D Is For #Dictatorship Disguised as a #Democracy

D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
By John W. Whitehead
What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing. Read more...

Syria Testimonies: A Mother’s Brave Testimony after Martyrdom of Her Son, Majed, 4th April 2019
By Vanessa Beeley
Majed was sitting on the street drinking coffee with his friends when the rocket landed around 20 meters away from them. He and 42 year old father of two, Yousef Habib Najjar, were hit by the shrapnel, the other friends survived uninjured. Yousef later also died from shrapnel that had entered his brain. Read more...

Named: The People Killed in Gaza and Israel this Weekend

By Middle East Eye
After the worst fighting seen in Gaza since the war in 2014, at least 25 Palestinians, including two pregnant women and a 14-month-old baby girl, have been killed in the past three days, while four Israelis were killed by rocket fire from Gaza. Read more...

Sloppy Journalism: CNN Falsely Claims Venezuela’s Guaido Was Elected President in January
By Jason Ditz
Continuing to try to advance the US narrative that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido is the “duly elected” president, CNN went to the trouble on Sunday afternoon of inventing an entire election to base this around. Read more...

Bolton’s Vague Press Release Lays Foundation for Military Attack Against Iran
By Whitney Webb
According to Bolton’s statement, an attack launched by a “proxy” of Iran on not just assets but “interests” of the U.S. in the region or “interests” of a U.S. ally in the region, would now be sufficient to trigger a U.S. attack on Iran, even if Iran itself was not directly responsible. Read more...

Italy, the Aircraft Carrier on the War Front
By Comitato No Nato
The U.S. Armed Forces have in Italy (according to the official report of the Pentagon Base Structure Report) more than 1,500 buildings, with a total surface area of over 1 million m², and they rent or have been granted permission to use a further 800 buildings, with a surface of approximately 900,000 m². In total, there are over 2,300 buildings with an area of approximately 2 million m² scattered over fifty sites. But this is only part of the U.S. military presence in Italy. Read more...

Embassy Protection Collective: We’re Still Here and We’re Staying
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
The Embassy Protection Collective formed on April 10, the day after the Trump administration manipulated the Organization of American States (OAS) to change the rules so they could recognize their puppet, Juan Guaido, as president of Venezuela. The OAS could not get the required two-thirds vote to recognize a government so they changed the rules to a mere majority and barely got that. By then, the US had allowed their Guaido coup forces to take the Venezuelan military attaché building in Washington, DC and three diplomatic offices in New York City. Read more...

Ever More Complex EU Gas Pipeline Geopolitics
By F. William Engdahl
Israel plans to construct the world’s longest underwater gas pipeline together with Cyprus and Greece to carry Eastern Mediterranean gas on to Italy and the EU southern states. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just endorsed the project. It will run smack up against a competing Turkish-Russian gas pipeline, Turk Stream, against a potential Qatari-Iran-Syria pipeline, as well as de facto undercut the Washington attempt to get more US LNG gas to the EU to reduce Russian dependency. Read more...