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NATO Summit Closes By Condemning Russia
Eric Zuesse
The issues that were discussed at this year’s NATO Summit were mainly preparations for a possible war against Russia.
The two-day Summit in Warsaw Poland ended on Saturday July 9th, with a 139-part "Warsaw Summit Communiqué” which used the word “terrorism” 17 times, “jihad” and “jihadist” and “jihadism” 0 (zero) times, and “Russia” 58 times — never favorably, and often with overt hostility.
It also referred to “Ukraine” 34 times, and “Syria” 10 times. Ukraine, during a February 2014 coup (it has been referred to as having been a “coup” both by the leader of the private CIA firm Stratfor, and by the Establishment writer on international relations John Mearsheimer, among others) switched, immediately after the coup, from having been neutral between NATO and Russia, to being suddenly and consistently intensely hostile to Russia, and immediately applied to join NATO; Syria still remains strongly allied with Russia.
The Ukrainian government was referred to 100% favorably, and the Syrian government was referred to 100% unfavorably.
What Is NATO — Really?
Eric Zuesse
When NATO was founded, that was done in the broader context of the U.S. Marshall Plan, and the entire U.S. operation to unify the developed Atlantic countries of North America and Europe, for a coming Cold War allegedly against communism, but actually against Russia — the core country not only in the U.S.S.R. but also in Eastern Europe (the areas that Stalin’s forces had captured from Hitler’s forces).
NATO was founded with the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington DC on 4 April 1949, and its famous core is:
Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Dallas Cops Lethally Shot Because Black Lives Don’t Matter
Stephen Lendman
Unaccountable killer cops turning Black communities into battlegrounds made overnight Thursday’s incident inevitable.
It was just a matter of time - nor likely the last instance of justifiable public outrage exploding. People and communities take so much before reacting.
Until killer cops are held accountable for false arrests, extreme brutality, other forms of abuse and murdering Black youths, Dallas may prove a shot across the bow for what’s to come - a declaration of war against longstanding injustice.
This week’s headline-making police executions of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, MN respectively reflect daily incidents across America - cops brutalizing Blacks unaccountably, over 1,000 cop killings in 2015, disproportionately affecting unarmed Blacks.
State Department Intends Second Hillary Whitewash
Stephen Lendman
Hillary is criminally culpable for violating State Department rules and US statute laws, prohibiting documents and other information pertaining to national security and defense from being moved or removed from their “proper place of custody.”
FBI director James Comey obstructed justice, dismissively calling her criminality “extreme carelessness,” making him complicit in serious wrongdoing.
Ordinary Americans are held to one standard, privileged ones another, justice whatever powerful figures want it to be. Rule of law principles don’t matter.
Tony Blair’s Deputy Prime Minister Calls Iraq War Illegal
Stephen Lendman
John Prescott served from May 2, 1997 until June 27, 2007.
In a Sunday Mirror op-ed, he called John Chilcot’s report “a damning indictment on how the Blair Government handled the war,” adding he shares blame.
Apologizing to families of scores of British servicemen perishing in conflict dismissively ignored millions of Iraqi deaths from war, related violence, preventable diseases, starvation and overall deprivation - hundreds to thousands more dying monthly, a Western-instigated holocaust for power, privilege, dominance and all that oil. Prescott saying he now believes war on Iraq was illegal ignores fundamental international law principles proving it all along. No nation may attack another except in self-defense - Security Council members alone permitted to authorize it, not sitting governments.
BERNIE: Were You Set Up?
Posted on July 11, 2016 by State of the Nation
How can you back a known warmonger, hardened corporatist and pathological liar?
Hillary Clinton stands for everything you oppose, and she will not follow through on a single promise to your supporters, and you and everyone else in America knows that … so why are you throwing your support to her? *Written by a Former Bernie Sanders Supporter
An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders
Dear Bernie,
Many of us watched your campaign unfold in awe over these past many months. Your energy and enthusiasm were infectious. The various pillars of your campaign platform were quite ambitious for any lefty. Especially at your age, the whole political enterprise was that much more impressive and exemplary. Thank you!
Now for the bad news.
You know that Hillary Clinton is not anywhere close to representing your principles, your supporters, or your platform. Nor is she aligned with your political philosophy or practice to any meaningful degree whatsoever. In a phrase: she is everything that you are not.
Why, pray tell, would you even think of throwing your support to her presidential aspirations? Why? More importantly, how could you?! Especially in light of the Comey testimony, she has been proven to be a prevaricator par excellence, as well as a menace to society.
Everyone now knows that it is only time before her more serious (and unreported) crimes catch up with her. There are those political analysts who strongly feel that she may be setting herself up for a fall much harder than Nixon’s Watergate. Is that what you want to be associated with, Bernie?!
Your liberal supporters and progressive devotees across the country followed you as though you were the Pied Piper as we hung on to your every word.
Now that you have expressed your intentions to effectively join her, here’s how one op-ed put it.
No, Bernie, your supporters will NOT support Hillary—EVER!
Clearly, going over to the other side represents a profound violation of everything you stand for. So why should anyone follow you? Your flipping over to the enemy camp — enemy of the American people, mind you — is quite horrific at best, nefarious at worst. Some of us are wondering if your campaign was just a sham to galvanize, and then corral, the progressives and liberals so that they could be conscripted to march right into the Clinton camp. Clinton had already lost many of them so perhaps you were just a setup to keep them all in the election game and going to the polls, yes?
(Source: No, Bernie, your supporters will NOT support Hillary—EVER!)
The preceding allegation will surely make you mad as it ought to. However, there is no reason under the sun that you should freely walk into the enemy camp at this or any point of electoral time.
Actually, there is only one plausible reason, and that is that you were set up. Either wittingly or unwittingly you were propped up as a magnet to draw all of the true progressives and liberals, the real Democrats and left-wingers, who have absolutely no stomach for a Clinton presidency. These folks wouldn’t vote for Hillary if their lives depended on it, and the DNC knew that.
The DNC also knew that the vast youth vote and college kids and young adults did not identify with the thoroughly corrupt Ms. Clinton. The youth are by nature very idealistic and politically pure and rarely support such transparent criminals. Not only is she old (no age discrimination intended), but she is also sick with an extremely unattractive political persona. Young voters simply won’t go there.
Herein lies the central plot to the DNC stealth narrative: That you either knowingly or unknowingly presented the perfect campaign slogans and promises to suck ’em all in like a vacuum cleaner … which you did like a mighty Dirt Devil. Then, you kept going, and going, all over the country even after the delegate count was unofficially tallied. In so doing, you rallied even more Don Quixotes to your cause.
After all the sheep were corralled into your carefully constructed political pen, they were to be conveniently delivered to the wolf Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Now we do admit, Bernie, that such a naked deceit would be out of character for you. However, your backing of Hillary Clinton for president only provides compelling testimony to such an egregious crime as you have been charged with above.
Sincerely
A Former Bernie Sanders Supporter
P.S. Boy, am I ever feelin’ the Bern! I really wonder how many other folks are?
Originally published by State of the Nation
July 11, 2016
JONES, LYNCH, AND MASSIE HOST PRESS CONFERENCE ON NEW RESOLUTION TO DECLASSIFY THE 28 PAGES
Executive Intelligence Review
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3), Congressman Stephen F. Lynch (MA-8), and Congressman Thomas Massie (KY-4) hosted a press conference to highlight H. Res. 779, a resolution Congressman Jones introduced to urge the House Intelligence Committee to publish the 28 classified pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001. The pages were initially classified by President George W. Bush and have remained classified under President Barack Obama. In the House, the Committee on Intelligence has jurisdiction over the pages. "I have read these pages and can say that while their release will not harm national security, the contents are critical to our foreign policy moving forward. That is why I have introduced a resolution that would enable the House Committee on Intelligence to declassify the 28 pages," said Congressman Jones. "The CIA has stated that Congress owns the 28 pages, and the Supreme Court has ruled that members of Congress can declassify material. It is more critical than ever for the American people to know what led to the tragic attacks on September 11, 2001, and I urge my colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee to release the pages."
The War on Weed Part II: Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for Corporate Cannabis
Ellen Brown
California’s “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” (AUMA) is a voter initiative characterized as legalizing marijuana use. But critics warn that it will actually make access more difficult and expensive, squeeze home growers and small farmers out of the market, heighten criminal sanctions for violations, and open the door to patented, genetically modified (GMO) versions that must be purchased year after year.
As detailed in Part I of this article, the health benefits of cannabis are now well established. It is a cheap, natural alternative effective for a broad range of conditions, and the non-psychoactive form known as hemp has thousands of industrial uses. At one time, cannabis was one of the world’s most important crops. There have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US, compared to about 30,000 deaths annually from alcohol abuse (not counting auto accidents), and 100,000 deaths annually from prescription drugs taken as directed. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance (“a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse”), illegal to be sold or grown in the US.
Powerful corporate interests no doubt had a hand in keeping cannabis off the market. The question now is why they have suddenly gotten on the bandwagon for its legalization. According to an April 2014 article in The Washington Times, the big money behind the recent push for legalization has come, not from a grassroots movement, but from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Big Ag and Big Pharma.
Chilcot, Israel and the Lobby
Gilad Atzmon
It took seven years for Sir Chilcot and his team to reach a set of conclusions that every Brit capable of thought understood back in November, 2013.
The inquiry produced a damning assessment of Blair’s conduct as well as the British military. But the Chilcot Inquiry failed to expose the crucial close ties between Blair’s criminal war, the Jewish Lobby and Israel.
At the time Britain entered the criminal war against Iraq, Blair’s chief funders were Lord ‘cashpoint’ Levy and the LFI (Labour Friends of Israel). The prime advocates for the immoral interventionist war within the British press were Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen. The attorney general that gave the green light for the war was Lord Goldsmith.
In 2008 The Guardian revealed that the “Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial.” Israel was conspicuously engaged in the vast production of WMDs. If Britain and America had any genuine concerns about WMDs, bombing Tel Aviv would have been the way to go.
Washington’s ‘New Managers’ in Latin America: Oligarchs, Bankers and Swindlers
James Petras
Introduction
Amid raging corruption, social pathologies and outright political thuggery, a new gang of vassal regimes has taken-over Latin America. The new rulers are strictly recruited as the protégé’s of US financial and banking institutions. Hence the financial press refers to them as the “new managers” – of Wall Street.
The US financial media has once again provided a political cover for the vilest crimes committed by the ‘new managers’ as they launch their offensive against labor and in favor of the foreign and domestic financiers.
To understand the dynamics of the empire’s new vassal managers we will proceed by identifying (1) the illicit power grab (2) the neo-liberal policies they have pursued (3) the impact of their program on the class structure (4) their economic performance and future socio-political perspectives.
Vassals as Managers of Empire
Latin America’s current vassalage elite is of longer and shorter duration.
The regimes of longer duration with a historical legacy of submission, corruption and criminality include Mexico and Colombia where oligarchs , government officials and death squads cohabitate in close association with the US military, business and banking elites.
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