consolidating power” and failed “to lift the agony off the citizens’ shoulders.”
After the sermon, protesters marched through the district, a longtime opposition stronghold, chanting “the people want the downfall of the regime,” the slogan heard in Arab Spring uprisings that began in late 2010 and have led to the ouster of the leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Clearly, the “activists” indeed have a leader – Sadiq al-Mahdi of the National Umma Party who was literally leading the protesters out into the streets. And while comparisons to the “Arab Spring” invokes images of peaceful “pro-democracy” protests – AP admits that the protesters are already turning to violence:

Angry protesters torched police and dozens of gas stations and government buildings, and students marched chanting for al-Bashir’s ouster.

AP, perhaps hoping readers would not bother researching the matter further, also quotes “local blogger and journalist Reem Shawka” to bolster their narrative. Shawka is a columnist at Sudan’s 500 Words Magazine. While 500 Words maintains that it is “a Sudanese independent online magazine,” it proudly advertises in the right column of its website an upcoming US Institute of Peace “Sudanese and South Sudanese Youth Leaders Program.” Like Thailand’s deceitful US-funded propaganda front Prachatai, 500 Words is most likely directly funded by the US government, and is most certainly in tune with the US State Department’s agenda and talking points regarding Sudan.

Image: Sudan’s “independent online magazine,” 500 Words proudly advertises for the US Institute of Peace on its website (right-hand side), exposing the predictable ties between its support for Western-backed opposition inside of Sudan and the US State Department through the National Endowment for Democracy and others, who most likely funds the online propaganda front. 

….

Indeed 500 Words’ editor-in-chief, Moez Ali, has his own page on “Open Democracy” – funded by Open Society Institute, the Oak Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, TIDES, and many others.

It should be mentioned that the US Institute of Peace – advertised for on 500 Words - has played an instrumental role in the Western-engineered “Arab Spring,” where it literally crafts the constitutions and structure of proxy regimes the West plans to create once targeted nations have been overthrown.

Who is Opposition Leader Sadiq al-Mahdi?

Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of Sudan’s National Umma Party, is a member of the EU-US-Saudi-Qatari run Arab Democracy Foundation and the Club de Madrid which features former US President Bill Clinton as a “full member” amongst many others, and is backed by Wall Street and London’s myriad of “international institutions” and foundations including the World Bank, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, Walmart, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Microsoft, and many others.

Al-Mahdi himself was Oxford educated, according to his official Club de Madrid biography, which also states [emphasis added]:

Al-Mahdi was elected president of the Umma party in November 1964, and led a campaign to promote political activity, develop political Islam, and reform the party by expanding its base and promoting democracy behavior. Despite his efforts towards a democratic government, there was another coup d´état in 1969 that led to a dictatorship referred to as the May Regime.
He was soon arrested by the military government, exiled to Egypt, and detained in Sudanese prisons repeatedly until 1974. Later that year, he traveled abroad and toured Arab and African Capitals where he delivered a number of lectures. While in exile, he formed the National Democratic Front (NDF), comprised of Umma, the Democratic Unionist Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Through his efforts, the NDF was able to make an accord of national reconciliation in 1977 with the May Regime that mandated democratic reform.

His direct association with the Muslim Brotherhood is important, as this is the organization that as far back as 2007, under then US President George Bush, began receiving US-Saudi-Israeli support to prepare the violent overthrow of several nations, including in particular, Syria. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article,  “The Redireciton: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” would reveal US-Saudi-Israeli support behind funding and arming the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria:

“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.”

Hersh also reported that a supporter of the Lebanese pro-US-Saudi Hariri faction had met Dick Cheney in Washington and relayed personally the importance of using the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in any move against the ruling government:

“[Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.”

The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007 US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood:

“There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.”

That al-Mahdi, whose coalition included the Muslim Brotherhood that’s played an instrumental role executing recent Western designs in Syria and Egypt, and whose uprising and calls for faux-reform is echoed by the likes of Sudanese extremist leader Hassan al-Turabi (who had in fact invited Osama Bin Laden to Sudan), is now leading protesters through the streets of Sudan’s capital, torching infrastructure, government buildings, and police stations (just as was done across Egypt and Syria), indicates another attempt by the West to overthrow the Sudanese government via proxy militancy.

That the West has once again “coincidentally” arrayed its vast resources behind al-Mahdi’s “revolution,” which includes Al Qaeda-linked leaders like al-Turabi, once again illustrates that so-called “Islamic” extremism is a geopolitical tool both created and intentionally perpetuated by the West, both as a pretext for direct military invasion and occupation (Mali, Afghanistan) and as an inexhaustible proxy mercenary force for overthrowing targeted nations (Libya, Egypt, Syria).

What to Watch For 

Sudan shares borders with NATO-overthrown Libya, destabilized Egypt, and US military proxy Ethiopia. It is also across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia itself. Both Libya and Egypt have sizable US-Saudi-Israeli-Qatari-backed terrorist organizations and their affiliated political arms – the Muslim Brotherhood being the most prominent. Sudan is a potential tinderbox made more volatile in recent years due to the Muslim Brotherhood’s US-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli enabled rise, along with the Western-backed terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, that form it’s armed factions.

The West’s interest in Sudan is not causal or spontaneous. It was listed as one of several nations the US had intended to violently overthrow and subjugate as a client regime since at least 2001, revealed in a speech given by US Army General Wesley Clark in 2007.

With a recent terrorist attack by US armed and backed Al Qaeda in Nairobi Kenya threatening to justify new joint African Union-US AFRICOM incursions into Somalia, and destabilizations ongoing in both Egypt and to a much greater extent in Syria, the words of General Wesley Clark are both prophetic and indicative of the true nature of both the so-called “Arab Spring” and the attempted violent regime changes being organized behind the smokescreen of “pro-democracy protesters.”

While Sudan may not seem to have significance to most across the West, the geopolitical implications of an entire region from Mali to Pakistan under Western destabilization directly impacts oil, logistics, and stability across the globe. Nations like China which relies on African and Middle Eastern trade, are directly impacted by US attempts to destabilize and overthrow Sudan - and is in fact one of the driving motivations of the West’s so-called “Arab Spring.”

Following the “Arab Spring” playbook, we should expect attempts to justify the increased militarization of the so-called “opposition,” who will at first be portrayed as “pro-democracy” moderates forced to “defend themselves,” but will be fully revealed as Al Qaeda as full-scale proxy military operations get underway. The only way to avert a destructive military conflict is for the Sudanese government to swiftly and severely crush the opposition and secure the borders where NATO-backed militants and their equipment are most likely to flow.

Sudan’s government must also make real attempts at reform, while exposing the foreign-backed nature of opposition leaders trying to divide and destroy the nation. By breaking the predictable “evil dictator” mold Sudan’s leadership has been cast in by the Western media, it, and other nations targeted by Western regime change can even the odds leveled against them by the still formidable Western press and their partners in propaganda across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.

Unprecedented amounts of resources have been committed to the geopolitical reordering of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. It would be a considerable mistake for any nation overtly listed by the US as “pending regime change” to underestimate any beginnings of unrest clearly backed by foreign interests. While some operations may be “testing the waters,” the final push can come at any time with fully militarized proxies pre-positioned and prepared to sow the same genocidal destruction US-backed terrorists in Syria are carrying out.