Coup d'Narrative: The Making of Wad Guano and the New Venezuela

America’s Venezuela Strategy: Coup By Sheer Narrative Control

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

March 20, 2019

The Trump administration is working to overthrow the government of Venezuela. They are not at this time doing this by military invasion, nor by funneling thousands of armed militants into the country, nor even solely with starvation sanctions and CIA ops.

The first and foremost means of overthrowing Venezuela’s government currently being utilized by the United States government is the low-risk, low-cost plan to simply control the stories that everyone tells themselves about who is in charge in Venezuela.

Adept manipulators understand that humans are storytelling animals.

The only thing keeping the powerful powerful, keeping money operating the way it operates, and keeping government running the way it runs is the stories we all agree to tell each other about those things.

If everyone collectively decided today that poker chips are the new currency and Kim Kardashian is the Supreme Ruler of the Entire World, those stories would be the new reality, and tomorrow we’d all be doing whatever Empress Kim commands and Las Vegas would be the new Wall Street.

The Trump administration is exploiting this exact principle in Venezuela by singling out some guy named Juan and calling him Mister President, despite the fact that he’s never received a single vote for that office and holds no actual power. If they can persuade enough Venezuelans (particularly the ones with the big guns) and the rest of the world’s governments to do the same, then Guaido will indeed become the functional president of the country.

Everything the Trump administration does to Venezuela is done with the goal of controlling the stories people tell about it. They smash the country with starvation sanctions, then tell everyone to believe that Maduro is starving his people. They stage a “humanitarian aid” stunt on Venezuela’s border, then they lie and tell everyone that Maduro is blocking all aid to Venezuela and setting aid trucks on fire, because he wants to starve the hungry and kill the sick. It’s all about controlling the narrative with the goal of changing who is recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

We saw this illustrated especially clearly in a recent press briefing with the State Department’s “Special Representative for Venezuela”, war criminal Elliott Abrams.

Abrams was asked by a reporter to “explain to us the article under which Mr. Guaido declared himself president” because “It is said that it has expired last month.”

Indeed, when Guaido declared himself interim president back in January we were told that it would be a month-long position in the interim while a new election is prepared. As Reuters reported at the time, “Venezuela’s constitution says if the presidency is determined to be vacant, new elections should be called in 30 days and that the head of the congress should assume the presidency in the meantime.”

But, since the Trump administration’s coup-by-narrative has not gone as planned, Abrams stumbled all over himself informing the press that the goalposts of the story have been moved:

ABRAMS: As to the Venezuelan constitution, the National Assembly has passed a resolution that states that that 30-day period of interim presidency will not start ending or counting until the day Nicolas Maduro leaves power. So the 30 days doesn’t start now, it starts after Maduro. And they – that’s a resolution of the National Assembly.

QUESTION: When did they – they did that after he —

ABRAMS: They did that – this is roughly a month ago. We could try to find the date for you.

QUESTION: When he was – when he was – took the mantle of interim president, that wasn’t there.

ABRAMS: Yes, when – that’s correct. And so people —

QUESTION: Can you do that ex post facto like that?

ABRAMS: When people ask a question how do —

QUESTION: That seems to be like saying I was elected for four years to be president, and then two years in you change the rules so that your term didn’t start – hasn’t even started yet. How does that happen?

ABRAMS: Well, you don’t get a vote because you’re not in the National Assembly.

QUESTION: Well, you don’t. You’re not in the National Assembly either.

QUESTION: If it matters, does the U.S. view that as constitutional under their system?

MR ABRAMS: Yes. I mean, we’re taking the – the National Assembly is the only legitimate democratic institution left in Venezuela, and their interpretation of the constitution, as you know, is that as of the date of this alleged term for Maduro, the presidency is vacant. But they have also said that that 30-day period starts when Maduro goes.

QUESTION: So Juan Guaido is the interim president of an interim that doesn’t exist yet?

MR ABRAMS: The 30-day end to his interim presidency starts counting. Because he’s not in power, that’s the problem. Maduro is still there. So they have decided that they will count that from when he actually is in power and Maduro’s gone. I think it’s logical.

QUESTION: So then he really isn’t interim president, then?

MR ABRAMS: He is interim president, but he’s not —

QUESTION: With no power.

MR ABRAMS: — able to exercise the powers of the office because Maduro still is there.

QUESTION: So their interpretation is that until and unless he actually has the power to run the country, he’s not actually the interim president?

MR ABRAMS: No. Their interpretation is that the constitution requires a 30-day interim period, but it – those 30 days should not be counted while Maduro is still there exercising the powers of his former office.

So to recap, Guaido is still the president of Venezuela after his 30-day window closed because his interim presidency doesn’t currently exist, and because he has no power. By those standards, I’m just as much president of Venezuela as Guaido is. Where’s my meeting with Mike Pence?

But of course facts don’t figure into this equation at all, because this is a coup by narrative. As we discussed yesterday, narrative always takes precedence over fact in these games. They will keep referring to Juan the guy as “President Guaido”, despite the admitted fact that he does not actually have any of the powers or recognition that an actual president has, and despite the fact that there is currently a guy in Caracas who does have all those things. They will keep advancing this narrative control war until it either succeeds or fails, and in the case of the latter they’ll change tactics and try something else.

The battle for power is the battle to control as many humans as possible, and the battle to control as many humans as possible is the battle to control the stories those humans are telling each other. Humans are storytelling animals, so if you can control the stories you can control the humans. Understand this and you’ll understand the behaviors of governments and media around the world.

____________________

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Bloomberg's War Brands Loyalty or, How I Learned to Love the Military-Industrial Complex

Bloomberg’s Armsmaker-Funded Columnist Wants You to Know: Military Spending Is Woke

by Adam Johnson - FAIR

March 19, 2019

You may not know it, but bloated Pentagon budgets are actually “progressive.” Or so says a recent opinion piece in Bloomberg News (3/17/19), “Progressives Should Learn to Love the Pentagon Budget,” by Hal Brands.

Bloomberg identifies Brands as the “Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.”

“Kissinger” is ominous enough, but surely Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is some innocuous, wonky academic institution, no? In a piece explicitly defending bloated military budgets, however, perhaps it would be useful to know what exactly the “Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments” is.


We can start by reading this section taken directly from their website (unabridged):

"Below is a list of organizations that have contributed to our efforts over the past three years.

• Aerojet Rocketdyne
• Army Strategic Studies Group
• Army War College
• Austal USA
• Australian Department of Defence
• BAE Systems Inc.
• Carnegie Corporation of New York
• Chemring Group
• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
• Department of the Navy
• Embassy of Japan
• Fincantieri/Marinette
• Free University Brussels
• General Atomics
• General Dynamics—National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO)
• Harris Corporation
• Huntington Ingalls Industries
• Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
• Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force
• Kongsberg Defense Systems, Inc.
• L3 Technologies, Inc.
• Lockheed Martin Corporation
• Maersk Line, Limited
• Metron
• National Defense University
• Navy League of the United States
• Northrop Grumman Corporation
• Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Net Assessment (ONA)
• Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE)
• Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (AT&L)
• Polski Instytut Spraw Miedzynarodowych (PISM)
• Raven Industries
• Raytheon Company
• Sasakawa Peace Foundation
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• SEACOR Holdings
• Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows Program
• Smith Richardson Foundation
• Submarine Industrial Base Council
• Taiwan Ministry of National Defense
• Textron Systems
• The Boeing Company
• The Doris & Stanley Tananbaum Foundation
• The Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation
• United Kingdom Royal Air Force

Brands is a senior fellow at an organization funded almost entirely by those with a clear interest in the upcoming $750 billion defense budget Brands is pushing for. While we don’t have a tax filings for CSBA since Brand was hired there, and thus we do not know his specific income, the average senior fellow at the organization, as of its last tax filing, makes just under $300,000 a year.

They can call it whatever they wish—”think tank,” “nonprofit,” “Center”—but by any objective metric, this organization is just a lobbying entity for the weapons industry and Western militaries.

A cursory glance at their policy briefs reveals they, unsurprisingly, always support more spending on weapons systems. Unlike other weapons-funded lobbying groups such as Center for Strategic and International Studies (FAIR.org, 8/12/16), they don’t even bother throwing some banks or soda companies in there to give the appearance of being anything other than a weapons industry trade group.

(Don’t be fooled by the “Sasakawa Peace Foundation”—that’s an organization founded by far-right Japanese business executive Ryoichi Sasakawa, (far right) jailed as a war crimes suspect after World War II, and who once described himself as the “world’s richest fascist”—Time, 8/26/74.)

Setting aside its disqualifying conflicts of interest, Brands’ piece is an assortment of sophistry about how weapons systems create middle-class jobs for Americans. Given that any meaningful definition of “progressive” must take into account the 95 percent of the world who are not Americans—e.g., those on the other end of these weapons systems and military occupations—the column rests its premise on a massive category error.

One passage in particular displays a rather goofy notion of what “progressive” means (emphasis added):

"The progressive critique misses the fact that military spending already serves progressive ends. Yes, defense spending benefits the executives who run major defense contractors, just as infrastructure spending benefits the executives of companies that build highways and airports and schools. But the Pentagon budget also serves as a huge jobs program and source of economic security for the middle class.

"This includes the roughly 2 million people who serve either on active duty or in the reserves and 730,000 civilian employees. The vast majority of them qualify as middle class and enjoy precisely the sort of healthcare and other benefits progressives seek to provide for the population as a whole."

See, if only all 330 million Americans could work in the military industry, building bombs and F-35s, no one would die due to preventable disease or an inability to afford chemotherapy. To Brands, the most “progressive” vision for society is the Klingon Empire—a perpetual war state where service to large-scale mechanized violence is the cost of survival. The idea that healthcare could, maybe, not be tethered to exporting weapons, occupation, hundreds of military bases, CIA dirty tricks and bombings is simply not an option. Progressives’ only hope: piggyback off US imperialism which evidently, to Brands, is simply a law of nature like ocean tides or entropy.

Brands also suggests that you can’t have trade except at gunpoint:

"Defense spending produces massive positive spillovers in the form of national security and the ability to protect access to the global commons – critical to promoting U.S. trade and improving living standards at home."

And he says that what progressives should be worrying about as a “long-term threat to America’s ability to invest in infrastructure, education and other progressive priorities is not the Pentagon,” but “runaway entitlement spending.”

New York’s Eric Levitz (3/18/19) does a good job debunking Brands’ argument, such as it is, and his piece is well worth reading. But it’s not totally clear how useful it is to assume good faith from someone with such deep, undisclosed conflicts.

We learned years ago to dismiss out of hand experts funded by the tobacco industry commenting on the effects of smoking, or climate scientists funded by big oil; why, exactly, do we take at all seriously organizations like CSBA when they comment on military budgets, and broader questions of US militarism, while receiving the vast bulk of their funding from those with a vested interest in bloating the US military machine?

The reason is, compared to the fossil fuel industry and tobacco, the military-think tank complex’s mercenary experts are 100-fold more intertwined into the US bipartisan consensus. It’s a product of ubiquity and professional courtesy borne from having influence with both Democrats and Republicans, rather than just the increasingly fringe and anti-science GOP.

From an ontological standpoint, there’s little difference between experts on the take pushing cigarettes and those on the take pushing weapons; it’s simply a matter of scope and sophistication.

In addition, Brands’ Bloomberg bio omits Brands is also a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which also receives sizable funds from the weapons industry. While its funders are not posted on its website, Rightwing Web, a website that monitors the influence of right-wing funding, does report that,

"[M]ajor supporters listed in the group’s 2012 annual report include Boeing, Piasecki Aircraft… Historically, FPRI has also benefited from the largesse of conservative foundations.

"Between 1985 and 2005, FPRI received nearly $5 million from the Lynde and Harry Bradley, John M. Olin, Earhart, Smith Richardson and Sarah Scaife Foundations, among others."

A variation on the Inexplicable Republican Best Friend (FAIR.org, 2/26/19), Brands––a career conservative whose recent output includes columns in Bloomberg downplaying Elliott Abrams’ laundry list of war crimes (2/20/19) and calling for a “new Cold War” in Latin America (2/10/19) and a 34-page paper in Journal of Strategic Studies making “The Case for Bush Revisionism” (7/28/17)––is here to tell progressives what’s good for them; in this case, supporting the funding of massive, expensive weapons systems. The fact that he’s potentially paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from a group funded almost exclusively by weaponsmakers and US and foreign militaries isn’t disclosed.

Laundering conflicts of interests through “think tanks” isn’t a new phenomenon for the media, and it’s one FAIR has documented for years (e.g., 5/17/17, 3/7/18), but perhaps editors can explain what exactly groups like “Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments” are, who funds them, or what their political leanings may be. These militaristic propaganda outfits are specifically designed to sound boring and Official and Serious, so the average reader won’t make the connection between their funding sources and their ideological end product.

Perhaps an enterprising editor, not wanting to collaborate in this transparent scam, will break convention and actually make clear to the reader what 20 seconds of Google would show: that these columns are written by people directly invested in the continued bloating of the Pentagon and function in effect, if not intent, as little more than marketing tools for industries and armies that build, stock and use weapons systems.

You can send a message to Bloomberg here (or via Twitter: @business). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Janine Bandcroft, Christina Nikolic - Funding Drive March 21, 2019

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

March 21, 2019

10-06 101.9 FM 'cfuv.ca'

Thursday March 21st, 2019

 Funding Drive

 

Listen. Hear.

11:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc. And welcome to Gorilla Radio's Funding Drive show! Next month marks the 20th anniversary of this show. That translates to more than a thousand episodes, two thousand studio interviews or so, and an uncounted number of streeters, demos, and assorted event recordings. Why do I do it? It's a fair question; and I'll try answer it over the next 57 minutes.

But for now, I'd like to introduce two of the people that make the continuance of the show possible. Janine Bandcroft has been providing Left Coast Events Bulletins, and much more besides, for the show for almost as long as it's been on the air. And Christina Nikolic has stepped in for the Events Bulletin, appeared as an expert guest on soil health and horticultural issues, and provided administrative, logistical, and moral support for more than a decade. And, both Janine and Christina are here again today for the umpteenth Funding Drive program. Hello Janine and Christina!

11:03:00 1:00 Pitch/How to's of donating, etc.
11:04:00 4:00 Music - Hawksley Workman - "Teenage Cats" - Old Cheetah (disc)
11:08:00 3:00 20 Years Monkeying Around - (Music - Soma - "Get Thee Behind Me" - The Fire This Time - background - disc)

Believe it or not, when this show's first episode aired, way back in 1999, people over here in the Western democracies believed bombing distant countries for the good of the people living there was a legitimate form of international diplomacy. Some people, anyway. This bizarre logic was not limited to the United States alone. Even in places like Canada, the leaders of Parliament said they believed blitzkrieging modern, perfectly functional cities into a pre-industrial state, difficult as it may be for those beneath the barrage, was a case of short-term pain for long-term gain. "They would come to thank us for it, in time", we were assured.

It was the Former Yugoslavia being destroyed at that moment in the way back, long ago, thanks largely to Bill Clinton's winning ways, and the eagerness of NATO to prove its continuing usefulness in a post-Cold War World. But, to be fair to Slick Willy, he was merely following the tenor of the times set by his New World Order predecessor, George H. W. Bush, and there would be so much more to come.

The music behind me is from The Fire This Time, a project undertaken by Briton, Grant Wakefield. He produced it as both a historical record of George, the first Bush's destruction of Iraq, and monument to the inauguration of the Forever War. He says it's dedicated to, "the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US led bombing and sanctions from the years 1990-2001."

11:11:00 5:30 Transglobal Underground - "Radio Unfree Europe" - Impossible Broadcasting (disc)
11:16:30 2:00 Pitch and Updates with Janine and Christina
11:18:00 1:00 Intro...(Music - Arcade Fire - "Electric Blue" - Everything Now background - stick)

Of course, it's not all war and rumours of the same here at GR. This year, and every year for the last twenty years, the show has provided a platform for people doing great, positive things singly and in groups locally, regionally, nationally, and around the World: Providing a venue for people and issues not adequately covered in state and corporate media.

11:19:00 5:00 Paolo Nutini - "Iron Sky" - Caustic Love (disc)

11:24:00 7:00 Update/Pitch & Left Coast Events Bulletin... (Music - Arcade Fire - "Electric Blue" - Everything Now - background - stick)

11:31:00 4:00 Music - Macka B - "Wha Me Eat" - More Knowledge (stick)
11:35:00 2:00 Pitch and Such - Music - 2raumwohnung - "Melancholisch Shon" - Putumayo - background - disc)

11:37:00 5:00 Music - Los Lobos with La Marisoul - "Nothing Can Be Done" - Youtube from PBS Joni 75 Live (Twitter feed Mar. 17)

11:42:00 3:00 Pitch & Such (with Jane's Addiction - "Ted, Just Admit It" - Nothing's Shocking background (disc)

Imagine, after living somewhere for a long time, even through childhood, discovering a place you'd no idea existed. A place always there, for those with eyes to see, and the ears to hear. CFUV, this great latter day Tower of Babel was erected in 1984 and has since been administered by an ever-changing cadre of acolytes, true believers in the power of radio to change moods and minds. It's ever been the place where the sounds of an entire World congregate and coagulate, before emanating out to Victoria, (and whichever way the wind blows) through a minuscule, 22-hundred watt transmitter.

That's how it was for most of the station's history. Our little signal now hitches a global ride on the world-wide-web, capable of sending back to the far-flung corners of the planet what we've for so long taken. But, though the World change some things stay constant. Just so with CFUV, where the passions of programers for beauty and the truth of music and sounds to present to you, dear listener, has and will always remain constant, as long as there be ears to hear it...Whether you've been along for the ride from the beginning, or hearing CFUV for the first time, remember: We're always here for everyone.

11:45:00 1:00 Chris Chandler promo (stick)
11:46:00 3:00 Parry Farrell - "Did You Forget" - Song Yet to Be Sung (Twitter feed Mar. 18)

11:49:00 2:00 Pitch and Such wrapping it up totals, etc.
11:51:00 3:00 The Plugz - "Reel Ten" - Repo Man soundtrack  - background (stick)
11:54:00 4:00 Arcade Fire - "Good God, Damn" - Everything Now (stick)
 
11:58:00 1:00 Thanks to J9, Christina, Donors, and you, dear listener.
11:59:00 --:-- Out with - Tom & Joy - "Meditation" - Putumayo Presents Bossa Nova Around the World (disc)

-0-

Birdcage Liners: Manning, Assange & the Corpo Media

The Destruction of Freedom: Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and the Corporate Media

by Media Lens - In Alerts 2019 

19 March 2019

In 2013, US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000 confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.

Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military video WikiLeaks titled 'Collateral Murder'.

It showed the indiscriminate slaying of up to eighteen people in Baghdad on 12 July, 2007.

The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, showed the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist and his rescuers. A second Reuters staff member, employed as a driver and camera assistant, was also killed.

Two young children, whose father was among those killed, were seriously wounded.

The video, together with the transcript of army exchanges during the indiscriminate US killings, shocked many around the world:

Let's shoot.
Light 'em all up.
Come on, fire!
Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]
keep shoot.
keep shoot.
[...]
Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.
Nice.

While in prison, Manning twice attempted to commit suicide and also spent time in solitary confinement. She was released in 2017, after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, two days before he left office.

On 8 March – International Women's Day – Manning was once again jailed after she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange, before a grand jury in Virginia. A grand jury means that the public is not allowed entry: the hearings are held in secret. She said in a statement:

'I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.

'Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

'I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.'

Binoy Kampmark, who lectures at RMIT University in Melbourne, remarked:


'The sense of dredging and re-dredging in efforts to ensnare Manning is palpable... There is a distinct note of the sinister in this resumption of hounding a whistleblower'.

Kampmark added:

'Manning's original conviction was a shot across the bow, the prelude to something fundamental. Journalists long protected for using leaked material under the First Amendment were going to become future targets of prosecution.'

Sending Manning back to jail shows:

'the unequivocal determination of US authorities to fetter, if not totally neutralise, the reach of WikiLeaks in the modern information wars.'

The famous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 detailing US war crimes in Vietnam and US government lies to the public, told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview:

'This is a continuation of seven-and-a-half years of torture of Chelsea Manning, in an effort to get her to contribute to incriminating WikiLeaks, so that they can bring Julian Assange or WikiLeaks to trial on charges that would not apply to The New York Times. It's been speculated for years now that the secret charges, if they did exist—and apparently they do exist—against Julian Assange were under the same charges that I was first—the first person to be prosecuted for, back in 1971: violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy and theft. It would be the same cases brought against me.'

Ellsberg continued:

'Unfortunately, bringing that against a journalist is even more blatantly a violation of the First Amendment, freedom of the press. And although Donald Trump has made it very plain he would love to prosecute and convict The New York Times, he doesn't have the guts to do that, to do what he wants, fortunately, because it would be so obviously unconstitutional, that although his base would be happy with it and he would be happy with it, he would get into too much trouble constitutionally. So he wants to find charges against Julian that would be different from mine, because if he brought the same charges that he brought against me—in this case, against a journalist—it would clearly be found unconstitutional.'

He then pointed to the significance of this latest development:

'And so, Chelsea, having failed to give them what they wanted over seven-and-a-half years here she was incarcerated, or since, or in the grand jury—namely, false incriminating charges against WikiLeaks—they're resorting again to torture, which does work at getting false confessions. That's what it's for. That's what it mainly does. They want her to contradict her earlier sworn testimony many times, that she behaved in relation to WikiLeaks exactly as she would have to The New York Times or The Washington Post, to whom she went first, before going to WikiLeaks. And they didn't pick up on what she was offering, so she went to WikiLeaks. But she took sole responsibility, not to spare them, but because that was the truth. And she tells the truth.'

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to a series of Guardian and Washington Post articles based on documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, concurred that the real target is WikiLeaks:

'the Trump administration is trying to do what the Obama administration tried to do but ultimately concluded it couldn't do without jeopardizing press freedoms, which is to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for what it regards as the crime of publishing top-secret or classified documents.'

Greenwald rightly called this attempt to go after WikiLeaks 'a grave threat to press freedom'. However:

'most reporters are mute on this scandal, on this controversy, and while a lot of Democrats are supportive of it, because they still hate WikiLeaks so much from the 2016 election that they're happy to see Julian Assange go to jail, even if it means standing behind the Trump administration'.

The reference to the 2016 election is the allegation that WikiLeaks' publication of emails from the Democratic Party and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman, brought about Trump's victory. Assange had even supposedly conspired with Trump, and with Trump's alleged Russian allies, to fatally damage Clinton's 2016 campaign: charges that are without any solid basis.

The Courage Foundation, a trust set up to fundraise the legal defence of individuals such as whistleblowers and journalists, warns of the 'Assange Precedent'; namely, the threat to all media posed by the Trump administration's attempt to prosecute Julian Assange:

'All media organizations and journalists must recognize the threat to their freedom and ability to work posed by the Trump Administration's prosecution of Assange. They should join human rights organizations, the United Nations and many others in opposing Assange's extradition. They should do so out of their own self-interest given that their ability to safely publish is under serious threat.'

In December 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed that the WikiLeaks founder, whose health is deteriorating, has been arbitrarily detained since 2010, and that he should be freed and compensated. George Galloway rightly points out that:

'It's a kind of modern day torture that Julian Assange has been subjected to.'

In November 2018, Assange's mother made an urgent and impassioned plea to raise awareness of his plight:

'This is not a drill. This is an emergency. The life of my son...is in immediate and critical danger.'

On 18 March, Christine Assange renewed her appeal to journalists, in particular, to stand up for her son. Their record to date has been, in the main, shameful. We have previously detailed numerous examples of journalistic abuse, scorn and ridicule thrown at Assange, and WikiLeaks, notably by Guardian journalists. For instance, Hannah Parkinson, who writes for the Guardian and its sister Sunday paper, the Observer, tweeted this about Assange last year:

'this little shit has lived rent free in Knightsbridge for 5 years, probably saved about £200k'

The tweet was 'liked' by John Simpson, the 'impartial' grandly-titled BBC World Affairs Editor who exudes gravitas, if little insight, on world affairs.

And in response to the news last October that Assange was to launch legal action against the government of Ecuador, accusing it of violating his fundamental rights and freedoms, Parkinson had tweeted:

'a teenager whose parents turn the wifi off'

This is par for the course at the Guardian whose journalists are regularly shamed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange doing the real job of exposing power to public scrutiny. In 2015, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs had even mocked Chelsea Manning when she was put in solitary confinement:

'And the world's tiniest violin plays a sad song'

That, however, did earn a mild rebuke in a tweet from Guardian editor Matt Wells. The tweets were subsequently deleted, but not before screenshots had been saved.

The disdain, sometimes outright hostility, towards WikiLeaks and Assange is also reflected in the minimal coverage, and distinct lack of support, for Chelsea Manning's renewed incarceration. The Guardian merely published a brief article titled, 'Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify to grand jury in WikiLeaks case'. As WikiLeaks journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson pointed out:

'Of the MSM ['mainstream' media] the @guardian benefitted most from material Chelsea Manning was sentenced for in 2013. You might expect a huge story on the yda [yesterday] jailing of @xychelsea [Chelsea Manning] to extort her to testify against Assange/@wikileaks. But nothing except a small AP [Associated Press] based story that quickly lost front.'

Hrafnsson added:

'Every day Chelsea Manning @xychelsea spends in jail for refusing to testify against Assange/@wikileaks adds shame to those journalists who remain silent about this disgrace. This applies especially to those who benefited most from her brave acts in the past. @guardian @nytimes'

The Guardian had, of course, benefitted in publishing Greenwald's work based on Manning's releases via WikiLeaks; as well as book sales that were generated on the back of WikiLeaks' work. In 2012, veteran journalist and filmmaker John Pilger wrote that the British government's pursuit of Julian Assange was 'an assault on freedom and a mockery of journalism'. He described the corporate media's treatment of Assange as 'a vituperative personal campaign':

'Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover, has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a "damaged personality" and "callous". They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables.'

A ProQuest newspaper database search on 19 March revealed that there were but four newspaper articles about the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning in the whole of the national print press: The Times, the Daily Mail, The Herald and the Daily Record (the latter two newspapers are based in Scotland). The Guardian article mentioned above, based on an Associated Press release, was published online; but not in the print version. There was also an online Telegraph piece which was also just a press release (by Agence France-Presse). As far as we could tell, there was not a single editorial or column in a major national newspaper defending Chelsea Manning, nor pointing to the grave danger to press freedom that her new incarceration posed. That is a disgraceful indictment of our so-called 'free press'.

In an interview last week with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA, John Pilger described the significance, and injustice, of the recent jailing of Chelsea Manning. The irony of her being imprisoned on International Women's Day was first noted, then Pilger pointed to the shameful silence from the women's movement, and other human rights activists:

'Where are they [human rights activists] on Chelsea Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the Court House? Where is Amnesty International? Where are the women's groups? Where are the LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why aren't they massing in support of Chelsea Manning? Instead I see Chelsea Manning's story relegated in a sort of, "Oh well, that's almost inevitable this is going to happen." But this [...] is the most significant act of principle; an inspiration to all decent people; to democrats, to people who believe in justice. So where are the groups who have been very loud in their condemnation – rightly - of Donald Trump? Where are they? Why are we not hearing from them?'

Discussion then turned to the crushing reality that the corporate media is an extension of an oppressive establishment order:

Dennis Bernstein: 'it seems to me that journalists believe Chelsea Manning should be in jail. And that Julian Assange isn't a publisher, and that he should be tried for treason because, after all, these journalists are patriots. They're no reporters.'

John Pilger: 'Well, I think I'll stand back a little from that question a little, Dennis. I think we can go on and beat our heads on the media brick wall, and asking these questions on the media. The media is part of an oppressive system in various forms [...]. It is an extension of the established order and these days it is without something it used to have, and that is spaces – limited spaces – but spaces for free and fair comment. Right across the corporate media these spaces have evaporated. So they are part of a system. They have shown this in a most grotesque way by the persecution of Julian Assange – the slandering of him, the distortion of the facts about his case.'

Pilger, who is well-versed in Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model of the media, explained that it has already been clear for some considerable time how and why the corporate media operate in the way they do. It is now time for nonviolent direct action against the media that constantly promotes rapacious Western interests and erodes public freedoms:

'It is certainly right for us to protest – and I think our protests against the media should be more of a direct action now: occupy their spaces, occupy their buildings, confront them.'

Pilger added that 'people who preserve human decency' – the majority, that is – need to ask ourselves what we are doing about the ongoing state and corporate assault on freedom of expression; and, indeed, on freedom itself:

'The Chelsea Manning/Julian Assange case goes to the very heart of everything. It is about freedom. It's not just about freedom of expression. It is about justice. It is about the law: the use of law, the misuse of law. It is about right and wrong. If there is going to be any real debate, I think we have to confront it, and we have to do it on our terms; not through the hopeless cypher of a corporate media.'

The corporate media is institutionally opposed to the interests of the vast majority of the public; that is why we reject the label 'mainstream'. The corporate media including BBC News, systematically promotes imperialist and exploitative state interests, together with private power in the form of big business, financial speculation, military forces, the arms industry, the fossil fuel lobby, destructive agribusiness, unsustainable food production and rampant global consumerism that is destroying ecosystems, ramping up mass loss of species and endangering human survival through climate chaos. This oppressive system, with the corporate media a vital cog in the apparatus, must be exposed, confronted, dismantled and replaced with a society that truly promotes democracy, justice and human potential. It is up to us to make it happen before it's too late.

DC

Preview: Trump Coup And Our Next Oil War

Venezuela: The Trump Coup And Our Next Oil War: Aggressive Progressive 

by Jimmy Dore interviews Greg Palast

March 6, 2019

People don’t know the Kochs have these giant refineries, some of the biggest in the world, on the Gulf Coast of Texas, in the middle of oilfields. They can’t use Texas oil because it’s not heavy and filthy enough, so they have to take almost all their oil from Venezuela, one of the only places where you get this super heavy oil.

Normally it’s discounted. But because they know the Kochs have to use their oil, Chavez, who was a really bright man, was squeezing the Kochs by the cojones and charging them a premium for his oil.

The Kochs have been going crazy – they were losing money at their refinery because of the price.

[Above: Part 1 of Palast’s “Solid Chat Saturday” interview with Jimmy Dore.]

So they had two choices. Buy Tar Sands gunk from Canada, via the XL Pipeline, but it’s taking too long. First they had to get Trump to come in as president and overcome all of the environmental objections to get the XL Pipeline approved. But it still ain’t there. So what do you do? You better overthrow the government of Venezuela with some guy named Juan Guaido who said, and I quote, "I will open up the Venezuela oil fields to American companies."

You have to understand, Exxon was basically thrown out of Venezuela. They’ve had lawsuits going against Venezuela. Guaido says he’ll pay off Exxon and he will let Exxon take control again of the Venezuelan oil fields. That’s what this game is about, it’s about the oil.

[Above: Part 2 of Palast’s “Solid Chat Saturday” interview with Jimmy Dore.]

And who is this guy Juan Guaido that Trump has said he’s recognized as president? He’s not someone who said, “Oh, the election was stolen from me.” He literally never ran for president. He’s just a 35-year old white guy – and that’s really at the heart of it. That’s something that Trump likes. He speaks good English, he hung out with the Right Wing think tanks in Washington, went to George Washington University. He’s a rich, white guy. That’s really, really important. And in a Mestizo nation, which is made up of about 70% Mestizos, that is people, as Chavez told me, who are a combination of “Negro e Indio,” as he said, black and indigenous, that’s the majority of the people in Venezuela, but they’re finding a white guy to run it.

[Above: Part 3 of Palast’s “Solid Chat Saturday” interview with Jimmy Dore.]

To learn more read “In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key to Trump’s Coup.”

Interview with Jimmy Dore first broadcast on “Solid Chat Saturday” on March 2, 2019 (Rated: R for Real Truth). Subscribe to The Jimmy Dore Show.

WitchHunt

WitchHunt

by Jon Pullman - Witchhuntfilm.org

March 17, 2019

In 2015, while the far right was gaining ground around the world, socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the UK Labour Party in a landslide victory.

Accusations of antisemitism within the party immediately began to circulate. Well-known anti-racists and left-wing Jews, such as Jackie Walker, were amongst the chief targets.

WitchHunt sets out to investigate the stories and the people behind the headlines, examining the nature of the accusations. Is this a witch hunt, as some claim? If so, who is behind it, and what is the political purpose of such a campaign? Has the media failed in its duty to fairness and accuracy in reporting on such serious allegations?

Through a series of interviews, analysis and witness testimony, WitchHunt explores the connections between the attacks on Labour, the ongoing tragedy of Palestine and the wider struggle against race-based oppression. It argues that if it is to mean anything at all, the fight against racism must be a shared one that includes all peoples.

Into the D.C. Streets with Anti-War Message to Trump

“No War for Oil” as Thousands March Against US Intervention in Venezuela

by TRNN

March 17, 2019

As part of an international day against US intervention in Venezuela, a mobilization in Washington, DC with speakers Daniel Ellsberg and Jill Stein emphasized that Trump is only interested in Venezuela’s resources, not in its human rights.

Pants on Fire Media and the Flaming Lies They Fan

Exposure of Another Pro-War Lie Doesn’t Make Media More Skeptical of Pro-War Claims

by Janine Jackson - FAIR

March 17, 2019

Listeners will likely know by now, the late February story, complete with vivid video footage, about forces of elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro burning trucks trying to bring the besieged country food and medicine was false.

Weeks later, the New York Times (3/10/19) reported the humanitarian trucks were not set on fire by Maduro’s forces, but instead by anti-Maduro protestors throwing Molotov cocktails.

The Times outlined how the fake story took root, passing from US officials to media that simply reported their claims as fact with no investigation—does any of this sound familiar?

Folks like CNN‘s Marshall Cohen noted the Times debunking as if it were just an interesting development—a “classic example of how misinformation spreads,” Cohen said in a tweet. Except, as The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald pointed out (3/10/19), it was Cohen’s own network, CNN, that led the way in spreading the lie around the world.

And not simply by parroting official claims. On February 24, the network told viewers that “a CNN team saw incendiary devices from police on the Venezuelan side of the border ignite the trucks.” It was then we got to Mike Pence claiming that “the tyrant” Maduro “danced as his henchmen…burned food and medicine”; Marco Rubio’s comment that “each of the trucks burned by Maduro carried 20 tons of food and medicine. This is a crime and if international law means anything, he must pay a high price for this”; Mike Pompeo’s fist-shaking, “What kind of a sick tyrant stops food from getting to hungry people?”

It isn’t merely that corporate media will never, in a million years, go back to each of these people and demand to know why they won’t insist on the same sort of response, now that it appears it was Maduro’s opponents who were to blame. It’s more that the very news dissemination process here superficially being indicted will not itself be reconsidered.

After all, this false story arrived embedded within another false story: that the Venezuelan government is blocking needed humanitarian aid to the country. The Venezuelan government has and does allow aid into their country—from countries that are not actively and vituperatively threatening to overthrow the elected president with an external coup.

Groups from the Red Cross to the UN have challenged the US’s earnest claims of humanitarian concern. NPR (2/16/19) acknowledged that US moves are not simply humanitarian, but “also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela—which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it.”

That, plus the evidence that it was in fact opposition protesters that burned the trucks, would suggest a real flipping of the current script, and with it some consideration of how that script got written in the first place.

But, as happened with those raising questions about evidence of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction—or the Cuban airfield in Grenada, or Iraqis throwing babies out of incubators, or North Vietnam firing on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin—the outlets that vigorously pushed the false story will not extend any new skepticism toward the official sources that sold it to them. Nor will they offer any new respect—or platform—to the people (like Max Blumenthal, like Boots Riley) who questioned the claim…not weeks later, but in real time.

Those official sources will still be central and those asking questions will still be marginal. Those who cannot believe that the US government is working, with corporate media support, to set up a false storyline to push the public to support another war on another country might at this point ask themselves: If they were doing that, how would that look different than what we’re seeing now?

Wanted: Monkeywrencher w/ Knowledge of Electricity Systems - Must Enjoy Travel

US officials offered my friend cash to take down Tehran’s power grid

by Sharmine Narwani - Medium

March 14, 2019

It took a country-wide power outage in Venezuela, whispers of a cyberattack, and smug tweets from US officials to make me suddenly recall the cloak-and-dagger story of a close Iranian-American friend nine years ago.

My friend, an engineer — who I will not name for obvious reasons and who I will call ‘Kourosh’ for the purpose of this article — revealed to me in 2010 that he was approached by two “State Department employees” who offered him $250,000 to “do something very simple” during his upcoming trip to Tehran.

Kourosh was freaking out because he didn’t know how these guys knew he was going to Iran in the first place, and how they knew he was “cash-strapped,” in the second.

He wasn’t a particularly political person, though he had participated in some DC protests in the aftermath of the hotly contested 2009 presidential elections. He was just one of thousands of Iranian-American engineers in the Washington-Maryland-Virginia technology belt looking to make a decent living.

Kourosh told the US officials that he was not interested, that if Iran needed to make changes, Iranians inside the country were the only ones who should do it.

I begged him to let me write this story, but he was very nervous and declined. Over the next year or two, I pushed some more and he gave me further information, but wouldn’t budge on its publication. Here’s what he revealed:

The State Department guys had since approached him a second time. They offered him further details about the job. They wanted him to disable Tehran’s power grid in exchange for the $250k. They needed someone with technical skills, but said the job was a simple one. He would have to go to a specific location in the Tehran area with a laptop or similar communication device and punch in a code.

Kourosh even told me the code. Said he had memorized it and could recite it in his sleep. Here it is: 32-B6-B10–40-E (symbol for epsilon)

Okay, that’s not the actual code, but it looks exactly like that — same format, same sequence and amount of numbers and letters. I don’t feel comfortable publishing the code in case it is still relevant — sorry.

If anyone knows what this code could be, please comment below. A colleague with an engineering background has this to say about it:

“This could be a password for power grids or any equipment that is governed by an electronic or computer system. Manufacturers have codes they use for de-bugging or resetting a system.

“Control systems are all electronic and sometimes for any reason (like an earthquake) something is triggered and the system goes off. And then you reset it within the vicinity of the system usually and feed in the new code. You don’t have to physically be there if you can hack into it, but that’s of course harder.

“If they (the Americans) needed to have someone physically there during the sabotage attempt, it probably means they didn’t have remote access to the system.”

I don’t actually know why Kourosh received that level of detail unless he was willing to go through with this act of sabotage on behalf of the US government, but he assured me he would never consider it — that he was just “curious” during the second meeting. “No way,” he told me. “Imagine it I did it and someone’s grandmother or father died because their life support machine switched off.”

I remember these details because I discussed it with a number of people in and around 2010, without disclosing Kourosh’s name. Today, I dug up the old Facebook message I sent to Iranian-American author and activist Trita Parsi of the DC-based National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a fellow Huffington Post blogger at the time. Trita gave me permission to post screenshots here:

Disclosure: My Iranian-American husband and I ran an internet company in the telecommunications industry in Washington years ago and I was a founding member of the Iranian-American Technology Council, so I knew a lot of engineers and technology folks from that very background.

I recall writing to Trita precisely because he was so keyed into the political heart of this community. It would be extremely dangerous for myself and colleagues in my industry if the US government was recruiting Iranian-American civilian engineers as saboteurs in third countries.

This deep-dive by investigative journalist Whitney Webb into Venezuela’s power outage reveals some interesting details about a Bush administration cyberattack plan against Iran. Exposed by the New York Times in 2016, the “Nitro Zeus” plan — which involved the US Cyber Command — would, among other things, target crucial parts of Iran’s electricity grid.

Take note, however, that US officials asked Kourosh to sabotage Tehran’s power grid during the Obama administration. Obviously aspects of the Nitro Zeus plan remained on the table despite a switch in government, political parties and policies.
Back to Venezuela

It’s been a grueling week for Venezuelans dealing with the nationwide blackout that has brought the country to a standstill. Last Thursday an “accident” at the Guri Dam power plant in Bolivar state — which generates around 80% of the country’s electricity — left at least 20 out of 23 Venezuelan states without electricity.

As power started to flood back to central states, a second “cyber attack” on Saturday plunged the country back into darkness. Government authorities have charged US officials with launching the attack on Venezuela’s electricity infrastructure and say they will present evidence of this to the United Nations and other international organizations.

The US has countered, blaming the power outage on corruption and infrastructure neglect by the government of President Nicolás Maduro — against whom Washington has been staging a rather unsuccessful coup effort these past months.

But in the midst of this to-and-fro between longtime adversaries, insightful news reports and analysis are starting to emerge, suggesting that a US cyberattack against Venezuela’s power grid is actually a very possible — even likely — scenario. Says Forbes Magazine‘s Kalev Leetaru:

“In the case of Venezuela, the idea of a government like the United States remotely interfering with its power grid is actually quite realistic. Remote cyber operations rarely require a significant ground presence, making them the ideal deniable influence operation.”

“Widespread power and connectivity outages like the one Venezuela experienced last week are also straight from the modern cyber playbook. Cutting power at rush hour, ensuring maximal impact on civilian society and plenty of mediagenic post-apocalyptic imagery, fits squarely into the mold of a traditional influence operation,” he continues.

For those of us who have spent years covering US irregular warfare in the Middle East, infrastructure targets are part and parcel of these wars — sometimes via direct strikes, other times via proxies and sabotage operations.

I’m not just talking about cyberattacks like the US/Israeli-made Stuxnet virus that destroyed hundreds of centrifuges at Iranian nuclear facilities.

In Syria, for instance, the US military specifically targeted major economic infrastructure under the guise of ‘fighting ISIS.’ These include but are not limited to oilfields, wells and facilities, electrical transformer stations, gas plants, bridges, canals, a number of vital dams and reservoirs in the country’s northern agricultural belt — and power generation facilities.

And US-backed proxies — part of the Pentagon and CIA’s ‘irregular army’ in Syria — targeted bread factories, wheat silos and flour mills to deprive a population of basic food staples.

As opposed to conventional wars, US irregular warfare seeks to covertly use influence ops to turn the largest part of a country’s population, the “uncommitted middle,” into supporting regime-change. Destroying infrastructure, creating shortages, unleashing political violence, propaganda dissemination — these are all steps outlined in the US military’s Special Forces Unconventional Warfare manual to create a disgruntled population that will turn on its government.

And cyber warfare is the newest theater of engagement for the Pentagon, which is now openly ramping up its investment in “lethal cyber weapons,” regardless of the civilian casualties these attacks will leave in their wake.

So far in Venezuela around 20 people are reported dead due to the blackouts, though I’ve seen some opposition sources place that number north of 70.

Is Venezuela’s blackout part of US cyber warfare against a Latin American adversary? Has the US engaged in cyber warfare against Iranian infrastructure?

Does a duck quack?

Sharmine Narwani

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook if you like.
All my work is archived on my website Mideast Shuffle.

Remembering Marielle Franco

Brazilians Remember Marielle Franco on Anniversary of her Assassination

by TRNN

March 15, 2019 

Marielle was a Black, LGBT, anti-police violence activist from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and a city councilor for the Progressive Socialism and Liberty Party, PSOL.

She was a vocal opponent to the military occupation of Rio’s poorest communities. Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes, were gunned down on March 14, 2018.

Her killing sparked an international movement for justice and once again highlighted the increasing violence against black women in poor communities.

In major cities of Brazil, activists honored the life and legacy of LGBT and police violence activist Marielle Franco, who was assassinated a year ago in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Mike Fox reports.

Living in the Unharmonious World: Is Surviving Without a Fight Possible?

Can China and Russia Survive in this Unharmonious World?

by Andre Vltchek - NEO

March 12, 2019

Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands?

What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre ways?

Describing the world, I often feel that I am back in my primary school. When I was a child, I had the misfortune of growing up in a racist Czechoslovakia. Being born in the Soviet Union, and having an half Russian and half Asian mother, I was brutally beaten up between classes, from the age of seven.

I was systematically attacked by a gang of boys, and humiliated and hit for having ‘Asian ears’, for having an ‘Asian mother’, for being Russian. During winters, my shoes were taken out into the bitter cold and pissed into. The urine turned into ice. The only consolation was that ‘at least’ I was Russian and Chinese. If I was a Gypsy (Roma) boy, I would most likely not have made it, at least without losing an eye, or without having my hands broken.

I tried to be polite. I did my best to ‘play by the rules’. I fought back, first only half-heartedly.

Until one day, when a kid who lived next door, fired his air gun and barely missed my eye. Just like that, simply because I was Russian… and Asian, just because he had nothing better to do, at that particular moment. And because he felt so proud to be Czech and European. Also, because I refused to eat their shit, to accept their ‘superiority’, and humiliate myself in front of them. Both mother and I were miserable in Czechoslovakia, both of us dreamt about our Leningrad. But she made a personal mistake and we were stuck in a hostile, provincial and bombastic society which wanted to “go back to Europe”, and once again be part of the bloc of countries, which has been ruling and oppressing the world, for centuries.

The air gun and almost losing my eye turned out to be the last straw. I teamed up with my friend, Karel, whose only ‘guilt’ was that at 10, he weighed almost 100 kilograms. It was not his fault, it was a genetic issue, but the kids also ridiculed him, eventually turning him into a punching bag. He was a gentle, good-natured kid who loved music and science-fiction novels. We were friends. We used to plan our space travels towards the distant galaxies, together. But at that point, we said ‘enough’! We hit back, terribly. After two or three years of suffering, we began fighting the gang, with the same force and brutality that they had applied towards us and in fact towards all those around us who were ‘different’, or at least weak and defenseless.

And we won. Not by reason, but by courage and strength. I wish we did not have to fight, but we had no choice. We soon discovered, how strong we were. And once we began, the only way to survive was to win the battle. And we did win. The kids, who used to torment us, were actually cowards. Once we won and secured some respect, we also began sheltering and protecting the ‘others’, mainly weak boys and girls from our school, who were also suffering attacks from the gang of those ‘normal’, white, and mainstream Czechs.

*

There are self-proclaimed rulers of the world: Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. And there are two other groups: the nations which are fully cooperating with the West (such as Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Korea, Colombia or Uganda), and those that are decisively refusing to accept Western dictates, such as Russia, China, DPRK, Syria, Eritrea, Iran, South Africa, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia.

The first group does almost nothing to change the world. It goes with the flow. It accepts the rule of the bullies. It collaborates, and while it is at it, tries to at least gain some privileges, most of the time unsuccessfully.

The second group is well aware of the dismal state of the world. It maneuvers, resists, and sometimes fights for its survival, or for the survival of others. It tries to stick to its principles, or to what used to be called ‘universal values’.

But can it really survive without confrontation?

The West does not tolerate any dissent. Its culture has been, for centuries, exceedingly aggressive, bellicose, and extremist: “You are with us, that is ‘under us’, or you are against us. If against us, you will be crushed and shackled, robbed, raped, beaten and in the end, forced to do what we order, anyway.”

Russia is perhaps the only nation which has survived, unconquered and for centuries, but at the unimaginable price of tens of millions of its people. It has been invaded, again and again, by the Scandinavians, French, Brits, Germans, and even Czechs. The attacks occurred regularly, justified by bizarre rhetoric: ‘Russia was strong’, or ‘it was weak’. It was attacked ‘because of its Great October Socialist Revolution’, or simply because it was Communist. Any grotesque ‘justification’ was just fine, as far as the West was concerned. Russia had to be invaded, plundered and terribly injured just because it was resisting, because it stood on its feet, and free.

Even the great China could not withstand Western assaults. It was broken, divided, humiliated; its capital city ransacked by the French and Brits.

Nothing and no one could survive the Western assaults: in the end, not even the proud and determined Afghanistan.

*

A Chinese scholar Li Gang wrote in his “The Way We Think: Chinese View of Life Philosophy”:

“Harmony” is an important category of thought in traditional Chinese culture. Although the concept initially comes from philosophy, it stands for a stable and integrated social life. It directly influences Chinese people’s way of thinking and dealing with the world…

In the ancient classic works of China, “harmony” can, in essence, be understood as being harmonious. Ancient people stressed the harmony of the universe and the natural environment, the harmony between humans and nature, and what is more, the harmony between people…

Traditional Chinese people take the principle as a way of life and they try their best to have friendly and harmonious relations. In order to reach “harmony”, people treat each other with sincerity, tolerance and love, and do not interfere in other people’s business. As the saying goes, “Well water does not intrude into river water”

Could anything be further from the philosophy of Western culture, which is based on the constant need to interfere, conquer and control?

Can countries like China, or Iran, or Russia, really survive in a world that is being controlled by aggressive European and North American dogmas?

Or more precisely: could they survive peacefully, without being dragged into bloodstained confrontations?

*

The onset of the 21st Century is clearly indicating that ‘peaceful resistance’ to brutal Western attacks is counter-productive.

Begging for peace, at forums such as the United Nations, has been leading absolutely nowhere. One country after another has collapsed, and had no chance to be treated justly and to be protected by international law: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya.

The West and its allies like Saudi Arabia or Israel are always above the law. Or more precisely, they are the law. They twist and modify the law however it suits them; their political or business interests.

Harmony? No, they are absolutely not interested in things like harmony. And even if a huge country like China is, then it is seen as weak, and immediately taken advantage of.

Can the world survive if a group of countries plays totally against all the rules, while most of the planet tries to stick, meticulously, to international laws and regulations?

It can, but it would create a totally twisted, totally perverse world, as ours actually already is. It would be a world of impunity on one end, and of fear, slavery and servility at the other.

And it is not going to be a ‘peaceful world’, anyway, because the oppressor will always want more and more; it will not be satisfied until it is in total, absolute control of the planet.

Accepting tyranny is not an option.

So then, what is? Are we too scared to pronounce it?

If a country is attacked, it should defend itself, and fight.

As Russia did on so many occasions. As Syria is doing, at great sacrifice, but proudly. As Venezuela will and should do, if assaulted.

China and Russia are two great cultures, which were to some extent influenced by the West. When I say ‘influenced’, I mean forcefully ‘penetrated’, broken into, brutally violated. During that violent interaction, some positive elements of Western culture assimilated in the brains of its victims: music, food, even city planning. But the overall impact was extremely negative, and both China and Russia suffered, and have been suffering, greatly.

For decades, the West has been unleashing its propaganda and destructive forces, to ‘contain’ and devastate both countries at their core. The Soviet Union was tricked into Afghanistan and into a financially unsustainable arms race, and literally broken into pieces. For several dark years, Russia was facing confusion, intellectual, moral and social chaos, as well as humiliation. China got penetrated with extreme ‘market forces’, its academic institutions were infiltrated by armies of anti-Communist ‘intellectual’ warriors from Europe and North America.

The results were devastating. Both countries – China and Russia – were practically under attack, and forced to fight for their survival.

Both countries managed to identify the treat. They fought back, regrouped, and endured. Their cultures and their identities survived.

China is now a confident and powerful nation, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Present-day Russia under the presidency of Vladimir Putin is one of the mightiest nations on earth, not only militarily, but also morally, intellectually and scientifically.

This is precisely what the West cannot ‘forgive’. With each new brilliant electric vehicle China produces, with each village embracing the so-called “Ecological Civilization”, the West panics, smears China, portrays it as an evil state. The more internationalist Russia becomes, the more it protects nations ruined by the West – be it Syria or Venezuela – more relentless are West’s attacks against its President, and its people.

Both China and Russia are using diplomacy for as long as it is constructive, but this time, when confronted with force, they indicate their willingness to use strength to defend themselves.

They are well aware of the fact that this is the only way to survive.

For China, harmony is essential. Russia also has developed its own concept of global harmony based on internationalist principles. There is hardly any doubt that under the leadership of China and Russia, our world would be able to tackle the most profound problems that it has been facing.

But harmony can only be implemented when there is goodwill, or at least a decisive dedication to save the world.

If a group of powerful nations is only obsessed with profits, control and plunder, and if it behaves like a thug for several long centuries, one has to act, and to defend the world; if there is no alternative, by force!

Only after victory, can true harmony be aimed at.

At the beginning of this essay, I told a story from my childhood, which I find symbolic.

One can compromise, one can be diplomatic, but never if one’s dignity and freedom was at risk. One can never negotiate indefinitely with those who are starving and enslaving billions of human beings, all over the world.

Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and so many countries are now bleeding. Soon, Iran could be confronted. And Nicaragua. And perhaps China and Russia themselves could face yet another Western invasion.

A ‘harmonious world’ may have to be built later; definitely one day, but a little bit later.

First, we have to make sure that our humanity survives and that Western fascism cannot consume further millions of innocent human lives.

Like me and my big childhood friend Karel at an elementary school in former Czechoslovakia, Russia and China may have to once again stand up and confront ‘unharmonious barbarity’; they may have to fight, in order to prevent an even greater disaster.

They do not want to; they will do everything possible to prevent war. But the war is already raging. Western colonialism is back. The brutal gang of North American and European countries is blocking the road, clenching fists, shooting at everyone who dares to look up, and to meet their gaze: “Would you dare?” their eyes are saying.

“Yes, we would!” is the only correct answer.

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”