Month: March 2016

Nixon’s advisor Ehrlichman said White House enemies were “antiwar left and black people”; WH created fake “war on drugs” to demonize and destroy

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Several articles below

From Natural Blaze

Former Nixon Aide Admits War On Drugs Was A Big Lie; Was Never About Drugs

March 23,
By Brandon Turbeville

In an interview conducted by Harper’s Dan Baum nearly 22 years ago, former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman admitted what many have known ever since the beginning – that the Nixon administrations’ War On Drugs was a giant lie.

To clarify, it was not Nixon’s police state that was a lie. That was very real. It was the justification used for the war, the fearmongering, and the panic-inducing hype produced by the White House that was a monumental obfuscation.

Ehrlichman doesn’t mince words when he discusses the War On Drugs and it is not inference suggesting that the justification given for the War on Drugs was a lie. In fact, Ehrlichman even states that the policy was in order to attack political rivals and alleged “threats” to the Nixon administration like “blacks and hippies.”

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” Ehrlichman said.

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

As Tom LoBianco writes for CNN, “It’s a stark departure from Nixon’s public explanation for his first piece of legislation in the war on drugs, delivered in message to Congress in July 1969, which framed it as a response to an increase in heroin addiction and the rising use of marijuana and hallucinogens by students.”

Of course, the War On Drugs and the ensuing police and incarceration states that followed had a much larger purpose than merely helping Nixon fight back against potential political threats. Indeed, most drugs were already illegal by Nixon’s election.

Hiding and preventing the knowledge of positive effects of some substances, shredding Constitutional and human rights, creating a culture of incarceration, and implementing a gradual but eventually total police state were most certainly part of the plan as well, which history has demonstrated. For instance, Reagan and especially Clinton were under no threat from the populations mentioned by Ehrlichman but they nevertheless sent the drug war and the natural results of it listed above into overdrive.

Nevertheless, after setting the United States further down the path of totalitarianism, we at least appreciate Ehrlichman’s honesty even if it is decades later. Perhaps now, we can begin dismantling the drug war.

Photo credit: gmcmullen via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA, modified by editor

[1]

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Here’s the article where Dan Baum reveals this information.

from Harpers

April 2016 issue

Legalize It All
How to win the war on drugs

By Dan Baum

In 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, unlocked for me one of the great mysteries of modern American history: How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “war on drugs” and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. I barely recognized him. He was much heavier than he’d been at the time of the Watergate scandal two decades earlier, and he wore a mountain-man beard that extended to the middle of his chest.

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away.

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I must have looked shocked. Ehrlichman just shrugged. Then he looked at his watch, handed me a signed copy of his steamy spy novel, The Company, and led me to the door.

Nixon’s invention of the war on drugs as a political tool was cynical, but every president since — Democrat and Republican alike — has found it equally useful for one reason or another. Meanwhile, the growing cost of the drug war is now impossible to ignore: billions of dollars wasted, bloodshed in Latin America and on the streets of our own cities, and millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that doesn’t end at the prison gate; one of every eight black men has been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction…

For the rest of the article, http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

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The interviewer didn’t publish this information, information that shocked him at the time, for 22 years. Instead, he forgot, and only discovered this in his notes when he was writing the Harper article.

From CNN on how this went missing for 22 years — see highlighted text below.

Report: Aide says Nixon’s war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

By Tom LoBianco, CNN
March 24, 2016

Washington (CNN)One of Richard Nixon’s top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies, according to a 22-year-old interview recently published in Harper’s Magazine.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Ehrlichman’s comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.

It’s a stark departure from Nixon’s public explanation for his first piece of legislation in the war on drugs, delivered in message to Congress in July 1969, which framed it as a response to an increase in heroin addiction and the rising use of marijuana and hallucinogens by students.

However, Nixon’s political focus on white voters, the “Silent Majority,” is well-known. And Nixon’s derision for minorities in private is well-known from his White House recordings.

The comments come as there has been a marked shift in attitudes toward handling drug use — ranging from the legalization of marijuana in various states to White House candidates focusing heavily on treatment as an answer to New Hampshire’s heroin epidemic while they were campaigning across the state.

Ehrlichman died in 1999, but his five children in questioned the veracity of the account.

“We never saw or heard anything from our dad, John Ehrlichman, that was derogatory about any person of color,” wrote Peter Ehrlichman, Tom Ehrlichman, Jan Ehrlichman, Michael Ehrlichman and Jody E. Pineda in a statement provided to CNN.

“The 1994 alleged ‘quote’ we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him,” the Ehrlichman family wrote. “We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father’s death, when dad can no longer respond. None of us have raised our kids that way, and that’s because we were not raised that way.”

Ehrlichman’s comments did not surface until now after Baum remembered them while going back through old notes for the Harper’s story. Baum said he had no reason to believe Ehrlichman was being dishonest and viewed them as “atonement” from a man long after his tumultuous run in the White House ended.

“I think Ehrlichman was waiting for someone to come and ask him. I think he felt bad about it. I think he had a lot to feel bad about, same with Egil Krogh, who was another Watergate guy.” Baum told CNN.

Baum interviewed Ehrlichman and others for his 1996 book “Smoke and Mirrors,” but said he left out the Ehrlichman comment from the book because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author.

Baum equated Ehrlichman’s admission with traumatic war stories that often take decades for veterans to talk about and said it clearly took time for Ehrlichman and other Nixon aides he interviewed to candidly explain the war on drugs.

“These guys, they knew they’d done bad things and they were glad finally when it was no longer going to cost them anything to be able to talk about it, to atone for it.” Baum said. “Nobody goes in to public service, I don’t think, on either side of the political aisle, to be repressive, to be evil. They go in because they care about the country.”

[3]

[1] This article (Former Nixon Aide Admits War On Drugs Was A Big Lie; Was Never About Drugs) can be republished under a Creative Commons license with  attribution to Brandon Turbeville and Natural Blaze.com.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense SolutionsandDispatches From a Dissident, volume 1and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 600 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/03/former-nixon-aide-admits-war-on-drugs-was-a-big-lie-was-never-about-drugs.html

[2] http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Dan Baum is the author of four books, most recently Gun Guys (2013). His most recent article for Harper’s Magazine, “How to Make Your Own AR-15,” appeared in the June 2013 issue.

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

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Obama goes to Nazi immigrant haven during Argentina trip

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Two articles

Obama brings two fuel-guzzling planes to serve as Air Force One in Argentina

By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times
March 24, 2016

President Obama brought along a second, smaller Air Force One for his family to enjoy a day of sightseeing in Argentina on Thursday.

After dancing the tango at a state dinner in Buenos Aires Wednesday night, the president and first lady Michelle Obama took their daughters aboard the government plane colloquially known as “baby” Air Force One Thursday to fly to the scenic town of Bariloche in southern Argentina. It’s a Boeing 757 used when traveling to places where the runway is too short for the primary Air Force One.

The larger Air Force One, a 747-200, was parked alongside the smaller plane at the airport in Buenos Aires, according to pool reporters traveling with the president. It costs about $206,000 per hour to fly the larger plane, which the president is expected to use for the 10-plus-hour flight back to Washington late Thursday night.

It’s common for the government to have a backup plane available when the president travels, although not often for a family sightseeing excursion.

Bariloche is a lakeside resort town nestled in the foothills of the Andes mountains, famous for its chocolates and Swiss-style architecture.

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But Bariloche is more than that.

In Argentine Nazi Refuge Bariloche

By / October 19th, 2013

Bariloche, a popular Argentine tourist resort ringed by the Andes, where Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke found refuge after World War II, has kept mostly silent on its long history as a home to Nazis. For 40 years, Priebke lived undisturbed among its citizens, until he was finally extradited to Italy in the 1990s over a World War II massacre for which he has never expressed regret.

…

Thousands of Nazis, Croatian Ustasha fascists and Italian fascists arrived in Argentina with the blessing of president Juan Peron, who led the nation from 1946 to 1955 and again briefly in the 1970s, according to the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Working first as a waiter, then as owner of a delicatessen and finally as owner of a consulting firm, Priebke was liked and respected in the German community. He was the president of Bariloche’s German-Argentine cultural association and would celebrate Adolf Hitler’s April 20 birthday alongside the town’s other Germans….

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From Wikipedia

Nazis in Bariloche

In 1995, Bariloche made headlines in the international press when it became known as a haven for Nazi war criminals, such as the former SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke. Priebke had been the director of the German School of Bariloche for many years.

In his 2004 book Bariloche nazi-guía turística, Argentine author Abel Basti claims that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun lived in the surroundings of Bariloche for many years after World War II.[5] Basti said that the Argentine Nazis chose the estate of Inalco as Hitler’s refuge.[5]

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, a 2011 book (and subsequent film) by British authors Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, proposed that Hitler and Eva Braun escaped from Berlin in 1945 and hid at Hacienda San Ramon, six miles east of Bariloche, until the early 1960s. These accounts are disputed by most historians, who generally believe that Hitler and Braun committed suicide in the last days of World War II, even though their bodies were never found.[6]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/24/obama-takes-two-air-force-one-planes-argentina/

http://www.constantinereport.com/in-argentine-nazi-refuge-bariloche/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariloche

 

The nuclear Near East! Israelis commanded atomic bomb drop on Yemen in 2015

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By Thierry Meyssan
Global Research, March 16, 2016
Voltaire Net 7 March 2016

While the West was applying pressure on Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear programme, the Saudis were buying the atomic bomb from Israel or Pakistan. From now on, to everyone’s surprise, the Near East has become a nuclear zone, dominated by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In 1979, Israel completed the final adjustments to its atomic bomb, in collaboration with the apartheid régime of South Africa. The Hebrew state has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has always avoided answering questions about its nuclear programme.

Every year since 1980, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a consensual resolution to make the Near East a region free from all nuclear weapon. This resolution was aimed at encouraging Israel to give up its bomb and to ensure that other states would not enter into an arms race.

Under the Shah, Iran also had a military nuclear programme, but it was pursued only marginally after the revolution of 1979, because of the war started by Iraq (1980-88). However, it was only after the end of war that ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini opposed weapons of mass destruction, and consequently prohibited the fabrication, possession and the use of atomic weapons.

Negotiations then began for the restitution of the 1,180 billion dollars of Iranian investment in the Eurodif complex for the enrichment of uranium at Tricastin. However, the question was never resolved. As a result, during the dissolution of Eurodif in 2010, the Islamic Republic of Iran still owned 10% of the capital. It is probable that it still holds a part of the company for uranium enrichment at Tricastin.

From 2003 to 2005, the negotiations relative to the nuclear litigation were presided for Iran by Sheikh Hassan Rohani, a religious leader close to Presidents Rafsandjani and Khatami. The Europeans demanded the introduction of a passage stipulating that Iran dismantle its system for the teaching of nuclear physics, so as to ensure that they would be unable to relaunch their military programme.

However, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a partisan for the relaunching of the Khomeinist Revolution – came to power, he rejected the agreement negotiated by Sheikh Rohani and dismissed him. He restarted the teaching of nuclear physics, and launched a research programme which was aimed, in particular, at finding a way of producing electricity from atomic fusion and not nuclear fission, which is currently used by the United States, Russia, France, China and Japan.

Accusing President Ahmadinejad of «preparing the Apocalypse to hasten the return of the Mahdi» (sic), Israël launched an international Press campaign intended to isolate Iran. In reality, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not share the Jewish vision of an evil world which has to be destroyed and then rebuilt, but that of a progressive maturation of collective awareness until Parousia, the return of the Mahdi and the prophets. At the same time, Mossad busied itself with the assassination, one by one, of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. From their side, the Western powers and the UN Security Council adopted ever more restrictive sanctions until they had completely isolated Iran at the economic and financial level.

In 2013, the Guide of the Revolution, ayatollah Ali Khameinei, agreed to a round of secret discussions with Washington, in Oman. Persuaded that he had to loosen the constraints which were suffocating his country, he considered a provisional ten-year agreement. After a preliminary agreement, Ahmadinejad’s candidacy for the Presidential election was not authorised, and Sheikh Hassan Rohani was elected. He restarted the negotiations that he had abandoned in 2005, and accepted the Western conditions, including the ban on enriching uranium at 20%, which put an end to the research on nuclear fusion.

In November 2013, Saudi Arabia organised a secret summit which brought together members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the friendly Muslim states [1]. In the presence of delegates from the UN General Secretariat, Israeli President Shimon Peres joined them by video-conference. The participants concluded that the danger was not the Israeli bomb, but the bomb that Iran might one day possess. The Saudis assured their interlocutors that they would take the necessary initiatives.

Military cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a new phenomenon, but the two countries have been working together since 2008, when Riyadh financed Israel’s punitive expedition in Gaza, known as «Operation Cast Lead» [2].

The 5+1 agreement was not made public until mid-2015. During the negotiations, Saudi Arabia multiplied its declarations that it would launch an arms race if the international community did not manage to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear programme [3].

On the 6th February 2015, President Obama published his new «National Security Strategy». He wrote – «Long-term stability [in the Middle East and North Africa] requires more than the use and presence of US military forces. It demands partners who are capable of defending themselves by themselves. This is why we invest in the capacity of Israel, Jordan and our Gulf partners to discourage aggression, while maintaining our unwavering support for the security of Israel, including the continued improvement of its military capacities» [4].

On the 25th March 2015, Saudi Arabia began its operation «Decisive Tempest» in Yemen, officially aimed at re-instating the Yemeni President, who had been overthrown by a popular revolution. In fact, the operation was the implementation of the secret agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia for the exploitation of the Rub’al-Khali oil fields [5].

On the 26th March 2015, Adel Al-Jubeir, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, refused to answer a question from CNN concerning the project for a Saudi atomic bomb.

On the 30th March 2015, a joint military Staff was set up by Israel in Somaliland, a non-recognised state. From the first day, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan participated under Israel command.

Two days later, on the 1st April 2015, during the Charm el-Cheick summit, the Arab League adopted the principle of a «Joint Arab Force» [6]. Officially, this was to implement the Arab Defence Treaty of 1950 to fight against terrorism. De facto, the League had validated the new Arab military alliance under Israeli command.

In May 2015, the Joint Arab Force, under Israeli command, used a tactical atomic bomb in Yemen. It may have been used in an attempt to penetrate an underground bunker.

On the 16th July 2015, intelligence specialist Duane Clarridge affirmed on Fox Business that Saudi Arabia had bought the atomic bomb from Pakistan.

On the 18th January 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry affirmed on CNN that atomic weaponry can not be bought and transferred. He warned Saudi Arabia that this would constitute a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the 15th February 2016, Saudi analyst Dahham Al-’Anzi affirmed in Arabic on Russia Today that his country has been in possession of an atomic weapon for two years, in order to protect Arabs, and that the major powers know this.

The declarations of Saudi analyst Dahham Al-’Anzi, on the 15th February 2016 on Russia Today – which were immediately translated and broadcast by the Israeli service Memri – raised a considerable echo in the Arab world. However, no international political leader, not even Saudi, made any comment. And Russia Today has erased them from its Internet site.

The declarations of Dahham Al-’Anzi – an intellectual close to Prince Mohamed ben Salman – lead us to think that he was not speaking of a strategic atomic weapon (A-bomb or H-bomb), but a tactical bomb (N-bomb). Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine how Saudi Arabia could «protect Arabs» from the Syrian «dictatorship» by using a strategic nuclear bomb. Moreover, this corresponds to what has already been observed in Yemen. However, nothing is certain.

It is obviously unlikely that Saudi Arabia had built this kind of weapon itself, since it is absolutely bereft of scientific knowledge in the matter. On the other hand, it is possible that it bought the weapon from a state which has not signed the NPT, Israel or Pakistan. If we are to believe Duane Clarridge, it would have been Islamabad which sold its technology, but in this case, the weapon could not be a neutron bomb.

Since Saudi Arabia signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (TNP), it did not have the right acquire the weapon, whether it be a tactical or a strategic bomb. But it would be enough for King Salman to declare that he bought the bomb in his own name to avoid being concerned by the Treaty. We know that the state of Saudi Arabia is the King’s private property, and that his budget only represents a part of the royal coffers. This would mean that we have entered a phase of the privatisation of nuclear weapons – a scenario which until now had been unthinkable. This evolution must be taken most seriously.

Finally, everything leads us to believe that the Saudis acted within the framework of US policy, but that they overstepped themselves by violating the NPT. By doing so, they have laid the foundation for a nuclearised Near East in which Iran could no longer play the role that Sheikh Rohani had hoped to recover, that of «regional police force» for the benefit of his Anglo-Saxon friends.

Thierry Meyssan, French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Hillary Clinton is a neo-con; she has the record and the vision

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From the Action Network

3-15-16

“For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.” —Robert Kagan

“I have a sense that she’s one of the more competent members of the current administration and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president.” —Dick Cheney

“I’ve known her for many years now, and I respect her intellect. And she ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” —Henry Kissinger

Nobody Beats This Record

  • She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013.
  • She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011.
  • She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009.
  • She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan.
  • She voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
  • She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq.
  • She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing.
  • She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel.
  • She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi.
  • She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran.
  • She is not afraid to antagonize Russia.
  • She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine.
  • She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers.
  • She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation.
  • She supported President Bill Clinton’s wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress.
  • She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria.
  • She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.

More about Robert Kagan.

Further Reading

Videos

http://hillaryisaneocon.com/node/3

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https://twitter.com/Hillary_Neocon

http://www.hillaryisaneocon.com/

Global rally for zero nuclear weapons, April 1, Washington DC

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From Beyond Nuclear

Rally for Zero

Nuclear weapons do not equal security

On March 31 & April 1, world leaders are convening right here in DC to talk nuclear security. Not on the agenda: nuclear weapons.

That has to change. There are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, thousands ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Nuclear weapons jeopardize global security – not strengthen it.

Join us as we rally to show world leaders that 15,000 nuclear weapons ≠ security. It’s time they take action for zero.

Who: Global Zero, the international movement to eliminate nuclear weapons, and you!

What: A rally featuring a life-size inflated nuclear missile and Global Zero movement leaders

When: Friday, April 1st, 12:00pm

Where: McPherson Square

RSVP at: http://www.globalzero.org/protest

Email ldaigle@globalzero.org for more information.

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/nuclear-weapons/2016/4/1/global-zero-rally-for-zero-april-1st-washington-dc.html

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Hugo Chávez is just a dead communist dictator

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By Venezuela Today
Global Research, March 07, 2016
Venezuela Today

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is a rarity in American politics: a self-described socialist running for the White House. And this September, Sanders sought to distance himself from one of the most well known socialists of the new millennium — Hugo Chávez.

Sanders accused Hillary Clinton supporters of attempting to smear him by linking him with the divisive figure. Clinton is Sanders’s biggest rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the comments were allegedly made by pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record. But in trying to distance himself from Chávez, Sander is making many Venezuelans angry.

“Yesterday, one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent Super PACs attacked our campaign pretty viciously…They suggested I’d be friendly with Middle East terrorist organizations, and even tried to link me to a dead communist dictator,” Sanders wrote in a fundraising email.

The senator’s strong words are likewise stirring up trouble. One Venezuela news website dryly noted that Sanders dictator remark was “referring to Venezuela’s three time democratically-elected former president Hugo Chávez.” Maximilien Arvelaiz, Venezuela’s ambassador in the United States, also defended the the late leader in the American media.

“Venezuela has become…the bad guy. We’re the villain,” Arvelaiz said. “I could send a couple of good books to Bernie Sanders.”

Sanders’s email was one of his first statements dealing with foreign policy. So far, the politicians has instead focused on rising income inequality. According to the Pew Research Center, the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 80% of the country’s stocks and mutual funds.

Supporters of Chávez were quick to point out that the democratic socialist president addressed similar concerns in Venezuela. And if he wants to become president, then perhaps Sanders could take lessons from Chávez’s many supporters around the globe.

In the United Kingdom, fellow socialist Jeremy Corbyn recently won a decisive election to become the Leader of the Labour Party. Corbyn has publicly endorsed Chávez in the past.

The original source of this article is Venezuela Today
Copyright © Venezuela Today, Venezuela Today, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-senator-bernie-sanders-hugo-chavez-is-just-a-dead-communist-dictator/5512498
Additional information, including the supply of free or low cost oil to Northeastern US poor residents by Venezuela –
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article35361897.html
Clinton-allied group ties Sanders to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez

A peace pledge for government officials and candidates to sign

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From Peaceful Skies Coalition

Click to access CandidatePeacePledge.pdf

Stand for Peace. Take the Pledge.

There is a strong desire for peace both within the United States and around the world. Awareness continues to grow that the use of warfare rather than peacemaking has created dangerous fallout, the impacts of which affect everyone.

2016 is the time to recommit to peacemaking.

Therefore, it is imperative that all elected officials commit to address the tragic environmental, financial, and human costs of US militarism. I understand that not only federal funding goes to militarism, but that state and local governments also fund the military.

As a candidate for elected office I commit to this Candidate Peace Pledge:

  1. I will work to end the global epidemic of violence by prioritizing diplomacy, peacemaking, and the demilitarization of the police. I will work to stop wars, declared and undeclared.
  2. If elected to office in 2016, I will prioritize economic conversion and demilitarizing the economy.
  3. I will work for the cleanup of all toxic military sites and protection of the public health. Biological, chemical and nuclear warfare research, development, use, and waste across the US and around the world has resulted in the destruction of human and environmental health. It is an obligation of all levels of government to repair the damage to the highest degree possible.

http://www.peacefulskies.org

Why does the West hate North Korea?

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That the Russians and Chinese have joined the US in [imposing sanctions] instead of calling for sanctions against the US for its threats against the DPRK and its new military exercises which are a clear and present danger to the DPRK is shameful. If the Russians and Chinese are sincere why don’t they insist that the US draw down its forces there so the DPRK feels less threatened and take steps to guarantee the security of the DPRK?  They do not explain their actions but their actions make them collaborators with the USA against the DPRK.”

— Christopher Black, international attorney

By Andre Vltchek

Global Research, March 08, 2016

New sanctions, and once again, new US-ROK military exercises right next door; new intimidations and new insults. For no other reason than because the country that never attacked anyone, is still determined to defend itself against appalling military, economic and propaganda provocations.

How much more can one country endure?

More than 60 years ago, millions of people above the 38th parallel died, were literally slaughtered by the US-led coalition.

After that, after its victory, the North Korea was never left in peace. The West has been provoking it, threatening it, imposing brutal sanctions and of course, manipulating global public opinion.

Why? There are several answers. The simple one is: because it is Communist and because it wants to follow its own course! As Cuba has been doing for decades… As several Latin American countries were doing lately.

But there is one more, much more complex answer: because the DPRK fought for its principles at home, and it fought against Western imperialism abroad. It helped to liberate colonized and oppressed nations. And, like Cuba, it did it selflessly, as a true internationalist state.

African continent benefited the most, including Namibia and Angola, when they were suffering from horrific apartheid regimes imposed on them by South Africa. It goes without saying that these regimes were fully sponsored by the West, as was the racist madness coming from Pretoria (let us also not forget that the fascist, apartheid South Africa was one of the countries that was fighting, on the side of the West, during the Korean War).

The West never forgot nor ‘forgave’ the DPRK’s internationalist help to many African nations. North Korean pilots were flying Egyptian fighter planes in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The DPRK was taking part in the liberation struggle in Angola (it participated in combat operations, alongside the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA)), it fought in Rhodesia, Lesotho, Namibia (decisively supporting SWAPO) and in the Seychelles. It aided African National Congress and its struggle against the apartheid in South Africa. In the past, it had provided assistance to then progressive African nations, including Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Tanzania.

The fact that people of the DPRK spilled their blood for freedom of the most devastated (by the Western imperialism) continent on earth – Africa – is one of the main reasons why the West is willing to go ‘all the way’, trying to “punish”, systematically discredit, even to liquidate this proud nation. The West is obsessed with harming North Korea, as it was, for decades, obsessed with destroying Cuba.

The West plundered Africa, an enormous continent rich in resources, for centuries. It grew wealthy on this loot. Anybody who tried to stop it, had to be liquidated.

The DPRK was pushed to the corner, tormented and provoked. When Pyongyang reacted, determined to protect itself, the West declared that defense was actually “illegal” and that it represented true “danger to the world”.

The DPRK refused to surrender its independence and its path – it continued developing its defensive nuclear program. The West’s propaganda apparatus kept going into top gear, spreading toxic fabrications, and then polluting entire Planet with them. As a result, entire world is convinced that the “North Korea is evil”, but it has absolutely no idea, why? Entire charade is only built on clichés, but almost no one is challenging it.

Christopher Black, a prominent international lawyer based in Toronto, Canada, considers new sanctions against the DPRK as a true danger to the world peace:

 “Chapter VII of the UN Charter states that the Security Council can take measures against a country if there is a threat to the peace and this is the justification they are using for imposing the sanctions. However, it is not the DPRK that is creating a threat to the peace, but the USA which is militarily threatening the DPRK with annihilation. The DPRK has clearly stated its nuclear weapons are only to deter an American attack which is the threat to the peace.

The fact that the US, as part of the SC is imposing sanctions on a country it is threatening is hypocritical and unjust. That the Russians and Chinese have joined the US in this instead of calling for sanctions against the US for its threats against the DPRK and its new military exercises which are a clear and present danger to the DPRK is shameful. If the Russians and Chinese are sincere why don’t they insist that the US draw down its forces there so the DPRK feels less threatened and take steps to guarantee the security of the DPRK?  They do not explain their actions but their actions make them collaborators with the USA against the DPRK.”

US/NATO Threatens the DPRK, China and Russia’s Far East

The US/NATO military bases in Asia (and in other parts of the world) are actually the main danger to the DPRK, to China and to the Russian “Far East”.

Enormous air force bases located in Okinawa (Kadena and Futenma), as well as the military bases on the territory of the ROK, are directly threatening North Korea, which has all rights to defend itself and its citizens.

It is also thoroughly illogical to impose sanctions on the victim and not on the empire, which is responsible for hundreds of millions of lost human lives in all corners of the Globe.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Andre Vltchek, Global Research, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-does-the-west-hate-north-korea/5512822

Embassy of Mongolia confirms demand from Kiev for reparations

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From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
1st March, 2016
 
Batu Khan on the throne of the Golden Horde
The press attaché of the Embassy of Russia in Mongolia, Lhagvasuren Namsrai, has confirmed the information about the country’s Parliament receiving an official letter from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with the requirement to pay compensation for the destruction of Kiev by the troops of Batu Khan.
“The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine wrote an official letter to the State Great Khural (our Parliament) that said in the thirteenth century Batu Khan (Golden Horde, the grandson of Genghis Khan) organized the genocide of the Ukrainian people. Ukrainians demand the payment of compensation. Both Russian and Mongolian websites have written about it”, said Namsrai on the 29th February in an interview with radio station “Vesti FM”.
“Then our correspondent asked our Chairman of the State Great Hural: the letter is factual? And our Chairman of the State Great Hural replied that, generally, in the history of the Middle ages it was the Kievan Rus, the Ukrainian State did not exist then. But if the Verkhovna Rada writes all the names of the Ukrainian citizens who died as a result of genocide, and their families, we will be ready to pay”, — said the press attaché.
As a reminder, in May of 2015, the TV channels “Ren TV”, “Star” and several other news agencies reported that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the resolution “On the genocide of the Ukrainian people in the 13th century by the criminal regime of the Mongol Empire” and sent to the Mongolian authorities the requirement to pay compensation for the destruction of Kiev. Meanwhile some agencies reported the announcement as a prank.
The Chairman of the Khural, Zandaahuugiyn Enkhbold, called the resolution of the Ukrainian Parliament “a propaganda cliche of Ukraine concerning Mongolia”. “The world did not know and never heard about any Ukrainian nation, especially in the era of the heirs of the Great Temujin, he said. — Millions of dead Ukrainians in the thirteenth century is the fruit of an unhealthy imagination of Ukrainian deputies”.
Enkhbold added that “Mongolia is ready to pay damages in the capture of Kiev by Batu Khan, but only to the victims or their families”. “We look forward to announcing the full list of victims”, — said the Chairman of the Khural.

On Ukraine’s support of ISIS

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Posted on Doubting Steven
Source: Medium.com

2-29-16

Since complete international isolation of Islamists isn’t achieved, any military confrontation with ISIS would be inefficient. Meanwhile Middle Eastern terrorism gets support not only of Islamic countries but also of those ones that pretend to belong to European democratic community. Also this community seems to consider that relations with terrorist structures of such countries as Ukraine are a common thing. At any rate, neither Berlin, nor Paris, nor Rome have ever condemned Kiev or called to do away with the Dudayev battalion (an armed group of radical Islamists mainly consisting of Chechens but also including militants from other Caucasian regions, and some Ukrainians) or the Sheikh Mansur battalion (seceded from the Dudayev battalion, placed not far from the Mariupol city in south east of Ukraine). No one also demanded to eliminate either Hizb ut-Tahrir organization banned by the majority of civilized governments, the ultra-radical UNA-UNSO, or the Right Sector. However all those organizations have been openly fraternizing with ISIS and even blew horn about it until recently.
The leader of the UNA-UNSO Dmytro Korchynsky and his Right Sector counterpart Oleksandr Muzychko succeeded in Middle Eastern bridge building. The first one thought that terrorists had been the only Kiev’s allies in its fight against Russia and called Islamists for ‘taking a good aim’ at Russians. The other one was one of a general connecting links between Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and Islamists and liked to vaunt of success in dealing with ISIS. They say that the information about sale of Israeli and Soviet missiles and allegedly nuclear weapons elements to Daesh leaked to mass media due to his excessive garrulousness. However, after his death (which has been considered no-coincidence — he was killed during Ukrainian police-involved shooting) the leaks to the media died out. Some people believe that all relations with Ukrainian group of ISIS and its Syrian leaders have been monopolized by power structures annoyed with public rodomontade of Muzychko and his ‘associates’.
It is clear that there is no trustworthy information in this respect. This is just a buzz. But there is no smoke without fire. They say that regular (!) contacts with ISIS are under the jurisdiction the Verkhovna Rada MP and the Minister of the Interior’s adviser Anton Herashchenko (!) famous of his proposal to publish personal data of Russian pilots in Syria, so that the militants could have the opportunity to take revenge.
Apropos, Ukraine being represented by the secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Oleksandr Turchinov occurred to be nearly the only state applauding the attack on the Russian Su-24M bomber by the Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter. By doing so Kiev has distinctly defined which side it’s been standing and whom it’s been supporting. The speech of Ukroboronprom Deputy Director General responsible for Foreign Economic Activity Denis Gurak that Ukraine and Turkey had reached agreement on joint projects in many fields of defense industry, in particular aerospace, aviation, armor sectors and boosting security and protection in the Black Sea waters refers to the same.
On top of that Ukraine has given Turkey all scientific resources in the field of nuclear research remaining since Soviet times. Thus Ukrainian engineers of carbon-uranium commercial reactors meant for production of weapons plutonium participate in research works organized in Turkish Nuclear Research and Training Center. In this way, Islamists can gain access to technology of making plutonium nuclear bomb through the agency of Turkey!
It’s a remarkable fact that a representative of Syrian Turkomans Alparslan Çelik who is deemed to be responsible for the murder of the Russian pilot expresses thanks to Ankara and both ISIS and Ukrainian authorities as well in his appeal to Turkish government.
His appeal was detected by Anonymous Group on one of Islamist sites نداء الى تركيا و داعش و اوكرانيا.
There is every ground to believe that the alliance between Kiev and jihadists exists and that both sides have been actively engaging. For Ukraine, ISIS is a considerable leverage in its confrontation with Russia and an inexhaustible source of ‘black’ money at the same time. In particular ISIS supplies Ukraine with hit men from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and some former socialist republics for military conflicts in the territory of Novorossia. The most illustrative example of illegal export is a confession of the Kuwait ISIS group Osama Hayat of the deal to buy Chinese MANPADs FN-6 in Ukraine designed to engage low flying targets with maximum altitude of 3.8 km, which they conveyed through Turkey to Syria. The money was transferred through a Turkish bank.
The Islamic State has also created several bases for terrorists’ training (according to various opinions, the largest training camps have been located in the Dnipropetrovsk suburbs and Perevalnoye place) and ‘recreation camps’, where it is possible to buy legal Ukrainian IDs. In the view of the visa-free regime for Ukrainians, those jihadists with new legal status obtain a very easy access to the Western countries. As a result, Ukraine turns into a terminal for Islamists in their way to Europe and transient center for committing acts of terrorism in Russia and other countries.
Source
http://doubtingsteven.blogspot.com/2016/02/on-ukraines-support-of-isis.html