Stephen Lendman

Russia is geopolitical enemy No. 1. Not for wrongdoing. Or posing an existential threat. Or acting irresponsibly in any way. For defending its sovereign independence responsibly. Lawfully. Wanting other nations respecting it. Believing rule of law principles are inviolable. For Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov and other officials telling it like it is. Expressing important views candidly, forthrightly and unambiguously.

Polar opposite duplicitous Western politicians. Especially Obama. A caricature of a leader. Arguably America's worst ever. A serial liar. A moral coward. A war criminal multiple times over. A shameless head of state. A deplorable one. A dangerous one. A lawless one. A ruthless one. Neo-liberal, reactionary, belligerent, pro-war, pro-monied interests, anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-populist, anti-labor and anti-social justice. A world-class thug. A threat to global peace at the most perilous time in world history.

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Rogozin commented. He explained Moscow's response to real existential threats. It's proud independence. Able to defend its interests effectively. Not about to roll over for Washington or other rogue Western partners. More on his remarks below.

Welcome to Cold War 2.0. The first one never ended. Since Soviet Russia's 1991 dissolution, Western policy remained hard-wired in place. Russia bashing persists. Intensely. Raging daily. Exceeding the worst of Soviet era levels. Daily vilifying a maliciously reinvented Evil Empire. It's back to the future. Unsurprisingly. Neocons infest Washington. Other Western capitals. Business as usual continues. At stake is world peace.

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Stephen Lendman

Ukraine's so-called government is a US-installed fascist dictatorship. It has no legitimacy whatever. Tyranny masquerades as democracy. None exists. Ordinary people have no say. Like in America. Monied interests run things in both countries. One fascist regime supports another. Sunday's snap parliamentary elections were farcical. Expect worse than ever business as usual going forward.

Sergey Lavrov is a world class diplomat. He combines candor and statesmanship with tactfulness, discretion, thoughtfulness and prudence. His comments warrant highlighting. He addressed post-electoral Ukraine. He did so for Moscow's Life News television and Izvestia. He believes Russia will recognize Ukraine's election results. Even though they fell short of international standards nationwide.

It's "critically important for Ukraine to obtain, at long last, a leadership that will not engage in petty infighting and drag the country from east to west and back again, but one that will address real Ukrainian problems, Lavrov said.

"Ukraine needs a government that will think how the nation should regain unity. It needs a government to guarantee an equal status to all Ukrainian citizens irrespective of the language they speak and political convictions they have." "No one should be victimised on political and other grounds, as has been the case until recently."

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Pepe Escobar

Silvio Santos cumprimenta Dilma Rousseff e Aécio Neves. (As fotos
são de Marcelo Parada, diretor do SBT.) (notícias da tv)

Sun, sex, samba, carnival and at least until the World Cup hammering by Germany, the "land of football". And don't forget "vibrant democracy". Even as it enjoys one of the highest soft power quotients around the world, Brazil remains submerged by cliches.

"Vibrant democracy" certainly lived up to its billing as President Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Worker's Party (PT) was re-elected this Sunday in a tight run-off against opposition candidate Aecio Neves of the Social Democracy Party of Brazil (PSDB).

Yet another cliche would rule this was the victory of "state-centric" policies against "structural reforms". Or the victory of "high social spending" against a "pro-business" approach - which implies business as the privileged enemy of social equality. Exit clichés. Enter a cherished national motto: "Brazil is not for beginners".

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Stephen Lendman

Survivors won't ever forget. Nor should they. Including Vietnamese sufferers. Permanently disabled US war veterans. Many on both sides enduring chronic illnesses. They want truth and full disclosure maintained. Nothing erased from history. Or reinvented to ignore what happened. One of history's greatest crimes. Nameless, faceless victims suffering to this day out of sight and mind understand best.

Pentagon commanders initiated it. A duplicitous 2015 50th anniversary commemoration. Honoring one of history's greatest crimes. Turning truth on its head. Orwell explained saying "(h)e who controls the past control the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

A Pentagon web site headlines "The United State of America Vietnam War Commemoration." Pentagon commanders glorify what demands condemnation. Providing "the American public with (so-called) historically accurate materials and interactive experiences that will help Americans better understand and appreciate the service of our Vietnam War veterans and the history of US involvement in the Vietnam War."

A Commemorative Partners Program "is designed for federal, state and local communities, veterans' organizations and other nongovernmental organizations to assist a grateful nation in thanking and honoring our Vietnam Veterans and their families." Thanking them for mass murder. Involvement in genocidal high crimes against peace. Making the world safe for monied interests. More on this below.

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Robert Parry

Official Washington treats whatever comes out of Russian President Putin’s mouth as the ravings of a lunatic, even when what he says is obviously true or otherwise makes sense, as the New York Times has demonstrated again.

When reading the New York Times on many foreign policy issues, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out what the newspaper’s bias is. Anything, for instance, relating to Russian President Vladimir Putin drips of contempt and hostility.

Rather than offer the Times’ readers an objective or even slightly fair-minded account of Putin’s remarks, we are fed a steady diet of highly prejudicial language, such as we find in Saturday’s article about Putin’s comments at a conference in which he noted U.S. contributions to chaos in countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

That Putin is correct appears almost irrelevant to the Times, which simply writes that Putin “unleashed perhaps his strongest diatribe against the United States yet” with his goal “to sell Moscow’s view that American meddling has sparked most of the world’s recent crises.”

Rather than address the merits of Putin’s critique, the Times’ article by Neil MacFarquhar uncritically cites the “group think” of Official Washington: “Russia is often accused of provoking the crisis in Ukraine by annexing Crimea, and of prolonging the agony in Syria by helping to crush a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s last major Arab ally. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Putin seeks to restore the lost power and influence of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire, in a bid to prolong his own rule.”

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Robert Wenzel

America’s Weaponization of Ebola
Could Ebola have escaped from a US bio-war laboratory?

It has been my contention that the recent Ebola outbreak is likely the result of US military testing of Ebola gone awry. See: THE PAPER TRAIL: The US Government Involvement in Developing Ebola as a BioWeapon

Now more evidence has been brought to my attention of the alarming nature of the Ebola testing going on by the US military. Apparently, the military has created an airborne version of Ebola and tested it on monkeys.

A paper written by E. Johnson, N. Jaax, J. White, and P. Jahrling of US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Frederick, Maryland was published in 1995 in the International Journal of Experimental Pathology. The abstract from the paper, Lethal experimental infections of rhesus monkeys by aerosolized Ebola virus, informs:

The potential of aerogenic infection by Ebola virus was established by using a head-only exposure aerosol system. Virus-containing droplets of 0.8-1.2 microns were generated and administered into the respiratory tract of rhesus monkeys via inhalation. Inhalation of viral doses as low as 400 plaque-forming units of virus caused a rapidly fatal disease in 4-5 days. The illness was clinically identical to that reported for parenteral virus inoculation, except for the occurrence of subcutaneous and venipuncture site bleeding and serosanguineous nasal discharge.

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Stephen Lendman

So-called Ukrainian democracy is pure fantasy. Tyranny masquerading as rule by the people. Sunday's snap unicameral Verkhovna Rada (parliamentary) elections reflected post-February coup business as usual. Ukraine is a US-installed fascist dictatorship. Its so-called government has no legitimacy whatever.

A previous article discussed whole families contesting for seats. Future deputies were known in advance. They're relatives of currently serving politicians. Including oligarch president Petro Poroshenko's son, Oleksiy. Running for the same Vinnitsa region's seat his father held previously. Assured of winning before voting began. According to Itar-Tass:

"…Ukraine’s political class is built on the foundation of nepotism and cronyism, as all the political forces display the tradition of nominating candidates on the grounds of kinship." "A closely controlled family affair with no legitimacy. Powerful interests control things Ordinary people have no say."

Stop NATO founder/editor Rick Rozoff calls Ukraine "a Nazi-like victory of US/NATO lawlessness." A US-led takeover of formerly sovereign Ukraine. Planned and executed by neocons and Zbigniew Brzezinski acolytes, says Rozoff. The driving force behind US unipolarity and quest for unchallenged global dominance.

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Anders Romelsjö

Vid parlamentsvalet i Ukraina fick västorienterade partier majoritet totalt och parlamentet får viss legitimitet. - DN skrev igår kväll

”Premiärminister Arsenij Jatsenjuk var den stora överraskningen i Ukrainas parlamentsval. Hans nybildade parti är nästan jämnstort med president Petro Porosjenkos enligt prognoser på söndagskvällen. Det mesta tyder på att de två partierna bildar en EU-vänlig regering."

Valdeltagandet var endast 50 %, och betydligt lägre i östra Ukraina. Tidigare i år förbjöds ett vänsterparti som i val under 2000-talet fått över 10 % av rösterna. Förre presidenten Janukovitjs ”Regionernas parti” var närmast utraderat. Det hela började i samband med statskuppen 22/2 då 72 ledamöter från Regionernas parti lämnade partiet under trycket av massvåld med beväpnade fascister utan riksdagen, radan. I dessa valtider vill man påminna om att Janukovits segrade vid presidentvalet 2010 med hela 69 % valdeltagande i ett val som den europeiska säkerhets- och samarbetsorganisationen OSSEs valobservatörer på plats berömde som en ”imponerande uppvisning i demokrati”.

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Wayne Madsen

President Barack Obama has received a torrent of criticism for dispatching U.S. troops and National Guardsmen to the Ebola-ravaged West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to help control the spread of the highly-lethal Ebola-Zaire hemorrhagic virus. While Cuba has sent qualified doctors to the stricken region, Obama has responded with troops answering to the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Evidence has recently surfaced in a 2009 U.S. embassy Berlin cable to the U.S. State and Defense Departments that German authorities hesitated to send hemorrhagic fever cultures to the suspected biological warfare laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland because the Germans feared the Army might «weaponize» the cultures. The cable, classified as «Sensitive», is dated December 15, 2009 and states:

«German MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] Deputy Head of Division for Export Control Markus Klinger provided the following non-paper to Econoff [Embassy Economics Officer], seeking additional assurances related to a proposed export of extremely dangerous pathogens to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. The Army's end use certificate provided to Germany is lacking an official seal. Klinger's deputy, Nancy Reck, noted that Germany had made two follow-up requests to the Army seeking assurances and clarifications related to this proposed export. The GOG [Government of Germany] seeks assurances from the USG [US Government] or US Army that the end use certificate and the information contained therein are legitimate and accurate».

The «non-paper» reference is to an «aide-memoire», what is known in the diplomatic world as a note without an author, source, or title that is used to prepare for negotiations. The following «non-paper», which was originally written in German, was translated by the embassy and sent to Washington:

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John Pilger

Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution". Whitlam ended his nation's colonial servility. He abolished Royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported "zones of peace" and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor Party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country's resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to "buy back the farm". In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain's colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent's vast natural wealth.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this "breaking free" in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided "black teams" to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington's informants during the Whitlam years.

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Keith Jones

The Canadian state has enacted its National Anti-Terrorism Plan, which involves the coordinated mobilization of all sections of the national-security apparatus, including the military, in response to the shooting Wednesday morning of a soldier at the National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa and storming of the national parliament building by a gunman.

The soldier, 24 year-old Canadian Armed Forces Reservist Nathan Cirillo, succumbed to his injuries.

Soon after, security forces shot and killed a man armed with a rifle in what is being described as a wild shootout in the Hall of Honour. The hall, which is both a ceremonial hall and main corridor, accesses the rooms where the ruling Conservatives and Official Opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) were holding their weekly parliamentary caucus meetings. When the shooting erupted, both Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair were at their respective party meetings.

Police-intelligence sources have identified the dead gunman as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. He was reportedly under surveillance by Canada’s national security agencies and had had his passport confiscated to prevent him from traveling to the Middle East to link up with Islamist militia groups.

In the aftermath of the Parliament Hill attack, police mounted a massive security operation, saying they believed there had been multiple attackers. The media cited unconfirmed reports of multiple shooters and shots being fired at locations other than the War Memorial and Hall of Honour. From the parliament buildings, the police rapidly expanded a security perimeter, placing offices, shops and schools under lockdown, closing off streets to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and deploying heavily-armed SWAT teams.

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Gilad Atzmon

A few days ago, I came across a disturbing article on Buzzfeed. The headline read; “U.S. Journalist Regrets Attending Conspiracy Conference In Tehran.” According to Buzzfeed, Gareth Porter, a respected journalist and critic of the Jewish lobby and Israel, reported that he would have never have attended the “conference in Tehran if he had known the real views of his fellow attendees.”

But the report didn’t stop there. In an attempt to justify his position, Porter proceeded to breach the ethics of journalism -- he published an email correspondence with a top Iranian official without requesting permission to do so. Porter didn’t even bother to correct the spelling and typos of the Iranian official.

Porter purported to speak on behalf of other activists and writers, again, without obtaining their consent. And as if all this was not sufficient, Porter went on to smear other activists and condemned their elementary exercise of freedom of speech.

But the entire story is not all bad. While most non-ethical conspirators operate in a clandestine manner, Porter exposed his methods. For some reason he provided a precious glimpse into the entire spectrum of ugly tactics that are employed to keep the gates sealed. It is not a secret that instead of choosing to be a guardian of the truth, the contemporary progressive operates as a guardian of the discourse, or, more accurately, ‘the progressive discourse.’

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Barry Grey

Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report Monday documenting the widespread use of banned cluster munitions rockets by the Ukrainian military against heavily populated civilian centers in eastern Ukraine, including central Donetsk city.

The detailed account, based on an on-the-spot investigation by the New York-based organization, working with a New York Times reporter, is a damning exposure of the brutal and illegal methods being used by the US- and European Union-backed regime in Kiev against Ukrainians in the pro-Russian east of the country.

The report includes video interviews with victims of the cluster rocket attacks. It charges the Kiev regime with firing the weapons into Donetsk city, the center of the separatist rebellion against the fascist-backed, pro-Western government that was installed last February in a putsch orchestrated by the CIA and German intelligence.

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

In 2002, George W. Bush’s Zionist speechwriter David Frum coined the term “axis of evil” – and applied it to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. But today, if we were to nominate two Middle Eastern countries and one non-Middle Eastern country as the real axis of evil, it would be Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. Those three countries have been spreading violence and destabilization throughout the Middle East and beyond. Unlike Frum’s trio, the Zio-Saudi-American axis really is an axis. And unlike Frum’s trio, it is genuinely evil.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA created ISIL. Israel, with help from the Americans and the Saudis, is committing genocide in Palestine. Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA are promoting sectarian tension and violence throughout the Islamic world. And they are collaborating to pillage the region’s resources.

What would it take to stop this axis of evil? Perhaps the declassification of 28 pages of the 2002 US Senate Joint Inquiry Report on 9/11? President George W. Bush slapped a “top secret” stamp on those pages. Senators and congressmen who have seen the redacted 28 pages say they implicate one or more governments in the 9/11 attacks.

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Aggeliki Dimopoulou

Introduction by Paul Craig Roberts: Is The US Government The Master Criminal Of Our Time? - Experts have brought to the public’s attention that ebola is a genetically modified organism developed in US biowarfare laboratories in Africa. In the two articles below reproduced from Tom Feeley’s Information Clearing House (a good site worthy of your support), Dr. Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois and Dr. Cyril Broderick of the University of Liberia and the University of Delaware provide their fact-based assessments. Dr. Boyle drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the US implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. For speaking out, both Boyle and Broderick will be viciously attacked by the US print and TV media. Remember the case of Gary Webb who exposed the CIA’s drug-running that supported the Contras in Nicaragua. The cocaine that launched the War on Drugs was brought in by the CIA.

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William Blum

You can’t believe a word the United States or its mainstream media say about the current conflict involving The Islamic State (ISIS).

You can’t believe a word France or the United Kingdom say about ISIS.

You can’t believe a word Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, or the United Arab Emirates say about ISIS. Can you say for sure which side of the conflict any of these mideast countries actually finances, arms, or trains, if in fact it’s only one side? Why do they allow their angry young men to join Islamic extremists? Why has NATO-member Turkey allowed so many Islamic extremists to cross into Syria? Is Turkey more concerned with wiping out the Islamic State or the Kurds under siege by ISIS? Are these countries, or the Western powers, more concerned with overthrowing ISIS or overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad?

You can’t believe the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels. You can’t even believe that they are moderate. They have their hands in everything, and everyone has their hands in them.

Iran, Hezbollah and Syria have been fighting ISIS or its precursors for years, but the United States refuses to join forces with any of these entities in the struggle. Nor does Washington impose sanctions on any country for supporting ISIS as it quickly did against Russia for its alleged role in Ukraine.

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Stephen Lendman

The late Edward Said called "any serious public discussion" about Israeli policies the last taboo. It's no exaggeration, he said.

"Abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty, even the sacrosanct military budget can be discussed with some freedom." "The extermination of native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag publicly committed to the flames."

"But (decades-long Israeli) oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear."

Why, he asked? Because of enormous Israeli Lobby influence. The "power of Zionist organizations in American politics…" An "absolute astonishing" refusal to openly discuss what's vital. One-sided MSM media support for Israel. Many US Zionists believe "Palestinians are not real beings." They're "demonized fantasms - fearsome embodiments of terrorism and anti-Semitism." AIPAC is Washington "most powerful single lobby," Said said.

It "inspires an awed fear and respect across the political spectrum." "Who is going to stand up to this Moloch on behalf of the Palestinians, when they can offer nothing, and AIPAC can destroy a congressional career at the drop of a check book?" "(V)irtually the entire Senate can be marshalled in a matter of hours into signing a letter to the President on Israel’s behalf."

"No-one exemplifies the sway of AIPAC better than Hillary Clinton, outdoing even the most right-wing Zionists in fervor for Israel in her avid clawing for power in New York, where she went so far as to call for the transfer of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the grant of leniency for Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy serving a life sentence in the US."

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Vera Graziadei

No Justice for East Ukrainians: Despite widespread and undeniable evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses little is being done to hold Kiev to account

A day after winning the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, Kailash Satyarthi, in an interview with RIA News, urged the Ukrainian government to protect Ukrainian citizens and especially children: “It is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to save their citizens, particularly children. Safety of children will be their utmost priority. I will appeal to the Ukrainian government so as to ensure that such incidents against children will not occur in future.”

According to the recent UN report as many as 3,660 people have been killed and over 8,756 have been wounded in Donbass since Kiev launched its military operation in April. Even though a ceasefire was announced on September 5th, more than 330 people have died since, including 20 children. UNICEF stated that at least 35 children have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict and 87 have been wounded.

Human Rights Watch already called on Ukraine’s international supporters to “urge the Ukrainian government to strictly adhere to international humanitarian law, including by ending all use of Grad rockets in populated areas by Ukraine’s army”. Amnesty International also urged the Ukrainian government to “stop abuses and war crimes by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces”, such as Aidar. All these appeals, urges and calls are likely to remain voices in the wilderness.

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Robert Parry

Thousands of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis surrounded the parliament in Kiev demanding that the government honor Ukrainian paramilitary forces who fought for Adolf Hitler in World War II, another embarrassing reminder of the extremism unleashed by last February’s U.S.-backed coup.

For months, the New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets have insisted that it’s just Russian propaganda to say that a significant neo-Nazi presence exists inside Ukraine, but thousands of these “non-existent” neo-Nazis battled police on Tuesday outside the parliament building in Kiev demanding recognition of their Hitler-collaborating forebears.

The parliament, aware of the obvious public relations fiasco that would follow if it bowed to far-right demands to honor members of the Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army (or UIA), defeated the proposal. That touched off riots by an estimated 8,000 protesters led by Ukraine’s right-wing Svoboda party and the Right Sektor.

Historians blame the UIA and other Ukrainian fascist forces for the extermination of thousands of Poles and Jews during World War II as these right-wing Ukrainian paramilitaries sided with the German Nazis in their fight against the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Svoboda and the Right Sektor have elevated UIA leader Stepan Bandera to the level of a Ukrainian national hero.

But Svoboda and Right Sektor activists are not just neo-Nazi street protesters. They were key figures in last February’s violent uprising that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych and established a coup regime that the U.S. State Department quickly recognized as “legitimate.” Many far-right militants have since been incorporated into the Ukrainian military in its fight to crush resistance to the coup regime from ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east.

Though played down by the Western press, the neo-Nazi affiliations of these militants have occasionally popped up in news stories, including references to displays of Nazi insignias, but usually these citations are mentioned only in passing or are confined to the last few paragraphs of lengthy stories or are dismissed as “Russian propaganda.”

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Stephen Lendman

Fear-mongering is sinister. It's reprehensible. It's longstanding US policy. So are false flags. Merriam-Webster calls them "deliberate gross distortion(s) of the truth used especially as a propaganda tactic." Wikipedia says they're "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities."

Official reports hype Big Lies. MSM scoundrels regurgitate them. Truth is systematically buried. Deception substitutes for reality. False flags are pretexts for militarism, wars, occupations, colonization, resource theft, and exploiting populations for profit. They facilitate ruthlessness. They foster police state repression against freedom.

Post-9/11, global war on terror lawlessness followed. It rages out-of-control. One country after another is ravaged, destroyed and pillaged. No end of conflicts loom. Permanent war is official US policy. Big Lies hype nonexistent threats. Regurgitated ad nauseam gets most people to believe them.

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