Omitted media

A different take on what preceded the murder of Iranian general Solemani Here is, first, a video sequence that has gone viral. It’s U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, telling – laughingly – an audience that CIA’s perception of truth is quite advanced; and he must know since he headed that ugly institution 2017-2018. Listen to him saying how much “We lied, we cheated, we stole” from about 29:10 to 29:50 – and by all means, get an impression of this man’s way of seeing the world and the role of the United States in it. (Interestingly, this is from the official State Department channel on YouTube). And here is The Greyzone’s program PushBack with Aaron Maté interviewing investigative journalist, historian and TFF Associate, Gareth Porter – which gives you insights into the role of Israel in Iraq and its provocative attacks there which were closely related to what later...

By Dean Baker Last month George Soros had a New York Times column arguing that Mark Zuckerberg should not be running Facebook. (Does the NYT reserve space on its opinion page for billionaires?) The gist of Soros’ piece is that Zuckerberg has made a deal with Trump. He will allow all manner of outrageous lies to be spread on Facebook to benefit Trump’s re-election campaign. In exchange, Trump will defend Zuckerberg from efforts to regulate Facebook. Originally posted in Counterpunch.org on February 18, 2020, here Soros is of course right. Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will not attempt to verify the accuracy of the political ads that it runs. This is a green light for any sleazebag to push the most outrageous claims that they want in order to further the election of their favoured candidate. This will almost certainly benefit Donald Trump’s re-election since the one area where he...

By Craig Murray January 31, 2020 In one of the series of blatant lies the USA has told to justify the assassination of Soleimani, Mike Pompeo said that Soleimani was killed because he was planning “imminent attacks” on US citizens. It is a careful choice of word. Pompeo is specifically referring to the Bethlehem Doctrine of Pre-Emptive Self Defence. Originally posted on Craig Murray’s personal blog on January 4, 2020, here Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That is something most people, and most international law experts and judges, would accept. Including me. What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal...

By Nicolas J.S. Davies January 27, 2020 The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001, have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies, in part two of his series. Originally posted on Consortium News April 3, 2018 here Part One here In the first part of this series, I estimated that about 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal invasion of their country by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2003. I turn now to Afghan and Pakistani deaths in the ongoing 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. In part three, I will examine U.S.-caused war deaths in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.  According to Ret. U.S. General Tommy Franks, who led the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in reaction to 9/11, the U.S. government...

VideoAnother video from the event where the author gave this talk Like perhaps most people who visit Los Angeles, I consider it my duty to offer a brilliant new idea for a film script. My idea is in the genre of science-fiction mafia, a genre that I think has not been sufficiently exploited. In this film, the protagonist wakes up to the fact that without knowing it, he has somehow joined the mafia. I expect people to be able to relate to the story because I believe that this entire country either has become aware or needs to become aware that it has joined the mafia. How do major U.S. newspapers and television news programs refer to the murder of an Iranian general? Never with the word murder. Often with words like “deal with” or “take out.” Trump had to deal with him. You could read an article like that,...

. On December 12, 2012, on the day, 4 years earlier, Western countries and allies – perversely calling themselves ‘Friends of Syria’ – carried through a regime change by statement and set up a Syrian National Council of people never elected by anyone in Syria and told the world that it was, from now on, the only ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people!’ During the 4 years, Western, Saudi, Turkish and the Gulf States supported innumerable illegal, destructive and mainly foreign terrorist groups with the goal to undermine the legitimate Syrian government and destabilise the country – as had been recommended by US ambassador William Roebuck (1) in Damascus as far back as in 2006 (WikiLeaks documentation here). December 12, 2016, marked a fundamental turning point. Aleppo did not “fall to the dictator/butcher/mass murderer” aka President Bashar al-Assad – no, it was liberated and the occupation by terrorist groups such...

More documents leaked confirming 2 OPCW whistleblowers’ accounts of Douma Report By Natylie Baldwin December 19, 2019 This past weekend saw two more major blows to the years-long establishment narrative of the Syrian war in general and the chemical weapons attacks allegations against the Assad government in particular. This article was originally published at Natylie Baldwin’s blog on December 16, 2019 First, Tareq Haddad, an accomplished British journalist who began working for Newsweek earlier this year, resigned last week, telling his Twitter followers that he had done so as the result of his editors attempting to block him from accurate reporting on the Syria war and the OPCW whistleblowers. He also said that in the coming days he would be sharing a write-up on what had happened, despite threats of legal action by Newsweek: Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW...

Imagine that you tell a friend something and you say it’s a fact and you know the sources are reliable – but then, a few weeks later, you learn that there was more to it, perhaps even that what you were in good faith believing was unfortunately factually wrong. Would you not call that friend and say – “hey, I’ve just learned that what I told you wasn’t really true; rather, it turned out to be a story, more or less constructed for a purpose, and the facts are much more complex?” Well, you are surely a decent person so you would. But what about our mainstream media? Do you remember to have seen a front-page item stating something to the effect that “we are sorry to inform you that the news story this media published some weeks back, turned out to be a planted propaganda story. We have now...

By Joe Emersberger November 6, 2019 Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, a prominent journalistic critic of US policy toward Venezuela,  was arrested by DC police on Friday, October 25, in connection with a protest at the Venezuelan embassy, and held incommunicado. But if you rely on corporate media, or even leading “press freedom” groups, you haven’t heard about this troubling encroachment on freedom of the press. Originally posted on Fair.org on October 30, 2019 here Blumenthal is a bestselling author whose work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, CJR, The Nation and Salon. DC police arrested him at his home on a five-month-old arrest warrant, charging him with simple assault for his attempt to deliver food to the besieged Venezuelan embassy; he was held for two days, and for the first 36 hours was not allowed to speak with a lawyer. (In an interview with FAIR, Blumenthal noted that keeping arrestees—generally poor and African-American—from speaking...

By Scott Ritter November 4, 2019 At a time when the credibility of the United States as either an unbiased actor or reliable ally lies in tatters, Russia has emerged as the one major power whose loyalty to its allies is unquestioned, and whose ability to serve as an honest broker between seemingly intractable opponents is unmatched. Originally posted on Truthdig.com on October 30, 2019 here If there is to be peace in Syria, it will be largely due to the patient efforts of Moscow employing deft negotiation, backed up as needed by military force, to shape conditions conducive for a political solution to a violent problem. If ever there was a primer for the art of diplomacy, the experience of Russia in Syria from 2011 to the present is it. Like the rest of the world, Russia was caught off guard by the so-called Arab Spring that swept through the Middle...

By Gordon M. Hahn October 1, 2019 Five or six years ago, when I was still working most intensively on issues related to jihadism in Russia and globally, I warned of the Caucasus Emirate-tied network running from Russia’s North Caucasus to ISIS in Syria and Iraq through Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia (with Tbilisi’s connivance) (see previous articles here and here). Originally posted on Gordon M. Hahn’s personal blog on September 29, 2019 here Somewhat more recently, I also had written about former US President Barak Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) strategy for bringing ‘Islamic democracy’ to the Muslim world and its dire consequences in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere in what came to be misnamed the ‘Arab Spring’.  America’s hopefully accidental but nevertheless resulting connivance with ISIS and Al Qai`da-tied groups (e.g., AQ-tied Jabhar al-Nusrah) was exacerbated by intentional connivance by one of Obama’s partners in creating the Arab winter: Turkish...

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has long been controversial. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow protected communist and ultra-socialist dictators around the world from any attack on their human rights abuses. At the same time routine attacks on Israel, even the extravagant ones, were given free reign in the Council. Indeed, this still continues with the protagonists often unable in their minds to separate criticizing Israel, which deserves it, with criticizing the religion of Judaism, so-called anti-Semitism. (One should add that many Jews conflate the two as well.) This month a new controversy has flared. According to the Swiss organisation, UN Watch, the Human Rights Council is censoring a human rights complaint about the mass incarceration of Moslem Uighurs who live in northwest China. More than a hundred NGOs from around the world have co-sponsored the complaint. A letter has also been written by the same...