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Sanctions? How About Sanctions Against the United States?
By Andy Piascik
As the United States imposes sanctions on Russia and moves to do likewise to Venezuela, it’s essential to keep in mind which country it is that’s the most destructive and dangerous in the world today. When such questions have been posed in international polls in recent decades, the answer overwhelmingly is the United States. Not Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia or any of the many other nations the ruling class and corporate media here regularly demonize, but the United States.
People in the global South know this all too well from the long and brutal history of US foreign policy. Because we live in such a closed society, however, where critical analysis of imperialism is by definition excluded from discussions in Washington and the national media, people here must search long and hard for such information. Should information of this sort seep into the mainstream, ruling elites invariably vilify it and those imparting it just as they vilify international figures they regard as enemies.
According to Washington, sanctions are being considered against Venezuela because of repressive measures and violence that is attributed almost exclusively to the government. In reality, counterrevolutionaries are responsible for the majority of those killed including at least one death of a motorcyclist decapitated by wire strung across a street. This tactic was suggested by retired General Angel Vivas, who has become a hero of the counterrevolution for his armed defiance of the government’s attempt to arrest him for the motorcyclist’s death. Simultaneously, the US has imposed sanctions against Russia and is threatening military escalation in response to the incursion into Crimea.
Venezuela: Defeating Fascism Before it’s too Late
By Prof. James Petras
Captain Jose Guillen Araque, of the Venezuelan National Guard, recently gave President Maduro a book on the rise of Nazism, warning that “fascism has to be defeated before it’s too late”! In retaliation for his prophetic warning, the patriotic young captain was shot by a US-backed assassin on the streets of Marcay in the state of Aragua on March 16, 2014. This raised the number of Venezuelan soldiers and police killed since the fascist uprising to 29. The killing of a prominent, patriotic officer on a major street in a provincial capital is one more indication that the Venezuelan fascists are on the move, confident of their support from Washington and from a broad swath of the Venezuelan upper and middle class. They constitute a minority of the electorate and they have no illusions about taking power via constitutional and democratic means.
Captain Guillen Araque had stepped forward to remind President Maduro that the road to power for Nazi and fascist totalitarian groups has been littered with the corpses of well-meaning democrats and social democrats throughout contemporary history because of their failure to use their constitutional powers to crush the enemies of democracy.
Crimean Reunification Day
by Stephen Lendman
On Monday, Putin endorsed Crimean independence. He signed a decree affirming it.
He did it in the Kremlin's Yekaterininsky Hall. Federation Council and State Duma members attended the signing.
It recognizes Sevastopol as a city with "special autonomous status." It's within the Republic of Crimea.
Putin's signature kickstarted reunification. Russia's State Duma and Federation Council members overwhelmingly approved it. So did Russia's Constitutional Court. Two new Russian constituent territories were formed.
Revolutions: Ukraine and Yugoslavia When Will Americans Come to Their Senses
By Diana Johnstone
“I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across that huge puddle, in America, people sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing.”– Vladimir Putin, 4 March 2014
Five years ago, I wrote a paper for a Belgrade conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In that paper I stressed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had been used as an experimental laboratory to perfect various techniques that would subsequently be used in so-called “color revolutions” or other “regime change” operations directed against leaders considered undesirable by the United States government.
At that time, I specifically pointed to the similarities between the Krajina region of former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. Here is what I wrote at the time:
Turkish PM Bans Twitter - Usage Soars
Michael Collins
"The international community will say this and that [about the ban], and it doesn't concern me one bit. [The world] will see the power of the Turkish Republic." Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister, Turkey, March 20
Things didn't work out as planned for PM Erdogan when he tried to shut down Twitter in Turkey on Thursday, March 20. However, the world did see the power of the Turkish people who boosted Twitter usage from 4.54 million to 6.04 million messages in the period after the government ordered the service banned according to the Somera Social Media Rating service. In addition to the 33% increase in message traffic, Somera reported a 17% increase in users. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, sent a message to Turkish users offering alternatives to access the service. (Image: Twitter)
Cheerleading Potential Disaster
by Stephen Lendman
Consider the times. Daily events should scare everyone. Washington rules alone matter. Unfettered power reflects things.
Rule of law principles are ignored. Core Bill of Rights protections are gone. Freedom hangs by a thread.
Democracy is a convenient illusion. Obama presides over a police state apparatus. Bipartisan complicity shares responsibility. Full-blown tyranny is a hair's breadth away.
Fundamental rights don't matter. Big Brother watches everyone. De facto one-party rule runs things.
Monied interests created a multi-headed monster. Super-wealth and privilege rule. Popular needs go begging.
Social justice is disappearing in plain sight. Money power in private hands is used to make more of it at the public's expense.
Imperial madness defines official policy. Sovereign independence is criminalized. It's considered justification for war.
Unchallenged global dominance is prioritized. Wars rage without end. New ones are planned. Humanity's fate hangs in the balance.
US Mainstream Media Journalists With “Blood on Their Hands”
By Eric Sommer
Hey U.S. mass media journalists: A large number of you writing in outlets like CNN, Fox News, New York Times, and Washington Post have blood on your hands. It may initially sound exaggerated, but you are complicit in mass murder. In the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi war criminals at the end of WW II, the prosecution powerfully argued that those journalists who use propaganda to prepare the public to accept war crimes are themselves also guilty of those crimes.
As the Nuremberg prosecutor stated:
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“The use made by the Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack….In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.¡±”
Israel's Racist War on Palestine
by Stephen Lendman
It rages daily. Israel considers Muslims subhuman. Militarized occupation, colonialism and apartheid reflect official policy.
So does institutionalized state terror. Rule of law principles are systematically spurned. Colonialism and apartheid are grave international law breaches.
According to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), self-determination is "one of the essential principles of contemporary international law."
All nations are obligated to respect it. Colonialism is in clear violation.
The 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (the Declaration on Colonialism), condemns "colonialism in all its forms and manifestations."
US-NATO is Losing Covert War on Syria Recent Victories Betray Last Year's WMD Lies
By Tony Cartalucci
Since the beginning of 2013, Syrian troops had begun an irreversible push to take back territory overrun by foreign-backed militants, including along Syria’s borders with Lebanon and Jordan. Today, cities long lost to these militants once again have the Syrian flag waving above them, their people liberated, and the deadly toll of occupation finally being tallied before the global public.
The strategic turn in Syria’s favor was noted by geopolitical analysts long before the Damascus chemical weapons attack in the summer of 2013. When Western nations used “desperation” as a motive for the attack, which they squarely blamed on the Syrian government, those watching Syria’s systematic victories against the West’s proxy militants immediately suspected a false flag attack – one that was carried out by either the West, or one of its regional collaborators.
Anti-Russian Media Wars
by Stephen Lendman
Welcome to Cold War 2.0. The first one never ended. Since Soviet Russia's 1991 dissolution, Western policy remained hard-wired in place.
Putin defends Russian sovereignty. He opposes US imperial lawlessness. Washington considers him public enemy number one. At stake is world peace.
Russia bashing is intense. It rages daily. It exceeds the worst of Soviet era levels.
Daily attacks reinvented the Evil Empire. It's back to the future. It doesn't surprise. Media scoundrels march in lockstep with US imperial lawlessness. It's longstanding policy. Propagandists masquerade as journalists. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Readers and viewers are systematically lied to. Mind manipulation works this way.
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