A Wrench in the Works: Why Chavez Had to Go

Hugo Chavez and the Global Poverty Conspiracy

Greg Palast's Column  - Vice Magazine

London, February 2002. A tiny, dark and intense woman waited at the end of a lecture until I was alone, brought her face strangely close to mine and whispered, “President Chavez needs you. Right now. To Caracas. Right now. You must come to see him.”

President Who? All I knew about this Hugo Chavez guy was that he was an Latin-American jefe, led a bungled coup and was filled with a lot of populist bullshit and a lot of oil.

And I also knew that no one at BBC Newsnight was going to blow the budget for me to fly to South America to talk about a nation that 92 percent of our viewers couldn’t find on a map and wouldn’t want to.

“Send me an email.”

“There will be a coup. March 15.”

“The Ides of March. I like that. Aren’t there always coups down there?”

“They’ll kill him, undo everything. He needs you to stop it, he wants to explain it to you because he knows you understand.”

Actually, you’d be surprised at the amount I don’t understand at all. “So talk.”

She did – for four hours – and wore me down into submission. But back at Newsnight I looked like an idiot when March 15 came and went with just a little gunfire in Caracas.

Three weeks later, the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was kidnapped and held hostage by the head of Venezuela’s Chamber of Commerce. Suddenly the BBC had to get me on a plane.

When I got to the Presidential Palace, Chavez was already back at his desk, though the bullet holes in the palace’s walls weren’t yet filled in.

Chavez told me that he'd agreed to be taken hostage by gunmen on the condition that his staff and their trapped children would be allowed to escape. He was bundled into a helicopter, and when it swerved out to sea he assumed he would be pushed out: “I was calm. I was ready.”

So who was behind it?

Chavez gave me information on US military attachés who had met with the plotters. While I couldn’t verify any specific US directive to seize him, I didn’t have to: I had grinning photos of George W Bush’s new US Ambassador, Charles Shapiro, congratulating Chavez’ kidnappers.

The question was, why? Why the need to eliminate Chavez, by coup, by bullet, by propaganda, embargo, or, as we later discovered, by screwing with Venezuela’s vote count?

No doubt that for Bush’s oil-o-crats, Chavez’ doubling the royalties paid by Exxon and Chevron was worth the price of a bullet; but it was no more than the amount that Sarah Palin would seize from the oil companies when she ruled Alaska. So what was it?

The answer was in the movie Network.

“AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU, MR. BEALE? The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now THEY MUST GIVE IT BACK!

“It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. You are an old man who thinks in terms of national and peoples. THERE ARE NO NATIONS. There are no peoples. There is only ONE HOLISTIC SYSTEM OF SYSTEM, one vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars. Electro-dollars. Multi-dollars. IT IS THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY which determines the totality of life on this planet. Am I getting through to you?”

Chavez had defied gravity, overpowered the tide. Venezuela earned billions in petro-dollars from the USA – but then, Chavez refused to “give it back”.

Third World nations are not supposed to keep the dollars paid to suck out their oil and mineral blood. For every dollar US consumers pay the Saudis for their oil, about $1.24 is given back as Saudis return the funds by purchasing US Treasury debt or hunks of US banks, CitiCorp for one.


Above: World Capital Flow 2005, from Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast

In 2005, the US spent $227 billion in Latin America, sapping its properties and resources. But the money turned right around and, added to the funds sent to Miami by Latin America’s elite, immediately became a $379 million loan to the US Treasury and financiers.

Argentina leant the US at 4 percent interest, then had to borrow its own money back at 16 percent – the whirring wheel, this grinder, left school teachers in Buenos Aires hunting in garbage cans for food. Riots followed and – in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere – this led to tanks in the street, currency collapse, crisis and the “rescue” by the IMF. Rescue meant forcing the mass sell-off of state industries, from oil to water systems, to the crushing of labour unions and to swallowing the whole bottle of poisons kept by the elite of the Northern Hemisphere for just such occasions.

And that was the plan. Literally. I've held the proof in my hands, about five thousand pages of financial agreements, all labelled “confidential” and “not to be distributed except by authorised persons”, which bore benign titles like “World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy, Argentina.”

Why would the IMF, World Bank and the bankers not want to make their wonderful plans for reducing poverty public? It was for the same reason the finance ministers who signed the documents didn’t even tell their own presidents: they were in fact “reduce-to-poverty” plans, complete resource surrender.

For these deliberately bankrupted nations, it was sign or starve. Until Hugo Chavez came along. Early on, Chavez withdrew $20 billion of Venezuela’s money leant to the US Federal Reserve, to create a giant micro-lending programme for his citizens. Then he went a step too far, establishing what the Wall Street Journal called, “a tropical IMF”.

In 2000 and after, when the IMF and banks moved to financially strangle these nations by making their debts unsalable, Hugo Chavez would roll up in his oil-gilded chariot. He effectively underwrote Argentina’s debt, providing 250million dollars worth of loans, and assistance to Ecuador. After Enron seized Argentina’s water system and Occidental seized Ecuador’s oil fields, Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner, followed by Ecuador’s Correa, told US banks to go fuck themselves. And the IMF, too.

Then there was the big one: Brazil. The World Bank/IMF “Poverty Reduction Strategy” for Brazil required the nation to close its publicly-owned banks, to sell off its vast oil properties, to give away its power industry and, to please the new foreign owners, slash wages and pensions. But with Chavez prepared to back up its new President, Lula Ignacio de Silva, the mighty little man from the Socialist Workers Party could tell the IMF to stick it where the free market don’t shine.


The late Hugo Chavez wearing the author's hat

For the first time in contemporary history, resource states refused to give back the money received for their resource. At Chavez’ funeral, Lula, former President Ignacio de Silva of Brazil, praised this as Chavez’ most revolutionary act.

Now, instead of billions flowing North, Latin American capital was staying in Latin America. It is delicious irony that the European and American financiers, fleeing from the economic conflagration they’d ignited in their home countries, are loading their loot onto planes for Brazil. And that Venezuela’s central bank made a mint on its intra-continental loans.

And so, a coup was called for.

In 2002, Chavez’ oil company chief, Ali Rodriguez, told me: “America can’t let us stay in power. We are the exception to the New Globalisation Order. If we succeed, we are an example to all the Americas.”

That you were, Hugo Chavez. That you are, Venezuela. And all the Americas are ready.

Follow Greg on Twitter: @Greg_Palast

As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. Based on Palast's several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television. DVDs also available.

Previously:

Vaya Con Dios, Hugo

Too Fat to Vote

Murkier Than Oil

Greg Palast is a New York Times bestselling author and fearless investigative journalist whose reports appear on BBC Television Newsnight and in The Guardian. 

Palast eats the rich and spits them out. Catch his reports and films at www.GregPalast.com, where you can also securely send him your documents marked, "confidential".

Shooting Down Gaza's Fishers

Israeli Navy Opens Fire at Fishermen in Gaza

by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

Thursday March 14, 2013, the Israeli Navy attacked several Palestinian fishermen and fishing boats in the As-Sudaniyya coastal area, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, No injuries have been reported but the fishermen had to go back home after being denied the right to fish.

Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli Navy fired dozens of rounds of live ammunition at several fishing boats, and into the air in an attempt to force the fishermen back to the shore.

The fishermen were within the six-nautical mile area they are allowed to enter and fish, but the army attacked them.

The attack is similar to numerous attacks that led to dozens of casualties and significant damages.

Under the Oslo accords in the mid-nineties, the Palestinians are allowed to fish in 20 nautical miles off the Gaza shore, but in 2008, Israel unilaterally reduced the fishing area to three nautical miles.

As part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Israeli war on Gaza in November 2012, Palestinian fishermen were allowed to fish within six nautical miles off the Gaza coast, but the army continued to attack them in their allotted areas.

Fox on Francis' 'Dirty War' Record

A New Pope and "The Most Corrupt Vatican Since the Borgias" 

by TRNN

Matthew Fox (former Catholic priest) discusses the Vatican's work with the CIA and it's alliance with far right political forces and Pope Francis' opposition to liberation theology in Latin America.

 

NATO's Terrorist Proxies in Syria Revealed

Open War Crimes: US and British-Backed Weapons Airlift From Croatia to Terrorists in Syria

by Patrick Henningsen - 21st Century Wire

The evidence is now in, as list of state actors can now be seen openly

conspiring to drive the Middle East into full-blown war.

It’s well known by now that NATO and the Gulf States initial plans to overturn the sovereign state of Syria has been running behind schedule since their operation was launched two years ago. They had hoped for the sort of slam dunk which they enjoyed in overturning the country of Libya in late 2011.

This same formula could not be applied again however, so Plan B, a ground war using proxies has meant a longer drawn out conflict. It hasn’t been working fast enough in Syria, and western backed terrorist groups still sustaining heavy losses in their fight to topple the Assad government on behalf of the NATO and its Gulf allies.

The main obstacle with Plan B is that the very idea of directly arming terrorists in Syria is not one which can be sold openly in either the US or Britain. Plan C is to draw in the UN by creating a ‘chemical weapons’ crisis in Syria, and thanks to a prominent online leak of documents relating to UK DOD contractor Britam, the British have been caught brokering a deal transferring ex-Gaddafi stocks from Libya to Syria to be blamed on Assad, and paid for by Qatar. But the WMD threat still remains a hard sell for western voters…

From the NATO Allied corner, something drastic needed to be done.

Whilst politicians in the West, namely those in Washington DC, London and parts of Europe, have been publicly denying that they were helping to organise running arms into Syria and issuing very public pleads for ‘humanitarian aid’ for those they identify as the Syrian Opposition, activity back stage has been furious. The debate in government and the media has been mere window dressing for the real operation being quietly carried out.

NATO Gun-running via Croatia



It can now be revealed that NATO allied nations were busy using proxy states to drive their war in Syria – putting together one of the biggest international black operation transfers of military supplies in recent history. So it’s official: large caches of hardware from the West have been transferred to the Syrian jihadist mercenary collective known as the ‘Free Syrian Army’ , ‘Syrian Rebels’, or ‘Syrian Opposition’ – depending on who you ask, a brash move which may be vehemently opposed by other UN Security Council members – namely Russia and China.

Multiple media sources reveal the details of this massive airlift comprised of 75 airplanes, and an estimated 3,000 tons of military weaponry on board has left Croatia and has already been delivered… to Syria.

It is also confirmed from these reports that Saudi Arabia has financed a large portion of this purchase secretly transported to al Qaeda and other FSA fighters – who are working with the support of the CIA, MI6 and others, along with other financial and material support of Qatar and Saudi, to further destabilise and overthrow the Assad government in Syria.

Croatia’s daily newspaper Jutarnji List reported:

“From the start of November last year, till February this year, 75 planes flew out from Zagreb Airport with over 3,000 tons of weapons and ammunition bound for Syrian rebels…The newspaper, quoting diplomatic sources, says that besides Croatian weapons the planes were full with weapons from other European countries including the UK. The weapons were organised by the United States of America.
Sources say that the first few flights to leave Croatia bound for Syria with weapons were operated by Turkish Cargo, which is owned by Turkish Airlines. After those flights, Jordanian International Air Cargo took over the flights. The deal to provide arms to the rebels was made between American officials and the Croatian Ambassador to the US.”

In addition to this huge gun-running operation, Croatia also appears to be guilty of either having advanced knowledge, or possibly coordinating with Syrian terrorists as evidenced by their recently withdraw all of troops from the UN observer mission in Golan Heights, indicating that the recent kidnapping by Free Syrian Army Terrorists of at least 20 UNIFIL peacekeepers in the Golan Heights was known in advance by Croatia.

The kidnapping incident may have been designed to test the UN, but also to pull Syria’s southern neighbor, Israel, even closer to the conflict, a development which would almost surely prompt the UN to declare this as trigger to a regional crisis, followed by an authorised military intervention. Pulling Israel in would also risk involving Hezbollah from Lebanon, who are already engaging in assisting Assad in training a new specialist paramilitary force in Syria to deal with urban warfare.

If it was known by Croatia, then one can only conclude that this was also known by US and British operatives as well. Both the US and Britain will naturally claim deniability as their legal out in this case, by deniability through the use of proxies makes no innocent parties when the prospect of a multi-regional war beckons as a result of the west’s financial, logistical, political, and now material involvement in the overthrow of a sovereign state and internationally recognised government.

Much worse, however, is that by employing proxies like Jordan, Croatia, Turkey,and others, the NATO allies have guaranteed long-term retribution down the road, should Syria prevail in this fight. For Syria, it is now known which countries collaborated with the West to dismantle their country. This fact alone will ensure conflict in the region for a generation.

US officials are on record as admitting to helping arrange the weapons airlift, as cited in this Feb 25, 2012 article in the New York Times:

“An official in Washington said the possibility of the transfers from the Balkans was broached last summer, when a senior Croatian official visited Washington and suggested to American officials that Croatia had many weapons available should anyone be interested in moving them to Syria’s rebels.”

Terrorist receive recoilless guns from the former Yugoslavia.

Revelations are not limited to the Croatian news report, as we see the US and Europe’s mainstream media wall of silence has begun to crack, including here a recent report from London’s Daily Telegraph sent across Syria’s borders with Jordan and NATO-member Turkey. The article entitled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’“goes on to give further details of direct European involvement in illegal weapons running:

“The United States has coordinated a massive airlift of arms to Syrian rebels from Croatia with the help of Britain and other European states, despite the continuing European Union arms embargo, it was claimed yesterday…

Decisions by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, to provide non-lethal assistance and training, announced in the past week, were preceded by much greater though less direct Western involvement in the rebel cause, according to a Croat newspaper.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours.

…as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.

British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers…

… The weapons, including rocket launchers, recoil-less guns and the M79 anti-tank weapon, have been seen in rebel hands in numerous videos, and were first spotted by an arms expert Eliot Higgins, who blogs under the name Brown Moses. He traced them moving from Dera’a in the south, near the Jordanian border, to Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the north.”

Hague: Denies Britain’s involvement in gun-running.

It is also no big secret that Britain has deployed a significant contingent of troops and support personnel to Jordan at least as far back as Autumn 2012 as part of its ongoing ‘joint military exercises’ with the Jordan military, but this latest revelation puts into clearer perspective the overwhelming likelihood that high level British military operation have actually been involved in the transfer of arms from Jordan into the hands of the international terrorist confab of mostly foreign fighter running under the west’s media banner of “Syrian Rebels”.

Consequences for Croatia, and Britain

What Britain may be guilty of here, is cynically – and illegally, trying to side-stepping the EU embargo on arms into Syria by using the fledgling EU state of Croatia as their delivery mechanism, because Croatia does not officially join the EU until July 1, and has not implemented any binding EU legislation. This flagrant violation of both EU and international law should mean that Croatia’s entrance into the EU could be appealed by other members states willing to raise an objection, with what are now clear grounds to mount a legal challenge against Croatia.

Regardless of any EU outcomes however, Croatia at least –  is guilty of international war crimes.

International and EU Sanctions Against the US, Britain, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia

As expected, Britain’s Foreign Office denies all of the claims connecting it to the Croatian gun-running program, but if Britain is involved – even indirectly, through a proxy like Croatia, or if British military personnel are aiding and abetting these known terrorist fighters in Syria through the transfer of weaponry, then Britain can also be brought into the international legal framework to answer for what it has done behind the public’s back.

The international war crimes which are now in the public view could test the legal framework of the EU, the UN and the ICC in the Hague. The legal door is now open for charges against state actors including US, Britain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – for the crimes of illegally arming a force of foreign fighters and known terrorists in Syria – designed to destroy the country from within. Many UN resolutions, including the recent Resolution 1973 applied in Libya by the UN, have been implemented on much more spurious and shaky grounds than the overwhelming evidence available regarding Syria.

Consequences for NATO and the UN

Despite any denials in Brussels, NATO are involved through their member states Turkey and Croatia, as well as US, UK, and France from behind. Any involvement should question these country’s NATO status, or at least it begs the question what is NATO for, or even the UN, if their member states are conspiring together to subvert international law?

Moreover, Israel’s unwarranted airstrike against a Syrian Military Research facility last month was also ignored by the UN, but this is not surprising as Israel has long been allowed to operate outside of international law and norms.

If the international community does not act in this instance, then it opens the door to more brazen criminality sans borders, which could spawn similar illegal operations against Iran, opening the door to a Third World War.

US uniformed Personnel Training Rebels in Jordan

Der Spiegel also reports this week that, despite denials by Washington DC, Americans are definitely training Syrian rebels in neighboring Jordan. The reports goes on:

“It is not clear if the Americans are members of the US armed forces or are part of a private contracting firm, but the trainers wear uniforms, the paper reported.

It added that the training, which also involves Jordanian intelligence officers, had been going on “for some time,” and that the rebels were being taught how to use anti-tank weaponry.”

France sends ‘aid’ for Syria to Jordan 

France played an integral part in the destruction of Libya in 2011, and they might also have an interest in their former colonial possessions in Syria, but it’s not clear as yet if France’s commitment to overthrowing the Assad government is on par with the US and Britain’s efforts. Back in August 2012, France had also been sending large shipments designated for Syria via Jordan, claiming that these shipment contained ‘aid and medical supplies’ – intended for Syrian refugees. Real Syrian News reported:

“An Antonov 124 cargo aircraft landed at the Marka military airport in Amman on Saturday. The cargo is said to include a field hospital and medical supplies for the refugees in the Zaatari camp near the Syrian border. An A310 airliner carrying 85 French military staff and medical equipment arrived in Jordan on Thursday.”

After the Croatian airlift, it’s now not a stretch to suspect that other countries could be involved in similar operations under the cover of supplying ‘humanitarian aid’.

Consequences for Jordan

The overwhelming body of evidence proves that Jordan is playing the key role as proxy and facilitator for the West’s wishes and desires to destroy the country of Syria. The consequences for Jordan, should the West’s efforts fail, is that Jordan has now exposed itself as a provocateur and enemy of both Syria, and Lebanon, and indeed Iran also. It is not know how much Jordan has been paid for its services, or what promises have been made to its royal family in exchange for facilitating the Syrian upheaval, but it cannot compensate Jordan for playing the crucial role in possibly fomenting a regional or multi-theatre global war.

Syria Crisis Planned by the US and NATO Allies Before the ‘Arab Spring’

Despite previous denials and avoiding the issue by states persons like Hillary Clinton and William Hague, it is certain that ‘al Qaeda’ terrorists are operating in Syria and receive various kinds of support from the West and their Gulf allies, and that these are many of the same terrorist who are responsible for violence and killing in Iraq. The New York Times confirmed this fact recently:

“Iraqi officials said the extremists operating in Syria are in many cases the very same militants striking across their country. “We are 100 percent sure from security coordination with Syrian authorities that the wanted names that we have are the same wanted names that the Syrian authorities have, especially within the last three months,” Izzat al-Shahbandar — a close aide to the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — said in an interview on Tuesday. “Al Qaeda that is operating in Iraq is the same as that which is operating in Syria,” he said.”

Bangkok based analyst, Tony Cartalucci, from Land Destroyer blog, adds another important piece of evidence in this mix, pointing out the fact that the US and its NATO operatives have been engineering the crisis in Syria well before the official ‘uprising’ began in 2011:

“Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, in his 2007 New Yorker report titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?“stated explicitly that:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Cartalucci provides further background to support the west’s own knowledge and involvement is the current crisis: 

Is there any doubt that the US has executed this plot in earnest, arming and funding sectarian extremists “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” on both Syria’s northern and southern border? Where else, if not from the West and its regional allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, could extremists be getting their weapons, cash, and logistical support from? 

And of course, Syria’s borders with Jordan and Turkey have been long-ago identified by the US Army’s own West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) as hotbeds of sectarian extremist/Al Qaeda activity – hotbeds that the West is purposefully funneling thousands of tons of weaponry through, while disingenuously claiming it is attempting to prevent such weapons from falling into the hands of extremists.

The CTC’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” identified Syria’s southeastern region near Dayr Al-Zawr on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the northwestern region of Idlib near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border, as having produced the majority of fighters found crossing over into Iraq throughout the duration of the Iraq War.



Image: (Left) West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s 2007 report, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into Iraq came from during the US invasion/occupation. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr in Syria’s southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian border, and Dar’a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right) A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of so-called “pro-democracy fighters.” 

These areas are now admittedly the epicenters of fighting, and more importantly, despite being historical hotbeds of Al Qaeda activity, precisely where the West is flooding with cash, weapons, and military “advisers.”

Just like in Libya where the West literally handed an entire nation to sectarian extremists, we are watching a verbatim repeat in Syria – where we are told Al Qaeda terrorists are “pro-democracy” “freedom fighters” that deserve US cash, weapons, and support, when it couldn’t be any clearer they aren’t.

Not only has the US and UK lied to the world about their policy toward Syria and their current level of support for increasingly overt terrorists committing an array of atrocities – their latest act including the taking of over 20 UN peacekeepers hostage in the Golan Heights - but have revealed once again the manufactured facade that is the “War on Terror…”

Terrorist Groups Currently Active in Syria

Known terrorist groups are operating in Syria and are receiving the full backing of NATO Allies and Gulf states Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They include – but are not limited to, Saudi Intelligence-backed Jabhat al-Nusra or ‘al Nursa Front’, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,  Abdullah Azzam Brigades and Al Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade, the jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham, the PKK (in northeast Syria), Kata’ib Mohadzherin from the Russian Caucus region - to name only a few.Earlier reports of rogue Russian and Chechen terrorists filtering into Syria appear to be preceded by Salafists killing Sufi leaders in the Russian Federation. The Pakistan Christian Post reports:

“Recently in Dagestan the Sufi spiritual leader Said Efendi Chirkeisky was killed by a suicide bomber along with a few followers. This happened in late August and the closeness to the recent attack against Sufi leaders in Tatarstan is a clear reminder that Salafism is a potent force within parts of the Russian Federation. Therefore, not surprisingly the Russian Federation is extremely alarmed by major Western powers once more working in collusion with the FSA, al-Qaeda and a whole array of Salafi terrorist organizations.”

It’s worth noting also that like Libya’s new militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, terrorist group Kata’ib Mohadzherin’s leader Airat Vakhitov was also imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 after being captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Both were released and filtered back into fighting regions to organise al Qaeda-type Islamist groups – both active in countries which the US and NATO have been actively vying for regime change, in Libya and Syria respectively. You can draw your own conclusions here about what Guantanamo is in reality.

The same New York Times article(above) also mentions terrorists’ theocratic designs of establishing some caliphate in the region:

“One Qaeda operative, a 56-year-old known as Abu Thuha who lives in the Hawija district near Kirkuk in Iraq, spoke to an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times on Tuesday. “We have experience now fighting the Americans, and more experience now with the Syrian revolution,” he said. “Our big hope is to form a Syrian-Iraqi Islamic state for all Muslims…

It’s important to understand that such claims by any shadowy ‘al Qaeda’ figures must also be balance with the reality that these militants have been historically, and are still today, directed and funded at the highest levels of both US and Saudi intelligence, and others. When you see terror spokesman like Ayman al-Zawahri, the alleged leader of Al Qaeda, praise the Syrian fighters by referring to them as “the lions of the Levant,” in messages released exclusively via a known CIA media dissemination outlets like SITE, or INTEL CENTER, then readers should be suspicious of why it’s been released and what political effect it is designed to have.

Now that some of the scope of NATO Allies operation in Syria has been exposed to the public, perhaps political representatives, media journalist, and editors will be able to report more accurately on the Syrian crisis, and demand a withdrawl of NATO, Arab League and others country’s support for the growing and highly dangerous paramilitary and other al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups who are currently working to take power by destabilising the country of Syria.

It’s all happening out in the open now.

Finding the Fifth Dimension

Discovery of the Fifth Dimension

by Dr. Henryk Frystacki

The 2012 records of quantum teleportation on earth do not describe any kind of Stargate technology that would allow us to travel from one point in the universe to another at an instant. However, the effect leads to the discovery of at least one additional fifth dimension on top of Einstein’s four space-time dimensions length, height, width and time.

Many renowned scientists around the world are eagerly expecting an imminent proof of the existence of one or even more additional dimensions of the universe. The forthcoming confirmation of additional dimensions will change everything in physics; quantum information and perhaps even some kind of exotic dark matter travels along additional dimensions at an instant. With such a proof, the speed of light turns out to be an invincible barrier of nothing more than a so far only incompletely described world with four dimensions.

Quantum teleportation is the transfer of quantum information units, so called qubits, from one point in our universe to another, without traversing the intervening space. The polarization of photons (horizontal or vertical) and the orientation of particle spins (up or down) are examples for such qubits. Quantum teleportation is based on the experimentally proven peculiarity of quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where two elementary particles become intertwined and behave as one single system, regardless if they are close to each other or light years apart. In case of entangled photons, the measurement of a horizontal polarization of one photon will cause the measurement of a vertical polarization of the other entangled photon.

Entangled photons can be simply generated by optical crystals or half-silvered mirrors: A photon with high energy is split into a pair of entangled photons, one transmitted through the medium and the other reflected. Both photons travel at the speed of light. Certain atoms can be stimulated by lasers in such a way that they emit pairs of entangled photons.

The following short and simple excursion through quantum mechanics is helpful to better understand the principle of quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation.

Classical physics describes the current state of motion of a particle by two independent data, namely its location and its speed. According to quantum mechanics, the situation is somewhat different: Location or velocity can be determined individually with nearly any degree of accuracy, as long as an evaluating person is only interested in the accurate measurement of one physical quantity. Both quantities cannot be measured with unlimited high accuracy at the same time. We cannot even assume that both have precise values at any instant.

Multiplying the uncertainty range ∆x of a particle’s location with the impulse uncertainty range ∆p of the product (velocity x mass), the derived product (∆p x ∆x) will be never smaller than a fixed constant of nature, called the elementary quantum of action.

This means that the exact location of an electron, just for example, is not precisely readable along one complete centimeter, in case the velocity of the electron was measured extremely accurately as one centimeter per second.

Additionally, only the type of experimental measurement proves the electron either to be a particle or a wave. This is valid for any photon and any other elementary particle as well. Both evaluations are in complete contradiction. Scientists speak of the duality of particles and waves. That all sounds very strange but nature behaves exactly this way, so far without any plausible explanation. It is the biggest challenge of this 21st century to develop a model that combines classical physics and the uncertainties and probabilities of quantum physics without any contradiction.

Rotational symmetry of Einstein’s space-time, introducing not only positive but also negative values ​​for lengths, height and width, and even backward movement of time, is one of such models. The negative directions ​​of time and space do not appear with negative values in our observation environment ​​but show altered physical properties: time stagnation, functional inversion or extremely accelerated processes.

Such accelerated processes may appear for example as different kinds of particle spins or simultaneous appearances of one and the same particle in two different locations. Any extreme acceleration of processes in relation to our perception of time progress leads to a quantized superposition of a nearly infinite number of images that shape our registration of nature, space and masses within. The actual observations of these continuously repeated reduced four-dimensional images (three of space and one for time) cause interferences in our seeming space-time continuum, determining the outcome of each measurement individually, i.e. the observation of a particle, or a wave, or even double images of particles at completely different locations.

The extreme acceleration of processes in relation to our perceivable time progress can be considered as the contribution of a fifth dimension, on top of Einstein’s four dimensions. Because of this extreme acceleration, any point in our universe can be reached at any instant. This way, everything across the universe is connected with each other until it is observed, thus making it an irretrievable event of the past.

All known types of masses can be considered to travel with the speed of light on this fifth dimension, because they acquired relative speed of light during their individual generation processes. Therefore, our time came nearly to a standstill in relation to the fifth dimension; Einstein’s classical physics of relative time dilation for reduced four dimensions merely works the other way round. Therefore, introducing the fifth dimension, classical physics can be still used to grasp all peculiarities of quantum physics within the apparent continuum of space and time.

String theory is another attempt to bring the world of classical physics and quantum physics in line. Scientists spent already more than two decades without coming to feasible and unifying descriptions. The assumption of endless multiple universes are necessary to support the logic of string theory with respect to its leakage concept of gravity between innumerable parallel universes. The repetition sequences of a fifth dimension replace the parallel universes of the string theory by the innumerable superposition of only one and the same universe. Additional dimensions explain gravity in a very simple way by our inverted perception of negative space dimensions and relative backward movement of time. They even provide a feasible concept for hidden areas of the universe’s expanding dark energy and the galaxies’ stabilizing dark matter.

The research of the experimental entanglement of photons and the teleportation of quantum states has to answer the question, whether it is possible to send messages that arrive instantaneously at the receiver, regardless of the distance, or not.

The current method of quantum teleportation consists of the transmission of a quantum state that is not yet measured, e.g. the horizontal polarization of a photon from a laboratory anywhere to a second remote laboratory. If two photons were entangled, none of these photons has a horizontal or vertical polarization before an actual measurement of the polarization state. However, as soon as the state of one entangled photon is measured, and if it gets through this measurement a horizontal polarization, e.g. caused by the passage through a polarizing filter, the second photon will show a vertical polarization, regardless of how far the two photons are separated in space from each other. Strictly speaking, this only applies to 25% of all measured cases. In 75% of cases, the actual measuring direction of oscillation of the photon in the second laboratory has to be rotated by 180 degrees in order to complete the quantum teleportation successfully.

An information transfer is not possible with this property, because the quantum state has been only fixed by its actual measurement which simultaneously caused the teleportation of the orthogonal polarization state onto the entangled photon. The entanglement of the photons got lost during this procedure. A random sequence of binary numbers of “zeros”, for example defining horizontal polarization, and “ones”, accordingly defining vertical polarization, can be sent, but information cannot be transmitted and retrieved. Einstein's general theory of relativity for a four-dimensional world, strictly prohibiting information spreading faster than light, still remains valid, at least so far.

Nevertheless, in conjunction with a classical information channel this effect can be used for quantum cryptography: sender and receiver agree via a classical information channel on a data coding, incorporating the random sequences of quantum states into the classical information data. This random sequences of quantum states, horizontal polarizations or vertical polarizations of the photons, are well-known only to the sender and the receiver.

However, investigating the fifth dimension with an extreme acceleration and iterative framing of nature around us thoroughly, will lead to a completely different picture in the near future. At present, we cannot handle nearly infinite quantized repetition sequences that construct every single moment of our time. Innovative technical procedures, based on the well-known effect of relative time dilation, may succeed to stretch the repetition sequences of a fifth dimension in a way that we are able to influence and simultaneously evaluate only one single repetition frame across the complete universe, still before it became an irretrievable event of the past.

The discovery of the fifth dimension changes everything we thought to know about our universe and opens a completely new window for our views on our existence, including the two questions “how” and “why”.

Christy Clark Tries Running on Nebulous "Prosperity Fund"

Premier's Calculations for Pipelines, Fish Farms, Site C Dam Don't Add Up

by Rafe Mair - The Canadian.org

Gary Mason’s column in the March 12 edition of The Globe and Mail, on Christy Clark, is very interesting. The premier is complaining about the lack of precision in the NDP’s plans and calls upon Adrian Dix to spell it all out.

What is most interesting is Ms. Clark’s position on issues and what she deems those issues to be. (Remember that the Liberals have raised the provincial debt and other taxpayer obligations by some five fold, which should limit the generosity of both leaders).

"So not only are the people going to compare me with Adrian Dix," said Clark, "they will be comparing leadership with an absence of courage to tell people where his party where his party stands on things. If we get into a competition of ideas in this campaign, I believe we can win that battle because I believe the things I stand for are what British Columbians want: a strong economy, smaller government, jobs for our kids, a prosperity fund, lower taxes."

Leaving aside the prosperity fund nonsense for a moment, these words could have been attributed to all premiers I have listened to going back to my own days in the Legislature. Mindless crap, motherhood and apple pie - but predictable.

Clearly, there are a number of things Ms. Clark does not wish to debate, especially the deplorable fiscal situation and scandals galore, with two fresh ones ongoing right now.

Let’s have a look at the promise involving the chimera she calls a “prosperity fund”.

This is simple barnyard droppings wrapped in a pretty package. You will remember that in the Throne Speech this “fund” would come to pass in two years. In an interview with Justine Hunter she admitted that might be up to five years – how long will it be Ms. Clark?

How about “never”.

The plain truth is that it will never happen. Even if LNG plants (the proposed sources of funds) sprang up all over the province, which they won’t, any revenue would be required for general taxation for a province Ms. Clark’s government, and the Campbell one before it, has left broke.

It would be just as accurate for Premier Clark to promise that our economy under a Liberal government - our "prosperity" - depends upon the Easter Bunny.

Let’s turn now to what the premier is not talking about – the environment.

Readers will recall that the environment has never been a major issue in elections. The media types who conduct and participate in the traditional debate never raise this as an issue because their bosses won’t tolerate anything that smacks of being anti-Liberal.

We have had a recent environmental question arise over a refinery to be built in Kitimat by David Black. Now this is the issue in a nutshell: Premier Clark, who has raised red flags regarding the proposed Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, has hinted at her support for Black's alternative venture, which would see diluted Alberta bitumen refined in Kitimat before being loaded onto tankers destined for other markets.

The premier says she opposes Enbridge because it doesn't give BC sufficient revenue to compensate for the environmental 'risk'. Black's alternative involves a pipeline carrying the same product from the same place, along the same route, to the same destination, where it would then be refined before being loaded onto tankers. And yet, Clark somehow seems amenable to the newer proposal.

The only apparent difference is the greater share of provincial revenue and local jobs which Black's proposal offers and the perceived lower risk of shipping refined products vs. diluted bitumen (only for the tankers - the pipeline would be moving the same Tar Sands product).

In essence the Liberal position is we will not approve these pipelines and tanker traffic unless the bribe is sufficient to permit us to overlook the risks.

Here is the crux of the matter. Surely all would agree that in order to meet the money versus pipelines and tankers issue we must assess what that risk is. That’s only common sense.

What, then, Premier Clark, do you assess these risks to be?

Surely there must be a formula. Tell us that it isn’t just flying by the seat of our pants, or pantsuits!

What studies has your government done to assess these risks? Have you looked at the history of pipelines the world over? Have you, more to the point, assessed the risks associated with Enbridge, whose record is appalling? Black, for his part, has zero experience moving oil products - hardly any more reassuring.

But it's more than that, for you surely agree that before making this "risk for dough" assessment you must not only deal with the possibilities of a spill but what damages would flow.

What about, say, a spill in the Rockies, or in the Coast Range, or in the Rocky Mountain Trench or in the Great Bear Rain Forest? Or by tanker. In the case of pipelines, how in hell is a company going to get men and heavy machinery to the site?

I’m sure you’ve seen by now that you must not only assess the risk of harm in various sensitive areas, be they in a fjord, Vancouver Harbour, and in all sensitive areas, which, Premier, means everywhere in the province, but what the cost will be.

Are you familiar, Ms. Premier, with the Enbridge spill in the Kalamazoo River in July 2010? There, the spill was easily accessed yet 2½ years later it has still not be cleaned up.

I shouldn’t have to ask if you know the difference between dilbit (diluted bitumen) and refined oil.

But do you? Do you know what the consequences of dilbit accidents are?

Let’s call these spills/accidents for what they really are.

They are not risks but catastrophes waiting to happen. It’s not "if", Premier Clark, but "when".

What you are saying to the people of BC is that you are prepared to take a certain sum of money for inevitable “accidents”, wherever they happen and whatever damage they do.

At least be honest on this score so that the voting public has a clear understanding that for money you will abandon our heritage.

There are two other issues that I will go into in depth with as the days pass.

Your government is continuing to grant fish farm licenses in spite of Commissioner Bruce Cohen’s report. Indeed, your government is the landlord for all BC's fish farms (signing off on the tenures they require to site and operate their farms), yet you have done no policing and the only fines ever imposed came from an NDP administration and the Campbell government gave them their fines back.

The only way these farms can make a profit is by sending their sewage (fish excrement, unconsumed food, anti-lice compounds, unconsumed medicines, drugs and colourants) into the oceans as raw sewage.

Quite apart from the appalling impact these hideous farms have had on wild salmon runs, the above should have you forcing these farms on land, as a recent federal government report recommended.

Will you do this - and if not, why not?

The weasel words, “run of river” projects, have decimated our rivers and, as with fish farms, no inspection of them takes place even though there have been 1000s of broken rules. BC Hydro, the jewel of our crown would be bankrupt if it were in the private sector because of the sweetheart deals your government has forced them to pay to private companies.

This is just one of the scandalous policies that have beset your government. What are you going to do about this issue?

Finally, Premier, why Site C Dam?

Is this really a process to provide energy to gas prospectors who can use that energy to “frack” for natural gas to make energy? And to power the liquefaction of natural gas (LNG), for which, in all likelihood, there will be no customers?

(By the way, Ms. Clark, have you even the faintest idea what the fracking process is all about, and the undetermined environmental impacts?)

Yes, Mr. Dix must come clean with his program and I intend to ask him questions like these. But you are the premier. You must deal with these issues and do so in specific terms, not barfed up stale marshmallows. I assure you that you will hear about these issues again, for many British Columbians, including me, believe our environment and the fauna and flora it creates and protects is worth more than simply a token amount that they consider, and write off, as a cost of doing business no matter how much that may be.


Rafe Mair was a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. Since 1981 he has been a radio talk show host, and is recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists.
Website: rafeonline.com/

"Ag Gag" Laws Grow Across US

Wave of "Ag Gag" Bills Threaten Food Safety and Freedom of the Press

by Rebekah Wilce — PR Watch

Remember "fecal soup"? A CBS "60 Minutes" exposé in 1987 documented widespread food safety violations by the poultry industry, making use of undercover video from a hidden camera placed by the "60 Minutes" crew. The episode vindicated U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) whistleblower Hobart Bartley, who had been ignored and threatened by his superiors and finally transferred to another plant when he warned of unsanitary conditions at a Simmons Industries plant in Missouri. Bartley was particularly irate about the "eight-foot-high vat of water called the 'chiller,' where as many as 10,000 chicken carcasses were routinely left to float, soaking up moisture to increase their selling weight. Dried blood, feces, and hair were floating in along with the dead birds. Diane Sawyer later called it 'fecal soup.'"

In the modern era, effective enforcement of food safety and the humane treatment of animals has long relied on undercover video investigations by reporters and citizens. The footage and images gained can serve as proof of criminal wrongdoing or lay ugly practices bare. Such images can vindicate whistleblowers who otherwise risk retaliation when speaking up. Now this practice, which has time and time again exposed hidden dangers -- including downer cows linked to Mad Cow disease in the food supply -- is under threat by a series of state bills dubbed "ag gag" bills.

Recent Ag Gag Law in Florida, Followed by 17 Others in Two Years

In 2011, a 21 million egg-a-year Florida producer, Wilton Simpson of Simpson Farms, requested a bill from then-state Florida Senator Jim Norman.

At Simpson's behest, in February 2011 Norman introduced a bill to the Florida Senate that would make photography "at or of a farm" a first-degree felony. SB1246, the "Farms" bill, and copycat bills in Minnesota and Iowa would later be called "ag gag" bills by the New York Times' Mark Bittman.

Simpson and the Florida Farm Bureau wanted to "deter animal-rights activists from obtaining imagery used to harm the industry," according to The Florida Independent, but the bill as written would have applied to anyone, including journalists. The bill died in committee in 2012.

But while Florida's bill did not pass, similar "ag gag" bills were introduced in Iowa, Minnesota, and New York in 2011. A modified bill passed in Iowa in March 2012. The bill's proponents in the Iowa state legislature were heavily funded by corporate agribusiness interests.

2012 saw the introduction of similar bills in six more states. "Ag gag" became law in Utah, and a modified version was signed into law in Missouri. Nine "ag gag" bills have been introduced so far in 2013: in New Hampshire, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and New Mexico. (See the Center for Media and Democracy's article on SourceWatch for more.)

 New Tactic Devised to Make Bills Legal

In its original form, the "ag gag" bill was a blatant violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression and would have quashed the right of independent investigators to document the truth. So legislators in Iowa and Utah changed the bills to make lying on employment applications a crime. Now factory farms and slaughterhouses can screen out reporters and other investigators by asking on job applications, "Are you affiliated with a news organization, labor union, or animal protection group?"

A former Humane Society investigator, Cody Carlson, wrote in The Atlantic, "Two years ago, I had to answer a similar question when I applied to work at the nation's second biggest egg producer, located in Thompson, Iowa. If the Ag Gag law had been in effect then, I might be writing this article from a cell." The same would have been true for a New York Times or Chicago Tribune investigative reporter.

Instead, Carlson was able to work undercover at four Iowa egg farms in the winter of 2010 and expose abuses such as manure pits not cleaned or maintained in multiple years, and laying hens with unnoticed and untreated prolapsed uteruses.

Carlson wrote, "A few months later, Iowa's egg farms were in the news again when nearly identical conditions were found at several other locations, this time by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The farms were at the center of a massive salmonella outbreak that caused the biggest egg recall in United States history."

March of Bills Have Roots in ALEC

The ideological ancestor of these bills is a 2002 "model" bill called the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act" (AETA) pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill responsible for spreading 2011's spate of "voter ID" laws and the NRA-drafted "Stand your Ground" law, as Green is the New Red author Will Potter points out.

AETA broadly prohibits various kinds of "obstruction" of "an animal or natural resource activity," including by damage or destruction, trespassing, as well as "entering an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner."

The newer "ag gag" bills focus more exclusively on "prohibiting a person from entering onto a farm or photographing or video recording a farm without the owner’s written consent" (from Florida's 2011 bill).

ALEC approved AETA and started pushing it both in the states and at the federal level in January 2004, with its publication of the propaganda pamphlet "Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America." According to a text comparison performed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the ALEC bill appears to be based on a 1990 Kansas bill called the "Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act."

After ALEC started pushing the bill, it was introduced in Tennessee in 2006, but died in committee; a limited version was passed in California in 2008; and a nearly identical bill was introduced in Washington State in 2010 (see CMD's text comparison here), but died in committee.

As the New York Times' Mark Bittman commented in the first wave of bill introductions two years ago, "The biggest problem of all is that we’ve created a system in which standard factory-farming practices are inhumane, and the kinds of abuses documented [by the investigations criminalized by the bills] are really just reminders of that."

The path between Washington's 2010 bill and Florida's 2011 bill is not clear, but it is clear that the intended result is the same. "Ag gag" bills seek to prevent the documentation and exposure of safety violations and atrocities in animal industries by criminalizing them and labeling them "obstruction." In other words, turn off the tape and bury the evidence rather than reforming the system.

Liberal Lies for the Digital Slaves

The New Propaganda Is Liberal -- The New Slavery Is Digital

by John Pilger - Information Clearing House

What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerized Germans; her Triumph of the Will cast Hitler's spell.

She told me that the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above," but on the "submissive void" of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? "Everyone," she said.

Today, we prefer to believe that there is no submissive void. "Choice" is ubiquitous. Phones are "platforms" that launch every half-thought. There is Google from outer space if you need it. Caressed like rosary beads, the precious devices are borne heads-down, relentlessly monitored and prioritized.

Their dominant theme is the self. Me. My needs. Riefenstahl's submissive void is today's digital slavery. Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.

Today's "message" of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behavior, this is extremism. When Hugo Chavez challenged it, he was abused in bad faith; and his successor will be subverted by the same zealots of the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard's Kennedy School and the "human rights" organizations that have appropriated American liberalism and underpin its propaganda.

The historian Norman Pollack calls this "liberal fascism." He wrote, "All is normality on display. For [Nazi] goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarization of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manque, blithely at work [in the White House], planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while."

Whereas a generation ago, dissent and biting satire were allowed in the "mainstream," today their counterfeits are acceptable and a fake moral zeitgeist rules. "Identity" is all, mutating feminism and declaring class obsolete.

Just as collateral damage covers for mass murder, "austerity" has become an acceptable lie. Beneath the veneer of consumerism, a quarter of Greater Manchester is reported to be living in "extreme poverty." The militarist violence perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of nameless men, women and children by "our" governments is never a crime against humanity.

Interviewing Tony Blair 10 years on from his criminal invasion of Iraq, the BBC's Kirsty Wark gifted him a moment he could only dream of. She allowed Blair to agonize over his "difficult" decision rather than call him to account for the monumental lies and bloodbath he launched. One is reminded of Albert Speer.

Hollywood has returned to its cold war role, led by liberals. Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo is the first feature film so integrated into the propaganda system that its subliminal warning of Iran's "threat" is offered as Obama is preparing, yet again, to attack Iran.

That Affleck's "true story" of good-guys-vs- bad-Muslims is as much a fabrication as Obama's justification for his war plans is lost in PR-managed plaudits. As the independent critic Andrew O'Hehir points out, Argo is "a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology." That is, it debases the art of film-making to reflect an image of the power it serves.

The true story is that, for 34 years, the US foreign policy elite have seethed with revenge for the loss of the shah of Iran, their beloved tyrant, and his CIA-designed state of torture. When Iranian students occupied the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, they found a trove of incriminating documents, which revealed that an Israeli spy network was operating inside the US, stealing top scientific and military secrets. Today, the duplicitous Zionist ally -- not Iran -- is the one and only nuclear threat in the Middle East.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organizations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time, and the big TV broadcasters. These days, such a formal nefarious workforce is quite unnecessary.

In 2010, the New York Times made no secret of its collusion with the White House in censoring the WikiLeaks war logs. The CIA has an "entertainment industry liaison office" that helps producers and directors remake its image from that of a lawless gang that assassinates, overthrows governments and runs drugs. As Obama's CIA commits multiple murder by drone, Affleck lauds the "clandestine service ... that is making sacrifices on behalf of Americans every day ... I want to thank them very much."

The 2010 Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty , a torture-apology, was all but licensed by the Pentagon. The US market share of cinema box-office takings in Britain often reaches 80 percent, and the small UK share is mainly for US co-productions.

Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction of those we are allowed to see. In my own film-making career, I have never known a time when dissenting voices in the visual arts are so few and silent. For all the hand-wringing induced by the Leveson inquiry, the "Murdoch mold" remains intact. Phone-hacking was always a distraction, a misdemeanor compared to the media-wide drumbeat for criminal wars.

According to Gallup, 99 percent of Americans believe Iran is a threat to them, just as the majority believed Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. "Propaganda always wins," said Leni Riefenstahl, "if you allow it."

www.johnpilger.com

Chavez: Friend of America, Enemy of Injustice

Hugo Chavez: Friend of the American People, Enemy of US Hegemony and Washington's Injustice

by Paul Craig Roberts - Global Research

On March 5, 2013, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and world leader against imperialism, died.

Washington imperialists and their media and think tank whores expressed gleeful sighs of relief as did the brainwashed US population. An “enemy of America” was gone.

Chavez was not an enemy of America. He was an enemy of Washington’s hegemony over other countries, an enemy of Washington’s alliance with elite ruling cliques who steal from the people they grind down and deny sustenance. He was an enemy of Washington’s injustice, of Washington’s foreign policy based on lies and military aggression, bombs and invasions.

Washington is not America. Washington is Satan’s home town.

Chavez was a friend of truth and justice, and this made him unpopular throughout the Western World where every political leader regards truth and justice as dire threats.

Chavez was a world leader. Unlike US politicians, Chavez was respected throughout the non-western world. He was awarded honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford.

Chavez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chavez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.

Each of Washington’s puppets, from Asia to Europe and the Middle East, anxiously awaits the call that demonstrates Washington’s appreciation of his or her servitude to the global imperialist power that still occupies Japan and Germany 68 years after World War II and South Korea 60 years after the end of the Korean War and has placed troops and military bases in a large number of other “sovereign” countries.

It would have been politically easy for Chavez to sell out. All he had to do was to continue populist rhetoric, promote his allies in the army, throw more benefits to the underclass than its members had ever previously experienced, and divide the rest of the oil revenues with the corrupt Venezuelan elites.

But Chavez was a real person, like Rafael Correa, the three-term elected president of Ecuador, who stood up to the United States and granted political asylum to the persecuted Julian Assange, and Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia since the Spanish conquest. The majority of Venezuelans understood that Chavez was a real person. They elected him to four terms as president and would have continued electing him as long as he lived. What Washington hates most is a real person who cannot be bought.

The more the corrupt western politicians and media whores demonized Chavez, the more Venezuelans loved him. They understood completely that anyone damned by Washington was God’s gift to the world.

It is costly to stand up to Washington. All who are bold enough to do so are demonized.

They risk assassination and being overthrown in a CIA-organized coup, as Chavez was in 2002. When CIA-instructed Venezuelan elites sprung their coup and kidnapped Chavez, the coup was overthrown by the Venezuelan people who took to the streets and by elements of the military before Chavez could be murdered by the CIA-controlled Venezuelan elites, who escaped with their own venal lives only because, unlike them, Chavez was humanitarian. The Venezuelan people rose in instantaneous and massive public defense of Chavez and put the lie to the Bush White House claim that Chavez was a dictator.

Showing its sordid corruption, the New York Times took the side of the undemocratic coup by a handful of elitists against the democratically elected Chavez, and declared that Chavez’s removal by a small group of rich elites and CIA operatives meant that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.”

The lies and demonization continue with Chavez’s death. He will never be forgiven for standing up for justice. Neither will Correa and Morales, both of whom are no doubt on assassination lists.

CounterPunch, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and other commentators have collected examples of the venom-spewing obituaries that the western presstitutes have

written for Chavez, essentially celebrations that death has silenced the bravest voice on earth. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/08/obituaries-for-hugo-chavez/

http://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/in-death-as-in-life-chavez-target-of-media-scorn/

Perhaps the most absurd of all was Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson’s judgment that Chavez wasted Venezuela’s oil wealth on “social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs,” a poor use of money that could have been used to build sky scrappers such as “the world’s tallest building in Dubai and branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”

http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/06/ap-chavez-wasted-his-money-on-healthcare-when-he-could-have-built-gigantic-skyscrapers/

Among the tens of millions of Washington’s victims in the world–the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Mali, with Iran, Russia, China, and South America waiting in the wings for sanctions, destabilization, conquest or reconquest, Chavez’s September 20, 2006 speech at the UN General Assembly during the George W. Bush regime will stand forever as the greatest speech of the early 21st century.

Chavez beards the lion, or rather Satan, in his own den:

“Yesterday, the devil himself stood right here, at this podium, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

“We should call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: ‘the Devil’s Recipe.’”

The UN General Assembly had never heard such words, not even in the days when the militarily powerful Soviet Union was present. Faces broke out in smiles of approval, but no one dared to clap. Too much US money for the home country was at stake.

The US and UK delegations fled the scene, like vampires confronted with garlic and the Cross or werewolves confronted with silver bullets.

Chavez spoke about the false democracy of elites that is imposed by force and on others by “weapons and bombs.” Chavez asked, “What type of democracy do you impose with Marines and bombs?”

Wherever George W. Bush looks, Chavez said, “he sees extremists. And you, my brother–he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him. The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It is not that we are extremists. It is that the world is waking up. It is waking up all over and people are standing up.”

In two short sentences totaling 20 words, Chavez defined for all times early 21st century Washington: “The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.”

Throughout South America and the non-western world, Chavez’s death is being blamed on Washington. South Americans are aware of the US congressional hearings in the 1970s when the Church Committee brought to light the various CIA schemes to poison Fidel Castro.

The official document presented to President John F. Kennedy by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, known as the Northwoods Project, is known to the world and is available online. The Northwoods project consisted of a false flag attack on American citizens in order to blame Cuba and create public and world acceptance for US-imposed regime change in Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the proposal as inconsistent with morality and accountable government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

The belief has already hardened in South America that Washington with its hideous technologies of death infected Chavez with cancer in order to remove him as an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony over South America.

This belief will never die: Chavez, the greatest South American since Simon Bolivar, was murdered by Washington. True or false, the belief is set in stone. As Washington and globalism destroy more countries, the lives of elites become more precarious.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that security for the rich required economic security for the underclasses. Roosevelt established in the US a weak form of social democracy that European politicians had already understood was necessary for social cohesion and political and economic stability.

The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes set about undermining the stability that Roosevelt provided, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and the current prime minister of the UK undermined the social agreement between classes in the UK. Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.

Gerald Celente predicts that the elites will not survive the hatred and anger that they are bringing upon themselves. I suspect that he is correct. The American middle class is being destroyed. The working class has become a proletariat, and the social welfare system is being destroyed in order to reduce the budget deficit caused by the loss of

tax revenues to jobs offshoring and the expense of wars, overseas military bases, and financial bailouts.

The American people are being compelled to suffer in order that elites can continue with their agendas.

The US elites know what is coming. That is why they created a Nazi-style Ministry of the Interior known as Homeland Security, armed with enough ammunition to kill every American five times and with tanks to neutralize the Second Amendment rights of Americans. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34259.htm

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/

Pistols and rifles are useless against tanks, as the Branch Davidians found out in Waco, Texas. The protection of a small handful of elites from the Americans they are oppressing is also the reason the police are being militarized, brought under Washington’s control and armed with drones that can assassinate the real leaders of the American people who will be, not in the legislative, executive, or judicial chambers, but in the streets. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-militarization-of-law-enforcement-in-america-use-of-military-technology-and-tactics-by-local-level-police/5326303

Internment camps in the US appear to be real and not a conspiracy theory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkZ1yri26s http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf

The threat that the US government poses to its own citizens was recognized on March 7, 2013, by two US Senators, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY), who introduced a bill to prevent the US government from murdering its own citizens: “The Federal Government may not use a drone to kill a citizen of the United States who is located in the United States” unless the person “poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to another individual. Nothing in this section shall be construed to suggest that the Constitution would otherwise allow the killing of a citizen of the United States in the United States without due process of law.” http://www.cruz.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=339952

The “indispensable people” with their presidents Bush and Obama have begun the 21st century with death and violence. That is their only legacy.

The death and violence that Washington has unleashed will come back to Washington and to the corrupt political elites everywhere. As Gerald Celente says, the first great war of the 21st century has begun.


Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

http://paulcraigroberts.com

Riel's Revenge: Historic Ruling for Manitoba's Métis

Manitoba Métis Win Historic Ruling

by Roger Annis - Global Research

“Louis Riel must be smiling.” That’s the front-page headline in the Winnipeg Free Press two days ago.

Louis Riel and fellow governing councilors, 
Manitoba 1869, Manitoba Archives.(right) 

It’s taken from the response of the head of the Manitoba Métis Federation to the ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada last Friday that the Canadian and Manitoba governments abrogated their responsibilities to respect land rights won by the Métis people when the province was established in 1870. Louis Riel was one of the leaders of the Métis people during the latter half of the 19th century. They are the people of mixed European/Indigenous ancestry in western Canada.


According to the Manitoba Act of 1870, the children of then-Métis residents were to receive some 1.4 million acres of land. That would have given them a head start during the rush for prime agricultural land during the colonial-settler expansion into western Canada that followed the founding of Canada in 1867. Instead, governments delayed or acted dishonorably, effectively disenfranchising the Métis claim.

Background

Of the approximate 7,000 Métis children in 1870, 1,000 got nothing and 6,000 received disparate pieces of land. Sooner or later, many lost the land through swindling or coercion. In Canada, they and their descendants became victims of deepgoing national, language and other forms of discrimination.

The Supreme Court ruling does not prescribe a remedy. Indeed, it was not asked to do so by the Métis. They wanted a favourable ruling with which they could then negotiate land and financial settlements. It now behooves the federal and provincial governments to negotiate with the Métis. Time will tell if and how that will occur.

There are considerable economic interests at stake, including projected hydro-electricity lines that Manitoba Hydro wants to construct across disputed land for export markets in the United States.

Most of the land that was supposed to be distributed to the Métis is within or adjacent to present-day Winnipeg. There are an estimated 52,000 people of Métis descent in the province today. Across western Canada, the Métis number several hundred thousand.

This is the second major legal victory for Métis in recent months. In January, the Supreme Court ruled that Ottawa has an obligation to grant constitutional recognition to the estimated 600,000 Métis and “non-status” Indians in the country. The decision opens a door to negotiation or legal action for access to health care, education and other benefits that Ottawa restricts to Aboriginal people with “official” status under the Indian Act (ie to those Aboriginal peoples that signed treaties).
Louis Riel

The Manitoba Act was negotiated by Louis Riel, then head of a provisional government in the Red River Settlement (the land surrounding present-day Winnipeg). That government was formed to resist the unbridled expansion of settlement into western Canada being driven by capitalist interests in the east.

Following the signing of the Act, the personal safety of members of the provisional government, especially of Riel, became precarious. He was obliged to flee several times across the border to the U.S., notwithstanding his popularity and his later election (by acclamation) to the Canadian Parliament in 1873. That election and a second one that produced the same result were annulled by Ottawa.

Riel began a five-year exile from Canada in 1875 under an amnesty agreement by then Prime Minister John A. MacDonald. He served part of it discretely in Quebec and ended up settling in Minnesota in 1878. There he became active in the Republican Party (the party that led the anti-slavery side of the 1861-65 U.S. civil war) and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1883.

Riel returned to western Canada in 1884 at the urging of the Métis to assist the second rebellion of Métis, this time in alliance with Aboriginal peoples in the vast territory that later became Saskatchewan and Alberta. The uprising’s principal military commander was Gabriel Dumont. It was defeated by the Canadian military and Riel was captured and executed in Regina, Saskatchewan on November 16, 1885.

Since 2008, Riel is honored each year in Manitoba on Louis Riel Day, a general provincial holiday on the third Monday of February. A statue of him sits on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature.

In Ottawa, a resolution recognizing Riel as the founder of Manitoba was passed on March 10, 1992. But several legislative initiatives to reverse his 1885 conviction for treason have failed. •



Roger Annis is a writer and antiwar activist in Vancouver, Canada.