The neocon-flagship Washington Post fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy, but left out key facts like NED’s U.S. government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow, writes Robert Parry. The Washington Post’s descent into the depths of neoconservative propaganda – willfully misleading its readers on matters of grave importance – apparently knows no bounds as was demonstrated with two deceptive articles regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin and why his government is cracking down on “foreign agents.”
Category: Head Stories
Few people could probably have predicted that the Greek debt crisis that has been building in intensity since early 2015 would finally have taken such a vicious turn as it has since the end of June. It seems clear that this was the result of a continuing impasse in negotiations between the leftist Syriza government elected in Athens in January on a strong anti-austerity platform and the “troika” of creditors (comprising the European Commission (representing the 19 Eurozone members, ECB and IMF) determined to continue imposing harsh measures of economic “reform”.
To Russia & China: Are you? “The ‘Silk Road’ plan is expected to change the world political and economic landscape through development of countries along the routes, most of which are eager for fresh growth,” Xinhua wrote. Beijing hopes that annual trade volume between China and “Belt and Road” countries will “surpass 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars in a decade or so,” – Chinese President Xi Jinping Today Greece is a tiny microcosm of much of Southern and Eastern Europe. All have too much government debt owed to distant mega banks, massive underemployment, weak energy starved economies and rule by distant, unelected, EU bureaucrats. These problems are combined with minimal prospects for new sources of government funding and private investment.
Deceptive Euphoria Last December US President Obama had to admit that the US Cuba policy had failed. It took Washington about fifty years to understand a basic fact: sanctions, economic and trade embargo, as well as the attempts to isolate the small island were doomed from the very start. The Cuban revolution has stood up to the challenges to protect the independence and sovereignty. The national leadership has defined the strategic mission to accomplish on the way of modernization. The Castro brothers – Fidel and Raul – stood at the origin of the reforms leaving far behind the old ideological dogmas.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 A standing army – something that propelled the early colonists into revolution – strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead?
Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning of an interlocking set of organizations — the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), the AIIB (the new Chinese-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), and the NDB (the BRICS’ New Development Bank) — whose acronyms you’re unlikely to recognize either. Still, they represent an emerging new order in Eurasia.
After more than 18 months of open economic and political warfare against Vladimir Putin and Russia, the winner is emerging It’s almost over. My colleague from Holland and I decided in my garden last night, America has been ultimately isolated from most of the rest of the world now. Barack Obama and a few well placed neocons have managed to accomplish what empires could not. We’re betrayed from within, the world is truly sick and tired of American hegemony and bullying, and a new star is rising to the East, a familiar one by now. When Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a press conference at the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summits in Ufa the other day, I noticed a familiar smile. Not that I am the Putin analyst mind you, but a visibly tired leader could not hide the unmistakable signs he’d won a substantial victory.
The Russian government cannot pursue peace when Washington is pursuing War. Obama is being praised as a man of peace for the nuclear agreement with Iran. Some are asking if Obama will take the next step and repair US-Russian relations and bring the Ukrainian imbroglio to an end? If so he hasn’t told Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland or his nominee as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Paul Selva, or his nominee as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, or his Secretary of the Air Force, Deborah Lee James.
All of Europe, and insouciant Americans and Canadians as well, are put on notice by Syriza’s surrender to the agents of the One Percent. The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled. The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has agreed to the One Percent’s looting of the Greek people of the advances in social welfare that the Greeks achieved in the post-World War II 20th century. Pensions and health care for the elderly are on the way out. The One Percent needs the money.
People move events. The Greek people are trying to shape their own history. They aren’t there yet—even the Left hasn’t quite joined them. But a coalescence of forces is on the horizon: either Syriza radicalizes or it will be left behind. Capitalism by its very harshness is creating its own antithesis. Ideological labels are not important; what is, is a genuine people’s government. The riots in Athens, while the Greek Parliament passed the austerity measures, may be the first sign of the breakup of the EU, itself a political formation of advanced capitalism unable to meet the needs of its poorer members.