Month: April 2016

U.S. empire — the overview

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From Empire Slayer

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December 21, 2013

I knew that I could never again raise my voice… without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.  …for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?

– Martin Luther King Jr.  

Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or “disappeared”, at the hands of governments or armed political groups.  More often than not, the United States shares the blame.

– Amnesty International 

em·pire
ˈemˌpī(ə)r/
noun

an extensive operation or sphere of activity controlled by one person or group

The US stands today as both the world’s – and history’s – largest empire.  Thus, to understand empire, we can study the attributes of the US.

The US:

  • Has more foreign military bases than any country in world history – the number is estimated to be approximately 1,000 to 1,100, though the US doesn’t take kindly to even satirical requests for other countries to put bases or foreign soldiers on US soil; see here.  No other country has a remotely comparable amount of foreign bases.  Russia has 12.  China has 0 (and see here).  The organization that had the second highest number of foreign bases in human history was the British Empire, which, at its height, had 40.
  • Came into existence and achieved its economic power through slavery and genocide, and has been waging expansionist war for nearly 100% of the time since.

 

  • Spends more on violence and means of violence (such as weapons and foreign military bases) than the rest of the world combined.  “One year of the United States military budget is equal to more than 30,000 dollars per hour for every hour since the birth of Jesus Christ.”  (Blum)  In 2014, the USA spent approximately 1.2 million dollars per minute on violence and means of violence.  (China is second highest, at less than one sixth of that in 2012.)  As every violent group in history has said, the US frames its violence and terror as being for “stability”.  Stability, in this usage, means conditions that benefit the conqueror (see here).  These are conditions that, to be reached, require mass, violent destabilization, which produces widespread carnage, as in the US attacks on Korea (millions of deaths; South Koreans finally overthrew the US-backed dictator in 1987), Vietnam (untold millions of deaths), Iran (millions of deaths), Iraq (millions of deaths), Afghanistan (millions of deaths), and many others.
  • Stockpiles more Weapons of Mass Destruction than all other nations combined, and, in defiance of the rest of the world, plans to weaponize and nuclearize outer space to increase its “full spectrum dominance”, regardless of the catastrophes that will almost inevitably result.  (The space around our planet is filled with satellites and debris.  Any explosion in that region will cause this debris to hurtle out of control, rendering the region useless for helpful technologies on which we rely.)  (Here)
  • Since WW2, has used more Weapons of Mass Destruction than all other nations combined.  Many of these weapons are indiscriminate, which can mean that simply to use them is to commit terrorism.  (Here)
  • Has up to 10,000 nuclear weapons, the most of the nuclear countries.  Obama is currently illegally spending 1 to 1.5 trillion on nuclear weapons, more than any other president by far.  International law requires immediate nuclear disarmament.  While spending these illegal trillions, Obama is also allowing for water to illegally be shut off to poor residents of Detroit.  (Here)
  • Is the world’s biggest violator of international nuclear law.  (Here)

 

  • Sells 70% of the total weapons sold on the worldwide weapons-dealing market.  Current biggest recipients of US tax money and/or weapons are Israel, which has up to 400 illegal nuclear weapons, regularly attacks other countries, and is carrying out an ethnic cleansing and colonization campaign in Palestine, and Saudi Arabia, which is the most “significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” including Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, and the Taliban, and apparently helped sponsor the 9/11/01 attacks against the US.  The US sold arms or military services to well over 100 nations in 2008, and during the two Bush terms the majority of US arms sales to the third world went to countries that the US State Department defined as undemocratic regimes and/or major human rights abusers.
  • Currently under Obama, the top ten recipients of US aid are all torture regimes, because torture is one of the many anti-democratic methods of enforcing empire, and is necessary to terrorize and repress democracy since, to quote war criminal and Obama mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski, “democracy is inimical to empire”.

 

  • Has overthrown or attempted to overthrow about 62 countries, the majority of them democracies, since it became a global power after WW2.  Recent US-backed overthrows of democracies include Honduras in 2009 (Obama/Clinton) and Paraguay in 2012 (Obama/Clinton).  Recent US-backed crushing of democratic uprisings include the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Bahrain, where the US-backed family dictatorship is, according to Amnesty International, systematically torturing children as part of its repression and terrorism against the population.  More on why the USA supports terrorism and war in one country, such as Syria, but simultaneously crushes an Arab Spring uprising in another country, such as Bahrain, here and here.  More on the USA’s history of terrorism/imperialism against Syria, here.  (Imperialism is what empires do – it means the strong using an unequal relationship, i.e. superior weapons, force, wealth, propaganda, and the like, to coerce or forcefully influence the weak for the benefit of the strong.)
  • Since 1776, has invaded some 80 foreign nations.
  • Regularly wages war of aggression, which is the supreme international crime (meaning it includes and is worse than terrorism, ethnic cleansing, torture, etc.), and which includes all evils that follow as a result, meaning fighting due to instability, displacement of persons, etc.  “In the 64 years since the end of WWII, [the USA] ha[s] started and fought far more wars and invaded and bombed more countries than any other nation in the world — not even counting the numerous wars fought by… clients and proxies.  Those are just facts.”  The USA always uses its history of contributing to fighting Hitler (after supporting him – Germany declared war on the US, not the converse – and sustaining his aggression) as a justification for subsequent US acts of aggression.  The justification does not take into account that the USA acted aggressively before WW2 (George Washington called the USA a “nascent empire”), for the same reasons it has done so since WW2: to destroy conditions that limit US control and profit margins, and to create conditions to increase US control and profit margins (by, for example, forcing populations to be cheap tools of US international industry – expendable, uneducated, and given the minimum possible amount of sustenance, so the maximum amount of profit and luxury go to the owners, whose investment is protected by local proxy forces and backed by the US military).  “The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” – Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
  • Has tortured virtually non-stop since colonizers tortured the Native Americans.  This continues up to today, under Bush and now Obama, who protects, supports, and mandates torture (see here).
  • Kills and mercilessly mutates (with various chemical, radioactive, and other weapons) millions of people around the world.
  • Kills indiscriminately, which is terrorism.  Uses weapons (such as WMD) that are by their nature indiscriminate, which can be terrorism.  “Reaper” drone “Hellfire” missiles, for example, have a kill or injury radius of 60 feet, making their use potentially indiscriminate, depending on where they are used.  Their use very often results in the murder of civilians and unknown people, meaning they are used indiscriminately, which is terrorism – not to mention that bombing other countries is illegal.  The USA’s disgraceful chemical warfare in Vietnam indiscriminately targeted and killed or harmed millions of Vietnamese people.  (Imagine if China sprayed 20,000,000 gallons of toxic chemicals, including some of the most toxic known in science, and dumped 373,000 tons of napalm over the USA, and refused to acknowledge or pay compensation for the resulting murders, birth defects and health problems that resulted: see here.)
  • Intentionally targets civilians for murder or collective punishment as a way of influencing them or their government, which is terrorism.  For example, the USA’s terrorist sanctions against the people of Cuba are, as is stated in internal US government dialogue, intended to hurt Cuban civilians and induce them to overthrow their government.  US siege and criminal bombings against Iraq in the 1990s, continuing through the 2000s, knowingly and, evidence strongly indicates, intentionally targeted civilians and murdered from 500,000 to 1,000,000 (or more) Iraqis, mainly children under the age of five.  In the USA’s Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, the US intentionally hunted and murdered 70,000 civilians, while overall torturing or disappearing 80,000 in this single operation (see here).
  • Constantly makes threats of force against countries like Iran and Syria.  Threats of force are strictly and patently illegal under international law, including the UN charter, article 2(4) (see here), which is supreme law of the US.  Threats of violence are acts of terrorism.  Terrorism means using violence or the threat of violence to influence people or governments.  Threats of violence also constitute use of dictatorial force.
  • Installs and/or supports military dictators (from Pinchet in Chile to Ceaușescu in Romania to Suharto in Indonesia, and dozens of others) who comply with the US material and political agenda of preventing democracy (rule of the people) and keeping authoritarian control in the hands of ruling elites that allow the US to control and exploit populations and natural resources, to maximize profit margins for US international companies.  This forceful maintenance of control is called hegemony.  With the USA as the world’s dominant hegemonic power, global poverty has risen faster than population, and the top zero point one percent of the world’s population has 81% of the world’s financial wealth.  The richest 85 individuals possess more wealth than the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population—3.5 billion people.  “Th[e] need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the… action of American forces…” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Assassinates people and political leaders around the world.  Since WWII the U.S. has been involved in the assassination or intended assassination of over 50 prominent foreign individuals in various nations.  See here.
  • Censors the media to prevent it from showing the realities of US wars of aggression, including images of dead US soldiers and coffins containing dead soldiers.
  • Vetoes, by far, more UN resolutions than any other country.  Included are numerous US vetoes, essentially in opposition to the entire world, against resolutions calling for conventions on women’s rights, ending South African Apartheid, ending the illegal US embargo of Cuba, and ending Israel’s illegal presence in and blockades of Palestinian territories.

 

  • Donates less of the required percentage to the UN than any other country in the world.  When the first Secretary General of the UN condemned the West (US, UK, France, and Belgium) for trying to maintain colonial dictate over the Congo, the Secretary General was murdered.  Just before he died, he said “It is better for the United Nations to lose the support of the United States because it [the UN] is faithful to law and principles, than to survive as an agent whose activities are geared to political purposes.”  When Secretary General Kofi Annan declared the 2003 US invasion of Iraq to be illegal, there was a concerted effort to label him a “crook” and discredit him.  He was vindicated of all smears by an independent commission.  (here)
  • Is isolationist (by the actual definition): The USA stands virtually alone in almost all of its positions at the UN, such as continuing its illegal sanctions against Cuba and blocking the international consensus for a resolution to Israel’s colonization of Palestine (see here).  It stands alone in its brutal war-making: support for the US invasion of Iraq barely reached above 11% anywhere in the world.  Numbers were similar for the US invasion of Afghanistan.  The handful of countries that supported the US in those invasions did so as dictatorships – in complete defiance of nearly their entire populations (see here).
  • Claims to wage wars on various things such as drugs and terrorism, while being a leading drug state (see here, here, here, here) and a (if not the – see here) leading terrorist state (see here, here, here, here, and here).  Examples of the hypocrisy include: 1) At the same time as invading places like Panama (an invasion that killed the per capita equivalent of what would be over 500,000 people in the US) and massacring civilians for claimed “war on drug” pretexts, the USA threatens places like Thailand with sanctions if it puts barriers on US cigarette imports; tobacco is the world’s most lethal drug, expected to kill a billion people in the 21st century.  2) In terms of terrorism, the USA has been complicit in the deaths of millions of people, in the Middle East alone, just since 1979 – incomparably more than any other group, and arguably constituting genocide, particularly against Iraq (see here) and Iran (see here).
  • Loots and harms the areas under its control: “…the US lost most of its influence in Latin America over the past 15 years, and the region has done quite well, with a sharp reduction in poverty for the first time in decades. The Washington-based International Monetary Fund has also lost most of its influence over the middle-income countries of the world, and these have also done remarkably better in the 2000s.”
  • Internally, the USA has by far the world’s highest rate of imprisonment, but not the world’s highest crime rates.  USA has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population.
  • Has a for-profit prison slave/labor system, and lobbyists that work to maintain and add obscure laws to keep their prisons full and profits flowing.  Dozens of corporations taking advantage of prison labor include Starbucks, McDonalds, Boeing, and Victoria’s secret.  More here.
  • Minority defendants are charged with and convicted of violent crimes requiring a mandatory minimum prison sentence far more often than non-minorities.
  • Is the only country in the world that refuses to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The only other previous holdouts, Somalia and South Sudan, have now ratified it.
  • Is the only country in the world to veto UN resolutions calling on all states to follow international law.  The resolutions were in reference to the USA being convicted, by the World Court and confirmed at the UN, twice, of waging illegal war of aggression against Nicaragua.  The World Court (ICJ) demanded that the US cease its aggression and pay Nicaragua massive reparations, on the order of 18 billion dollars.  The US responded by saying no, and escalating its war of aggression against Nicaragua.
  • Is the only country in the world where courts give life sentences to people who are found guilty of crimes committed before they turn 18.  The USA only made illegal the execution of juveniles in 2002, and the giving of life without possibility of parole to juveniles in 2012.
  • Executes more citizens than almost any country on Earth.  The USA ranks sometimes as high as number 3, behind only Saudi Arabia (a huge US ally/client) and Iran, (and almost certainly China, though numbers are unknown) for the number of executions it performs on its own citizens.  90% of countries do not perform state executions.
  • Has the worst income inequality in the industrialized world.  The top 1% has almost 40% of the financial wealth, while the bottom 80% have less than 13%.  Much of this is due to corporate welfare, meaning massive transfers of wealth from the poor to elite criminals, such as those running big banks, who are treated as an aristocracy above law.  Big US banks make no profit – all of their profits, usually around 83 billion a year total, come from money taken from taxpayers and transferred directly to these bankers.  See Bloomberg News, here.  These banks have been prosecuted for financial crimes unprecedented in scope and the harm they cause, yet they go virtually unpunished, and on the contrary are rewarded for their crimes (see here and here) and allowed to continue their massive heist of taxpayer money.  No top bankers whose crimes bring about the destruction of the economy are jailed.

 

  • Has the highest first day infant mortality rate in the industrialized world.
  • Ranks in the bottom four of the 29 industrialized countries for child poverty, education, and overall well-being, despite the USA having roughly as many people with fortunes greater than 50 million dollars as the rest of the world combined (approx. 46,000 people in the US).
  • Is not a democracy (country ruled by the people).  The bottom 70% of US citizens have essentially no influence on government policy.  The people making the above choices (such as for prison labor and virtually non-stop aggressive war) are principally the top “tenth of one percent… [these] people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine [US government] policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy.”
  • And much more…  For details and further info, resources, and updates, check out the posts (see here, for example) and follow this blog, and share the information with as many people as you can (hit the +1 button and see other sharing tools to right) so we can improve on the above and, as US citizens, stop participating (through taxation and other means) in rampant immorality, brutality, and unmatched global criminality.  Step one is knowing what’s going on.
  • Two informative reviews:
    • “Rogue State”, by William Blum
    • “The Crimes of Empire”, by Carl Boggs
End of 2013 Win/Gallup poll of 65 countries around the world, 1,000 people in each country:
“…the United States was overwhelmingly viewed as the greatest threat to world peace—as it is each year the survey is conducted.” – Gary Leech

“…this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe?” – Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“Most icons of contemporary liberal Democrats are exemplars of armed empire: Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Obama, for example.  Martin Luther King Jr. is one exception to the rule but his inspirational civil rights speeches are celebrated, not his foreign policy views.” – Jeff Taylor is professor of political science at Dordt College.

“The United States Foreign Policy Establishment consists of liberal imperialists, reactionary imperialists, and middle-of-the-road imperialists. But they all share in common a firm belief in America’s “Manifest Destiny” to rule the world.” – Dr. Francis Boyle, JD, PhD

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.” – Noam Chomsky

“Those of us who belong to former colonies think of imperialism as rape.” – Arundhati Roy

We must all be “dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism”. – Chris Hedges

http://www.empireslayer.org/2013/12/us-empire-overview.html?m=1

Obama requests EU support for possible war against Russia

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Washington and NATO governments lose patience at Russia and Syria wins in the public polls. The West pushes to achieve their ends by any means possible, and they will do it over the public’s dead bodies, if need be. Despite the high-sounding patriotic rhetoric, their ends were never for the public. Those who believe the fear-mongering and the lies are fools. Those driving Western federal policies and in the Pentagon and military establishment are truly mad.

By Eric Zuesse
Global Research, April 24, 2016

According to Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News), on April 23rd, U.S. President Barack Obama is “demanding the active deployment of the Bundeswehr [Germany’s armed forces, including their Army, Navy, and Air Force] to NATO’s eastern borders” at Poland and the Baltic republics, to join the quadrupling of America’s forces there, on and near those borders of Russia. (This is an extreme violation of what Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to when he ended the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirror organization the Warsaw Pact, but it’s actually culminating a process that began shortly after he agreed to America’s terms, which included that NATO “not move one inch to the east.”)

Furthermore, DWN reports that on April 25th, the U.S. President will hold a “summit meeting” in Hannover Germany with the leaders of Germany (Angela Merkel), Italy (Matteo Renzi), France (Francois Hollande), and Britain (David Cameron). The presumed objective of this meeting is to establish in NATO’s countries bordering on Russia, a military force of all five countries that are headed by these leaders, a force threatening Russia with an invasion, if NATO subsequently decides that the ‘threat from Russia’ be ‘responded to’ militarily.

NATO’s surrounding Russia with hostile forces is supposedly defensive against Russia — not an offensive operation. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America’s President JFK didn’t consider Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev’s plan to base nuclear missiles in Cuba to be ‘defensive’ on the USSR’s part — and neither does Russia’s President Vladimir Putin consider America’s far bigger operation, of surrounding Russia with such weapons, to be ‘defensive’ and not offensive. The U.S. Government, and NATO, act as if Russia is surrounding them, instead of them surrounding Russia — and their ‘news’ media transmit this lie as if it should be taken seriously, not as its being a lie; but, in actual fact, NATO has already expanded right up to Russia’s western borders.

Obama is thus now adding to the economic sanctions against Russia that he had imposed allegedly because of Russia’s alleged ‘seizure’ of Crimea from Ukraine after Obama’s coup overthrew Russia’s ally Viktor Yanukovych who led Ukraine until the coup in February 2014.

Right after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, Obama slapped sanctions against Russia (even though Western-sponsored polls in Crimea, both before and after the coup, had shown higher than 90% support by Crimeans for rejoining with Russia), and nuclear weapons were prepared, both on the U.S.-EU side and on the Russian side, for a possible nuclear war.

This is no mere restoration of the Cold War (which was based upon the capitalist-communist ideological disagreement); it’s instead getting forces into position for a possible invasion of Russia, pure-and-simple — raw conquest — though no major news-media in the West are reporting it as beingsuch.

That preparation doesn’t necessarily mean a nuclear war will result. Russia might accept whatever the demands of ‘the West’ are, and thus lose its national sovereignty. Otherwise, ‘the West’ (the U.S.leadership, and the leaderships in its allied countries) might quit their evermore-ominous threats, and simply withdraw from Russia’s borders, if Russia stands-its-ground and refuses to yield up its national sovereignty.

Basically, the U.S. leadership decided to take over Ukraine, and refused to acknowledge the rights of the Crimean people to reject being conquered by the U.S. — and Russia’s leadership decided toprotect them against the type of invasion that subsequently occurred in Ukraine’s former Donbass region, where the opposition to Obama’s coup was even more intense.

Supposedly, ‘the West’ is asserting that Russia is somehow in the wrong here; but, since even the head of Stratfor has called what Obama did in Ukraine “the most blatant coup in history”, and since the fact that it was a U.S. coup has been documented extensively on cellphone and other videos, and inthe most thorough academic investigation that has been performed of the matter — and was even acknowledged by Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko, a participant in the coup, to havebeen a coup — and since evidence survives on the Internet of the U.S. Embassy’s preparations as early as 1 March 2013for the February 2014 coup; and since even the U.S. government’s hired polls showed that Crimeans rejected overwhelmingly the U.S. coup and supported rejoining Russia; the question still needs to be answered: What basis of ‘the West’s’ aggressive actions threatening Russia’s national security is there, other than such lies by the West, against Russia’s President? And, that’s a very worrisome basis — worrisome regarding, essentially, dictatorship in ‘the West’, rather than regardingany dictatorship outside ‘the West’. The dictatorship here seems clearly to be coming from the West,against the East.

Back in January, Russian President Vladimir Putin called-out American President Barack Obama on Obama’s big lie, that America’s “ABM” weapons to disable in-flight nuclear missiles were being installed in Europe in order to protect Europe against Iranian nuclear missiles, but now the U.S. acknowledges that Iran doesn’t have, and won’t have, any nuclear missiles, and yet Obama is stepping up (instead of ending) those ABM installations — even though the alleged anti-Iranian reason for them is gone. The only actual reason they have been installed, Putin argues, is in order to enable a blitz nuclear attack against Russia, which will include disabling Russia’s retaliatory capacity.

Any in-depth news-report about Obama’s organizing for a possible invasion of Russia, needs to deal, therefore, with the key question: What basis of ‘the West’s’ aggressive actions threatening Russia’s national security is there, other than such lies by ‘the West’? And, if there is no honest answer to it, then the only rational response by Western publics, to what Obama and his foreign allies are doing, is to recognize what is actually happening and to take action against their own leaders, before this increasingly high-stakes confrontation — of no benefit but only extremely high costs, to publics around the world — becomes terminal. In that instance, Western publics need to defend themselves against their own nation’s leaders. This is a situation that is frequently encountered in dictatorships.

The key questions are not being asked in the Western press; they are being ignored by it. Unless these questions are publicly dealt with — and soon — the answer, to them all, could well be terminal. Consequently, any ‘news’ medium that fails to address them is less than worthless; it is sheer propaganda that merely parades in the mask of being a ‘news medium’: the potentially terminal questions are then being ignored, and lies are promoted instead, which distract the public from the most urgent public-affairs issue of them all, in our era, not draw the public’s attention to that overriding international-affairs issue.

The closer that things are getting to a nuclear war, the more difficult becomes either side’s backing down from it — and this is especially the case with the aggressor (most especially when it falsely claims that it is being aggressed-against, and this is the reason why the lies urgently need to be exposed).

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Global Research, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-requests-eu-support-for-possible-war-against-russia/5521560

 

Third strand of Crimea energy bridge launched

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Posted on Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
14th April, 2016
The third strand of the energy bridge in the Crimean Federal district was put into operation ahead of schedule. Its launch helped to increase the maximum power transmitted across the energy bridge. This was reported by the Russian Ministry of Energy.
“After the early launch of the third line, the total volume of alloted power to Crimea increased to 1060 MW excluding alternative and backup power sources. The maximum peak consumption on the Peninsula in the spring is expected to be no more than 1100 MW, that is, after today’s launch, the shutting down of the power supply will almost be completely stopped,” — said energy Minister Alexander Novak.
That third strand of the power bridge will be launched today, said the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, speaking at Straight Line.
“Overall, we are approaching the volume of flow that was carried from the Ukrainian territory”, — said the Russian leader.
According to him, the fourth strand of another 200 MW, which will completely replace the volume that came from Ukraine, will be running within two to three weeks.

S-300s installed; Kiev junta is preparing to shoot down planes over Crimea; Kherson leader appeals to European community

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From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
9th April, 2016
 
The Kiev junta is preparing to shoot down planes over Crimea. Two S-300 systems were installed in the Henichesk district, Kherson region. Residents, as well as the military, reported that these systems are on alert and are supplied with everything needed to ensure the smooth operation of these SAMs. Officially, the regime claims that the deployment of the systems is supposedly designed to protect the territory of Ukraine on the border with Crimea. However, this is not true, according to Kherson politician Aleksey Zhuravko.

 

Activist warned, with reference to its sources, that there is a high probability that the S-300 can be used for provocations similar to the downed Malaysian Boeing over Donbass. The politician wrote this on his social network, attaching a photo of the area where the SAM is deployed.
“From serious sources: SAM is not installed to protect the territory of Ukraine, but to commit provocations against the Russian Federation. The whole situation with the advent of SAM in the Kherson area reminds me of the preparation for the implementation of the scenario according to the example of the downed Boeing 777 flight MH-17 over Donbass. According to a high-ranking military source, these systems will not be operated by local Kherson troops, but by the Ukrainian military personnel brought here from another area.
I am extremely worried about the situation on the border with Crimea in connection with the arrival of SAM systems. I want to warn everyone that today’s bloody Kiev government is ready for anything and will stop at nothing. If a plane is shot down in the skies over Crimea, you know that the responsibility for this will fall on the current leadership of Ukraine: the President, the government, and Parliament,” said Zhuravko.
“I appeal to the entire European community, including europarliamentarians. Please work pro-actively and prevent new casualties,” said the politician, summarizing his message.

“Suicide Bomber Battalion” formed on the Crimean border

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From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
9th April, 2016
 
The situation on the border with Crimea is far from ideal. Here, in cooperation with volunteers from the Aidar and Azov battalions, Crimean Tatar activists operate who, after their leader Refat Chubarov’s meeting with the Turkish leadership, started to form a national military unit. At the same time the Turkish authorities were equipping these units, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko personally took a ride on the frigate “Hetman Sahaidachny” in Istanbul and brought them new uniforms.
Now the situation on the border with Crimea is on the verge of a social explosion. The excesses of the Tatar youths, among which activists of the extremist Turkish organization “Grey wolves” are seen, get on the nerves of the region’s people. It came to the point that the leaders of the Majlis demanded the Ukrainian authorities allocate them a portion of the territory of the Kherson region to create their own enclave.
The news that Crimean Tatars will ask for the most “appetizing” areas near the black sea coast is not much of a surprise as it has already happened in Crimea. Meanwhile, the Genichesk, Kalanchak, and Chaplynka districts are undergoing attacks on representatives of local business, during which the blockades by the activists extort financial support for their activities.
Now the passion has begun to subside a bit due to the fact that the activities of the organizers of the blockade of Crimea went far beyond the legal framework and drew the attention of the police and also the world community. In the end, they were forced to remove their posts and join the border guards, the so-called “public control” over the movement of people and goods across the border.
However, this activity also cannot fool anybody. Currently, there is a rapid formation of Crimean Tatar units. The “Crimea” Battalion had been previously created. Despite the number of volunteers falling short of a fully-fledged division, the soldiers have already been in the area of the ATO.
Currently the head of the Mejlis, Mustafa Dzhemilev announced the formation of a new battalion called “Asker”. He does not hide the fact that he supports bloody acts and the destabilization of the situation in Crimea. Volunteers who have been recruited in this formation called themselves the “Suicide Bomber Battalion” because they assert that they are prepared to “help” their compatriots on the Peninsula.
Despite the statement of Petro Poroshenko that Crimea will be returned peacefully, on March 21st, Chubarov spoke about a military solution to the issue. In his words, the Crimean Tatar units will follow the advancing units of the Ukrainian troops and will bring order to the territory.

Right Sector arrive at the contact line for provocations against LPR Army

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From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
14th April, 2016
 
Kiev continues to move nationalist battalions to the line of contact, including committing provocations against the military personnel of the LPR’s militia. This was reported today at a Luganskinfo briefing, and was said by the official representative of the Defense Ministry of the Republic – Andrei Marochko.
“There is an ongoing increase in nationalist battalions at the line of contact of the parties,” he said.
“A division of the “Right sector” appeared in the settlement of Shchastya, and are located in one of the administrative buildings of the village. Also, earlier there were units of the Right sector and “Aidar” battalion in the villages of Raihorodka, Novoaidar, and Severodonetsk,” said Marochko.
“Nationalist battalions arrived to stage provocations against servicemen of the militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” said the official representative of the Defense Ministry of the Republic.
“Despite all this, the people’s militia continues to observe the Minsk agreements. Our units comply with the “ceasefire”, without simultaneously weakening vigilance”, he said.

Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant radioactive release and emergency shutdown

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From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
11th April, 2016
 
A radioactive release and emergency shutdown of unit 6 occurred at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant.  Management of the State Emergency Service requested people not to panic, but to calmly take preventive measures:
“For preventive measures State Emergency Service experts recommend to refrain from a prolonged stay in an open area within three days, to use a medical mask, use a weak solution of iodine in cold water and red wine”.
Vladimir Rogov, the leader of the Zaporizhia “Slavic Guard” writes:
These Nazi brutes are doing everything to turn all post-Ukraine space into an exclusion zone!
Meanwhile, $700 million was allocated from the budget of Ukraine for the repair and modernization of power units №1 and №2 of Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant – the junta stole more than $420 million. Moreover, in the corruption scheme, in addition to the so-called “Minister” of Energy and Coal Industry, Vladimir Demchishin, and the “President” of “Energoatom” that participate directly, there are also “President” Poroshenko and the leaders of the American company Westinghouse who are implementing the corruption schemes through its Swedish subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB.
Quote: “…the excess background radiation at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant and the sanitary protective zone in a radius of 2.5 km is about 10 times and is not critical to the health of the population. Repair work will be tentatively held until 13th April.”

White supremacy and genocide in Australia — the dirty secret of Utopia

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By John Pilger
Global Research, April 09, 2016

 

The Derogation of Indigenous Rights in Australia

I had a call from Rosalie Kunoth-Monks the other day. Rosalie is an elder of the Arrernte-Alyawarra people, who lives in Utopia, a vast and remote region in the “red heart” of Australia. The nearest town is Alice Springs, more than 200 miles across an ancient landscape of spinifex and swirling skeins of red dust. The first Europeans who came here, perhaps demented by the heat, imagined a white utopia that was not theirs to imagine; for this is a sacred place, the homeland of the oldest, most continuous human presence on earth.

Rosalie was distressed, defiant and eloquent. Her distinction as one unafraid to speak up in a society so often deaf to the cries and anguish of its first people, its singular uniqueness, is well earned. She appears in my 2013 film, Utopia, with a searing description of a discarded people: “We are not wanted in our own country.” She has described the legacies of a genocide: a word political Australia loathes and fears.

A week ago, Rosalie and her daughter Ngarla put out an alert that people were starving in Utopia. They said that elderly Indigenous  people in the homelands had received no food from an aged care program funded by the Australian Government and administered by the regional Council. “One elderly man with end-stage Parkinson’s received two small packets of  mincemeat and white bread,” said Ngarla, “the elderly woman living nearby received nothing.” In calling for food drops, Rosalie said, “The whole community including children and the elderly go without food, often on a daily basis.” She and Ngarla and their community have cooked and distributed food as best they can.

This is not unusual. Four years ago, I drove into the red heart and met Dr. Janelle Trees. A general practitioner whose indigenous patients live within a few miles of $1,000-a-night tourist resorts serving Uluru (Ayers Rock), she said, “Malnutrition is common. I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

“There’s asbestos in many Aboriginal homes, and when somebody gets a fibre of asbestos in their lungs and develops mesothelioma, [the government] doesn’t care. When the kids have chronic infections and end up adding to these incredible statistics of indigenous people dying of renal disease, and vulnerable to world record rates of rheumatic heart disease, nothing is done. I ask myself: why not?”

When Rosalie phoned me from Utopia, she said,

“It’s not so much the physical starvation as the traumatising of my people, of whole communities We are duped all the time. White Australia sets up organisations and structures that offer the pretence of helping us, but it’s a pretence, no more. If we oppose it, it’s a crime. Simply belonging is a crime. Suicides are everywhere. (She gave me details of the suffering in her own family). They’re out to kill our values, to break down our traditional life until there’s nothing there anymore.”

Barkly Regional Council says its aged care packages get through and protests that the council is “the poorest of the three tiers of government and is very much dependent on [Northern] Territory and [Federal] governments for funds to provide such services to the bush. Barbara Shaw, the council’s president, agreed that it was “totally unacceptable that people should be starving in a rich and well-developed country like Australia” and that “it is disgusting and wrong that Indigenous people experience deep poverty such as this.”

The starvation and poverty and the division often sewn among Indigenous people themselves as they try to identify those responsible stem in large part from an extraordinary episode known as “the Intervention”. This is Australia’s dirty secret.

In 2007, the then Prime Minister, John Howard, sent the army into Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to “rescue children” who, claimed his minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough, were being abused by paedophile gangs in “unthinkable numbers”.

Subsequently exposed as a fraud by the Australian Crime Commission, the Northern Territory Police and a damning report by child medical specialists, the “intervention” nonetheless allowed the  government to destroy many of the vestiges of self-determination in the Northern Territory, the only part of Australia where Aboriginal people had won federally-legislated land rights. Here, they had administered their homelands with the dignity of self-determination and connection to land and culture and, as Amnesty reported, a 40 per cent lower mortality rate. Distribution of food was never a problem.

It is this “traditional life” that is anathema to a parasitic white industry of civil servants, contractors, lawyers and consultants that controls and often profits from Aboriginal Australia, if indirectly through the corporate structures imposed on Indigenous organisations. The remote homelands are seen as an ideological  threat, for they express a communalism at odds with the neo-conservatism that rules Australia and demands “assimilation”.

It is as if the enduring existence of a people who have survived and resisted more than two colonial centuries of massacre and theft remains a spectre on white Australia: a reminder of whose land this really is.

I know these communities and their people, who have shown me the conditions imposed on them. Many are denied consistent running water, sanitation and power. That basic sustenance should join this list is not surprising.

According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth report, Australia is the richest place on earth. Politicians in Canberra are among the wealthiest citizens; they like to hang Indigenous art on the white walls of their offices in the bleakly modern Parliament House. Their self-endowment is legendary. The Labor Party’s last minister for indigenous affairs, Jenny Macklin, refurbished her office at a cost to the taxpayer of $331,144. During her tenure, the number of Aboriginal people living in slums increased by almost a third.

When Professor James Anaya, the respected United Nations Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, described the “intervention” as racist, the opposition spokesman on indigenous affairs, Tony Abbott, told Anaya to “get a life” and not “just listen to the old victim brigade.”  Abbott was promoted to prime minister of Australia; he was evicted last year.

When I began filming Indigenous Australia some thirty years ago, a global campaign was under way to end apartheid in South Africa. Having reported from South Africa, I was struck by the similarity of white supremacy and the compliance, defensiveness and indifference of people who saw themselves as liberal. For example, black incarceration in Australia is greater than that of black people in apartheid South Africa. Indigenous people go to prison, are beaten up in custody and die in custody as a matter of routine. In despairing communities, children as young as ten take their own lives.

Yet no international opprobrium, no boycotts, have disturbed the surface of “lucky” Australia. As Rosalie’s call reminds us, that surface should be shattered without delay.

www.johnpilger.com

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © John Pilger, Global Research, 2016

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-dirty-secret-of-utopia/5519484

Congress Government Accounting Office (GAO) says U.S. government accounting is fraudulent

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By Washington’s Blog
Global Research, April 08, 2016
Washington’s Blog 7 April 2016

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the non-partisan auditor and investigator for Congress.

The GAO says that the U.S. government’s records are so poorly kept that it can’t really audit them. 

Specifically, the GAO provided a report to Congress yesterday stating:

The federal government was unable to demonstrate the reliability of significant portions of its accrual-based financial statements as of and for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2015, and 2014, principally resulting from limitations related to certain material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and other limitations affecting the reliability of these financial statements. For example, about 34 percent of the federal government’s reported total assets as of September 30, 2015, and approximately 19 percent of the federal government’s reported net cost for fiscal year 2015, relate to three CFO Act agencies—the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—that received disclaimers of opinion on their fiscal year 2015 financial statements. As a result, we were prevented from providing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.

The federal government did not maintain adequate systems or have sufficient appropriate evidence to support certain material information reported in its accrual-based financial statements. The underlying material weaknesses in internal control, which have existed for years, contributed to our disclaimer of opinion on the accrual-based financial statements as of and for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2015, and 2014.  Specifically, these weaknesses concerned the federal government’s inability to:

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  • adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal entities;
  • reasonably assure that the government wide financial statements are (1) consistent with the underlying audited entities’ financial statements, (2) properly balanced, and (3) in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP); and
  • reasonably assure that the information in the (1) Reconciliations of Net Operating Cost and Unified Budget Deficit and (2) Statements of Changes in Cash Balance from Unified Budget and Other Activities is complete and consistent with the underlying information in the audited entities’ financial statements and other financial data.

These material weaknesses continued to (1) hamper the federal government’s ability to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, costs, and other related information; (2) affect the federal government’s ability to reliably measure the full cost as well as the financial and nonfinancial performance of certain programs and activities;(3) impair the federal government’s ability to adequately safeguard significant assets and properly record various transactions; and (4) hinder the federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an efficient and effective manner.

Moreover, the Pentagon hasn’t even attempted to comply with government audits …  and “$8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon [between] 1996 [and 2013] has never been accounted for.”  The military wastes and “loses” trillions of dollars.

In addition:

  • Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely
  • The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud (a whistleblower also “gift-wrapped and delivered” the Madoff scandal to the SEC, but they refused to take action). Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen

Yesterday’s GAO report also predicted:

By 2089 … debt held by the public as a share of GDP reaches 314 percent in our baseline extended simulation or 568 percent in our alternative simulation

As the head of the GAO put it, “We’re going to owe more than our entire economy is producing and by definition this is not sustainable.”

The Hill reported in November:

The former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion.

Dave Walker, who headed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said when you add up all of the nation’s unfunded liabilities, the national debt is more than three times the number generally advertised.

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“If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent reforms ….”

But former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and current Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff says that – when unfunded liabilities are taken into account – the fiscal gap for the U.S. is actually 3 times higher … $205 trillion as of 2013 (and getting worse all the time).

We believe that an accurate would show that the government already owes more than the entire economy is producing …Government Accounting Is Fraudulent

The original source of this article is Washington’s Blog

Copyright © Washington’s Blog, Washington’s Blog, 2016

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-government-accounting-is-fraudulent/5519261

U.S. delivers 3,000 tons of weapons and ammo to Al-Qaeda and Co. in Syria

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By Moon of Alabama
Global Research, April 08, 2016
Moon of Alabama

The United States via its Central Intelligence Service is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.

The British military information service Jane’s found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes:

The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command. Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba. … The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.

Screenshot of Jane’s Report

The Jane’s author tweeted the full article (copy here).

One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which has a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.

We already knew that the “rebels” in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these “rebels” regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):

Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, ..

U.S. and Turkey supported “rebels” took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack.

Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet providence. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by several independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda.

From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of “brown people” in the Middle East, but also attacks on “western” people and interests.

Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not be enough to deter the politicians and “experts” that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people.

The original source of this article is Moon of Alabama

Copyright © Moon of Alabama, Moon of Alabama, 2016

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-delivers-3000-tons-of-weapons-and-ammo-to-al-qaeda-and-co-in-syria/5519413