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The Collapse of the Western Fiat Monetary System may have Begun. China, Russia and the Reemergence of Gold-Backed Currencies | Global Research

By Peter Koenig

On 19 April 2016, China was rolling out its new gold-backed yuan. Russia’s ruble has been fully supported by gold for the last couple of years. Nobody in the western media talks about it. Why would they? – A western reader may start wondering why he is constantly stressed by a US dollar based fiat monetary systems that is manipulated at will by a small elite of financial oligarchs for their benefit and to the detriment of the common people. 

In a recent Russia Insider article, Sergey Glaziev, one of Russia’s top economists and advisor to President Putin said about Russia’s currency, “The ruble Is the most gold-backed currency in the world”. He went on explaining that the amount of rubles circulating is covered by about twice the amount of gold in Russia’s Treasury.
In addition to a financial alliance, Russia and China also have developed in the past couple of years their own money transfer system, the China International Payment System, or the CIPS network which replaces the western transfer system, SWIFT, for Russian-Chinese internal trading. SWIFT, stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a network operating in 215 countries and territories and used by over 10,000 financial institutions.

Up until recently almost every international monetary transaction had to use SWIFT, a private institution, based in Belgium. ‘Private’ like in the US Federal Reserve Bank (FED), Wall Street banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS); all are involved in international monetary transfers and heavily influenced by the Rothschild family. No wonder that the ‘independent’ SWIFT plays along with Washington’s sanctions, for example, cutting off Iran from the international transfer system. Similarly, Washington used its arm-twisting with SWIFT to help Paul Singer’s New York Vulture Fund to extort more than 4 billion dollars from Argentina, by withholding Argentina’s regular debt payments as was agreed with 93% of all creditors. Eventually Argentina found other ways of making its payments, not to fall into disrepute and insolvency.

All of this changed for Argentina, when Mauricio Macri, the new neoliberal President put in place by Washington, appeared on the scene last December. He reopened the negotiations and is ready to pay a sizable junk of this illegal debt, despite a UN decision that a country that reaches a settlement agreement with the majority of the creditors is not to be pressured by non-conforming creditors. In the case of Argentina, the vulture lord bought the country’s default debt for a pittance and now that the nation’s economy had recovered he wants to make a fortune on the back of the population. This is how our western fraudulent monetary system functions.

China’s economy has surpassed that of the United States and this new eastern alliance is considered an existential threat to the fake western economy. CIPS, already used for trading and monetary exchange within China and Russia, is also applied by the remaining BRICS, Brazil, India and South Africa; and by the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), plus India, Pakistan and Iran, as well as the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan). It is said that CIPS is ready to be launched worldwide as early as September 2016. It would be a formidable alternative to the western dollar based monetary Ponzi scheme.

The new eastern monetary sovereignty is one of the major reasons why Washington tries so hard to destroy the BRICS, mainly China and Russia – and lately with a special effort of false accusations also Brazil through a Latin America type Color Revolution.

In addition, the Yuan late last year was accepted by the IMF in its SDR basket as the fifth reserve currency, the other four being the US dollar, the British pound, the euro and the Japanese yen. The SDR, or Special Drawing Right, functions like a virtual currency. It is made up of the weighted average of the five currencies and can be lent to countries at their request, as a way of reducing exchange risks. Being part of the SDR, the yuan has become an official reserve currency. In fact, in Asia the yuan is already heavily used in many countries’ treasuries, as an alternative to the ever more volatile US dollar.

It is no secret, the western dollar-led fiat monetary system is on its last leg – as eventually any Ponzi scheme will be. What does ‘fiat’ mean? It is money created out of thin air. It has no backing whatsoever; not gold, not even the economic output generated by the country or countries issuing the money, i.e. the United States of America and Europe. It is simply declared “legal tender’’ by Government decree.

No pyramid scheme is sustainable in the long run and eventually will collapse. It was invented and is used by a small invisible upper crest of elite making insane amounts of profit on the back of the 99% of us. Since these elitists are in control of the media with their lie propaganda, as well as the warmongering killing machine, US armed forces, NATO, combined with the international security and spy apparatus, CIA, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and more, we are powerless – but powerless only as long as we ignore what’s really going on behind the curtain.

Our western monetary system is based on debt has all the hallmarks of a failing global monster octopus. The US banking system was deregulated in the 1990’s by President Clinton. The European vassals followed suit in the early 2000’s. About 97% of all the money in circulation in the western world is ‘made’ by private banks by a mouse click in the form of ‘loans’ or debt. Every loan a private bank hands out is a liability on that bank’s books; a liability that bears interest, the key generator of the banks’ profits. Profit from thin air! No work, no production, no real added value to the economy.

If and when the banks within this web of debt begin recalling their outstanding liabilities, they may set a non-stoppable avalanche in motion – leading to a chaotic end of the system. This end-run may have just begun. We have seen a gradual build-up since the end of WWII with the armament of the Cold War farce, and a high point with the manufactured sub-prime crisis of 2007 / 2008 / 2009, prompting an artificial and endless global economic crisis which may come crashing down in 2016 / 2017.

The damage may be humongous, leaving behind chaos, poverty, famine, misery – death. With the invisible ruling elite having cashed in, remaining on top and being liable to start again from scratch. – If we let them. It always boils down to the same: An uninformed people can be manipulated at will and is left in awe when hit by unexpected events, like acts of terror by bombs or banks.

Let us be crystal clear – we are all uninformed as long as we listen to and believe in the mainstream media – which are controlled by six Anglo-Zionist media giants, feeding the western public with 90% of the information, the so-called ‘news’ that we consume so eagerly every day; the barrage of lies that repeat themselves in every western country every hour on the hour – and, thus, become the truth. Period.

We must get out of our comfortable armchairs, listen to that innermost spark in the back of our minds, telling us against all avalanches of lies that there is something wrong, that we are being fed deception. We have to dig for the truth. And it is there – on internet, on alternative media, like Global Research, Information Clearing House, VNN, The Saker, NEO, Russia Today, Sputnik News, PressTV, TeleSUR – and many more credible sources of truth-seekers.

Back to the impending collapse. – The ground rules for our pyramid monetary scheme have been laid in 1913 by the creation of the FED. Again, the FED is an entirely private, Rothschild dominated banking institution that serves as the US Central Bank. It is the omnipotent dollar making machine. It was fraudulently and secretly conceived in 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, and described by Jekyll Island history (http://www.jekyllislandhistory.com/federalreserve.shtml ) as the “duck hunt” which

“included Senator Nelson Aldrich, his personal secretary Arthur Shelton, former Harvard University professor of economics Dr. A. Piatt Andrew, J.P. Morgan & Co. partner Henry P. Davison, National City Bank president Frank A. Vanderlip and Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. partner Paul M. Warburg. From the start the group proceeded covertly. They began by shunning the use of their last names and met quietly at Aldrich’s private railway car in New Jersey.”

The concoction of these secretive “duck hunters” became in 1913 the privately owned Rothschild dominated Federal Reserve System, the US central bank by deceit.

After signing the FED act into existence, President Woodrow Wilson declared,

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

The Anglo-Saxon system had a central bank in England since way back in 1694. It was then already controlled by the Rothschilds, as was the entire banking system. Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild once declared:

“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”

The Rothschild family’s fortune cannot be properly estimated, but it must be in the trillions. What Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild may have said some 300 years ago, still holds true to this day.

No wonder, breaking loose of this sham monetary scheme is number one priority of most countries that treasure sovereignty, autonomy and freedom, though they do not dare say so openly, lest the empire lashes out at them punishing them with the very financial terror they want to escape from. And lashing out at the unaligned world the empire does, like a dying beast, attempting to pull with it much of the living world into its own shoveled grave.

Is it therefore coincidence or a rather a purposefully planned convergence of several events as a last ditch effort first to ravage then to salvage as much as possible before the collapse?

On 10 April, Zero Hedge reports “Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut of Senior Creditors in First “Bail In” Under New European Rules”. The Austrian “bad bank”, the failed Hypo Alpe Adria, that became Heta Asset Resolution AG after the government’s nationalization, found a US$ 8.5 billion hole in its balance sheet, enough to trigger the new European ‘bail-in’ rule. Is it coincidence that also in Austria a major bank failure triggered the Great Depression also on a 10th of April – in 1931? – This is a first in Europe. Be prepared for others to follow, as over-extension of European banks is estimated in excess of a trillion dollars.

On 15 April, the New York Times reported that – Five of Wall Street’s eight largest banks are in defiance of the US banking regulator. The FED and FDIC said that “JP Morgan, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street and Bank of New York, all lacked ‘credible‘ plans to enter bankruptcy in the event of a financial crisis.” These banks have until October 2016 to comply. Under the new rules a tax-payer bail-out would be unlikely. Hence ‘bail-ins’ could affect millions of depositors and shareholders, their funds being stolen in order to self-rescue the too-big-to-fail banks. After all, non-compliance with the regulator’s requests, or insolvency, can easily be manufactured as a legal base for stealing common people’s savings. No worries, the TBTF banks will not go away, but your savings may.

The CIA released Panama Papers (for who still doubts about the CIA involvement in the release of the Panama Papers,

read here http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/09/the-panama-papers-the-people-deceived/),

aimed in a most rudimentary way at defaming the ‘usual suspects’, Presidents Putin and Assad, as well as Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, of course – and others. Strangely no notable EU or US citizens or corporations were on the list. Would anybody seriously believe that Mr. Putin, a former KGB agent, would be so ignorant as to putting his fortune (even if he had any to hide) into Panama, the epitome of a US puppet state, where you can’t flush a toilet without Washington knowing it?

Some token neocons appear in the published papers, like Argentina’s new ‘Washington appointed’ President Mauricio Macri, who is running amok ruining his country. Within less than four months he has rolled Argentina’s economy back by ten years, raising poverty from below 10% in November 2015 to 34% by the end March 2016. The Empire needs him to keep gradually turning Argentina into chaos, however not too quickly, lest he may be ‘deposed’ and replaced by a US adversary – that would not at all be appreciated in Washington. For the types of Macri that made it on the list, the Panama Papers are a warning signal to keep them in-check.

The publication of the Panama Papers may also be an incentive for US citizens and corporations to bring home trillions of undeclared dollar holdings stacked away in overseas tax havens into homeland financial shelters like those in Delaware, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nevada, thereby helping strengthen the gradually decaying dollar.

Simultaneously, some European countries and Japan introduced negative interest rates, so as to increase monetary liquidity, thereby hoping stimulating an ever stagnant economy. That’s the pretext. In reality however, negative interests are but a precursor to a wholly bank controlled financial system. Normally ‘bail-ins’ and negative interest would cause a run on the banks. This has not happened yet.

In Switzerland, one of the first countries to introduce negative interests, the Swiss National Bank reported that the demand of the 1,000 franc notes – one of the world’s highest value denominations (apparently to be maintained despite ECB Draghi’s call for elimination of high denomination bank notes) – increased by 17% (by CHF 4.7 billion – US$ 4.85 billion) in December 2014, the month following the introduction of negative interests. May it be an indication that the Swiss have quietly started hoarding big-denomination cash?

Future hoarding and runs on the banks will be countered by the introduction of a cashless society, i.e. all monetary transactions will gradually become electronic. The process has already begun. In Sweden and other parts of Europe, as well as Japan, cashless supermarkets and department stores claim big success, especially with the young consumers, who happily play along paying electronic cashiers by swiping their cell phones in front of an electronic eye.

The Young and Innocent – if they only knew that the banking oligarchs want to control their money and enslave them with a ‘fun gadget’, they may decide to resist.  But well know those who control the system that the young are the drivers of the future. We, the old resistance will eventually die out. Problem solved. – But we are not dead yet. The Times are A-Changing… (Bob Dylan, 1964).

The nefarious trio – ‘bail-ins’, negative interests, and a cash free society – will make living in the industrialized ‘first world’ a sheer nuisance, a stressful dance on toes, as the emperor’s proverbial Damocles Sword hangs intimidatingly above us.

Washington may have one last joker up its sleeve – reintroducing the ‘gold standard’, the very gold standard that Nixon abandoned in 1971. The US have also been accumulating huge amounts of gold over the past 25 years. A new US dollar gold standard would most likely be set at a ratio that would wipe out all US debt, including future ‘unmet obligations’ (GAO – General Accounting Office) of about US$ 125 trillion. It would attempt to keep the western industrialized world in Washington’s orbit, but might lose most of the developing world owning natural resources coveted by the west. These countries oppressed and colonized for centuries are likely to gravitate to the new China-Russia alliance – leaving the outsourced and outwitted west alone without workforce – and with a massive but outdated military power.

To counter the build-up of this criminal last ditch sham by the western Zionist banking czars, China and Russia have been preparing over the last few years an independent financial system, delinked from the US dollar and which now incorporates the BRICS, the SCO nations, as well as the Eurasian Economic Union. This association of countries and economies account for about half the world’s population and at least one third of the globe’s economic output; a fact totally ignored by the mainstream media, for obvious reasons. The Machiavellian sinking ship does not want its passengers to jump to safety.

The 19 April 2016, announcement by China of its gold-backed yuan, no longer convertible into dollars, may just trigger an economic shift into the ‘eastern camp’. Many countries are wary and tired of western exploitation, enslavement, threats of sanctions, oppression and an ever present danger of invasion by the killing machine. The decoupling of the dollar by a third of the world economy may indeed open new horizons, creating new alliances, new hope for a more equal and just world.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, CounterPunch, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

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Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Has Not Been Good For Our Democracy | Bill Moyers & Truthout

GettyImages-51584279-1280x720The media has become controlled by a handful of corporations thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

By Michael Corcoran

Wall Street’s sinister influence on the political process has, rightly, been a major topic during this presidential campaign. But history has taught us that the role that the media industry plays in Washington poses a comparable threat to our democracy. Yet this is a topic rarely discussed by the dominant media, or on the campaign trail.

But now is a good time to discuss our growing media crises. Twenty years ago last month, President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was “essentially bought and paid for by corporate media lobbies,” as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically “opened the floodgates on mergers.”

The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar Robert McChesney, “is widely considered to be one of the three or four most important federal laws of this generation.” The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world.

“Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few,” said Eduardo Galeano, the Latin-American journalist, in response to the act.

Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is undeniable: About 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. Bill Clinton’s legacy in empowering the consolidation of corporate media is right up there with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and welfare reform, as being among the most tragic and destructive policies of his administration.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not merely a regrettable part of history. It serves as a stern warning about what is at stake in the future. In a media world that is going through a massive transformation, media companies have dramatically increased efforts to wield influence in Washington, with a massive lobbying presence and a steady dose of campaign donations to politicians in both parties — with the goal of allowing more consolidation, and privatizing and commodifying the internet.

This issue has not been central in the 2016 presidential election. But it is deeply concerning that, of all the presidential candidates running in 2016, the Big Media lobby has chosen to back Hillary Clinton. Media industry giants have donated way more to her than any other candidate in the race, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In light of this, we must be mindful of the media reform challenges we face in the present, as we try to prevent the type of damage to our democracy that was caused by the passing of this unfortunate law.

A Threat to Democracy: The Telecommunications Act and Media Consolidation

When President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act into law, he did so with great fanfare. The bill, which was lobbied for in great numbers by the communications and media industry, was sadly a bipartisan misadventure — only 3 percent of Congress voted against the bill: five senators and 16 members of the House, including then-Rep. Bernie Sanders.

At the time, President Clinton touted the law as “truly revolutionary legislation … that really embodies what we ought to be about as a country.” House Speaker Newt Gingrich boasted ofprojected consumer savings and private job growth. Rep. John Dingell (D-Michigan) “thanked God” for the bill that would “make this country the best served, the best educated and the most successful country … in all areas of communications.”

Despite all of these glowing words, the consequences of the bill were disastrous. The act “fueled a consolidation so profound that even insiders are surprised by its magnitude,” said one trade publication, according to Robert McChesney, in his book, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times.

“Before the ink was even dry on the 1996 Act,” wrote S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, in a 2009 report proposing a national broadband strategy, “the powerful media and telecommunications giants and their army of overpaid lobbyists went straight to work obstructing and undermining the competition the new law was intended to create.”

Media consolidation was already an extremely pressing concern long before 1996. In 1983, Ben Bagdikian published his groundbreaking book, The Media Monopoly, which revealed that just 50 corporations owned 90 percent of the media. That number gradually dwindled over the coming 13 years and was accelerated by the Telecommunications Act. This has led us to the aforementioned crisis where more than 90 percent of the media is owned by just six companies: Viacom, News Corporation, Comcast, CBS, Time Warner and Disney.

Radio has seen an equally appalling consolidation, which has been horrendous for both news media and music. In 1995, before the Telecommunications Act was passed, companies were not allowed to own more than 40 radio stations. “Since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Clear Channel [now called iHeartMedia] has grown from 40 stations to 1,240 stations — 30 times more than congressional regulation previously allowed,” according to a report from the Future of Music Coalition.

Local newspapers, too, have been stung by these deregulations. Gannett, for instance, owns more than 1,000 newspapers and 600 print periodicals. Layoffs have been the norm for the company, including at USA Today, the paper with the largest circulation in the country, where layoffs were described as a “total bloodbath” in the American Journalism Review.

Save the Internet: The Next Big Media Battle

There was a lot at stake when media companies lobbied for reform in 1996. There is just as much at stake today in the battle for a free and open press. Not only have big media companies continued to push for more consolidation and mergers, but they are also seeking to commodify and privatize the internet. This has become a major concern for advocates of “net neutrality,” who want to “save the internet,” and ensure it is protected as a public utility with equal access for everybody. An FCC ruling in February 2015 has protected the internet for now, but as Free Press warns, the internet is still “in danger.”

“Net neutrality has made the internet an unrivaled space for free speech, civic participation, innovation and opportunity. Net neutrality prohibits online discrimination and gives any individual, organization or company the same chance to share their ideas and find an audience,” explains Free Press’s website, Save the Internet. “Companies like Comcast and Verizon aren’t used to losing in Washington, and they’ll do everything they can to knock down the Title II protections the FCC approved on Feb. 26, 2015.”

The organization is right to be concerned. One reason for the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as McChesney wrote in 1997, was the sheer power that the media and communications industry has in Washington. “Both the Democratic and Republican parties have strong ties to the large communication firms and industries, and the communication lobbies are among the most feared, respected and well-endowed of all that seek favors on Capitol Hill.”

Today that power and influence has only increased. “From 2002-2008, the industry increased its spending on lobbying efforts every year,” reports the Center for Responsive Politics. “The streak snapped when the Great Recession set in and most clients cut back on their DC efforts, and then reversed again in 2013. In 2014, cable and satellite providers spent nearly $8.1 [million] on lobbying.”

Big Media’s Relationship With Hillary Clinton

What is most revealing when analyzing the donation patterns of these industries in the data from the Center for Responsive Politics — be it cable television, print and periodicals, radioor telecom services — is that Hillary Clinton is, by far, the largest recipient of donations of any candidate in the 2016 election in either party. In fact, of all the top industries that have donated to Clinton, the TV/movies/music category ranks behind only the securities and investments category. (This data is from reports filed on January 31, 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.)

More troubling is that these filings come on the heels of a report from Politico that the Clinton Foundation has received donations, some of them very large, from most of all the major media companies directly: Viacom, News Corporation, Reuters, NBCUniversal, Newsmax, Time Warner, Mort Zuckerman (owner of US News &World Report and the New York Daily News), Comcast, AOL Huffington Post Media and Robert Allbritton (owner of Politico). George Stephanopoulos, one of ABC News’ most visible journalist and a former staffer for President Clinton, has also been under scrutiny for not disclosing a $75,000 donation to the foundation.

Of course, the Clinton Foundation is not a political campaign and does some philanthropic work. So while this all might be legal, it is extremely unsettling, especially in tandem with all the campaign donations Hillary Clinton has received from the major players in this industry.

In March 2015, for instance, a Comcast executive held a $50,000 per plate fundraiser for Clinton’s super PAC. “Comcast NBCUniversal operates in 39 states and has 130,000 employees across the country,” said company spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice at the time. “It is important for our customers, our employees and our shareholders that we participate in the political process.”

Of course, media companies don’t just donate to Clinton, but also to members of Congressfrom both parties. Further, as the Center for Responsive Politics reports, the FCC is filled with “revolving-door” employees, who have been switching back and forth between government work and lobbying for Comcast.

Their aggressiveness in Washington makes them a dangerous enemy in the fight for free and democratic media. In this environment, it should come as no surprise that the position of FCC chairman is typically held by a former lobbyist for the cable industry, such as Tom Wheeler, the current chairman, who was once president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a major opponent of net neutrality.

And while it is good news that Clinton has come out in favor of net neutrality, it is a reasonable fear that she could change her views once elected, especially given her relationship with Big Media. It would not be the first time a president has changed a view after being elected, as we learned when Barack Obama embraced a mandate in health care, or when George H.W. Bush raised taxes, despite his infamous promisethat he never would.

It is important to note that, whatever her relationship with the telecommunications industry, it is not fair to blame Hillary Clinton for the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As first lady, Clinton was not in charge of telecommunications policy and there doesn’t appear to be evidence she played a role in constructing or fighting for the law in the White House. In fact, 20 years later, it is difficult to find any public statements from Hillary Clinton expressing her opinion about the law or its impacts. She did address a question at the 2012 YearlyKos convention about the Telecommunications Act. Her response, however, did little to clarify her views on the subject. She said:

You’ll have to ask [then-Vice President] Al Gore. We’ve had a lot of media consolidation. We’ve had some good competition. We have a lot that we need to do to begin to create a more competitive framework. Al was very involved in designing and pushing that through — he is an expert; I am not … We’ve got to take a hard look at this and I don’t want to say something I may not really support. So I have to look at that proposal.

Clinton is now, however, deep into a presidential run and could well be responsible for appointing the head of the FCC. She owes it to voters to describe her views on the Telecommunications Act, and on media consolidation more broadly, in a way that goes beyond advising Americans to “go ask Al Gore.”

Why Media Reform Matters

When McChesney observed that the communications lobby was “among the most feared, respected and well-endowed of all” groups in Washington, he also pointed out one of the great challenges about trying to fight Big Media.

“[The] only grounds for political independence in this case,” he wrote about the debate over the Telecommunications Act, “would be if there were an informed and mobilized citizenry ready to do battle for alternative policies. But where would citizens get informed?”

In other words, how can we have a real debate about media issues, when we depend on that very media to provide a platform for this debate? It is no surprise, for instance, that the media largely ignored the impact of Citizens United after the Supreme Court decision helped media companies generate record profits due to a new mass of political ads. “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS,” said CBS president Les Moonves, in a rare moment of candor at an entertainment conference in 2012.

This catch-22 is indeed one of the great difficulties about fighting for a vibrant media and a healthy democracy. But it is a challenge advocates of free media must embrace. Supporting independent media is one important way to help bring light to issues the corporate media ignores.

Media reform is the issue that affects all other issues. As the impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has shown, democracy suffers when almost all media in the nation is owned by massive conglomerates. In this reality, no issue the left cares about — the environment, criminal legal reform or health care — will get a fair shake in the national debate.

Source: This post originally appeared at Truthout.

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US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II | Global Research

war-on-terror

By James A Lucas

After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.”

But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” This theme is developed in this report which contains an estimated numbers of such deaths in 37 nations as well as brief explanations of why the U.S. is considered culpable.

The causes of wars are complex. In some instances nations other than the U.S. may have been responsible for more deaths, but if the involvement of our nation appeared to have been a necessary cause of a war or conflict it was considered responsible for the deaths in it. In other words they probably would not have taken place if the U.S. had not used the heavy hand of its power. The military and economic power of the United States was crucial.

This study reveals that U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.

The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.

But the victims are not just from big nations or one part of the world. The remaining deaths were in smaller ones which constitute over half the total number of nations. Virtually all parts of the world have been the target of U.S. intervention.

The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.

To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were U.S. military action, proxy military forces, the provision of U.S. military supplies or advisors, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by our nation. They had to make decisions about other things such as finding lost loved ones, whether to become refugees, and how to survive.

And the pain and anger is spread even further. Some authorities estimate that there are as many as 10 wounded for each person who dies in wars. Their visible, continued suffering is a continuing reminder to their fellow countrymen.

It is essential that Americans learn more about this topic so that they can begin to understand the pain that others feel. Someone once observed that the Germans during WWII “chose not to know.” We cannot allow history to say this about our country. The question posed above was “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” The answer is: possibly 10,000.

Comments on Gathering These Numbers

Generally speaking, the much smaller number of Americans who have died is not included in this study, not because they are not important, but because this report focuses on the impact of U.S. actions on its adversaries.

An accurate count of the number of deaths is not easy to achieve, and this collection of data was undertaken with full realization of this fact. These estimates will probably be revised later either upward or downward by the reader and the author. But undoubtedly the total will remain in the millions.

The difficulty of gathering reliable information is shown by two estimates in this context. For several years I heard statements on radio that three million Cambodians had been killed under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. However, in recent years the figure I heard was one million. Another example is that the number of persons estimated to have died in Iraq due to sanctions after the first U.S. Iraq War was over 1 million, but in more recent years, based on a more recent study, a lower estimate of around a half a million has emerged.

Often information about wars is revealed only much later when someone decides to speak out, when more secret information is revealed due to persistent efforts of a few, or after special congressional committees make reports

Both victorious and defeated nations may have their own reasons for underreporting the number of deaths. Further, in recent wars involving the United States it was not uncommon to hear statements like “we do not do body counts” and references to “collateral damage” as a euphemism for dead and wounded. Life is cheap for some, especially those who manipulate people on the battlefield as if it were a chessboard.

To say that it is difficult to get exact figures is not to say that we should not try. Effort was needed to arrive at the figures of 6six million Jews killed during WWI, but knowledge of that number now is widespread and it has fueled the determination to prevent future holocausts. That struggle continues.

The author can be contacted at jlucas511@woh.rr.com

37 VICTIM NATIONS

Afghanistan

The U.S. is responsible for between 1 and 1.8 million deaths during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, by luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation. (1,2,3,4)

The Soviet Union had friendly relations its neighbor, Afghanistan, which had a secular government. The Soviets feared that if that government became fundamentalist this change could spill over into the Soviet Union.

In 1998, in an interview with the Parisian publication Le Novel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to President Carter, admitted that he had been responsible for instigating aid to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan which caused the Soviets to invade. In his own words:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. (5,1,6)

Brzezinski justified laying this trap, since he said it gave the Soviet Union its Vietnam and caused the breakup of the Soviet Union. “Regret what?” he said. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (7)

The CIA spent 5 to 6 billion dollars on its operation in Afghanistan in order to bleed the Soviet Union. (1,2,3) When that 10-year war ended over a million people were dead and Afghan heroin had captured 60% of the U.S. market. (4)

The U.S. has been responsible directly for about 12,000 deaths in Afghanistan many of which resulted from bombing in retaliation for the attacks on U.S. property on September 11, 2001. Subsequently U.S. troops invaded that country. (4)

Angola

An indigenous armed struggle against Portuguese rule in Angola began in 1961. In 1977 an Angolan government was recognized by the U.N., although the U.S. was one of the few nations that opposed this action. In 1986 Uncle Sam approved material assistance to UNITA, a group that was trying to overthrow the government. Even today this struggle, which has involved many nations at times, continues.

U.S. intervention was justified to the U.S. public as a reaction to the intervention of 50,000 Cuban troops in Angola. However, according to Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University the reverse was true. The Cuban intervention came as a result of a CIA – financed covert invasion via neighboring Zaire and a drive on the Angolan capital by the U.S. ally, South Africa1,2,3). (Three estimates of deaths range from 300,000 to 750,000 (4,5,6)

Argentina: See South America: Operation Condor

Bangladesh: See Pakistan

Bolivia

Hugo Banzer was the leader of a repressive regime in Bolivia in the 1970s. The U.S. had been disturbed when a previous leader nationalized the tin mines and distributed land to Indian peasants. Later that action to benefit the poor was reversed.

Banzer, who was trained at the U.S.-operated School of the Americas in Panama and later at Fort Hood, Texas, came back from exile frequently to confer with U.S. Air Force Major Robert Lundin. In 1971 he staged a successful coup with the help of the U.S. Air Force radio system. In the first years of his dictatorship he received twice as military assistance from the U.S. as in the previous dozen years together.

A few years later the Catholic Church denounced an army massacre of striking tin workers in 1975, Banzer, assisted by information provided by the CIA, was able to target and locate leftist priests and nuns. His anti-clergy strategy, known as the Banzer Plan, was adopted by nine other Latin American dictatorships in 1977. (2) He has been accused of being responsible for 400 deaths during his tenure. (1)

Also see: See South America: Operation Condor
Brazil: See South America: Operation Condor

Cambodia

U.S. bombing of Cambodia had already been underway for several years in secret under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, but when President Nixon openly began bombing in preparation for a land assault on Cambodia it caused major protests in the U.S. against the Vietnam War.

There is little awareness today of the scope of these bombings and the human suffering involved.

Immense damage was done to the villages and cities of Cambodia, causing refugees and internal displacement of the population. This unstable situation enabled the Khmer Rouge, a small political party led by Pol Pot, to assume power. Over the years we have repeatedly heard about the Khmer Rouge’s role in the deaths of millions in Cambodia without any acknowledgement being made this mass killing was made possible by the the U.S. bombing of that nation which destabilized it by death , injuries, hunger and dislocation of its people.

So the U.S. bears responsibility not only for the deaths from the bombings but also for those resulting from the activities of the Khmer Rouge – a total of about 2.5 million people. Even when Vietnam latrer invaded Cambodia in 1979 the CIA was still supporting the Khmer Rouge. (1,2,3)

Also see Vietnam

Chad

An estimated 40,000 people in Chad were killed and as many as 200,000 tortured by a government, headed by Hissen Habre who was brought to power in June, 1982 with the help of CIA money and arms. He remained in power for eight years. (1,2)

Human Rights Watch claimed that Habre was responsible for thousands of killings. In 2001, while living in Senegal, he was almost tried for crimes committed by him in Chad. However, a court there blocked these proceedings. Then human rights people decided to pursue the case in Belgium, because some of Habre’s torture victims lived there. The U.S., in June 2003, told Belgium that it risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters if it allowed such a legal proceeding to happen. So the result was that the law that allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad was repealed. However, two months later a new law was passed which made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habre.

Chile

The CIA intervened in Chile’s 1958 and 1964 elections. In 1970 a socialist candidate, Salvador Allende, was elected president. The CIA wanted to incite a military coup to prevent his inauguration, but the Chilean army’s chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, opposed this action. The CIA then planned, along with some people in the Chilean military, to assassinate Schneider. This plot failed and Allende took office. President Nixon was not to be dissuaded and he ordered the CIA to create a coup climate: “Make the economy scream,” he said.
What followed were guerilla warfare, arson, bombing, sabotage and terror. ITT and other U.S. corporations with Chilean holdings sponsored demonstrations and strikes. Finally, on September 11, 1973 Allende died either by suicide or by assassination. At that time Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, said the following regarding Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” (1)

During 17 years of terror under Allende’s successor, General Augusto Pinochet, an estimated 3,000 Chileans were killed and many others were tortured or “disappeared.” (2,3,4,5)

Also see South America: Operation Condor

China An estimated 900,000 Chinese died during the Korean War. For more information, See: Korea.
Colombia

One estimate is that 67,000 deaths have occurred from the 1960s to recent years due to support by the U.S. of Colombian state terrorism. (1)

According to a 1994 Amnesty International report, more than 20,000 people were killed for political reasons in Colombia since 1986, mainly by the military and its paramilitary allies. Amnesty alleged that “U.S.- supplied military equipment, ostensibly delivered for use against narcotics traffickers, was being used by the Colombian military to commit abuses in the name of “counter-insurgency.” (2) In 2002 another estimate was made that 3,500 people die each year in a U.S. funded civilian war in Colombia. (3)

In 1996 Human Rights Watch issued a report “Assassination Squads in Colombia” which revealed that CIA agents went to Colombia in 1991 to help the military to train undercover agents in anti-subversive activity. (4,5)

In recent years the U.S. government has provided assistance under Plan Colombia. The Colombian government has been charged with using most of the funds for destruction of crops and support of the paramilitary group.

Cuba

In the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 18, 1961 which ended after 3 days, 114 of the invading force were killed, 1,189 were taken prisoners and a few escaped to waiting U.S. ships. (1) The captured exiles were quickly tried, a few executed and the rest sentenced to thirty years in prison for treason. These exiles were released after 20 months in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine.

Some people estimate that the number of Cuban forces killed range from 2,000, to 4,000. Another estimate is that 1,800 Cuban forces were killed on an open highway by napalm. This appears to have been a precursor of the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991 when U.S. forces mercilessly annihilated large numbers of Iraqis on a highway. (2)

Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire)

The beginning of massive violence was instigated in this country in 1879 by its colonizer King Leopold of Belgium. The Congo’s population was reduced by 10 million people over a period of 20 years which some have referred to as “Leopold’s Genocide.” (1) The U.S. has been responsible for about a third of that many deaths in that nation in the more recent past. (2)

In 1960 the Congo became an independent state with Patrice Lumumba being its first prime minister. He was assassinated with the CIA being implicated, although some say that his murder was actually the responsibility of Belgium. (3) But nevertheless, the CIA was planning to kill him. (4) Before his assassination the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying “lethal biological material” intended for use in Lumumba’s assassination. This virus would have been able to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa and was transported in a diplomatic pouch.

Much of the time in recent years there has been a civil war within the Democratic Republic of Congo, fomented often by the U.S. and other nations, including neighboring nations. (5)

In April 1977, Newsday reported that the CIA was secretly supporting efforts to recruit several hundred mercenaries in the U.S. and Great Britain to serve alongside Zaire’s army. In that same year the U.S. provided $15 million of military supplies to the Zairian President Mobutu to fend off an invasion by a rival group operating in Angola. (6)

In May 1979, the U.S. sent several million dollars of aid to Mobutu who had been condemned 3 months earlier by the U.S. State Department for human rights violations. (7) During the Cold War the U.S. funneled over 300 million dollars in weapons into Zaire (8,9) $100 million in military training was provided to him. (2) In 2001 it was reported to a U.S. congressional committee that American companies, including one linked to former President George Bush Sr., were stoking the Congo for monetary gains. There is an international battle over resources in that country with over 125 companies and individuals being implicated. One of these substances is coltan, which is used in the manufacture of cell phones. (2)

Dominican Republic

In 1962, Juan Bosch became president of the Dominican Republic. He advocated such programs as land reform and public works programs. This did not bode well for his future relationship with the U.S., and after only 7 months in office, he was deposed by a CIA coup. In 1965 when a group was trying to reinstall him to his office President Johnson said, “This Bosch is no good.” Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann replied “He’s no good at all. If we don’t get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. It’s just going to be another sinkhole.” Two days later a U.S. invasion started and 22,000 soldiers and marines entered the Dominican Republic and about 3,000 Dominicans died during the fighting. The cover excuse for doing this was that this was done to protect foreigners there. (1,2,3,4)
East Timor

In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. This incursion was launched the day after U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia where they had given President Suharto permission to use American arms, which under U.S. law, could not be used for aggression. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” (1,2) The result was an estimated 200,000 dead out of a population of 700,000. (1,2)

Sixteen years later, on November 12, 1991, two hundred and seventeen East Timorese protesters in Dili, many of them children, marching from a memorial service, were gunned down by Indonesian Kopassus shock troops who were headed by U.S.- trained commanders Prabowo Subianto (son in law of General Suharto) and Kiki Syahnakri. Trucks were seen dumping bodies into the sea. (5)

El Salvador

The civil war from 1981 to1992 in El Salvador was financed by $6 billion in U.S. aid given to support the government in its efforts to crush a movement to bring social justice to the people in that nation of about 8 million people. (1)
During that time U.S. military advisers demonstrated methods of torture on teenage prisoners, according to an interview with a deserter from the Salvadoran army published in the New York Times. This former member of the Salvadoran National Guard testified that he was a member of a squad of twelve who found people who they were told were guerillas and tortured them. Part of the training he received was in torture at a U.S. location somewhere in Panama. (2)

About 900 villagers were massacred in the village of El Mozote in 1981. Ten of the twelve El Salvadoran government soldiers cited as participating in this act were graduates of the School of the Americas operated by the U.S. (2) They were only a small part of about 75,000 people killed during that civil war. (1)

According to a 1993 United Nations’ Truth Commission report, over 96 % of the human rights violations carried out during the war were committed by the Salvadoran army or the paramilitary deaths squads associated with the Salvadoran army. (3)

That commission linked graduates of the School of the Americas to many notorious killings. The New York Times and the Washington Post followed with scathing articles. In 1996, the White House Oversight Board issued a report that supported many of the charges against that school made by Rev. Roy Bourgeois, head of the School of the Americas Watch. That same year the Pentagon released formerly classified reports indicating that graduates were trained in killing, extortion, and physical abuse for interrogations, false imprisonment and other methods of control. (4)

Grenada

The CIA began to destabilize Grenada in 1979 after Maurice Bishop became president, partially because he refused to join the quarantine of Cuba. The campaign against him resulted in his overthrow and the invasion by the U.S. of Grenada on October 25, 1983, with about 277 people dying. (1,2) It was fallaciously charged that an airport was being built in Grenada that could be used to attack the U.S. and it was also erroneously claimed that the lives of American medical students on that island were in danger.

Guatemala

In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala. He appropriated some unused land operated by the United Fruit Company and compensated the company. (1,2) That company then started a campaign to paint Arbenz as a tool of an international conspiracy and hired about 300 mercenaries who sabotaged oil supplies and trains. (3) In 1954 a CIA-orchestrated coup put him out of office and he left the country. During the next 40 years various regimes killed thousands of people.

In 1999 the Washington Post reported that an Historical Clarification Commission concluded that over 200,000 people had been killed during the civil war and that there had been 42,000 individual human rights violations, 29,000 of them fatal, 92% of which were committed by the army. The commission further reported that the U.S. government and the CIA had pressured the Guatemalan government into suppressing the guerilla movement by ruthless means. (4,5)

According to the Commission between 1981 and 1983 the military government of Guatemala – financed and supported by the U.S. government – destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide. (4)
One of the documents made available to the commission was a 1966 memo from a U.S. State Department official, which described how a “safe house” was set up in the palace for use by Guatemalan security agents and their U.S. contacts. This was the headquarters for the Guatemalan “dirty war” against leftist insurgents and suspected allies. (2)

Haiti

From 1957 to 1986 Haiti was ruled by Papa Doc Duvalier and later by his son. During that time their private terrorist force killed between 30,000 and 100,000 people. (1) Millions of dollars in CIA subsidies flowed into Haiti during that time, mainly to suppress popular movements, (2) although most American military aid to the country, according to William Blum, was covertly channeled through Israel.

Reportedly, governments after the second Duvalier reign were responsible for an even larger number of fatalities, and the influence on Haiti by the U.S., particularly through the CIA, has continued. The U.S. later forced out of the presidential office a black Catholic priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, even though he was elected with 67% of the vote in the early 1990s. The wealthy white class in Haiti opposed him in this predominantly black nation, because of his social programs designed to help the poor and end corruption. (3) Later he returned to office, but that did not last long. He was forced by the U.S. to leave office and now lives in South Africa.

Honduras

In the 1980s the CIA supported Battalion 316 in Honduras, which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of its citizens. Torture equipment and manuals were provided by CIA Argentinean personnel who worked with U.S. agents in the training of the Hondurans. Approximately 400 people lost their lives. (1,2) This is another instance of torture in the world sponsored by the U.S. (3)

Battalion 316 used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations in the 1980s. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. Declassified documents and other sources show that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy knew of numerous crimes, including murder and torture, yet continued to support Battalion 316 and collaborate with its leaders.” (4)

Honduras was a staging ground in the early 1980s for the Contras who were trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. John D. Negroponte, currently Deputy Secretary of State, was our embassador when our military aid to Honduras rose from $4 million to $77.4 million per year. Negroponte denies having had any knowledge of these atrocities during his tenure. However, his predecessor in that position, Jack R. Binns, had reported in 1981 that he was deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations. (5)

Hungary

In 1956 Hungary, a Soviet satellite nation, revolted against the Soviet Union. During the uprising broadcasts by the U.S. Radio Free Europe into Hungary sometimes took on an aggressive tone, encouraging the rebels to believe that Western support was imminent, and even giving tactical advice on how to fight the Soviets. Their hopes were raised then dashed by these broadcasts which cast an even darker shadow over the Hungarian tragedy.“ (1) The Hungarian and Soviet death toll was about 3,000 and the revolution was crushed. (2)

Indonesia

In 1965, in Indonesia, a coup replaced General Sukarno with General Suharto as leader. The U.S. played a role in that change of government. Robert Martens,a former officer in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia, described how U.S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5,000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965 and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Martens admitted that “I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.” (1,2,3) Estimates of the number of deaths range from 500,000 to 3 million. (4,5,6)
From 1993 to 1997 the U.S. provided Jakarta with almost $400 million in economic aid and sold tens of million of dollars of weaponry to that nation. U.S. Green Berets provided training for the Indonesia’s elite force which was responsible for many of atrocities in East Timor. (3)

Iran

Iran lost about 262,000 people in the war against Iraq from 1980 to 1988. (1) See Iraq for more information about that war.

On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy ship, the Vincennes, was operating withing Iranian waters providing military support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. During a battle against Iranian gunboats it fired two missiles at an Iranian Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilian on board were killed. (2,3)

Iraq

A. The Iraq-Iran War lasted from 1980 to 1988 and during that time there were about 105,000 Iraqi deaths according to the Washington Post. (1,2)

According to Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, the U.S. provided the Iraqis with billions of dollars in credits and helped Iraq in other ways such as making sure that Iraq had military equipment including biological agents This surge of help for Iraq came as Iran seemed to be winning the war and was close to Basra. (1) The U.S. was not adverse to both countries weakening themselves as a result of the war, but it did not appear to want either side to win.

B: The U.S.-Iraq War and the Sanctions Against Iraq extended from 1990 to 2003.

Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the U.S. responded by demanding that Iraq withdraw, and four days later the U.N. levied international sanctions.

Iraq had reason to believe that the U.S. would not object to its invasion of Kuwait, since U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, had told Saddam Hussein that the U.S. had no position on the dispute that his country had with Kuwait. So the green light was given, but it seemed to be more of a trap.

As a part of the public relations strategy to energize the American public into supporting an attack against Iraq the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. falsely testified before Congress that Iraqi troops were pulling the plugs on incubators in Iraqi hospitals. (1) This contributed to a war frenzy in the U.S.

The U.S. air assault started on January 17, 1991 and it lasted for 42 days. On February 23 President H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. ground assault to begin. The invasion took place with much needless killing of Iraqi military personnel. Only about 150 American military personnel died compared to about 200,000 Iraqis. Some of the Iraqis were mercilessly killed on the Highway of Death and about 400 tons of depleted uranium were left in that nation by the U.S. (2,3)

Other deaths later were from delayed deaths due to wounds, civilians killed, those killed by effects of damage of the Iraqi water treatment facilities and other aspects of its damaged infrastructure and by the sanctions.

In 1995 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. reported that U.N sanctions against on Iraq had been responsible for the deaths of more than 560,000 children since 1990. (5)

Leslie Stahl on the TV Program 60 Minutes in 1996 mentioned to Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think is worth it.” (4)

In 1999 UNICEF reported that 5,000 children died each month as a result of the sanction and the War with the U.S. (6)

Richard Garfield later estimated that the more likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000 – double those of the previous decade. Garfield estimated that the numbers to be 350,000 through 2000 (based in part on result of another study). (7)

However, there are limitations to his study. His figures were not updated for the remaining three years of the sanctions. Also, two other somewhat vulnerable age groups were not studied: young children above the age of five and the elderly.

All of these reports were considerable indicators of massive numbers of deaths which the U.S. was aware of and which was a part of its strategy to cause enough pain and terror among Iraqis to cause them to revolt against their government.

C: Iraq-U.S. War started in 2003 and has not been concluded

Just as the end of the Cold War emboldened the U.S. to attack Iraq in 1991 so the attacks of September 11, 2001 laid the groundwork for the U.S. to launch the current war against Iraq. While in some other wars we learned much later about the lies that were used to deceive us, some of the deceptions that were used to get us into this war became known almost as soon as they were uttered. There were no weapons of mass destruction, we were not trying to promote democracy, we were not trying to save the Iraqi people from a dictator.

The total number of Iraqi deaths that are a result of our current Iraq against Iraq War is 654,000, of which 600,000 are attributed to acts of violence, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. (1,2)

Since these deaths are a result of the U.S. invasion, our leaders must accept responsibility for them.

Israeli-Palestinian War

About 100,000 to 200,000 Israelis and Palestinians, but mostly the latter, have been killed in the struggle between those two groups. The U.S. has been a strong supporter of Israel, providing billions of dollars in aid and supporting its possession of nuclear weapons. (1,2)

Korea, North and South

The Korean War started in 1950 when, according to the Truman administration, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25th. However, since then another explanation has emerged which maintains that the attack by North Korea came during a time of many border incursions by both sides. South Korea initiated most of the border clashes with North Korea beginning in 1948. The North Korea government claimed that by 1949 the South Korean army committed 2,617 armed incursions. It was a myth that the Soviet Union ordered North Korea to attack South Korea. (1,2)

The U.S. started its attack before a U.N. resolution was passed supporting our nation’s intervention, and our military forces added to the mayhem in the war by introducing the use of napalm. (1)

During the war the bulk of the deaths were South Koreans, North Koreans and Chinese. Four sources give deaths counts ranging from 1.8 to 4.5 million. (3,4,5,6) Another source gives a total of 4 million but does not identify to which nation they belonged. (7)

John H. Kim, a U.S. Army veteran and the Chair of the Korea Committee of Veterans for Peace, stated in an article that during the Korean War “the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy were directly involved in the killing of about three million civilians – both South and North Koreans – at many locations throughout Korea…It is reported that the U.S. dropped some 650,000 tons of bombs, including 43,000 tons of napalm bombs, during the Korean War.” It is presumed that this total does not include Chinese casualties.

Another source states a total of about 500,000 who were Koreans and presumably only military. (8,9)

Laos

From 1965 to 1973 during the Vietnam War the U.S. dropped over two million tons of bombs on Laos – more than was dropped in WWII by both sides. Over a quarter of the population became refugees. This was later called a “secret war,” since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War, but got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Branfman make the only estimate that I am aware of , stating that hundreds of thousands died. This can be interpeted to mean that at least 200,000 died. (1,2,3)

U.S. military intervention in Laos actually began much earlier. A civil war started in the 1950s when the U.S. recruited a force of 40,000 Laotians to oppose the Pathet Lao, a leftist political party that ultimately took power in 1975.

Also See Vietnam

Nepal

Between 8,000 and 12,000 Nepalese have died since a civil war broke out in 1996. The death rate, according to Foreign Policy in Focus, sharply increased with the arrival of almost 8,400 American M-16 submachine guns (950 rpm) and U.S. advisers. Nepal is 85 percent rural and badly in need of land reform. Not surprisingly 42 % of its people live below the poverty level. (1,2)

In 2002, after another civil war erupted, President George W. Bush pushed a bill through Congress authorizing $20 million in military aid to the Nepalese government. (3)

Nicaragua

In 1981 the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza government in Nicaragua, (1) and until 1990 about 25,000 Nicaraguans were killed in an armed struggle between the Sandinista government and Contra rebels who were formed from the remnants of Somoza’s national government. The use of assassination manuals by the Contras surfaced in 1984. (2,3)

The U.S. supported the victorious government regime by providing covert military aid to the Contras (anti-communist guerillas) starting in November, 1981. But when Congress discovered that the CIA had supervised acts of sabotage in Nicaragua without notifying Congress, it passed the Boland Amendment in 1983 which prohibited the CIA, Defense Department and any other government agency from providing any further covert military assistance. (4)

But ways were found to get around this prohibition. The National Security Council, which was not explicitly covered by the law, raised private and foreign funds for the Contras. In addition, arms were sold to Iran and the proceeds were diverted from those sales to the Contras engaged in the insurgency against the Sandinista government. (5) Finally, the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990 by voters who thought that a change in leadership would placate the U.S., which was causing misery to Nicaragua’s citizenry by it support of the Contras.

Pakistan

In 1971 West Pakistan, an authoritarian state supported by the U.S., brutally invaded East Pakistan. The war ended after India, whose economy was staggering after admitting about 10 million refugees, invaded East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and defeated the West Pakistani forces. (1)

Millions of people died during that brutal struggle, referred to by some as genocide committed by West Pakistan. That country had long been an ally of the U.S., starting with $411 million provided to establish its armed forces which spent 80% of its budget on its military. $15 million in arms flowed into W. Pakistan during the war. (2,3,4)

Three sources estimate that 3 million people died and (5,2,6) one source estimates 1.5 million. (3)

Panama

In December, 1989 U.S. troops invaded Panama, ostensibly to arrest Manuel Noriega, that nation’s president. This was an example of the U.S. view that it is the master of the world and can arrest anyone it wants to. For a number of years before that he had worked for the CIA, but fell out of favor partially because he was not an opponent of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (1) It has been estimated that between 500 and 4,000 people died. (2,3,4)

Paraguay: See South America: Operation Condor

Philippines

The Philippines were under the control of the U.S. for over a hundred years. In about the last 50 to 60 years the U.S. has funded and otherwise helped various Philippine governments which sought to suppress the activities of groups working for the welfare of its people. In 1969 the Symington Committee in the U.S. Congress revealed how war material was sent there for a counter-insurgency campaign. U.S. Special Forces and Marines were active in some combat operations. The estimated number of persons that were executed and disappeared under President Fernando Marcos was over 100,000. (1,2)

South America: Operation Condor

This was a joint operation of 6 despotic South American governments (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) to share information about their political opponents. An estimated 13,000 people were killed under this plan. (1)

It was established on November 25, 1975 in Chile by an act of the Interamerican Reunion on Military Intelligence. According to U.S. embassy political officer, John Tipton, the CIA and the Chilean Secret Police were working together, although the CIA did not set up the operation to make this collaboration work. Reportedly, it ended in 1983. (2)

On March 6, 2001 the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. (3)

Sudan

Since 1955, when it gained its independence, Sudan has been involved most of the time in a civil war. Until about 2003 approximately 2 million people had been killed. It not known if the death toll in Darfur is part of that total.

Human rights groups have complained that U.S. policies have helped to prolong the Sudanese civil war by supporting efforts to overthrow the central government in Khartoum. In 1999 U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) who said that she offered him food supplies if he would reject a peace plan sponsored by Egypt and Libya.

In 1978 the vastness of Sudan’s oil reservers was discovered and within two years it became the sixth largest recipient of U.S, military aid. It’s reasonable to assume that if the U.S. aid a government to come to power it will feel obligated to give the U.S. part of the oil pie.

A British group, Christian Aid, has accused foreign oil companies of complicity in the depopulation of villages. These companies – not American – receive government protection and in turn allow the government use of its airstrips and roads.

In August 1998 the U.S. bombed Khartoum, Sudan with 75 cruise míssiles. Our government said that the target was a chemical weapons factory owned by Osama bin Laden. Actually, bin Laden was no longer the owner, and the plant had been the sole supplier of pharmaceutical supplies for that poor nation. As a result of the bombing tens of thousands may have died because of the lack of medicines to treat malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. The U.S. settled a lawsuit filed by the factory’s owner. (1,2)

Uruguay: See South America: Operation Condor

Vietnam

In Vietnam, under an agreement several decades ago, there was supposed to be an election for a unified North and South Vietnam. The U.S. opposed this and supported the Diem government in South Vietnam. In August, 1964 the CIA and others helped fabricate a phony Vietnamese attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and this was used as a pretext for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (1)

During that war an American assassination operation,called Operation Phoenix, terrorized the South Vietnamese people, and during the war American troops were responsible in 1968 for the mass slaughter of the people in the village of My Lai.

According to a Vietnamese government statement in 1995 the number of deaths of civilians and military personnel during the Vietnam War was 5.1 million. (2)

Since deaths in Cambodia and Laos were about 2.7 million (See Cambodia and Laos) the estimated total for the Vietnam War is 7.8 million.

The Virtual Truth Commission provides a total for the war of 5 million, (3) and Robert McNamara, former Secretary Defense, according to the New York Times Magazine says that the number of Vietnamese dead is 3.4 million. (4,5)

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of several republics. Since it refused to be closely tied to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it gained some suport from the U.S. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, Yugoslavia’s usefulness to the U.S. ended, and the U.S and Germany worked to convert its socialist economy to a capitalist one by a process primarily of dividing and conquering. There were ethnic and religious differences between various parts of Yugoslavia which were manipulated by the U.S. to cause several wars which resulted in the dissolution of that country.

From the early 1990s until now Yugoslavia split into several independent nations whose lowered income, along with CIA connivance, has made it a pawn in the hands of capitalist countries. (1) The dissolution of Yugoslavia was caused primarily by the U.S. (2)

Here are estimates of some, if not all, of the internal wars in Yugoslavia. All wars: 107,000; (3,4)

Bosnia and Krajina: 250,000; (5) Bosnia: 20,000 to 30,000; (5) Croatia: 15,000; (6) and

Kosovo: 500 to 5,000. (7)

Source & Footnotes: Global Research

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Donald and Melania Trump on Their Marriage and His Campaign Interviewed by Barbara Walters | YouTube

Editor’s Note: A beautiful interview that brings out the personal, human side of the Trump family. Worth watching.

Source: YouTube

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Selective empathy: “Terrorist” attacks rock Paris, and the public response to tragedy is typically disproportionate | SOTT Exclusive

EiffelPeaceBy Daniel DeLafe
In light of the Paris terror attack that killed at least 126, I have some observations to share regarding the social media response to such a tragedy. First, I want to share this particular story to help make a point: New evidence emerges showing the US deliberately attacked the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan.

…the Associated Press published a report providing further confirmation that the facility was targeted and bombed by US military personnel with full knowledge that it was a functioning hospital. The attack lasted for an hour, destroying the building and killing 30 people, including at least 13 MSF staff members and 10 patients.
…
The report follows a previous article citing a former intelligence official who said special operations analysts had mapped the entire area and drawn a circle around the hospital.

The new report adds to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that US forces knowingly and deliberately destroyed a hospital that was performing civilian functions, a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions and a violation of the US War Crimes Act. According to the latter, those found guilty of committing such a crime can be subject to life imprisonment or death.

Among the possible motivations for the attack is the fact that the hospital was the only major medical center in northeastern Afghanistan, and it provided aid to all those injured in the escalating conflict between US forces and the Taliban-led insurgency. Beyond those immediately killed, hundreds or even thousands will die as a result of their loss of access to medical care.

In a statement released on October 23, which reported an increase in the death toll from 22 to 30, MSF noted that the destruction of the hospital “will have a huge impact on access to surgical care for hundreds of thousands of people in the region… Last year, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed.”

This is only one example among countless others I could use (many much worse), but it’s recent and I only need one to make this point. Where were all the “prayers” and “thoughts” for any of these people from most of you posting your condolences about what just happened in Paris? I’m sorry if this offends anyone, or if you feel like I’m trying to take attention away from the lives lost and disrespecting those grieving, but that is the opposite of what I’m doing. I’m trying to honor them.

I’m simply trying to get you to think and to feel deeper, and to expand your circle of empathy beyond Paris in order to grasp the bigger picture of why these attacks happen. This opinion piece gets to the core of some of those reasons: The Age of Despair: Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence. A larger game is at work, one we often do not see.

Let’s start by asking: Why are you more upset over one group of people being murdered and not another group? Or is the bombing of a hospital not terrorism? Do Afghan lives not mean as much as Parisian lives?

The events yesterday in Paris are heartbreaking and disturbing. What I find more disturbing is how easily people ignore why these things are even happening and who actually arms and funds Islamic extremists. How many just swallow the mainstream media propaganda and are therefore oblivious to history? Most disturbing is that 90% of the people that send their prayers and condolences online to those who died in Paris (as good as their intentions are), never seem to bat an eye at, or send a single prayer to, the millions of people slaughtered by the U.S./EU/Israeli/Saudi war machine, which created these extremist groups in the first place through direct and indirect results of Western foreign policy and Western proxy armies.

When an attack like this happens in the West, everyone is so, so sad – yet when hundreds of homes are leveled in Gaza, or elsewhere in the Middle East, there is relative silence! We should be equally upset about all of this senseless killing orchestrated by psychopaths in the highest echelons of society, not just what our TVs tell us we should be upset about. We should be sending our thoughts and prayers everyday to all the innocents murdered with our tax dollars, not just when an attack occurs in Europe or the U.S. Such events are also used as a fear-monger tactic and fuel to continue the very same policies and wars-for-profit that result in such attacks, whether orchestrated by extremists or by intelligence agencies.

To those who expressed themselves over the Paris attacks, yet remained silent over countless similar atrocities, I ask: where were your condolences, your “thoughts”, your “prayers” for those killed in the attack on the Afghan hospital by US forces, or any other war crime committed by or supported by your own government? What determined your care for one group of people and not another? Was it your attitude? Your popularity? Maybe it was the type of information you are exposed to, or deliberately expose yourself to? Was it your beliefs?

Most likely it’s all of that – and more. The main question here is: Do you really have control over what you pay attention to and care about?

I guess terrorism is only what our psychopathic leaders and their media moguls tell us it is, and only then when it happens to us in the West, not when we’re the perpetrators. It seems that a lot of people only take the time to share their condolences about a tragedy when it’s trending and trendy to do so, and such trends are not only tracked and played upon by the power brokers in society, but are also manufactured and directed for larger political purposes. When Gaza was getting bombed to smithereens in summer of 2014, I didn’t see half the response I saw over this recent attack on social media and in conversation.

I’m sad for Paris today. I’m thinking about it a lot. I know this article, or a Facebook post, or a Tweet, won’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, but such things may do more than we think, and can plant seeds in people’s minds, just like the TV does. It helps to vent our frustration with all the lies, and to counter them even just a little bit. Many people decided to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media to voice their concerns, their “thoughts and prayers” about Paris, and I completely understand why you did this.

You cared that people got killed for no reason. I get it. I feel that way everyday. But this is also a sinister manipulation of the public at large, and anyone who is familiar with Edward Bernays knows that powerful people put lots of time, money, and research into figuring out how to control what people think, like, and care about (I highly recommend the documentary series The Century of the Self). We all must understand how and why we are programmed by psychopaths in power, the richest of whom are in control of our own countries here in the West, and how these same people influence us to be selective with our conscience, with our caring.

Every single day, even my best and happiest days (like right now – I’m on tour with a band called The Gray Company, staying in a beautiful home in North Carolina with amazing friends, and having a blast!) I set some time aside to think of all the others dying at the hands of our government and the Secret Government, the National Security State, and its military industrial complex. I devote some time to reading and studying, and I try to post and disseminate information. I don’t wait for the mainstream media to tell me when to be upset and when to care, and what is true and what isn’t. I try to look and work it out and hold off on concluding. I choose to care because I value Truth, and I understand Truth hurts us in the process of seeking Her, and I’m willing to endure the pain of knowing for a chance to dance with Truth.

I wasn’t always like this though. It takes hard work and effort to Love and to seek the Truth, to draw up Her bitter-sweet water and drink it and to be changed by Her – it’s a constant effort to care and know how crazy the world really is while at the same time allowing yourself to be happy when necessary, and to appreciate your own life, and to strive in such a crazy world without letting it get to you and still succeed. I understand why so many shut this stuff out and just want to focus on their own life and success, or only spare a thought or condolence when it’s trendy to do so, especially when it’s shoved in our faces, while other events get downplayed or ignored. It’s easier to believe the lies and watered-down truth when it’s spoon-fed to us – it’s more comfortable and takes no effort. But will it help us grow?

I wasn’t always like this. You also don’t have to be the way you may be, to be manipulated by powers you don’t understand. But only if you really want to seek knowledge, to objectively Love, to seek Truth – if you truly want to care MORE. Take the feelings you get from the Paris attacks, the sadness for those lives lost in the middle of a grander chess game, and use it as motivation to learn and to speak – to try and follow the moves on the board by unseen hands. Post your thoughts and feelings every single day about ALL the innocents dying, not just for one day – because such things happen every day, and we all carry the responsibility for it and for doing something about it. The least we can do is make an effort to really understand it, to pay attention and speak out as much as possible, rather than blindly accepting what the talking heads tell us is going down and whose deaths we should or should not care about.

Dr. Martin Luther. King, Jr. once said “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Of course, once you are aware of that decision, it’s then up to you to choose. Choose wisely.

Daniel DeLafe

An ambivalent student of life, self-proclaimed symbologist and writer, born September 9th, 1990, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I still reside. I have a B.A degree (a piece of paper in a frame) which certifies that I studied English & Writing at Kean University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

An information junkie, social critic, and independent researcher with an interest for a variety of subjects, from comparative religion, mythology, mysticism, esotericism, the occult, and UFOs, to science, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, politics, activism, literature, and history.

A musician with over a decade of self-taught drum set dabbling under my belt. Lover of smart and creative friends, silky cats, delicious coffee and tea, cooking concoctions, robust pipe tobacco, abstract and allegorical art, drawing and painting, traveling, museum time machines, library arsenals, big book bullets, forests, parks, profound poetry, alliteration, intellectually stimulating conversations, rhyming, dining, people-watching, live concerts, a tasty array of music, the Oxford comma, and listing stuff.

Source: SOTT

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Fukushima’s Political Fallout Puts Anti-Nuke Researcher On Trial | Activist Post

FukishimiFalloutBy Yoichi Shimatsu

Dana Durnford, a former commercial diver who plies a rubber dinghy along the Canadian Pacific coast to study the effects of Fukushima radiation on marine life, has been arrested for making alleged death threats against a chemistry professor at University of Victoria in British Columbia. Mr. Durnford is facing trial on two counts of harassment related to his comments on video at his webpage, the Nuclear Proctologist. The video clips in question have been removed by YouTube at the request of unnamed complainants.

Whatever the substance those controversial statements, Canadians should realize his frustration arises in response to the official campaign of denial of Fukushima’s lethal effects. I have often enjoyed dialogues with Dana on the rense.com radio program on Monday nights, especially stories of his harrowing experiences at sea amid 15-foot swells. After a career of diving for shellfish, he developed a passion for coastal research two years ago after discovering that the once-lush seafloor and tidal pools of British Columbia have been denuded of vegetation and are now devoid of marine-animal life. A burning curiosity prompted him to obtain Geiger counters, a microscope and underwater cameras to search for the root cause of this unprecedented natural catastrophe along North America’s Pacific coast,

Durnford has an encyclopedic recall for identifying marine species that few marine biologists can equal. His estimate, four years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, is that out of more than 2,000 coastal species only about 200 still survive. The absence of any other plausible cause prompted his conclusion that low-level radiation from Fukushima arriving in immense volumes is responsible for the greatest extermination event in human history. His field research shows that the ongoing ecocide of the Pacific is a man-made catastrophe and not a natural disaster, and the nuclear industry bears the entire culpability. For his tireless campaign of gathering a vast body of smoking-gun evidence, Durnford is being persecuted in a modern-day witch trial by the high priests of the nuclear industry.

Durnford stands accused on trumped-up charges of a “hate crime” against those marine chemists who categorically deny radiation as a potential factor in the oceanic kill-off, a priori, that is even before they start to gather data from the shore. As quoted in the Globe and Mail, Durnford said, “in court I was charged with criminal harassment of nuclear industry PR people, and one of those was from Woods Hole and the other one was from UVic, British Columbia, Canada.”

Correction: Durnford is not aware of the fact, and probably neither are the students at University of Victoria, that one of his accusers, Professor Jay Cullen, served as a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, which throughout its history has been an “ocean environment” research front funded by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research.

“Zero risk” from Fukushima

To be fair, as far as possible when presented with transparent scientific fraud, let us now pay attention to the opinions of the main “victim” of this alleged heinous murder plot.

Chemistry professor Jay T. Cullen, with the University of Victoria, British Columbia, gave his account of a “hate crime” and “harassment” from critics of the Fukushima meltdowns to a sympathetic Globe and Mail in its November 11 edition:

Jay Cullen never expected the world of hate he encountered when he began to post scientific information about the impact of the Fukushima accident on the Pacific Ocean. Criticism was anticipated ­ but then he started getting death threats.

“I knew there were lots of individuals who felt strongly about nuclear power. So it wasn’t a surprise that there were those who didn’t accept what the scientific research was showing, but I have to admit the hatred and the threats I received, that was somewhat of a surprise.”

Dr. Cullen started a radionuclide-monitoring program in 2014. The Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring project (or InFORM, as he optimistically called it) worked with a broad network of scientists to gather the latest research and distribute it to the public.

Shortly after he began blogging about the findings, which showed just about zero risk to the environment and to the public in North America, he became the target of a hate campaign.

So there you have it from both sides, the Rashomon effect. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, or is the payoff in a Swiss bank account? Who to believe: Dastardly Dana or the Professor of Culling?

The Wheelchair Murders

When the Durnford case reaches trial, the prosecution must prove that the accused made a threat with murderous intent that could be actualized in a physical assault or with a weapon. The defendant, however, is disabled and requires the assistance of a wheelchair or crutches for mobility. It is highly unlikely that Durnford could mount a successful physical attack against any person capable of running, making the harassment charges simply a bad joke that exposes the folly of this spurious court case.

If anything, the scene of Professors Cullen and Buesseler being chased around the docks by a wheelchair would make a hilarious episode for the Canadian comic-reality show “Just for Gags”.

Apologists for Nuclear Ecocide

Here, I present arguments for Durnford’s defense, much of which cannot be entered into the court record in a national judicial system constrained by a blanket nuclear-security regime and Official Secrets Act that grossly subvert the Rule of Law:

– First, it will be shown that the accusers Cullen and Buesseler have institutional links with the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and are therefore implicated in the Fukushima cover-up for their assigned task of countering anti-nuclear critics. Their illicit connections to the military-nuclear complex prompt them to concoct flawed research methodologies that purposely underestimate levels of radioactive contamination. Their grotesque violations of science ethics are here exposed, followed by a call for their being defrocked and excluded from academic discourse.

– Second, the funding from the nuclear industry to the University of Victoria, located on Vancouver Island, is “hush money” timed to coincide with the imminent start of uranium shipments across Western Canada through Vancouver harbour to Asia by TEPCO Resources, yes, the same Tokyo Electric Power Company responsible for Fukushima and co-owner of the Cigar Lake uranium mine, which recently started extraction operations in Sasketchewan. TEPCO is hitting Canada in more ways than one.

– Third, the Canadian government’s nuclear-secrecy regulations backed by the Official Secrets Act encourages extralegal suppression of anti-nuclear critics and enables the duplicitous export of uranium for nuclear weapons despite a long-standing export ban imposed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. connected with the funding for Cullen’s inFORM radiation-monitoring project got its start as the uranium supplier to the Manhattan Project, which constructed the atomic bombs that exterminated up to a quarter-million civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

– Fourth, the principle of international law set by the highest Tribunal in postwar history ruled that scientists who participate in genocidal programs must be meted out capital punishment. To repeat emphatically, for the education of plaintiffs Cullen and Buesseler, researchers implicated in mass murder deserve to be executed, according to the unanimous decision at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial.

Downplaying the Radiation Threat

Before doing a single stitch of field research, Cullen stated that the Canadian coast is free of dangerous levels of radiation and categorically disputed that Fukushima radioactive contamination as a causal factor in the numerous reports of mass deaths of marine mammals, fish, sea birds and invertebrates over the past two years. Since 2014, his inFORM network has involved willing NGOs to set up monitoring stations north of Vancouver Island to measure radiation in water.

Professor Cullen is using a bogus methodology, Water is known to be a highly unreliable medium for radiation measurement due to the diffraction and diffusion of gamma and beta rays, on the same principle as the reflection of visible light in a glass of liquid. Therefore, the only effectual method to determine exposure levels is by measuring radiation levels in marine vegetation and sea-animal tissue, to determine the “bio-accumulation” of radioactive isotopes. In an urgent crisis like Fukushima, the effect of radiation on life is all that matters.

A low level of radioactive does not eliminate the risk of harmful health effects or lethal consequences. What matters more is the time-length of exposure because of its cumulative effect. The vast area of contamination of the atmosphere and water across the Pacific, resupplied by unstoppable releases from the Fukushima plant, has resulted in practically year-round 24X7 exposure for residents of the North American Pacific coastal region. An apt analogy is the cancer threat from secondary cigarette smoke. While the nonsmoker does not inhale high concentrations of carcinogens, constant exposure to low levels of indoor smoke can lead to lung cancer.

Bioaccumulation is, therefore, the focus of my field research in measuring radiation along the Fukushima coast and on the beaches of Southern California and Washington State over the past four years since the meltdowns. Some of those field studies were done at the tip of Makah Indian territory where the Pacific meets the Salish Sea channel. This area, which directly faces Vancouver Island where Dr. Cullen’s laboratory is located, showed disturbing levels of radiation contamination in varieties of seaweed and plastic flotsam. The fact that Professor Cullen cannot find any substantial traces of radiation in that same vicinity of the Salish Sea discloses him to be a huckster for the nuclear lobby and a disgrace for the University of Victoria.

Cesium-137 Deception and Flat-Earth Theory

The veracity of Buesseler and his apprentice Cullen rides on a claim they made to the PBS Nova science program:

Cullen and Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, found no trace of radioactivity from the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor in fish collected off British Columbia. Rather, the faint traces of radioactivity they found can be traced to weapons testing done over the Pacific in the 1960s and ’70s. Fukushima’s fingerprint is cesium-134, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of two years. Because it will decay almost completely within a decade, the presence of cesium-134 can only be explained by recent exposure, such as the discharge of radioactive coolant that occurred at Fukushima. By contrast, the isotope lingering from weapons testing, cesium-137, has a half-life of 30 years.

In an interview with the Juneau Empire newspaper in Alaska in April 2015, Cullen was dismissive of the health risk from Fukushima:

“The prediction is that we will not approach levels that will present a danger to anybody’s health,” Cullen said, adding “that it’s unlikely marine organisms will be at risk. I would say that there’s a small proportion of the public who hold the belief that the Pacific Ocean and our coasts are void of life because of radiation from Fukushima.”

The Buesseler-Cullen thesis, summarized, is that since March 1, 2013 (two years after the 311 crisis), Fukushima radiation in seawater poses absolutely no threat due to the 2-year half-life of cesium-134. Any radiation from cesium-137 (half-life of 30 years) is from atmosphere tests more than three decades ago, meaning there is at present no radioactive threat at all.

Their fantastic fable for idiots is shattered by factual reporting by the Kyodo news agency (10 May 2014):

At the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Michio Aoyama, a professor at Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity who is part of the research team, said that TEPCO underestimates the amount of cesium-137 that was released into the atmosphere and later fell into the sea.

Scientists are trying to detect the levels of radioactive cesium due to its potential, long-term risks to the land and sea. Cesium-137, which has a half-life of around 30 years, can cause cancer.The study estimates that 14,000 to 17,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137 were released into the atmosphere, while about 3,500 terabecquerels directly flowed into the ocean. (A terabequerel is equal to 1 trillion bequerels.)

Aoyama said the release of radioactive cesium-137 has a ‘big impact on the ocean’ since the Fukushima nuclear complex is near the coast. The study also found that 12,000 to 15,000 terabecquerels of the cesium-137 released into the atmosphere fell into the sea, while the remaining amount fell into the soil. Of the amount that fell on land, up to 400 terabecquerels fell on North America.

No cesium-137 from Fukushima, Professors Cullen and Buesseler? Have you never heard about the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel rods of uranium and plutonium that went up in smoke from Reactor 3? And that these burnt-out rods continue to bleed radioactive isotopes including Cs-137 into the Pacific?

The Buesseler-Cullen thesis collapses like flat-earth theory crumbled when challenged by one astronomer’s observations through a telescope in the late 16th century. Knowing full well the flaws in his own argument, Cullen reacts in the same manner at the flat-earther scientists did against Galileo, by denouncing Dana Durnford as a dangerous heretic. Unable to counter Durnford’s massive biological data findings, Cullen resorts to calling the police just like the top scientists of the past called in the Vatican’s thought-control priesthood against Galileo, who was imprisoned for the high crime of reporting the facts and nothing but the facts.

Class dismissed, and you Professor Cullen and Dr. Buesseler are fired and fork over the grant money. That, departments heads at U. Victoria, is how to deal with scientific fraud.

Atomic Energy of Canada

What Jay Cullen failed to mention to the Toronto-based Global and Mail is that the 630,000 dollar grant to his inFORM project came from the MEOPAR foundation, whose Board chairman is Robert Walker, former CEO and President of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL). The federal Crown corporation is Canada’s largest nuclear laboratory, which developed the CANDU reactors and was the wartime uranium-supplier for the Manhattan Project, which built and detonated the world’s first atomic bombs.

The Pentagon links to AECL were revealed early-on, in December 1952, when the NRX reactor at AECL’s Chalk River lab suffered a partial meltdown in the world’s first major nuclear accident. One of the American naval officers dispatched to Chalk River by then-Captain Hyman Rickover, founder of the U.S. nuclear fleet, was Lt. Jimmy Carter. His assignment was to enter and inspect the damaged reactor building, and this is the probable cause for his struggles with cancer. The nuclear industry, which has shown no regrets about harming a president, certainly has nothing but contempt for ordinary citizens.

Before his appointment at Victoria, Cullen was a postgraduate researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where obviously he was inducted into the radiation cover-up operation by Ken Buesseler. Woods Hole provide civilian cover for the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), the marine component of DARPA. WHOI got its start during World War II with its development of sonar, needed to detect and target German U-boats and Japanese submarines. Sonar invention was a crash program for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), which later created the CIA.

Buesseller is a dissembler who has made extraordinary efforts to conceal his secret work for military programs. His focus on Fukushima radiation was initiated soon after the 311 disaster under assignment with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Attached to that study of radioactivity in the seas south of Fukushima was postdoctoral researcher Elizabeth Douglass with the NRL. Funding for Woods Hole comes from the Defense Department; the Department of Energy, which produces nuclear warheads; weapons manufacturer Raytheon; and environmental polluter Chevron.

The team of Buesseler and Cullen, like a Sith lord and his eager apprentice, are agents of the nexus of the nuclear-weapons establishment and corporate merchants of death.

Canada’s Nuclear Conundrum

Canada, in its less-than glorious moments, is capable of committing acts of official repression of the type Edward Snowden warned of coming from its neighbor to the south. The Canadian government deploys an arsenal of press censorship and repression of anti-nuclear critics.

An arrest similar to Durnford’s occurred in Yellowknife in the Northern Territories soon after the Fukushima disaster targeted a local radio host who had discussed the radiation levels in northern Canada. He was soon thereafter taken away in a raid by uniformed men and silenced. His name was never identified to the public and he has not been heard from since. Yellowknife is the center of operations for the Pentagon-supported Canadian Arctic command.

Despite the best efforts of the elder Trudeau against nuclear weapons, secret uranium shipments from Canada continued for nuclear-warhead production in the United States. In blatant violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Canada has supplied uranium to the Indian, Pakistani and Israeli nuclear program under the thinnest pretext of supporting “peaceful” civilian energy. Bureaucratic duplicity, of course, is connected with corruption.

Devil in the Details

What is interesting today about the Fukushima-related arrest of Durnford is the eagerness of the Canadian authorities to suppress its own citizens who criticize Japan’s nuclear industry. This is because Fukushima-perpetrator TEPCO is a shareholder in Canada’s largest untapped deposit of high-grade uranium, which began production in September 2015. If ever there was a deal with the devil, it is called, appropriately, Cigar Lake.

TEPCO is sending the uranium not to its own nuclear plants, which have little chance of restart-up. Instead, the nuclear-energy giant is morphing into a supplier of fuel rods for new reactors being promoted by the Abe government in Turkey, Vietnam, the UAE and India. Therefore, much of that uranium from Cigar Lake will be sent by truck on the public highways of Western Canada and loaded onto ships in Vancouver harbour. The planned massive expansion of uranium shipment will without doubt threatened public health in that fair city. This is why Jay Cullen is needed by TEPCO and CAMECO to be posted in the Vancouver region to dispel any concerns of local residents when local children start dying of thyroid cancer and leukemia.

Fouling the Arctic

The Cigar Lake mine is located 450 meters underground in northern Saskatchewan. Deep below the lake bed, the uranium deposit rests on dense ancient bedrock. Above this subterranean trove is the Athabascan aquifer, a canyon-like labyrinth carved into porous sandstone by underground streams, which eventually feed into the northward-flowing MacKenzie River.

The mining is done by CAMECO, the world’s largest publicly traded uranium miner, which was spun off by the federal government and Saskatchewan Province. The uranium deposit is blasted to pieces by water-jet technology. Pressured water, focused in a small radius, can easily cut through metal, as is done at fabrication workshops. The difficult challenge is to prevent loosened particles from contaminating the aquifer. Therefore a barrier between the mining and the aquifer is created by pumping super-chilled water into the sandstone to create an “ice wall”.

Ice walls have a dismal record. Engineers at the Fukushima nuclear plant made many attempts to surround the facility with an ice barrier but have repeatedly failed. So too at Cigar Lake, where recurrent flooding has delaying mining for years on end. The simple fact that the brightest engineers cannot comprehend is that water when frozen expands, thereby shattering the matrix of sandstone.

Cigar Lake has probably already started to contaminate the springs that fill the MacKenzie River, which drains into the Beaufort Sea. The waste material from Cigar Lake will add more radioactive material in the Arctic atop the massive amounts of isotopes and tritium carried by the jetstream from Fukushima. The destruction of the Arctic ice cap, along with the opening of a polar atmospheric ozone hole, suddenly started just a month after the Fukushima radioactive releases in 2011. The destruction of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears and walruses, are undoubtedly being caused by that surge of radiation contamination. All of these realities are denied by the scientific establishment and its military bosses.

Nuremberg Verdict on Murderous Science

Only a halfwit or a numskull could misconstrue Dana’s comments as a direct death threat against Cullen or Buesseler. To dare mention that an evil scientist deserves to die constitutes a crime, but to spew lies that abet the deaths of millions is just a job.

His comments were essentially along the same lines as Jean Rostand’s in Thoughts of a Biologist: “Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.” TEPCO has achieved the status of a deity, worshiped by Canada’s bankers and politicians. CAMECO and Atomic Energy of Canada are now trying to join the same major league. (As for diabolical metaphors, the AECL logo is just one ray from being a pentagram.)

There are strong reasons why scientists are expected to live up to higher standards for truthfulness and ethical conduct, in contrast with the money-grubbing merchant or obedient technocrat. Communities and nations depend on the ethical integrity and moral conscience of science professionals who control vast powers over life and death.

The temptation to destructive power was described by nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer in his chilling words on his newly devised atomic bomb: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” Death on a planetary scale is being realized in the ongoing spread of radioactive contamination out of Fukushima. How a scientist reacts to this unending catastrophe, whether with a dismissive attitude or serious consideration, is an ethical litmus test.

The higher responsibility of scientific researchers to defend the public interest was accorded special emphasis at the the Nuremberg Doctor’s Trial. The tribunal’s counts against the German medical researchers included “common design or conspiracy”, “crimes against humanity” and “membership in a criminal organization.” Among those who received the maximum penalty of hanging by the neck were Red Cross chief Karl Gebhardt, the Reich’s chief hygeinist Joachim Mrugowsky, and Wolfram Sieverts, head of military science research. The Nuremberg verdict set the standard for dealing with serious abuse of scientific authority.

The Globe and Mail article reported that Cullen was shocked that “he was not only called a ‘shill for the nuclear industry’ and a ‘sham scientist’ but was told he and other researchers who were reporting that the Fukushima radiation wasn’t a threat deserved to be executed.”

Well, Doktor Cullen, did you not choose to enter into a “common design or conspiracy” to deny the dangers to public health posed by radioactivity? Do you and Dr. Buesseler not make excuses for “crimes against humanity”? And, by any chance, do the two of you belong to a “criminal organization” that dares not reveal its existence?

Do scientists who sell out their ethics for pieces of silver when millions of civilian lives are at stake “deserve to be executed”? According to the highest standard of international law on criminal abuse by scientific researcher, the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, the answer is an emphatic affirmative: Scientists involved in genocide should be put to death. There are no ifs, buts or maybes about it. You, Professor Cullen and Dr. Buesseler, are guilty, and Dana Durnford is innocent. The defense rests.

Canada on Trial

While Durnford faces an official inquisition, it is actually Canada on trial. Will that northern dominion abide by its own principles of nonproliferation, opposition to nuclear war and environmental protection for the welfare of its communities, its children and its threatened wildlife? Or will Canada self-destruct like Shinzo Abe’s Japan under militarism, war denial and unstoppable radioactive contamination?

The new Canadian prime minister faces the daunting challenge posed by his father: “Nuclear weapons exist. They probably always will. And they work, with horrible efficiency. They threaten the very future of our species. We have no choice but to manage that risk. Never again can we put the task out of our minds; nor trivialize it; nor make it routine. Nor dare we lose heart.”

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of The Japan Times Weekly, is a science journalist who has conducted extensive radiation studies inside the Fukushima nuclear exclusion zone since April 2011. He shares a weekly online radio program at rense.com with Dana Durnford.

Source: Activist Post

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9 Reasons To Question The Paris Terror Attacks | Activist Post

ParisAttacksBy Brandon Turbeville

As France finds itself in the grips of martial law and its first mandatory curfew since it was occupied by the Nazis in 1944, there exists a number of questionable details surrounding the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

Only hours after the first shots were fired, stories and reports are beginning to change and contradict one another. Considering the history of the French government, French Intelligence agencies and the Anglo-American/NATO Intelligence apparatus, particularly the recent events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo attacks that were exposed as false flags, one would be justified in wondering whether or not these recent attacks in Paris were of the same variety.

Below are a number of reasons to question the official story of the Paris terror attacks.

1.) How many gunmen? Already, the number of individuals involved in the Paris attacks is in question. While some reports suggested four shooters were involved, others suggested three. The majority of mainstream reports seem to be only acknowledging two shooters. So how many shooters were there? Two, three or four? One witness, Pierre Marie Bertin, a 36-year-old who was at the theater when the shooting began, stated that there were as many as four gunmen. Bertin described some male hostages who “went onto the balcony and tried to negotiate for the life of their wives with one of the guys [terrorists]. It was sickening.” Bertin recounted somewhat more detail than some other witnesses and was clear that there were as many as four gunmen. Australian news media is reporting that three gunmen have been killed.

This might seem inconsequential to many readers, but in informed researching circles it is well-known that the information that comes out shortly after the event is usually the most reliable. This is not to discount the existence of confusion related to panicked reports coming from eyewitnesses and the like. However, the information coming out early on has not yet been subjected to the top-down media revision that will inevitably take place as the story becomes molded to fit the narrative pushed by the individuals who either directed the attack at the higher levels or at least have connections with those who are able to control the manner in which various media outlets report the event. For instance, in times of false flag attacks, the initial reports may point to 5 gunmen. Very shortly after, reports may only mention two. Only a few hours after the attack, however, all references to more than one gunmen are removed entirely, with only the “lone gunman” story remaining. Any other mention of additional gunmen after this point is ridiculed as “conspiracy theory.”

2.) The types of weapons used – While some reports suggest that the attackers were using AK-47s, other reports are suggesting that shotguns were used. While the contradiction in reports can certainly be attributed to victims and witnesses simply not being aware of the type of weapons being used in the attacks and panic in the heat of the moment, there is none the less contradiction in the reports being issued. As of the time of the writing of this article there has been no clarification as to what type of weapons were used. Since the assailants were supposedly killed by police it should be clear what weapons they used.

3.) Were the gunmen killed or arrested? While the number of gunmen itself is in doubt, news reports coming from Fox and Sky are suggesting that a suspected gunmen was actually arrested. In fact, the suspect allegedly stated to police, “I am from ISIS” giving us all the information we need as for who is responsible for this attack.

4.) Gunmen connected to ISIS, gunmen connected to Syria – Along with the very convenient and immediate statement by an allegedly arrested suspect that he was from ISIS, we also have screams of a shooter that “This is for Syria!” This gives us all the information that we need regarding the motivation of the alleged attackers. They are from ISIS. They hate the French because the French are “attacking” ISIS and because somewhere in France in a very darkened corner, under the sofa, there are freedoms. ISIS hates freedoms. This is quite coincidental considering the fact that a Russian airliner was recently bombed, allegedly by ISIS – at least according to the West.

5.) The timing of the event – Aside from the obvious connotations derived from the attacks occurring on Friday the 13th, the Paris massacre has taken place shortly before a major climate summit that was set to take place in France. The French government was expecting massive protests they alleged could potentially become violent, by activists opposed to globalization and energy austerity. Interestingly enough, France had already planned to impose border controls starting on November 30th in anticipation of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Paris “because of the terrorist threat or risk of public disorder.” Needless to say, there will be no massive protest now considering the fact that 2015 France resembles the 1943 version of itself more than anything else.

6.) Security – Considering the fact that the security had been so heightened both on the heels of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the anticipation of disorder for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, how on earth did such a major terror attack slip through the hands of the DGSE? After all, France is nothing if not a police state. It is also giving the United States a run for its money in the contest for how much information it is able to nab up on its citizens. No doubt, we will be sold the line of “pre-civilized savages outsmarted first-world high end military surveillance states.”

7.) Drills – One hallmark of the false flag operation is the running of drills shortly before or during the actual attack. Many times, these drills will involve the actual sequence of events that takes place during the real life attack . These drills have been present on large scale false flags such as 9/11 as well as smaller scale attacks like the Aurora shooting.

For instance, as Webster Tarpley documents in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made In USA, at least 46 drills were underway in the months leading up to 9/11 and on the morning of the attack. These 46 drills were all directly related to the events which took place on 9/11 in some way or other. Likewise, the 7/7 bombings in London were running drills of exactly the same scenario that was occurring at exactly the same times and locations.

Although one reason may take precedence over the other depending on the nature and purpose of the operation drills are used by false flag operators for at least two reasons. One such purpose is the creation of intentional confusion if the drill is taking place during the actual attack. The other, more effective aspect, however, is using the drill as a cloak to plan the attack or even “go live” when it comes time to launch the event. Even more so, it gives the individuals who are involved in the planning of the event an element of cover, especially with the military/intelligence agency’s tight chain of command structure and need-to-know basis. If a loyal military officer or intelligence agent stumbles upon the planning of the attack, that individual can always be told that what he has witnessed is nothing more than the planning of a training exercise. This deniability continues all the way through to the actual “going live” of the drill. After the completion of the false flag attack, Coincidence Theory is used to explain away the tragic results.

All of this must be considered, when one reads reports suggesting that the UK conducted counter-terrorism drills earlier this year that included scenarios that involved terror attacks in Paris similar to those that took place on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. As the reports surrounding the UK drills were released, a number 10 spokesman confirmed “it had been agreed that future exercises, which take place on a regular basis, should seek to learn from events in France.” David Cameron himself stated that there was  a need for police “to call on military help if there was a major emergency.”

8.) Charlie Hebdo – The recent Paris attacks were similar to the Charlie Hebdo massacre that occurred earlier this year. The Charlie Hebdo attacks, however, were largely revealed as a false flag operation. Evidence for which can be seen in my article “15 Signs the Charlie Hebdo Attack Was a False Flag.” Thus, there exists a clear precedent for such attacks in France, albeit on a much larger scale.

9.) Who controls ISIS? For many, claims that the attackers belong to ISIS is a deal breaker. For these individuals, ISIS is a shadowy terrorist organization that supports itself and has created a caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq that can scarcely be defeated (except when the Russians bomb it). However, the facts do not support such a shallow understanding of the ISIS terrorist organization. ISIS was entirely created, funded and directed by the United States, Britain, France and other NATO countries. Its actions have been coordinated by the Anglo-American Intelligence apparatus for geopolitical purposes all across the world both at home and abroad. For this reason, the declaration that ISIS committed a terrorist attack in Paris is by no means a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Western Intelligence apparatus. Instead, it is the trademark of their handiwork. Please see these articles for more information on the nature of ISIS: here, here, here and here.

While the information presented above may not be enough evidence to conclude that the Paris attacks were false flag attacks, it is reason enough to question the official story thus far. If these attacks are indeed placed in the lap of ISIS, however, all fingers should immediately point to NATO and the Atlanticist Intelligence apparatus. It is they who control ISIS and they who bear the responsibility for its actions.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions andDispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Source: Activist Post

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Supreme Court to Hear Texas Abortion Law Case | New York Times

AbortionLegalBy Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear its first major abortion case since 2007, one that has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights.

The court’s decision will probably arrive in late June, as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, thrusting the divisive issue of abortion to the forefront of public debate. Other major rulings — on affirmative action, public unions, contraception coverage and possibly immigration — are also expected to land around then.

But it is the new abortion case, however it is decided, that is likely to produce the term’s most consequential and legally significant decision. Many states have been enacting restrictions that test the limits of the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, and a ruling in the new case, from Texas, will enunciate principles that will apply in all of them.

The Casey decision said states may not place undue burdens on the constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. Undue burdens, it said, included “unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy helped write the controlling opinion in Casey, and his vote will almost certainly be crucial in the new case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, No. 15-274. The future of abortion rights in the United States probably rests almost entirely in his hands, given the deadlock on the court between conservatives and liberals.

The case is a challenge to a Texas law that would leave the state with about 10 abortion clinics, down from more than 40. Such a change, the abortion providers who are plaintiffs in the case told the justices, would have a vast practical impact.

“Texas is the second-most-populous state in the nation — home to 5.4 million women of reproductive age,” they wrote in their brief urging the court to hear the case. “More than 60,000 of those women choose to have an abortion each year.”

The case concerns two parts of a state law that imposes strict requirementson abortion providers. It was passed by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature and signed into law in July 2013 by Rick Perry, the governor at the time.

One part of the law requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers,” including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Officials in Texas said that the contested provisions were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers responded that the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and intended to put many of them out of business.

The measures were modest and sensible, Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said in a statement on Friday

“The state has wide discretion to pass laws ensuring Texas women are not subject to substandard conditions at abortion facilities,” Mr. Paxton said. “The advancement of the abortion industry’s bottom line shouldn’t take precedence over women’s health.

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the Texas challenge, said officials in Texas had used “deceptive laws and regulatory red tape” to block access to abortion.

“Playing politics with women’s health isn’t just wrong,” she said in a statement. “It’s dangerous for many women who will have no safe and legal options left where they live, and may be forced to take matters into their own hands.”

Parts of the law not at issue before the Supreme Court have already caused about half of the state’s 41 abortion clinics to close. If the contested provisions take effect, the challengers’ brief said, the number of clinics would again be halved.Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, the lead plaintiff, said that “would have devastating effects on women and families around the state.”

The remaining clinics would be clustered in four metropolitan areas: Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.

“There would be no licensed abortion facilities west of San Antonio,” the challengers’ brief said. The only clinic south of San Antonio, in McAllen, it added, would have “extremely limited capacity.”

In urging the Supreme Court to decline the case, Mr. Paxton quoted from an earlier opinion. The justices, Mr. Paxton said, should not turn themselves into “the country’s ex officio medical board with powers to approve or disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.”

The lower courts are divided over whether they should accept lawmakers’ assertions about the health benefits of abortion restrictions at face value or investigate to determine whether the assertions are backed by evidence.

In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, largely upheld the contested provisions of the Texas law, using the more deferential approach. A panel of the court ruled that the law, with minor exceptions, did not place an undue burden on the right to abortion.

The court said women in West Texas could obtain abortions in New Mexico, a ruling at odds with one from a different panel of the same courtthat said Mississippi could not rely on out-of-state abortion clinics in defending a law that would have shut down the state’s only clinic.

The appeals court declined to grant the challengers a stay, but the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the ruling later that month pending its own decision in the case. The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Kennedy joining the court’s liberal wing to form a majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. voted to deny the stay.

Source: New York Times

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Europe Drops Charges Against Edward Snowden, Offers Asylum And Protection | Filming Cops

fcsnowdenBy John Vibes | The Free Thought Project

The European Parliament voted to offer Edward Snowden asylum and protection and drop all criminal charges against him.

When at one time most of the world was bullied by the US government into pressing charges against Snowden and forcing him into exile, the entire European continent has now officially given him a pass.

Thursday’s 285 – 281 vote officially recognized Snowden as an “international human rights defender” and ensured that he would be free from arrest within European borders.

The final resolution mentioned that “too little has been done to safeguard citizens’ fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance.”

Snowden is currently living in asylum in Russia and is wanted in the United States for charges under the federal Espionage Act, but Russia has declined to extradite him.

He has been unable to leave due to the fear of being kidnapped by the US military when he left the country, but now it may be possible for him to travel to Europe.

Snowden posted on his Twitter page that this could be a good sign of a shift in attitude towards his cause.

Earlier this year, it was reported that a federal appeals court ruled that the controversial NSA spy program which collects phone records is actually illegal. Snowden recently joined Twitter, making himself more visible and approachable to the general population than ever before.

Within a day of opening his first social media account since leaking information about the NSA spy program, Snowden gained over one million subscribers.

However, there was only one account that he decided to follow, the NSA.

The whistleblower’s first tweet read, “Can you hear me now?”

John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter-culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work, he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.

Source: Filming Cops