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Hostile US Actions Against RT and Sputnik News
Stephen Lendman
The latest US hostile action against Russia requires a company providing services for RT America to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), along with an FBI probe of Sputnik News to check for FARA violations.
Enacted in 1938 one year before WW II began, it requires agents representing foreign powers politically or quasi-politically to disclose their relationship with other governments, along with information about their activities and finances. Originally administered by the State Department, FARA later came under Justice Department jurisdiction.
From 1938 until amended in 1966, enforcement focused on foreign propagandists, during WW II used in 23 criminal cases, the last time America had an enemy, none since then except invented ones to justify unjustifiable imperial wars.
Since 1966, FARA focused on foreign lobbying instead of propaganda. From then to now, no one was convicted of violating the law.
Liberals Don’t Respect a Nation’s Sovereignty
Eric Zuesse
When the United States and some of its allies in 2003 invaded and destroyed Iraq on false pretenses — and without Iraq having ever invaded (much less destroyed) any of the invading countries — this was actually within the scope of the invaders being liberal countries, because a nation’s sovereignty isn’t at all respected in traditional liberal thought. This also is the reason why some of the same nations invaded and destroyed Libya in 2011, and Syria since 2012. Neither of those two invaded countries had ever invaded — much less destroyed — any of their invaders; but, in all of these cases, such invasions were accepted by the populace within each of the invading countries, all of which invading countries considered themselves to be liberal nations. Why do liberals (and not only conservatives) so routinely accept barbaric aggressions by their own country? Here is the reason (and it needs to be read slowly and carefully, in order to become understood, because what follows is densely packed with meaning; the subject here is sufficiently deep to reach the core of things, like drilling through hard rock — it’s necessarily slow going):
A nation’s sovereignty means that the residents in a land possess the ultimate authority over that land, regardless of what its ‘owner’ might happen to be: a foreign king, an international corporation, or even a domestic person who is one of the people who live there. Consequently, whereas an authentic revolution by the residents within a country, to overthrow and replace their government — or else a vote to secede — is acceptable in the concept of national sovereignty (and is recognized as “the right of self-determination”), no foreign invasion is (and this includes any internal invasion to defeat a secession), unless the invasion is authentically a response to a real and present danger of, or else in direct response to, an invasion by the country (or region) that's being invaded. This is the concept of national sovereignty: the residents rule — no foreigner does. However, the concept of national sovereignty is fundamentally alien to liberals.
North Korea Responds to Unacceptable Sanctions
Stephen Lendman
The right of self-defense is sacrosanct. International law affirms it, including in the UN Charter.
North Korea is threatened by possible US aggression. Without powerful deterrent weapons, it’s defenseless, an unacceptable situation no responsible leadership would permit.
That’s why it continues developing its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities - for defense, not offense. Pyongyang never preemptively attacked another country in its entire history. It threatens none now despite phony US accusations otherwise. Washington needs to claim the fiction of a North Korean threat to maintain its northeast Asia military presence. The DPRK is a convenient punching bag, China and Russia the real targets.
If North Korea didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. Creating nonexistent threats is how America justifies its menacing military presence worldwide - the US, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies the only legitimate threats to humanity.
On Friday, Pyongyang conducted its latest ballistic missile test, a clear response to new Security Council sanctions it rejects.
Another Killer Cop Exonerated
Stephen Lendman
Wearing a badge in America provides a virtual license to kill with impunity. Incidents happen nationwide with disturbing regularity.
Driving, walking, shopping, and engaging in other entirely legal activities publicly or privately at home while Black is hazardous to their life and welfare.
Anthony Lamar Smith, aged 24, was one of many victims - in December 2011 lethally shot seven times at point-blank range in his car, murdered by former killer cop Jason Stockley after a three-minute high-speed chase.
While ongoing, Stockley was recorded saying: “Gonna kill this (expletive), don’t you know it.” After stopping Smith’s car, Stockley ordered him to open the door, according to witnesses and dashcam footage.
Before he had a chance to comply, Smith was murdered in cold blood. Cell phone video then showed Stockley planting a gun in his car taken from the police vehicle, a common stunt to justify cop killings, unjustifiably claiming self-defense.
The Politics of Military Ascendancy
James Petras
Introduction
Clearly the US has escalated the pivotal role of the military in the making of foreign and, by extension, domestic policy. The rise of ‘the Generals’ to strategic positions in the Trump regime is evident, deepening its role as a highly autonomous force determining US strategic policy agendas.
In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ‘the Generals’ have been able to impose their definition of international realities. We will discuss the military’s ascendancy over Trump’s civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition.
The Prelude to Militarization: Obama’s Multi-War Strategy and Its Aftermath
The central role of the military in deciding US foreign policy has its roots in the strategic decisions taken during the Obama-Clinton Presidency. Several policies were decisive in the rise of unprecedented military-political power.
Julian Assange Offers U.S. Gov’t. Proof Russia Wasn’t Source of Democratic Party Leaks, Says WSJ
Eric Zuesse
According to the Wall Street Journal, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California spoke by phone on September 13th with U.S. President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, aiming to transmit to President Trump, from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a trade of ‘proof’ of Russian non-involvement in the transmission to the public of internal Democratic Party information during the 2016 Presidential contest with Hillary Clinton, in return for the U.S. Government’s stopping its efforts to prosecute Mr. Assange. Assange wanted finally to become freed from his years-long virtual house-arrest inside Ecuador’s London Embassy, by the United States Government efforts to force him to be tried in U.S. courts. So, he wants to offer this trade in which Assange would provide to the White House physical ‘proof’ that Russia had nothing to do with the Democratic Party leaks from (or what Russia’s enemies call ‘hacks’ into) Democratic Party computers, which produced the revelations which Hillary Clinton says cost her the 2016 election.
According to the WSJ report, General Kelly refused to inform President Trump of the offer.
Scores of Bomb Threats in Russia
Stephen Lendman
On Wednesday, around 190 sites were evacuated in Moscow and 16 other Russian cities following bomb threats.
Emergency services remain on alert in schools and universities, shopping malls, railway stations, airports, hotels, cinemas and other locations.
Moscow’s emergency services received over 100 bomb threats. Sniffer dogs and bomb disposal teams searched numerous sites.
Over 50,000 people were evacuated from threatened facilities. Earlier cordoned off areas were later normalized.
Muscovite residents reacted calmly. No terrorist incidents or disturbances occurred. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “this is a matter for the security services to address.”
Victory Achieved in Syria?
Stephen Lendman
Yogi Berra was right, saying “(i)t ain’t over till it’s over.” Things are heading in the right direction in Syria, miles yet to go to liberate the country from the scourge of America’s presence and terrorist groups it supports.
Each day brings more good news than bad. On Tuesday, Russian armed forces chief of staff in Syria General Alexander Lapin said:
“At present, 85 percent of the Syrian territory has been liberated from the militants of illegal armed formations.”
“About 27 square kilometers (10,424 square miles]) of Syrian territory remain to be liberated until the complete annihilation of” US-supported ISIS.
Defeating US-supported al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) remains a formidable task to achieve. Encouraging news reported by AMN News said “(a)t least five Syrian rebel groups associated with the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization, a coalition of Syrian rebels closely linked to Al-Qaeda, have announced their defection, marking another episode in a recent string of defections affecting HTS.”
Bill in Congress to Fund CIA and NSA Outlaws Wikileaks
Eric Zuesse
The bill in Congress to fund U.S. intelligence services includes a provision, Sec. 623, which states:
SEC. 623. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON WIKILEAKS.
It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.
In other words: if this bill passes, Wikileaks will be categorized by U.S. Intelligence in the same way as will the intelligence services of Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other countries that the U.S. Government wants to conquer. (Whereas the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly has continued on the American side.) Cooperation with Wikileaks would then be treated by the U.S. Government as treachery, the same as cooperation with Soviet intelligence was treated when the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy (backed by the Democratic Party’s Kennedy family) held sway over the U.S. Senate, from 9 February 1950 to 9 March 1954. Though this was the situation during the Cold War (prior to its having been ended by Russia in 1991), the time when there existed an authentic ideological reason for the U.S. Establishment’s opposition to the Soviet Union’s ruling Establishment (and when there existed not only the ongoing thirst for conquest of the entire world by the U.S. aristocracy), America’s Establishment (the aristocracy and its agents) is trying to restore that hostility now, 26 years after 1991, which was the year when the Soviet Union broke up, and after which, only Russia remained, and when communism had ended, and when the Soviet Union’s military alliance with the Soviet Union’s surrounding nations, the Warsaw Pact (mirroring America’s NATO), also ended — all of that happening in 1991.
Former Georgian Despot a Man Without a Country
Stephen Lendman
In 2003, Washington’s color revolution elevated him to power illegitimately.
Familiar tactics included election rigging, organized street protests, and major media disinformation. Once empowered, neoliberal harshness followed.
State enterprises were privatized. Georgia’s civil service was gutted. Business-friendly tax cuts were enacted. Widespread corruption gamed the system for personal advantage. Georgia became a ruthless police state. Heavy-handed repression replaced rule of law principles. Legitimate opposition was crushed.
Saakashvili’s tenure included suspicious deaths, disappearances, mass arrests, detentions, torture, loss of civil liberties, mass media control, and allying with Washington’s imperial agenda.
