Activist Professor Denis Rancourt's Judicial Lynching

Stephen Lendman

Injustice defines Western societies. Canada marches in lockstep with Washington. Rogue state ruthlessness defines both countries. Imperial priorities matter most. Inviolable laws don't matter. Nor judicial fairness.

Denis G. Rancourt reflects academia's best, most competent, most responsible and bravest. He has two blog sites. Visit them for updated information. Activist Teacher and U of O Watch provide updates. They explain what most people can't imagine. What happened to Rancourt can happen to anyone responsibly challenging what's too deplorable to accept.

Rancourt is a distinguished University of Ottawa professor. He's tenured. He's a recognized physics and environmental science expert. Students loved him. He's a "phenomenal teacher," they said. He didn't teach to the test like in America. He prioritized learning. He inspired academic achievement. He supports fundamental human and civil rights. Political activism caused his dismissal. University of Ottawa's campus isn't safe. President Allan Rock is a former Canadian politician. He runs University of Ottawa like his private fiefdom. Like a police state. He's unprincipledly hard right. He ignores fundamental Canadian law doing so. Academic freedom doesn't matter. Or free thought, opinion or expression. University of Ottawa is a hotbed of fascist extremism. It's inhospitable to learning.

University of Ottawa Law Professor Joanne St. Lewis colluded with Rock. She did so against Rancourt. She sued him unjustifiably. She wants $1 million. She irresponsibly charged racism. It related to his legitimate blog site comments. He called St. Lewis a "house negro." He cited Malcolm X. He first used the term.


Irresponsible Syria Bashing

Stephen Lendman

Syria's June 3 presidential election approaches. It's historic. It's the Syrian Arab Republic's first ever free, fair, open presidential process. Twenty-four aspirants registered to compete. Parliamentarians Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar were approved.

So was Assad. He's overwhelmingly popular. He's expected to win easily. Syrians want no one else leading them. He's especially trusted now. He's defeating foreign invaders. He's doing it responsibly. He's fighting for Syrian freedom. For its independent sovereign rights. He's up to the challenge. He's winning. He's defeating Obama's dirty game. He deserves universal support.

Friends of Syria (London): The 11 countries include America, Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). On May 15, they issued a joint statement. They irresponsibly denounced what deserves support. They shamelessly called Syria's upcoming democratic presidential election "illegitimate."

It'll be free, open and fair. International monitors will observe things. It'll shame what passes for sham London 11 country processes. It's representatives outrageously called what's upcoming "a parody of democracy." Under conflict conditions, turnout is expected to be impressive.

Not according to them. They ludicrously claimed it'll "be devoid of political participation of millions of Syrians." They "call(ed) on the entire international community to reject" what's planned. They "agreed unanimously to take further steps…" They called doing so "a coordinated strategy." They support death squad killers. They lied calling them "moderate opposition" forces. They blamed Assad for their crimes. They want him and Syrian officials prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. More on this below.


The Social Cost of GMOs

Paul Craig Roberts

Ecological economists such as Herman Daly write that the more full the world becomes, the higher are the social or external costs of production.

Social or external costs are costs of production that are not captured in the price of the products. For example, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico that result from chemicals used in agriculture are not included as costs in agricultural production. The price of food does not include the damage to the Gulf.

Food production is a source of large social costs. Indeed, it seems that the more food producers are able to lower the measured cost of food production, the higher the social costs imposed on society.

Consider the factory farming of animals. The density of operations results in a concentration of germs and in animals being fed antibiotics. Lowering the cost of food in this way contributes to the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs that will impose costs on society that will more than offset the savings from lower food prices.

Monsanto has reduced the measured cost of food production by producing genetically modified seeds that result in plants that are pest and herbicide resistant. The result is increased yields and lower measured costs of production. However, there is evidence that the social or external costs of this approach to farming more than offsets the lower measured cost. For example, there are toxic affects on microorganisms in the soil, a decline in soil fertility and nutritional value of food, and animal and human infertility.


Israeli State Terror

Stephen Lendman

Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine. Israeli security forces attack, brutalize, murder or injure nonviolent Palestinians with impunity. They're ruthless. They're lawless. It's standard practice. Crimes too grave to ignore occur multiple times daily. Soldiers, border guards and police harass, intimidate and terrorize Palestinians ruthlessly. They hold an entire population hostage.

Fear is constant. It's pervasive. Collective punishment is official Israeli policy. Peaceful public demonstrations are prohibited.

So are free expression and movement. Population centers are isolated. Borders are closed. Occupation harshness denies Palestinians control over their own land. Normal daily life is nonexistent. Economic strangulation is imposed. Institutionalized racism reflects official Israeli policy. Curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, separation walls, electric fences, and other barriers are standard practice.

Neighborhood incursions, land, sea and air attacks, bulldozed homes, land theft, ethnic cleansing, slow-motion genocide, targeted killings, political assassinations, mass arrests, torture, and gulag imprisonment reflect daily life. Fundamental human and civil rights are verboten. Crimes of war and against humanity repeat without redress. Wanting to live free in sovereign Palestine is called terrorism. So is legitimate self-defense.


West promotes election held at gunpoint in Ukraine

Bill Van Auken


Meet Svoboda, an up-and-coming party in Ukraine. It's nationalist,
pro-Nazi, and poised for the parliament.
(Caption: Salo-Forum)

With just days before presidential and municipal elections are to be staged in Ukraine by the Western-backed, right-wing “interim government,” the regime’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that its so-called “antiterrorist operations” against dissident populations in the east and south of the country are proceeding at full strength.

“The active phase of the antiterrorist operations is currently continuing,” ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said Wednesday. “Residents in the eastern regions of Ukraine can observe this. There is currently a planned rotation of troops and forces included in the antiterrorist operation.”

Washington and its Western European allies are promoting Sunday’s election as a means of legitimizing the Western-backed, neo-fascist-led coup which toppled Ukraine’s elected president and installed an illegal regime whose leaders were handpicked by US officials.

The idea that a legitimate election could be held, as the army employs tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships to suppress political opposition in large portions of the country, is ludicrous. This fraudulent exercise is being staged, with unconditional US support, just two weeks after the May 11 referenda on autonomy in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that the State Department denounced as illegitimate. The Ukraine crisis has provided a unique window into the cynicism and hypocrisy of American imperialist foreign policy.


Justice Is Dead In Amerika

Paul Craig Roberts

Cecily McMillan is an Occupy protester who was seized from behind by a goon thug cop–a goon thug with a long record of abuse of authority–by her boobs. One was badly bruised. Cecily McMillan’s elbow reflexively and instinctively came up, and Cecily was arrested for assaulting a goon thug. The goon thug was not arrested for sexually assaulting a young woman.

False arrests of this sort are common in the US. Indeed, they are more common than justified arrests. The police and the courts are completely corrupted institutions that reek of injustice and evil.

Cecily was locked up in Rikers Island without bail by the judge who sees his role as protecting the abuse of police and prosecutorial power. The judge would not allow evidence in behalf of Cecily to be presented to the jury.

Nevertheless, the jurors, or 75% of them, understood that something was wrong and although they were coerced into convicting the young woman they sent a letter to the judge requesting that no prison time be imposed on Cecily. Nonetheless, the judge for whom all must stand in respect in the courtroom, gave the goon thug’s victim 90 days in prison and 5 years probation. This was Amerika’s sendoff of an idealistic young woman who was about to receive a master’s degree from an important educational education.

America’s injustice is a unique kind. American injustice has actually managed to completely destroy the achievements dating from Magna Carta that made law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the state. Today America is pre-Magna Carta England.


Ukraine SITREP May 20th, 16:28 UTC/Zulu: deliberate chaos

The Saker

I think that we can all agree that the situation in the Ukraine is one of total chaos.

Renat Akhmetov, the local oligarch-mobster, had declared that his companies will go on a "warning strike" for 3 hours per day because Akhmetov was angered that the authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) had taken over the control of the railways which resulted in losses for his company.
One of the officials of the DRP reacted to Akhmetov's threat by declaring that the DRP authorities have begun the process of nationalization of the companies located on the territory of the DRP, in other words, Akhmetov's holdings.
The military forces of the neo-Nazi junta have begun shelling several cities in the eastern Ukraine destroying several buildings
The military commander of the DRP forces, Igor Strelkov, has made a poignant and blunt appeal for a much bigger mobilization of men, especially officers, in the volunteer forces defending the DRP against the junta's military.
Ukrainian death-squads have, yet again, kidnapped a team of Russian reporters, this time of the TV station LifeNews, accusing them of being the "information-component" of a terrorist movement.
The Russian government has indicated that the military forces which had been on maneuvers had returned to their bases. NATO denied that.
The Russian military has completed the building a network of pipelines which are now fully supplying Crimea with fresh water.
The leader of the Ukie Nazis, Iarosh, has announced that if he is elected he would launched a guerrilla war in Crimea.

So what is really going on? I think that while it is premature to make grand conclusions and predictions, we can begin by agreeing on a number of basic facts.


The Ukraine in Turmoil

Israel Shamir

It is not much fun to be in Kiev these days. The revolutionary excitement is over, and hopes for new faces, the end of corruption and economic improvement have withered. The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in power.

The new acting President has been an acting prime minister, and a KGB (called “SBU” in Ukrainian) supremo. The new acting prime minister has been a foreign minister. The oligarch most likely to be “elected” President in a few days has been a foreign minister, the head of the state bank, and personal treasurer of two coups, in 2004 (installing Yushchenko) and in 2014 (installing himself). His main competitor, Mme Timoshenko, served as a prime minister for years, until electoral defeat in 2010.

These people had brought Ukraine to its present abject state. In 1991, the Ukraine was richer than Russia, today it is three times poorer because of these people’s mismanagement and theft. Now they plan an old trick: to take loans in Ukraine’s name, pocket the cash and leave the country indebted. They sell state assets to Western companies and ask for NATO to come in and protect the investment.

They play a hard game, brass knuckles and all. The Black Guard, a new SS-like armed force of the neo-nazi Right Sector, prowls the land. They arrest or kill dissidents, activists, journalists. Hundreds of American soldiers, belonging to the “private” company Academi (formerly Blackwater) are spread out in Novorossia, the pro-Russian provinces in the East and South-East. IMF–dictated reforms slashed pensions by half and doubled the housing rents. In the market, US Army rations took the place of local food.

The new Kiev regime had dropped the last pretence of democracy by expelling the Communists from the parliament. This should endear them to the US even more. Expel Communists, apply for NATO, condemn Russia, arrange a gay parade and you may do anything at all, even fry dozens of citizens alive. And so they did.


New York Times Editors Defend the Indefensible

Stephen Lendman


Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians.” –Former
Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko in leaked phone call

Jill Abramson is gone. Dean Baquet replaced her as executive editor. Deplorable policy remains unchanged. It's featured daily. It's done so in articles, commentaries and editorials. Disgraceful op-eds are standard practice. Scoundrels are invited. Truth-tellers aren't welcome. Misinformation rubbish is featured. What readers most need to know is buried. Lies, damn lies and Big Ones infest Times pages.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a former illegitimate Orange Revolution prime minister. She's billionaire mega-thief. She accumulated wealth the old-fashioned way. She stole it. She was imprisoned for embezzlement and serious "abuse of public office." Charges included illegally diverting $425 million meant for environmental projects into pension funds. A second case involved stealing around $130 million for personal use.

Putschists freed her. They did so lawlessly. She has presidential aspirations. She enjoys weak support.

Earlier she had dozens of secret offshore bank accounts in over two dozen countries. Reportedly most are closed. At least 13 worldwide remain open. They hide her ill-gotten wealth. She conspired with former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko among others. From the mid-1990s, enormous funds were stolen. They disappeared. They did so when Tymoshenko ran United Energy Systems (UES). Lazarenko awarded it monopoly rights to import Russian natural gas. In 2004, a US court convicted him of money laundering, theft, and hiding funds in foreign accounts.


Appeal from the commander of the militia of Donetsk People`s Republic, Igor Strelkov

The Saker

Full text of the appeal of the commander of the militia of Donetsk People`s Republic Igor Strelkov (UPDATED WITH 2nd translation!) (Huge thanks to "CG" who found this text here. Translation by "E.K". - The Saker)

Citizens of the People's Republic of Donetsk, I appeal to you. With a request to rise in defense of your Motherland, your homes, your families, your people. It falls on me to ask you to do the thing that shouldn't need asking. After all, to rise for the Motherland and for the freedom in Russia always was an honourable thing. It is an honourable thing to answer the call, to which people that count themselves real men always willingly responded. Nevertheless, I should tell you the truth. Straight in your eyes. To tell harsh and, perhaps, even offensive for your dignity words.

For more than a month now, we, a small group of volunteers of Russia and Ukraine, having listened to the calls for help from the lips of leaders of the protest elected by you , arrived here and in the armed fight we resist all the Ukrainian army and the hired scum.

For the past month we heard many times a desperate appeal – give us the weapons! Give us the weapons so we could battle for the freedom, for the right to read and speak native Russian, for the right to honor our ancestors and heroes of the Great Patriotic War – not the henchmen of Nazi criminals. Having heard this appeal, we got the weapons. We took them from warehouses, took them away from the Ukrainian military and militia, bought them from underground dealers for unthinkable money. And now we have the weapons. They are not in the rear – they are not in Donetsk, Lugansk or Makeyevka, not in Shakhtyorsk or Anthracite. They are at the lines of defense - in the besieged city of Slavyansk, in Kramatorsk, in Konstantinovka. They are where they are needed most. They are where volunteers defend all of Donbass, and Donetsk, and Lugansk.

And here, around the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, Krasniy Liman and Konstantinovka – where our garrisons are located – the Kiev junta gathered the most capable and numerous forces. There are two thirds of castigators and the headquarters of so-called anti-terrorist operation.


Militarist Bunkum

Paul Craig Roberts

Empire over life. That has always been Washington’s guiding principle.

Did you know that 85 to 90 percent of war’s casualties are non-combatant civilians? That is the conclusion reached by a nine-person research team in the June 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The deaths of soldiers who are fighting the war are a small part of the human and economic cost. Clearly, wars do not protect the lives of civilians. The notion that soldiers are dying for us is false. Non-combatants are the main victims of war.

Keep that in mind for July 4th, which is arriving in six weeks.

July 4th is America’s most important national holiday celebrating American independence from Great Britain. On July 4th, 1776, America’s Founding Fathers declared that the Thirteen Colonies were no longer colonies but an independent country in which the Rights of Englishmen would prevail for all citizens and not only for King George’s administrators. (Actually, the Second Continental Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2, and historians debate whether the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4 or August 2.)

In this American assertion of self-determination citizens of Great Britain were not allowed to vote. Therefore, according to Washington’s position on the votes in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine–the former Russian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk–America’s Declaration of Independence was “illegitimate and illegal.”


In the service of imperialism: Right-wing “intellectuals” gather in Kiev

David North

"In the writings of Timothy Snyder we are confronted with an intellectually unhealthy and dangerous tendency: the obliteration of the distinction between the writing of history and the manufacturing of propaganda in the service of the state." ~ David North

A group of right-wing academics, journalists, pro-war human-rights activists, and specialists in “discourse” is gathering in Kiev this coming weekend (May 16–19). The purpose of the meeting—headed by Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University and Leon Wieseltier, the neo-con literary editor of the New Republic, is to bestow political and moral respectability on the Ukrainian regime that came to power in February, through a putsch financed and directed by the United States and Germany.

Promoting themselves as an “international group of intellectuals,” the organizers have issued a publicity handout—excuse me, a “Manifesto”—in which the meeting is described as “an encounter between those who care about freedom and a country where freedom is dearly won.” There is some truth in this statement, as the overthrow of the Yanukovych government did, in fact, cost the United States a great deal of money.

The meeting is an exercise in imperialist propaganda. Its sponsors include the embassies of Canada, France, Germany, Poland and the United States. Other sponsors include the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the European Endowment for Democracy, and Eurozine. On the Eurozine web site, which is heavily promoting the Kiev meeting, there are numerous postings relating to the geostrategic implications of the Ukrainian coup. Prominently featured are articles such as “How to Win Cold War II.” Its author, Vladislav Inozemtsev, is presently a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.


Freedom or Fascism

Stephen Lendman

Ukraine is Obama's latest imperial trophy. Holding it is another matter entirely.

Fascist regimes run America and Ukraine. Democracy is pure fantasy. Monied interests control things. People have no say. Fundamental freedoms don't matter. They're trampled on. They're crushed.

In Ukraine, democracy was systematically quashed. Washington elevated fascist putschists to power. They're unelected. They're radicalized ultranationalists. They're overt anti-Semites. They're militant thugs. They have no legitimacy whatever. They're convenient US stooges. They're puppets. They take orders from Washington. They masquerade as politicians. They represent mob rule. They make mafia bosses look saintly by comparison.

Growing thousands of Eastern Ukrainians resist. They reject Kiev fascists. They do so for good reason. Maybe their Western counterparts will join them. Maybe a national convulsion will erupt. Freedom is too precious to lose. Nothing remains without it. Ordinary people are putting their bodies on the line to save it. They're doing so courageously. They deserve worldwide support. They represent model resistance for others to emulate.

Kiev putschists have no legitimacy. They're waging war on their own people. They're doing it no-holds-barred. They're murdering people in cold blood. They're doing it at Washington's urging.

Gangsterism reflects official US policy. Accountability is absent. Permanent war is longstanding. Peace is pure illusion. Governance is secretive, ruthless and lawless. It's dressed up to look respectable in legal mumbo jumbo. Monied interests run things. Duopoly power represents it. Checks and balances don't exist. Nor separation of powers. Nor government of, by and for everyone equitably. Claiming otherwise is fantasy.


Akhmetov and other oligarchs seek role as Ukraine’s policemen

Chris Marsden


Swedish politician Carl Bildt, a member of the Bilderberg group for 20
years plus (l), Ukranian steel and mining oligarch Rinat Akhmetov (c)
and Nomen Nescio (probably just as evil as the two we've mentioned).

The New York Times has led efforts to portray the setting up of patrols employing “steelworkers” and “miners” in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol as proof of a rising wave of opposition to all those presently engaged in conflict with the Kiev regime and its thugs.

In its front-page lead article Friday, the Times described the move as “a body blow,” asserting that “the pro-Russian protesters have melted away, as has any sign of the Donetsk People’s Republic or its representatives.”

The Times claimed that by late Thursday, “miners and steelworkers had deployed in at least five cities, including the regional capital, Donetsk.” But the Wall Street Journal reported patrols being mounted in only “four smaller towns” where the steel and mining oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s company owns facilities, and cited a spokesman stating that “it wasn’t clear yet whether similar patrols could be introduced in Donetsk….”

Once again, the New York Times —the so-called “newspaper of record”—has distinguished itself only as a useful conduit for the crudest propaganda in the service of US imperialism. In reality, the launching of the patrols has nothing to do with a movement in the working class. Along with their promotion by the Times and other sources, the patrols are part of a concerted effort by the United States and Germany to stifle resistance to Kiev’s coup regime and ensure that presidential elections planned for May 25 go ahead.

To this end, the Western powers are seeking to use the wealth and influence of Ukraine’s oligarchs to bring things under control. The various reports citing a number of patrols, made up of six workers and two police officers, as having taken control of Mariupol all acknowledge that those involved are employees of Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, with a fortune estimated at $11.8 billion. It is Akhmetov who is behind the patrols, and there is no doubt that he acted in consultation with the Western powers.


Bilderberg's silent takeover of Britain’s $60bn defense budget

Tony Gosling

Democracy had another near-fatal stroke, and the military industrial complex further tightened UK defense spending with the appointment of ex-army officer and Tory hothead Rory Stewart MP as the new chairman of Westminster’s Defence Select Committee.

Last week the Home Affairs Select Committee delivered a damning verdict on Britain's defense and secret service oversight, on taxpayer accountability. It said the refusal of the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, to appear before them and lack of any effective supervision was "undermining the credibility of the intelligence agencies and parliament itself."

Surely nothing could surpass the ‘Dodgy Dossier', the criminal conspiracy that led to the US and Britain, as the Arab League put it in 2003, to 'Opening the Gates of Hell in Iraq'? But with Stuart's appointment to oversee public scrutiny of UK military spending just two weeks before NATO's political cabal of which he's a member, the Bilderberg conference, meets in Copenhagen later this month, it is clear to those who still have eyes to see that those bloody lessons have not been learned and the worse could be yet to come.


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