Bulletin
N° 812
“The Yellow Submarine”
https://putlocker9.nl/film/yellow-submarine-1968-1080p/watching.html
(1968)
&
“Kings Bay Plowshares: Meet Two of the Seven Activists Who Secretly Entered a Nuclear Submarine Base”
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/23/kings_bay_plowshares_meet_two_of
(2018)
Subject : The Horrors of War, the Reproductions of
Capitalism: Who will stop these people?
26 July 2018
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Today's
defeat of the US-led forces in Syria will be accompanied predictably by
high-volume propaganda against Iran, Russia and China. The indispensable enemy
must be maintained for industrial capitalist profits to flow and, of course, for
banking interests in social control to grow.
While
the inevitable collapse of the late capitalist system continues at what seems
to be an escalating pace, the promising appearance of future social structures are
hardly visible in the din of this monumental confusion.
Now
threatened with extinction, humanity is polarized as never before between those
whose greed is insatiable and those who simply want to live decent lives. The mass murders we must witness on almost a daily basis speak to the wholsale
devaluation of human life. Resistance movements make this violence more
visible, but the cause of this violence is found elsewhere, in the deeply
rooted traditions of capitalist exploitation and alienation, and the quasi-religious
collaboration of the masses who have been cynically
ensnared by identity politics and consumerism, until their exclusive
overconsumption threatens our extinction.
The
25 + items below provide CEIMSA readers with another up-date in this saga
of Capitalist Decline. We see in the essays and articles below failing alliances
and pathetic self-deceptions which can only contribute to the collapse of this
political economy, which is formally ignorant of class struggle. Where, we can only ask, are the thinkers who might be preparing to
implement a “Plan B”. Such rational thought seems to be
beyond the pale of contemplation in today's society, but is it really . . . ?
Cheerleaders
on the side lines, however, are simply not enough!
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
a.
The All-Pervasive Military/Security
Complex
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49914.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
The
article below by Professor Joan Roelofs is reproduced
with permission from CounterPunch.
The
article below by Professor Joan Roelofs is long but
it's very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the
military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social,
economic, and political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an
extremely brave or foolhearty person to take on this
most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to normalize US
relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the “enemy”
that justifies its enormous budget and power.
In
1961 President Eisenhower in his
last public address to the American people warned us about the
danger to democracy and accountable government
presented by the military/industrial complex. You can imagine how much stronger
the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The
Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to
comprehend how powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven
into the fabric of America. No amount of diplomacy by Lavrov
and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the control over the
United States exercised by the military/security complex.
===========
b.
American
Scholars Say
The
Real Threat To The U.S. Is Russophobia
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49893.htm
Watch
Posted July 20, 2018
Two American foreign policy experts, Stephen F. Cohen and
John Mearsheimer, both say they are afraid
anti-Russia sentiment in the U.S. will tank Trump's efforts.
American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t for These 8 Myths
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-society-would-collapse-if-it-werent-for-these-8-myths/
===========
c.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Friday, 20 July, 2018
Subject: [MCM] The sham conviction of Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev
John Remington Graham's separate motion before the US Court of Appeals is at
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/20/appeal-court-intervention/.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/20/the-false-prosecution-of-dzhokhkar-tsarnaev/
The False Prosecution of Dzhokhkar Tsarnaev
Boston
Marathon Bombing -
The False
Prosecution of Dzhokhkar Tsarnaev
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49897.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
As I reported at
the time, and as all evidence indicates, the alleged Boston Marathon Bombing
was a publicly announced drill in which crisis actors were used. There were no
real deaths or injuries, and the Tsarnaev brothers
did not set off a bomb.
The drill was turned
into a real event by propagandists who used the propaganda to advance their
agenda of police state regulation and to test US reaction to the use of martial
law to close down the city of Boston and the airport and to use 10,000 armed
troops to invade without warrants and search citizens’ homes under the guise
that a dangerous 19-year old “terrorist,” who was already shot up by soldiers
or police, was on the loose. The insouciant American public, the law schools,
bar associations, US Congress and media accepted this extraordinary violation
of the US Constitution based on the most flimsy of all possible stories, thus
opening Pandora’s Box of police state measures by the US government.
The faked
terrorist event required terrorists, and the Tsarnaev
brothers were selected for that patsy role. The older brother was murdered by
police. The younger brother, having unexpectedly survived police attempts to
shoot him to death, was put on trial. His attorneys were appointed by the
government, and the attorneys, rather than the prosecutor, convicted their
assigned client.
All of this was
accepted by the public, but not by John Remington Graham, an attorney of wide
experience. He saw that exculpatory evidence proving the innocence of the
surviving younger brother, Dzhokhar, was ignored and
later kept out of the trial. Mr. Graham took action that succeeded in the First
Circuit accepting into the record the exculpatory evidence, thereby requiring
that the evidence be considered in the appeal of Dzhokhar’s
kangaroo court death sentence.
Attentive people
abroad have noticed the increasing corruption and collapse of justice in
America. On July 4, the Danish publication, Radians & Inches, published
John Remington Graham’s account of the prosecution of Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev. With permission, it is reproduced below.
Documents relating to the case will be posted separately.
===========
d.
From:
"Elizabeth
Warren (via DFA)" <info@democracyforamerica.com>
Sent: Saturday, 21 July, 2018
Subject: We need answers about family separation. Will you sign my
petition?
Francis
-- Elizabeth Warren is courageously taking on Kathy Kraninger over her role in Donald Trump's cruel
immigration policies -- with the most powerful confrontation coming
yesterday in a pivotal Senate hearing, as Sen. Warren describes below. We
need to have her back now.
Kraninger
has been tapped to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the important
agency Sen. Warren helped develop. But she refuses to answer questions about
her possible role in developing Donald Trump's family separation
policies. Check out Elizabeth Warren's email from yesterday below, then
sign our petition demanding answers from Kathy Kraninger
on family separation now. -- Karli Wallace
Thompson, Senior Digital Manager, Democracy for America
I'm
disgusted.
I
just got back to my office from the Senate Banking Committee, where I asked
Kathy Kraninger – Donald Trump’s pick to lead the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – some tough questions.
As
a White House Office of Management and Budget official, Kraninger
oversaw the budget for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department
of Justice – the two cabinet agencies that implemented Trump’s “zero-tolerance”
policy that ripped babies away from their parents at the border.
I
repeatedly asked her: Did you help develop or implement this policy?
She
bobbed, she weaved – and she completely dodged the question.
Then
I asked her, point blank: Do you think it is immoral to set up a plan whose
deliberate intent is to inflict harm on children?
She
couldn’t give me a straight answer. She refused to answer the question “yes” or
“no.”
Kathy
Kraninger’s role in the border separation policy is a
moral stain that will follow her for the rest of her life – and if we give her
a big promotion to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, then it’s a
stain on the senators who vote for her.
We
still need answers from Kathy Kraninger – because we
certainly didn’t get them in today’s confirmation hearing. The American people
need to see Kraninger’s OMB documents and emails
detailing her role in this immigration policy – to see who Trump wants to put
in charge of an agency whose sole mission is to stand up for people who don’t
have power.
This
isn’t about politics – this is about people. The CFPB needs a leader who will
stand up to powerful interests and level the playing field for working people –
and I know that person is not Kathy Kraninger.
Thanks
for being a part of this,
-
Elizabeth
+
Migrant Children Detained in Shelters Being
Drugged, Told Not to Hug, Forced to Bathe in Sinks
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/20/migrant_children_detained_in_shelters_being
. . . the U.S. military and CIA contractor MVM has
admitted it detained migrant children overnight inside a vacant Phoenix office
building with dark windows, no kitchen, only a few toilets. A Reveal investigation
earlier this month uncovered what some are calling a “black site” for migrant
children, after a neighbor filmed children in sweatsuits
being led into the building. The building was leased in March by MVM, a
military contractor. Now a new report
by Reveal shows MVM also operated a second office nearby, where a
neighbor reported seeing immigrant children bathing themselves in bathroom
sinks.
===========
e.
From:
Mark
Crispin Miller
Sent: Sunday, 22 July, 2018
Subject: [MCM] Israel evacuates White Helmets
newsfromunderground@googlegroups.com
Just as a reminder (since I've sent them out
before), here are links to several pieces laying out some awful truths about
the
White Helmets—who certainly are not what
"our free press" and Hollywood have cracked them up to be, but a jihadist
propaganda mill, funded by
the US and UK (at whose request the IDF has rescued them).
- Vanessa Beeley, “John Pilger Exposes White Helmets as
‘Propaganda Construct in Syria,’” 21st Century Wire, May
26, 2017; http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/05/26/john-pilger-exposes-white-helmets-as-uk-propaganda-construct-in-syria/
- Eva Bartlett, “How the Mainstream
Media Whitewashed Al-Qaeda and the White Helmets in Syria,”
Global Research, Jan. 6, 2018; https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-mainstream-media-whitewashed-al-qaeda-and-the-white-helmets-in-syria/5624930
- Carla Ortiz, “The Truth about
Syria,” interview on “The Jimmy Dore Show,” April 22, 2018; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kL2IjbgEhc
MCM
Syria conflict: White
Helmets evacuated by Israel
(July 22, 2018)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44915099
Israel says it has
carried out an evacuation of members of Syria's White Helmets civil defence group from a war zone in south-western Syria.
Some 422 volunteers and family members were taken to Jordan via
the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights overnight.
The UK, one of the nations requesting Israel's help, hailed the
operation and will assist with resettlement.
The White Helmets describe themselves as a volunteer workforce
that acts to save people in Syria's war zones.
Supporters of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, and his Russian allies, say the White Helmets support the rebels and
also have links to jihadist groups.
How did the operation come about?
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they were acting on a
request from the US, the UK and other European nations.
The White Helmets had become trapped in an area of south-western
Syria near the border with the Golan Heights after an offensive by the Syrian
military.
Image copyrightIDFImage captionPictures supplied by the Israel Defence
Forces show families waiting to get off the bus after being safely evacuated
The offensive, begun in June, has seen a number of agreements
that have led to the evacuation of rebel forces from the Deraa
and Quneitra areas to regions further north.
The
latest deal for Quneitra was reached on Thursday.
The White Helmets operate only in rebel-held areas, although
they say they are non-partisan.
+
Western
States Salvage Terror Assets in Syria
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49912.htm
by
Finian Cunningham
Western
states made a dramatic intervention in the Syrian war earlier this week to
extricate hundreds of terrorist militants. The militants are to be fast-tracked
for resettlement in Europe and Canada. But in saving their terror assets,
Western governments are risking future public safety as well as sowing seeds
for increasing multicultural strife. In a stunning revelation of the foreign
links to the extremists in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
ordered his military forces to evacuate up to 800 militants belonging to the
so-called White Helmets. They are the propaganda merchants for Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda-linked terror organizations.
Netanyahu announced that
the blatant intervention to rescue the jihadists in southwest Syria was made at
the personal request of US President Donald Trump and the Canadian premier
Justin Trudeau, “among others”. Separately, there were reports of
four senior jihadist commanders being given safe passage by Israeli forces out
of Syria as the Syrian army closed in on the last-remaining militant
strongholds around the southwest city of Daraa and Quneitra province.
===========
f.
From: "IAK Blog" <contact@ifamericansknew.org>
Sent: Thursday, 19 July, 2018
Subject: Jewish groups protest false definitions of anti-Semitism,
air strikes, aid, and more...
|
+
The ICC is reaching out to victims of war crimes in
Palestine
by Nada Kiswanson
In
an extraordinary move, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal
Court recently issued a decision
ordering its registry "to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of
public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and
affected communities in the situation in Palestine".
It
is the first time the court issues an order for outreach at the earliest stages
of the process, and before a decision has been reached by the ICC Prosecutor to
open a formal investigation. The decision struck fear in the Israelis, who were
yet again confronted with the long reach of the court. It also surprised those
closely following the work of the court, including myself. What is to be made
of this decision and could it be that the court is attempting to correct its
criticized approach to victims and affected communities in general, through the
situation in Palestine?
The
decision came at a time when state representatives gathered in The Hague to mark twenty years
since the adoption of the Court's founding treaty, the so-called Rome Statute.
Those participating in the celebrations reminisced at the landmark decision to
establish the first permanent international criminal institution capable, in
theory, of holding world leaders to account for their role in the commission of
war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The novelty of the decision
by the Pre-Trial Chamber on the situation in Palestine reminds us, however, of
the court's shortcomings in engaging with victims and affected communities in a
timely, continuous, and valuable manner as well as ensuring their early
participation in the proceedings so that their unique views and concerns are
taken into consideration from the beginning until the end.
===========
g.
Israel,
Land Of Miracles
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49894.htm
by Gideon Levy
The days of
kites abound with miracles here. The fact that more Israelis were scratched
while shaving in recent months than from kite fires is attributed entirely to
miracles
A great miracle
occurred on Moshav Tkuma. A
cinder carried by a paper kite from Gaza landed in a kindergarten yard. The
kindergarten teacher called what she saw in the sky a finger-size glowing
ember. She was the first to detect it and rushed to get all the children into
the protected area. A small boy wearing a large kippa
said a miracle had happened.
+
Israel strikes Gaza after its soldiers come under fire
As fears rose of
a wider conflict in the region, the UN pleaded with all sides to "step
back from the brink" of war.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-strikes-gaza-after-its-soldiers-come-under-fire-n893216
===========
h.
Israel Declares Itself Apartheid State
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49879.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
July 19, 2018 –
Today Israel declared itself to be an apartheid
state:
The Knesset
passed early Thursday a controversial bill that officially defines Israel as
the national homeland of the Jewish people and asserts that "the
realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to
the Jewish people," with 62 lawmakers voting in favor of the legislation
and 55 opposing it.
...
The nation-state law also includes clauses stating that a "united
Jerusalem" is the capital of Israel and that Hebrew is the country's
official language. Another says that "the state sees the development of
Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its
establishment and consolidation."
===========
i.
Violent Coup Fail in Nicaragua
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/24/violent-coup-fail-in-nicaragua/
by Kevin Zeese
On Clearing
The FOG radio and podcast, Margaret Flowers and I
interviewed Stephen Sefton, who lives in
Nicaragua and is a founder of Tortilla con Sal. He names the names behind
the violence and describes what is happening in Nicaragua.
Lessons Learned From The Failed Violent Coup In Nicaragua And Next Steps:
The
violent coup
in Nicaragua has failed. This does not mean the United States and oligarchs
are giving up, but this phase of their effort to remove the government did not
succeed. The coup exposed the alliances who are working with the
United States to put in place a neoliberal government that is controlled by the
United States and serves the interests of the wealthy. People celebrated the
failure of the coup but realize work needs to be done to protect the gains of
the Sandinista revolution.
===========
j.
Russia
Ditches Plan to Scrap 10,000 Reserve Tanks
Will
now retain as many as 6,000 non-serving tanks that were previously
slated to be dismantled for scrap
https://www.checkpointasia.net/russia-ditches-plan-to-scrape-10000-reserve-tanks/
by Dave Mujamdar
Understandable given NATO encroachment on Moscow’s
borders. In a high-intensity war tank attrition is sky-high. 80,000 Soviet ones
were lost in WWII. Best to have a big reserve pool
Russia is sharply curtailing the number of
Soviet-era tanks that is planning to scrap. In previous years, Moscow had
planned to send some 10,000 of its older model tanks to the junk yard for
disposal, now that figure could be reduced to as few as 4,000. “Initially, when
the program was drafted, it was planned that about 10,000 Soviet-made armored
fighting vehicles (AFVs) stored in warehouses…will be scrapped,” Lt. Gen.
Alexander Shevchenko, chief of the main armored directorate of the Russian
Defense Ministry, told the TASS news agency. “At present, the
number of armored fighting vehicles to be scrapped in line with the program
until 2020 stands at about 4,000 such vehicles.” Shevchenko cited
changes in in the security environment for the move.
Instead of being scrapped, the older vehicles will now be upgraded.
+
The Mind Reels
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/23/the-mind-reels/
(July 23, 2018)
by Winslow Myers
“I cannot
forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery,
inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national
interest.”
—Winston
Churchill
Equally
enigmatic is how Mr. Trump went about representing the national interest of the
United States at Helsinki. Until Mr. Mueller is ready to provide possible
clarification, the fog around the president’s motivation persists: narcissistic
ineptitude almost surely; perhaps also kompromat,
collusion, and/or fear of money laundering becoming exposed.
All
the confusion provides an object lesson in the plasticity of enemy-imaging. As
someone old enough to remember the lame British-American interference in Iran
in the fifties, the hysteria of McCarthyism, Hoover’s clandestine harassment of
Martin Luther King Jr., and far greater debacles like the wanton destruction of
Vietnam and Cambodia, I persist in my skepticism concerning the degree of
competence we can expect from the bureaucrats and generals to whom we
reluctantly entrust our safety.
But
now, with the executive branch demonstrably willing to gallop bareback off the
established foreign policy reservation, the knee-jerk adversary of progressives
for decades, the so-called “deep state,” with its reflexive fear of Russian
totalitarian infiltration and its perpetuation of military dominance in all
earthly spheres, may at least be providing a sorely needed element of restraint
and integrity.
The
plot is further thickened by an interesting analysis in The Nation magazine by
Stephen Cohen, a Princeton professor emeritus and lifetime Russia watcher. He
asks us to take a deep breath in the midst of our anxiety about the president’s
apparent capitulation to his authoritarian friend in power.
Cohen
asserts that when the president states that “I hold both countries responsible.
I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been
foolish. … And I think we’re all to blame,” he is onto something:
Cohen
continues: “For the past 15 years, the virtually unanimous American bipartisan
establishment answer has been: Putin, or “Putin’s Russia,” is solely to blame.
Washington’s decision to expand NATO to Russia’s border, bomb Russia’s
traditional ally Serbia, withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, carry out military regime change in Iraq and Libya, provoke the
Ukrainian crisis and back the coup against its legitimate president in 2014,
and considerably more—none of these, only “Putin’s aggression,” led to the new
Cold War. This explanation has long become a rigid bipartisan orthodoxy tolerating
no dissent.”
Tragically,
the president’s compulsive willingness to lie, his thin-skinned, possibly
guilt-motivated defensiveness, his Kissingeresque
lone-cowboy-riding-to-the-rescue style, along with the appallingly
short-sighted withdrawal from both the Paris Accords and the Iran nuclear deal,
has pretty much destroyed his credibility as a heretical and possibly creative
anti-establishment actor. When he assigns blame equally between America and
Russia for the new Cold War, all most of us can see is an echo of the false
equivalence of his assigning blame equally to the neo-Nazis and the civil
rights protesters in Charlottesville.
Where
does a citizen go in all this craziness for an authoritative sense of context?
One useful perspective is the long-term history of the nuclear arms race, out
of which came a bracing truth from another apparent adversary of progressive
thinking, Ronald Reagan: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be
fought.” In spite of our finding ourselves, more than a half-century beyond the
Cuban missile crisis, still building new nuclear weapons on all sides, we
humans have not gotten the message: continuing the arms race on the basis of
deterrence prophesies not greater security but only inevitable mass death
through error, misinterpretation, or miscalculation.
The
“establishment” is well aware of this. They are designing new nuclear weapons
to be less powerful so that they become strategically more “flexible” and
“useful,” and presumably can avoid fatal consequences like nuclear winter. But
smaller weapons only make the nuclear threshold easier to cross, and once it is
crossed, who will prevent escalation to the larger, world-ending weapons?
===========
k.
Russia
Has Dumped Its Entire US Bonds Portfolio — $100 Billion in Two Months
A
dress rehearsal to see what would happen when/if China
does the same?
by Tyler Durden
Selling off
your US bonds is one thing, but dumping your entire stock in the space of two
months?
===========
l.
Conversation
with Alexander Buzgalin
“. . . after the
chaotic ‘90’s, the Russian oligarchs needed a stronger central state to defend
their class interests. . .”
https://therealnews.com/series/reality-asserts-itself-alexander-buzgalin
===========
m.
Russiagate
Is Like 9/11,
Except It’s
Made Of Pure Narrative
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49896.htm
by Caitlin Johnstone
The
last few days have been truly amazing. I didn’t even write an article
yesterday; I’ve just been staring transfixed by my social media feeds watching
liberal Americans completely lose their minds. I can’t look away. It’s like
watching a slow motion train wreck, and everyone on the train is being
really homophobic.
I’ve
been writing about Russiagate since it started, and I
can honestly say this is the worst it’s ever been, by far. The
most hysterical, the most shrill, the most emotional, the most cartoonishly over-the-top and hyperbolic. The fact
that Trump met with Putin in private and then publicly expressed doubt about
the establishment Russia narrative has sent some political factions of America
into an emotional state that is indistinguishable from what you’d expect if
Russia had bombed New York City. This despite the fact that
the establishment Russia narrative consists of no actual, visible events
whatsoever. It is made of pure narrative.
+
The Arrest of
Maria Butina Is Another Hoax
https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-the-arrest-of-maria-butina-is-another-hoax/
by Paul Craig Roberts
The
Guardian Neswspaper, which once was an honest
newspaper that spoke for the British working class has now been suborned, in my
opinion, by the CIA and British Intelligence (sic). Perhaps you remember a few
years ago that The Guardian complied with illegal orders from the corrupt UK
government to destroy the Wikileak files that
revealed US felonies and deceptions of so-called “allies,” who are nothing but
Washington’s vassals. What disturbs me about The Guardian is that it no longer
guards truth and the working class. Instead The
Guardian guards the extraordinary lies that serve the agenda of the US
hegemonic state.
I
cannot understand why any of The Guardian’s original subscribers read apologies
for Washington’s crimes and misdeeds or why The Guardian prefers conflict
instead of peace with Russia. Why does The Guardian work to increase hostility
between nuclear powers that can easily result in the termination of life on
earth? Are The Guardian’s editors paid by the CIA and
UK “intelligence,” as the German newspaper editor Udo
Ulfkotte said in his book, Bought Journalism, or are
The Guardian’s editiors threatened with arrest and
prison unless they serve the interests of the UK’s overlord in Washington?
Whatever The Guardian is, just like The New York
Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the rest of the Western presstitutes, journalism is not present on its pages. What
the West has is a Ministry of Propaganda. The public is lied to and
brainwashed, not informed. We can see the total failure of The Guardian, and
all the rest as well, in the reporting on the arrest of the alleged Russian
spy, Maria Butina by the utterly corrupt US
Department of Justice (sic). The principal evidence against Maria is that she
met with a former Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.
According to the utterly corrput US Department of
Justice (sic), an assistant US attorney, Erik Kenerson,
“cited Butina’s encounter with Kislyak
as proof that she was in touch with diplomatic or consular officials and must
be detained while awaiting trial.”
So,
in America if you get your photo taken with a former Russian ambassador to the
US it is evidence that you are a spy. I have read the indictment of Maria Butina. She is not accused of any crime recognizable by
Anglo-American law. She is indicted under Jeremy Bentham’s 18th century
totalitarian argument that she is guilty of the “crime” of possibly intending
to commit one in the future. (See The Tyranny of
Good intentions by PCR and Lawrence Stratton.) Maria, who has long red
hair but otherwise is unremarkable, especially in contrast to the women that
the interest groups, such as the military/security complex, Wall Street, and
the Israel lobby are believed to provide to the executive and legislative
branches of the US government, is certainly not the seductive Russian spy that
Americans know from James Bond films. The woman has not done a thing. She is
indicted for a non-crime. She is indicted because she is Russian and living,
according to the presstitute media, with a
congressional staffer. Maria has no way whatsoever to spy on the US through the
low level congressional staffer with whom she was allegedly living.
===========
n.
No Liberal Rallies Yet for the Children
of Yemen
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/no-liberal-rallies-yet-for-the-children-of-yemen/
by Paul Street
Hundreds of thousands of people showed up across the
United States at more than 600 gatherings three weeks ago. They came out to
protest Donald
Trump‘s “zero tolerance” immigration policy in highly
choreographed, Democratic Party-affiliated “Families Belong Together” rallies
and marches. Liberal celebrities marched and spoke. Local, state, and
federal Democratic Party politicians and office-holders gave passionate
speeches denouncing Trump’s separation of Central American migrant children
from their parents at the southern U.S. border.
Marchers
carried signs expressing their concern for children and families. Here are some
of the messages written on the posters displayed at these
gatherings:
“We
care”
“I
Raise my Voice Not so I can Shout but So that Those
Without a Voice Can be Heard”
“Do
All Lives Still Matter?”
“What
Would Mr. Rogers Say?”
“Compassion”
(The
issue that sparked this remarkable outpouring has already been pushed off the
front pages and the cable news headlines by the resurgent RussiaGate
story, brought to new intensity by Trump’s “spectacular debacle” alongside Vladimir Putin in Helsinki,
Finland. It is a victim of the all-powerful “now we see you, now we don’t” U.S.
news cycle – this even as nearly two-thirds of the migrant children criminally
separated have yet to be reunited with their parents and as evidence emerges
that the Trump administration intended for the family separations to be permanent.)
“Emaciated
Babies”: 50,000 Yemeni Children May Have Died in 2017
We
have yet to learn of any large and widespread U.S. demonstrations on behalf of
the children and families of Yemen, where the U.S. is deeply complicit in the
creation of a situation that “looks,” in the words of the United Nations’
humanitarian chief, “like the Apocalypse.” UNICEF reported last year that a child dies from
preventable causes on the average of once every 10 minutes in Yemen.
As
the Associated Press (AP) reported last May, roughly 3 million Yemeni women and
children are “acutely malnourished; another 400,000 children are fighting for
their lives.” Further: “Nearly a third of Yemen’s population — 8.4 million of
its 29 million people — rely completely on food aid or else they would starve.
That number grew by a quarter over the past year…Aid agencies warn that parts
of Yemen could soon start to see widespread death from famine. More and more
people are reliant on aid that is already failing to reach people. …It is
unknown how many have died, since authorities are not able to track cases. Save
the Children late last year estimated that 50,000 children may have died in
2017 of extreme hunger or disease (emphasis added),
given that up to 30 percent of children with untreated cases of severe acute
malnutrition die.”
+
Government Pays $775 Per Night For
Children
Separated From Parents At U.S
Border
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49895.htm
by
Emily Stewart
Newly created “tent cities” for separated children cost two
to three times what it would to keep them with their parents.
===========
o.
From: "Mark Crispin Miller"
<markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, 22 July, 2018
Subject: [MCM] What WikiLeaks has wrought (all
good)
Inside
WikiLeaks: Working with the Publisher that Changed
the World
by Stefania Maurizi
Italian journalist Stefania
Maurizi has worked with WikiLeaks
for nine years on the Podesta emails and other
revelations. Here’s an insider’s view of the publisher, which has incensed
rulers around the world, desperate to hide their corruption.
Silenced and
cut off from the outside world, WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorian
embassy in London for the last six years with no access to sunlight, fresh air,
or proper medical treatment. Furthermore, last March President Lenin Moreno’s
Ecuadorian government cut his access to the internet, phone calls and even
visitors and journalists. For a man who has already been confined to the
embassy for so long, these restrictions are particularly harsh.
I began
working as one of WikiLeaks’ media partners in 2009,
before Assange and WikiLeaks
published such bombshells as the “Collateral Murder” video. Over the last nine
years, I have partnered with WikiLeaks on behalf of
my newspaper, the Italian daily La
Repubblica to work on the Podesta emails and many of its other secret files, except
for those that WikiLeaks released without media
partners: the DNC emails, the Saudi Cables, Turkey’s ruling party emails, the Hacking
Team documents, the Collateral Murder video and the Brennan emails.
Like its work
or not, WikiLeaks is an independent media
organization that doesn’t have to rely on traditional media to publish its
scoops. Indeed it was founded to bypass the legal qualms traditional media may
have about publishing classified information.
With its 5.5
million followers on Twitter, WikiLeaks has a huge
social media presence that gives its work immediate impact. But WikiLeaks has published most of its revelations in collaboration
with a number of media partners.
For instance,
I was a partner in the publication of the emails of John Podesta,
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, which were published by WikiLeaks shortly after the infamous Access Hollywood video revealed
candidate Donald Trump making rude remarks about women.
Many media
outlets continue to report that the Podesta emails
were released only minutes after the Access Hollywood video aired, hinting at some sort of
coordination between WikiLeaks and the Trump
campaign. In a indictment issued last Friday,
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating the alleged Russian
interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, charged 12 officers of the Russian
military intelligence service, GRU, for having allegedly hacked both the DNC
and Podesta emails and allegedly passed them on to WikiLeaks for publication.
I have no idea
who WikiLeaks’ sources were for the Podesta emails: the whole concept of WikiLeaks
is based on the submission of secret or otherwise restricted documents by
anonymous sources. Assange said numerous times that
his source for the Clinton emails was not the Russian
government nor a state party.
As I worked on
the Podesta emails, I do know that their publication
was not a last-second decision. I had been alerted the day before, and their
staggered release was a choice WikiLeaks made after
the organization was harshly criticized by mainstream media for
publishing the DNC documents all at once. This time the emails would trickle
out to make them easier for the public to digest. But that was criticized too
by the U.S. media and the Democrats as an attempt to leave Clinton
bleeding a few weeks before the elections.
Ready to
Release Trump Documents
I was also a
witness when WikiLeaks received four documents about
Trump’s business at a certain point during the campaign and media partners were
asked to help verify the documents to determine if they should be published.
The WikiLeaks team had already prepared a placeholder
graphic for a possible release on Trump: a caricature of Trump and his
characteristic hairstyle. Unfortunately, we found that the documents had
already been made public.
Over the last
nine years of my work in partnership with WikiLeaks
on behalf of first the Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso and then La Repubblica,
I have spent many hours talking to Assange and his
staff, maintaining weekly contact with them. Looking back, I realize that in
all those years, I only met Assange as a free man
once. That was in September 2010: he had just left Sweden to meet me and other
journalists in Berlin after the publication of the Afghan War Logs. At that
time, I didn’t realize so many years would pass without seeing him free again.
He is one of
the most demonized men on the planet. “We are in the business of crucifixion,”
he told me several months ago, before Ecuador cut his social contacts. Indeed
he has been crucified for whatever he has done: he talked to the press? He is a
narcissist. He didn’t talk to the press? He wants to fuel his image as an
international mystery man. He is a complicated human being, but he is neither a
hard man nor the imperious, James Bond-style villain depicted by newspapers. He
can be warm, with a sharp sense of humor, and he is definitely brilliant and
bold enough to publish exceptionally risky documents.
The Full Force
of the State
WikiLeaks is rather unique from many
standpoints. As a media organization publishing exclusively secret or otherwise
restricted documents on “invisible powers,” such as intelligence agencies,
which citizens do not normally perceive as directly relevant to their lives,
there is little doubt that WikiLeaks has the full
force of the State against it. It is probably the only Western media
organization to have been under continuous investigation by the U.S.
authorities – and probably others—since 2010, and it is definitely the only one
whose editor is arbitrarily detained in the heart of Europe.
Assange: No way out?
Whenever I say
that Assange is the only editor arbitrarily detained
in Europe, some object that he isn’t detained, or that he isn’t an editor at
all. But that he is arbitrarily detained is the opinion of the United Nations’ Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention, whose decisions are considered authoritative by the
European Court of Human Rights. The UK government has always rejected the UN
body’s decision on Assange, and even tried to appeal
it. Since losing this appeal, the UK authorities have continued to ignore the
decision and apparently no one else has anything to say about it.
Many argue
that Assange is not detained, but rather is in a
state of “self-imposed exile,” since he could leave the embassy at any time. He
could, if he wanted to, walk out and be arrested by the UK authorities, on now
flimsy skipping bail conditions after Sweden dropped its investigation against him, and he’d face
the risk of extradition to the United States. Last year the former head of the
CIA, Mike Pompeo, attacked him and his organization ferociously, calling WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” The
current Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has declared that arresting him is a priority.
Assange’s lawyers believe a grand jury in
the state of Virginia has likely rendered a sealed indictment against him.
Theoretically he is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution,
which protects publication of stolen documents,
something that major media does routinely. However, through the last years we
have seen many attempts by the U.S. authorities to claim WikiLeaks and Assange have no First Amendment righrts.
Curiously,
those critics who insist he is in a form of self-imposed exile or confinement
seem to forget that Assange has attempted all sorts
of legal routes to challenge his detention. I have never heard of someone
imposing exile on himself while at the same time
attempting various legal means to put an end to it.
Assange’s latest appeal to the Westminster
Magistrates’ Court was dismissed last February by the British judge Emma
Arbuthnot, in a ruling indicating that for UK Justice it is perfectly fine for
an individual to remain confined to a tiny building for almost six years with
no access to sunlight, fresh air or proper medical treatment. “I do not find
that Mr. Assange’s stay in the Embassy is
inappropriate, unjust, unpredictable, unreasonable, unnecessary or
disproportionate”, concluded Arbuthnot with no British irony.
As far as the
concept of “editor” goes, I can refer to my own experience, describing what I
have seen on my end: Assange has always been the
person coordinating WikiLeaks publication activities,
making the editorial choices, deciding how to present the revelations to the
public—just like any editor of traditional media. He and his organization are
far from perfect: they have made mistakes and questionable choices, but it is a
matter of fact that they have revealed very important information in the public
interest.
snip>
+
Julian Assange's Asylum to be Rescinded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XdZcCANhqM
===========
p.
From Suzie Dawson:
1. Pinned Tweet
Suzie Dawson @Suzi3D 23m23 minutes ago
The #Unity4J non-violent digital army has grown to 1,441
members in the first 18 hours of operation. Hundreds of users are collaborating
in real time at any given moment, creating comms,
web, tech, graphic, video solutions for the movement! Join us: http://unity4j.com/discord
1 reply23 retweets23 likes
===========
q.
Former CIA
Officer: Clinton "Involved In Biggest Treason In
History"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49898.htm
by
Greg Hunter
Former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp says what Hillary
Clinton did with her charity and Uranium One while she
was Secretary of State was a crime for the history books. Shipp explains,
“Hillary Clinton used this to launder money in foreign banks so it wasn’t
subject to U.S. laws, congressional subpoenas or FOIA demands for the
evidence. This was done to launder this money globally into the Clinton
Foundation so the U.S. government could not examine it at all.”
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller was the head of the FBI while
the Uranium One deal was being done by Clinton and the Russians. One
fifth of U.S. uranium production was bought by the Russians in a deal Clinton
pushed and approved. The Clinton Foundation received more than $140
million from some of the same Russian players who were involved with Uranium
One. Why didn’t Mueller stop the deal? Shipp says, “Mueller is
either a complete moron, which he is not, or he overlooked the biggest
counterterrorism cases in U.S. history. It involved Hillary Clinton, the
Clinton Foundation, Uranium One and, of course, the
destruction of all the emails and evidence and her secret server, and on and on
and on it goes, and he (Mueller) ignored it all.”
How did she get away with obvious crime? Shipp says, “The
most bizarre thing is the people who protected her from clear felonious
activity and violations of the Espionage Act. James Clapper, Director of
National Intelligence, was protecting her and leaking things to the media and
lying. You had John Brennan, Director of the CIA, protecting her by
starting a false investigation (on Trump) and stirring things up with this
(false/unverified) dossier. You had James Comey,
Director of the FBI, protecting her. . . . Then, you’ve got Peter Strzok protecting her, and now it appears the United
Kingdom GCHQ was using NSA information to target Donald Trump and protect
Hillary Clinton. You have to ask yourself what kind of power or
connections does this woman have to get all of these members of the Deep State,
Shadow Government to risk their own criminal penalties to protect her and try
to get her elected? That is the Shadow Government. That is the Deep
State. That is what is so chilling about this whole thing. . . . This is
deep. This is dark. This is as dark as it gets, and this is the
biggest espionage case involving government officials in the history of this
country.”
Shipp also points out that, this time, it will not be business as
usual for the “Deep State and Shadow Government.” They are going to be
brought to justice because Shipp says, “indictments are coming because of
Donald Trump coming into the White House from the outside. Trump cannot
be bribed.”
+
Mueller Indictment Catches Ukraine
http://washingtonsblog.com/2018/07/mueller-indictment-catches-ukraine.html
===========
r.
Economic Policy
Institute
The new gilded age Income
inequality in the U.S.
by
state, metropolitan area, and county
by Estelle Sommeiller and
Mark Price
(July 19, 2018)
===========
s.
Working Class Fiction—Not Just Surplus
Value
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/working-class-fiction-not-just-surplus-value/
by Ron Jacobs
When
reading and discussing the effects of capitalism’s peaks and valleys, it is
very rare that the actual effect on individual families is included in the
conversation. Instead, most of what is published are
rationales from capitalist economists that don’t hold up when critically
examined and excuses from politicians who benefit from capitalism’s cruelty.
Even rarer in contemporary times are fictional representations of working
people struggling to survive the never-ending series of machinations at the top
of capitalism’s collapsing pyramid.
+
The Next Global Financial Crisis is Inevitable (Pt 1/2)
https://therealnews.com/stories/the-next-global-financial-crisis-is-inevitable-pt-1-2
(July 22,
2018)
===========
t.
Brexit Is About
to Get Lit
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/07/brexit-is-about-to-get-lit/
by Kevin Drum
Hey,
remember last
weekend’s geography lesson about England vs. Great Britain vs. the United
Kingdom? It’s about to come in handy!
As
you’ll recall, Northern Ireland is part of the UK, which means that when Brexit is implemented it will be out of the EU just like
the rest of the country. The borders of the EU will look like this:
This
is a problem. Ireland will now have a hard customs border between the Republic
of Ireland and Northern Ireland, something that’s wildly unacceptable to both
sides. In fact, the 1995 Good Friday Agreement, which ended a quarter century
of violence by squaring the circle of a kinda-sorta-united Irish island but with a sovereign Northern
Ireland, was largely based on demilitarizing the border and leaving it
completely open. It’s obviously a colossal fudge, but
it’s worked well for 20 years, and nobody wants to take a chance on what
happens if it goes away.
===========
u.
Gaza
Reports:
Two
Palestinian Scientists Found Dead in Algeria
by Jack Khoury
It wasn't
immediately clear whether their deaths were a result of an accident or an
assassination.
·
Hamas:
Drone expert assassinated by Israel in Tunisia was part of our military wing
·
Hamas
engineer murdered in Malaysia: gov’t accuses 'foreign
agents'
·
Brainwashing
and cross-dressing: Israel's assassination program laid bare in shocking detail
===========
v.
The Birth of
American Empire
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-birth-of-american-empire/
“The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of
American Empire”
A book by Stephen Kinzer reviewed by H.
Patricia Hynes
By
the final decade of the 19th century, the American project sanctified as
Manifest Destiny was complete. The western boundary of the United States now
stretched to the Pacific Ocean, leaving in its wake the genocide of Native
Americans, the purchase of Louisiana without
the consent of the governed,
and a war of aggression against Mexico. What next? Pursue the colonialist
mandate beyond continental borders—or not?
Stephen
Kinzer’s “The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark
Twain, and the Birth of the Empire” is a compact, bracing history of the answer
to What next? It features the drama and
decisions of four years—1898-1902—that, in Kinzer’s
thesis, set the course of American wars, military expansion and the overthrow
of governments throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, interrupted with
brief, impermanent periods of “isolationism.”
===========
w.
4 Themes to
Follow as Corporate America Reports a Surge in Profits
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/business/earnings-report-trade-war-wages.html
by Matt Phillips
(July 23, 2018)
Earnings
season is upon us once again, and analysts expect the strong economy and the
Trump administration’s tax cuts to lead to another batch of knockout quarterly
profits.
Per-share
earnings at companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are forecast
to have risen 20.8 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier.
That would be the second straight quarter of 20-percent-plus jumps, something
that hasn’t happened since late 2010.
Tax
cuts aren’t responsible for all of that growth. Measures of sales, which are
closely tied to the health of the economy, are also expected to rise at a
robust 9 percent in the second quarter, compared with a year earlier, according
to analyst estimates compiled by the data provider FactSet
through Friday.
+
Russian Defense Ministry unveils
footage of futuristic weapon tests & development
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_6wTNEXiRw&feature=youtu.be
===========
x.
IF
AMEREICANS KNEW
What
every American needs to know about Israel-Palestine
===========
y.
Noam Chomsky
on Fascism, Showmanship and Democrats’ Hypocrisy in the Trump Era
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49916.htm
by
C.J. Polychroniou
After 18 months of Trump in the White House,
American politics finds itself at a crossroads. The United States has moved
unmistakably toward a novel form of fascism that serves corporate interests and
the military, while promoting at the same time a highly reactionary social
agenda infused with religious and crude nationalistic overtones, all with an
uncanny touch of political showmanship. In this exclusive Truthout
interview, world-renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky
analyzes some of the latest developments in Trumpland
and their consequences for democracy and world order.