North Korea Punished for Helping to Liberate Africa Soon, most likely, there will be new brutal sanctions imposed against North Korea. And there will be massive provocative military exercises held, involving the US and South Korean (ROK). In brief, it is all ‘business as usual’: the West continues to torture DPRK; it is provoking it, isolating, demonizing and dehumanizing it, making sure that it wouldn’t function normally, let alone thrive. The submissive Western public keeps obediently swallowing all the shameless lies it is being served by its mainstream media. It is not really surprising; people of Europe and North America already stopped questioning official dogmas long time ago.
Category: Head Stories
“Operation Barbarossa 2” Wars are horrible. The only good thing about wars is that they help reduce the world population.” These are the words flung in my face not too long ago, by a person I thought was close to me. I was in shock and asked what do you mean? “Well, don’t you think the world is over-populated?” – I couldn’t believe that these were the thoughts of somebody I had respected. They may well be the thoughts of common people in my close vicinity. By opening my eyes to a dimension I ignored until then – the secret thoughts and dreams of people, maybe of the masses began revealing themselves; thoughts that are expressed only in an ambiance of familiarity, or perhaps when ‘under the influence’, when often the inner-most truths come to the fore.
The journalist Eva Golinger (US – Venezuela) has repeatedly questioned the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The website aporrea.org quotes her statement: «Everything that Washington was trying to achieve during the administration of Hugo Chávez is today being realized in his absence. The cancerous illness from which Chávez suffered was unusually aggressive and suspicious, and every day turns up more evidence that it is possible Chávez was murdered». The first signs of cancer were found in Chávez in May 2011. In June he underwent two surgeries at a specialized center in Havana. His Cuban surgeons found and removed a malignant tumor that had metastasized with sinister persistence, despite all preventive measures.
Last week, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi announced a much bigger and wider-ranging stimulus package than anyone had expected. Unfortunately, the ECB’s bond buying program will have no impact on employment, business investment, inflation, lending or growth. It will, however, create a temporary incentive for corporations to buy back more of their own shares while providing more cheap cash for banks to roll over their prodigious pile of debt which otherwise would have dragged them into default. All in all, Draghi’s turbo-charged QE should do largely what it was designed to do, shift more cash into overpriced financial assets while perpetuating the illusion that the EU banking system is still solvent. The size and scale of Draghi’s massive giveaway is impressive by any standard. He increased his purchases of financial assets by a hefty €20 billion per month (from €60 billion to €80 billion), pushed interest rates lower into negative territory (by 10 basis points), improved financing for the banks, and announced his intention to buy investment grade corporate bonds.
As the Geneva Peace talks enter into a stalemate, Moscow announces “Mission accomplished”, namely the withdrawal of its forces from Syria. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Foreign MinisterSergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (see image below) confirmed the following: “I believe that the task put before the defense ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled. With the participation of the Russian military … the Syrian armed forces and patriotic Syrian forces have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism and have taken the initiative in almost all respects, … I am therefore ordering the defense minister, from tomorrow, to start the withdrawal of the main part of our military contingent from the Syrian Arab Republic.” (quoted by Reuters, March 14, 2016) Emphasis will be put on establishing a diplomatic solution:
With the ceasefire generally holding, the fate of Syria comes to the fore. The UN emphasizes Syria’s unity. But no eyebrows are raised in the West when some experts and politicians openly say a partition is a way to finding a final settlement of the problem. They affirm that a dismemberment of Syria could be a form of a lasting political solution. The idea appears to have become an option on the table. On March 9, Foreign Policy published an article written by James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Commander, Europe and head of US European Command. The Admiral writes that «Syria as a nation is increasingly a fiction. It is utterly riven by the civil war that has raged for three years, and large chunks of it are ruled by disparate actors with no allegiance and often bitter enmity toward what remains of the sovereign state». According to him, the odds of putting Syria back together again into a functioning entity appear very low. It is time to consider a partition, which could provide a simple chance to leave a refugee camp or avoid a long and dangerous trek to an asylum state – in effect creating the elusive «safe zones».
“BRICS” is the dirtiest of acronyms in the Beltway/Wall Street axis, and for a solid reason: the consolidation of the BRICS is the only organic, global-reach project with the potential to derail Exceptionalistan’s grip over the so-called “international community.” So it’s no surprise the three key BRICS powers have been under simultaneous attack, on many fronts, for some time now. On Russia, it’s all about Ukraine and Syria, the oil price war, the odd hostile raid over the ruble and the one-size-fits-all “Russian aggression” demonization. On China, it’s all about “Chinese aggression” in the South China Sea and the (failed) raid over the Shanghai/Shenzhen stock exchanges.
Here’s Your US Foreign Policy Quiz For The Day: Question 1– How many governments has the United States overthrown or tried to overthrow since the Second World War? Answer: 57 (See William Blum.) Question 2– How many of those governments had nuclear weapons? Answer— 0 Does that mean North Korea needs nuclear weapons to deter US aggression? Yes and no. Yes, nuclear weapons are a credible deterrent but, no, that’s not why North Korea set off a hydrogen bomb last Tuesday. The reason North Korea detonated the bomb was to force the Obama administration to sit up and take notice. That’s what this is all about. North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, wants the US to realize that they’re going to pay a heavy price for avoiding direct negotiations. In other words, Kim is trying to pressure Obama back to the bargaining table.
If the intent of the Obama Iran strategy was to woo the great Persian nation to the West in a complex geopolitical game, and turn her against Russia, China and the emerging Eurasian Century being constructed around China’s One Belt, One Road project, it is emerging as another colossal failure. The newly-sanction-free Iran, far from becoming a pawn of NATO intrigues, is making rapid and brilliant moves to connect with her Eurasian neighbors. What a contrast to the Saudi-Turkish moves to connect with murder, rape and destruction in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond in the name of Allah and oil.
It’s not only the right-wing think tanks (such as the Hudson Institute and the Rand Corporation) that urge America to invade countries that pose no threat against the US, but also liberal think tanks (such as the Open Society Foundation and the Brookings Institution) that urge firebombing of cities and even ethnic cleansing in order to defeat foreign leaders whom the American aristocracy want to overthrow. Though there is space here to mention just a few examples of these «liberal» psychopaths, these will be representative ones. In 2002, Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution came forth with his book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. As the Council on Foreign Relations promoted it: «This highly influential book, written as the Bush administration turned its sights on Saddam Hussein’s regime, takes the reader back to the pre-war days of uncertainty about Saddam’s weapons and his ties to major terrorist organizations, outlining a powerful case for a US invasion of Iraq. Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack argues that to prevent Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has little choice [but] to topple the regime, eradicate its weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild the country as a prosperous and stable society».