Wayne Madsen

France and Greece were the only NATO nations to successfully quit the military structure of the Western «defense» organization. In 1966, President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s military command structure and expelled NATO’s headquarters from outside of Paris. France has been a full-fledged member of the military wing of NATO since 2009 when Nicolas Sarkozy, with only verbal grandstanding from the French Socialist Party, reversed de Gaulle’s nearly four-decade old policy. In fact, in 1966, the French Socialist Party moved to censure de Gaulle for pulling France out of NATO’s military structure. Socialist President Francois Hollande has shown no inclination toward re-adopting de Gaulle’s policy and withdraw France from NATO’s military command. Hollande, like Sarkozy and the last Socialist President Francois Mitterand, is a committed Atlanticist.

In 1974, Greece withdrew from NATO’s military command structure in protest over the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. However, conservative New Democracy Prime Minister Konstantine Karamanlis, a fervent supporter of NATO, rejoined NATO’s military command structure in 1980.

Declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents point to a major program by the United States to woo leaders of European NATO countries to support the alliance, even though they may have been committed left-wingers and, at least in public, against NATO policies.

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Wayne Madsen

U.S. and NATO ensure a pro-West UN General Assembly

The permanent members of the UN Security Council have, through the organization’s history, used the virtually powerless General Assembly to push through resolutions when one or more of the veto-wielding member states have blocked them in the Security Council.

In 1950, the United States and its Cold War allies used the passage of the Uniting for Peace resolution in the General Assembly to circumvent a Soviet veto in the Security Council that prevented UN action in Korea to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea. The General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority, voted in November 1950 to authorize UN action in Korea and, thus supported, two previous UN Security Council resolutions adopted in June and July 1950, that mandated a UN force for Korea to repel the North’s invasion force. The Security Council was able to adopt the two resolutions because the USSR was boycotting the Council over its refusal to seat the People’s Republic of China as a member. In order to put an official UN imprimatur on the allied forces fighting in South Korea, the U.S. pushed through the General Assembly the Uniting for Peace resolution, which authorized military action under the earlier Security Council resolutions, even after the USSR had resumed its seat in the Security Council.

When the General Assembly took up the Korea military authorization, it was too late for the Soviets. The USSR, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic – two Soviet republics that had their own UN membership -- as well as Czechoslovakia and Poland, voted against the Uniting for Peace resolution in the Assembly. India and Argentina abstained in the lopsided 52-5-2 vote.

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Stephen Lendman

For around two months, Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy after requesting political asylum. Sweden wants him extradited on spurious charges. They include unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape. Allegedly it's for having nonconsensual condomless sex. A honey trap snared him. Sex charges are bogus. Sweden represents Washington's interests. Obama officials wants him extradited to stand trial for whistleblowing. They want him put away and silenced. Sweden's playing willing co-conspirator. So is Britain.

On August 16, word came. Asylum was granted short of freedom to leave Britain unarrested. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said "Ecuador decided to grant political asylum to Julian Assange following the request sent to the President."

He faces likely extradition to a third country without proper guarantees. If tried in America, it won't be fair. Patino called Ecuador's decision "protected by international law."

Shortly before Patino's announcement, President Raphael Correa signaled his likely decision by twittering "No one is going to terrorize us."

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Wayne Madsen

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has assembled as the core of his national security and foreign policy advisory team some of the most right-wing and militaristic members of the Bush-Cheney administration. In many ways, the hawkish Romney advisers represent a virtual Sturmabteiling (SS), or Nazi-like “Storm detachment” of the Republican Party, a vanguard that ensures neo-conservative doctrinal discipline throughout Republican ranks.

In a case of regressive amnesia, a number of Romney’s foreign policy advisers are stuck in the past and continue to speak of the danger posed by the “Soviet Union,” which has not existed for over twenty years. A case in point is Romney foreign policy adviser Richard Williamson, a longtime neo-conservative fixture in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, including being named special envoy to Sudan in 2008.

Williamson is also a member of the board of the International Republican Institute (IRI), an adjunct of the Republican Party that is partly funded by Central Intelligence Agency funds laundered through the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Williamson is also connected to “democracy” projects funded by hedge fund tycoon George Soros, particularly through Williamson’s affiliation as a trustee with the Soros-funded Freedom House. Williamson, in recent criticism of the Obama administration's policy regarding Syria, stated that Syria is "strategically important to the Soviet Union."

Williamson’s stasis in a historical time warp becomes clearer when his participation in the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) examined. The original Committee was a Cold War era contrivance designed to propagandize the Soviet and communist “threat” to the United States. In 2004, the committee was re-launched after a hiatus of over a decade, but, instead of focusing on communism, the new committee targeted international terrorism. However, the new CPD could not leave its anti-communist baggage in the closet. One of the architects of the new CPD, Peter Hannaford, a former Reagan adviser, said

the reason for restoring the CPD was renewed was that he and other leading neo-cons and pro-Israeli policymakers, including former CIA director James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth Adelman, Rabbi Dov Zakheim, Michael Rubin, Joseph Lieberman, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Clifford May, John McCain’s 2008 campaign foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (who also works closely with Soros themed revolution projects), and Newt Gingrich, saw a “parallel between the Soviet threat and the threat from terrorism.”

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Wayne Madsen

Using the former Soviet republic of Georgia as a base of operation, NATO, the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the Zionist regime of Israel have a plan to carve up southern Russia, including the Caucasus region, into a group of vassal states that will either be under the influence of Georgia, pan-Turkic nationalists, or radical Sunni regimes owing fealty to Riyadh and Doha. Moreover, the plans for southern Russia are a carbon copy of Nazi Germany’s failed plans for the region.

Current neo-conservative doctrine foresees the fall of the governments of Iran, Belarus, and, ultimately Russia and China, after the fall of Damascus, to the combined forces of NATO and the Saudi- and Qatari-backed Salafist Wahhabis, who make up a large portion of the Syrian rebel movement. Russia has clearly drawn a line in the sand in Syria and does not want to see yet another Arab nation fall into the clutches of neo-con globalists and radical Muslims. Libya constituted proof of the alliance between the neo-con uber-capitalists, Zionists, and Wahhabists. Even if Russia concedes Damascus and the rest of inland Syria to the rebels, it is prepared, through the use of its Navy and naval base at Tartus in the predominantly-Alavi coastal region of Syria, to offer military protection for Bashar al-Assad, his fellow Alavis, and Syrian Christians who have been protected by the Alavis in an independent salient that includes Tartus and Latakia. The complete fall of Syria to Wahhabists and NATO will move the instability of the Middle East closer to the Russian southern frontier.

The stakes for Russia are immense. One only needs to examine Nazi Germany’s “New Order” (Neuordnung) plans for the occupation of the Soviet Union and Persia to understand what the neo-cons and their Israeli and Wahhabist colleagues have in store for southern Russia and Iran.

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Justin Raimondo

Howard Berman threatens fourth-smallest nation on earth

No country is safe from the power of the Israel lobby — no, not even tiny Tuvalu, a nation consisting of nine minuscule islets in the middle of the Pacific Ocean totaling ten square miles. Rep. Howard Berman, former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee and longtime Democratic party power broker, is threatening the Tuvaluans with economic sanctions because they are allowing Iranian ships to register under the Tuvaluan flag. “This has the effect of assisting the Iranian regime in evading US and EU sanctions and generating additional revenues for its nuclear weapons program,” said the bullying Berman in a letter to Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Willy Telavi. The reflagging is “sanctionable activity,” Berman continued, and “given the close and co-operative relationship that our two governments now enjoy, it would be unfortunate if this action were permitted to stand.” A very thinly-veiled threat — but to do what? What will be the consequences if Tuvalu gives Berman the answer he so richly deserves?

As our Jason Ditz points out, Tuvalu has no significant relations with the US: there is no US military base, and the amount of US aid — a desalinization plant, a few other minor contributions — is negligible.

There is one way, however, that Berman could try to bully the Tuvaluans into compliance with his diktat: the US Tuna Treaty, as its called, is a typical mercantilist arrangement whereby the governments involved give US ships permission to fish for tuna in the South Pacific in return for a hefty payment. The private companies involved are subsidized by the US government to the tune of $6 million per year to pay for their licenses. The treaty is up for renegotiation next year: it would be an easy task for the powerful Berman to insist on the US taking a hard line and depriving Tuvalu of some $10 million in revenue per year.

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Wayne Madsen

President Fernando Lugo in a pensive moment (Baltimore Sun)

The scenario on June 22 in Asuncion, Paraguay was like a case of déjà vu. President Fernando Lugo, a leftist president, was deposed by an impeachment and removal from office engineered by his political opponents in the Paraguayan legislature. In June 2009, another leftist Latin American leader, Manuel Zelaya, was removed by the U.S.-trained and supervised Honduran military at gunpoint under the claimed authority of the Honduran Supreme Court acting on orders from the Honduran Congress. In both cases the United States acquiesced to the new political realities brought about by constitutional «soft»coups and it quickly recognized the accession to power in Paraguay by Lugo’s opponent, Vice President Federico Franco just as it had the Honduran junta led by Roberto Micheletti.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who is married to arch-neoconservative and Israel supporter Robert Kagan, one of the chief architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, refused to call the Paraguayan Congress’s rapid impeachment and the Senate’s conviction and removal of Lugo a coup. The right-wing governments of Canada, Spain, and Germany quickly recognized the Franco government even as Latin American nations moved to isolate it diplomatically and economically.

The Obama administration has put a «civilian» imprimatur on America’s coups in Latin America, opting to involve governmental branches, such as legislatures and courts, to carry out its covert operations in the Western Hemisphere. Just as drone attacks and targeted assassinations have become a hallmark of the Obama doctrine, for Latin America the internally-launched «autogolpe,» or self coup by government insiders, is preferable to ordering tanks on to the streets, dissolving parliament and the Supreme Court, and turning over power to a military junta of generals and colonels.

Latin American nations now recognize the core of the Obama doctrine for putting one of its loyalists in power and ousting a leader not favorable to Washington’s policies – if the legislative and judicial branches of a government can be used to «constitutionally» eject an executive from power, the United States will recognize the change as constitutional and in keeping with the «democratic process.»

Honduras, and, now, Paraguay serve as stark examples of the Obama doctrine in practice.

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Wayne Madsen

The Fourth Estate has never been under as much pressure in the United States as it has been under the Obama administration. On the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon administration, thanks to a vigorous and independent U.S. press, many journalists have openly wondered how today’s corporate-controlled and increasingly-beleaguered independent media would have handled the Watergate affair. Many journalists have rightly concluded that today’s press would have given Nixon and his administration a free pass and there would have been no investigation, impeachment, or presidential resignation.

Across the United States journalists are facing pressures from the government and corporations that would have been unheard of forty years ago. After leaks from unnamed government sources about the decision-making process in carrying out targeted assassinations using drones and details of the Stuxnet and Flame computer malware and the use of Flame in spying on Iranian computers in the CIA’s Operation Olympic Games, Attorney General Eric Holder has opened a criminal investigation into the leaks. Journalists are not immune to being hauled before federal grand juries by Justice Department prosecutors to reveal their sources under oath.

New York Times reporter Jim Risen is facing the government’s appeal of an earlier federal court decision to quash his subpoena to reveal his source or sources. In his book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” Risen revealed the CIA’s Operation Merlin, a program to sabotage components of Iran’s nuclear power program. The Holder Justice Department, acting to protect the Bush administration program, wants Risen to testify on the guilt of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling as the source for the information. Sterling has been indicted by a grand jury under the arcane 1917 Espionage Act, which is being used to prosecute other leakers of alleged classified information and as a weapon to keep other potential government whistleblowers silent.

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Wayne Madsen

The annual secretive Bilderberg Group conference, which brings together the capitalist world’s financial, political, and media kingpins in various venues, was held this year in Chantilly, Virginia, near the back gate of Washington Dulles International Airport. The Marriott Westfields resort hotel venue allowed official and unofficial guests to make their way from the airport as clandestinely as possible, thus avoiding the large number of protesters representing both the progressive “Occupy” and conservative “Tea Party” movements who gathered at the government security perimeter erected for the “private” conference.

This year’s Bilderberg conference featured three guests from Russia. However, unlike the “establishment” figures from Western nations, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Canada, two of the three Russians represented the anti-Valdimir Putin opposition. Present at Bilderberg 2012 were Anatoly Chubais and Garry Kasparov, leading anti-Putin Russian politicians.

Chubais is reviled among a majority of Russians for shepherding the wholesale privatization of Soviet and Russian Federation state enterprises under the administration of President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The chief benefactors of the privatization were a handful of Russian entrepreneurs who soon became billionaire oligarchs. Many of these oligarchs soon found themselves in prison in Russia or in exile in Britain and Israel to avoid prosecution in Russia. Today, Chubais is the head of Rusnano, a leading Russian nanotechnology firm.

At the Chantilly conclave, Chubais rubbed shoulders with the robber barons of Wall Street, including former Goldman Sachs and Citigroup senior executive and Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Goldman Sachs International Chairman Peter Sutherland, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company co-chairman Henry Kravis and former Obama Office of Management and Budget director and current Citigroup vice chairman Peter Orszag.

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Wayne Madsen

Major multinational corporations and the financial and non-governmental organization network of George Soros have taken effective control of a number of United Nations functions within the UN Secretariat and within the organization's specialized agencies. The goal of this alliance is to re-draw the map of the world for the benefit of the global elites and the “top 1 percent.”

The United Nations, which once prided itself on transparency, has now become a bureaucratic behemoth where decisions are made in closed door meetings attended by diplomats, mostly from English-speaking Western countries; corporate representatives; NGO officials tied to Soros and other entities like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations; and current and former CIA officers, some of whom act under U.S. State Department cover. It is a fact of life that today a number of UN agencies and elements are funded by private money.

Although South Korean Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary General of the UN, his most important deputies represent the interests of NATO and its allies. The Undersecretary General for Political Affairs is B. Lynn Pascoe, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and Malaysia and is thought by many UN staffers to have links to the CIA. The Undersecretary General for Safety and Security is Gregory Starr, a former Director of the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service who is also thought to have close links to the CIA. The Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination is Robert Orr, the former Director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council on which the CIA is represented. The Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is Anthony Lake, a former U.S. National Security Adviser.

The Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations is Herve Ladsous of France who has served as French ambassador to Indonesia and China and who is a pro-NATO Atlanticist.

Perhaps no where is the Soros and CIA influence felt more than in the UN Development Program (UNDP), which is headed by Helen Clark, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. However, Soros's operatives are heavily present in every UN agency except for Peacekeeping Operations but it, too, is an ultimate target for the multi-billionaire Hungarian Jew who once cooperated with the Nazi occupation forces in wartime Hungary.

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