A "CIA within the CIA" battles against Trump By Wayne Madsen Report

 A "CIA within the CIA" battles against Trump  By Wayne Madsen Report
Even before he was inaugurated on January 20, President Trump faced a virtual "CIA within the CIA" that is bound and determined to derail his intelligence and foreign policy agendas. Past presidents have faced opposition from the Central Intelligence Agency -- John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter are prime examples -- but the opposition was sub rosa and not out in the open as it is today.

A number of former CIA officers have taken to CNN and MS-NBC to voice their opinions that Trump is a threat to U.S. national security. In addition to venting their own spleens about Trump, they are publicly airing the views of hundreds of their former colleagues currently serving within the CIA. 

The conventional punditry in Washington is stressing, without evidence, that Trump's presidential campaign was helped by "Russian intelligence officials." A dodgy British memorandum, created by a former MI-6 spook named Christopher Steele, and embellished by the Jeb Bush campaign, which hired him to dig up dirt on Trump, is being used as "proof" of Russian interfered in the U.S. election. However, what is being overlooked is that "Russian intelligence" may be a substitute for "Russian-Israeli mafia." The Russian-Israeli oligarchs, many of whom are exiled in Britain, Switzerland, and Israel, have no love for Trump and his previous pro-Russian views. 

It recently emerged that Ukrainian parliament member Andrey Artemenko met in January with Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to deliver a proposal that would have "leased" Crimea to Russia for 100 years in exchange for a pullout of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. The "peace plan" appears to have been a red herring since there is no documented evidence of regular Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Artemenko is a shady figure who has been involved with the scandal-plagued Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) and who is a member of the party of the corrupt former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. 

It was Tymoshenko's criminal conviction and imprisonment by the government of president Viktor Yanukovych that helped propel the "Euromaidan" revolution and coup that drove Yanukovych into exile in Russia. Artemenko is also close to the former Ukrainian boxer Vitali Klitschko, the current mayor of Kiev, who recently attended the Munich Security Conference along with Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and such anti-Russian U.S. delegates as Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, neocon Robert Kagan, and Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland, the chief architect of the Euromaidan revolution. At Munich, where the CIA was working overtime to cultivate new relationships and reinforce older ones, the plotters of neo-Cold War intrigue in Ukraine were all present. The CIA would have known about Klitschko's ties to Artemenko and Artemenko's meeting on the Ukraine peace deal with Trump's lawyer Cohen.

Trump, who has surrounded himself with shady characters like Stephen Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Hungarian-American fascist Sebastian Gorka, may not be a "puppet" of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as alleged by detractors. Instead, Trump appears to be an unwitting stooge of the Russian-Israeli mafia that wants a green light to depose Putin and replace him with one of their own, someone, for example, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

Khodorkovsky, now in exile, is leading the Russian-Israeli oligarchs in their attempt to undermine Putin. International hedge fund tycoon George Soros was also in Munich, rubbing shoulders with Klitschko and his own puppet, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The intrigue on display in Munich may be complicated, but the end result may be a two-for-one deal for the Russian-Israeli gangsters: the overthrow of Putin and the impeachment of Trump. The result would be a Russian president who would complete the privatization of Russian industry and infrastructure to benefit the exiled mafia oligarchs and a committed "Christian Zionist," Pence, in the Oval Office.

 
Klitschko [left], a colleague of Artemenko, and Ukrainian President Poroshenko [right] in Munich rubbing shoulders with anti-Trump and anti-Russian U.S. politicians, as well as VP Pence and SecDef Mattis. Is the Ukrainian "peace deal" a red herring by Kiev and the Russian-Israeli oligarchs, working with a "CIA within the CIA" to sink Trump? 

As delegates were packing up to leave Munich, there was another interesting development in nearby Vienna. An Austrian appeals court approved the extradition to the United States of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash to the where he faces corruption charges. After the Euromaidan coup in 2014, Firtash was arrested by Austrian police on an FBI warrant. Firtash was a close political ally of Yanukovych. Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was a business partner of Firtash. In 2008, Manafort and Firtash were part of a business team that sought to buy Manhattan's Drake Hotel and demolish it to make way for a new skyscraper called the Bulgari Tower, a deal that may have involved the Trump Organization. The Drake deal involved another Trump adviser, Richard Gates. While she was prime minister, Tymoshenko sued Firtash over the Drake deal. Now, an ally of Tymoshenko, Artemenko, has his fingerprints on a Ukrainian peace plan shopped to Trump's lawyer Cohen. 



Also in Munich with Pence, Mattis, Kagan, and Nuland was Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, who gave the Trump Foundation $150,000 for a Trump video speech to Pinchuk's Yalta European Strategy (YES) annual meeting in Ukraine in 2015. Pinchuk, a friend of John McCain, is close to both Poroshenko and Soros and a vocal opponent of Putin.

No one is clean in these machinations but they could very well serve as a basis to impeach Trump under the emolument clause of the U.S. Constitution, which makes any personal profit by the president based on foreign links an impeachable offense.

There are forces within the CIA -- the "CIA within the CIA" -- that want a return to the days of Boris Yeltsin, when everything and everyone in Russia was for sale and Russia gladly followed the diktats from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Two things stand in their way, Putin and the Putin-admiring Trump, the latter not seeming to want to "get with the program" of returning to the status quo ante in U.S.-Russian relations.

In the 1975 cinematic thriller "Three Days of the Condor," Robert Redford, who plays Joe Turner and whose CIA codename is "Condor," works at a CIA front operation in Manhattan’s Upper East Side called the "American Literary Historical Society – ALHS." Condor returns from running a lunch errand to find that all his colleagues have been shot to death. The plot centers around a "CIA within the CIA." The producers of the film, which was based on a 1974 novel by James Grady titled "Six Days of the Condor," must have had an inkling about a "CIA within the CIA." 

In "Three Days of the Condor," a CIA front in Manhattan is wiped out by a "CIA Within the CIA." There is more fact than fiction in the 1975 cinematic thriller.

In 1975, the concept of a "CIA within the CIA" prompted Emily Sheketoff, a House Select Committee on Intelligence staffer who was investigating the CIA, to inquire about a "CIA within the CIA," from Robert Gambino, the chief of security for the CIA. It was Gambino who briefed Jeb Bush on his non-official cover assignment in Venezuela, prior to the ex-CIA director's son's departure in 1977 for Caracas to head up the Texas Commerce Bank's operations in the country. Gambino scoffed at the notion of a "CIA within the CIA" in an October 30, 1975 memo. Based on Gambino's ties with ex-director Bush while Jimmy Carter's director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, was in charge of the CIA, Gambino serves as "exhibit number one" when it comes to the "CIA within the CIA." In fact, Sheketoff flat out stated to Gambino that she believed the CIA's Office of Security was then the major component of the hidden CIA.
An intelligence game is now being played out by Langley and it involves unsavory mafiosi in Ukraine, London, and Langley, Virginia. In essence, a "CIA within the CIA" is attempting to stage a "soft coup" in the United States and they have a number of willing accomplices in the media and within Mr. Trump's own inner circle.

Ukrainian "black ledger" a forgery concocted by Clinton team and its Ukrainian donors By Wayne Madsen Report

Ukrainian "black ledger" a forgery concocted by Clinton team and its Ukrainian donors By Wayne Madsen Report
The Ukrainian government ledgers recently disclosed by the right-wing government in Kiev and which allegedly contain records of under-the-table payments by the former Ukrainian government to Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort are rank forgeries, according to well-placed sources who spoke to WMR on conditions of anonymity.

Although our sources admit that Manafort was paid by his Ukrainian clients for political consulting services, they also point out that Manafort's company at the time was Davis Manafort, Inc., a partnership based in Alexandria, Virginia, between Manafort and John McCain's former presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis. The media, including the pro-Clinton New York Times, made no mention in its reporting on the Manafort-Ukraine relationship of the inclusion of Davis and McCain in the Ukrainian political consulting deal. Later, McCain actively supported the 2014 coup against Davis Manafort's client, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. Manafort's and Davis's consulting business in Ukraine was under the aegis of the since-dissolved Davis Manafort International.

Manafort's name allegedly appeared in a handwritten ledger of political payoffs by the former ruling Party of Regions of the now-exiled Yanukovych. The ledger was "found" in the abandoned headquarters of the political party, which was overthrown in a 2014 coup financed by the United States and George Soros and his International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) and Open Society Foundation (OSF). Also involved in the coup planning was then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, and Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel and uranium magnate who has donated as much as $25 million to the Clinton Foundation and who maintains a close relationship to Hillary and Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky. Also reportedly involved with 2011 to 2012 discussions at the State Department concerning the future the putsch against the democratically-elected Yanukovych government was Melanne Verveer, a Ukrainian-American State Department official under then-Secretary of State, Clinton, and Douglas Schoen, a longtime political consultant to the Clintons. Yanukovych was elected as president of Ukraine in 2010.

According to leaked Soros files, others involved in the 2014 coup against Yanukovych included David Meale (Economic Counselor to Pyatt); Lenny Benardo (OSF); Yevhen Bystrytsky (Executive Director, IRF); Oleksandr Sushko (Board Chair, IRF); Ivan Krastev (Chariman, Centre for Liberal Studies, a Soros-funded operation in Sofia, Bulgaria); Sabine Freizer (OSF); and Deff Barton (Director, U.S. Agency for International Development, Ukraine [USAID is a conduit for the Central Intelligence Agency]). Soros was also present at a post-coup meeting on March 21, 2014 that involved U.S. support for the "New Ukraine." Soros pushed for sanctions against Russia for refusing to recognize the coup government, which included neo-Nazis, and rejected a federalized Ukraine that would grant self-government to the Russian-speaking eastern Donbass region.
The so-called "black ledger" is said to cover the years 2007 to 2012 and consists of 400 pages "removed" by the newly-formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau from Party of Regions bound ledger books. As any forensic specialist is aware, the removal of bound pages from a ledger renders the authenticity of both the ledger and its information highly suspect. The new bureau is rife with operatives of Soros, who, according to files hacked from Soros computers, actually ran Ukraine shortly after Yanukovych was deposed in the themed "Euromaidan" uprising of 2014. Although Manafort was charged with accepting $12.7 million from Yanukovych's party, no records of such payments are found in the pages released by the Anti-Corruption Bureau.


A very poor quality image of a page from the alleged Party of Regions payments ledger. Paul Manafort's name does not appear on the page released by the Ukrainian government. Knowledgeable sources told WMR that the ledger is a forgery concocted by the Ukrainian government of President Petro Poroshenko, Victoria Nuland at the State Department, George Soros, Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, and the Clinton presidential campaign.
Pinchuk's involvement in the Democrats' operation against Manafort, who resigned as Trump's campaign manager after the Ukraine story hit the press, is problematic. In addition to donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, Pinchuk's annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit held in Yalta on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine has drawn participation from Bill Clinton; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; former NATO military commander, Clinton confidante, and noted anti-Russian polemicist General Wesley Clark; former George W. Bush chief adviser Karl Rove; disgraced and criminally-convicted former CIA director David Petraeus; Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice; former President of Georgia and current governor of Odessa Mikheil Saakashvili; disgraced former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn; former Polish foreign minister and noted neo-conservative Radoslaw Sikorski, who is married to Washington Post neocon columnist Anne Applebaum; Bill Clinton pal and journalist Strobe Talbott; and Wikipedia's dubious and disingenuous co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Rove's connections to Pinchuk are noteworthy, considering the fact that he has been covertly advising the Hillary Clinton campaign. The appearance of Ukrainian forgeries in an attempt to derail the Trump campaign bears all the markings of a typical Rove dirty tricks operation. Rove has also been a longtime political enemy of Manafort and Davis.

SPECIAL REPORT. Obama and Clinton push entangling alliances as keystones of U.S. foreign policy By Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Obama and Clinton push entangling alliances as keystones of U.S. foreign policy By Wayne Madsen Report
George Washington warned America against them. Thomas Jefferson was not keen on them. However, Barack Obama, in the last commencement speech he gave under his lackluster eight-year term as president, urged the graduating class of the Air Force Academy to support all the foreign treaties and alliance of the United States. And in a campaign speech in San Diego, Hillary Clinton, who hopes to succeed Obama in office, echoed him by stressing that America's foreign alliances have kept the country "safe."

Obama's hailing of America's foreign alliances, which Washington warned were "entangling," came a week after he spoke in Hiroshima, Japan of the value of America's alliance with Japan. Obama's words were clearly directed against China. Although the Cold War-era Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the alliance that helped plunge America into the Indochina War quagmire, no longer exists, Obama is trying to recreate it with his military "pivot to Asia." Obama is beefing up U.S. military ties with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, India, and Vietnam. In essence, Obama is clearing the path for Hillary Clinton to pursue a military confrontation with China.

Although the "punditocracy" claims that Obama and Clinton were responding to Donald Trump's isolationist signals, their message was more deep-seated. The Clinton Doctrine will be the Obama Doctrine on steroids. Trump is no panacea either. The real estate mogul has criticized Obama for reneging on America's "alliance" with Israel. That comment came after uber-Zionist casino mogul Sheldon Adelson dangled a $100 million campaign contribution in front of Trump in exchange for the presumptive GOP candidate's everlasting commitment to Israel, the only nation that Adelson cares about.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the only U.S.-led Cold War military alliance that continues to entangle the United States, received a shot in the arm from both Obama and Clinton. They see NATO has the spearhead for a U.S. military confrontation with Russia during a Clinton administration. NATO just welcomed Montenegro, a one-time loyal Slavic ally of Russia, into NATO. In addition, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the pathetic neoconservative ex-Danish prime minister who committed Danish troops to the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq, just signed on as a foreign policy adviser to the corrupt American-installed Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko. Rasmussen joins the wanted fugitive ex-President of Georgia, the George Soros acolyte Mikheil Saakashvili, as a member of the joint neo-Nazi/Zionist government of Ukraine.

Obama, in his zeal to support for the new right-wing governments of Argentina and Brazil, installed with the help of Soros and the CIA, has propped up the old Organization of American States (OAS), another Cold War relic that was used to justify the economic blockade of Cuba and U.S. military invasions of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Panama. 

With Venezuela in the  of Obama and his old CIA pals, the U.S. saw to it that another Soros acolyte, Luis Almagro of Uruguay, was installed as the Secretary General of the OAS. Almagro is the U.S.-designated Latino puppet who has been organizing opposition -- especially from the right-wing fascist governments of Argentina and Brazil -- to Venezuela's beleaguered socialist government. Almagro was silent when Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, was ousted in a right-wing "constitutional" coup. Almagro now hopes to see the same action take place in Venezuela with a right-wing National Assembly-sponsored recall vote of President Nicolas Maduro. 


OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro not only takes his orders from the CIA and Soros.

Meanwhile, Soros has been rubbing his hands and licking his fangs over the prospect of extending, for the first time, International Criminal Court indictments into Latin America by targeting the Venezuelan leadership after it is forced from office. For Soros, these phony "war crimes" indictments have been used to imprison or threaten to imprison CIA and Rothschild banking family foes in Serbia, the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, and Chad.

As president, Clinton will surely continue NATO's "drang nach osten" -- the "long march east" coined by Adolf Hitler -- until Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Sweden, Kazakhstan (where Hillary's despicably crooked and perverted husband* has brokered lucrative uranium export deals with the county's dictator), Finland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia become full-fledged members of the "North Atlantic" Treaty Organization. The "North Atlantic" euphamism is now a joke, NATO only exists to protect the interests of U.S. war contractors (the term "defense industry" is also a joke) and the House of Rothschild and its front man Soros. The Rothschilds, through their influential puppet Soros, invested millions in Obama and Mrs. Clinton in order to carry out what a one-time recipient of Rothschild donations -- the short former Austrian corporal in the German Army with the short mustache -- could not do, namely conquer the Eurasian land mass and join it to European and North American overseers.

There is a reason why such neocons as Robert Kagan (married to Mrs. Clinton's war-mongering Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland who crafted the Ukrainian coup), Max Boot, and John Podhoretz are supporting Hillary over The Donald. Mrs. Clinton will plunge America into a major world war much sooner than Trump can be blackmailed into one.


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Bill Clinton does not have a monopoly on sexual perversion. WMR has been informed by a very good source in Manhattan that Trump, while sitting next to his underage daughter Ivanka at the Trump Grill in Manhattan's Trump Tower, was witnessed by waiters on a number of occasions with his hand under her dress and fondling her genitalia. Some of these waiters have stated they would swear out affidavits about what they saw. After Ivanka became of age, Trump told Playboy magazine, ". . .if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her." Eventually Ivanka married Jared Kushner of the very wealthy Orthodox Jewish and ultra-Zionist Kushner real estate family of New York. 


This photo of Trump with his 15-year old daughter was taken while sitting on a statute of two copulating parrots at Trump's Mar Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Trump's hand appears to be starting a journey that some waiters witnessed it complete during numerous table interludes at the Trump Grill in New York.

What lurid secrets were rampant under the table cloths at the Trump Grill?
It is now well known that Bill Clinton feared that the Mossad possessed tapes of his salacious phone calls with Monica Lewinsky. Mossad was in a commanding position to blackmail Clinton. One can only wonder what evidence Mossad currently possesses of Donald Trump's incestuous pederasty with his 15-year old daughter. George Washington could have never dreamed of such "entanglements" when he warned about "entangling" foreign alliances.

Kiev prepares to use chemical weapons against eastern Ukraine by Wayne Madsen

Kiev prepares to use chemical weapons against eastern Ukraine

by Wayne Madsen

According to eastern Ukrainian sources who contacted WMR, the Ukrainian central government in Kiev has been stockpiling cylinders of toxic gas and canisters of other poisonous substances at an electrical plant in Slavyansk, a town in eastern Ukraine that remains occupied by Kiev troops. The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, populated by mostly ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, declared independence last year as the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Ukrainian government, aided by neo-Nazi and Israeli mercenaries, as well as "Al Qaeda" and "Islamic State" veterans from Iraq and Syria, have been waging a war against the people of eastern Ukraine with military assistance from the United States and other NATO nations.

A source in Slavyansk reports, "There's chlorine in cylinders, in not less than five covered wagons and also in other containers with contents I know nothing about, labeled with words and signs "poison, "danger," and "do not touch without protection." The source added, "All of it was brought in under the guise of varnishes and paints, but I know the look of the packaging of both, and whatever was brought here last week has got nothing to do with it, it looks like a chemical weapon."

The report from the Donbas region also stated that the intelligence service of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) was informed by its sources inside the Ukrainian Security Service that Kiev plans to use the chemical weapons in eastern Ukraine and then blame the eastern Ukrainian separatists. The source with DPR intelligence said, "I think they will follow the suit of the militants in Syria, they [Kiev] will use it against their own soldiers and civilians, and blame us, following which they will invite foreign reporters, show the corpses, raising a worldwide scandal with demand that NATO forces bomb us."

A Ukrainian rail and road transportation industry source confirmed that the suspect canisters spotted in Slavyansk were, in fact, transported asdangerous cargo by the Ukrainian Security Service and Ukrainian military intelligence, with the full cooperation of Kiev and local authorities.

In Syria, Islamic State guerrillas and their allies used sarin and chlorine gas to attack civilians outside of Damascus and then blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad for waging chemical warfare against his own people. The charge that certain governments have resorted to using chemical weapons, known as the "poor man's weapon of mass destruction," has been a favorite neocon propaganda tool employed against targeted leaders, including Assad, Libya's late leader Muammar Qaddafi, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and, possibly soon, the leadership of eastern Ukraine. In all these cases, the story of chemical weapons use was either totally false or was altered to show it was the governments that used the weapons and not U.S.-supported rebels.

Assad was accused of using sarin gas on to kill some 1300 civilians near Damascus, including children (above). In fact, it was the Islamist guerrillas that carried out the attack and another in Aleppo that killed 30 civilians. The Israeli media blamed Assad and the international media, pressured as usual by Israel's propaganda machine, blamed Assad. However, the neocon propaganda was so weak, President Obama opted not to commit U.S. forces to fight against Assad's government.

The intelligence chatter from eastern Ukraine indicates that the United States and its allies in Kiev are going to use, once again, a page from the WMD false flag playbook, previously employed in Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq.

Obama helping neo-Nazis re-write history of World War II by Wayne Madsen

Obama helping neo-Nazis re-write history of World War II by Wayne Madsen

By refusing an invitation to attend the May 9 celebration marking the victory of the Allies, and specifically, the Soviet Red Army, over Nazi Germany -- what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War -- President Obama has made common cause with neo-Nazis and Axis revanchists from Kiev and Berlin to Tallinn and Warsaw who are attempting to erase the USSR and its immense sacrifices in the war against fascism from the history books and various 70th anniversary commemorations of the war's milestones.

The George Soros and neo-conservative snubbing of Russia in commemorating World War II began with the Polish foreign ministry's refusal to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp from the Nazis. Although it was the Soviet Red Army that liberated the death camp, Poland not only decided to snub Putin but it invited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has a number of neo-Nazis serving in his country's government, armed forces, and intelligence services, to the Auschwitz ceremony. A number of Ukrainians were allied with the Nazi SS in fighting against the Red Army. Their sons and grandsons, known as "Banderists" for Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera, now rally around the Ukrainian nationalist and fascist cause in support of Ukraine's genocidal war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass region.

Polish foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna attempted to re-write history by claiming Ukrainians, not Russians, liberated Auschwitz. Russia's Foreign Ministry responded to Schetyna by stating, "It's common knowledge that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, in which all nationalities heroically served," adding that Poland was making a "mockery" of history.

Putin has said that there is a coordinated attempt by the West to belittle Russia's role in World War II. The latest attempt to diminish Russia's sacrifices in World War II have come with the announcement by many Western leaders that they will boycott the 70th Moscow anniversary commemoration of the end of the Great Patriotic War. Critics of the decision of the Western leaders to boycott the Victory Day ceremony note that by their actions Obama, Britain's David Cameron, France's Francois Hollande, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, and others are trying to negate the deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens who died during the Second World War.

Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council and an ardent Polish nationalist and anti-Russian, announced that he would not be representing the European Union at the Moscow ceremony. Poland is hoping to lure those leaders boycotting Moscow to its own ceremony marking the end of World War II.

While Obama and his friends in NATO will not be in Moscow, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has demanded war reparations from Germany for his country, will buck the NATO boycott and attend the ceremony on Red Square. He will be joined by North Korea's Kim Jong Un in his first trip outside of North Korea since assuming power. Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, was a Communist partisan leader against the Japanese occupiers in Korea.

Another NATO leader who will bolt from the Western military bloc and go to Moscow is Milos Zeman, the Czech president. Right-wing members of the Czech Civic Democrats Party are attempting to deny financing of Zeman's trip to Moscow. Zeman, if he does make it to Moscow, will reportedly be joined by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Slovakia is also a member of NATO. Slovakia's President Andrej Kiska, who has links to the Church of Scientology, refused Russia's invitation to attend the Victory Day event. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades will buck the wishes of other European Union leaders and be in Moscow.

Nicos Anastasiades

Also joining other leaders in Moscow who are ignoring the West's boycott of the May 9 event are Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian President Shri Pranab Mukherjee, South African President Jacob Zuma, Cuban President Raul Castro, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, Serbian PresidentTomislav Nikolic, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakshtan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Armenian President Serzh Sarsyan, Tajikistan PresidentEmomalii Rahmon, and Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambaev.

There are also high-level government delegations expected in Moscow from the Netherlands, which is surprising considering the fact that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 departed from Amsterdam before it was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Although the Ukrainian regime has tried to lay blame for the shoot down on Russian-backed separatists, there has been no final conclusion as to the perpetrators. However, given reports from the Netherlands that crash investigators believe that the plane was shot down by air-to-air gunfire from Ukrainian air force warplanes, the presence of a Dutch delegation in Moscow implies that the Netherlands authorities may be aware of Kiev's culpability in the attack.
In what can only be considered a diplomatic slap at the Kiev regime and its Western supporters, the leaders of the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine will be in the same Red Square viewing stand as the leaders from 30 other countries, including China, India, and South Africa, a fact that will confer a semblance of de facto international recognition of their status. In addition, the leaders of the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will also be present, constituting a diplomatic defeat for the authorities in Georgia who view the republics as integral parts of their state.
 
Kiev authorities, supported by ex-U.S. ambassadors, push for their own May 9 ceremony rivaling that planned in Moscow to celebrate victory over Nazism. Ironic, since the Kiev regime is backed by neo-Nazis who support Adolf Hitler and his Ukrainian henchman Stepan Bandera [left].  Baltic leaders boycott Moscow Victory Day event while their capitals host vigils for Nazi SS veterans. [right]. The U.S. embraces these proto-Nazi governments as allies.

The Obama administration is applying intense pressure on South Korean President 
Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to refuse Moscow's invitation to the participate in the May 9 event. Venezuela, Brazil, and Nicaragua are expected to send high-level delegations to Moscow.

The leaders of the Baltic nations, where there have been recent ceremonies honoring the military veterans of their nations who fought alongside Adolf Hitler's troops, will not be in Moscow.

The leaders gathered in Moscow will witness troops from at least 10 nations marching alongside their Russian counterparts. Some Russian troops will be clad in the World War II uniforms of the Soviet Red Army. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she will skip the May 9 ceremony in Moscow but show up the following day, likely to apply further pressure on Putin over the Ukraine situation. Three former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine, John Herbst, Steven Pifer, and William Taylor, have called on world leaders to attend a Victory Day ceremony in Kiev and not Moscow. Such a move would be awkward considering the number of neo-Nazis embedded in Ukrainian military, police, and militia units.

Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" Weapons Transport Makes Its Rounds by Wayne Madsen

Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" Weapons Transport Makes Its Rounds

In a repeat of the Central Intelligence Agency's globe hopping weapons transport cargo planes of the Iran-Contra scandal and the more recent Libyan rebel supply caper to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi, a Ukrainian Antonov AN-124 (tail number UR-82072) heavy lifter military transport plane, denoted as an "International Cargo Transport" and belonging to the "Antonov Transport Bureau," astonished residents around Belgrade's Nikola Tesla International Airport in Serbia when it landed there on January 28, 2015. The Ukrainian plane, the world's largest aircraft, was a rare sight at an airport in a country that generally supports Russia in its conflict with Kiev.

In September of last year, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that a number of NATO countries have agreed to deliver weapons to Ukrainian forces, which consist not only of regular Ukrainian troops but irregular battalions supported by billionaire Ukrainian-Israeli warlord Ihor Kolomoisky consisting of neo-Nazis, U.S. and other private military forces, and ex-Israel Defense Force personnel. At the time of the September 2014 NATO summit in Wales, Ukrainian presidential adviser Yuri Lutsenko said that the United States, France, Poland, Norway and Italy had agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine and Canada later revealed that it had also commenced weapons transfers to the Kiev putschist regime.

Ukraine's military forces have received so much NATO military aid and assistance and personnel, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said that the Ukrainian Army is acting as NATO's "foreign legion." There are also credible reports that NATO has supplied the Kiev regime with deadly cluster bombs that are being used against the largely Russian-speaking civilian population of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.


Antonov AN-124 (UR-82072) military transport plane suspected of ferrying weapons to Kiev seen on January 29, 2015 at Belgrade airport.

The AN-124 that landed in Belgrade appears to have been ferrying weapons from a number of known NATO air terminals used for such purposes. After arriving in Bucharest, Romania on January 23, 2015 from the Italian island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Libya, the aircraft departed on January 23 for New Jersey in the United States. Lampedusa was a major staging base for NATO weapons supplies to Libyan rebels during the Western- and Islamist-inspired rebellion against the Qaddafi government. Bucharest has become a major base for NATO military support to Kiev.

On January 25, the Antonov departed Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey for Trondheim, Norway. On January 26, the Ukrainian transport plane left Trondheim for Prestwick Airport, Glasgow, Scotland. The plane departed Prestwick on January 28 and touched down the same day at Belgrade. Prestwick was a favorite transit hub used by the CIA for the rendition of detainees following 9/11.

The United States has positioned six storage units located in the mountains of Norway’s central Trøndelag region, the capital of which is Trondheim. U.S. military equipment, including tanks and armored personnel vehicles, are stored at two Norwegian Air Force stations in the area, one of them being co-located with Trondheim Airport Værnes where the Ukrainian Antonov landed on January 26.


Antonov (UR-82072) coming in for a landing at Nikola Tesla International Airport in Belgrade on January 28.

Ukrainian transport UR-82072 plane flight from Glasgow to Belgrade on January 28.
The Antonov's destination after it left Belgrade was Mombasa, Kenya via Athens. The plane was reported by Serbian sources to be carrying "special cargo" weapons. It is conceivable that UR-82072 dropped off in Athens for further shipment to Ukraine weapons loaded at NATO airports in Lampedusa, Glasgow, and Trondheim, as well as Serbian caches placed on board in Belgrade and, perhaps, U.S. weapons stored at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, New Jersey, the Defense Department's Specialty Site for Guns and Ammunition, and Naval Weapons Station Earle, New Jersey. Both weapons bases are in close proximity to Newark Liberty International. The AN-124 is permanently based at Kiev's Gostomel Airport.


Helicopter being placed on board Ukraine's "Flying Dutchman" weapons transport.
Ever since fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine, the mysterious Ukrainian AN-124 has been spotted around the world, likely picking up weapons. On June 18, 2014, it was seen at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. Before that, it was seen on May 22, 2014 at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, in what may have been a refueling stop. On January 1 and 6, 2015 and November 23, 2014, it was spotted at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany; on July 2, 2014, it was Luqa International in Malta (Malta was another staging base for weapons supplies to anti-Qaddafi forces during the Libyan civil war); and on April 15, 2014 at Francisco Sa Carneiro Aiport, Porto, Portugal and a week later, on April 27, at Schwechat Airport in Vienna.

Kiev was hotbed of neo-Nazism even during Soviet times by Wayne Madsen

Kiev was hotbed of neo-Nazism even during Soviet times

by Wayne Madsen

The CIA archives contain an obscure newspaper article from the New York Herald Tribune, dated September 14, 1964 that points out that neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism ran rampant in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev even during the time of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This fact makes the current love affair between neoconservative Zionists like Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, and incoming Central Intelligence Agency director David Cohen and the neo-Nazi imbued government of Ukraine all the more perplexing.


Senator John McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is flanked by neo-Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnbok [right] and gives his very best "Heil Hitler" salute to protesters at Maidan Square in Kiev last year.

The neo-Nazism of the Ukrainian government was recently on full display when Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, known affectionately as "Yats" by Nuland, described the Soviet Red Army's move into Nazi Germany not as a "liberation" but as an "invasion." Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently awarded one of Ukraine's top medals to Belarusian Serhiy Korotkykh, a member of the far-right Russian National Unity party and founding member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Society (NSS) in Russia. Korotokykh has recently been engaged in a pogrom of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine as a member of the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary unit financed and armed by Ukrainian-Israeli Zionist billionaire tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky.

The head of the Azov Battalion is Andriy Biletsky, a neo-Nazi activist who has switched his allegiance between the two main neo-Nazi parties, Svoboda and Right Sector. The alliance between Zionists like Kolomoisky and neo-Nazis like Biletsky must be viewed in the context of Ukrainian history where even Ukrainian Communist leaders during the Soviet Union expressed neo-Nazi sympathies in direct challenges to Moscow's wishes.

The Herald Tribune article describes the Ideological Commission of the Soviet Communist Party and Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev as being furious over the 1963 publication by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences of an anti-Semitic publication, complete with Nazi-like caricatures, titled "Judaism Without Embellishment." That publication was followed in 1964 by another book published by the State Publishing House of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in Kishniev titled "Contemporary Judaism and Zionism," which expressed similar Nazi-like views to the Ukrainian book but without the Nazi cartoons.
 
Nikita Khrushchev [left], like Vladimir Putin, had to deal with neo-Nazis in Kiev.

Today, the ideological sons and daughters of the crypto-Nazis who proclaimed they were Ukrainian Communists are in power in Kiev. Their major support comes from neoconservatives like Nuland, Pyatt, and B'nai B'rith. In 1964, the latter organization rented a room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York where B'nai B'rith president Label A. Katz condemned the Nazi-like policies of the Ukrainian Communist Party which his successors actively support today in pro-Western Ukraine.

It is not the Russian government that should stand accused before the international court of public opinion but the neo-Nazis of Kiev and their Zionist Jewish enablers in New York and Washington, DC.

THE ROVING EYE - Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar

Washington plays Russian roulette

THE ROVING EYE Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar These are bleak times. I've been in serious conversation with some deep sources and interlocutors - those who know but don't need to show off, privileging discretion. They are all deeply worried. This is what one of them, a New York strategic planner, sent me: The propaganda attack against Putin equating him with Hitler is so extreme that you have to think that the Russians cannot believe their ears and cannot trust the United States anymore under any circumstances. I cannot believe how we could have gotten ourselves into this situation to protect the looters in the Ukraine that Putin would have rid the Ukraine of, and even had the gall to place in a leadership role one of the worst of the thieves. But that is history. What is certain is that MAD [mutually assured destruction] is not a deterrent today when both sides believe the other will use nuclear weapons once they have the advantage and that the side that gains a decisive advantage will use them. MAD is now over. That may sound somewhat extreme - but it's a perfectly logical extension, further on down the road, of what the Russian president intimated in his already legendary interview with Germany's ARD in Vladivostok last week: the West is provoking Russia into a new Cold War. [1] Mikhail Gorbachev just stressed a few days ago the new Cold War is already on. Princeton's Stephen Cohen says the Cold War in fact never left. The Roving Eye reported about Cold War 2.0 months ago. Brits - still stranded in the 19th century new Great Game - prefer to spin the "strident toxic personality" of "diminutive Putin"; [2] he is the "ruthless, charming and ultimately reckless" man who "put the cold war back in vogue". The Council on Foreign Relations, predictably, mourns the end of the post-Cold War world, blasts the current "disorder", and dreams of the good ol' unchallenged exceptionalist days. [3] For arguably the best detailed background on how we came to this perilous state of affairs, it's hard to beat Vladimir Kozin of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. [4] Read him carefully. And yes, it's Cold War 2.0, the double trouble remix; between the US and Russia, and between NATO and Russia. Seeing red In his ARD interview, Putin stuck to actual facts on the ground: "NATO and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing ? Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy special operations forces, again in close proximity to our borders. You have mentioned various [Russian] exercises, flights, ship movements and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed." For the Russia-demonizing hordes, it's always convenient to forget that NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine was clinched at a NATO meeting in Bucharest in April 2008. The Georgia op spectacularly failed in the summer of 2008. Ukraine is a work in progress. Crucially, in the ARD interview, Putin also told the EU coalition of the clueless/vassals/puppets/ that Russia can bring down the Ukraine House of Cards in a flash; Moscow just needs to emphasize it's time to collect the humongous amounts of cash it is legally owed. Putin also made it very clear Moscow won't allow - and that was categorical: won't allow - Donbass to be overrun/smashed/ethnic-cleansed by Kiev: "Today there is fighting in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian central authorities have sent the armed forces there and they even use ballistic missiles. Does anybody speak about it? Not a single word. And what does it mean? What does it tell us? This points to the fact, that you want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there, all of their political foes and opponents. You want that? We certainly don't. And we won't let it happen." [5] According to Kiev's own figures, no less than 65% of residential buildings and 10% of schools and kindergartens in Donbass have been destroyed. Over 40,000 medium-sized companies are paralyzed. Unemployment - Ukraine-wide, is over 40%. External debt may reach US$80 billion - and don't expect the International Monetary Fund, which now owns Ukraine, to go philanthropic. Most of all, Kiev can't pay its billionaire gas bills to Gazprom because it spends a fortune terrorizing eastern Ukraine citizens. This Poroshenko rant sums it all up - with the US and EU fully complicit. So NATO has been warned about Russia's real red lines. Still, substantial sectors of the Washington/Wall Street elites can't get enough of war. And they like it hot. [6] No one should ever underestimate the unlimited stupidity of the Return of the Living Neo-con Dead using their favorite pulpit, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. The "logic" behind Cold War 2.0 - now in full swing - couldn't give a damn about European stability. The Obama administration launched it - with NATO as the spearhead - to in fact prevent Eurasian integration, building a New Berlin Wall in Kiev. The immediate target is to undermine Russia's economy; in the long run, regime change would be the ultimate bonus. So the logic of escalation is on. The economically devastated EU is a joke; the only thing that counts for the US is NATO - and the overwhelming majority of its members are in the bag, sharing the prevailing mood in Washington of treating Putin as if he were Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi. There are no signs whatsoever Team Obama is willing to de-escalate. And when the Hillarator President-in-Waiting ascends to the throne, all bets are off. Notes: 1. Putin's Sunday Interview on German TV (Dubbed + Transcript), Russian Insider, November 19, 2014. 2. The new cold war: are we going back to the bad old days?, The Guardian, November 19, 2014. 3. The Unraveling: How to Respond to a Disordered World, foreignaffairs.com, December 2014 issue. 4. See here. 5. The broken-down beauty of Eastern Ukraine, 25 years after the end of the USSR, Quartz, November 15, 2014. 6. The Wall Street Journal Wants the US to Go To War in Ukraine, Russia Insider, November 18, 2014. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

The Anti-Empire Report #134 By William Blum - Russia invades Ukraine. Again. And again. And yet again … using Saddam’s WMD

The Anti-Empire Report #134

By William Blum – Published November 19th, 2014

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Russia invades Ukraine. Again. And again. And yet again … using Saddam’s WMD

“Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday [August 27], sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week.”

None of the photos accompanying this New York Times story online showed any of these Russian troops or armored vehicles.

“The Obama administration,” the story continued, “has asserted over the past week that the Russians had moved artillery, air-defense systems and armor to help the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. ‘These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway’, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said. At the department’s daily briefing in Washington, Ms. Psaki also criticized what she called the Russian government’s ‘unwillingness to tell the truth’ that its military had sent soldiers as deep as 30 miles inside Ukraine territory.”

Thirty miles inside Ukraine territory and not a single satellite photo, not a camera anywhere around, not even a one-minute video to show for it. “Ms. Psaki apparently [sic] was referring to videos of captured Russian soldiers, distributed by the Ukrainian government.” The Times apparently forgot to inform its readers where they could see these videos.

“The Russian aim, one Western official said, may possibly be to seize an outlet to the sea in the event that Russia tries to establish a separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine.”

This of course hasn’t taken place. So what happened to all these Russian soldiers 30 miles inside Ukraine? What happened to all the armored vehicles, weapons, and equipment?

“The United States has photographs that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American officials say. One photo dated last Thursday, shown to a New York Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the artillery in firing positions in Ukraine.”

Where are these photographs? And how will we know that these are Russian soldiers? And how will we know that the photos were taken in Ukraine? But most importantly, where are the fucking photographs?

Why am I so cynical? Because the Ukrainian and US governments have been feeding us these scare stories for eight months now, without clear visual or other evidence, often without even common sense. Here are a few of the many other examples, before and after the one above:

• The Wall Street Journal (March 28) reported: “Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another [sic] major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims, US officials said.”
• “The Ukrainian government charged that the Russian military was not only approaching but had actually crossed the border into rebel-held regions.” (Washington Post, November 7)
• “U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove told reporters in Bulgaria that NATO had observed Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops enter Ukraine across a completely wide-open border with Russia in the previous two days.” (Washington Post, November 13)
• “Ukraine accuses Russia of sending more soldiers and weapons to help rebels prepare for a new offensive. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied aiding the separatists.” (Reuters, November 16)

Since the February US-backed coup in Ukraine, the State Department has made one accusation after another about Russian military actions in Eastern Ukraine without presenting any kind of satellite imagery or other visual or documentary evidence; or they present something that’s very unclear and wholly inconclusive, such as unmarked vehicles, or unsourced reports, or citing “social media”; what we’re left with is often no more than just an accusation. The Ukrainian government has matched them.

On top of all this we should keep in mind that if Moscow decided to invade Ukraine they’d certainly provide air cover for their ground forces. There has been no mention of air cover.

This is all reminiscent of the numerous stories in the past three years of “Syrian planes bombing defenseless citizens”. Have you ever seen a photo or video of a Syrian government plane dropping bombs? Or of the bombs exploding? When the source of the story is mentioned, it’s almost invariably the rebels who are fighting against the Syrian government. Then there’s the “chemical weapon” attacks by the same evil Assad government. When a photo or video has accompanied the story I’ve never once seen grieving loved ones or media present; not one person can be seen wearing a gas mask. Is it only children killed or suffering? No rebels?

And then there’s the July 17 shootdown of Malaysia Flight MH17, over eastern Ukraine, taking 298 lives, which Washington would love to pin on Russia or the pro-Russian rebels. The US government – and therefore the US media, the EU, and NATO – want us all to believe it was the rebels and/or Russia behind it. The world is still waiting for any evidence. Or even a motivation. Anything at all. President Obama is not waiting. In a talk on November 15 in Australia, he spoke of “opposing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – which is a threat to the world, as we saw in the appalling shoot-down of MH17”. Based on my reading, I’d guess that it was the Ukranian government behind the shootdown, mistaking it for Putin’s plane that reportedly was in the area.

Can it be said with certainty that all the above accusations were lies? No, but the burden of proof is on the accusers, and the world is still waiting. The accusers would like to create the impression that there are two sides to each question without actually having to supply one of them.

The United States punishing Cuba

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an “international pariah”. We haven’t heard that for a very long time. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions):

Year	Votes (Yes-No)	No Votes
1992	59-2	US, Israel
1993	88-4	US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994	101-2	US, Israel
1995	117-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996	138-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997	143-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998	157-2	US, Israel
1999	155-2	US, Israel
2000	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002	173-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003	179-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2004	179-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005	182-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006	183-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007	184-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008	185-3	US, Israel, Palau
2009	187-3	US, Israel, Palau
2010	187-2	US, Israel
2011	186-2	US, Israel
2012	188-3	US, Israel, Palau
2013	188-2	US, Israel
2014	188-2	US, Israel

This year Washington’s policy may be subject to even more criticism than usual due to the widespread recognition of Cuba’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.

Speaking before the General Assembly before last year’s vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez declared: “The economic damages accumulated after half a century as a result of the implementation of the blockade amount to $1.126 trillion.” He added that the blockade “has been further tightened under President Obama’s administration”, some 30 US and foreign entities being hit with $2.446 billion in fines due to their interaction with Cuba.

However, the American envoy, Ronald Godard, in an appeal to other countries to oppose the resolution, said:

The international community … cannot in good conscience ignore the ease and frequency with which the Cuban regime silences critics, disrupts peaceful assembly, impedes independent journalism and, despite positive reforms, continues to prevent some Cubans from leaving or returning to the island. The Cuban government continues its tactics of politically motivated detentions, harassment and police violence against Cuban citizens. 

So there you have it. That is why Cuba must be punished. One can only guess what Mr. Godard would respond if told that more than 7,000 people were arrested in the United States during the Occupy Movement’s first 8 months of protest in 2011-12  ; that many of them were physically abused by the police; and that their encampments were violently destroyed.

Does Mr. Godard have access to any news media? Hardly a day passes in America without a police officer shooting to death an unarmed person.

As to “independent journalism” – What would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money – secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba – would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?

The real reason for Washington’s eternal hostility toward Cuba has not changed since the revolution in 1959 – The fear of a good example of an alternative to the capitalist model; a fear that has been validated repeatedly over the years as many Third World countries have expressed their adulation of Cuba.

How the embargo began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” 

Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted its suffocating embargo against its everlasting enemy.

The United States judging and punishing the rest of the world

In addition to Cuba, Washington currently is imposing economic and other sanctions against Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, China, North Korea, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico, South Sudan, Sudan, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, India, and Zimbabwe. These are sanctions mainly against governments, but also against some private enterprises; there are also many other sanctions against individuals not included here. 

Imbued with a sense of America’s moral superiority and “exceptionalism”, each year the State Department judges the world, issuing reports evaluating the behavior of all other nations, often accompanied by sanctions of one kind or another. There are different reports rating how each lesser nation has performed in the previous year in areas such as religious freedom, human rights, the war on drugs, trafficking in persons, and sponsors of terrorism. The criteria used in these reports are often political. Cuba, for example, is always listed as a sponsor of terrorism whereas anti-Castro exile groups in Florida, which have committed literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the years, are not listed as terrorist groups or supporters of such.

Cuba, which has been on the sponsor-of-terrorism list longer (since 1982) than any other country, is one of the most glaring anomalies. The most recent State Department report on this matter, in 2012, states that there is “no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.”  There are, however, some retirees of Spain’s Basque terrorist group ETA (which appears on the verge of disbanding) in Cuba, but the report notes that the Cuban government evidently is trying to distance itself from them by denying them services such as travel documents. Some members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been allowed into Cuba, but that was because Cuba was hosting peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government, which the report notes.

The US sanctions mechanism is so effective and formidable that it strikes fear (of huge fines) into the hearts of banks and other private-sector organizations that might otherwise consider dealing with a listed state.

Some selected thoughts on American elections and democracy

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from one side to the other, thinking they will be more comfortable.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

• 2012 presidential election:
  223,389,800 eligible to vote
  128,449,140 actually voted
  Obama got 65,443,674 votes
  Obama was thus supported by 29.3% of eligible voters
• There are 100 million adults in the United States who do not vote. This is a very large base from which an independent party can draw millions of new votes.
• If God had wanted more of us to vote in elections, he would give us better candidates.
• “The people can have anything they want. The trouble is, they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on election day.” – Eugene Debs, American socialist leader (1855-1926)
• “If persons over 60 are the only American age group voting at rates that begin to approximate European voting, it’s because they’re the only Americans who live in a welfare state – Medicare, Social Security, and earlier, GI loans, FHA loans.” – John Powers
• “The American political system is essentially a contract between the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of both no matter how many people despise or ignore them.” – Richard Reeves (1936- )
• The American electoral system, once the object of much national and international pride, has slid inexorably from “one person, one vote”, to “one dollar, one vote”.
• Noam Chomsky: “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars. Their professional concern in their regular vocation is not to provide information. Their goal, rather, is deceit.”
• If the Electoral College is such a good system, why don’t we have it for local and state elections?
• “All the props of a democracy remain intact - elections, legislatures, media - but they predominantly function at the service of the oligarchy.” – Richard Wolff
• The RepDem Party holds elections as if they were auctions; indeed, an outright auction for the presidency would be more efficient. To make the auction more interesting we need a second party, which must at a minimum be granted two privileges: getting on the ballot in all 50 states and taking part in television debates.
• The US does in fact have two parties: the Ins and the Outs … the evil of two lessers.
• Alexander Cockburn: “There was a time once when ‘lesser of two evils’ actually meant something momentous, like the choice between starving to death on a lifeboat, or eating the first mate.”
• Cornel West has suggested that it’s become difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic society, without great concentrations of corporate power, would look like, or how it would operate.
• The United States now resembles a police state punctuated by elections.
• How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can’t change anything.
• H.L. Mencken (1880-1956): “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
• “All elections are distractions. Nothing conceals tyranny better than elections.” – Joel Hirschhorn
• In 1941, one of the country’s more acerbic editors, a priest named Edward Dowling, commented: “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.”
• “Elections are a necessary, but certainly not a sufficient, condition for democracy. Political participation is not just a casting of votes. It is a way of life.” – UN Human Development Report, 1993
• “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain!” I reply, “You have it backwards. If you DO vote, you can’t complain. You asked for it, and they’re going to give it to you, good and hard.”
• “How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It’s the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It’s been 200 years at it. It’s superb.” – Gore Vidal
• We can’t use our democracy/our vote to change the way the economy functions. This is very anti-democratic.
• What does a majority vote mean other than that the sales campaign was successful?
• Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
• We do have representative government. The question is: Who does our government represent?
• “On the day after the 2002 election I watched a crawl on the bottom of the CNN news screen. It said, ‘Proprietary software may make inspection of electronic voting systems impossible.’ It was the final and absolute coronation of corporate rights over democracy; of money over truth.” – Mike Ruppert, RIP
• “It’s not that voting is useless or stupid; rather, it’s the exaggeration of the power of voting that has drained the meaning from American politics.” – Michael Ventura
• After going through the recent national, state and local elections, I am now convinced that taxation without representation would have been a much better system.
• “Ever since the Constitution was illegally foisted on the American people we have lived in a blatant plutocracy. The Constitution was drafted in secret by a self-appointed elite committee, and it was designed to bring three kinds of power under control: Royalty, the Church, and the People. All were to be subjugated to the interests of a wealthy elite. That’s what republics were all about. And that’s how they have functioned ever since.” – Richard K. Moore
• “As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.” – Michael Parenti
• “The fact that a supposedly sophisticated electorate had been stampeded by the cynical propaganda of the day threw serious doubt on the validity of the assumptions underlying parliamentary democracy as a whole.” – British Superspy for the Soviets Kim Philby (1912-1988), explaining his reasons for becoming a Communist instead of turning to the Labour Party
• US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941): “We may have democracy in this country, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
• “We don’t need to run America like a business or like the military. We need to run America like a democracy.” – Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate 2012

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Notes

1. Democracy Now!, October 30, 2013
2. Huffingfton Post, May 3, 2012
3. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba(1991), p.885 (online here)
4. For the complete detailed list, see U.S. Department of State, Nonproliferation Sanctions
5. U.S. Department of State, “Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, Chapter 3: State Sponsors of Terrorism,” May 20, 2013

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.