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.’

More »

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.

More »

Kevin Barrett

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.

More »

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.

More »

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.

More »

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."

More »

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.

More »

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.”

More »

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.

More »

Eric van de Beek

Exclusive Russia Insider interview with Udo Ulfkotte, German Editor Turned CIA Whistleblower. Fascinating details emerge. Leading US-funded think-tanks and German secret service are accessories. Attempted suppression by legal threats. Blackout in German media.

A senior German editor is causing a sensation with his allegations that the CIA pays German media professionals to spin stories to follow US government goals. We wrote about this two weeks ago, and the article shot up in views, becoming one of the most read articles on our site.

Udo Ulfkotte reveals in his bestseller Bought Journalists, how he was "taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public." The former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is one of Germany’s largest newspapers, was secretly on the payroll of the CIA and German secret service, spinning the news in a way that was positive for the United States and bad for its opponents.

In his latest interview, Ulfkotte alleges that some media are nothing more than propaganda outlets of political parties, secret services, international think tanks and high finance entities. Repenting for collaborating with various agencies and organisations to manipulate the news, Ulkotte laments, "I'm ashamed I was part of it. Unfortunately I cannot reverse this." Some highlights from the interview:

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

In an interview today with Politika, a Serbian newspaper, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said that it is futile and dangerous for the US and its European puppets to blackmail Russia and that the "Exceptional Nation" and its vassals should consider the risks that are inherent in aggressive disputes between countries heavily armed with nuclear weapons.

Putin noted that Obama took a hostile attitude toward Russia in Obama’s UN speech to the General Assembly on September 24 when Obama declared Russia to be one of the three threats to the world along with the Islamic State and ebola. President Putin said that unilateral and punitive actions taken against Russia can provoke a crisis, and that if Washington’s purpose is to”isolate our country, it is an absurd and illusory goal.” - Here are some of President Putin’s direct quotes:

“How can we talk about de-escalation in Ukraine while the decisions on new sanctions are introduced almost simultaneously with the agreements on the peace process?”

“Together with the sanctions against entire sectors of our economy, this approach can be called nothing but hostile.”

“We hope that our partners will realize the futility of attempts to blackmail Russia and remember what consequences discord between major nuclear powers could bring for strategic stability.”

More »

Stephen Lendman

Mass surveillance is longstanding. It's institutionalized. It's lawless. It has nothing to do with domestic or foreign threats. Or anything related to national security. America's only enemies are ones it invents. It spies globally. It watches everyone. It monitors allies. It's for control. It's for economic advantage. It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations. Don't expect Washington's criminal class to explain. It's bipartisan. It's government of, by, and for special interests. Ordinary ones are ignored.

Edward Snowden connected important dots for millions. He did so because it matters. He and London Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger won this year's Rights Livelihood Award (RLA). "(F)or outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people." It's the "Alternative Nobel Prize." One with real distinction. Meaning that matters. Warranting universal praise. RLA honors the best and most deserving. 'Right livelihood' is an ancient notion. Everyone deserves respect. So does the natural world. We're all responsible for the consequences of our actions. No one should take more than a fair share of world resources.

More »

Mike Whitney

An Interview with "The Saker" - "The Saker" is an ex-military analyst who was born in Europe to a family of Russian refugees. He now lives in Florida where he writes The Vineyard of the Saker blog and is a regular contributor to Russia Insider. The international community of Saker Blogs includes, besides the original Saker blog, French, German, Russian, Oceania and Serbian members and will soon include a Latin American member.

People dancing on Birzhevaya Ploshchad (Stock Exchange Square)

Mike Whitney: Is the United States responsible for the troubles in Ukraine?

The Saker: Yes, absolutely, there’s no doubt about it. While it’s true that the Ukrainian people were unhappy with the corrupt Yanukovich regime, the coup itself was definitely CIA orchestrated. The EU was also involved, especially Germany, but they didn’t play nearly as big a role as the U.S. The taped phone messages of (US Undersecretary of State) Victoria Nuland show who was really calling the shots behind the scenes.

Mike Whitney: What role did the Obama administration play in Kiev’s decision to launch a war on its own people in the east of Ukraine?

The Saker: A central role. You have to understand that there is no “Ukrainian” power in Kiev. Poroshenko is 100% US-run as are the people around him. The head of the notorious Ukrainian secret police (the SBU), Valentin Nalivaichenko, is a known CIA agent. It’s also true that the US refers to Poroshenko “our Ukraine insider”. All of his so called “decisions” are actually made by U.S. officials in Kiev. As for Poroshenko’s speech to Congress a few weeks ago, that was obviously written by an American.

More »

Bill Van Auken & David North

With US politicians and the American media engaged in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the strategy guiding the latest US war in the Middle East, the United States Army has unveiled a new document entitled the Army Operating Concept (AOC), which provides a “vision of future armed conflict” that has the most ominous implications. It is the latest in a series of documents in which the Pentagon has elaborated the underlying strategy of preventive war that was unveiled in 1992—that is, the use of war as a means of destroying potential geopolitical and economic rivals before they acquire sufficient power to block American domination of the globe.

The document was formally released at this week’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference, an annual event bringing together senior officers and Defense Department officials for a series of speeches and panel discussions, along with a giant trade show mounted by arms manufacturers to show off their latest weapons systems and pursue lucrative Pentagon contracts.

Much of this year’s proceedings were dominated by dire warnings about the impact of cuts to the Army’s troop strength brought about by sequestration. Gen. Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters at the AUSA conference Monday that he was “starting to worry about our end strength” and regretting having told Congress in 2012 that the Army could manage with 490,000 active-duty soldiers.

In addition to the 490,000, there are 350,000 National Guard soldiers and 205,000 reservists, for a combined force—referred to by the Pentagon as the Total Army—of well over one million American troops. The answer to why such a gargantuan armed force would seem inadequate to Gen. Odierno can be found in the new Army Operating Concept (AOC), a reckless and dangerous document laying out a strategy of total war that encompasses the entire planet, including the United States itself.

The document makes clear that in regard to the ongoing debate over “boots on the ground,” for the top brass of the US Army there is no question: there will be boots and plenty of them.

More »

Gilad Atzmon

GA: The following is my book review of Shlomo Sand's latest book. It was published a year ago. Following the publication of the English edition of How I Stopped Being A Jew last week, I decided to post it again.

Sand’s latest book, How I Stopped Being A Jew, is a tragic testimony made by a morally awakened Israeli Jew who comes to realise that his spiritual, cultural and political existence is contaminated with Judeo-centric exclusivism and is fuelled by ethno-centric racism. Shlomo Sand decides to stop being a Jew – but has he succeeded?

Sand, as we all know, is a wonderful writer; witty, innovative, poetic and fluent, his voice is personal, at times funny, occasionally sarcastic and always genuinely pessimistic.

Sand’s writing is scholarly, deep, reflective and imaginative; however, his scholarship is pretty much limited to French liberal thinking and early post-modernist theory. The outcome is disappointing at times. How I Stopped To Be A Jew is a ‘politically correct’ text, saturated with endless caveats inserted to disassociate the author from any possible affiliation with anyone who may be viewed as an opponent of Jewish power, critical of Jewish identity politics or a challenger of the mainstream historicity of the Holocaust.

“I don’t write for anti-Semites, I regard them as totally ignorant or people who suffer from an incurable disease,” (p. 21/Hebrew edition) writes the author who claims to be humanist, universalist and far removed from Jewish exclusivism.[*] It all sounds very Jewish to me. When it comes to the Holocaust, Sand uses the same tactic and somehow manages to lose all wit and scholarly fashion. The Nazis are “beasts”, their rise to power metaphorically described as a “beast awakening from its lair.” I would expect a leading historian and ex-Jew to have moved on beyond these kinds of banal clichés.

More »