Archived links are available even if the original is taken down, stored at (archive.org), (archive.today), (peeep.us).
News links are provided for educational purposes only, and do not constitute an endorsement of political tendencies, or of foreign governments.
Recommended Radical Newsletters:
* "Popular Resistance Newsletter: What It Means To #ReclaimMLK" (2015-01-16) [https://archive.today/9Pr9U]
* "CCDSLinks: Radical Ideas for Radical Change" newsletter (2015-01-16) [https://archive.today/gdQx3]
* "The Soapbox People's Network" (2015-01-18) [https://archive.today/IPjKg]
PRESERVE AND EXPAND QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION
* "Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty" (2015-01-16) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html] [https://archive.today/51nfJ]
On the following map, the Red States are those with the majority of public school students being of lower-income. "Mississippi, Gawd Damn!"
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The federal government spent $69 billion in 2012 to subsidize the cost of college through grants, tax breaks, and work-study funds. Tuition at ALL public colleges came to $62.6 Billion. Cut out the middle man. Give us free college.
* "For-Profit Colleges Collect $32 Billion, 3 Lose Federal Aid Eligibility For Failing 90/10 Rule" (2012-09-28) [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/for-profit-colleges-lose-federal-aid-90-10_n_1920190.html] [https://archive.today/2xWan]
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* "The Federal Education Budget" (2015-01) [https://archive.today/B8bZD]:
Department of Education Appropriation -
Nearly all federal education programs are funded through the annual appropriations process, but a few, such as student loans, are funded on an ongoing basis through mandatory spending. The appropriations for the Department of Education totaled $67.3 billion in fiscal year 2014, accounting for 6.0 percent of the $1.1 trillion in total appropriations funding across all federal agencies that year.
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* "FY15 Republican Budget Summary and Analysis" (2015-01) [https://archive.today/M3TsB]:
The reckless Republican budget casts a dark shadow over the American Dream. It is a direct attack on job creation and condemns America to economic decline by providing perverse tax incentives to ship American jobs overseas while shortchanging investments in jobs here at home. This budget violates our commitments to seniors, punishes Americans struggling to stay afloat economically, and steepens inequality by protecting wealthy special interests as it takes resources away from everyone else.
UNDERMINES JOB CREATION AND DISMANTLES THE LADDER OF OPPORTUNITY -
The Administration has calculated how the Republican budget’s 15-percent cut to 2016 non-defense appropriations would affect services if applied on a proportional basis today:
* Head Start would serve about 170,000 fewer of the nation's most vulnerable children.
* Title I , which helps ensure students receive support to meet challenging academic standards, would be unable to support the equivalent of roughly 8,000 schools and 3.4 million disadvantaged students, potentially resulting in 29,000 fewer teachers and aides with jobs.
* Special Education — Schools across the country would lose funding for 21,000 special education teachers.
* Job Training – More than 3.5 million fewer individuals would receive employment and training services through Department of Labor job training programs.
* The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) , which provides critical food assistance and nutrition education to pregnant and postpartum women, infants and children, would assist at least 200,000 fewer postpartum women and children. Adequate early childhood nutrition is a crucial factor in children’s ability to thrive and succeed in school.
* $19 billion cut from early childhood education through 2024 – This cut to Head Start and Early Head Start stands in contrast to the President’s 2015 budget, which not only increases this funding but also includes a $76 billion 10-year initiative for partnerships with states to provide universal pre-K services.
* $89 billion cut from all of K-12 education through 2024, including special education.
* $28 billion cut from Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) – Current IDEA funding already provides only about 16 percent of the average per pupil expenditure for special education, far below the 40 percent “full funding” pledged when Congress passed the IDEA in 1975.
* $35 billion cut from Title I — This deep cut would reduce the program’s ability to provide additional teachers and other supports to help students in low-income schools succeed.
* Puts College Out of Reach for Millions of Students — At a time student loan debt totals more than $1 trillion, the Republican budget slashes grants and charges students more interest on their loans. The Republican budget guts current policy support for higher education by more than $260 billion, putting a college education out of reach of the millions of students who rely on Pell grants, federal student loans, and higher education tax credits.
* Cuts Pell grants by $145 billion – Pell grants are the cornerstone of federal student aid, and help make obtaining a college degree a reality for almost 10 million college students each year. Yet the Republican budget cuts $145 billion from Pell grants over the budget window. That total reflects a $55 billion discretionary funding cut through their 24 percent cut to non-defense appropriations through 2024, plus another $90 billion from eliminating the one guaranteed source of Pell Grants: the $90 billion that Congress already enacted – and paid for – to provide mandatory annual inflationary increases to the maximum Pell grant. The Republican budget claims to freeze the maximum Pell grant forever, but does not provide the additional appropriations that would be needed just to maintain the current $5,730 maximum grant, even before considering the unallocated cut to all non-defense funding.
* Charges low-income students more for loans – The Republican budget makes college more expensive for needy students by charging interest on their loans while they are still in college. This cuts student loan support by $41 billion over ten years. According to CBO, students borrowing $23,000 in subsidized loans will leave school owing an additional $3,800 in accrued interest.
Increases student loan debt – In addition, the budget will increase student debt by eliminating $7 billion in expanded student loan repayment benefits that Congress enacted – and paid for – in 2010. More than two thirds of those graduating from college in 2012 had student loan debt, and the average was a whopping $29,400.
* Lets higher education tax cut expire – Unlike the President’s budget, which includes $67 billion to extend the American Opportunity Tax Credit, the Republican budget lets it expire. This tax credit helps defray college costs for 11.5 million working- and middle-class students by an average of more than $1,100 each year.
information collected by the
WORKER'S DEFENSE COMMITTEE
* "Reporters Banned at California State Sponsored 100th Anniversary Of Workers’ Compensation & Safety & Health in California" [https://archive.today/Nc1Qp], read the full report, with photos, at [https://web.archive.org/web/20150118001504/http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/01/05/part2.celebrating100interview.pdf], from the "Injured Workers National Network" [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Injured-Workers-National-Network-IWNN/108362552680848]. The video footage, production of KPFA WorkWeek Radio & Labor Video Project; [www.laborvideo.org] can be viewed at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M6m8S1OoH0]:
At a California meeting for "Celebrating 100 Years" of Workers' Compensation & Health & Safety
at the Oakland State Building on December 15, 2014, reporters were prevented from attending the
state sponsored meeting. The meeting was funded by the insurance industry. Department of Industrial
Relations DIR Director Christine Baker has been charged with terrorizing and bullying the employees
of Cal-OSHA.
No reporters were allowed to attend the "private" meeting at the state building and the Highway
Patrol was called by Baker to evict a reporter from KPFA who was in the foyer but the California
Highway Patrol officer said the reporter had a right to be in the foyer. The Cal-Osha Report was also
prevented from sending a reporter to the meeting. There are only 172 OSHA inspectors for 18.5
million workers in California.
Department of Industrial Relations DIR Director Christine Baker, who was appointed by California
Governor Brown, is under attack by health and safety advocates such as; Garrett Brown as well as
injured workers and their attorneys, for siding with insurance companies and employers.
BAY AREA SOLIDARITY
Updates on campaigns for for Peace, Justice, & Freedom across the greater Bay Area, Norcal, and Socal
* "Facebook takes down, then restores, BART protest page" (2015-01-15) [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Activists-say-Facebook-killed-page-organizing-6018796.php#photo-7204237] [https://archive.today/SI2Uo]
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* "HSU Students Take Over Native Forum" (2014-01-20)[https://www.facebook.com/unitedstudentsofhumboldt]
On the eve of January 19th, 2015 Martin Luther King Day, Native students and allies at Humboldt State University took residence at the Native American Forum on HSU campus, re-naming it the Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman Forum.
The announcement that students planned to remain in the building came after a 2-day long Native American Activism Conference at Humboldt State where speakers from across the state presented on a variety of issues faced by Indigenous Peoples.
The Unified Students of Humboldt formed after the HSU administration abruptly and unjustly fired Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman, a nationally recognized Native scholar and mentor, and director of HSU’s INRSEP (Indian Natural Resources Science and Engineering Program) for 9 years.
The manner in which Dr. Bolman was fired was a traumatic experience for many students. With no warning, 3 administrators removed Bolman and students from the INRSEP house, and changed the locks. To add insult to injury, Bolman’s firing occurred 2 days before Indigenous Peoples’ Week.
In October, the group organized some of the largest demonstrations seen on campus since the Vietnam War. They have made very clear that their demands are necessary for the success of Native students (see below), though HSU administration has yet to meaningfully respond.
Unified Students of Humboldt delivered this statement to the forums’ first class, (excerpt)
“HSU is not living up to their own mission statement to support and celebrate diversity. We will occupy the Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman Forum until our demands are met.
Nationwide, Native American students continue to be overlooked by the educational system, and HSU is no exception. At one time, HSU was the premier destination for Native students in the state. However, in the past decade there has been a regular assault on our student programs and community.”
Unified Students of Humboldt Demands
1. Reinstate and secure Dr. Jacquelyn Bolman position as Director of INRSEP.
2. We demand full effective participation in a transparent hiring process for HSU staff, faculty and administration. We as students demand equal voting power on hiring, promotion, tenure committees and dismissal procedures in selecting and dismissing HSU staff, faculty and administration in order to ensure greater diversity at HSU.
3. Fully fund our Diversity Programs; including but not limited to the $40,000 promised to be restored by President Richmond to the INRSEP Program in a meeting last May.
4. Honor instead of retaliating against HSU staff and faculty who support students of color and our advocates including Antonio Lopez, Stephen Bell, Grace Cardenas and Jacquelyn Bolman, among many others. We demand these rights for our faculty and staff under the Whistleblowers Protection Act and Educational Code 66301 (Section F) to protect their first Amendment rights.
5. We demand the dissolution of RISS (Retention and Inclusion of Student Success) and the programs in which it supports to be moved back into their respective Colleges. Faculty, Staff and Students who operate and participate in these programs should be the ultimate say in the fate of their programs.
6. Terminate Radha Webley.
7. The Bolman Forum is not the BSS Forum and is for the Indigenous Community.
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* "HSU: Students set to reside in forum until demands are met" (2015-01-20) [http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20150120/hsu-students-set-to-reside-in-forum-until-demands-are-met] [https://archive.today/vUw7b]
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* "California Newspaper’s Office Vandalized For Using the ‘Offensive’ Term ‘Illegals’ in Headline" (2015-01-19) [http://toprightnews.com/?p=7932] [https://archive.today/9pwTU],
Under pressure from illegal alien activists, the Associated Press in 2013 banned the use of “illegal,” “illegal alien,” and “illegal immigrant.” Several other media outlets have followed.
But the newspaper said it will continue to use the term “illegals” to describe people who enter the U.S. without permission, despite the attack by vandals.
“It is an appropriate term in describing someone as “illegal” if they are in this country illegally.” - Statement from Santa Barbara News-Press.
The Santa Barbara News-Press’s front entrance was sprayed with the message “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it” in red paint, early Thursday morning, according to the newspaper’s director of operations, Donald Katich.
[begin excerpt]: [end excerpt]
* "California Newspaper Stands Its Ground On Free Speech" commentary by Jim Gilchrist, President of the Minuteman Project (2015-01-10) [http://minutemanproject.com/commentary-from-jim-gilchrist-defending-free-speech-for-santa-barbara-ca-newspaper/] [https://archive.today/nLfnB]
* "SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS RESPONDS TO JIM GILCHRIST" (2015-01-12) [http://minutemanproject.com/exclusive-response-santa-barbara-news-press-responds-to-jim-gilchrist/] [https://web.archive.org/web/20150120183405/http://minutemanproject.com/exclusive-response-santa-barbara-news-press-responds-to-jim-gilchrist/]
* "TIME TO CALL IN THE MILITIAS!" (2014-09-13) [http://minutemanproject.com/time-to-call-in-the-militias] [https://archive.today/H9vgo], [begin excerpt]: As we move into the future the conduct du jour will become mob rule, that “mob” being uncounted millions of illegal aliens in the United States; and tyranny, that “tyranny” being the repeated abuse of our immigration laws by wayward members of Congress and the White House who have become wholly disconnected with the rightful decision-makers of our country: U. S. citizens. Americans, a handful of people cannot save a nation that does not want to be saved…but millions of people allied together can save a country that does want to be saved. Perhaps it is time to call in the militias to encourage a return to our stature as “a nation of laws.” Our bureaucrats, except for a few dozen Republicans in Congress, have no interest in stopping an unprecedented invasion of illegal aliens, which will reinvent, and forever change, the demographics of our country and make our heralded stature as “a nation of laws” meaningless. [end excerpt]
* "Minutemen Tea Party Supporting Santa Barbara Press" video (2015-01-19) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mES3Zv7NrRc]: Santa Barbara News Press ran a controversial and racists headline titled: "Illegals Line Up for Driver's Licenses" .. showing a random group of brown people at the DMV on their front page. Community fought back. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO CAME OUT TO SUPPORT SANTA BARBARA PRESS. — at MLK March/ SB News Press Protest.
* Facebook page for the Santa Barbara News-Press Protest, archived 2014-01-20 [https://archive.today/8zW0q].
"La Reconquista de Nueva Aztlan" reverses 500 years of genocide by a foreign ideology, to stand against cultural genocide, and to restore history.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE NATION OF NEW AFRIKA
* #Oakland Federal Building locked down by #3rdWorld4BlackPower because #BlackLivesMatter #MLKShutItDown
The demonstrators allowed access to the federal court-not sure about the rest of the bldg
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The first Blackman to call for Black Power-in the 1960's-
Willie Ricks (Mukasa Dada)- with General
T.A.C.O and Chief of Staff Laalaa Shakur-Black Riders-New Generation Black Panther Party for Self-Defense-Black Power! All Power to the People! Willie Ricks was a part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C) and worked side by side with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Stokley Carmichael, and Ella Baker. Eventually, Ricks distanced himself from S.N.C.C because of his affiliation with the Original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (with leaders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale). The term Black Power became known in June 1966, during a protest march in the South where Ricks, THEN... Stokley used it as a rallying war cry... to take the passive nonviolent civil rights movement to the next level of Armed Self-Defense, Human Rights, and REVOLUTION- based on the teachings of Minister Malcolm X! Hands up don't shoot... HELL NAW...
GUNS UP AND DEFEND YOURSELF! BLACK POWER... A RALLYING WAR CRY!
Much respect Elder Willie Ricks...
Don't be a house cat... Be A Panther At War... For the Hearts and Minds of the People...
To join, inbox or email us , at blackriders1996@gmail.com
R.I.P. Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner and many others...
RBG 4 LIFE! Black Power! All Power to the People!
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"After More Than 48 Years, Today's International BPP Movement With The Notion of Black Self-Determination and All Peoples Liberation Continue To Works Well Together" by Melvin Dickson of the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party [https://archive.today/ta1Ya], [begin excerpt]: BPP legacy and protest formations groups continues to exist in India, New Zealand, Australia, England, and other places around the globe organizers and revolutionary continue to promote the BPP legacy, goals, and principles; mostly through peaceful agitation - despite the continued imprisonment of former members, leaders and current organizers. I'm absolutely amazed at how it seems like at almost every turn of the globe one hears about the Black Panther old, and newly so-called BPP formations attempting to promote the legacy advocating many of the principles of the original party; this is not lightweight but historic. But there is much work ahead and these young folks seem to want to take on the challenge; want to move with building community sustainability on all fundamental levels in order to liberate the many exploited community, occupied and oppressed communities within the United States and throughout the globe. As in the meantime, the exploited oppressed and too often victimized community gain the consciousness and initiative to organize themselves to join the growing movement to end all forms of exploitation and oppression as new paradigm shift in the strong massive and tight unity resisting injustice through the unity of ideas and goals via transformational vehicles (i.e. community programs coordinated through local residents) which demand change in the fundamentals tied together worldwide to end the oppression of Black People worldwide so that the rest of the world can move forward. [end excerpt]
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* "Black People’s Grand Jury Indicts Cop for First Degree Murder of Michael Brown" (2015-01-05) [http://www.blackagendareport.com/node/14607] [https://archive.today/aUfxw], original version appears to be down as of this posting, use archived link. [begin excerpt]:
A Black People’s Grand Jury in St. Louis, Missouri, this weekend delivered a “true bill of indictment” for first degree murder against former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Black teenager Michael Brown. Black people “can and must take matters into our own hands,” said Omali Yeshitela, one of four prosecutors that presented evidence, not only of Wilson’s personal guilt, but the institutional culpability of the entire regional criminal justice system in the murder and subsequent whitewash of the crime.
The Black People’s Grand Jury also heard testimony from local residents with personal knowledge of police behavior in the region, including Black former police officers – a method of truth-seeking grounded in the logic that the most “expert” witnesses on institutional racism are its victims, who have experienced the phenomenon in all its dimensions.
At root, the Black People’s Grand Jury is an exercise in self-determination, a collective response to a collective assault on a people that have been criminalized by the Mass Black Incarceration State. “We cannot trust our children, the future of our community, in the hands of this establishment that has proven to us over and over again its disregard for black life,” said Yeshitela, whose International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement teamed with local Black organizations to convene the proceedings.
Most importantly, the Black People’s Grand Jury model is easily replicable throughout the U.S., just as the Mass Black Incarceration State operates in near-uniform fashion in every precinct of the country. North, South, East and West, whether the Black population is relatively large or small, the State’s mission is to contain, control, terrorize and criminalize Black people, and to incarcerate them in enormous numbers. The St. Louis model, and longer-form variations on the theme, such as Black People’s Boards of Inquiry, can go far towards exposing and deconstructing the police/prison regime that over the past two generations has killed innumerable Michael Browns and spawned a gulag so huge and so disproportionately Black that one out of every eight prison inmates on the planet is an African American.
“Resistance to the Black Mass Incarceration State, in all its manifestations, must be rooted in the struggle for self-determination.”
Black People’s Grand Juries can be part of the process of building local self-determinationist institutions of resistance to the ruling order, particularly in bolstering demands for genuine community control of police. For these reasons, the model can help prevent Black people’s righteous anger and energies from being dissipated by diversions concocted by the matrix of elected officials, their appointees and commissions, along with the Black misleaders and accommodationists who act as agents of the Democratic Party and the rich.
[end excerpt]
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The question isn't "why wasn't this man shot", the question is "why are Black people killed?"
* "Questions remain after Sentinel police chief is shot, detained man is released" (2015-01-15) pg.1 [http://newsok.com/update-gunman-released-after-shooting-of-sentinel-police-chief/article/5384876] [https://archive.today/rSXiA], pg.2 [http://newsok.com/questions-remain-after-sentinel-police-chief-is-shot-detained-man-is-released/article/5384876/?page=2] [https://archive.today/iWc4k]
* "White Oklahoma Man Shoots Black Police Chief 4 Times, Walks Free" (2015-01-18) [http://www.vibe.com/article/white-oklahoma-man-shoots-black-police-chief-walks] [https://archive.today/yb6K5], and a photo of the happy Oklahoma gun owner [https://archive.today/cN1H5].
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General knowledge of New Afrikan history is censored, under the idea that knowledge of such history is "divisive".
* "Alabama school superintendent bans high school history club from seeing ‘Selma’" (2015-01-18) [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/alabama-school-superintendent-bans-high-school-history-club-from-seeing-selma/] [https://archive.today/aOlDQ]
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By denying that a distinct nation exists, you can therefore deny that repression exists against a captive nation. The following is written by a neo-Conservative intellectual who explains that the very idea of African-American is detrimental and racist to the People of the USA.
* "Race identity incompatible with autonomy and liberty" (2013-08-01) [http://ibvallejo.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1724&Itemid=1] [https://archive.today/U7u1D], [begin excerpt]:
American racism took an ironic twist during the 1960s. American society had made great advances for equality of opportunity after Congress approved 1964 Civil Rights Act, and 1965 Voting Rights Act. Then, some people previously targeted for economic, political, and legal oppression based on skin color and black-race-classification yielded to the emotional lure of race identity and racism. They supported the movement for African-American racial and cultural identity for them. They acted against self-interest of equality of opportunity. "A rose by any other name would smells as sweet." Racial segregation, economic, political, and legal inequality by any other name is as oppression.
My bitter disappointment on learning of the African-American movement continues today. I never embraced race for an identity. Even as a child, I recognized the intellectual trap of group thinking and the loss of personal identity. I wrote a book, "African-Americans and Other Myths, Confusing Racism with Cultural Diversity (1994) that warned of the negative results of adopting the African-American race identity.
As I expected, society supported the African-American Movement and used it as the foundation for claims of culture diversity of race (policy of separate-but-equal race segregation). Now government, writers, and society in general refer to a "White majority and black and other minority groups of color. In other words, only white-race-labeled people are of American culture.
[end excerpt]
NORTHBAY COPWATCH
* "You Are a Rogue Device: A New Apparatus Capable of Spying on You Has Been Installed Throughout Downtown Seattle. Very Few Citizens Know What It Is, and Officials Don’t Want to Talk About It" (2013-11-06) [http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/you-are-a-rogue-device/Content?oid=18143845] [https://archive.today/t5fA2], [begin excerpt]:
After reviewing Aruba's technical literature, as well as talking to IT directors and systems administrators around the country who work with Aruba products, it's clear that their networks are adept at seeing all the devices that move through their coverage area and visually mapping the locations of those devices in real time for the system administrators' convenience. In fact, one of Aruba's major selling points is its ability to locate "rogue" or "unassociated" devices—that is, any device that hasn't been authorized by (and maybe hasn't even asked to be part of) the network.Which is to say, your device. The cell phone in your pocket, for instance.
The user's guide for one of Aruba's recent software products states: "The wireless network has a wealth of information about unassociated and associated devices." That software includes "a location engine that calculates associated and unassociated device location every 30 seconds by default... The last 1,000 historical locations are stored for each MAC address."
That is how you can see the Seattle Police Department's new wireless mesh network, bought from a California-based company called Aruba Networks, whose clients include the Department of Defense, school districts in Canada, oil-mining interests in China, and telecommunications companies in Saudi Arabia.
The question is: How well can this mesh network see you?
How accurately can it geo-locate and track the movements of your phone, laptop, or any other wireless device by its MAC address (its "media access control address"—nothing to do with Macintosh—which is analogous to a device's thumbprint)? Can the network send that information to a database, allowing the SPD to reconstruct who was where at any given time, on any given day, without a warrant? Can the network see you now?
[end excerpt]
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* "FBI Director Jim Comey Bullies NYT to Stop Publishing Anonymous Claims about Drone Killings" (2015-01-16) [https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/01/16/jim-comey-bullies-nyt-to-stop-publishing-anonymous-claims-about-drone-killings/] [https://archive.today/uftvN]
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* "Whose Plot in Ohio? A "Home Grown Terrorist" or Just Another FBI-Created "Illusionary" Threat?" (2015-01-15) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/15/whose-plot-ohio-home-grown-terrorist-or-just-another-fbi-created-illusionary-threat] [https://archive.today/enJ0N]
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* "FBI Thwarts Terror Plot on Capitol (That They Planned)" (2015-01-15) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/fbi-thwarts-terror-plot-on-capitol-that-they-planned/5424819] [https://archive.today/ZKmP8]
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* "The Dark Road from the Clipper Chip to PRISM Reveals 'Crypto Wars' Never Ended" (2013-11-10) [http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-dark-road-from-clipper-chip-to.html] [https://archive.today/bnWH8], [begin excerpt]:
Back in the 1990s, security researchers and privacy watchdogs were alarmed by government demands that hardware and software firms build "backdoors" into their products, the millions of personal computers and cell phones propelling communication flows along the now-quaint "information superhighway."
Never mind that the same factory-installed kit that allowed secret state agencies to troll through private communications also served as a discrete portal for criminal gangs to loot your bank account or steal your identity.
To make matters worse, instead of the accountability promised the American people by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, successive US administrations have worked assiduously to erect an impenetrable secrecy regime backstopped by secret laws overseen by secret courts which operate on the basis of secret administrative subpoenas, latter day lettres de cachet.
But now that all their dirty secrets are popping out of Edward Snowden's "bottomless briefcase," we also know the "Crypto Wars" of the 1990s never ended.
[end excerpt]
* "FBI has its fingers deep in NSA surveillance pie, declassified report shows --Feds had a hand in PRISM, too" (2015-01-13): The FBI has a much closer involvement with the NSA’s mass surveillance programs than previously thought, with access to raw foreign intelligence and data on Americans gleaned from the PRISM program. The 231-page report, from the Department of Justice's Inspector General, was obtained -- albeit in a heavily redacted form -- after a Freedom of Information request by The New York Times, a request made possible using key details leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The report finds that in 2008 -- almost since the inception of the PRISM program, which allows the NSA access to citizens' information stored by Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo! among others -- the FBI had access to slurped private data.
Read the report (.pdf) [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1393145/savage-nyt-foia-doj-ig-report-fbi-702.pdf]
* "Forget phones, PRISM plan shows internet firms give NSA everything" (2013-06-07) [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/07/prism_plan_for_nsa_surveillance_of_internet_companies/] [https://archive.today/RUhJT]
* "The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control; At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a 'totalitarian mentality' " (2014-07-10) [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/11/the-ultimate-goal-of-the-nsa-is-total-population-control] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140728222828/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/11/the-ultimate-goal-of-the-nsa-is-total-population-control], [begin excerpt]: “At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.” The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually.
[end excerpt]
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For some reason, the domestic security agencies are prevented from collecting actionable information about a targeted dissident if they are a Citizen, however, security agencies of foreign governments are not restricted, and share what they collect...
* "NSA's Foreign Partnerships" (2014-09-04) [http://electrospaces.blogspot.de/2014/09/nsas-foreign-partnerships.html] [https://archive.today/oozaZ], [begin excerpt]:
The 2nd Party countries are cooperating in many ways, one of which is in cable tapping operations. The NSA umbrella program for this is codenamed WINDSTOP. According to NSA's Foreign Partner Access budget for 2013 WINDSTOP involves primarily Britain, but also Canada, Australia and New Zealand and focusses on access to (mainly internet) "communications into and out of Europe and the Middle East" through an integrated and overarching collection system.
Likewise, the other Five Eyes countries have a representative at the NSA headquarters. These are called Special UK Liaison Officer (SUKLO), Special Canada Liaison Officer (SCALO), Special Australia Liaison Officer (SAUSLO), and Special New Zealand Liaison Officer (SNZLO).
The foreign partner agencies are mostly interested in American technology, money and access to the worldwide interception capabilities of NSA and its Five Eyes partners. This makes these 3rd Party partnerships especially attractive for smaller countries, for whom it means a sometimes substantial increase of their otherwise limited capabilities.
[end excerpt]
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"COPS SEEN ON VIDEO LITERALLY CLIMBING ON TOP OF RESTRAINED MAN AND MUTILATING HIM UNTIL HE DIES" [http://filmingcops.com/cops-seen-on-video-literally-climbing-on-top-of-restrained-man-and-mutilating-him-until-he-dies/] [https://archive.today/rKFXQ]:A deeply disturbing video has surfaced online showing a man dying after six cops dogpiled him and tortured him while he was restrained.
The incident began when Ervin Edwards, 38, was approached by officers at a gas station.
The officers accused him of “disturbing the peace.”
Once the video starts, Edwards can be seen being dragged into a prison cell by a group of cops.
Once they have him in the cell, six officers can be seen stepping on his back, stepping on his head, pulling his pants down and Tasing him on his buttocks for over a minute.
The whole time, Edwards body was lying motionless on the ground.
Both his feet and his hands were handcuffed.
Cops tried to claim that Edwards was “resisting,” but that claim is contradicted by the raw footage.
Edwards’s family believe that the police are responsible for his death after viewing the footage, according to reports.
“I just can’t believe it. The beating, the torture they did my brother,” his sister said in an interview with WAFB 9 News.
The family is still grieving and plans to sue the police, though the trial date has not been determined.
Visual imagery of a motionless Edwards lying on the ground as cops dogpile him and torture him to death bears shocking similarity to what cops did to Kelly Thomas and Eric Garner.
It’s almost as if this strategy of crowding onto an individual and mutilating him until he dies is part of official police training.
We guess these cops will not be indicted, and that they “feared for their lives.”
* "9News Investigators: Video of final moments of inmate's life prompts questions from victim's family" (2015-01-10) [http://www.wafb.com/story/27810613/9news-investigators-video-of-final-moments-of-inmates-life-prompts-questions-from-victims-family] [https://archive.today/KXM2j]
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* "Video Emerges Showing Police Intimidating Girlfriend of Man Killed by Cops in Walmart as Family Files Lawuit" (2014-12-17) [http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/beavercreek-police-sued/] [https://archive.today/CXoTz], [begin excerpt]: Back in August, Crawford was shot and killed by Beavercreek police in a Walmart after a 911 caller claimed a man was pointing a loaded rifle at store customers. It was later revealed that the rifle was actually an unloaded store BB gun that had been previously removed of its packaging and that the claims made by the caller were false. Adding insult to injury (or in this case death) comes the recently released police interrogation footage with Crawford’s girlfriend, Tasha Thomas. During the video, Beavercreek Police Detective Rodney Curd interrogates Thomas in the cruelest of manners, attempting to implicate some sort of criminal behavior from her and Crawford even though neither had given the police any indication that a crime had been committed. Despite her obvious distress and lack of evidence, Curd continued to barrage Thomas and insinuate some pretty disturbing things that he must have known weren’t true. Asking if Crawford had ever threatened to “Shoot that bitch” in reference to the mother of his children LeeCee Johnson. Despite her pleas, Curd gave no signs of sympathy for the grieving Thomas, while attempting to criminalize her completely legal behavior. That video along with the surveillance video of the shooting are posted at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp49Q_sjjjM], and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNATI8rArjk].
FREE 'EM ALL
* "Maduro calls for prisoner swap: Free Oscar Lopez Rivera!" (2015-01-09) [http://www.liberationnews.org/maduro-calls-prisoner-swap-free-oscar-lopez-rivera/] [https://archive.today/WmAtD]. Venezuela is publicized as tyrannical because a terrorist leader is incarcerated for attempting to lead a violent coup that killed numerous people, including police. The USA has incarcerated people and tortures them for decades for doing far less...
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#WeAreHowardMorgan [http://www.freehowardmorgan.com/]
* About Howard Morgan [https://archive.today/wxtCT]
* "Former Chicago Cop, Shot 28 Times by Police & Found Guilty of Attempted Murder, Has 40-Year Sentence Commuted" (2015-01-13) [http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2015/01/13/former-chicago-cop-shot-28-times-by-police-found-guilty-of-attempted-murder-has-40-year-sentence-commuted/] [https://archive.today/4EVth]
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* "Suitcase of many colors is at center of COINTELPRO murder mystery in Omaha" (2015-01-14) [http://www.examiner.com/article/suitcase-of-many-colors-is-at-center-of-cointelpro-murder-mystery-omaha] [https://archive.today/cnKOv], [begin excerpt]:
The suitcase bomb that killed Omaha policeman Larry Minard, Sr. on August 17, 1970, put two Black Panther leaders in prison for life. Doing hard time at the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (then David Rice) are known as the Omaha Two, where both men continue to deny any guilt in the crime.
The Omaha Two were convicted following a controversial trial which featured conflicting police testimony and withheld evidence. A FBI Laboratory report on the identity of the anonymous caller that led police to an ambush bomb was withheld under orders of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover ordered the FBI Laboratory director Ivan Willard Conrad to not issue a written report as part of the illegal COINTELPRO program, a clandestine counterintelligence operation which targeted the Black Panthers.
In the months leading to the deadly blast Hoover had put increasing pressure on Omaha FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Paul Young to get the Omaha Two off the streets. In December 1969, Hoover told Young in a stern COINTELPRO memorandum to be “imaginative” in devising a counterintelligence actions against the two Black Panther leaders.
The two week trial in April 1971 was filled with contradictory and conflicted testimony but nothing was in greater dispute than the color of the deadly suitcase bomb itself.
Duane Peak, the fifteen-year old confessed bomber, who got off on a juvenile delinquency charge after implicating the Omaha Two, said the suitcase was “gray, real dark gray” in a police deposition. Of course the young killer is not the most reliable witness and also gave several different stories about where he got the suitcase.
Was the suitcase gray, tan, black, green, brown, blue, or a light color? The Omaha World-Herald described the suitcase for the public in an article the day after the bombing: “In the hushed blackness of the vacant house at 2867 Ohio Street, a light green suitcase stood on the warm floor.”
Perhaps the color of the suitcase bomb is unimportant to the guilt or innocence of the Omaha Two, but the widely differing colors by eyewitnesses hints at some of the difficulties Edward Poindexter and Mondo we Langa encountered in trying to establish their innocence in the COINTELPRO-manipulated trial, unable to disprove alleged facts against them.
What color was the suitcase bomb? It was the color of injustice.
[end excerpt]
SOLANO PEACE, JUSTICE & FREEDOM COALITION
* "White House: 'We Look Forward' to Working with GOP on Limitless War Authorization; Republicans leadership told to expect language from Obama administration that would provide new authorization for war in Iraq and Syria" (2015-01-14) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/14/white-house-we-look-forward-working-gop-limitless-war-authorization] [https://archive.today/oj0hd]
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* " 'Open for Business' American-Style: The Military-Industrial Complex in Iraq" (2015-01-15) [http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/15/open-business-american-style-military-industrial-complex-iraq] [https://archive.today/xgmxO]
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The money spent by the USA for private contractors to build infrastructure for a war that nobody supported, built by the people being made war upon, no less! The war against the People of Afghanistan continues, albeit labeled as a "new" operation.
* "US funded Afghan training base that later crumbled" (2015-01-15) [http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_funded_Afghan_training_base_that_later_crumbled_watchdog_999.html] [https://archive.today/GR4u0], [begin excerpt]: The United States wasted nearly $500,000 on an Afghan police training center that began to fall apart only months after it was built due to shoddy contractor work, according to a watchdog report released Thursday. The center's adobe-style brick buildings were supposed to replicate an Afghan village to allow the country's special police to practice search operations but the roof and walls began "melting" away in the rain four months after it was completed, said the report by John Sopko, Washington's special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR). The report found that US officials failed to properly supervise or hold accountable the Afghan firm selected to build the center, Qesmatullah Nasrat Construction Company, which used substandard bricks and failed to follow contract requirements. [end excerpt]
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* "CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran" (2015-01-14) [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/cia-trial-virginia-planting-nuke-evidence-iran.html] [https://archive.today/LfO0X]
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* "US to Send 400 Trainers, Hundreds Support Staff to Aid Syrian Opposition" (2015-01-16) [http://sputniknews.com/military/20150116/1016959482.html] [https://archive.today/6WUwx]
* "Pentagon to deploy 400 troops to train Syrian rebels" (2015-01-16) [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/16/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSKBN0KP0FO20150116] [https://archive.today/nu7bj]
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* "Colombian marines spread USMC doctrine" (2014-07-07) [http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/01/09/colombian-marines-usmc-doctrine/21418911/] [https://archive.today/y8Fju]
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* "I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, But I Also Stand With the Victims of Our Bombs" (2015-01-14) [http://www.veteransforpeace.org/pressroom/news/2015/01/14/i-stand-charlie-hebdo-i-also-stand-victims-our-bombs] [https://archive.today/pGKvJ]:
The killings at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are abhorrent. But let us not forget the daily abhorrence of our wars in the Muslim World, wars that have seen over a million Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Syrians and Yemenis killed and millions more wounded and maimed physically and psychologically, while millions of men, women and children endure another cold winter, homeless and hungry.
So as we question and fume, shocked and aggrieved at the hateful killing of journalists and satirists, police officers and a janitor, we should not be so insensible as to not acknowledge the horrid cost we have exacted on the populations of the Greater Middle East in pursuit of democracy, freedom and liberty; campaigns undertaken in the name of our values that are executed in the very manner as those murderers in Paris on Wednesday proselytized and witnessed their faith as Muslims.
We must recognize the extremists and war-mongerers in our societies, who like the members of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, want war and require war to justify their own cosmic, religious and Manichean world views, or profit from the bounty of being an empire that has over 700 military bases around the world and sells nearly three-quarters of the world's arms.
For to believe that the attack in Paris was a tragedy singularly about a cartoon or as an event solely to be defined as an assault on freedom of expression, is to be daft and incongruent with the history and reality of American and Western policy in the Middle East. For decades, American and Western policy, through action and subsequent backlash, has provided the world and, most sordidly, Muslims with such Frankensteins as the Saudi Royal Family, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and, now, the Islamic State. What played out and ended with the sickening execution of a wounded policeman on a Paris sidewalk is a direct outgrowth of American and Western policies to try and manipulate sects, tribes, ethnicities and religions in the Middle East to preserve or remove regimes in an absurd and defiled real life version of the board game Risk. It is a game that makes sense to very few outside of Washington, DC and London, but serves to validate and enrich a $1 trillion dollar a year US national security and intelligence industry, while making composite and real the propaganda and recruitment fantasies of al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other extremist groups that are parasites of war.
So I stand with Charlie, but I also stand with all those millions of voiceless victims of our wars and our policies in the Middle East. To do other, to condemn the killings of innocents in our lands, without offering the same condemnation of our government's killings in their lands, is not just a cruel blindness to the human suffering inflicted by our own machines of war and their munitions; but it is unwise, because what we saw this week in Paris is just one other moment in the ever-continuing, never-ending cycle of violence between the Western and Muslim worlds.
Those in the West who proclaim the defense of democracy, freedom and liberty as justification for our bombings in the Middle East are of the same ilk, cloth and substance as those whose corrupted interpretations of Islam leads to slaughter on Western streets and genocide in Muslim lands. Stand with Charlie Hebdo, stand with our Muslim brothers, sisters and their children, and stand against the purveyors of hate and war in all societies.
New Afrika Peace Movement
* "Never Ending Violence in South Sudan: Foreign Intervention, Militant Secessionism, Fake Propaganda" (2015-01-15) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/never-ending-violence-in-south-sudan-foreign-intervention-militant-secessionism-fake-propaganda/5424889] [https://archive.today/HbzuG]
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* "Boko Haram Is A CIA Covert Operation – Wikileaks" (2014-02-17) [https://wonuolatahjdeen.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/boko-haram-is-a-cia-covert-operation-wikileaks/] [https://archive.today/GlAzH]
Health and the Human Ecology
Monopolists enforce a regime that does not recognize the natural right to health and life
* "Researchers challenge drinks with 'extraordinarily high' added micronutrients" (2015-01-13) [http://www.beveragedaily.com/Ingredients/nutrients-micronutrients-vitamins-novel-beverages] [https://archive.today/hHkLc]
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* "Food Additive Excitotoxins and Degenerative Brain Disorders" [http://www.aapsonline.org/jpands/hacienda/article27.html] [https://archive.today/Y7hVr]
UNITED STATES FASCISM WATCH
Documenting the current process of fascism, the acts of monopolists, and of fascist vanguards
Fascism in the itty-bitty city of Santa Cruz
"Mayor Refuses to Postpone Repression with Quick and Dirty Decorum Rule Changes" (2015-01-13) [https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/01/13/18766842.php?show_comments=1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20150118224326/https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/01/13/18766842.php?show_comments=1], [begin excerpt]: The "decorum rule" changes proposed at City Council today are part of a long ongoing process of marginalizing, discouraging, and discrediting activists. When the community got righteously angry at the SCPD last-minute hurry-through of its armored personnel "rescue" vehicle and some members turned their back on the Council (quite legally and legitimately), Mayor Lane went into crisis mode. As a strong media critic of his and his Council around their homeless abuses, I've been punished for the last year with an absurd "unattended recording device" rule which required me to sit next to my machine or risk having it confiscated. Lane needs to abolish this rule and restore the prior "leave it where you want but don't disrupt" process. But he won't. [end excerpt]
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* "The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Government" (2015-01) [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary_2015/on_political_books/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_us_go053474.php?page=all] [https://archive.today/JI9HB]
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* "Middle Eastern Governments Are on a Shopping Spree for Former Congressmen" (2015-01-12) [http://www.vice.com/read/the-middle-east-on-shopping-spree-to-hire-former-members-of-congress-112] [https://archive.today/tGvhR], [begin excerpt]:
Over the past year and a half, regimes throughout the Middle East, from Turkey to the United Arab Emirates, have gone on what appears to be a shopping spree for former members of Congress. Compared to the rest of the world, Middle East governments have accounted for more than fifty percent of the latest revolving door hires for former lawmakers during this time period, according to a review of disclosures by VICE.
What’s also striking about the latest surge in foreign lobbying is that many of these former lawmakers maintain influence that extends well beyond the halls of Congress. Former Michigan Representative Pete Hoekstra, who used to chair the House Intelligence Committee, appears regularly in the media to demand that the US increase its arms assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq. Writing for the conservative news outlet National Review, Hoekstra argued that [https://archive.today/0jJHI], “the United States needs to immediately provide [the Peshmerga] with more than light arms and artillery to tip the scales in their favor and overcome the firepower of the Islamists.” In that instance and in others, Hoekstra has often not disclosed that since August 12th, he has worked as a paid representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which relies on the beleaguered Peshmerga militia for safety against ISIS. (View his US DOJ Foreign Agents Registration Statement at [https://archive.today/WS1Bh])
The same goes for former US Senator Norm Coleman, a lobbyist who serves on the board of the influential Republican Jewish Coalition, and whose Super PAC, American Action Network, spent over $12.3 million to help elect Republicans last year. Since July, Coleman has been a registered lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hired in part to work on sanctions against Iran, a key priority of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family. Shortly after signing up as a lobbyist for the Saudis, Coleman, introduced only as a former Senator, gave a speech on Capitol Hill imploring his congressional allies to realize that Israel and Saudi Arabia have many shared policy priorities, and that the United States “should be hand in glove with our allies in the region.”
It’s not always clear what these lawmaker-lobbyists say or do on behalf of their foreign supervisors, but what is clear is that many of these politicians are willing to renege on their past commitments to human rights. Delahunt, for example, led inquiries in Congress to cast a light into the brutal abuses of Azerbaijan. If anything, Azerbaijan has gotten worse, according to international observers, who note that since last year, the country has gone on an unprecedented crackdown of activists, journalists, and other perceived opponents of the regime. But instead of pushing back against such crimes, Delahunt now works to put a positive spin on the developments.
The influx of foreign influence into Washington is a growing phenomenon. As the New York Times reported late last year, major think tanks, including the Brookings Institute and the Atlantic Council, have allowed foreign donors to call the shots on their policy prescriptions.
The American Petroleum Institute, for instance, is run by a board of directors that includes an executive from ARAMCO, the Saudi state-owned oil company that takes its orders from the Saudi ruling family.
[end excerpt]
* "The Saudi Lobbying Complex Adds a New Member: GOP Super PAC Chair Norm Coleman" (2014-09-18) [http://www.thenation.com/article/181674/saudi-lobbying-complex-adds-new-member-gop-super-pac-chair-norm-coleman] [https://web.archive.org/web/20150116195028/http://www.thenation.com/article/181674/saudi-lobbying-complex-adds-new-member-gop-super-pac-chair-norm-coleman]
---
* "Letter Reveals Tony Blair Advised Kazakhstan’s President on How to Spin Massacre of Innocent, Unarmed Protesters" (2014-08-27) [http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/08/27/letter-reveals-tony-blair-advised-kazakhstans-president-on-how-to-spin-massacre-of-innocent-unarmed-protesters/] [https://archive.today/tW9QM]
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* "Chevron’s Lobbyist Now Runs the Congressional Science Committee" (2014-02-21) [https://www.republicreport.org/2014/chevron-science-committee/] [https://archive.today/sDQha]
* "Blackwater Lobbyist Will Manage the House Intelligence Committee" (2014-12) [https://www.republicreport.org/2014/blackwater-lobbyist-will-manage-the-house-intelligence-committee/] [https://archive.today/QbQE8]
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* "Forget Lobbyists: Big Business Wants To Control American Minds, Not Just Their Lawmakers" (2015-01-15) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/15/forget-lobbyists-big-business-wants-control-american-minds-not-just-their-lawmakers] [https://archive.today/SU3Ed], [begin excerpt]:
Take, for example, the American Petroleum Institute. The oil and gas industry trade group spent more than $7 million lobbying federal officials in 2012. But that sum was dwarfed by the $85.5 million it paid to four public relations and advertising firms to, in effect, lobby the American public — including $51.9 million just to global PR giant Edelman.
Of $3.4 billion in contracts reported by the 144 trade groups from 2008 through 2012, more than $1.2 billion, or 37 percent, went toward advertising, public relations and marketing services, more than any other category. The second-highest total, $682.2 million, or 20 percent of the total, was directed toward legal, lobbying and government affairs.
[end excerpt]
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* "It’s not just Fox News: How liberal apologists torpedoed change, helped make the Democrats safe for Wall Street" (2015-01-11) [http://www.salon.com/2015/01/11/its_not_just_fox_news_how_liberal_apologists_torpedoed_change_helped_make_the_democrats_safe_for_wall_street/] [https://archive.today/U7vpu]
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* "The Sorry Record of a Muslim-Basher" (2015-01-12) [https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/12/the-sorry-record-of-a-muslim-basher/] [https://archive.today/JuZw1], [begin excerpt]:
Jumping on the Muslim-bashing bandwagon, Fox News’ commentator Steven Emerson claimed Muslims have seized control of parts of London and all of Birmingham, terrorizing non-Muslims to flee. Emerson was asserting that Muslim areas have become “no-go zones” for non-Muslims and cited as an example “actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” Yet, Birmingham, Great Britain’s second-largest city of more than one million people, is nearly half Christian, with the Muslim population less than one-quarter and with significant numbers of Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and non-religious. In parts of London “Muslim religious police … beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire.”[end excerpt]
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* "Boehner:‘full confidence’ in lieutenant despite white supremacist ties" (2015-01-06) [http://www.liberationnews.org/boehner-full-confidence-in-lieutenant-despite-white-supremacist-ties/] [https://archive.today/Q9hqa], [begin excerpt]:
Recently, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the third highest ranking Republican member in the U.S. House of Representatives, was exposed for his links to American neo-Nazi and white nationalist David Duke. In response to criticism of Scalise, Duke has threatened to release a list of names from both sides of the aisle with whom he has ties. The Republican Party, as well as some Louisiana Democrats, have come to Scalise’s defense. On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner announced his “full confidence” in Scalise as whip. The Democrats, like the Republicans responding to the scandal of Scalise’s connection to organized white supremacy, have likewise offered doubtful words and little action. At a time when hundreds of thousands of people are mobilized, shutting down cities and putting as much pressure on institutions as possible, the Democrats have done almost nothing.
The Democrats, representing the interests of one faction of the ruling class, have no intention of addressing the systemic causes of white supremacy, New Jim Crow and police brutality. They readily denounce racism, especially when they can hurl it as an accusation against their Republican rivals in the illusory arena of capitalist democracy. However, an honest look at their actions shows that they serve to maintain order and profit before all else.
[end excerpt]
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* "With Wall Street Holding the Strings, Republican-Controlled Congress Moves to Deregulate Big Banks" (2015-01-14) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/14/wall-street-holding-strings-republican-controlled-congress-moves-deregulate-big] [https://archive.today/NdoKe]
---
* "Has Lame-Duck Obama Suddenly Become a 'Progressive'?" (2015-01-17) [http://socialistorganizer.org/has-lame-duck-obama-suddenly-become-a-progressive/] [https://archive.today/705JM], [begin excerpt]: On January 14, for example, Obama announced that he would ask Congress for a bill that would allow millions of workers to earn up to seven paid sick days per year. He also announced that he would ask Congress to approve a bill granting federal workers six weeks of paid family leave after the birth or death of a child. A few days earlier, he announced that he would propose a bill to tax Wall Street financial transactions. Indeed, it is fair to say that Obama’s recent “executive actions” and his proposed pieces of legislation are primarily aimed at ensuring that the Democratic Party does not fracture after two terms of an unabashedly pro-big business Obama administration (thereby opening the space for independent labor-community candidates at all levels) and that Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic Party presidential candidate, is elected president in 2016. [end excerpt]
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* "Bernie Sanders Exposes Republican Plot To Cut Social Security For 11 Million Disabled People" (2015-01-12) [http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/12/bernie-sanders-exposes-republican-plot-cut-social-security-11-million-disabled-people.html] [https://archive.today/DGcYS]
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* "How Facebook May Secretly Foil Your Activist Plans" (2014-09-18) [http://linkis.com/filmsforaction.org/yL3ma] [https://archive.today/mmgMZ], [begin excerpt]:
For example, this year’s March Against Monsanto events have been popular with people across the globe, but not Facebook. An upcoming invitation for a rally in St. Louis, Missouri where Monsanto is headquartered was wiped clean from the social networking site. The administrator of the event received a very unspecific notice that the event “violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” yet it is not clear how the event would have violated any terms. What is clear, however, is that Monsanto advertises on Facebook and may have had some influence on the matter.
When the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics” group became extremely popular, employees at Facebook didn’t erase the page, but effectively shut it down anyway by putting severe restrictions on it. Not only was the page’s creator unable to edit or update the page, followers of the page could no longer start new discussions or post links and videos. A similar page that called for a boycott on BP was also rendered similarly useless after receiving the same posting constraints.
In these two cases, Facebook personnel explained that the boycott pages did not meet the Terms of Service since they did not represent a person or corporate entity. “To protect people from spam and other unwanted content, we restrict pages that represent ideas or positions – rather than discrete entities – from publishing stories to people’s News Feeds,” said a spokesperson.
[end excerpt]
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The article is a hit-piece against constitutional conservatives, although this spectrum of ideology is founded from among members and associates of the Ku Klux Klan in order to preserve Citizen rule against Federal encroachment against their liberties for self-determination and preservation of their national interpretation of the Federal Constitution, which disenfranchises everybody except the descendants of the European Settlers dominant over the majority of the USA.
* "As Extremist ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’ Meet With Senators, Their Supporters Call for Obama’s Lynching" (2015-01-08) [http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2015/01/08/as-extremist-constitutional-sheriffs-meet-with-senators-their-supporters-call-for-obamas-lynching/] [https://archive.today/rDfbD]
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* "Don’t Be Evil? Google Funding a Slew of Right-Wing Groups" (2013-12-04) [http://billmoyers.com/2013/12/04/dont-be-evil-google-funding-a-slew-of-right-wing-groups/] [https://archive.today/HokTA]
Many of these groups are working to replace publicly-funded social services with... nothing.
Some of these groups are deliberately attempting to "roll-back" democracy, or to install a theocratic government.
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* "Blood On Their Hands: The Racist History of Modern Police Unions" (2015-01-14) [http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17520/police_unions_racist] [https://archive.today/oDJXb], [begin excerpt]:
In June 1966, New York City Mayor John Lindsay, responding to widespread complaints of police brutality, called for a civilian review board. Five thousand off duty NYPD cops rallied at City Hall in opposition, and the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), leading the campaign against civilian review, intoned that “I am sick and tired of giving in to minority groups, with their whims and their gripes and shouting. Any review board with civilians on it is detrimental to the operations of the police department.” Invoking the specter of increased crime, the PBA mounted a massive public relations campaign against the measure, and it was defeated in a referendum that year.
In 1975, in response to proposed budget cuts that included police layoffs, the PBA ordered a rampage through the city’s black and Puerto Rican communities, with thousands of off duty cops waving their guns, banging on trash cans, and blowing whistles for several nights until Mayor Abe Beame obtained a restraining order.
In 1992, when David Dinkins, the first (and only) African-American Mayor of New York City sought to implement a civilian review agency to investigate allegations of police misconduct, the PBA organized another City Hall rally in protest. This time, the crowd of officers numbered 10,000, with PBA members hurtling barricades, jumping on cars, blocking the Brooklyn Bridge and kicking a reporter. Some of the rally’s participants carried signs showing Dinkins with a bushy Afro haircut and swollen lips, with racist slogans, including ones that ridiculed him as a “washroom attendant.”
In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents CPD patrol officers, has a similarly notorious history.
Handmaiden to the rioting cops who indiscriminately and brutally beat demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the FOP held a reunion of their 1968 troops in 2009 at the FOP Lodge. They proudly displayed pictures of some of the wanton police brutality on their website and, in an attempt to rewrite history (and the Walker Report's findings of a “police riot”), trumpeted that “the time has come that the Chicago Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to maintaining law and order—and for taking a stand against Anarchy. … The Democratic National Convention was about to start and the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, the FOP, demonstrating its reactionary and racist essence within its own ranks, aligned itself against the forces that were fighting to bring affirmative action to the CPD. The Afro American Patrolman’s League led the battle and was confronted in their legal struggle at every turn by disgruntled white officers and the FOP.
In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution that declared December 4 “Fred Hampton Day.” On December 4, 1969, Hampton, a dynamic young Black Panther Party leader, was slain in his bed by Chicago police in what, by 1990, had been documented and widely accepted in the African-American community as a politically motivated murder. Surprisingly, Mayor Richard M. Daley did not oppose the resolution. But the FOP most certainly did.
[end excerpt]
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* "New Federal Supermax Prison Will Double Capacity for Extreme Solitary Confinement" (2015-01-15) [http://solitarywatch.com/2015/01/15/new-federal-supermax-prison-will-double-capacity-for-extreme-solitary-confinement/] [https://archive.today/WGgh6]
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* "Record 346 inmates die, dozens of guards fired in Florida prisons" (2015-01-14) [http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/14/1357661/-Poisonings-beatings-gassings-Record-346-inmates-die-dozens-of-guards-fired-in-Florida-prisons#] [https://archive.today/Mynfw]
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* " ‘CIA killed prisoners, made it look like suicide’ – Guantanamo guard" (2015-01-15) [http://rt.com/usa/223139-cia-prisoners-suicide-guantanamo/] [https://archive.today/sdMZ2]
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Arm the Workers for self-defense against tyranny! Adherents to domestic fascism, especially those who are influenced by the propaganda issued by the National Rifle Association and other armament industry groups, generally claim that gun control is "communist". So, let's read what a genuine Communist Party member has to say about gun control:
* "A Marxist-Leninist response to Gun Control" (2013-01-09) [http://www.okworkersmonthly.blogspot.de/2013/01/a-marxist-leninist-response-to-gun.html] [https://archive.today/06vux]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH
* "Richest 1 Percent To Own More Than Half Of The World's Wealth By 2016, Oxfam Finds" (2015-01-19) [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/world-wealth-oxfam_n_6499798.html] [https://archive.today/dC4WN]
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* "That Was Easy: In Just 60 Years, Neoliberal Capitalism Has Nearly Broken Planet Earth; Pair of new studies show how various forms of human activity, driven by a flawed economic system and vast consumption, is laying waste to Earth's natural systems" (2015-01-16) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/16/was-easy-just-60-years-neoliberal-capitalism-has-nearly-broken-planet-earth] [https://archive.today/jXlcu]
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* "Don't Buy the Hype: 20 Years of Data Reveals 'Free Trade' Fallacies" (2015-01-15) [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/15/dont-buy-hype-20-years-data-reveals-free-trade-fallacies] [https://archive.today/XoqLl], The report, "Prosperity Undermined" (pdf) [http://citizen.org/documents/prosperity-undermined.pdf], [begin excerpt]: Since the Obama administration used Fast Track to push a trade agreement with Korea, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 50 percent—which equates to 50,000 more American jobs lost. The U.S. had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014—the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with the country on record. After the Korea FTA went into effect, U.S. small businesses’ exports to Korea declined more sharply than large firms’ exports, falling 14 percent. [end excerpt]
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It's only 868 million... "Not a billion after all" (2012-10-10) [http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2012/10/hunger] [https://archive.today/N1xKm], [begin excerpt]: IN 2010, as food prices were spiking for the second time in three years, governments, international agencies and non-government organisations blared out a new and powerful fact: there were a billion hungry people in the world and this, they said, in a period of plenty, was a disgrace. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which had estimated the figure in an annual report, even had the words ‘one billion hungry’ draped in letters 50 feet high outside its headquarters building in Rome. But there was one problem with the precise figure: it was completely bogus. This week, in its 2012 report on the state of food insecurity in the world, the FAO quietly revised it down to 868m. For developing countries, the new hunger estimates are lower after the price spike than they had been before it, falling from 885m in 2004-05 to 852m in 2010-12.
[end excerpt]
Their Global Economic Regime is worse than what has been said of Stalin... nearly a billion dying from artificial famine in the last decade (mostly children and elderly, but, then, that's how these things are counted), through price speculation of basic grains, forcing prices to skyrocket 400% across "third world" countries... imagine if prices for food quadrupled in a few years... yes. People would starve, malnourished children in a land of plenty, like in Honduras or the Philippines, even in South Korea... That's the "we" fought the Cold War... for the freedom for these bastards to rule the roost, expanding a global free-market dictatorship with no rules, no government to oppose them, only free trade and free flow of privately held resources.
---*---*---
Even the most wealthy desire "hidden" liquid cash reserves, and sources for these cash reserves to be unregulated and untaxed... like through trading illicit drugs (heroin, cocaine) that are cheap to produce and are sold for huge amounts of cash!
* "CIA Plane in Big Aussie-American Heroin Bust" (2014-09-12) [http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/09/12/mystery-aircraft-busted-in-australia-was-cia-plane/] [https://archive.today/fzDot]
* "400-Kilo Drug Bust at Paris Hilton’s Ranch in Costa Rica" (2014-09-02) [http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/09/02/400-kilo-drug-bust-at-paris-hiltons-ranch-in-costa-rica/] [https://archive.today/4Qidb]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Honduras
Most of the comments are collected from the daily "Presente Honduras Digest", and from the "Honduras Solidarity Network" listserve, authored by experts in geopolitics and history of Latin America. Libre is the "leftist" party working to uphold human rights and sovereignty, JOH is the dictator of Honduras supported by the USA.
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"Protests in Progreso and San Pedro Sula" (2015-01-15) [http://hondurasresists.blogspot.de/2015/01/protests-in-sula-valley.html] [https://archive.today/g2JlP], [begin excerpt]:
A lively protest movement in Progreso, San Pedro Sula and nearby towns is organizing against the increase in toll fees and government waste and corruption related to toll booth and road "upgrades". Tolls have been increased 100% in the Sula Valley while the government has also created public-private partnerships to build new toll roads on the major highway connecting the capital city of Tegucigalpa in the Southwest to other cities. Private companies both domestic and foreign are making money from this privatization while costs keep rising for motorists, small agricultural producers trying to get their products to market, taxi drivers, and the public in general. Protests began in late December but in January have gotten bigger and frequent. The FNRP, LIBRE, ERIC-SJ, organizations of poor residents (pobladores), teachers, campesinos and more are participating in the protests which are part of the Honduran people's rejection of the current government's intense neoliberal economic offensive. [end excerpt]---
"U.S.-Honduras High Level Security Dialogue" Press Statement from the USA State Department (2015-01-12) [http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/01/235867.htm] [https://archive.today/yuDgP]
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* "Three Hondurans Among the 12 Richest CentAm Millionaires" (2015-01-13) [http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3438051&Itemid=1] [https://archive.today/PecFv]
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* The World Bank Group is teaming up with two Honduran institutions to put together a two day international conference in Tegucigalpa in early February "to strengthen the capacity of Honduras to develop their mineral resources in a sustainable fashion".
Conference on Sustainable Development of Natural Resources, February 3-4, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras [https://archive.today/xHVlv]:
The Secretary of Natural Resources of Honduras (SERNA) and the Honduran Institute of Geology and Mines (INHGEOMIN), in collaboration with the World Bank Group, are organizing a two-day international conference to strengthen the capacity of Honduras to develop their mineral resources in a sustainable fashion.
The Secretary of Natural Resources of Honduras (SERNA) and the Honduran Institute of Geology and Mines (INHGEOMIN), in collaboration with the World Bank Group, are organizing a two-day international conference to strengthen the capacity of Honduras to develop their mineral resources in a sustainable fashion.
Presentations and discussion will focus on areas of international experience that have shown to support development of a sustainable mineral sector: clear rules of the game that encourage responsible investment in mining, regulatory capacity and in-depth knowledge of mineral resources.
The principal objectives of the conference are to learn from international experience in terms of concepts, functions, organization and implementation in the function of public mining institutions, promote dialogue about development of the mining sector between the government, private sector and civil society (NGOs, universities and church); present the mining policy of the government and discuss its implementation.
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* ConexiHon continues its coverage on the misuse of 'tasa de seguridad' funds. Sources in Spanish: (1) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/transparencia-y-corrupción/tasa-de-seguridad-sirvió-para-hacer-política-en-una-zona-de-0] [https://archive.today/VGbtu], (2) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/transparencia-y-corrupción/san-pedro-sula-negó-información-de-la-tasa-de-seguridad] [https://archive.today/uHsY5]
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* According to the president of the National Nurses Association (Aneeah), Honduran officials are hiding the real incidence rate of Chikungunya. Source in Spanish [http://www.hondurastierralibre.com/2015/01/honduras-esconden-estadisticas-reales.html] [https://archive.today/XJJ1M].
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* Onion growers took to the streets protesting against the importation of onions from the Netherlands. Soure in Spanish [http://www.hondurastierralibre.com/2015/01/productores-de-cebolla-protestan-en.html] [https://archive.today/bTNjv]
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JOH announced that he'll travel to Japan and South Korea in the coming months to promote the ZEDEs. Source in Spanish [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94734-hernández-viajará-a-japón-y-corea-del-sur-en-busca-de-inversión-y-comercio.html] [https://archive.today/BFcSQ]
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OFRANEH denounces that the Garifuna community in Nueva Armenia has been attacked by armed men. Sources in Spanish (1) [https://ofraneh.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/permanente-el-acoso-a-la-comunidad-garifuna-de-nueva-armenia/] [https://archive.today/oe5xs], (2) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/derechos-humanos/derechos-humanos-pueblos-indigenas/hombres-armados-incendian-viviendas-en] [https://archive.today/r60vS]
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Intervention in all Honduran youth detention centers simultaneously due to constant revolts by imprisoned gang members. Source in Spanish [http://www.ellibertador.hn/?q=article/honduras-intervienen-cárcel-de-menores-controlada-por-mafiosos] [https://archive.today/ZMTWq]
There was an important development after the initial raid of the juvenile detention centers in San Pedro and Tegus. At the one outside of Tegucigalpa, they found remains in a clandestine grave, according to Proceso Digital. Apparently during Fusina's search, they found out that there's a clandestine cemetery that reportedly contains at least six bodies. Medicina Forense and the new ATIC investigation crew were sent in.
El Tiempo, meanwhile, said it was confirmed that remains were found - dismembered, burned and buried. They're estimated to have been from 4 to 6 days ago, so there's speculation that it could be the remains of the unaccounted for escapees. A new El Tiempo story today reports that a whole team was sent in today to investigate 5 different locations on the grounds.
Proceso: [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94732-encuentran-osamenta-en-fosa-clandestina-en-predios-de-centro-de-menores.html] [https://archive.today/GQKtd].
El Tiempo yesterday: [http://www.tiempo.hn/sucesos/item/14867-honduras-hallan-indicios-de-cadáveres-durante-excavaciones-en-centro-renacer] [https://archive.today/48GNw]
El Tiempo today: [http://www.tiempo.hn/sucesos/item/14828-honduras-medicina-forense-contin%C3%BAa-con-excavaciones-en-centro-de-menores-renacimiento] [https://archive.today/QFUrr]
This is the same juvenile detention center where there was another major scandal a while back. The former director was arrested on charges of torture last year: [http://www.elheraldo.hn/tag/714390-213/envían-a-prisión-a-director-de-centro-para-menores-renaciendo] [https://archive.today/wfS5y]
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Congress approved the promotion of 31 police officials, but the opposition protested that it hadn't any time to take a closer look at the officials. As a response, congressman Nelson Abdalo said that they were approved by all important instances, where he mentioned, among others, the US embassy!
Source in Spanish [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94744-en-medio-de-fuerte-debate-aprueban-ascensos-en-la-policía-nacional.html] [https://archive.today/Iam5a]
---JOH announced that he'll travel to Japan and South Korea in the coming months to promote the ZEDEs. Source in Spanish [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94734-hernández-viajará-a-japón-y-corea-del-sur-en-busca-de-inversión-y-comercio.html] [https://archive.today/BFcSQ]
---
OFRANEH denounces that the Garifuna community in Nueva Armenia has been attacked by armed men. Sources in Spanish (1) [https://ofraneh.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/permanente-el-acoso-a-la-comunidad-garifuna-de-nueva-armenia/] [https://archive.today/oe5xs], (2) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/derechos-humanos/derechos-humanos-pueblos-indigenas/hombres-armados-incendian-viviendas-en] [https://archive.today/r60vS]
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Intervention in all Honduran youth detention centers simultaneously due to constant revolts by imprisoned gang members. Source in Spanish [http://www.ellibertador.hn/?q=article/honduras-intervienen-cárcel-de-menores-controlada-por-mafiosos] [https://archive.today/ZMTWq]
There was an important development after the initial raid of the juvenile detention centers in San Pedro and Tegus. At the one outside of Tegucigalpa, they found remains in a clandestine grave, according to Proceso Digital. Apparently during Fusina's search, they found out that there's a clandestine cemetery that reportedly contains at least six bodies. Medicina Forense and the new ATIC investigation crew were sent in.
El Tiempo, meanwhile, said it was confirmed that remains were found - dismembered, burned and buried. They're estimated to have been from 4 to 6 days ago, so there's speculation that it could be the remains of the unaccounted for escapees. A new El Tiempo story today reports that a whole team was sent in today to investigate 5 different locations on the grounds.
Proceso: [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94732-encuentran-osamenta-en-fosa-clandestina-en-predios-de-centro-de-menores.html] [https://archive.today/GQKtd].
El Tiempo yesterday: [http://www.tiempo.hn/sucesos/item/14867-honduras-hallan-indicios-de-cadáveres-durante-excavaciones-en-centro-renacer] [https://archive.today/48GNw]
El Tiempo today: [http://www.tiempo.hn/sucesos/item/14828-honduras-medicina-forense-contin%C3%BAa-con-excavaciones-en-centro-de-menores-renacimiento] [https://archive.today/QFUrr]
This is the same juvenile detention center where there was another major scandal a while back. The former director was arrested on charges of torture last year: [http://www.elheraldo.hn/tag/714390-213/envían-a-prisión-a-director-de-centro-para-menores-renaciendo] [https://archive.today/wfS5y]
---
Congress approved the promotion of 31 police officials, but the opposition protested that it hadn't any time to take a closer look at the officials. As a response, congressman Nelson Abdalo said that they were approved by all important instances, where he mentioned, among others, the US embassy!
Source in Spanish [http://www.proceso.hn/component/k2/item/94744-en-medio-de-fuerte-debate-aprueban-ascensos-en-la-policía-nacional.html] [https://archive.today/Iam5a]
Javier Suazo also offers his view on the possible constitutional status of the Military Police. He points out the role of JOH's assessor J. J. Rendon in the current discussion. Source in Spanish [http://alainet.org/active/80080] [https://archive.today/IUi1v]
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* PAC congressman Luis Redondo denounces that he is receiving death threats pressing him to vote in favor of giving a constitutional status to the Military Police. Source in Spanish [http://www.ellibertador.hn/?q=article/diputado-hondureño-denuncia-amenazas-de-muerte-por-no-respaldar-policía-militar] [https://archive.today/AAkXK]
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* Mel Zelaya tweeted that the National Party is proposing a secret vote to elevate the Military Police to a Constitutional level. This ends the remedy of DEMOCRACY.... The fix is in!
Original tweet from Jose Manuel Zelaya R (@manuelzr): "Partido Nacional propone voto secreto para Policia Militar ; se termino el remedo de DEMOCRACIA ... "
LIBRE demands that the vote in Congress on giving the MP constitutional status should be public. Source in Spanish [http://www.ellibertador.hn/?q=article/honduras-libre-pide-voto-público-y-prensa-en-parlamento-para-tema-policía-militar] [https://archive.today/HoLW2]
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According to an article by La Prensa, public education is not as free as it should be in Honduras. Source in Spanish [http://www.laprensa.hn/honduras/786229-417/en-escuelas-públicas-también-cobran-matrícula-disfrazada] [https://archive.today/WTGE2]
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Esdras Amado Lopez, director of Channel 36, denounces that he had to go off air due to intimidation, threats and indirect pressure by JOH. C-Libre journalist Wendy Funes was hold back by judges at the trial court in Tegucigalpa and she was forced to delete a picture. Sources in Spanish (1)[http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/libertad-de-expresión/propietario-de-canal-36-suspende-programación-habitual-ante-amenazas-y] [https://archive.today/dKWuk], (2) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/libertad-de-expresión/jueces-de-sentencia-retienen-periodista-y-la-obligan-borrar-material] [https://archive.today/BJ9Kh]
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The Secretariat for Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment (Serna) informed yesterday that they will know in the beginning of next year if there is enough and good quality oil to be exploited in the Moskitia. Source in Spanish [http://www.latribuna.hn/2015/01/14/en-2016-se-sabra-si-hay-petroleo/] [https://archive.today/0L10V].
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JOH keeps promoting the airport construction project at Palmerola. Its costs are estimated at $32-52 million and the construction will be led by a Spanish company. Source in Spanish [http://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/786434-331/joh-vamos-en-serio-con-palmerola] [https://archive.today/aE13o].
The privatizing body Coalianza met with a representative of a Spanish firm which will consult the construction of the Palmerola airport. Source in Spanish [http://www.latribuna.hn/2015/01/14/coalianza-reunion-con-consultor-espanol/] [https://archive.today/3BhYE].
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* Radio Progreso reports on the separation of thousands of employees from public companies - a consequence of the deal with the IMF. Source in Spanish [http://radioprogresohn.net/index.php/comunicaciones/noticias/item/1550-empresas-estatales-reducidas-a-su-mínima-expresión-suman-10-mil-trabajadores-separados] [https://archive.today/gSt46]
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ConexiHon reports on the trial against human rights defender Gladys Lanza. Source in Spanish [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/libertad-de-expresión/reconocida-feminista-hondureña-en-juicio-oral-por-difundir-denuncia-de] [https://archive.today/aNvQ1]
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Both Defensores en Linea and ConexiHon have new article on the trial against the military officials accused of being involved in the murder of then 15 year old Ebed Y?nez. During this first session it came to light how high ranked officials tried to cover up the murder. Sources in Spanish (1) [http://www.defensoresenlinea.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3382:militares-implicados-en-muerte-de-menor-solo-debian-disparar-si-su-vida-corria-riesgo&catid=42:seg-y-jus&Itemid=159] [https://archive.today/wKV1M], (2) [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/derechos-humanos/derechos-humanos-niñez-y-juventud/altos-mandos-de-ff-aa-encubrieron] [https://archive.today/z1oRu]
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Police agents harassed the journalist Gabriel Hernandez in Nacaome. Source in Spanish [http://conexihon.hn/site/noticia/libertad-de-expresión/policías-agreden-periodista-y-amenazan-con-destruir-su-equipo] [https://archive.today/BoypD]
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The media and the Honduran government seem to use Ban Ki-Moon's visit as a big publicity event. There are several articles on him supposedly praising Honduras for its good work. Source in Spanish [http://www.tiempo.hn/nación/item/15110-confirma-presencia-de-alto-comisionado-de-ddhh-ban-ki-moon-aplaude-reducción-de-violencia] [https://archive.today/M3bBb].
Libre's Manuel Zelaya wrote an open letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN General Secretary currently visiting Honduras. Source in Spanish [http://www.ellibertador.hn/?q=article/carta-del-expresidente-de-honduras-al-secretario-general-de-la-onu] [https://archive.today/kqlXn].
Letter translated from Spanish into English by Lucy Pagoada-Quesada
Tegucigalpa, MDC, January 13, 2014.
To: Mr. BAN KI-MOON, Secretary General, United Nations
Dear Mr. Secretary:Your visit it's very appropriate to express our deep appreciation and to inform you that from June 28, 2009 in our country complete impunity prevails against those who perpetuated the military coup which was condemned unanimously by the United Nations.
Since the coup, to today, the victims of killings, human rights violations and torture are still demanding and waiting for the application of justice that never arrives.
Since the coup, the majority of our population is torn between poverty and extreme poverty; increasing state violence, organized crime, extrajudicial executions; constant crimes committed by death squads and paramilitary groups, massacres against children and youth, are the order of the day in the most brutal violation of human rights.
Honduras is now a militarized state, a situation that has been observed and explained in the Preliminary Report of the Mission of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in their "in loco" visit to Honduras at the end of 2014. The annual report of "Human rights Watch" (World Report, 2014) also shows the crisis and likewise over a hundred US congressmen spoke in 2014 through a public letter to protest human rights violations, the military crackdown of congress members who make up the opposition and the state coercion experienced by the Honduran people.
For the fifth consecutive year since 2010, the people have been denied access to the funds from the Millennium Challenge Account of the United States, due to the loss of confidence of the international community for the high levels of violence, systematic violations of human rights and corruption of the HONDURAS administration today.
The Honduran people, outrageously withstands the devaluation of its currency, over nine fiscal adjustments, inconsiderate tax increases for the poor and public debt. This administration has lost all honesty in handling public funds and has legalized the secrecy of public life arbitrarily changing the Transparency Act and Access to Public Information passed during my administration.
Thousands of workers from government institutions that are being privatized, have been suspended and fired arbitrarily; while others are persecuted mercilessly as teachers, workers, and peasants are killed, especially in the northern part of the country.
The working class is living on low wages, and this admiration has frozen all increases and benefits, despite inflation, the high cost of living and the progressive devaluation.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, congressman and pro-coup in 2009 and current President of the Republic, has consistently refused to have a national dialogue with the opposition, instead he limits open dialogue and tolerance about different ideas with his media control and exaggerated propaganda in an authoritative and fraudulent way, represses social demands, imposing a system of military terror with security policies where fundamental civil rights have practically all disappeared and he threatens with disappearing the National Preventive Police to create a parallel military police.
Blackmail, persecution, public statements and press chains threatening the opposition to be associated with organized crime, are everyday forms of treatment to their opponents, from President Hernandez and his twisted personality.
Laws limiting individual and collective freedoms, such as the "Listening and Intervention of Private communications of citizens"; Terrorism Act; Act against "conspiracies" and laws of accelerated militarization of the state; illegal dismissal and without any pre-established procedure of judges and magistrates who ruled against the coup; arbitrary dismissal of four judges of the Constitutional Court for opposing the past elections fraud ; and unlawful and arbitrary appointment of the judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General; are some of his actions; typical of a tyrant.
Without respecting the procedure already established in the Constitution: the referendum (plebiscite or referendum), and denying the people their political rights, a strong group of congressmen in support of the government have officially proposed amendments to the Constitution by means of the Court, for the sole purpose of allowing the presidential continuity.
Mr. Secretary, your visit to our country is a great opportunity, for you to become aware without intermediaries, of the brutal subjugation imposed on to the Honduran people and the constant denial of the rights that we as a democratic and peaceful opposition face. WE DO NOT accept the violence and confrontation promoted by the President in an authoritarian manner and without legitimacy, since he has obtained just 34% of the national electorate.
Mr. Secretary, we have NOT lost hope to finding solutions for HONDURAS. In this timely opportunity we appeal to your high position at the United Nations, to advocate for the reconciliation, dialogue, JUSTICE and PEACE TODAY missing from the Honduran State and absent on the agenda of who govern US.
With the highest consideration and respect,
[signed] Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Constitutional President of Honduras, 2006-2010
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Haiti
* "Dissolution of Haiti’s Parliament on the Earthquake’s Anniversary" (2015-01-12) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/dissolution-of-haitis-parliament-on-the-earthquakes-anniversary/5425010] [https://archive.today/W61IM]
"Euro Crashes Against Swiss Franc" (2015-01-15),
pg.1 [http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2015/01/15/euro-crashes-against-swiss-franc/] [https://archive.today/Mf0MR],
pg.2 [http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2015/01/15/euro-crashes-against-swiss-franc/2/] [https://archive.today/C2kHa],
pg.3 [http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2015/01/15/euro-crashes-against-swiss-franc/3/] [https://archive.today/qESmt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of France (EU)
* "The French Role in the Use and Export of Torture" (2015-01-15) [http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/15/the-french-role-in-the-use-and-export-of-torture/] [https://archive.today/OBVNO]
---
* "Those who aren't Charlie", 2015-01-15 posted by Richard Seymour [https://archive.today/cROAO]: Unfortunately, there are a few troublemakers in our midst, people who aren't Charlie, who need to be rooted out and dealt with. As explained by Nathalie Saint-Cricq, chief political editor of France 2 (state-owned TV channel) [https://archive.today/a1GHA] [Translated]: "It is those indeed who are not "Charlie" who must be identified; those who in certain schools refused to observe the minute's silence, those who "spout off" on social networks, and those who don't see that this struggle is theirs. Well, they are the ones that we have to identify and treat, integrate or reintegrate into the national community. Schools and the politicians bear a heavy responsibility in this regard."
In fact (a correspondent tells me, referring to this article [https://archive.today/DMZ81]), the provisions of recent legislation (13.11.2014) on the monitoring and reporting of school pupils' speech and behaviour appear to have been put into effect for the first time as the names of children who failed to observe the minute's silence were reported by teachers or supervisors to the head, then to the rectorat - the regional education administration - and on to the police and prosecuting authorities, to be analysed by the intelligence services, who decide whether the facts in question are serious enough to warrant formal investigation of the pupil and his/her family and social network.
More widely, there are a series of arrests and sentences being handed down for "justification / glorification of terrorism" [https://archive.today/0hfo5], including that of a 28 year old man diagnosed with learning disabilities.
If you are not Charlie, would you please speak up so that we can have you arrested and flung in jail, or re-educated?
---
* "French government applauds coup in Ukraine" (2014-02-24) [http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/24/fren-f24.html] [https://archive.today/eloph], [begin excerpt]
The French political establishment is applauding the ouster on Saturday of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, in a coup by the Western-backed opposition led by fascist groups that glorify the crimes of the Nazis.
The embrace of fascist forces in Ukraine exposes the political criminality of France’s ruling Socialist Party (PS) and of the entire French political establishment. Along with Berlin and Washington, Paris backed far-right opposition forces like the neo-Nazi Right Sector and Oleh Tyahnybok’s fascist Svoboda party. Svoboda, which is affiliated to France’s neo-fascist National Front (FN), celebrates Nazi SS units that massacred Jews in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia during World War II.
The PS’ collaboration with Ukrainian fascist groups affiliated to France’s FN underscores the hypocrisy of its claims to be waging a struggle against the rise of the FN inside France itself. In fact, the PS easily works with fascist groups because the main points of its reactionary political agenda, consisting of deep austerity measures and escalating wars and imperialist interventions, are entirely compatible with far-right politics.
If the FN is rising, in fact, it is largely because of the right-wing policies of the PS and the pseudo-left parties, who have suppressed opposition to social austerity measures and allowed the FN to posture as the sole party opposed to the political establishment in France.
Significantly, though the ouster of Yanukovych represents a short-term victory for Svoboda, which is affiliated to the FN inside the European Alliance of National Movements (EANM), the FN has refrained from praising its Ukrainian allies.
On Thursday, FN Vice-President and Interior Ministry official Florian Philippot called on the EU not to intervene in Ukraine. He said, “We must avoid intervention by the European Union, which until now has only poured fuel on the fire by making completely irresponsible promises to Ukraine. We did not need to propose that Ukraine associate itself to or even become a member or affiliated party of the EU.”
One major factor in the FN’s decision to keep a relatively low profile and adopt a cautious stance on France’s Ukrainian intervention is that its affiliation with Svoboda cuts across current FN leader Marine Le Pen’s attempts to “de-demonize” the party.
Since she took over leadership of the FN from her father Jean-Marie, Marine Le Pen has tried to distance the FN from its historically anti-Semitic, free-market, and pro-Nazi positions. She considers this essential to the FN’s ability to win a broader electoral base inside France.
Jean-Marie Le Pen infamously dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail of history” and the Nazi occupation of France as “not especially inhumane, even if there were a number of excesses, which are inevitable in a country of 550,000 square kilometres.”
The ties of the FN and of France’s bourgeois “left” to the openly pro-Nazi Ukrainian far right underscore not only the profound links between the FN’s politics today and its openly fascist past, but the accelerating slide of the entire French ruling elite towards fascistic politics.
[end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Croatia (EU)
* "Croatia Elects Former NATO Official President" (2015-01-15) [http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/15/croatia-elects-former-nato-official-president.html] [https://archive.today/4e3Y3], [begin excerpt]:
Conservative politician and former NATO assistant secretary general for public diplomacy Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic defeated incumbent center-left president Ivo Josipovic by a traditional George Soros-crafted razor-thin vote. In the case of Croatia’s second-round, the vote was 50.54 percent for Grabar-Kitarovic to 49.46 percent for Josipovic. The razor-thin majorities for candidates groomed by Soros’s Eastern and Central European contrivances are normally very close. While giving the public the perception that their vote counted, election engineering allows for only a few votes to tip the balance to the candidate favored by Washington.
Grabar-Kitarovic’s majority was enabled by receiving the required 21,000-vote majority from Croatians living abroad. Grabar-Kitarovic lived as a graduate student in Washington, DC and Boston and soon became Croatian ambassador in Washington and the chief propaganda assistant to NATO’s neoconservative Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister.
Grabar-Kitarovic is a member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), the neo-fascist oriented party of the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman. She served as foreign minister of Croatia from 2005 to 2008 and was instrumental in pushing for Croatia’s joining the European Union in both that position as European Integration Minister from 2003 to 2005. Croatia joined the EU in 2013. EU membership brought Croatia the fourth-highest unemployment rate in Europe and a 50 percent jobless rate of Croatians under the age of 25. These statistics, which should have hurt the pro-EU Grabar-Kitarovic’s razor-thin victory in the presidential election even more suspicious and dubious.[end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Ukraine
* "What They’re Not Telling You About Monsanto’s Role in Ukraine: Will this be a takeover of Ukraine's farmland?" (2015-01-12) [http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/12/what-theyre-not-telling-you-about-monsantos-role-ukraine] [https://archive.today/1uTb1]
* "Ukraine Agreed to a Monsanto “Land Grab” to Get a $17 Billion Loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)" (2015-01-11) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-agreed-to-a-monsanto-land-grab-to-get-a-17-billion-loan-from-the-international-monetary-fund-imf/5424058] [https://archive.today/GOdmV]
---
* "On Ultra Nationalists: When You Slow-Dance with the Devil, You Can't See His Face" (2014-03-30) [http://www.opednews.com/populum/printer_friendly.php?content=a&id=177366] [https://archive.today/fFkUZ], [begin excerpt]:
Yes! Stepan Bandera is alive and well. He may well be invited to a mid-summer barbeque at the White House and down a few beers with President Barak Obama and Senator John McCain. The takeover of Ukraine by those who march to his ulra-nationalist drumming has allowed seventy years' worth of US foreign policy to pay off with bigger dividends than anyone could have imagined.
The first Bandera's grandson is a former editor and reporter for the Kiev Post, and you can read his own take on Ultra Nationalists like Oleh Tyanhybok here [http://kyivscoop.blogspot.com/].
From a Kiev Post interview lunch with the grandson of national hero Stepan Bandera, by Paul Miazga, Kyiv Post Staff Writer, April 20, 2005 [https://archive.today/q1yae]: "Bandera, who currently writes for New York City's [Ukrainian] Diaspora newspaper The National Tribune, never knew his grandfather, who was killed by a KGB agent in 1959. But he has an affinity with him.... 'Our family has always been very tight, very Ukrainian.' Bandera's father--also a nationalist activist--died under mysterious circumstances back in 1984, just like his grandfather. 'I came to Ukraine looking for a fight,' he says."Aside from being a journalist supporting his family's claim to an Ultra Nationalist Ukraine, Mr. Bandera plays a much larger role behind the scenes. This second-generation homegrown Canadian Ukrainian Ultra Nationalist helped Americanize the ultra-nationalist movement in Ukraine through his influence in America's civil, political, and business circles.
The CUSUR (Center for US-Ukrainian Relations) was started as a result of the continuing support for a free Ukraine in three US presidential administrations [https://archive.today/3txMg]. The "free" in "free Ukraine" refers to an ultra-nationalist Ukraine that Mr. Bandera's grandfather would be proud of.
First under President Bill Clinton, and then through two terms of GW Bush, both the US and Ukrainian governments, and businesses in the two countries, built extensive networks that culminated in the event-driving Maidan movement for Ukrainian integration with the West.
The CUSUR and the UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America) are intertwined and so powerful in American politics that even a casual glance at their meeting notes or plans will give you the chills. Both groups are in fact OUN (b) (Ukrainian Ultra Nationalist) organizations that operate freely in the US, influencing National Security issues [https://archive.today/I3wqn], Foreign Policy [https://archive.today/xhweo], and American National Politics [https://archive.today/nAP3N].
Both Congressional Durbin brothers and Secretary of State John Kerry are enthusiastic supporters. Senator Durbin, a Lithuanian-American, has in fact stated during John Kerry's bid for the Presidency, "If John Kerry is elected, Kerry will work vigorously for Ukraine's continued independence and prosperity." That position, of course, supports the UCCA view [https://archive.today/pF95b].
Where does Mr. Bandera fit into all of this? For the last seventy years, the US has only recognized one Ukrainian government. According to CIA-released documents to which I provided links in previous articles, that one government is the Ukrainian government in Exile, led by the Stetskos [https://web.archive.org/web/20140829050423/http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/1705143/QRPLUMB%20%20%20VOL.%202%20%20(DEVELOPMENT%20AND%20PLANS,%201970-78)_0017.pdf]. That government has now been brought back to Ukraine and cemented with the Maidan.
The Depth of the Bandera Influence
Here's a quick look at one name that appears on all of the steering committees of the CUSUR. As you'll see in UA Quest Roundtable Steering Committees [https://archive.today/TbpsX], that name is Stepan Bandera.
RTI: Ukraine's Quest for Mature Nation Statehood Steering Committee--Stepan Bandera.
RTII: US/Ukraine Strategic Partnership Steering Committee-- Stepan Bandera.
These committees interact with Congress, the State Department, and the Defense Department. Even if the references to the Bandera name are only honorary, it is significant that his name is deemed important enough to be connected with every steering committee.
Mr. Bandera is called on to give keynote speeches for the UCCA [https://archive.today/elmLb]. At the very least, his famous name is needed to garner support from the US government and from large US businesses for the sole purpose of setting up a free and ultra-nationalist Ukraine.
With Bandera's involvement, CUSUR has found enthusiastic support from across the spectrum of US universities, think tanks and corporations, and from the US government itself. Sponsor companies and foundations that fund the organization include [https://archive.today/5HlBh]: American Foreign Policy Council, Atlantic Council, Bechtel Corporation, Coca-Cola Beverages Ukraine Ltd., Canadian Ukrainian Foundation, Delta Airlines, Halliburton, J. P. Morgan, Microsoft, National Endowment for Democracy, Philip Morris Companies, Inc., and, of course, the RAND Corporation--among many others.
At the very least, Mr. Bandera provides the brand name for the new Ukraine that US businesses and the US government can rally around.
[end excerpt]
More info about Stepan Bandera at [https://archive.today/g8RfO], although the images, including screenshots of correspondence between the author and Stepan, are now private and not available for viewing.
---
* "The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs" (2015-01-16) [http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/16/new-ukraine-run-rogues-sexpots-warlords-lunatics-and-oligarchs.html] [https://archive.today/I46GP]
* "The far right in the new Ukrainian Parliament" (2014-12-14) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/the-far-right-in-the-new-ukrainian-parliament/] [https://archive.today/GV6l9]
* "Svoboda nazi apologist quits party to become head of Security Service propaganda" (2014-10-25) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/svoboda-nazi-apologist-quits-party-to-become-head-of-security-service-propaganda/] [https://archive.today/CBc2E]
---
* "Poroshenko reported to Soros and received instructions" (2015-01-13) [http://v7news.com/poroshenko-reported-to-soros-and-received-instructions/] [https://archive.today/6VuBi], original untranslated version in at [https://archive.today/0k1ZG]
---
* "In the district of Kiev three months will not be drinking water" [http://v7news.com/in-the-district-of-kiev-three-months-will-not-be-drinking-water/] [https://archive.today/VsdtF], original untranslated version at [https://archive.today/zkx2b]
---
* "Poroshenko rejected Putin’s artillery withdrawal plan, began assault" (2015-01-18) [http://rt.com/news/223875-putin-peace-plan-poroshenko/] [https://archive.today/RHBl3], [begin excerpt]: The Foreign Ministry has linked the deadly attacks in Donetsk and Kiev's “massive fire” order with the upcoming EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting on January 19. It has noted that “such attempts coupled with the apparent provocation (similar to the situation with the Malaysian Boeing and the incident with a bus in Volnovakha) come, as a rule, on the eve of the European Union and other Western states meetings, which deal with the situation in Ukraine.” [end excerpt]
---
* "Ukraine: U.S. Campaign Stuck Without Russian Intervention And German Support" (2014-05-04) [http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/05/ukraine-us-campaign-stuck-without-russian-intervention-and-german-support.html] [https://archive.today/NMMLn]
---
* "New round of mobilization may stir new protests in Ukraine, expert says" (2015-01-16) [http://itar-tass.com/en/world/771684] [https://archive.today/mAPGW]
---
* " “Patriot of Ukraine” neo-nazi militant appointed as Kiev head of police" (2014-11-03) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/patriot-of-ukraine-neo-nazi-militant-appointed-as-kiev-head-of-police/] [https://archive.today/UVUm9]
---
The State of Israel is partners with the USA State Department, and both governments has citizens who are high-ranking members of the fascist Republic of Ukraine government since the coup of February 2014. The groups employed by both governments are under orders to not attack citizens of either government, or to attack the Jewish community, except members of the community who are "leftist" and anti-fascist, although before the coup, all of the groups participated in public ventures of attacks against the Jewish people.
* "Nuland, Ashton, "Klitsch", "Yats" and...Oleh Tyahnybok? The Scary Side of the Ukraine Troika" (2014-03-13) [http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/13/the-scary-side-of-the-ukraine-troika/] [https://archive.today/rFhKP]
* "Ukraine: How to Hide a Nazi Army" (2014-03-12) [http://journal-neo.org/2014/03/12/ukraine-how-to-hide-a-nazi-army/] [https://archive.today/OTlZW].
The current Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok maintains informal links to another group, the Patriots of Ukraine, regarded by some as proto-fascist.
In 2004, Tyahnybok was kicked out of former President Viktor Yushchenko’s parliamentary faction for a speech calling for Ukrainians to fight against a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” – using two highly insulting words to describe Russians and Jews – and emphasising that Ukrainians had in the past fought this threat with arms.
In 2005, he signed an open letter to Ukrainian leaders, including President Yushchenko, calling for the government to halt the “criminal activities” of “organised Jewry”, which, the letter said, was spreading its influence in the country through conspiratorial organisations as the Anti-Defamation League – and which ultimately wanted to commit “genocide” against the Ukrainian people.
Astonishingly, it would be overt Jew-hater Oleh Tyahnybok that US Senator John McCain would share the stage with in Kiev during the climax of “Euromaidan” in support of the “pro-European” mobs.
Image: John McCain and Oleh Tyahnybok (in the center)
Image: Signed by Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok, a 2005 open letter titled, ”Stop the Criminal Activities of Organised Jewry” exemplifies the ideologies of groups leading the so-called “Euromaidan” uprising – groups the West has openly and eagerly supported.
* "Ukrainian Nazis Pay Private Military Company Academi (formerly Blackwater) for Training, Russian Report" (2015-01-03) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-nazis-pay-private-military-company-academi-formerly-blackwater-for-training-russian-report/5422667] [https://archive.today/Z3T3d], [begin excerpt]:
the U.S. Congress just passed and the U.S. President just signed into law in December authorization of a $450 million donation, is now co-funding this military training, along with — as wikipedia describes “Patriot of Ukraine” (but with wikipedia’s footnotes removed) — a Ukrainian nationalist organization with racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs. It constitutes a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and groups founded in 2008 that share the social-national ideology and agree upon building a social-national state in Ukraine. Both the “Patriot of Ukraine” and the S.N.A. engage in political violence against minorities and their political opponents. The leader of the “Patriot of Ukraine” and of the Social-National Assembly is Andriy Biletsky. The S.N.A. derived from “the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine,” whose name was derived from the National Socialist Party of Germany — the original Nazis. America’s CIA hides its longstanding support of nazis after World War II (see this and this), but the Bushes and Obama have continued it even decades after the Soviet Union and its communism ended. Consequently, in 2004, the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine was advised by the CIA to, and it did, change its name to the “Freedom Party,” or “Svoboda,” because that sounds better to Americans.
Biletsky has been kept out of high official authority in its post-coup Ukrainian Government, by the Obama Administration, but wikipedia’s article on Ukraine’s racist and overtly pro-Hitler “Azov Battalion” notes that Biletsky was placed in charge of the Azov Battalion, and also that Biletsky “was awarded by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko with a military decoration, ‘Order For Courage’,” so that the post-coup Ukrainian Government publicly honored this high nazi (‘nazi’ meaning racist-fascist, irrespective of any political party) operative, which Biletsky certainly has been, and is.
[end excerpt]
---
* "Our ‘Enemies’ in Ukraine Speak" (2014-08-20) [http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/enemies-ukraine-speak/] [https://archive.today/mT69T], [begin excerpt]:
In February 2014, our State Department and CIA used ‘false flag,’ or engineered-so-as-to-be-misinterpreted, violence by our country’s paid Ukrainian agents, in order to exploit the ‘Maidan’ demonstrations in Kiev, the desire of Ukrainians for a less-corrupt government than existed in Ukraine, and than has existed in Ukraine ever since the fall of communism there. Our Government, the Obama Administration, paid masked gunmen there to dress as if they were from the State Security Force of the corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and to shoot at and murder not just policemen but anti-Yanukovych or ‘democracy’ demonstrators. (However, Yanukovych had, in fact, himself been democratically elected in 2010, and still was the democratically elected President.) (NOTE: The complete key phone-transcript whose audio is briefly heard excerpted there is printed here [https://archive.today/YmC9z].) And our gunmen also threatened some members of the Ukrainian Parliament at gunpoint, and engineered their approval of an emergency replacement of Yanukovych’s government by one that was appointed by Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland, and that was headed by Nuland’s friend “Yats,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk. This new government was filled with people who stated their desire to exterminate the people in Ukraine’s southeast, the people who had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych — to just get rid of them. Doing that would make Obama’s regime in Ukraine become permanent. Then, Ukraine held a ‘democratic’ election in which voters everywhere but in the southeast voted, and essentially the same coup-installed people remained in power. The billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko was elected as the President of ‘Ukraine’; and Victoria Nuland’s chosen leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, continued on as the new country’s Prime Minister. Yatsenyuk fired the previous Defense Minister and replaced him with Mikhail Koval, who on June 11th announced a program of ethnic cleansing in the southeast. This was actually a direct extension from the program that had already started with the extermination on May 2nd of hundreds of supporters of the previous government, who were trapped inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa and burned alive there. This massacre was masterminded by people who were installed by the Obama Administration. That massacre started Ukraine’s civil war, by demonstrating to people throughout the southeast, that the newly Obama-installed Ukrainian Government wanted to kill them. It was now official policy throughout the southeastern portion of Ukraine, to kill the Obama-installed regime’s opponents. All of the residents there were being officially labelled by the Obama government as ‘terrorists,’ and their elimination was declared to be a patriotic necessity for Ukraine. However, this amateur documentary from Ukraine’s southeast — the video from which the scenes below are taken — presents the resulting civil war not from the Obama Government’s side, but from their regime’s victims’ side, which is hardly heard at all in the West.
[end excerpt]
Watch the documentary at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE18iPQ1Euk]
---
* "Poroshenko and Harf Shift Blame in Bus Tragedy to Justify Kiev Atrocity" (2015-01-14) [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/poroshenko-harf-shift-blame-bus-tragedy-justify-kiev-atrocity.html] [https://archive.today/pnHfu]
* "The East Ukraine Bus Disaster. The Propaganda War Goes Ballistic. Testimony of Bus Driver points to Kiev Regime" (2015-01-21) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-east-ukraine-bus-disaster-the-propaganda-war-goes-ballistic-testimony-of-bus-driver-points-to-kiev-regime/5426000] [https://archive.today/ytJp6]
---
Among the largest political parties in the Ukraine until the fascist coup of February, 2014, was the Communist Party, with membership not only from among the ethnic Russians, but also from among the ethnic Ukrainians. This confuses many observers outside the Ukraine as the USA State Department and their funding for specific university history programs have produced an official story that the Communist Party killed millions in the Ukraine during 1932 to 1933. After the dissolution of the USSR, the Communist Party remained popular and continued to gain members, because the people of the Ukraine, who had suffered the most according to the official history, remembered what really happened during 1932, that the Communist Party was not killing millions during a natural famine, and that they were defending the Ukraine against a hostile foreign-funded insurgency lead by adherents of the Roman Catholic church against atheistic government in the USSR, an attack which was designed to destroy food grown in the Ukraine to starve the people further (the theory that starving people would rebel, and join with the fascist dictatorships in Europe like Italy and Germany), an attack mitigated by the Communist Party's success at not only ending the famine through efficient food distributions that saved millions, but also ending the threat of famine in subsequent years. The counter-insurgency is known today as the "Great Terror" against fascism. After the famine of the early 1930s, subsequent famines no longer killed people. This legacy is why the Communist Party of the Ukraine remained popular and gained more members durign the 1990s through 2014.
Unfortunately, after World War 2, the USA State Department employed the Ukrianians in charge of the attacks against the People, using them to publicize a false version of history as propaganda to villify not only the Communist Party but also all people within the Ukraine of Russian ethnicity, leading directly to todays death squads targeting ethnic Russians and the Communist Party.
* "Kiev: Fascist arson attack against Communist Party District office" (2015-01-12) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/kiev-fascist-arson-attack-against-communist-party-district-office/] [https://archive.today/v4hne]
* "Communist Party offices in Kyiv attacked by neo-nazis" (2014-12-12) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/communist-party-offices-in-kyiv-attacked-by-neo-nazis/] [https://archive.today/YX4Ci]
* "October Revolution commemoration attacked by fascist thugs in Kharkov and Melitopol" (2014-11-12) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/october-revolution-commemoration-attacked-by-fascist-thugs-in-kharkov-and-melitopol/] [https://archive.today/DcFbm]
* "Odessa Court bans October Revolution and Makhno commemorations" (2014-11-07) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/odessa-court-bans-october-revolution-and-makhno-commemorations/] [https://archive.today/bbhGg]
* "Kherson: anti-war demonstration attacked by fascist thugs" (2014-09-02) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/kherson-anti-war-demonstration-attacked-by-fascist-thugs/] [https://archive.today/RrFkw]
---
* "Ukraine: Thousands of far right supporters mark anniversary of genocidal UPA" (2014-10-15) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/ukraine-thousands-of-far-right-supporters-mark-anniversary-of-genocidal-upa/] [https://archive.today/jdQHs]
---
The Republic of the Ukraine's Prime-Minister publicly shows his adherence to a version of history concerning World War 2 that places as representative of the nation the fascist Reichskommissariat Ukraine government and it's protector Nazi Germany during 1941 until its dissolution in 1944, replacing the Socialist Republic of Ukraine, a constituent Republic of the old USSR which had been invaded during 1941 by the European Union formed by the fascist dictatorships, combining their resources through the SS agency, which acted as a pass-through for certain monopolist cartels chartered in the USA, including Standard Oil (Chevron, Exxon), Ford Motor Company and even IBM and Coca Cola, all companies are documented as supporting fascist governments after World War 2, using the CIA agency as a pass-through for their resources.
* "Yatsenyuk Rewrites History: ‘USSR Invaded Germany’ " (2015-01-09) [http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150109/1016706636.html] [https://archive.today/N3zVH]
* "Czech Journalist Says Yatsenyuk Lied About WW2 to Justify Disastrous Policy" (2015-01-16) [http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150116/1016994257.html] [https://archive.today/irdjC]
* " ‘Soviets invading Germany, Ukraine:’ Berlin faces tough choice on PM Yatsenyuk’s WW2 take" (2015-01-10) [http://rt.com/op-edge/221459-ukraine-germany-invade-russia/] [https://archive.today/0uiMt], [begin excerpt]: This week, Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said the USSR had invaded Germany and Ukraine in WW2. "All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany," he told German-state broadcaster ARD. "We need to avoid [a repeat of] it." "Nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War," he also added.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, apparently handpicked for the PM post by US diplomat Victoria Nuland, believes the USSR invaded Germany in WW2. This runs contrary to the almost universally accepted narrative that Germany actually attacked the Soviets first in Operation Barbarossa. After repelling the attack, USSR forces eventually made it to Berlin where they met the other liberating powers, the USA and Britain.I’ve heard similar remarks before and the location was Western Ukraine, where the PM is from. Yatsenyuk hails from Chernivsti, widely regarded as the region’s second cultural capital, after Lvov, which is viewed by many as the nationalist stronghold.
Something interesting used to happen each May 9 in Ukraine (the anniversary of the German surrender in 1945). Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and all the other major cities, bar one, honored the defeat of the Nazis. Many in Lvov have never looked too happy with the day. In fact, in 2011, local ‘patriots’ went a step further by attacking a small gathering of veterans who were commemorating the occasion.
The reason for this feeling is simple. West Ukrainians believe that they lost the war. Their side was defeated. Put simply, Yatsenyuk is merely a product of his environment. However, this time he expressed publicly a view that was probably previously restricted to private discourse.
In reality, Germany wasn’t alone in its invasion of the USSR in 1941. Forces from Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia also took part and West Ukrainian elements collaborated with Hitler’s war machine.
The difference between Ukraine and, for example, Slovakia is that Slovaks have come to understand that their wartime behavior was wrong. The pro-Nazi leader, Jozef Tiso, is rightly reviled among the vast majority in Kosice and Bratislava. However, in West Ukraine, their chief Hitler acolyte Stepan Bandera is accorded ‘hero’ status. Indeed, there’s a gigantic statue of him in front of the main railway station in Lvov.
Ukrainian reverence for relics of the Nazi past is both embarrassing and worrying for Germany.
Just this week, the Czech President, Milos Zeman, was embroiled in an argument with Bandera fan boys in Ukrainian academia.
“You are aware of the Bandera statement: ‘You must kill every Polish person between 16 and 60 years of age?’ If you say you don’t know this - then what kind of scholars of Ukrainian studies are you?” he wrote.
Zeman continued: “I want to tell you that Bandera wished to make out of Ukraine a vassal state of Germany… I can’t congratulate a country that has such ‘national heroes.’”
[end excerpt]
Reichskommissariat Ukraine propaganda poster with inscription in Ukrainian language "Hitler's Warriors - they are friends of the people", alongside a 1942-09-01 Reichsführer-SS map showing Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the Army Rear Echelon Area
Before the invasion of Reichscommisariat Ukraine and Nazi Germany by the USSR Red Army (including hundreds of thousands of anti-fascist ethnic Ukrainians), the armies of both governments, including the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), shown in the photo parading in Lviv during 1943, had helped to massacre millions of stateless people, including Jewish folks and ethnic Novorossiyans. Their extreme hostility against their victims served to make their government unpopular, leading to their defeat. The irony is that todays Prime Minister of Ukraine is glorifying the legacy of the old Reichskommisariat Ukraine government, even though he is himself Jewish!
More info about the Reichskommisariat Ukraine [https://archive.today/Qq6mF].
Here's what the "official" history says:
* "80 Years On: Heroes of Lviv’s Independence Movement" (2009) [http://www.lvivtoday.com.ua/lviv-society/741] [https://archive.today/4bIfv], [begin excerpt]: Early February saw Lviv’s historic Rynok Square awash with young activists marking the 80th anniversary of the foundation of OUN, the controversial political organisation set up to fight for the idea of Ukrainian independence during the period of inter-war Polish rule in West Ukraine. [end excerpt]
Notice it does not mention open collaboration with Nazi Germany BEFORE World War 2, or working with the USA and fascist vanguards after World War 2.
* "ADL Calls On New Ukrainian President To Withdraw 'Hero' Title Bestowed By Predecessor On Nazi Collaborators" (2010) [http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/holocaust-nazis/adl-calls-on-new-ukrainian.html] [https://archive.today/D1SyS]
* "Ukraine's Yanukovich to repeal Bandera hero decree" (2010) [http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/19/us-ukraine-bandera-idUSTRE62I32J20100319] [https://archive.today/F7cAg]
* "Birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera celebrated in Lviv, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk; Svoboda MP Tyahnybok urges designation as 'Hero of Ukraine' " (2015-01-02) [http://freeukrainenow.org/2015/01/02/birthday-of-nazi-collaborator-stepan-bandera-celebrated-in-lviv-kiev-dnepropetrovsk-svoboda-mp-tyahnybok-urges-designation-as-hero-of-ukraine/] [https://archive.today/KqkqF]
---
* " ‘They’ll ridicule us’: Ukraine defense minister ‘claims’ Russia used nukes" (2014-09-21) [http://rt.com/news/189420-ukraine-nuclear-strike-russia/] [https://archive.today/9qkbc], [begin excerpt]:
The allegations, by Col. Gen. Valery Geletey, were first reported by Roman Bochkala, one of the Ukrainian journalists accompanying the minister in his recent trip to Poland.
“So Russia did use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troops,” the journalist wrote on his Facebook page, citing Geletey’s words.
The nuclear weapons in question are rounds for 2S4 Tyulpan self-propelled mortars. The journalist reported the minister as saying that Russia supplied some of those to rebel forces and used at least two 3-kiloton nuclear rounds in the battle for Lugansk airport.
“If it were not for the Tyulpans, we could have been holding the airport for months and nobody would have ousted us from it,” the general was cited as saying.
“Everyone knows that Russia is de facto using Ukrainian territory as a testing range for its new weapons,” Geletey wrote on his Facebook page. “What else than for testing did the Russians send 2S4s into our territory?”
“I stress that only competent specialists armed with special equipment may test whether or not a nuclear or any other weapon that we don’t know of was used. In particular they need to take radiation samples on the ground. Unfortunately, we cannot do that because Lugansk airport is currently under control of the terrorists and the Russian military,” he added.
The minister apparently is not completely honest, since direct access is not required to collect evidence of a nuclear detonation, even a small one. For instance, North Korea’s underground nuclear tests were independently proven to be genuine thanks to surveillance planes and monitoring stations equipped with radioactive isotope detectors.
The 2S4 mortar can hardly be called new as well, even if Geletey bothered to provide any evidence of its presence in eastern Ukraine. Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, stopped producing them in 1988, although some remain in service. Other countries in possession of the weapon include Iraq, Libya and the Czech Republic, although it’s not immediately clear whether any of theirs remain in working order.
[end excerpt]
---
The odd thing about this photo is that it shows a fascist "rebel" displaying the handsign for the Svoboda (originally known as the Social-National Party, or Nazi Party, of Ukraine, 1994), which is supporting the oppression of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine under the direction of the USA, supposedly to "preserve Ukraine's sovereignty" by preventing incorporation with the Eurasian Union, although the same rebel supports incorporation with the European Union and foreign ownership of national resources.
History is being re-written, so that fascist Ukraine did not participate in the mass-death of Jews during World War 2, and instead Liberated them from death camps...
* "Rewriting history? Polish FM says Ukrainians liberated Auschwitz, Russia puzzled" (2015-01-21) [http://rt.com/news/224891-poland-ukraine-liberated-auschwitz/] [https://archive.today/bzwMm]
* "Foreign Minister of Poland recognized the liberation of Auschwitz, for Ukraine" (2015-01-21) [http://newstwenty4seven.com/en/news/glava-mid-polshi-priznal-osvobozhdenie-osventsima-za-ukrainoj] [https://archive.today/7oSJA]
---
* "Who Is Going to Auschwitz?" (2015-01-01) [http://orientalreview.org/2015/01/21/who-is-going-to-auschwitz/] [https://archive.today/s4TRM], [begin excerpt]:
The death camps covered Central and Eastern Europe like bubonic plague sores. Even according to official data of German Ministry of Interior, the fascist regime built 1634 concentration camps. Besides, there were many other structures created to find the final solution to the problem of «second rate» map-of-auschwitz-366people or «lower races».
There were inmates from Poland, USSR, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Norway, Romania, Italy and Hungary. For a long time the number of victims was believed to be at least 1, 1 million. In 2010 the Russia’s Federal Security Service declassified the data which showed that more than four million inmates were killed by Nazi.
The Soviet Supreme Command knew about the existence of the death camps. It ordered the 1st and 4th Ukrainian fronts to liberate Auschwitz during the Vistula–Oder offensive operation. The 100th infantry division led by General Fyodor Krasavin took Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 to save the lives of remaining 7 thousand inmates.
Alfred Skchipek (in charge of barack N8), «There was a punishment called «steinbunker». 20-30 people were put into a small cell. With such little space they could only stand there. No windows, there was only a few millimeters wide crack in the wall. With no air coming inmates were suffocating. Transported in winter to be exterminated prisoners were made work outside without shoes and clothes on till they died of cold. There were 200-300 victims at a time».
There were thousands of such testimonies weird enough to give one the creeps. I’m afraid all these evidence is not enough to make a single tear drop from the eyes of those who today are mourning the dead in Washington, London, Brussels and Warsaw. They say that this is the time to commemorate the victims of gas chambers, but in reality they take the side of punishers, not the victims. In Europe and overseas they speak the right words to remember those who suffered from Holocaust while turning a blind eye on the SS marches that regularly take place in the Baltic States for already 20 years.
[end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Latvia (EU)
The following law is not being used against fascists, unless they belong to gorups advocating for the overthrow of the government. The law is being used against the ethnic Russian Citizens of latvia, whose number total 25% of the population.
* "Latvia introduces criminal charges against denial of Soviet and Nazi occupation" (2014-03-28) [http://rt.com/news/latvia-crime-soviet-occupation-869/] [https://archive.today/16UcU], [begin excerpt]: The Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia have been trying to diminish the Soviet role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Many countries’ residents equal Nazi to Soviets, saying that the local population suffered a lot from the Soviet secret service in the Stalin era (1945 to 1953, directed against Nazi collaborators, numbering in the few thousands). During the Nazi occupation in Latvia from 1941 to 1945, the country lost at least 70,000 Latvian Jews which was nearly 89.5 percent of the Jewish population who resided in the country before the war. [end excerpt]
---
* "Latvian Nazi SS Veterans March in Annual Riga Parade" (2014-03-16) [http://forward.com/articles/194652/latvian-nazi-ss-veterans-march-in-annual-riga-para/] [https://archive.today/k23F7]
---
* "Israel slams Latvian musical celebrating Nazi’s life; Herbert Cukurs personally participated in the near annihilation of Latvian Jewry after the Nazis invaded Latvia" (2014-10-24) [http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-slams-latvian-musical-celebrating-nazis-life/] [https://archive.today/iE0An]
---
* "Latvian politician 'praised Nazi shooting of gays' ; Inga Priede, member of Latvia's ruling Unity party, resigns after tweeting 'Thank God! The Germans shot them in their time' about homosexuals in same-sex marriage debate" (2014-12-03) [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/latvia/11269956/Latvian-politician-praised-Nazi-shooting-of-gays.html] [https://archive.today/VIsk7]
---
* "Head of Russia’s Jewish Communities Slams Latvia’s Holocaust Exhibition Ban" (2015-01-21) [http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150121/1017199797.html] [https://archive.today/eXkSG]
* "Dark past: Latvia blocks Nazi Holocaust exhibition in Paris due to image fears" (2015-01-21) [http://rt.com/news/224591-latvia-blocks-holocaust-exhibition/] [https://archive.today/ykHdS]
* "Resurgent Nazism: New and Frightening Reports" (2015-01-15) [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-brodsky/resurgent-nazism-new-and_b_6480826.html] [https://archive.today/OpPgg]
* "Ex-Nazi collaborators equating USSR with fascists to whitewash own sins – Jewish intl. organization" (2015-01-16) [http://rt.com/news/223215-efraim-zaruf-interview/] [https://archive.today/lXeTb]
"Hungary: Ukrainian Syndrome" (2015-01-06) [http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/16/hungary-ukrainian-syndrome.html] [https://archive.today/nCqkf], [begin excerpt]:
A wave of street protests hit Hungary in 2015. Over 5 thousand people protested the policy of Prime Minister Victor Orban on January 2. The government has taken steps to strengthen ties with Russia recently. The 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election took place on 6 April 2014. The result was a victory for Fidesz with Victor Orban remaining Prime Minister. The party got 14% more votes to win the majority needed to amend the country’s constitution. In October 2014 Hungary's governing Fidesz party won the lion's share of local elections, winning most mayoral slots including the coveted Budapest mayoral post as well as majorities on all county assemblies. Fidesz won 20 seats on the 33-seat Budapest assembly. No doubt, the government enjoys popular support.
Why the opposition is so much scared by Victor Orban? Eight years ago he was accused of being a Communist in disguise and a hidden supporter of János Kádár. Is he really the one? Far from it. There is nothing in his biography as a politician to confirm this view. At the time of Hungarian perestroika (the period of reforms) he fiercely opposed Communism demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. He was Prime Minister when Hungary joined NATO. As the head of the government he supported market reforms in combination with strong social security policy. He believes that every Hungarian should have a job. If private business does not cope with creating enough working places, the government should step in. His social policy is in stark contrast with the irresponsible policies of Lithuanian, Romanian and Ukrainian governments ready to comply with any conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund even if real, not imagined, Holodomor strikes their respective countries.
[end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Greece (EU)
* "Breakthrough in Greece? Austerity and Solidarity" message from the International Union of Food Workers (2015-01-14) [http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1067.php] [https://archive.today/A9Hrt], [begin excerpt]:
Greece will hold parliamentary elections on January 25 and Syriza, the left-wing party which has consistently called for debt restructuring and an end to austerity, is leading the polls. The IMF-European Commission-European Central Bank (Troika) are warning of the ‘threat’ of Syriza coming to power and have forcefully indicated their support for Greece's ruling coalition by conditioning further financial support on the re-election of a pliable government. A Syriza victory indeed threatens the suffocating grip of the European and global austerity regime, and for that reason should be welcomed and actively supported.
For the last four years, a succession of aggressively harsh austerity programs have been imposed on the country by the Troika as a condition for supporting the banks and the treasury. At the Troika's insistence, the minimum wage was reduced by 22%, and 32% for workers under 25. Collective bargaining has been shredded, in blatant violation of international and EU law. Public services have been gutted and there are shortages even of basic medicines. Economic output has declined by 25% compared with pre-crisis levels, a level of destruction normally associated with war. A quarter of the workforce is jobless, with unemployment over 50% for young people. Malnutrition and infant mortality are on the rise.
Unsurprisingly, years of austerity have only worsened the country's capacity to service its debt; the public debt to GDP ratio is now an unmanageable 175% – up by over 34% since 2010. Greece simply has no resources to pay its sovereign debt, as even the IMF has reluctantly recognized. The Eurozone's slide into austerity-induced deflation aggravates the problem. Yet the Troika continues to inflict social and economic damage on a massive scale, and insists that the carnage continue.
[end excerpt]
---
* "The Great Leap Rightward; Some Greeks have embraced the far right despite having long leftist family traditions or relatives killed by the Nazis" (2015-01-16) [http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/the-great-leap-rightward] [https://archive.today/LaMf4]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Turkey
* "Turkey suspends prosecutors in 'Syria arms' case" (2015-01-15 from "AFP" newswire) [http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Turkey_suspends_prosecutors_in_Syria_arms_case_999.html][https://archive.today/pSLfy], [begin excerpt]: Turkey has suspended five prosecutors working on a contentious investigation into an alleged delivery of arms for Syrian rebels that was intercepted on the border last year, media reports said Thursday. The top Turkish judicial committee said the decision was taken so as not to hamper the inquiry or tarnish the reputation of the judiciary, the official Anatolia news agency reported. The move came a day after Turkey imposed an all-out media blackout, including on Facebook and Twitter, prohibiting publication of reports on the issue. In January last year, Turkish police stopped and seized seven trucks near the Syrian border that were suspected of smuggling weapons into Syria. A series of documents were then leaked on the Internet indicating that the seized trucks were actually National Intelligence Agency (MIT) vehicles delivering weapons to Syrian Islamist rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey has vehemently denied aiding Islamist rebels in Syria, such as the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group. [end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: GCC States, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
* " 'Flogging for Blogging' Official Saudi Policy" (2015-01-15) [http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/15/flogging-blogging-official-saudi-policy] [https://archive.today/I2mJN], [begin excerpt]:
On January 9, two days after the massive Paris march condemning the brutal attack on freedom of the press, a young Saudi prisoner named Raif Badawi was removed from his cell in shackles and taken to a public square in Jeddah. There he was flogged 50 times before hundreds of spectators who had just finished midday prayers. The 50 lashes—labeled by Amnesty International a “vicious act of cruelty”—was the first installment on his sentence of 1,000 floggings, as well as ten years in prison and a fine of $266,000. Badawi’s crime? Blogging.The father of three young children, Badawi hosted the website known as Free Saudi Liberals, a forum intended to promote a lively exchange of ideas among Saudis. Badawi wrote about the advantages of separating religion and state, asserting that secularism was “the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.” He accused Saudi clerics and the government of distorting Islam to promote authoritarianism. Unlike the Saudi rulers, Badawi cheered the Egyptian uprising against Hosni Mubarak, calling it a decisive turning point not only for Egypt but “everywhere that is governed by the Arab mentality of dictatorship.”
Saudi Arabia also remains the only country in the world to maintain a ban on women drivers. According to this law, women are strictly restricted to the passenger seat of vehicles. This ban is so harshly imposed that two women, 25-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi, were not only arrested for driving to the United Arab Emirates, but they were also referred to be tried by a terrorism court. In the past, punishments for women drivers have included loss of jobs, passport revocation, and even floggings.
[end excerpt]
* "Saudi Arabia declares all atheists are terrorists in new law to crack down on political dissidents" (2014-04-01) [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-declares-all-atheists-are-terrorists-in-new-law-to-crack-down-on-political-dissidents-9228389.html] [https://archive.today/ivdld]
* "Western atheists: You aren’t illegal in Saudi Arabia" (2014-04-07) [http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/04/07/western-atheists-arent-illegal-saudi-arabia/] [https://archive.today/Vuq33], [begin excerpt]:
The real victims of Saudi Arabia’s latest decree: Saudis. And Saudi atheists aren’t the government’s only targets.
It’s important to take a look at the rest of the decree’s provisions. As reported by Human Rights Watch, the same article that slams atheism as terrorism also bans the act of “…calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”
As Brian Whitaker pointed out in Al-Bab, Saudi Arabia is legally a Wahhabi state. That’s a particularly strict interpretation of Sunni Islam which means that, as a direct result of this decree, members of other minority Islamic sects—like Ahmadis, Shiites, Sufis, or even Sunnis who disagree with Wahhabism—are at increased risk of persecution. That’s also true for Saudi Christians, Hindus, and all other religious minorities.
[end excerpt]
---
* "The Missing Pages of the 9/11 Report" (2015-01-12) [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/12/the-missing-pages-of-the-9-11-report.html] [https://archive.today/sSlHt], [begin excerpt]: A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers. The Saudis know what they did, Graham continued, and the U.S. knows what they did, and when the U.S. government takes a position of passivity, or actively shuts down inquiry, that sends a message to the Saudis. “They have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.” [end excerpt]
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of Iraq
* "Iraq: Mr Uday Al-Zaidi - Appeal of Extreme Urgency" (2015-01-10) [http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=2045] [https://archive.today/scXdd]:
Mr Al-Zaidi was arrested by Iraqi security forces at 18.00 hrs., on Friday January 9th near Al-Nasriyah in southern Iraq. This is an appeal for the immediate and urgent mobilization of your Agencies in securing the release of the prominent human rights defender, Mr.Uday Al-Zaidi.
Mr Al-Zaidi was arrested by Iraqi security forces at 18.00 hrs., on Friday January 9th in Al-Shatrah city in southern Iraq. Uday Al-Zaidi is internationally renowned for his courageous and outspoken advocacy against the sectarian cleansing in Iraq which began with the onset of the “divide and rule” policy of the US-UK invasion, continued under the occupation, their Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and now under his replacement of August 2014, Haider Al-Abadi.
His witness to Iraq’s ongoing tragedy has been tireless and international. On 19 March 2013 he received the BRussells Resistance Award.
In May 2011, invited by the Madrid-based Spanish Campaign Against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq, talking at venues in a number of cities he showed visuals, the reality of: “… killing of children, raping of women and men, secret prisons, daily humiliations”, of families assassinated by U.S bombs over eight grinding years. “An image is worth a thousand words. These images show what the occupation has done for us”, he said.
It is also incumbent upon the UN and all other relevant international organizations that pressure be brought on the Iraqi Authorities for Mr Al-Zaidi’s immediate release. Prime Minister Al-Abadi’s personal responsibility for Mr Al-Zaidi’s safety is paramount. His release could be a turning point for Iraq. Any other outcome a further slide into the abyss, with human rights and international law counting for even less than their woeful international post-invasion standing.
---
* " 'We will protest until the occupiers leave' – An Interview with Uday al-Zaidi" (2011-05-15) [https://warresisters.wordpress.com/iraq-reports-analysis-and-interviews-on-movement-building-now/“we-will-protest-until-the-occupiers-leave-”-an-interview-with-uday-al-zaidi/] [https://archive.today/jvukA]
“Since 2003, there have been a million deaths and four million orphans. And the big joke is that Iraq is a wealthy country. But its people, us, have to dig in the garbage to try and survive.”
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: State of Israel, occupied territories, international operations
* "Palestinian journalists targeted as Netanyahu and Abbas march for “free expression” in Paris" (2015-01-15) [http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/patrick-strickland/palestinian-journalists-targeted-netanyahu-and-abbas-march-free-expression] [https://archive.today/vezsC]
---
The following article brings with it a simple question: What is the government doing for the Citizens being made homeless? Is there a guaranteed employment agency, a housing program, free secular education for the evicted Citizens? The article does not provide that information. Is the treatment of these Citizens of the Bedouin culture comparable to the treatment of the "Montagnards" (Hmong) by the government in Vietnam, or of the Garifuna by the USA-backed dictatorship in Honduras?
* "Al-Araqib Village Buildings Demolished for 80th Time" (2015-01) [https://archive.today/FFbzy]:
Israeli authorities, on Wednesday, demolished a number of steel structures belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel, in the Negev-region village of al-Araqib, for the 80th time in a row.
Ma'an further reports that Israeli bulldozers, escorted by police forces, also demolished a building in the industrial area of Rahat, in southern Israel.
Both towns are populated primarily by Palestinian Bedouins with Israeli citizenship, with al-Araqib in particular being targeted repeatedly, since 2010, for demolition by authorities.
Israel considers al-Araqib and most other Arab villages in the Negev illegal, while, for Bedouins, the region is their ancestral land and they claim the right to live in the area.
Residents of al-Araqib have repeatedly fled into the village cemetery and lived there after Israeli authorities bulldozed several areas of the town, since they had been assured the cemetery would not be destroyed.
There are about 260,000 Bedouin in Israel, according to Ma'an, mostly living in and around the Negev in the arid south. More than half live in unrecognized villages without utilities and many also live in extreme poverty.
Al-Araqib is among some of the 40 Negev villages Israeli authorities have deemed unrecognized, arguing that the 53,000 Palestinian Bedouins living there cannot prove land ownership.
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Republic of the Philippines
Everything that is said about north Korea is given as reasons for violent intervention, yet, a system that is far worse is administered by the Republic of the Philippines, and is considered as an exemplary ally to the USA and Japan. The jurisdiction administered by the Republic of the Philippines has 100 million Citizens and 111,000 prisoners [https://archive.today/0Qjwt].
* "Child labour: Hunger and child malnutrition invisible in the Philippines" [http://www.academia.edu/3998629/Child_labour_Hunger_and_child_malnutrition_invisible_in_the_Philippines] [https://archive.today/7CpAe], [begin excerpt]:
In the Philippines, many children are engaged in child labour. One of the six reported forms of worst child labour in the country is child labour in sugarcane plantations. Child malnutrition or food insecurity is not commonly connected to child labour. The 23rd indicator of the FAO guidelines for adequate food assessment however, is the net primary school enrolment ratio. In other words, how many children are forced to work in a society instead of reading books at school? Suppose that all the children under the age of 18 go to school one day, how many children and adults will starve on that day?
In fact, the Philippines government legally allows child labour. The Child Labour Law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 15 except when working directly with a parent, when working in public entertainment is “essential”, and when the work does not endanger the child’s life, safety, health or morals or does not interfere with schooling. In many cases, the owner of the sugarcane plantation assigns areas of the plantation to various families (rather than to individual workers) to cultivate. In such a traditional tenant agricultural system, all family members, including children, work on the plantation. Under the law’s provision of children working with parents, this set up may not be categorized as child labour. Moreover, the law does not define any minimum age to begin work.
Approximately 80 percent of the total population in Negros Occidental are engaged in sugarcane work. There are about 5-10 landlords who own all the plantations in the village, while 80 percent of the farmers in each village are irregular sugarcane workers on these plantations. Without any written contract, they work during the milling season, and only some expect to get employed during the off season. Those who do not have work during the milling season are forced to migrate to the city in search for employment.
[end excerpt]
* "Manila slum life" (2004) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/world_manila_slum_life/print.stm] [https://web.archive.org/web/20100731052704/http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/world_manila_slum_life/print.stm], [begin excerpt]:
The Philippines where about 20 million people live in slums. One tenth of slum dwellers live in the capital Manila. There are 80,000 people per square kilometre.
The United Nations says many of them lack adequate water, housing, sanitation, education, health and employment. [end excerpt]
* "Forced to live in makeshift shanty towns built in disaster zones, the poor families of Manila being left behind by Asia's fastest-growing economy" (2013-06-11) [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2339640/Manila-slums-Forced-live-makeshift-shanty-towns-built-disaster-zones-poor-families-Manila-left-Asias-fastest-growing-economy.html] [https://archive.today/nBczL]
* "Children CAGED to keep the streets clean for the Pope: Police round up orphans and chain them in filth during pontiff's visit to Philippines" (2015-01-08) [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2906730/EXCLUSIVE-Children-CAGED-God-Police-seize-orphans-chain-filth-clear-streets-Pope-s-visit-Philippines.html] [https://archive.today/Fsyhv]
* "DESPITE 6.3% GDP JUMP, Hunger grips 7.36M kids" (2014-10-27) [http://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/other/despite-63percent-gdp-jump-poe-hunger-grips-736m-kids/ar-BBbtJ47] [https://archive.today/6rgLU]
* "15M PH kids hungry" (2014-10-28) [http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/647270/15m-ph-kids-hungry-poe] [https://archive.today/Q54FR]
* "Poverty, hunger prevent Filipino kids from getting basic education" (2008-08-04) [http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/111257/news/specialreports/poverty-hunger-prevent-filipino-kids-from-getting-basic-education] [https://archive.today/MLbmm]
* "Children on Philippine Island Still Dying of Starvation Despite Global Aid Effort" (1987) [http://articles.latimes.com/1987-04-02/news/mn-1984_1_land-reform] [https://archive.today/MVMaW]
* Collage of photos depicting the slums administered by the Republic of the Philippines [https://archive.today/8b7ZF].
Updates on the BOLIVARIAN ALLIANCE FOR OUR AMERICAS (ALBA)
Republic of Cuba
* "Obama to Use Détente as Cover for His Plans to Destabilize Cuba" (2015-01-13) [http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/13/obama-use-detente-as-cover-his-plans-destabilize-cuba.html] [https://archive.today/tpLBb], [begin excerpt]: [end excerpt]
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Plurinational State of Bolivia
* "Evo Morales has proved that socialism doesn’t damage economies; Bolivia’s re-elected president has dumbfounded critics in Washington, the World Bank and the IMF" (2014-10-14) [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/evo-morales-reelected-socialism-doesnt-damage-economies-bolivia] [https://archive.today/qH4OE]
Updates on the EURASIAN UNION (EEU), SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION (SCO), and allies
* "Russia and China: The Dawning of a New Monetary System?" (2015-01-09) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-and-china-the-dawning-of-a-new-monetary-system/5423637] [https://archive.today/TCSzB]
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Republic of Serbia
* "Serbian President Demands Kosovo Referendum" (2014-12-29) [http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbian-president-calls-for-kosovo-referendum] [https://archive.today/kQHiI]
To protect the Serbian people within the jurisdiction Kosovo, most of whom are within the region of North Mitrovica, there needs to be not only recognition of their existance, but also a referendum.
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* "Serbian Fighters Help 'Russian Brothers' in Crimea" (2014--03-06) [http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbian-fighters-head-to-crimea] [https://archive.today/CrsGS]
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Federal Union of Novorossiya, People's Republic of Donestk (DPR) and Lunghask (LPR)
* "Antratsyt, Luhansk: workers restart production at state owned Luganskugleremont factory" (2014-12-18) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/antratsyt-luhansk-workers-restart-production-at-state-owned-luganskugleremont-factory/] [https://archive.today/iWS6c]
* "Miners in the armies of the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk" (2014-11-24) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/miners-in-the-armies-of-the-peoples-republics-of-donetsk-and-lugansk/] [https://archive.today/rJn3J]
* "Donetsk republic dispatches 300 tons of coal to Ukraine as relief aid" (2015-01-15) [http://itar-tass.com/en/world/771371] [https://archive.today/XCumu]
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* "Perspectives for the People’s Republics: The external and domestic struggle of the left and progressive forces" (2014-12-16) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/perspectives-for-the-peoples-republics-the-external-and-domestic-struggle-of-the-left-and-progressive-forces/] [https://archive.today/qZr7o]
* "Ukraine: Reorganisation of the Left – New developments in the East" (2014-12-13) [https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/ukraine-reorganisation-of-the-left-new-developments-in-the-east/] [https://archive.today/jn5Yb]
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* "Ukraine Shells Donetsk Populated Areas Over 30 Times Overnight" (2015-01-17) [http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150117/1017015602.html] [https://archive.today/q4cN4]
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Federation of Russia
* "Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar" (2015-01-14) [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-14/russia-just-pulled-itself-out-petrodollar] [https://archive.today/Xy0v5]
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* "Medvedev: Russian economy will endure" (2015-01-14) [http://www.oilgasdaily.com/reports/Medvedev_Russian_economy_will_endure_999.html] [https://archive.today/F9aOn]
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* "Russia-EU Mars Research Program to Be Completed" (2015-01-13) [http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Russia_EU_Mars_Research_Program_to_Be_Completed_999.html] [https://archive.today/VqDNt]
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* "Russia to Merge Air, Space Forces in 2015: Defense Ministry" (2015-01-13) [http://sputniknews.com/military/20150113/1016833544.html] [https://archive.today/OrhvA]
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* "RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN SIGNS GMO LABELING LIABLITY LAW" (2015-01-03) [http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/science_technology/dna_gmo/news.php?q=1421259595] [https://archive.today/ATs3B], original in Russian at [https://archive.today/7dZ8V]
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* "Duma moves to outlaw ‘undesirable’ foreign groups" (2015-01-15) [http://rt.com/politics/222883-russia-undesirable-groups-bill/] [https://archive.today/TtFWr], [begin excerpt]:
The main idea behind the bill is that the Prosecutor General’s Office together with the Justice Ministry and Interior Ministry should create an official list of “undesirable foreign organizations” and outlaw their activities in the country.
The main criteria for putting an organization, which can be a foreign or international NGO as well as a company on the list is, “the threat to the defense capability or security of the Russian State,” or “the threat to public order and people’s health.”
After the group is recognized as “undesirable”, the authorities would freeze its accounts in Russian banks and impound any property on Russian territory. The organization would also be banned from opening offices, branches or affiliate companies in Russia, and barred from collecting donations or distributing propaganda. The bill also stipulates that individual foreign members of the banned groups would be banned from entering the country.
“Today we live in a period when some foreign organizations behave not in the best way. The reasons may vary, some act on requests of intelligence services, others have different motives. Sometimes it is even economic, they create problems for Russia in order to cheaply purchase Russian assets,” MP Tarnavskiy said as he presented the bill to the parliamentary committee. “The main objective of the motion is to demonstrate the existence of groups that are unfriendly to Russia,” he added.
[end excerpt]
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PR China
* "Confucius the Redeemer symbol of Xi's Chinese Dream" (2015-01-14) [http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Confucius_the_Redeemer_symbol_of_Xis_Chinese_Dream_999.html] [https://archive.today/T0u1K]
HISTORY & THE CURRENT CONTEXT
* "Stepan Bandera: The Legacy of Self-Loathing Nazi’s in America" (2015-01-15) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/stepan-bandera-the-legacy-of-self-loathing-nazis-in-america/5424749] [https://archive.today/1PGRw], [begin excerpt]:
Stepan Bandera’s greatest impact on the world was in North America through the OUN(Bandera’s nationalist army)-ABN (Anti-Bolshevik Nations)-UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America), and Eastern European emigre groups.
In the 1930′s Stepan Bandera and the OUN sent letters to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt to gain US recognition for the right of Ukrainian nazis to set up their own country. This came at the same time as Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. President Roosevelt rebuffed Bandera’s efforts and made it clear this would never happen.
In 1936 US Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd sent President Roosevelt a letter in which he stated - ”A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.”
This coup attempt culminated in a plan to assassinate sitting US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The assassination was planned between 1940-42. This was done even though there was already an investigation into the coup plot. Stepan Bandera ordered his favorite assassin to murder a sitting US President because Roosevelt refused to legitimize Bandera’s terrorist organization, the OUN-ABN-UCCA. Consider that this was the beginning of WW2 for the United States. What would have happened if the Bandera attempt had been successful? Consider what would have happened if the US came into WW2 under its own fascist government. Today there is only one official record of this occurrence and its not part of well known American history.
(Photo showing Stepan Bandera, in the center, alongside fellow fascist military leaders)
“There is also evidence of the OUN collaboration with Nazi Germany against the US in the beginning of World War II. For example, archival documents show that the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI, the State Department, a special intelligence unit created by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and other agencies investigated in 1940-1942 an involvement of OUN and specifically, OUN-B, members, leaders, and sympathizers in a Nazi-led plot to assassinate President Roosevelt. They indicate that Christian Zinsser, an agent of German security services who worked under cover of a German press attaché in Buenos Aires in Argentina, recruited in 1940 Hryhori Matseiko with a mission to kill President Roosevelt. Matseiko was a leading OUN terrorist who assassinated the minister of internal affairs of Poland on the order of Stepan Bandera in 1934. The American, British, and Soviet intelligence services reported involvement of the OUN, in particular, Matseiko, in assisting role in the assassination of the King of Yugoslavia and the Foreign Minister in France in 1934.”- The Politics of World War II in Contemporary Ukraine Ivan Katchanovski Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 210-233The official version of the assassination attempt is only found at the Roosevelt Library- Henry Field Papers, Box 52, Folder “1964,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New
York; Department of State Confidential Decimal File, Case 800.20211/Matzejko. National
Archives, College Park, Maryland; Pavel Sudoplatov, Spetsoperatsii. Lubianka i Kreml 1930-1950 gody (Moscow: OLMA-Press, 1998/2003) 26.
Roosevelt ordered the investigation of the OUN-ABN-UCCA Ukrainian nationalists in the United States under the House Un-American Activities Committee for nazism. After Roosevelt’s successor Harry Truman took the presidency the OUN-ABN-UCCA were reclassified as anti-communists and the nazi investigation was closed. Instead of testifying to the US Congress about their own anti- American activities like treason and attempted assassination, the Bandera stood behind Senator Joseph McCarthy and wrote the questions that defined what it meant to be un-American and demanded the answers.
Stepan Bandera and the OUN-ABN-UWC-UCCA leadership never answered for the assassination attempt or even apologized.
The American Liberty League, the working group behind the coup attempt went on to morph into the most powerful political engine in American history which was the China Lobby. One of the founders of the China Lobby was Yaroslav Stetsko. Stetsko was second in command to the Ukrainain nazi Stepan Bandera. His groups gave Senator Joe McCarthy the questions that defined what it meant to be a good American during the red scares. This mass murdering nazi became powerful enough in American politics to write points into Democratic and Republican presidential campaign platforms by the early 1950′s.
[end excerpt]
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* "IS THE U.S. BACKING NEO-NAZIS IN UKRAINE?" (2014-03-02) [http://voiceofdetroit.net/2014/03/02/is-the-u-s-backing-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/] [https://archive.today/ZABOn], [begin excerpt]:
Revered by Ukrainian nationalists as a legendary freedom fighter, Bandera’s real record was ignominious at best. After participating in a campaign to assassinate Ukrainians who supported accommodation with the Polish during the 1930’s, Bandera’s forces set themselves to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943 and 1944. In the process, they killed over 90,000 Poles and many Jews, whom Bandera’s top deputy and acting “Prime Minister,” Yaroslav Stetsko, were determined to exterminate. Bandera held fast to fascist ideology in the years after the war, advocating a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe while his affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out a doomed armed struggle against the Soviet Union. The bloodbath he inspired ended when KGB agents assassinated him in Munich in 1959.
Many surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the United States – occasionally with CIA help – where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. “You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence,” one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group’s resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, “Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party.”
In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of “complete OUN-B fronts,” according to Bellant. By the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky, serving as ambassador to the Bahamas, and his daughter, Paula, sitting on the National Security Council. Reagan personally welcomed Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.
“Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. “Your dream is our dream.”
When the Justice Department launched a crusade to capture and prosecute Nazi war criminals in 1985, UCCA snapped into action, lobbying Congress to halt the initiative. “The UCCA has also played a leading role in opposing federal investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals since those queries got underway in the late 1970’s,” Bellant wrote. “Some UCCA members have many reasons to worry – reasons which began in the 1930’s.”
In 2009, on the 50th anniversary of Bandera’s death, the group proclaimed [20] him “a symbol of strength and righteousness for his followers” who “continue[s] to inspire Ukrainians today.” A year later, the group honored [21] the 60th anniversary of the death of Roman Shukhevych, the OUN-B commander of the Nachtigall Battalion that slaughtered Jews in Lviv and Belarus, calling him a “hero” who “fought for honor, righteousness…”
Back in Ukraine in 2010, then-President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title of “National Hero of Ukraine,” marking the culmination of his efforts to manufacture an anti-Russian national narrative that sanitized the OUN-B’s fascism. (Yuschenko’s wife, Katherine Chumachenko, [22] was a former Reagan administration official and ex-staffer at the right-wing Heritage Foundation). When the European Parliament condemned Yushchenko’s proclamation as an affront to “European values,” the UCCA-affiliated Ukrainian World Congress reacted with outrage, [23] accusing the EU of “another attempt to rewrite Ukrainian history during WWII.” On its website, the UCCA dismissed [24] historical accounts of Bandera’s collaboration with the Nazis as “Soviet propaganda.”
[end excerpt]
They revere soldier who carried out the Wolyn massacres
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"America Failed at Building Up the Iraqi Army Back in the ’50s Sound familiar?" (2015-01-12) [https://medium.com/war-is-boring/how-the-u-s-failed-at-building-up-the-iraqi-army-in-the-50s-c43bfe3dfe11] [https://archive.today/wPxDu]
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"60 Years Since Launch of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Program" (2015-01-15) [http://sputniknews.com/asia/20150115/1016940901.html] [https://archive.today/TaXfW]
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* "History Proves that Western Governments Have Already Used Food as a Weapon of Genocide" (2015-01-09) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/history-proves-that-western-governments-have-already-used-food-as-a-weapon-of-genocide/5423682] [https://archive.today/KYRpH], [begin excerpts]:
In his book The Famine Plot, Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan brings to light how the British monarchy essentially drove the Irish people of that time to their grim fate by engineering the food shortage that would eventually capture more than one in eight Irish lives. Based on the definitions outlined by the United Nations as to what genocide actually is, the way the Irish were treated by the Royal Crown during the mid-19th century serves as a clear example of genocide through food.
According to Coogan’s account, the British government of the time purposely did nothing to help the Irish people when an unusual fungus began to wipe out much of the potato crop. With tensions high between the Protestant and Catholic elements of the two countries, England used the famine as an excuse to neglect and mistreat the Irish, claiming that they brought poverty on themselves by clinging to Catholicism.
The English already owned much of the land in Ireland prior to the famine, with the Irish as their tenants. They taxed the Irish heavily and charged them exorbitant rents, even as times began to get tough in the early days of the famine, and forced them to export most of their corn, wheat, barley and oat crops to Britain. This left only potatoes, which were slowly eaten up by the fungus, resulting in no food for the Irish.
Rather than help the Irish in their time of need, the British continued to turn up the heat, arguing in essence that God was judging the Irish for their misdeeds, which included rejecting the national religion of England. As explained by Coogan in his book, many local organizations sought to provide food and other forms of aid to the Irish, but the Crown made sure that almost none of these efforts were successful.
“The damned Irish were going to get what they deserved because of their attachment to Catholicism and Irish ways when they were refusing to toe the British line,” reports IrishCentral.com, reflecting the contents in Coogan’s book. “[E]very possible effort by local organizations to feed the starving were thwarted and frustrated by a British government intent on teaching the Irish a lesson and forcing market forces on them.”
[end excerpt]
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"The War on Billie Holiday: The Bureau of Narcotics’ strange obsession" (2015-01-16) [http://inthesetimes.com/article/17536/the_war_on_billie_holiday] [https://archive.today/NToqK], [begin excerpt]: Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (established in 1930), believed in. It is improvised, and relaxed, and free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores. To Anslinger, this was musical anarchy, and evidence of a recurrence of the primitive impulses that lurk in black people, waiting to emerge. “It sounded,” his internal memos said, “like the jungles in the dead of night.” Another memo warned that “unbelievably ancient indecent rites of the East Indies are resurrected” in this black man’s music. The lives of the jazzmen, he said, “reek of filth.”
His agents reported back to him that “many among the jazzmen think they are playing magnificently when under the influence of marihuana [sic] but they are actually becoming hopelessly confused and playing horribly.”
The Bureau believed that marijuana slowed down your perception of time dramatically, and this was why jazz music sounded so freakish—the musicians were literally living at a different, inhuman rhythm. “Music hath charms,” their memos say, “but not this music.” Indeed, Harry took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane. For example, the song “That Funny Reefer Man” contains the line “Any time he gets a notion, he can walk across the ocean.” Harry’s agents warned: “He does think that.”
Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with men like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and—as the journalist Larry Sloman recorded—he longed to see them all behind bars. He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them and instructed: “Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” His advice on drug raids to his men was always, “Shoot first.”
He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.” But when Harry came for them, the jazz world would have one weapon that saved them: its absolute solidarity. Anslinger’s men could find almost no one among them who was willing to snitch, and whenever one of them was busted, they all chipped in to bail him out.
In the end, the Treasury Department told Anslinger he was wasting his time taking on a community that couldn’t be fractured, so he scaled down his focus until it settled like a laser on a single target—perhaps the greatest female jazz vocalist there ever was—Billie Holiday.
[end excerpt]
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Al of Cambridge, Massachussets, posted as a comment at [https://archive.today/cROAO]:
In the mid 1970's, my city (Boston, Mass, USA) was in turmoil because of court-ordered school desegregation. White assholes were throwing rocks at little black kids on school buses. This was Boston in 1976, not Selma Alabama in 1965. I was part of the anti-racism committee of our Tenant's Union. Our job was to go take the rocks for the kids. And we did. (Maybe we threw some rocks back -- I'm not proud of that, but things look different when you're 22.)
Of course rocks are not the same as guns. But a little later the battle shifted: some of the assholes who were throwing rocks escalated to burning out Haitian immigrant families who had moved into public housing. People died in those fires. We did what we could to stop it.
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"For The Revival of Bolshevism" by Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency [https://www.facebook.com/RevolutionaryTendency]:
Mike Hirst falsely claims, "Bolshevism's world wide and historical record in achieving popular and progressive change is much worse than leftists operating in a social democratic framework - fact."
100% False. For instance, the New Deal in the United States was won by reds leading the labor movement, not by the Democrats who feared the working class. Similarly, it was the planned socialist economies of eastern Europe with guaranteed employment, healthcare, and education that helped force the imperialist capitalist countries of the west to give some of that to the working class, not the capitalist social democratic parties that have moved far to the right and are imposing austerity now. The capitalist classes backed those social democratic reforms in Europe at one time as a means of preventing social revolution. And all of that happened of course after the USSR liberated Europe from the Nazis. As the social democratic, Labourite, and Democratic parties have moved far to the right, what is needed is a revival of Bolshevism, not attempts to rebuild those failed pro-capitalist and imperialist models.
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This is a concise statement by Steven, provides some light on what influenced the monopolists in yielding to some of the demands of the workers within economically important jurisdictions, but at the same time, we can't forget how even the "liberal" Presidents of the USA and Prime Ministers of the various constituent members of the European Union provided a hell on this green earth to the people of Latin America (Central America and Bolivia especially) and Africa througout the 20th century, giving rise to today's popular revival of socialism! The more that you know about the economic history of Central America (especially in Guatemala and El Salvador), with artificial famines and permanent poverty, the more one concedes that the excesses of the old USSR are debatable in their severity, but that the dictatorship of capital was far, many times further, worse that what is said even of Stalin! Millions dead in Central America, extreme oppression against captive nations (Acalate of El Salvador, Garifuna of Honduras, etc.), slave camps on plantations as common business practice...
The plan for Austerity being implemented in the USA and the EU is meant to bring the quality of life of the People to the level of Latin America, already seen amidst communities of lower-income among the New African nation, and among white American nationals.
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Censorship in the USA, and example from Robert Parry, investigative journalist [https://archive.today/JuZw1]:
In the early 1990s, when Emerson was riding high as “an award-winning journalist” and took aim at me by falsely claiming that I had lied in a PBS documentary, he responded to my protest to his editors by threatening a lawsuit against me.
Only after I was able to prove that it was Emerson who was lying did he grudgingly back down and blamed one of his researchers for the falsehood. The context of that fabrication was Emerson’s attempt to debunk allegations that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign had colluded with Iranian officials to sabotage President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then being held in Iran, a crisis that effectively sank Carter’s reelection.
For a PBS “Frontline” documentary on the controversy, I had noted that the Secret Service had released only redacted copies of its records regarding the whereabouts of then vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush on days when he was alleged to have traveled secretly to Paris. Writing for The New Republic, Emerson claimed that he had received copies of the Secret Service records under a Freedom of Information Act request without any redactions, suggesting that I had lied.
After talking to the Secret Service and being told that Emerson’s records had redactions like everyone else’s – even Congress and federal prosecutors received redacted versions – I challenged Emerson’s account in letters to his editors, including one to CNN where he had been hired as an investigative reporter.
Emerson was subsequently dumped by CNN and I was promptly threatened by one of his law firms with a libel suit for having criticized him in letters to his editors. Apparently, I was supposed to apologize for saying that Emerson was lying when he claimed to have Bush’s unredacted Secret Service records.
Faced with this legal threat, I had to dig into my children’s college fund and hire a lawyer, who frankly seemed to doubt that the well-regarded Emerson could be in the wrong. My response was that if Emerson actually had the unredacted records, he could simply present them, but his lawyer said that would only be done in the midst of a costly trial.
As the abusive and threatening letters from Emerson’s lawyers mounted, I decided to submit a FOIA to the Secret Service for Emerson’s FOIA, i.e., I demanded exactly the same documents that the Secret Service had released to him. When those records arrived, they showed that Emerson indeed had been lying. His copies of the Secret Service records were redacted, just like those released to me and other investigators.
Finally, the threatened lawsuit went away, and Emerson was forced to admit in an interview with the media watchdog group FAIR that he never had the records he claimed. He blamed a research assistant, but never apologized for the bullying legal strategy designed to financially bleed a journalist (myself) into confirming a lie as the truth. (For more details, see a report in FAIR’s “Extra!,” November-December 1993 [https://archive.today/i3XEz])
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Perception management: How "skepticism" is used to deny evidence.
Sometimes, simple disbelief of the entire premise is enough to hold as evidence that the premise is wrong, a faulty reasoning based on emotion. This type of skepticism is classified as "middle of the road", a politically-correct viewpoint upheld by those adverse to controversy or critical thinking.
For example, this form of emotional-based skepticism is used to attack GlobalResearch.ca, as shown in the following examples:
* "Rational Wiki: GlobalResearch.ca" [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca] [https://archive.today/YAj81], and at [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whale.to] [https://archive.today/5Zjt6], the second example showing GlobalResearch.ca as a crazy website alongside other examples, each as different from the other yet still categorized as the same.
* "True Lies: Canada’s Global Research Trolls the Internet" [http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/08/14/true-lies-canadas-global-research-trolls-the-internet/] [https://archive.today/ePHr8], providing the weakest argument against the validity of the targeted online news journal.
The argument can be summed up as follows: GlobalResearch.ca provides articles from foreign sources, or from researchers whose articles are contrary to the skeptics personal beliefs despite the empirical veracity of the evidence, hence, GlobalResearch.ca is not to be believed! The examples of attacks against GlobalResearch.ca are written by authors who show not only emotional-based reasoning, but who appear to approve of unlimited war and an unusual amount of trust in the USA's official version of events, which is particularly sinful for a supposed skeptic. Ironically, this places GlobalResearch.ca's neutral re-postings of articles as being more trustworthy than the skeptics themselves.
The "Rational Wiki" skeptic's list of the three worst articles posted to GlobalResearch.ca, and the most likeliest explanation about why the articles are hated:
(1) Even today, many educated people in the USA do not believe that the USA engaged in a white-supremacist war of genocide against the People of Korea, with over 4 million victims during the early 1950s. The following article describes this, and perhaps this is why the skeptics at "Rational Wiki" show extreme hostility to the article:
* "North Korea, a Land of Human Achievement, Love and Joy North Korea Celebrates 60th Anniversary of Victory" (2013-08-04) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/north-korea-a-land-of-human-achievement-love-and-joy/5344960] [https://archive.today/Ct6mB], [begin excerpt]:
I explained that the best way to combat Western propaganda is to show to the world the faces of North Korean people. “It is their common tactic”, I said. “They portray people of China, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, as heartless, as if they were some plastic androids. Then, subconsciously, compassion for the people of those nations vanishes from the hearts of the Western public. Suddenly it is fine to starve them, to bomb them, to murder thousands, even millions of those androids. But once the faces are shown, the Western public gets confused; many refuse to support mass murder.“
In 1950, at the beginning of the war, the city of Sinch’ŏn was the site of a massacre of civilians by occupying U.S forces. The number of civilians killed over the 52-day period was allegedly over 35,000 people, the equivalent of a quarter of the city’s population at the time.
Ramsey Clark spoke about the horrors of the past, and about the brutality of the US actions. An old man, one of the survivors of the mass killings of civilians in the tunnels, spoke about horrors he witnessed as a child. The artwork in the local museum depicted the brutal torture and rape of Korean women by US troops, their bodies mutilated; with nipples penetrated by metal hooks.
Millions of faceless victims burned alive by napalm, ‘bomb-lets’ that explode decades later when children or water buffaloes are playing on the fields.
In the West, the topic remains almost totally taboo. One of the greatest journalists of the 20th century, Wilfred Burchett, even lost his citizenship and became ‘an enemy of the Australian people’, partially because he dared to describe the suffering of the North Korean people.
60 years ago North Korea won the war. But some 4 million people died many of them, civilians. Maybe it was more than 4 million, nobody knows exactly. The capital city Pyongyang was totally leveled to the ground.
[end excerpt]
(2) The following article is critical of the USA, and provides detailed information about why the USA would destroy the government which provided the highest quality of life on the continent of Africa. The skeptics at "Rational Wiki" chose to ignore not only that the quality of life in Libya gave it's former government of the masses (Jamahiriya) a loyalty shared by the majority of the people, but the editors also seem to overlook the violence used by the USA against Libya!
* "Why the NATO powers are trying to assassinate Moammar Gaddafi Protecting civilians or western oil companies?" (2011-06-13) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-the-nato-powers-are-trying-to-assassinate-moammar-gaddafi/25255] [https://archive.today/MDM3K], [begin excerpt]:
Wikileaks-released State Department cables from November 2007 and afterwards show the real reason for the mounting U.S. hostility to the Libyan government prior to the current civil war.
One State Department cable from November 2007 (Wikileaks reference ID 07TRIPOLI967) sounds the alarm of “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism” by the Gaddafi government.
Condemning “Libyan resource nationalism” is diplomatic language. The U.S. government was furious that Gaddafi was moving to rein in and limit the power and profits of the western-owned oil giants that he permitted to come back into the country after George W. Bush in 2004 lifted economic sanctions against Libya.
The same cable refers to an angry speech that Gaddafi made in 2006 which was interpreted as a virtual act of war by the oil companies and the U.S. and western governments.
Gaddafi’s speech included these unacceptable words: “Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them—now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.”
The oil companies and the State Department, as the cables indicate, were increasingly agitated by Gaddafi’s interference with their operations. The Washington Post, which is a big cheerleader for the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, published a story on June 11, 2011, about the leaked Libya cables: “Labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanise’ the economy, and oil firms were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resource directors.”
In mid-May 2011, just six weeks after the NATO bombing of Libya began, leaders of the anti-Gaddafi rebel movement came to Washington, D.C., for “talks.” They spoke at the U.S.-Libya Business Council. The big oil companies were present. The rebels have employed a public relations/lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., called the Harbour Group.
The principals of the Harbour Group include Hillary Clinton’s staff director from the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Another served as a spokesperson for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. The third served as a public relations figure in the last three Democratic presidential conventions, according to Reuters.
[end excerpt]
(3.1) For some, such as the editors at "Rational Wiki", critical studies of the State of Israel is defined as "hate speech" and as an intellectual embarrassment, a perception that confuses criticism of a government or national vanguard with an attack against everybody of the Jewish nation, an historically oppressed nation in Europe for over a thousand years. The following is a study of how that government projects its ideological interests within the realm administered by the USA. Unfortunately, no matter how disciplined and academic a critical study of the State of Israel is, it appears there are many who will choose emotional-based reasoning in declaring such criticism as hostile to their own personal beliefs, and the need for the eradication of such criticism.
* "The State and Local Bases of Zionist Power in America" (2010-09-01) [http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-and-local-bases-of-zionist-power-in-america/20877] [https://archive.today/cg7s6], [begin excerpt]:
There are at least 52 major American Jewish organizations actively engaged in promoting Israel’s foreign policy, economic and technological agenda in the US (see the appendix). The grassroots membership ranges from several hundred thousand militants in the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) to one hundred thousand wealthy contributors, activists and power brokers in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In addition scores of propaganda mills, dubbed think tanks, have been established by million dollar grants from billionaire Zionists including the Brookings Institute (Haim Saban) and the Hudson Institute among others.
In 2004, AIPAC successfully pressured the Bush Administration to create the office of Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (UTFI) and to name its protégé Princeton graduate Stuart Levey to that position. Before, but especially after his appointment, Levey was in close collaboration with the Israeli state and was known as an over the top Zionist zealot with unbounded energy and blind worship of the Israeli state.
The power of Israel in the US does not reside only in the influence and leadership of powerful Washington based “pro-Israel lobbies”, like AIPAC. Without the hundreds of thousands of militant locally based dentists, podiatrists, stockbrokers, real estate brokers, professors and others, the “lobby” would be unable to sustain and implement its policy among hundreds of millions of Americans outside the major metropolises. As we have seen from the Senate declassified documents, over a half-century ago, local Zionist organizations began a systematic campaign of penetration, control and intimidation that has reached its pinnacle in the first decade of the 21st century. It is no accident or mere coincidence that University officials in Northern Minnesota or upstate New York are targeted to exclude speakers or fire faculty members critical of Israel. Local Zionists have computerized databanks operating with an index of prohibited speakers, as the Zionists themselves admit and flaunt in contrast to “liberal” Zionists who are prone to label as “anti-Semitic” or “conspiracy theorists” writers who cite official Zionist documents demonstrating their systematic perversion of our democratic freedoms.
[end excerpt]
(3.2) There are "rational skeptics" who willfully disbelieve that the following scholarly article is true, through it is based on primary documents produced from the State of Israel and the former World Zionist Organization. This form of disbelief cannot be remedied, as it is not only willful, but based on extreme hatred against researchers who investigate these matters of international policy. The author, Israel Shahak, a professor of organic chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights at the time the article was originally published, himself suffered terrorism by those who disliked his research, including death threats and bomb threats!
* " 'Greater Israel': The Zionist Plan for the Middle East" [http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815] [https://archive.today/bpDMj]
===*===*===
"The Butcher of Bolivia" (2012-11-04) [http://www.bolivianexpress.org/blog/posts/the-butcher-of-bolivia] [https://archive.today/TgeBo]:
After WWII, the infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie found sanctuary in Bolivia, where he influenced national politics, helped overthrow a democratic government, and profited from the drug trade
Again, the topic of the Nazis’, says Nicolas Bauer, the president of Club Aleman, in an impatient voice. He lights another cigarette. ‘Well, what else could I have expected from someone who wants to write about German immigrants?’ For Bauer, it is difficult to say which of the Germans was not a Nazi before the end of World War II. Many Germans who immigrated before 1945 came to spread the Nazi way of life in Bolivia discreetly – several also came after 1945. In particular, many German teachers immigrated during the 1930s and 1940s and spread the National Socialist ideology. Ironically, many German Jews also immigrated to Bolivia during and after the war.
After the war, several ex-Nazis escaped to South America and Bolivia via ‘ratlines’, the notorious escape routes for Axis war criminals that were organized by members of the Catholic Church. US intelligence agencies also assisted, using the fugitives as assets during the Cold War. Among the most notorious was Klaus Barbie, the former chief of the Gestapo in Lyon. Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, tortured French Resistance leader Jean Moulin to death during the war, and was the man responsible for the deportation of 44 Jewish orphans to Auschwitz and their subsequent deaths. ‘I came to kill’ was the first thing he said upon reaching France. In Bolivia, Barbie became a tireless hustler and eccentric, wheeling and dealing with the German business community, politicians, and arms and drug traffickers. He held court in the Club La Paz near Plaza San Francisco, where former Nazis would meet with him to discuss old times.
During his stay in Bolivia, Barbie (who went by the name of Altmann) worked for the Department of the Interior as a lieutenant colonel and as an instructor for the Bolivian security forces, teaching them the finer points of torture and ‘disappearance’ of political dissidents. Together with Hans Stellfeld, another ex-Nazi officer, Barbie was instrumental in the ascendance of General Luis Garcia Meza Tejada, who took over the country as a dictator after a coup d’état in 1980. Called the ‘Cocaine Coup’, this takeover was financed through deals with wealthy cocaine producers in Santa Cruz, who gave kickbacks to Garcia Meza; Barbie was responsible for eliminating rival drug lords through his paramilitary group ‘the Fiancés of Death’.
In 1983, after the restoration of the civilian government in Bolivia, Barbie was finally arrested and extradited to France. He was condemned to life in jail and died there in 1991. His surviving family lives in Germany still. His Nazi comrades do not. They are still at home in Bolivian society. And they do not want to hear about the past.In the 1960s the ‘German colony’, as Bauer calls it, was centred in the Sopocachi neighbourhood. Barbie’s home was located there, on Avenida 20 de Octubre. Bauer often visited. At the time, he thought Barbie was nice and entertaining, not knowing about his sinister past.
Now, the Achumani district, in Zona Sur, is the centre of the German expat community. The Club Aleman is the reason for this change. With its white stone lobby and elegant wood terrace, it’s a throwback to another time. Nearby, the German school now has classes full of Bolivians, most of them members of the Club Aleman. But only 13 percent of Germans in Bolivia are members – an interesting development from the late 80s, a time before which non-Germans were prohibited from joining. Germans in Bolivia are still identified with National Socialism, but they are not criticised or confronted with it. And only occasionally do Bolivians greet their German neighbours with the Hitler salute.
Bolivians avoid acknowledging fascism’s bloody history because it was deeply rooted in their own political system for several years. The Bolivian Socialist Falange, established in 1937, was the country’s second-largest party between approximately 1954 and 1974. It was particularly strong in Santa Cruz and La Paz. One of the first sights Barbie saw after his arrival in La Paz was a march by FSB members. He later claimed that the sight of the uniformed, armband-wearing militants giving the Roman salute made him feel at home, and he soon sought out the party’s leading members and became close to them.
After 1974, the followers of the Falange lent their support to various military regimes, including those of Generals. Hugo Banzer and Juan Pereda. But with the restoration of the democratic process in Bolivia, they have become much less influential.
Yet some remnants of Nazi ideology remain in Bolivia. Four years ago in Cochabamba, the German school choir from La Paz marched into the room with a Hitler salute. It caused a minor scandal but was quickly hushed up.
Bauer says that the public has forgotten about its Nazi connection. Germans introduced a ‘forced forgetting’ to protect their reputations. They want to maintain their high-status life in Achumani and remain integrated in Bolivian society. In Germany, every school kid has learnt about National Socialism. They’ve all been to a concentration camp and several war museums. They remember and are confronted with the past. However, the process of a huge public discussion about the war and an emergence of collective memory has yet to develop in Bolivia.
Nevertheless, Bauer sees a light at the end of this tunnel. He wants to establish a discussion evening at the Club Aleman about the Nazi past. ‘It will be a scandal, something like this has never happened before’, he says in his harsh voice. His attitude changes during our conversation, from reluctantly discussing Bolivia’s dark chapter of history to embracing the notion of some sort of absolution through historical confrontation and acknowledgment. Nearly 70 years after the defeat of Nazism in Europe, Bolivia is finally ready to confront its own embrace of that barbarous ideology.
ACTION CALENDER
A list of gatherings, workshops, and educational events in the greater Bay Area region
PACK THE COURTROOM FOR OUR COMRADE ALI!
Jan. 22nd at 9:00am
Vallejo Superior Court Department 24
321 Tuolumne St, Vallejo, California 94590
[https://www.facebook.com/events/1538440369769369/]
On September 1, 2014 Anwar was falsely arrested during our 2nd Annual Community Appreciation BBQ, On this day we marched in solidarity with Ferguson and the family of Michael Brown, murdered by Ferguson Police , At the end of our march while returning back to our destination Ali Oakbaba was arrested falsely arrested by Vallejo Police , came from behind to capture and silence him for exercising his right to protest. Those of you who are active in the movement against police brutality know how dedicated he is to the movement
Please Join us as we stand in solidarity with Ali and let them know that he is not alone in this fight
Protest War Criminal Karl Rove in Contra Costa!
Thursday, January 22, 5:00 - 6:30 PM
Concord Hilton, 1970 Diamond Blvd., across from Willows Shopping Center (park & meet up there)
Join Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center, CODEPINK and others to hand out fliers, hold signs, and educate passersby about the war criminal Karl Rove (aka "Bush's Brain) and missile defense booster Ellen Tauscher speaking at the East Bay Leadership Council forum.
Jan. 24, 2015
[https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1574151249488303] [http://sinbarras.org]
The Santa Cruz community-based organization Sin Barras (Without Prison Bars) is a prison abolitionist group that fights for prisoners’ rights with the goal of ending the Prison Industrial Complex.
Please join our most urgent fight.
At least 6 people have died in the county jail while in the hands of the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department and California Forensics Medical Group (CFMG) since August 2012. In April 2013, we organized a march and speakout, highlighting sheriff violence faced by people inside the County Jail that inspired the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury to investigate the jail’s deadly conditions. The grand jury report named the April 2013 demonstration as a primary catalyst for the investigation.
In September 2014, the Grand Jury released its Final Report, which included recommendations to improve physical and mental health services in the jail. Nearly all of the research was met with utter denial from the Sheriff‘s Department and CFMG, continuing a trend of disrespect for the community and confirming that they operate with little to no accountability.
Sin Barras is organizing a demonstration on January 24th to demand immediate medical and safety measures be met to reduce harm faced by those presently incarcerated.
We demand that the County Board of Supervisors cancel its contract with CFMG and refuse to participate in the current wave of county jail expansion. These deaths are an act of collective punishment against people who are most in need of aid, and who are consistently denied community-based resources and drug treatment. While we fight for immediate solutions, we do so with a commitment to dismantling the prison system once and for all, brick by brick, wall by wall.
The deaths in the jail are caused by the same pattern of unaccountability that recently allowed Officer Darren Wilson to walk free after killing Michael Brown. From Ferguson to Santa Cruz, it is clear that our criminal justice system targets the most vulnerable members of this society: people of color, women, queer and trans people, people with disabilities, the poor, and the homeless.
Without overwhelming pressure from our communities, this pattern will continue.
These are our working demands:
• Cancel the contract with CFMG (Board of Supervisors);
• Issue public, formal apologies to family members of those who died (CFMG and the Sheriff’s department);
• Implement the Recommendations developed by the Grand Jury report;
• Abolish solitary confinement/administrative segregation and other forms of torture;
• Cancel the $26 million planned expansion of Rountree Detention Center and invest in community-based mental health services.
Here is what you can do:
· •Attend planning meetings to organize the demonstration & strategize. For meeting info, email: sinbarras@gmail.com
· •Endorse this campaign as individuals and organizations;
· •Write a letter in solidarity with this struggle from yourself or your organization. Distribute through your networks & send to: [sinbarras@) gmail.com];
· •Share, like, and spread the word with our event page;
· •Encourage your networks to come to the event and speak out;
"The ideas which can and will sustain our movement for total freedom and dignity of the people cannot be imprisoned, for they are to be found in the people, all the people, wherever they are.”
– Huey P. Newton
You Are Invited To a Book Signing with Joel Andreas, Author & Illustrator of
ADDICTED To WAR: Why The U.S. Can't Kick Militarism
[www.addictedtowar.com]
Saturday, January 24th - 7:00 PM
At The Peace Center, 3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Culver City 90230
Located Between Venice Blvd. & Washington on the East Side of Sepulveda
Plenty of Parking in Rear of Building
The New Updated 2015 Edition of ADDICTED To WAR will be available.
With Special Guests Blase & Theresa Bonpane & Michael Lindley
Hosted by Frank Dorrel, Publisher of ADDICTED To WAR
Music by Andy Manoff, Dennis Davis & Steve Ballentine
Dessert & Coffee Will Be Served
Free Event!
RSVP to Frank at [fdorrel@) addictedtowar.com] or [310-838-8131]
STOP THE RACIST WARS! Occupy Beale Air Force Base
January 26 & 27
STOP RACIST KILLING
From Ferguson to Pakistan
From Oakland to Afghanistan
This month at Beale we want to connect the dots between the indiscriminate killing of our brown, black and white brothers and sisters in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. war machine with the brutal police killings that indiscriminately takes the lives of unarmed brown and black lives in U.S. cities. These dehumanizing policies that disregard the value of human lives everywhere has got to STOP!
BROWN & BLACK LIVES MATTER! ALL LIVES MATTER!
Stop the Drone Killing! End the Wars!
Prosecute Killer Cops! Stop All Racist Killing!
Please join us this month as we try to connect the dots.
We'll have a large banner:
From Ferguson to Pakistan......STOP RACIST KILLING!
Please bring any signs and banners that can support this theme.
Mon. Night Potluck: I'll give an update on
Mar. 4-6: SHUT DOWN CREECH!
Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars
[http://shutdowncreech.blogspot.com]
[https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/]
Sunday, January 25, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley
(Drama 2013) explores the killing of Oscar Grant by a white BART policeman.
Contact: 510-540-0751
[http://www.thelonghaul.org]
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