Russia will back Egyptian efforts to end Israeli aggression: Putin

PressTV

Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country will back Egyptian efforts to put an end to the Israeli aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip.

In a telephone conversation with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Friday, Putin said Russia planned to support Cairo's efforts directed at normalizing the situation in the Palestinian territory, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The remarks come after Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil visited the Gaza Strip on Friday, where he urged the world leaders to stop Tel Aviv’s attacks.

Qandil promised to intensify Egypt’s efforts to “stop this aggression and achieve a lasting truce."

On Thursday, President Morsi also condemned the Israeli aggression as "unacceptable" and warned it could lead to instability in the region.

Some 25 people have been killed and more than 250 others injured in the new wave of attacks since November 14.

The Israeli regime frequently carries out airstrikes and other attacks on the Gaza Strip, saying the acts of aggression are being conducted for defensive purposes. However, in violation of international law, disproportionate force is always used and civilians are often killed or injured.

Great Paper. Great Propaganda Organ.

ZCommunications
Edward S. Herman

On  October 11, 2011, Paul Krugman asserted on his blog that he had the privilege of writing two columns a week for “the world’s greatest newspaper,” the New York Times (NYT). The NYT is surely an outstanding paper, with exceptionally wide scope, many good journalists on board and publishing many interesting and enlightening articles. But if the standard by which we judge greatness is the quality of its service to the public interest, to the 99 percent who don’t own or advertise in newspapers or TV networks, or control or benefit directly and heavily from other corporate and financial entities, and/or exercise substantial influence on governments, the paper’s greatness is debatable.

In fact, a case can be made that the NYT is the world’s greatest—or at least most important—organ of state propaganda. Because of its great prestige, its being pegged as a “liberal” newspaper, and the paper’s allowing just enough dissent to give the appearance of balance and to make its most serious apologetics seem credible, the general public is not aware of how often and how effectively the paper serves the imperial state, normalizing U.S. imperial ventures and putting them in a favorable light—and providing systematic apologetics for abuses by it favored clients. The editors even belatedly admitted their war-supportive bias in the run-up to the UN Charter-violating and lie-based Iraq war. They are clearly doing the same in the case of Iran, where the paper has had almost daily accounts of Iran’s alleged moves toward nuclear weapons capability, while working on the premise that Israel’s (and the U.S.’s) actual nuclear weapons, and almost daily and credible threats, are perfectly acceptable and understandable and don’t even constitute essential context in discussing the Iran menace.

The paper has preserved its high reputation even as it has been repeatedly guilty of serious failures in its basic newspaper function, at huge social cost. The classic illustration is provided in their own editorial “The Lie That Wasn’t Shot Down” (ed., June 18, 1988), which acknowledged that their earlier furious news-editorial-propaganda barrage of 1983 claiming a deliberate and knowing Soviet destruction of the civilian Korean airliner 007 was based on a lie. Significantly, the counter-evidence cited in the five-years-late editorial was not uncovered by the paper’s own staff, but by a congressperson’s inquiry. So they swallowed an official lie that served the official party-line and the ongoing process of demonization of the “evil empire,” but despite all their resources never got around to examining whether it was valid.

When this great newspaper is in a propaganda mode, which is often, and especially where foreign policy and “national security” matters are at issue, their biases are frequently blatant and even amusing. This can often be read in their word usage and headline policy which discloses their bias at a glance. For example, their party-line hostility to Hugo Chavez has been steadfast, and even led them to editorialize in favor of the soon to be aborted 2002 coup d’etat, with the editors claiming that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, [who] stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona” (ed., “Hugo Chavez Departs,” April 13, 2002).

The editors quickly changed their minds as the coup was reversed and the editors were subjected to sharp criticism for unprincipled behavior, acknowledging that Chavez’s “forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington…which we shared, [but] overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer” (ed., “Venezuela’s Political Turbulence,” April 16, 2002). But the editors had cheered it, and had misrepresented the facts: the “ruinous demagogue” didn’t “step down,” his performance had not been “ruinous” as had been, for example, Yeltsin’s in Russia, lauded by the editors, and ending democracy does not terminate a threat to democracy, either in Venezuela in 2002 or Chile on 9/11/73.

The incident revealed that the establishment party-line bias of NYT editors runs deeper than their commitment to democracy. More recently, William Neuman’s “Chavez, After Treatment for Cancer, Gets His Bluster Back and Flaunts It” (January 22, 2012) is a simple and easily replicable illustration of the institutionalized presence of an anti-Chavez bias. “Bluster” and “flaunts” are snarl words that the paper wouldn’t use for high-level U.S. or UK politicians, but are standard for Chavez.

Towards a Western Retreat from Syria

Global Research

by Thierry Meyssan

The Syria war drags on. Continuing it has become too expensive and too dangerous for its neighbors. Russia, which aims to re-establish itself in the Middle East, is trying to show the United States that it is in their best interest to allow Moscow to resolve the conflict.

The military situation in Syria is turning against those in Washington and Brussels who hoped to change the regime there by force. Two successive attempts to take Damascus have failed and it has become clear that that objective cannot be achieved.

Where NATO has failed to make war, the CTSO is preparing to make peace. The Secretary General of the Organization Nikolay Bordyuzha is setting up a peacekeeping force of 50,000 men, ready to be deployed in Syria.

On July 18th, an explosion killed the leadership of the Council of National Security, signalling the beginning of a vast offensive during which tens of thousands of mercenaries descended on the Syrian capital from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. After several days of pitched battles, Damascus was saved when the fraction of the population hostile to the government chose out of patriotism to assist the National Army rather than bid welcome to the forces of the FSA.

On September 26, al-Qaeda jihadists were able to penetrate the interior of the Defense Ministry, disguised as Syrian soldiers and carrying false papers. They intended to detonate their explosive vests in the office of the joint chiefs of the military but did not get close enough to their target and were killed. A second team attempted to take over the national TV station to broadcast an ultimatum to the President but were not able to reach the building as access was blocked moments after the first attack. A third team targeted government headquarters and a fourth was aimed at the airport.

In both cases, NATO coordinated the operations from its Turkish base in Incirlik, seeking to provoke a schism at the core of the Syrian Arab Army and rely on certain generals for the purpose of overthrowing the regime. But the generals in question had long been identified as traitors and marginalized from effective command. In the aftermath of the two failed attacks, Syrian power was reinforced, giving it the internal legitimacy necessary to go on the offensive and crush the FSA.

These failures put a damper on those who had been crowing in advance that the days of Bashar al-Assad were numbered. In Washington, consequently, those counselling withdrawal are carrying the day. The question is no longer how much time the «Assad regime» will hold out but whether it costs the U.S. more to continue the war than to stop it. Continuing it would entail the collapse of the Jordanian economy, losing allies in Lebanon, risking civil war in Turkey, in addition to having to protect Israel from the chaos. Stopping the war would mean allowing the Russians to regain foothold in the Middle East and strengthening the Axis of Resistance to the detriment of the expansionist dreams of the Likud.

While Washington’s response takes the Israeli dimension into account, it has stopped heeding the advice of the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu ended up undercutting himself through his manipulations behind the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens and through his shocking interference in the American presidential campaign. If the long-term protection of Israel is the goal rather than folding to the brazen demands of Benjamin Netanyahu, a continued Russian presence is the best solution. With one million Russian-speaking Israelis, Moscow will never allow that the survival of that colony to be imperiled.

A glance backward is necessary here. The war against Syria was decided by the Bush Administration on September 15, 2001 during a meeting at Camp David, as confirmed notably by General Wesley Clark. After having suffered several setbacks, NATO action had to be cancelled due to the vetos of Russia and China. A «Plan B» then emerged, involving the use of mercenaries and covert action once deploying uniformed soldiers had become impossible. Given that the FSA has not scored a single victory against the Syrian Army, there have been multiple predictions that the conflict will become interminable and will progressively undermine the states of the region, including Israel. In this context, Washington signed onto the Geneva Accord, under the auspices of Kofi Annan.

Subsequently, the war camp torpedoed this agreement by organizing leaks to the press concerning the West’s secret involvement in the conflict, leaks that led to Kofi Annan’s immediate resignation. It also played its two trump cards with the attacks on July 18 and September 26 and lost them both. As a result, Lakhdar Brahimi, Annan’s successor, has been called on to resuscitate and implement the Geneva Accord.

In the interim, Russia did not remain idle: it obtained the creation of a Syrian Ministry of National Reconciliation; supervised and protected the meeting in Damacus of national opposition parties; organized contacts between the U.S. and Syrian general staff; and prepared the deployment of a peace force. The first two measures scarcely registered in the Western press while the last two were flatly ignored.

Nevertheless, as revealed by Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Russia addressed the fears of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff concerning Syrian chemical weapons. It verified that these were stored in locations sufficiently secure not to fall into the hands of the FSA, be seized by jihadists and used by them indiscriminately. Ultimately, it gave credible guarantees to the Pentagon that the continuation in power of so determined a leader as Bashar el-Assad is a more manageable situation, for Israel as well, than allowing the chaos in Syria to spread further.

Above all, Vladimir Putin accelerated the projects of the CSTO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the anti-NATO defense alliance that unites Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Tadjikstan and Russia itself. The foreign ministers of the CSTO adopted a shared position on Syria and a logistical plan was drawn up for an eventual deployment of 50,000 men. An agreement was signed between the CSTO and the U.N. Peacekeeping Department that these «blue chapkas» would be used in the zones of conflict under a U.N. Security Council mandate. Joint drills between the two are to take place from 8 to 17 October in Kazakhstan under the label of «Inviolable Fraternity» to complete the coordination between these two intergovernmental organizations. The Red Cross and the IOM will also participate.

No official decision will be taken in the U.S. during the presidential campaign. Once that ends, peace might become conceivable.

Translation Michele Stoddard

Chechen ex-militant: Georgia trained anti-Russian terrorists, then killed them in false flag op

Russia Today

 A former Chechen militant has accused Georgia of training a network of Islamic terrorists, claiming that a recent anti-terrorist mission on the border with Russia was in fact a pseudo-operation targeting Georgian-trained jihadists. Last month Georgia claimed its forces had killed 11 militants who infiltrated the country through the Russian republic of Dagestan in a special operation personally led by the Georgian interior minister.

But Khizri Aldamov, who was an emissary of Chechen militants in Georgia for 18 years, before switching sides and returning to the fold of Moscow loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov earlier this year, has now put forward a different version of events. In a recent video conference at Moscow’s Ria Novosti news agency, he claimed the people shot were recruited by Georgia to stir up Chechen separatism in Russia, and the whole operation was staged.

“Georgian President Saakashvili’s plan was to send his own guys across the border into Russia, not the other way round, and then shoot them. But there was no mission; this was a set-up,” Aldamov told RT.

He says the purpose of the operation was to frame Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, and present Georgia as an anti-terrorist force, while getting rid of those Aldamov says “knew too much” about the country’s Islamic training program. “Saakashvili is allergic to Russia, allergic to Putin, allergic to Kadyrov,” said Aldamov.

The two neighbors have been locked in a long-standing dispute over the two republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, whose independence Moscow supports, a conflict which escalated after the August 2008 war.

Along with some of the Georgian media, Aldamov questions some of the details of Tbilisi’s operation against the militants, the aftermath of which was shown on Georgian television.

“First of all, their weapons were American-made, second – none of them fired a single shot. That's not all; the uniforms of these so-called fighters were brand new,” he alleges.

Aldamov claims that in his role as a go-between for Georgia and Chechen separatists, he trained many Islamist recruits himself. The practice supposedly continues today in Georgia, through the official Counter Terror Center.

“Everything is still controlled by the center – all the Mujahideen are in its hands. Any Chechen who lives in Georgia and wants to study in an Islamic country has to go through the center, and there they recruit him.”

Aldamov’s allegations caused a stir, but have not received universal endorsement. Badri Nachkebia, a Georgian expert in conflict and political violence present at the conference, questioned whether Aldamov had a pro-Russian agenda after his sudden return to Chechnya. He also contradicted the assertion that the militants had been killed with one shot each – as if by their trusted allies – noting that three Georgian special services soldiers had been killed during the operation, and six more injured.

Meanwhile, political expert Nana Devdariani said that while the country may have harbored Chechen militants, it is unlikely that the operation was an inside job, or that there was a border crossing from Georgia into Russia, considering how well fortified the Russian side is.

On the official level, Georgian ministers insist there was a crossing from Dagestan, while Russian officials have categorically denied the claim.

In the clandestine circumstances of a simmering regional conflict where both sides have an agenda (not to mention that Georgia faces a national election next week), the truth will be hard to come by, and claims such as Aldamov’s may be impossible to confirm or deny.

Syrian crisis: polarization of opinion

Voice of Russia
Ilya Kharlamov

Participants of the 67th General Assembly in New York have remained at odds over the situation in Syria. On Thursday, Qatar urged interference in the political standoff between Syrian authorities and rebels, something that was supported by France and Tunisia. Moscow, Tehran and Cairo, for their part, continue to call for a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the discussion in absentia, warning against taking decisions on Syria that bypass the UN. All those urging the ouster of the Assad regime by outside forces specifically pointed out the UN’s current inability to act. British Prime Minister David Cameron, in turn, said that the blood of children killed during the civil war in Syria was a “terrible stain on the reputation of the United Nations.” He was echoed by French President Francois Hollande who described the UN’s inaction as “shocking.”

The Westerns leaders making similar statements in New York is only natural given their permanent drive to rein in Damascus and Tehran and revise the current system of international relations in circumvention of the UN. Adding fuel to the fire was a statement by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruling Emir of the State of Qatar, who called for mulling a military intervention in Syria, where he said a no-fly zone should be created. This is a very dangerous tendency, believes Igor Korotchenko, a Moscow-based political analyst.

"Qatar acts as an instigator of sorts," Korotchenko says, referring to Qatar possessing hefty sums and local tribal leaders’ ambitions. "We know that Qatar sponsors a spate of negative changes that are taking place in Northern Africa, and that Qatar lends support to Syrian rebels. I think that the time is ripe for considering slapping sanctions on this gas dwarf," Korotchenko says.

Western elites and their Middle Eastern partners are irked with the position taken by Moscow and Beijing, which have repeatedly blocked the UN Security Council’s resolutions on Syria. In an interview with the Voice of Russia broadcast on Thursday, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine, lambasted Western countries’ push for meddling in the Syrian conflict. He attributed this push to the West’s dissatisfaction with its own actions, Lukyanov said.

" The situation in Syria came to a standstill," Lukyanov says, separately referring to the killing of a US Ambassador to Libya that recently hit the international headlines. "Some in the United States have already slammed Washington’s desire to interfere in the Syrian conflict that I think reflects the West’s inability to act," Lukayanov says, singling out the West’ frustration about Bashar Assad still being in power in Syria.

For his part, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi called the resolution of the Syrian problem one of his key priorities. He added that this would help Syria contain a threat of a foreign military intervention that he stressed is being opposed by Cairo. Morsi was echoed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who said on Thursday that the Syrian crisis should only be resolved through a national consensus in a wide-scale inter-Syrian dialogue under the UN’s aegis. Lavrov was speaking during his meeting with UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly

Wall Street, Pro-Israel Groups Support Malaysian Opposition

Land Destroyer 
Tony Cartalucci

Editor's Note: Nile Bowie had written this piece exposing the Malaysian opposition's foreign funding and the duplicitous implications involved, in the midst of what is an increasing public awareness of the role foreign-funded NGOs play in destabilizing and destroying the sovereignty of a nation targeted by Wall Street and London corporate-financier interests. 

In response to this increasing awareness, these very Wall Street-funded NGOs have published a ridiculous rebuttal featured in the image below.

Image: An absurd demand for an "apology" aimed at Malaysian journalists simply exercising the "freedom of speech" foreign funded NGOs like Bersih and the Centre for Independent Journalism have claimed to be fighting for. In reality the facade that these NGOs are "humanitarians" is collapsing, exposing the fact that they instead work subversively for the corporate financier interests of Walll Street and London toward the recolonization of Malaysia and the installation of a Western client regime headed by Anwar Ibrahim or one of his associates. 

....

It should be noted that Bersih at the top of the signatory list, is funded by the US State Department and convicted criminal George Soros' Open Society. Each subsequent signatory is also funded either directly or by NGOs that are directly funded by Wall Street, the US State Department, and George Soros' Open Society. 

Regardless of the rhetoric put out by these NGOs on a daily basis, the common thread that unites them is a concerted effort to both undermine the current Malaysian government, while promoting opposition groups led by IMF, Wall Street, and US State Department proxy, Anwar Ibrahim. These affiliations have been explored at great length in "Wall Street Fills Malaysian Streets With Unrest." 
....

Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
September 26, 2012  


As Malaysia approaches its highly anticipated 13th General Elections set to take place at some point before late June 2013, a tense political climate and a sense of unpredictability looms over the nation. The significance of these upcoming elections cannot be understated. During Malaysia’s 2008 General Elections, the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which held power continuously since the nation’s independence, experienced its worst result in decades, while the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition won 82 parliamentary seats. For the first time, the ruling party was deprived of its two-thirds parliamentary majority, which is required to pass amendments to Malaysia’s Federal Constitution. As the United States continues to militarily increase its presence in the Pacific region inline with its strategic policy shift to East Asia, Washington’s leaders would like to see compliant heads of state who will act to further American interests in the ASEAN region.

The outcome of the approaching elections could have significant ramifications for Malaysia’s foreign policy, economy, and trade relations. While allegations of corruption and economic mismanagement hinder the credibility of ruling Prime Minister Najib Razak, foreign organizations affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and funded by the United States government, have contributed support toward bolstering the influence and status of the Malaysia’s opposition groups, in addition to the controversial Bersih coalition for electoral reform, led by Ambiga Sreenevasan. Opponents of this information may dismiss these claims as the “propaganda” of Barisan Nasional, however the validity of these accusations have been highly documented, and constitute an attempt by foreign governments to undermine Malaysia’s independent political process. On June 27th, 2011, Bersih coalition leader Ambiga Sreenevasan conceded that her organization received financial assistance from two private American organizations:

Ambiga admitted to Bersih receiving some money from two US organisations — the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Open Society Institute (OSI) — for other projects, which she stressed were unrelated to the July 9 march. [1]

However innocuous such contributions may seem, a more critical review of these organizations and their affiliations is necessary. Hungarian-American philanthropist and financier George Soros founded the Open Society Institute in 1993, whose principle aim sought to “strengthen open society principles and practices against authoritarian regimes and the negative consequences of globalization,” with an emphasis on countries in transition from communism after the fall of the Soviet Union. [2] Although OSI has emphasized its commitment to "human rights" and "transparency" byheavily sponsoring organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Soros was convicted of insider trading in 2002 regarding French bank Société Générale and was ironically denied an appeal by the "European Court of Human Rights." [3][4][5] Although Soros has appeared to be publicly critical of capitalism, he has disingenuously profited from predatory trading in many instances, most prominently in 1992 when he earned an estimated $1.1 billion by short selling sterling while the British government was reluctant to adjust its interest rates prior to devaluing the pound. 

Image: NDI's website in 2011 before taking down any mention to Malaysia's Bersih movement. (click image to enlarge)

....

Former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright chairs the National Democratic Institute, an organization that supplies electoral observers and promotes governance reform, widely seen as an attempt to foster foreign political systems compatible with American interests by assisting civil society groups in mounting pressure on national governments. NDI President Kenneth Wollack served as the legislative director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, widely considered to be Israel’s most prominent lobbyist organization, one that influences American legislation to exert aggressive Israeli policy and viewpoints. [6] The National Democratic Institute is one of four organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), in addition to theInternational Republican Institute (IRI), the Chamber of Commerce's Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. 

Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy was notably quoted in 1991 as saying, “A lot of what we (NED) do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA.” [7] TheNational Endowment for Democracy receives its funding entirely through an annual allocation of funds from the United States Congress within the budget of the development assistance agency USAID, a branch of the US State Department. [8] Although the NED receives public funding from the US taxpayer, the activities of its four satellite institutes are not reported to Congress, making funding trails and their final recipients difficult to identify. Although the organization boasts of “promoting democracy” and “fortifying civil society” around the world, history had proven that these tired euphemisms have been used in numerous countries to mask funding to various political forces opposed to their national governments and aligned with American interests. American historian and former employee of the US State Department William Blum writes:

NED's Statement of Principles and Objectives, adopted in 1984, asserts that "No Endowment funds may be used to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office." But the ways to circumvent the spirit of such a prohibition are not difficult to come up with; as with American elections, there's "hard money" and there's "soft money". As described in the "Elections" and "Interventions" chapters, NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996; helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992; and worked to defeat the candidate for prime minister of Slovakia in 2002 who was out of favor in Washington. And from 1999 to 2004, NED heavily funded members of the opposition to President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to subvert his rule and to support a referendum to unseat him. [9]

NED President Carl Gershman was formerly a member of the Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress and Vice-Chairman of the Young People's Socialist League, and in 1968, he was employed in the research department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, considered the most prominent Jewish service organization in the world, committed to the security and continuity the State of Israel. [10] The Anti-Defamation League is a US-based human rights group committed to the “security of Israel and Jews worldwide," and was implicated in 1993 by the District of Attorney of San Francisco for overseeing a vast surveillance operation monitoring American citizens who were opposed to Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, prior to passing their personal information to the Israeli government in Tel Aviv. [11]

Image: NED is anything but a "promoter of democracy and freedom." Representing some of the largest corporate-financier interests spanning Wall Street and London, it merely couches global, neo-imperial hegemonic ambitions within the guise of "freedom" and "human rights." For Malaysian NGOs, it is indefensible to take money and support from NED.

....

In addition to providing funding to the Bersih coalition through the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy’s Malaysian operation provides $100,000 (RM 317,260) for political news website Malaysiakini, considered to be the nation’s most pro-opposition news outlet.[12] Premesh Chandran, Malaysiakini CEO, is a grantee of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and launched the news organization with a $100,000 grant from the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), a recipient of funds from the Open Society Institute, the NED, and Freedom House, an organization reliant on US federal government grants for a significant percentage of its funding. [13][14] NED also provides $90,000 (RM 285,516) to SUARAM, an organization promoting human rights. [15]

Russia accuses US development agency of election meddling

The Independent

The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the United States of interfering in its elections. On Monday, the US administration revealed that Russia had asked it to close down the office of its development arm USAID in Moscow, which employs 13 US diplomats and gives out $50m (£30m) of funding a year. In an official Foreign Ministry statement released yesterday, the Russian government accused USAID of "attempts to influence political processes through the distribution of grants".

 The agency funded a number of NGOs in areas such as election monitoring, anti-corruption investigation, and human rights protection, and also funded public-health projects. A senior US administration official said that Washington is "proud" of the work USAID has done for two decades in Russia, since the fall of communism, and would look for "new ways" to continue the same work.

 Life for NGOs has become harder since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in May. He has accused participants in protests against him of being paid by the US State Department, and the US ambassador, Michael McFaul, has been severely reprimanded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and hounded by pro-Kremlin television crews.

America's Long-standing Campaign to Destabilize Russia

Global Research
Eric Draitser

The shootings and bombings in Ingushetia and Dagestan this week rekindled a long-standing, brutal campaign of violence and terrorism in Russia’s Caucasus region – one that has seen more than its share of terror stretching back to the Chechen “rebellion” of the 1990s. However, in examining the recent attacks, it becomes clear that there are political and geopolitical interests behind the scenes that are actively working to destabilize Russia, with violence as their most potent weapon. The attacks are not simply isolated terrorist actions, but rather, cynically orchestrated events carried out by well-connected criminal networks whose goal is to foment conflict and carry out the agenda of the US intelligence establishment in its subversion of Russia.

Terrorists, Propagandists and Handlers

The complex network of terrorist organizations that operate under the banners of “separatism” and “independence” for the Caucasus region, has been at the center of the destabilization of Russia for the last two decades. Within hours of the deadly attacks, the Kavkaz Center – an organization known to be the propaganda mouthpiece of terrorist leader Doku Umarov – released an article characterizing the attacks as heroic acts and referring to the dead as “Russian puppets.” Though this would seem to be not in keeping with the Center’s stated mission “to provide reporting of events... and assistance of journalistic work in the Caucasus,” this is, in fact, very much par for the course for an organization that is funded by the US State Department and Finland’s Foreign Ministry.

Kavkaz Center has a long track record of supporting and legitimizing terrorist actions throughout the region, rationalizing atrocities committed in the name of “resistance.” In fact, Kavkaz engages in perpetual upside-down logic, referring to Russians as “terrorists” and terrorists as “heroes.” This type of Goebbles-esque propaganda is the hallmark of Western imperialist projects; most recently in the conflict in Syria, in which the Syrian National Council, Western corporate media and the like refer to terrorism and subversion as “rebellion and freedom-fighting”. Additionally, it is essential to note that Emarat Kavkaz (Umarov’s terrorist organization translated as “Caucasus Emirate”) has been listed by the United Nations as an organization associated with Al-Qaida. Kavkaz Center has been described by Umarov himself as “the official information organ of the Emarat Kavkaz.” This, of course, supports the claims made repeatedly by Moscow of the connection between Chechen and other extremists in the region and Al Qaida, a claim which, until recently, Kavkaz Center continued to deny.

Despite the fact that organs such as Kavkaz Center operate in the service of terrorists who advocate the destruction of Russia, their activity alone is not altogether significant if seen in a vacuum. Rather, it is the association of these types of individuals and organizations with the US State Department and US intelligence that makes them particularly insidious. One such entity that bears scrutiny is the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), previously known as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. As reported by Right Web at the Institute for Policy Studies, “The ACPC was founded in 1999 by Freedom House, a neoconservative organization that has worked closely with the U.S. government, receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. democratization initiatives.” This intimate relationship between the ACPC and the US State Department indicates not merely a confluence of interests, but rather a direct relationship wherein the former is an organ of the latter.

The paternalistic role of the US intelligence establishment in the ACPC is made all the more evident when one examines some of the more well known members of the ACPC including former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle and other top neocons such as William Kristol, Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, and Robert Kagan – the last two being closely associated with the inner circle of the Romney campaign. What becomes apparent in even a cursory analysis of these figures is that, despite the preponderance of neoconservatives, the top members of the ACPC are pulled from both the liberal and conservative establishments. Therefore, one can see how the ACPC represents a bipartisan consensus within the US imperialist ruling class – a consensus of aggression against Russia. What should be even more concerning to political observers is that, given the very real possibility of a Romney victory in November, Russia may see a surge in separatism and violence supported overtly or covertly by the ACPC and a future Romney administration.

The ACPC has taken the lead in championing the cause of separatism and terrorism directed toward Russia, both tacitly and overtly. After having championed the cause of former Chechen Foreign Minister Ilyas Akhmadov in his quest for asylum in the United States – subsequently granted along with a generous taxpayer-funded stipend – ACPC member Zbigniew Brzezinski went so far as to write the foreward to Akhmadov’s book The Chechen Struggle. The alliance between political figures such as Akhmadov and terrorist leaders in the region demonstrates conclusively the partnership between the various terror networks and the imperialist ruling class in the West. Moreover, it shows that, along with oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, the US and UK are still the favorite safe havens for criminals fleeing Russian justice.

The Political Context

Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal?

Global Research
Paul Craig Roberts

The morons who rule the American sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the american “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.

Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid Americans. It has no power except what its american protector provides. Yet, despite Israel’s insignificance, it rules Washington.

When a resolution introduced by the Israel Lobby is delivered to Congress, it passes unanimously. If Israel wants war, Israel gets its wish. When Israel commits war crimes against Palestinians and Lebanon and is damned by the hundred plus UN resolutions passed against Israel’s criminal actions, the US bails Israel out of trouble with its veto.

The power that tiny Israel exercises over the “worlds’s only superpower” is unique in history. Tens of millions of “christians” bow down to this power, reinforcing it, moved by the exhortations of their “christian” ministers.

Netanyahu lusts for war against Iran. He strikes out against all who oppose his war lust. Recently, he called Israel’s top generals “pussies” for warning against a war with Iran. He regards former Israeli prime ministers and former heads of the Israeli intelligence service as traitors for opposing his determination to attack Iran. He has denounced america’s servile president Obama and america’s top military leader for being “soft on Iran.” The latest poll in Israel shows that a solid majority of the Israelis are opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran. But Netanyahu is uninterested in the opinion of Israeli citizens. He has Washington watching his back, so he is war mad. It is a mystery why Israelis put Netanyahu in public office instead of in an insane asylum.

Netanyahu is not alone. He has the american neoconservatives in his corner. The american neoconservatives are as crazed as Netanyahu. They believe in nuclear war and are itching to nuke some Muslim country and then get on to nuking Russia and China. It is amazing that no more than two or three dozen people have the fate of the entire world in their hands.

The Democratic Party is helpless before them.

The Republican Party is their vehicle.

The Russians, watching Netanyahu push Washington toward dangerous confrontations keep raising their voices about the danger of nuclear war.

On May 17 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned the West against launching “hasty wars,” which could result “although I do not want to scare anyone” in “the use of a nuclear weapon.”

On November 30 of last year the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia warned of nuclear war with NATO. General Nikolai Makarov said that NATO’s eastward expansion meant that the risk of Russia coming into conflict with NATO had “risen sharply.” General Makarov said, “I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.”

Here is Russian president Medvedev (currently the prime minister) describing the steps toward nuclear war that Russia has taken pushed by the crazed warmongers in Washington wallowing in their insane hubris:

With regard to the american missile bases on Russia’s borders, “I have made the following decisions. First, I am instructing the Defense Ministry to immediately put the missile attack early warning radar station in Kaliningrad on combat alert. Second, protective cover of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons will be reinforced as a priority measure under the program to develop our air and space defenses. Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the Strategic Missile Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highly-effective warheads. Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for disabling missile defense system data and guidance systems. These measures will be adequate, effective, and low-cost. Fifth, if the above measures prove insufficient, the Russian Federation will deploy modern offensive weapon systems in the west and south of the country, ensuring our ability to take out any part of the US missile defense system in Europe. One step in this process will be to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad Region. Other measures to counter the European missile defense system will be drawn up and implemented as necessary. Furthermore, if the situation continues to develop not to Russia’s favor, we reserve the right to discontinue further disarmament and arms control measures.”

Kim Dotcom Resists, Pussy Riot Protests and the Insane Clown Posse Sues ... Internet Reformation Rolls

Daily Bell

Your life is precious ... precious, yeah
So don't you forget it, get it, no
You decide who you are
You decide who you are.

~ Kim Dotcom, lyrics to "Precious"

Dominant Social Theme: These people are all criminals! If only the world had a single corpus, we could throw everyone in jail at once.

Free-Market Analysis: As the power elite that wants to run the world continues to race against time more and more brutally, what we call the Internet Reformation becomes ever more visible.

It is becoming more visible because as the elites shove the world toward global governance, people being shoved, some of them, push back.
In the past week, we've seen three high-profile instances of this sort of resistance. Kim Dotcom, CEO of destroyed Megaupload, has launched a website to proclaim his innocence and begun releasing surprisingly tuneful pop music to plead his cause and shape his public image.

Over in Russia, the punk girl band Pussy Riot is finishing up a trial that sees them accused of violating the sanctity and physical space of the Russian Orthodox Church to protest Vladimir Putin's endlessly authoritarian reign. One of the members made an eloquent closing statement that we reproduce in part below.

Most recently, the Insane Clown Posse has filed a lawsuit against the FBI declaring the group and its followers to be a "gang." We last wrote about the Insane Clown Posse here:

In Defense of the Insane Clown Posse

It seems to us that the Internet Reformation is gaining traction, inevitably, as we long ago predicted. We first pointed to Congressman Ron Paul as an embodiment of the modern Reformation but as the powers-that-be push forward on all fronts, they are assaulting many other bright and courageous people who then step to the fore.

The initial Reformation was in part sponsored by the power elite, and the elites are trying to take over THIS reformation as well. But the trouble with taking over the Internet is that one has to do it in full VIEW of the Internet.

Confusion, therefore, is employed. "They" are using apparent false flags like Julian Assange, Anonymous and even faux alternative currency movements to undercut the tremendous progress that free-market thinking has made over the past decade.

But as we long ago predicted, the Internet Reformation is fairly unstoppable at the moment. The European Union is falling apart, the global warming scam is unraveling, the war on terror has not gone as planned in Afghanistan and many other elite promotions have been exposed in detail on the Internet.

The ancient power elite, that evidently wants to run the world and uses its control of central banks to fund its mania, is in no sense defeated but it is facing challenges that it has not faced since the Gutenberg Press itself began exposing the power structure 600 years ago.

Then, the Church was riven, a New World was discovered, two vast revolutions were initiated and the cause of freedom was at once massively advanced and then, after a time, retarded.

It took the elites about 400 years to fully control the damage. They didn't really overcome it until about the 20th century, and now the Internet Reformation has undone much of the globalist progress that was made.
Let's take these three examples cited above and analyze how they may be contributing to the current Reformation.

The violent raid on Kim Dotcom's mansion may soon be seen as disastrous overreach by US Federal authorities. It was no doubt thought that 400 pound Kim Dotcom was an easy target. He could be mocked and generally demonized as a greedy, overweight criminal.

But those in the upper reaches of this elite global conspiracy are still floundering when it comes to confronting the damage the Internet is doing to their plans.

Copyright was apparently invented by the power elite of the day to retard information flow from the Gutenberg Press. It was a brilliant stroke, at once slowing injurious information and placing many informed communicators on the side of the state itself because copyright would enrich them.

But in a 21st century Internet world we need only to turn to natural law to decide how well copyright works now. Laws that demand egregious violent enforcement and then are STILL flouted are dysfunctional ones. They are in legal parlance "positive" rather than natural. Like prohibition, they don't work.

People sense that the powers-that-be are on the wrong side of the copyright issue, thus some of the sentiment supporting Kim Dotcom. You can see some of our articles here:

The Creepy Pursuit of Kim Dotcom by Corporate America and Why it Matters

VIDEO: Internet Piracy – Who are the Thieves?

Both New Zealand and American authorities are being handed one defeat after another in this case, including a judicial invalidation of the very warrant that was executed on Kim Dotcom.

The elites behind this raid – the West's top dynastic families and their enablers and associates – may eventually come to regret making Kim Dotcom their number one target. He is big, increasingly angry and something of a marketing genius.

It may be that Vladimir Putin shall also regret HIS foray into further authoritarianism. Putin is worried about his legitimacy as a ruler and has decided that making a case against three pretty young women collectively called Pussy Riot will provide the shock value he needs to calm protest against him.

But late last week it backfired with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's closing statement, which, in our humble view, is so good it's almost dumbfounding. You can find the full statement at Infowars and Business Insider. Here's a little:

We are absolutely not happy with—and have been forced into living politically—by the use of coercive, strong-arm measures to handle social processes, a situation in which the most important political institutions are the disciplinary structures of the state – the security agencies, the army, the police, the special forces and the accompanying means of ensuring political stability: prisons, preventive detention and mechanisms to closely control public behaviour.

Nor are we happy with the enforced civic passivity of the bulk of the population or the complete domination of executive structures over the legislature and judiciary. Moreover, we are genuinely angered by the fear-based and scandalously low standard of political culture, which is constantly and knowingly maintained by the state system and its accomplices.

Look at what Patriarch Kirill has to say: "The Orthodox don't go to rallies." We are angered by the appalling weakness of horizontal relationships within society. We don't like the way in which the state system easily manipulates public opinion through its tight control of the overwhelming majority of media outlets. A perfect example is the unprecedentedly shameless campaign against Pussy Riot, based on distorting facts and words, which has appeared in nearly all the Russian media, apart from the few independent media there are in this political system.

The full text of the speech has by now been broadcast and texted around the world. Putin, who is evidently and obviously an ally of the Western power elite (he just returned from an Israeli love fest) made a mistake going after these girls.

The FBI meanwhile made a mistake targeting Insane Clown Posse, which is now going to sue them for falsely labeling them and their followers as a "gang."

The Insane Clown Posse is not a gang. In any case, if the far more insane laws against drugs and other private practices were lifted there probably wouldn't be any gang violence, especially if monopoly central banking were done away with, along with public schools, so that the economy could recover and people could find jobs again.

The FBI also played a big role in the raid on Kim Dotcom and it is very likely as the Internet Reformation continues the FBI's increasingly aggressiveness on behalf of the power elite shall meet rising pushback from the Internet Reformation.

The FBI has been exposed on the 'Net for creating and fostering false-flag terrorist episodes and has evidently and obviously covered up whatever really happened on 9/11. Like the CIA, which evidently created al Qaeda, the FBI's tactics have been exposed by the Internet and are increasingly transparent to the larger masses of people that might in a different era have been more trusting.

It is, after all, a matter of trust. What the Internet Reformation increasingly presents to viewers is a civilization that doesn't work as advertised ... and perhaps was designed not to work on purpose.

As this knowledge continues to percolate through the body politic, the ability of the powers that be to manipulate people via war, economic ruin and regulatory authoritarianism becomes increasingly difficult. The elites' dominant social themes are exposed along with their apparent one-world agenda.

The three examples we have examined here are just a small exhibit of the larger changes that are sweeping the world and making it increasingly difficult for those involved in a greater one-world conspiracy.

The last meme to fall, in our view, will be one having to do with what we call "private justice" – which was the way societies handled internal quarrels and injustices for tens of thousands of years. Public justice is increasingly exposed for the unjust mechanism that it is. You can read an article on public and private justice here:

What Amanda Knox Tells Us About Justice

Conclusion: Times are changing but we don't see that the power elite has developed any effective tactics to control the damage to their plans. Right now, they're becoming increasingly authoritarian and violent. But we bet in time they'll be forced to take a step back.

At UN, More Than One Third of the World Refuses to Endorse the Saudi-Qatari Call for Open Season on Syria; Mass Strikes in Saudi and Bahrain; Still No Sign of Bandar

Tarpley

Massacre in Uzbekistan

Craig Murray

This is a trailer for an extremely important documentary by Michael Andersen. The complicity of NATO and EU governments with the Karimov regime is one of the clearest glimpses of the evil motives that lurk behind the reasonable image that western politicians strive to portray. The complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring these facts is terrifying.

As NATO intensifies its logistical transit through Uzbekistan, as Britain increases training for the Uzbek military and secret services and looks to further arms sales, please bring this documentary to the attention of everyone you can, in any way that you can.

The appearance in the trailer of Pierre Morel, EU Special Representative for Central Asia, is noteworthy. He really is one of the nastiest men in Europe, with not even the slightest pretence of any concern for human rights except as a bureaucratic box to be ticked. What is the real interest of this arch European powercrat? You will hardly be surprised to hear it is Central Asia’s oil and gas.

One of the most important diplomatic developments in the last year – not mentioned anywhere in the lamestream media – has been the westward shift of the Government of Azerbaijan. Under hereditary President Aliev, son of Putin’s ex boss and mentor in the KGB, they had seemed the closest of Russia’s allies. But I noted a few months ago that remarkably on Syria they were voting with the U.S. and against Russia at the UN Security Council. Now they have agreed that an EU hydrocarbon pipeline can pass through their waters in the Caspian – thus negating Putin’s blocking move when he effectively annexed part of Georgia.

Germany now sees the eventual transit of Turkmenistan’s and Uzbekistan’s gas through Ukraine and Poland and into the Nordstream project, while bypassing Russia, as a tantalisingly close prospect. The furious courting of Central Asian dictators is therefore viewed as an unbounded success, and mangled corpses and tortured women an irrelevancy – along with the probable extinction of the sturgeon and other inconveniences. No wonder Morel looks self-satisfied.

I do hope the Central Asians who suffer grinding poverty and terrible repression will one day understand all this, and once they have their freedom will not forgive.