HUMAN RIGHTS FRAUD FROM UKRAINE TO NICARAGUA

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Stephen Sefton
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON July 26, 2020

Wrong Kind of Green Aug 09, 2020 Humanitarian Agencies, Imperialist Wars/Occupations, Whiteness & Aversive Racism

Tortilla con Sal

Current Western human rights industry practice has nothing to do with establishing the truth. Increasingly in recent years, US and allied elites have sought to legitimize illegal aggression by exploiting human rights motifs in their attempts to recolonize the majority world.

In any given crisis, human rights NGOs funded by the US and allied corporate elites and governments deploy sensationalist false claims, for example of police murdering peaceful protestors, so as to create a cognitive limbo of doubt and suspicion aimed at disabling opposition to the West’s recolonization campaigns. Over the medium and long term, the steady drip of false accusations against countries resisting recolonization, like Syria and Iran, or Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, creates false memories, corrupting and distorting the historical record and obscuring the West’s crimes against those and so many other countries in the majority world.

Western ruling elites have corrupted human rights organizations and institutions at practically every level using corporate grant making and government funding. The practical results of this corruption mirror corporate techniques of control fraud and strategic avoidance of regulation. Economics writers like Michael Hudson and William Black, among others, have explained how corrupt US and allied corporations have exploited these fraudulent abuses for decades. Control fraud is essentially no different from ancient practices like debasing coins, adulterating food products or selling defective goods as fit for use. They all fool people into accepting something that causes them loss, hurt and damage.

In the United States, powerful corporations control US political and institutional life sufficiently to be able to co-opt justice and escape criminal prosecution. This reality crowds out honest, socially responsible business and financial practice. Parallel to control fraud by major financial institutions, other multinational corporations, for example oil, mining or information technology corporations, operate what various writers call a “veil of tiers” strategy misrepresenting their earnings so as to avoid tax or other regulation, and legal prosecution. More legitimately, in the field of insurance, the “veil of tiers” strategy spreads risks associated with potential litigation. The international human rights industry uses similar techniques to justify and cover up Western attacks against the peoples of the majority world.

The dependence of international human rights NGOs on corporate and government funding and on publicity via corporate media and public relations over time has generated the osmosis of corrupt corporate practice into the human rights industry. Writers like Cory Morningstar have analyzed exhaustively how this takeover by corporate culture of the “non-profit industrial complex serves hegemony as a sophisticated fine-tuned symbiotic mechanism in a continuous state of flux and refinement. The ruling elite channel an immeasurable amount of resources and tools through these organizations to further strengthen, protect and expand existing forms of power structures and global domination.”

In a human rights context, control fraud takes the form of politically motivated, false, sensationalist accusations based on egregiously one-sided, often fact-free research, sometimes using fake pseudo-scientific reconstructions. Accountability for these false accusations is rendered negligible by means of a “veil of tiers” strategy starting at a low level with small, local or national human rights NGOS, progressing via larger international human rights NGOs and auxiliary private contractors to regional human rights institutions, then reaching United Nations organizations and ultimately the highest levels of the international human rights legal system. By excluding independent corroboration, the interchange from one level to the next imparts spurious mutual legitimacy of varying degrees between the organizations and institutions involved.

The process is quasi-judicial with zero accountability, such that attempting to counteract false accusations is extremely difficult if not impossible, especially in the short term. If anything, the human rights industry is even less accountable than multinational corporations. Two recent examples, among innumerable others, confirm the creeping monopolization of the human rights industry by corrupt corporate practice. Against both the Ukraine government in February 2014 and against the Nicaraguan government in May 2018, Western human rights NGOs made very similar accusations that their police forces murdered peaceful protestors indiscriminately. In both cases, the accusations were false.

The context of the killings in both cases was a violent attempt at regime change by a US government funded political opposition. In Ukraine’s case, the opposition had been supported for over twenty years with US government funding amounting to over US$5 billion as confirmed in 2013 by Victoria Nuland, then US Assistant Secretary of State. That US government finance was in addition to funding from US corporate oligarchs like Pierre Omidyaar and George Soros. The most notorious event in the regime change campaign in Ukraine took place over February 18th-20th in 2014 when over 70 people were killed in Kiev’s Maidan square during violent confrontations between police and protestors. The massacre led to the overthrow of the legitimate government and its replacement by a fascist US client regime.

After the event, even CNN felt bound to report a leaked conversation between Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs in which Paet confirmed that a pro-opposition doctor treating wounded protestors claimed opposition snipers, not government security forces, had shot the protestors. That report was followed by the broadcast from Italy’s Mediaset Matrix television channel of interviews, here and here, with mercenary snipers confessing they had fired on both protestors and police during the Maidan protests in February 2014. The mercenaries had come forward aggrieved at not getting paid by the opposition aligned figures who hired them. Even so, the Ukraine authorities announced their investigation into the shootings was complete, simply repeating the false accusations against the former Ukrainian government despite categorically clear evidence to the contrary.

A prominent part of the Ukraine prosecutors’ false case was a virtual reconstruction of events by a private New York contractor called SITU Research whose human rights work is funded by US oligarch owned grant making bodies, like the MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation and the Open Society Foundations. Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa has exposed as phony the SITU Research reconstruction of the Maidan shootings, demonstrating, for example, that in various cases SITU Research’s imaging moved wound locations indicated in the respective forensic autopsy reports in order to suit the video’s conclusions. Katchanovksi’s detailed analysis draws on other evidence omitted by SITU Research which also contradicts their claims, for example witness testimony from 25 wounded opposition supporters that they were shot from opposition controlled buildings.

Katchanovski points out that numerous video and TV footage shows opposition snipers and shooters in buildings controlled by the opposition. That footage is supported by over 150 witness testimonies confirming snipers were firing from those locations. Katchanovski also notes that Brad Samuels, founding partner of SITU Research “said in a video [start at 55:16] that ‘…eventually, there is a consensus that there was a third party acting. It is clear from forensic evidence that people were shot in the back. Somebody was shooting from rooftops.’ ” Katchanovski remarks that Samuels’ “striking observation was not included anywhere in the SITU 3D model report that he produced.” Katchanovski’s critical analysis of SITU Research’s material and of the broader official Ukraine investigation into the Maidan massacre has never been seriously challenged.

Similar false accusations ignoring readily available contradictory evidence and also using SITU Research modeling were made against Nicaragua’s government earlier this year. On May 30th the Organization of American States subsidiary body the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team and SITU Research jointly published a video allegedly proving that Nicaragua’s police shot and killed unarmed protesters at a demonstration on May 30th 2018. But detailed analysis of the video shows that in this case too SITU Research have misrepresented data, namely the distance between the police and the protestors which was in fact about 175 metres, in order to harmonize the reality of what happened with their virtual reconstruction which claims police snipers fired from a distance of around 250 metres.

The video footage of the protests in Nicaragua contains no scenes where Nicaraguan police use their firearms. Similarly, just as in their false reconstruction of events in Kiev’s Maidan square, SITU Research omitted a substantial body of information contradicting their account of the shootings in Managua on May 30th. The context in this case too was of extremely violent protests by organizations funded by the US government with over US$15 million just in 2017-2018. For example, local human rights organizations received over US$3 million from the US government that year as did local media NGOs. Although, two solidarity organizations wrote and published an open letter to the organizations who produced the video, respectfully questioning their findings, to date the letter has received only a formal acknowledgment without replying to the questions.

In both Ukraine and Nicaragua, the US government funded local opposition aligned NGOs to make false allegations of very serious human rights violations. A private company contractor was funded by US corporate interests to produce false pseudo-scientific material unfairly incriminating the governments for those violations. International human rights NGOs repeated the false accusations on the basis of that same false evidence. Regional human rights institutions accused the governments concerned on the basis of that same material.

The accusations are false but the Nicaraguan government and accused members of the former Ukrainian government are denied a fair defense. This same process has been repeated over and over again against governments resisting US and allied policies. Western human rights organizations share the same corrupt methodology as their corporate and government patrons. They make false claims, suppress inconvenient evidence, do all they can to avoid independent scrutiny and systematically evade accountability.

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The Kremlin Playbook

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The Real ‘Russian Playbook’ Is Written in English

The rabidly Russophobic The Economist, a stridently imperialist rag, apparently forgot to put horns on the Putin image. Or make Putin drip some blood. But the suggestion is clear: he's a master of the sinister Kremlin Playbook. What is the poor, innocent and so helpless West to do?

I hadn’t given The Russian Playbook much attention until Susan Rice, Obama’s quondam security advisor, opined a month ago on CNN that “I’m not reading the intelligence today, or these days — but based on my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook“. She was referring to the latest U.S. riots.

Once I’d seen this mention of The Russian Playbook (aka KGB, Kremlin or Putin’s Playbook), I saw the expression all over the place. Here’s an early – perhaps the earliest – use of the term. In October 2016, the Center for Strategic and International studies (“Ranked #1“) informed us of the “Kremlin Playbook” with this ominous beginning

There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russia’s economic engagement with the region expanded significantly.

And asks

Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode the region’s democratic institutions through its influence to ‘break the internal coherence of the enemy system’?

Well, to these people, to ask the question is to answer it: can’t possibly be disappointment at the gap between 2004’s expectations and 2020’s reality, can’t be that they don’t like the total Western values package that they have to accept, it must be those crafty Russians deceiving them. This was the earliest reference to The Playbook that I found, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

Russia has a century-old playbook for ‘disinformation’… ‘I believe in Russia they do have their own manual that essentially prescribes what to do,’ said Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former FBI agent. (Nov 2018)

The Russian playbook for spreading fake news and conspiracy theories is the subject of a new three-part video series on The New York Times website titled ‘Operation Infektion: Russian Disinformation: From The Cold War To Kanye.’ (Nov 2018)

I found headlines such as these: Former CIA Director Outlines Russian Playbook for Influencing Unsuspecting Targets (May 2017); Fmr. CIA op.: Don Jr. meeting part of Russian playbook (Jul 2017); Americans Use Russian Playbook to Spread Disinformation (Oct 2018); Factory of Lies: The Russian Playbook (Nov 2018); Shredding the Putin Playbook: Six crucial steps we must take on cyber-security—before it’s too late. (Winter 2018); Trump’s spin is ‘all out of the KGB playbook’: Counterintelligence expert Malcolm Nance (May 2019).

Susan Rice: A traitor to her race, like her boss, and a traitor to humanity. A plague, like her Neocon colleague Samantha Powers, in the service of empire.

Of course, all these people are convinced Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Somehow. To some effect. Never really specified but the latest outburst of insanity is this video from the Lincoln Project. As Anatoly Karlin observes: “I think it’s really cool how we Russians took over America just by shitposting online. How does it feel to be subhuman?” He has a point: the Lincoln Project, and the others shrieking about Russian interference, take it for granted that American democracy is so flimsy and Americans so gullible that a few Facebook ads can bring the whole facade down. A curious mental state indeed.

So let us consider The Russian Playbook. It stands at the very heart of Russian power. It is old: at least a century old. Why, did not Tolstoy’s 1908 Letter to a Hindu inspire Gandhi to bring down the British Indian Empire and win the Great Game for Moscow? The Tolstoy-Putin link is undeniable as we are told in A Post-Soviet ‘War and Peace’: What Tolstoy’s Masterwork Explains About Putin’s Foreign Policy: “In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Napoleon (like Putin after him) wanted to construct his own international order…”. Russian novelists: adepts of The Playbook every one. So there is much to consider about this remarkable Book which has had such an enormous – hidden to most – role in world history. Its instructions on how to swing Western elections are especially important: the 2016 U.S. election; Brexit; “100 years of Russian electoral interference“; Canada; France; the European Union; Germany and many more. The awed reader must ask whether any Western election since Tolstoy’s day can be trusted. Not to forget the Great Hawaiian Pizza Debate the Russians could start at any moment.

What can we know about The Playbook? For a start it must be written in Russian, a language that those crafty Russians insist on speaking among themselves. Secondly such an important document would be protected the way that highly classified material is protected. There would be a very restricted need to know; underlings participating in one of the many plays would not know how their part fitted into The Playbook; few would ever see The Playbook itself. The Playbook would be brought to the desk of the few authorised to see it by a courier, signed for, the courier would watch the reader and take away the copy afterwards. The very few copies in existence would be securely locked away; each numbered and differing subtly from the others so that, should a leak occur, the authorities would know which copy read by whom had been leaked. Printed on paper that could not be photographed or duplicated. As much protection as human cunning could devise; right up there with the nuclear codes.

So, The Russian Playbook would be extraordinarily difficult to get hold of. And yet… every talking head on U.S. TV has a copy at his elbow! English copies, one assumes. Rachel Maddow has comprehended the complicated chapter on how to control the U.S. power system. Others have read the impenetrably complex section on how to control U.S. voting machines or change vote counts. Many are familiar with the lists of divisions in American society and directions for exploiting them. Adam Schiff has mastered the section on how to get Trump to give Alaska back. Susan Rice well knows the chapter “How to create riots in peaceful communities”.

And so on. It’s all quite ridiculous: we’re supposed to believe that Moscow easily controls far-away countries but can’t keep its neighbours under control.

There is no Russian Playbook, that’s just projection. But there is a “playbook” and it’s written in English, it’s freely available and it’s inexpensive enough that every pundit can have a personal copy: it’s named “From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation” and it’s written by Gene Sharp (1928-2018). Whatever Sharp may have thought he was doing, whatever good cause he thought he was assisting, his book has been used as a guide to create regime changes around the world. Billed as “democracy” and “freedom”, their results are not so benign. Witness Ukraine today. Or Libya. Or Kosovo whose long-time leader has just been indicted for numerous crimes. Curiously enough, these efforts always take place in countries that resist Washington’s line but never in countries that don’t. Here we do see training, financing, propaganda, discord being sown, divisions exploited to effect regime change – all the things in the imaginary “Russian Playbook”. So, whatever he may have thought he was helping, Sharp’s advice has been used to produce what only the propagandists could call “model interventions“; to the “liberated” themselves, the reality is poverty, destruction, war and refugees.

The Albert Einstein Institution, which Sharp created in 1983, strongly deniescollusion with Washington-sponsored overthrows but people from it have organised seminars or workshops in many targets of U.S. overthrows. The most recent annual report of 2014, while rather opaque, shows 45% of its income from “grants” (as opposed to “individuals”) and has logos of Euromaidan, SOSVenezuela, Umbrellamovement, Lwili, Sunflowersquare and others. In short, the logos of regime change operations in Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Burkina Faso and Taiwan. (And, ironically for today’s USA, Black Lives Matter). So, clearly, there is some connection between the AEI and Washington-sponsored regime change operations.

So there is a “handbook” but it’s not Russian.

Reading Sharp’s book, however, makes one wonder if he was just fooling himself. Has there ever been a “dictatorship” overthrown by “non-violent” resistance along the lines of what he is suggesting? He mentions Norwegians who resisted Hitler; but Norway was liberated, along with the rest of Occupied Europe, by extremely violent warfare. While some Jews escaped, most didn’t and it was the conquest of Berlin that saved the rest: the nazi state was killed. The USSR went away, together with its satellite governments in Europe but that was a top-down event. He likes Gandhi but Gandhi wouldn’t have lasted a minute under Stalin. Otpor was greatly aided by NATO’s war on Serbia. And, they’re only “non-violent” because the Western media doesn’t talk much about the violence; “non-violent” is not the first word that comes to mind in this video of Kiev 2014. “Colour revolutions” are manufactured from existing grievances, to be sure, but with a great deal of outside assistance, direction and funding; upon inspection, there’s much design behind their “spontaneity”. And, not infrequently, with mysterious sniping at a expedient moment – see Katchanovski’s research on the “Heavenly Hundred” of the Maidan showing pretty convincingly that the shootings were “a false flag operation” involving “an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland”. There is little in Sharp’s book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit of using “democrat” and “dictator” as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and codfish. But any “dictatorship” – for example Stalin’s is a very complex affair with many shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it only succeeding against rather mild “dictators” presiding over extremely unpopular polities. With a great deal of outside effort and resources.

His “playbook” is useful to outside powers that want to overthrow governments they don’t like. Especially those run by “dictators” not brutal enough to shoot the protesters down. It’s not Russian diplomats that are caught choosing the leaders of ostensibly independent countries. It’s not Russians who boast of spending money in poor countries to change their governments. It’s not Russian diplomats who meet with foreign opposition leaders. Russia doesn’t fabricate a leader of a foreign country. It’s not Russia that invents a humanitarian crisis, bombs the country to bits, laughs at its leader’s brutal death and walks away. It’s not Russia that sanctions numerous countries. It’s not Russia that gives fellowships to foreign oppositionists. Even the Washington Post (one of the principals in sustaining Putindunnit hysteria) covered “The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere“; but piously insisted “the days of its worst behavior are long behind it”. Whatever the pundits may claim about Russia, the USA actually has an organisation devoted to interfering in other countries’ business; one of whose leading lights proudly boasted: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The famous “Russian Playbook” is nothing but projection onto Moscow of what Washington actually does: projection is so common a feature of American propaganda that one may certain that when Washington accuses somebody else of doing something, it’s a guarantee that Washington is doing it.

Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in the Canadian Department of National Defence specialising in the USSR/Russia from 1984 and a Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow in 1993-1996. He retired in 2008 and has been writing on Russia and related subjects on the Net ever since.

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Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution redux: Washington tries to destabilise China again

Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post. Be sure to share it widely.

In its offensive against China, Trump's minions are putting maximum pressure using all possible destabilisation tricks, including a virulent replay of 2014's "Umbrella (Color) Revolution" n Hong Kong, an old colonial outpost the British extracted from a pillaged China during the Second Opium War, in the 1840s. Since that time, Hong Kong has been a rich reservoir of anticommunist sentiment, inevitably mined by the Western intel services. This is coupled with intensifying efforts to detonate unrest in Tibet and the Uyghur areas, where the CIA and fellow western intel services have long worked to create anti-communist rebellions. The following are still valid analyses we published when the first round of Hong Kong disturbances hit the news in 2014, under Obama's watch. Below we offer two analyses, one by FW Engdahl, the other by Andrew Korybko., both incisive observers of world events.

“Color Revolution”: Hong Kong’s Umbrellas are “Made in USA”

Crossposted with Global Research, October 24, 2014 & New Eastern Outlook

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Washington neo-cons and their allies in the US State Department and Obama Administration are clearly furious with China, as they are with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. As both Russia and China in recent years have become more assertive about defining their national interests, and as both Eurasian powers draw into a closer cooperation on all strategic levels, Washington has decided to unleash havoc against Beijing, as it has unleashed the Ukraine dis-order against Russia and Russian links to the EU. The flurry of recent deals binding Beijing and Moscow more closely—the $400 billion gas pipeline, the BRICS infrastructure bank, trade in rubles and renminbi by-passing the US dollar—has triggered Washington’s response. It’s called the Hong Kong ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in the popular media.

In this era of industrial globalization and out-sourcing of US industry to cheap-labor countries, especially to China, it’s worth taking note of one thing the USA—or more precisely Washington DC and Langley, Virginia—are producing and exporting to China’s Hong Kong. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has been targeted for a color revolution, one that has been dubbed in the media the Umbrella Revolution for the umbrellas that protesters use to block police tear gas.

The bourgeois are lucky in many ways, including how they always find highly photogenic people to incarnate their false heroes. Here Denise Ho, the very picture of smug righteosness, is being led away by instruments of evil China. Hollywood's central casting could not have done better.

The “umbrellas” for Hong Kong’s ongoing Umbrella Revolution are made in Washington. Proof of that lies not only in the obscenely-rapid White House open support of Occupy Central just hours after it began, following the same model they used inUkraine. The US State Department and NGOs it finances have been quietly preparing these protests for years. Consider just the tip of the Washington Hong Kong “democracy” project.

Same dirty old cast of characters…

With almost by-now-boring monotony, Washington has unleashed another of its infamous Color Revolutions. US Government-steered NGOs and US-trained operatives are running the entire Hong Kong “Occupy Central” protests, ostensibly in protest of the rules Beijing has announced for Hong Kong’s 2017 elections. The Occupy Central Hong Kong protest movement is being nominally led by a 17-year-old student, Joshua Wong, who resembles a Hong Kong version of Harry Potter, a kid who was only just born the year Britain reluctantly ended its 99-year colonial occupation, ceding the city-state back to the Peoples’ Republic. Wong is accompanied in Occupy Central by a University of Minnesota-educated hedge fund money man for the protests, Edward Chin; by a Yale University-educated sociologist, Chan Kin-man; by a Baptist minister who is a veteran of the CIAs 1989 Tiananmen Square destabilization, Chu Yiu-ming; and by a Hong Kong University law professor, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, or Benny Tai.

Behind these Hong Kong faces, the US State Department and its favorite NGO, the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), via its daughter, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), is running the Occupy Central operation. Let’s look behind the nice façade of peaceful non-violent protest for democracy and we find a very undemocratic covert Washington agenda.

Start with Chu Yiu-ming, the Baptist minister chosen to head Occupy Central. The most reverend Chu Yiu-ming is a founder and sits on the executive committee of a Hong Kong NGO– Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor (HKHRM). HKHRM as they openly admit on their website, is mainly financed by the US State Department via its neo-conservative Color Revolution NGO called National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

They state their purpose: “HKHRM briefs the press, the United Nations, local and overseas governments and legislative bodies on Hong Kong human rights issues both orally and through written reports.” In their 2013 Annual Report, the NED reports giving Rev. Chu Yiu-ming’s HK Human Rights Monitor a grant of US$ 145,000. You can buy a boatload of umbrellas for that. Chu’s HKHRM also works with another NED-financed creation, the Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia (ARDA).

When Occupy Central top honchos decided to (undemocratically) name the very reverend Chu as leader of Occupy Central this past January, 2014, Chu said it was because “I have more connections with different activist groups, and experience in large-scale social campaigns.” He could have named NED as activist group and the CIA’s 1989 Tiananmen Square as a ‘large-scale social campaign,’ to be more specific. The Baptist preacher admitted that he was named de facto leader of Occupy Central by two other leading organizers of the civil disobedience movement, Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Dr Chan Kin-man, who wanted him “to take up” the role.

Benny Tai is also familiar with the US State Department. Tai, law professor at the University of Hong Kong and co-founder of Hong Kong Occupy Central, works with the Hong Kong University Centre for Comparative and Public Law which receives grants from the NED subsidiary, National Democratic Institute for projects like Design Democracy Hong Kong. The Centre Annual Report states, “With funding assistance from the National Democratic Institute, the Design Democracy Hong Kong website was built to promote a lawful and constructive bottom-up approach to constitutional and political reform in Hong Kong.” On its own website, NDI describes its years-long Hong Kong law project, the legal backdrop to the Occupy demands which essentially would open the door for a US-picked government in Hong Kong just as Victoria Nuland hand-picked a US-loyal coup regime in Ukraine in February 2014. The NDI boasts,

The Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) at the University of Hong Kong, with support from NDI, is working to amplify citizens’ voices in that consultation process by creating Design Democracy Hong Kong (www.designdemocracy.hk), a unique and neutral website that gives citizens a place to discuss the future of Hong Kong’s electoral system.

The Hong Kong wunderkind of the Color Revolution Washington destabilization, 17-year-old student, Joshua Wong, founded a Facebook site called Scholarism when he was 15 with support from Washington’s neo-conservative National Endowment for Democracy via its left branch, National Democratic Institute and NDI’s NDItech project. And another Occupy Central leading figure, Audrey Eu Yuet recently met with Vice President Joe Biden. Hmmmm.

Cardinal Zen and cardinal sin…

Less visible in the mainstream media but identified as one of the key organizers of Occupy Central is Hong Kong’s Catholic Church Cardinal Bishop Emeritus, Joseph Zen. Cardinal Zen according to the Hong Kong Morning Post, is playing a key role in the US-financed protests against Beijing’s authority. Cardinal Zen also happens to be the primary Vatican adviser on China policy. Is the first Jesuit Pope in history, Pope Francis, making a US-financed retry at the mission of Society of Jesus founder (and, incidentally, the Pope’s real namesake) Francis Xavier, to subvert and take over the Peoples’ Republic of China, using Hong Kong as the Achilles Heel?

Vice President Joe Biden, whose own hands are soaked with the blood of thousands of eastern Ukraine victims of the neo-nazi civil war; Cardinal Zen; Reverend Chu; Joshua Wong; Benny Tai and the neo-conservative NED and its NDI and a bevy of other State Department assets and NGO’s too numerous to name here, have ignited a full-blown Color Revolution, the Umbrella Revolution. The timing of the action, a full two years before the Hong Kong 2017 elections, suggests that some people in Washington and elsewhere in the west were getting jumpy.

The growing Eurasian economic space of China in conjunction with Putin’s Russia and their guiding role in creating a peaceful and very effective counter-pole to Washington’s New World (dis-)Order, acting through organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS, is the real target of their dis-order. That is really quite stupid of them, but then, they are fundamentally stupid people who despise intelligence.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

The original source of this article is New Eastern Outlook

First published on 03/10/2014

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and Secessionist Political Contagion in China (I)

(In search of a another Tienanmen and endless chaos)

Introduction

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]hina is in the throes of a Color Revolution just as, if not more, menacing than the anti-establishment threat it faced in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. At that time, just as now, well-intentioned individuals (mostly youth) were caught up in the revolutionary romanticism of the day. Before it was the impending fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe, whereas nowadays it’s Color Revolutions, the ‘Arab Spring’ events (a theater-wide Color Revolution), and the Occupy Movement. Last time, however, the scene of activity was the capital, and the (unrealistic) goal was to bring about a quick and speedy end to Communist rule in China via a manipulated ‘people’s protest’. What is happening now, however, is more sinister in intent. The far-reaching strategic aim is to initiate a long-term spate of copy-cat protests not only in the other major urban areas of coastal China, but to serve as an inspiration for far more violent demonstrations in the distant and restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.Altogether, this has the disturbing and realistic possibility of descending into high-impact and crude ‘protester’-provoked violence and even all-out separatism in the periphery, running the risk of posing an existential threat to the very concept of ‘One China’.

The research is divided into two parts, with the first exploring the event and its external managers and financiers. Then it moves into focusing on the dupes and troops of the movement and the plotters’ own admission that it was pre-planned and they were trained in advance. This is followed by an examination into how the Color Revolution is being marketed and ends with the significant tactical innovation of the umbrella in purposely provoking a violent crackdown. The second section steps back from the situation’s specificities and investigates Hong Kong’s vulnerabilities to this destabilization, with the next portion looking at the Color Revolution’s overall theme and strategic aims, both domestically and internationally. Finally, an analysis of the government’s response to this threat concludes the article.

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’

The Hidden Hand of the ‘Umbrella Revolution’:

The ongoing events in Hong Kong exactly follow the template of all Color Revolutions. Well-intentioned individuals are being duped to join a movement aimed at overthrowing the authorities through a soft coup (for now). Legitimate grievances are being exploited by a revolutionary core and their cohorts to bring as many peaceful civilians into the fracas for use as human shields, in the hope that this will guarantee their own security amidst the crackdown that some of them are trying to provoke.

Importantly, this is not an entirely domestic protest movement, as investigative reporter and political analyst Tony Cartalucci has meticulously documented. His viral article proves the connection between the US State Department, its proxy National Endowment for Democracy, and the so-called ‘Umbrella Revolution’. As metaphorical icing on the cake, so to speak, to prove this point, Gene Sharp’s protégé and assistant, Jamila Raqtib, co-authored a recent article explaining why the ‘non-violent resistance strategies’ were utilized in the first place. One must keep in mind that Sharp is the godfather of ‘civilian’ anti-government activity all across the world, and that the majority of his works deal with how to topple the authorities in a targeted area. The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ should rightly be seen in this exact same light.

With this hidden hand in mind, one can more clearly understand how regular Hong Kong citizens with legitimate misgivings against their leaders can be corralled like cattle by the movement’s organizers into large-scale and strategically deployed ‘occupation ranches’. As unfortunate and grim as the comparison may seem, just like the rancher intends for his cattle to be destined for the slaughterhouse one day, so too does the Color Revolution ‘rancher’ intend for his ‘herd’ to feel the brunt of state force after their provocative ‘occupation’ threats, a motivation which will be described more in-depth in the second part.

The Dupes and Troops

As part of its destabilization operation, the US and its proxy partners have mobilized the use of Color Revolutionary ‘dupes and troops’. The student Scholarismmovement is led by Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong teenager and already professional provocateur who has close and questionable relations with the US consulate in the territory. Under the auspices of being an ‘innocent teenager’, he has encouraged thousands of fellow Hong Kong students to join his movement, effectively duping all of those who participate. While in the beginning campaigning only to peacefully protest the controversial election law modifications, he now commands his group to consider a “final action” of occupying government buildings, in a sure fire move that will lead to a forcible state response. Gone is the rhetoric of protesting the law, the supposed original spark for the protests, and out comes the true motivations for the street actions – the overthrow (in their terms, ‘resignation’) of Hong Kong’s chief executive and other political members, effectively amounting to mob-inspired regime change. At this stage of rapid rhetorical escalation, it would not be surprising if some activists start endorsing outright secession for Hong Kong from the People’s Republic of China.

The thousands of dupes form the vast majority of the ‘Umbrella Revolution’s’ participants and provide a human shield and personal buffer against the core and cohort members organizing the subversive action. The larger and more organized group, however, is called Occupy Central with Peace and Love and run by Benny Tai. Their members admittedthat they trained for months in order to prevent the police from dispersing them once they decided to initiate the destabilization. This makes the group more dangerous than Scholarism’s dupes, as they may have any level of militarized Color Revolution training, including the violent methods employed during EuroMaidan. Although originally planning their campaign to begin on 1 October, China’s symbolic national day (Color Revolutions are always associated with symbolism), they unexpectedly pushed it ahead a few days ostensibly to support Scholarism’s weekend activity. In reality, it was likely expected all along to push the original date forward in order to throw the Chinese authorities off, with Scholarism once more playing the dupe to Occupy Central’s troops, and Joshua Wong and his detainment being nothing more than a strawman justification for doing this.

Perception Management and ‘Selling Democracy’

The ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is being marketed in a very specific way to mask its regime change, destabilization, and secessionist end game. The slogan of ‘universal suffrage’ is highly misleading, as Hong Kong’s citizens were going to have a vote regardless, and nobody is being prevented from partaking in it. This is in stark contrast to Western governments that outright forbade Syrians living there from voting in the recent Presidential election back in June. In fact, in some of those Western countries, particularly the US, presidential and governor candidates only really get on the ballot due to the hefty financial backing that makes their campaign possible. One needs only to invoke the Electoral College system, where voters indirectly vote for the president, since it is their ‘electors’ who cast the actual ballots that matter.

Rhetorical hypocrisy aside, the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is being marketed as a fresh student/youth movement versus the stale Communist Party bureaucracy. This isn’t true at all, as the majority of Hong Kong is against the subversives, which even CNN has implicitly acknowledged through their republication of an important op-ed piece by the Silent Majority founder. This group is the ‘anti-Maidan’ in Hong Kong, and already over 1.5 million Hong Kong citizens (out of 7 million) have signed a petition rejecting Occupy Central and its actions. This monumental number should be compared to the relatively paltry thousands that have taken to the streets to promote regime change to see which side true democracy rests on in Hong Kong.

In an intentional throwback to previous Western-sponsored destabilization efforts, a video has been making rounds where a young girl pleads with the Western audience to empathize with the protesters and support ‘democracy’. Called ‘Please Help Hong Kong’, it has already been recognized by online commentators as a structural copy of the ‘I am a Ukrainian’ video that was deployed during EuroMaidan, which itself was exposed as being linked to the NGO that managed the ‘Kony 2012’ and ‘Syrian Danny’ propaganda operations. Quite clearly, ‘Please Help Hong Kong’ is but another iteration of the same information manipulation formula that has been tried and tested in the destabilization operations before it.

The Umbrella as an Escalation Instrument

The eponymous Umbrella Revolution is known for the use of these accessories and plastic wrap to deflect pepper spray and other crowd control tools used by the authorities. The majority of the uninformed may laugh at the use of umbrellas or marvel at their ingenuity, but what most people neglect to realize is that this accessory is actually an instrument of violent and provocative escalation. By innovatively and inexpensively neutralizing the use of pepper spray and using plastic wrap to combat tear gas, the ‘protesters’ dangerously leave the outnumbered police with no other option than to use rubber bullets or worse to pacify the unruly masses, should need come to be.The Chinese authorities are now faced with two options – capitulate or escalate – but they have wisely created a third, unforeseen one, which is temporarily waiting it out. This risky decision will be discussed more at the conclusion of the work at the end of Part II.

Part I

Raining on China’s Parade

It is now necessary to look at the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in a larger geopolitical perspective to best understand how it fits into the larger picture of US grand strategy for Eurasia. In short, the US is attempting to ‘rain on China’s parade’ of global ascendancy by hijacking and sabotaging it via whichever means possible, including internal subversion and the festering of violent and secessionist tendencies. Finally, important attention must be paid to how the Chinese authorities are dealing with the conundrum between capitulation and escalation

Low-Hanging Fruit

Hong Kong finally became reunited with China in 1997 after over 150 years of British occupation. Seeing as how it socially, politically, and economically developed in a different manner than the rest of China during such important and rapidly changing historical periods, it can be seen as having already formulated its own identity somewhat separate from that of the rest of the country. Hong Kong’s semi-autonomy institutionalized this in its citizens’ mindset after the reunification, and considering that they are formally an island chain (albeit in extreme close proximity to the mainland), there is also a geographic separation that reinforces their self-identification separateness. Through these means, a sizeable proportion of Hong Kong’s population is influenced by the West and its various mechanisms of projecting such influence (including in ‘democratic’ rhetoric), thus making it the low-hanging fruit of a unified China and subject to extreme outside interference.

The Chaos Contagion

The primary domestic objectives of the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is to unleash a contagion of chaos to sweep through coastal China and severely undermine and weaken, if not overthrow, the Communist Party’s leadership. The idea is to create a ‘battering ram’ to break centralized control and initiate a chaotic chain reaction that spreads into all of China’s megalopolises via copycat movements (whether activated Color Revolution sleeper cells or not) and divides the rest of society, even if it is only theoretically 10% of a city’s population in favor of revolution and 90% against it. This strategic societal splitting leads to domestic chaos and a clash of two Chinas – ‘Chinese China’ and ‘Western China’, with the former supporting the Chinese method of democracy and managing affairs while the latter want to brazenly copy the West in all regards (like Russia’s ‘Westernizer’ leadership in the early 1990s, to similar success).

The end result is to create as much domestic chaos as possible to throw the authorities off balance and provoke another Tiananmen Square event. In turn, this can be selectively manipulated by Western media outlets for long-term image advantage and information warfare. CNN has already taken to highlighting the similarities between 1989 and 2014 (and 2019), and the activists themselves seem intent on doing the same, even hoisting the infamous ‘goddess of democracy’ above their gatherings. This is where the umbrella and plastic wrap innovations come into play. By offering the authorities no other non-lethal way to physically respond besides rubber bullets, the chances of this happening increase. Should the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ follow the template of Color Revolutions before it, one can expect ‘mysterious’ snipers to begin shooting indiscriminately at both police and civilians to maximize the chaotic uncertainty and provoke even more panic on the streets. Even if the Color Revolution attempt fails in all of its other objectives, its last-ditch intended legacy is to supercede the Tiananmen Square events as an even bigger black eye to China’s international reputation (whether real or perceived/manipulated).

The Containment and Cutting Apart of China

On an even larger scale, the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is intended to both contain and then cut apart China, representing an ominous threat to the country’s international ambitions and even territorial integrity. To begin with, by redirecting the country’s focus back to the coast and away from the South China Sea maritime frontiers, it seeks to strategically distract Beijing in an already vulnerable geopolitical theater at a time of heightened competition and overlapping claims. In a certain way, it is specific iteration of the ‘Reverse Brzezinski’ theorem first postulated this summer in that it creates a US-sponsored ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ dilemma for Beijing. Not only that, but the US has a long-term ‘defensive’ goal of strategic economic diversification away from China and towards the ASEAN countries. To explain, the US understands that the complex and intimate level of economic interdependence is a vulnerability that constraints itself from more aggressive actions against China. It also wants to create a buffer belt of anti-Chinese states in ASEAN. Thus, it seeks to marry these two goals together by finding ways for Western businesses to relocate from China to Vietnam, for example. It remains to be seen, but if the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ stretches on indefinitely, as EuroMaidan seemed to do, it is only a matter of time before some Western businesses make high-profiled exits from Hong Kong in favor of locales further south. This is but a small development in a very long-term game, but the general idea should be grasped by the reader, and this probable trend is something to monitor going forward.

The hype caused by the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is expected to spread not only to coastal China (as explained previously), but further afield and deeper into the country. Specifically, the US would like to see its pro-separatist policies in Tibet and Xinjiang energized by this movement, hoping that its proxy ‘activists’ take to the streets of Lhasa and Urumqi with umbrellas and plastic wrap themselves. By deflecting the non-lethal crowd control tactics of the Chinese authorities, they too can provoke an escalation that may tragically result in unintended civilian casualties. In fact, looking at it another way, the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is the first time that the US’ destabilization campaigns have penetrated the Heihe-Tengchong Line. This geographical division divides the country into roughly two geographically equal parts, but with the West having about 6% of the population and the East, the other 94%. Ideally for America, if destabilization can be coordinated on both sides of the Heihi-Tengchong Line between Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang (not only by their American overseers, but by collaborationist and unwitting domestic organizers within China), then this would be a partial fulfilment of America’s strategic warfare against China, throw Beijing off balance, and reorient the overall Asian initiative against China’s favor. Accordingly, this scenario represents a terrifyingly realistic nightmare for the Communist Party, hence the seriousness with which they are regarding the ‘Umbrella Revolution’.

Between Two Chairs

Thus, an analysis of Beijing’s response to the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ takes on even more heightened importance than previously thought, since the movement, as has been argued, could be the spark initiating a larger separatist and anti-government push all throughout the country. With the activists having neutralized all non-lethal methods of crowd control by the authorities through their umbrellas and plastic wrap, the government now stands between two chairs, to quote a Russian saying, where neither capitulation nor escalation is preferable. Thus, as was remarked in Part I, China has opted to wait and see how the movement develops, hoping that the majority of Hong Kong’s citizens which oppose the destabilization will demonstrate their opposition to the Color Revolution and fizzle the event out. This, however, is fraught with risk and could drastically backfire, although in the present circumstances, it may be the only reasonable approach of the country’s leadership at the moment.

As the New York Times noted in the above-referenced hyperlink, by choosing such a strategy, the government is effectively ceding the momentum to the movement, which could result in its exponential expansion. Nonetheless, if the Chinese authorities use this extra time to arrest the core and cohorts behind the Color Revolution attempt, then it can adeptly eliminate this threat by leaving only a mass of peaceful and confused civilians sitting around without subversive orders. The government does appear to be making moves in this direction, as the newspaper also reports that it is tracking and monitoring the cell phone activity of certain activists, likely in an attempt to locate and arrest the covert ringleaders (not the red-herring and media-iconic strawmen like Joshua Wong).

Beijing’s method of dealing with the crisis also carries with it another risk, namely that the pro-government crowds that it expects to gather could in the long run turn out to be dangerous in their own right. For example, although they may be useful in mitigating the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and saving Hong Kong’s stability, in the future they could gather on their own (using the connections acquired during their previous activity) to act autonomously and without Beijing’s blessing. This could take the form of extreme and widely broadcasted nationalist protests pertaining to the South China Sea controversy that could disrupt delicate Chinese diplomacy during a future crisis. Of course, the greater question is the extent that China can monitor and influence its citizens (both those that are pro- and anti-government), but this seemingly far-off threat could become a realistic possibility (or even one that could be directed and instigated by outside forces seeking to undermine China) sometime in the future. Basically, by opening the floodgates of activist civil society, China could also be unintentionally opening up a Pandora’s Box.

Concluding Thoughts

Hong Kong’s ‘Umbrella Revolution’ is undeniably a Western-orchestrated Color Revolution that seeks to exploit legitimate grievances to subversive and possibly secessionist effect. It is divided into two main groups, the dupes and the troops, with both of them having been brought together to form an anti-government mass in the middle of Hong Kong. By eliminating the effectiveness of the authorities’ non-lethal crowd control methods through cheap and readily available umbrellas and plastic wrap, they have pressed the government to resort to near-lethal force and rubber bullets if the activists follow through on their occupation threats. Although engineered to create a social contagion to rip through coastal China and the ethnic periphery, the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ succeeds if it can merely create the perception of another Tiananmen Square. Thus, Beijing is faced with a near intractable dilemma in how to proceed, hence its tentative ‘wait and see’ approach. This is, however, but a temporary breather, and both the anti-government activists and the legitimate authorities are likely bracing for what seems to be an inevitable escalation (protester-provoked) that could very well climax in catastrophe.

Reposts are welcomed with reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW and/or The Greanville Post.

Andrew Korybko is a political analyst, journalist and a regular contributor to several online journals, as well as a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People's Friendship University of Russia.

Appendix:

How Western TV is covering (and distorting) the truth behind these events.

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Imperial Mind Tricks: “Remember Pearl Harbor”, “Never Forget 9/11”, “Putin Did It”

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Pearl Harbor: The USS Virginia foundering. One of several capital ships attacked by Japanese aviation on 7 December 1941. US policy had made the attack almost certain.

“Remember Pearl Harbor” was the mantra used to enlist the US population in the imperial war in the Pacific. The US triumphantly succeeded in bringing out the Japanese imperial force in the military conflict by squeezing Japan with trade embargo, war propaganda and military provocations when it became obvious that the interests of the Japanese empire collided with its own.

There were many common threads between the Japanese empire and the US empire. Both were vehemently anti-communist, colonial and militaristic. There just couldn’t be two capitalist empires in the Pacific. The immediate US actions after the war—the war which was supposed to fight off the imperial Japanese—clearly indicate that the US was there to dominate the Pacific: the devastating Korean War aimed to kill off communist forces from the peninsula resulted in the deaths of 1/4 of the Korean population, US colonial policies against Pacific nations and beyond, and commencement of the Cold War with USSR and its allies.

Hollywood has made many movies about Pearl Harbor. From Here to Eternity, a famous book, taken to the screen with a stellar cast, provided the plot for one of the industry's biggest blockbusters. This is the poster for the French market. A prestigious film, the real backdrop for the story is the American soldiers' reaction to "Japanese treachery." This is the way the culture absorbs and replicates the official narratives.

The US nuked Japan to state who was the top dog in the Pacific and beyond. After the war the two empires became one. The US establishment utilized willing Japanese war criminals in shaping the trajectory of post WW2 Japan within the US imperial framework. Today, the phrase “remember Pearl Harbor” is used to keep the US Pacific ally under control, while justifying its imperial trajectory across the globe.

Now, such an angle also helps us see 9/11 from a fresh perspective. All the unanswered questions surrounding the event, the use of the event to start a string of colonial wars against the Middle East, the use of the event to introduce draconian laws against the US population and so on delineate the nature of the imperial trajectory.

Most of us avoid talking about 9/11 without following the narratives provided by the establishment because the topic has been stigmatized as “conspiracy” and it has become an industry independent from the historical context of colonial wars, capitalist expansion and loss of civil liberties. However, it is clear that the world is suffering as a result of actions that followed the event—as 1 out of 100 people become refugees, while millions are killed by the US backed colonial wars, which have destroyed many countries in the name of “democracy”, “freedom” and “justice”.

I mentioned “remember Pearl Harbor” because recently I was told to remember it when I mentioned the dropping of nuclear bombs on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One would like to hope that nuclear incineration of a few hundred thousand innocent civilians would be condemned without any attempt for a justification. However, the US school system still teaches the children that the decision to massacre so many people was necessary to end the war. Of course, such a position represents racism, American exceptionalism and colonial mentality, and it is successfully refuted by many reputable scholars and journalists as well as testimonies by US military officials at the time of the events. By the time nuclear bombs were dropped, the Japanese government was seeking ways to end the war. It was totally unnecessary for the stated purpose, however, it functioned as an unimaginably gruesome live human experiment, a threat against communist powers and collective punishment against any imperial competitor which gets in the way of the US empire building. If you or your family members are not familiar with the accurate version of the event, I highly recommend reading works by Gar Alperovitz and others (1).

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY CARRIED THE NARROW AMERICAN VERSION OF HISTORY, WRAPPED IN PERSONAL DRAMA. The film's poster for the Italian market. Every region had its own marketing program, and the film was widely distributed throughout Asia, too. Many other Hollywod films presented the same poit of view. Only by the 1980s and 1990s, when Japan was seen as a reliable vassal state well integrated into the American imperialist system and expected to help contain China, were films permitted to incorporate a more balanced view of events, in some cases even presenting the Japanese in a sympathetic light.

But to say the least, I was not alive in 1941. By the time I was born (1968) Japan was firmly in the hands of the US empire, violently repressing the segment of the Japanese population which stood against Japan’s complicity in the US militarism. So can you see where those people stand when they tell you to “remember Pearl Harbor”? It is the voice of the US empire chastising any element that goes outside of the imperial framework of colonialism, corporatism and militarism.

In the same way, I see people saying “remember 9/11”, “never forget 9/11” and so on. But 9/11 regularly happens in Yemen today at the hands of the US led coalition (2). Countless 9/11s have happened in Syria, which have killed 1/2 million Syrians, inflicted by the US backed terrorists (3). Incidentally, those terror groups include associates of Al Qaeda, the original 9/11 attackers. The US establishment is breaking its law in giving material support to terror groups, turning its own military forces into an auxiliary of Al Qaeda forces (4)(5). And speaking of the origin, Osama Bin Ladin was a US backed “freedom fighter” in Afghanistan. The US embarked on a deadly proxy war against socialist Afghanistan, and in the process, they created a justification for the the highly lucrative war on terror as well. In that sense, no matter where the truth lies, there is something to the claim that 9/11 was an inside job. One can observe that the US capitalist hegemony is actively shaping the imperial hierarchy by any means necessary.

But there is much more. There have been over 10,000 victims of many 9/11s inflicted by the US backed Ukrainian coup government in the Russian-speaking eastern region of Ukraine. Those who are still parroting the US propaganda lies about Ukraine, or Crimea (6), please do watch Oliver Stone’s excellent documentary Ukraine On Fire (7). It meticulously describes how the CIA fomented Nazi forces in the region, which had become vital in the US backed coup against the democratically elected deposed government. Furthermore, in 2017, details of protester killings—which were quickly blamed on the elected Ukraine government by the media—were revealed by Georgian snipers (8). In the testimonies, they claimed that they were ordered to shoot anyone to cause chaos at the scene (8). Shockingly, they also stated that they were under command of an American military officer (8). The US has been arming and training Ukraine military, continuing to add numbers of victims in Ukraine. Those people who have contracted the Putin panic, an epidemic spewing hatred against anything Russian, need to recognize the gravity of the matter. Our species has suffered deaths and destruction of imperial violence for some time.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ow, we have those same people in the west who have promoted the colonial savageries of murder and destruction against “others” telling us that Russians are destroying our “democracy”. For those who do not know the history, Russia was subjected to political and economic intervention by the US in the 90s. The US backed Boris Yeltsin—the US establishment openly bragged about him being their agent—even attacked his own parliament with tanks killing many officials. Swarmed by the US neoliberal restructuring forces, the country’s socialist fabric was ripped apart to be sold away. A prominent anti-imperial historian Luciana Bohne summarizes the era succinctly:

“The Neoliberal Great Terror," known as economic “shock therapy.” Between 1992 and 2000, there were between five and six million “surplus deaths,” 170,000 people were murdered, the GDP fell by 50% (more than during German occupation in WW II), 70 million fell into poverty, death rates increased by 60%, like countries at war, life expectancy decreased in males to 57, abortions increased spectacularly, birth rates fell , , , suicides, tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria (eradicated in the 1930s) . . . In short (and this was supposed to be a short post) Russia, under “shock-therapy” “reforms” became the site of an economic genocide.”

It's worth reading about what Luciana has to say about the century long US intervention against Russia (9).

The moral bankruptcy of the imperial media —mirroring the DNA of the capitalist system itself at its most malignant—is evident to anyone who understand even a bit of history.

Let’s put the dynamics in a perspective here regarding the “Evil Russian Empire”. Russia’s economy is about the size of South Korea. Its military spending is about 1/12 of the NATO forces. The US continues to encroach on Russia with hundreds of military bases. The US has been supporting right-wing coups around Russia despite its promise not to expand NATO forces. It continues to economically pressure Russia with embargoes. Russia is a geographically huge country with rich natural resources. It is a strategic ally of the emerging economic giant China. What is the US doing here? The empire has been waiting for Russia to jump on its Pearl Harbor or a 9/11, isn’t it? But after seeing what the US hegemony does to a country like Russia, why would anyone bite the bait?

Then we've got this insane Putin panic epidemic, which is nothing more than a product of psychopathic delusional projection by the establishment that has been hacking, intervening, destroying, hijacking and stealing other countries’ political processes for generations. Two years of allegations, accusations and speculations have not provided any proof of the Russian President stealing the election. The same thing can be said about the 12 Russians indicted recently (10), (11). The government’s own intelligence officer, former CIA analyst Ray MacGovern, is warning the people that the alleged “Russian hacking” is unfounded while speculating that it is most likely the work of its own agency (12).

In any case, I am rather surprised that many people are buying such an obvious scheme of imperialism. What the US establishment is concocting is a classic momentum heading toward a war described eloquently by Smedley Butler in War is a Racket (13). It is a tactic of fascist manipulation described by Nazi war criminal Herman Goering:

“the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

According to how history has unfolded what comes next are millions of horrible deaths and destruction.

We have been living in an empire that requires great sacrifices among the oppressed. There isn’t a future for such a scheme that stands on a pile of lies and deceptions. Every action to cover up a lie confirms the lie. The empire has been attempting to keep order by force. They’ve hired hitmen, many of them. But there is a time when the interests of the armed forces and the rich men collide in propping up the hierarchy. The late stage capitalism, as gruesome and atrocious as it is, isn’t entirely about protection racket, extortion, murder and theft. At some point, capitalists must fight among themselves for their own survival as their economic sphere suffers from their own violence and greed. This is what we are facing today. We are looking at the empire disintegrating as its economic sphere is losing its power and legitimacy while "enemies" of the empire are gaining a sphere of influence. Corporate political parties, war industry, government agencies and the rest of the imperialists are struggling to assert their own interests within the imperial framework of corporatism, colonialism and militarism, while picking fights with Russia, China, Iran and any country that defies the imperial hegemony, desperately seeking ways to matastasize for their survival. But the entire imperial order is collapsing.

We must not be a voice for the capitalist lords nor for the hitmen. This is a time we must reach out to people like us in Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and other peoples of the planet, and people like us in our communities, with messages of peace, sharing and mutual respect. The corporate power is already embarking on colonizing the momentum (see the work done by the Wrong Kind of Green on the non-profit industrial complex, for instance, 14). We the people of the planet somehow must assert our desire to bring about a new era for our species beyond the sufferings and deaths of neo-feudalism. You might feel isolated. But we are everywhere on this planet. We want to live as brothers and sisters. We want to live in harmony with our planet. We share our perspectives and facts for a better tomorrow for our children and their children. This is an urgent challenge of our time. Peace to us all.

END NOTES

1. The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It

By Gar Alperovitz

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/

2. The US Led War on Yemen

By Stephen Gowans

https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/11/20/the-us-led-war-on-yemen/

3. Washington’s Long War on Syria (A video from the book tour)

By Stephen Gowans

https://youtu.be/I7hWHrYdl00

4. The De Facto US/Al Qaeda Alliance

By Robert Parry

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/29/the-de-facto-usal-qaeda-alliance/

5. Syria - U.S. Moves To Protect Al-Qaeda And ISIS in Daraa

By Moon of Alabama

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/syria-us-moves-to-protect-al-qaeda-and-isis-in-daraa.html

6. Is it True That “Russia is Aggressive”?

by RICK STERLING

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/15/is-it-true-that-russia-is-aggressive/

7. Ukraine on Fire

By Oliver Stone

https://vimeo.com/252426896

8. The Hidden Truth About Ukraine, Kiev Euromaidan Snipers Kill Demonstrators. Italian Documentary Bombshell Evidence

Cheap Dignity of the Ukrainian Revolution

By Oriental Review

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-italian-documentary-bombshell-evidence-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators/5619684

9. LUCIANA BOHNE: TALK TO ME ABOUT RUSSIAGATE, ha!

https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/07/28/luciana-bohne-talk-to-me-about-russiagate-ha/

10. Clinging to Collusion: Why Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in the Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’

By Joe Lauria

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/14/clinging-to-collusion-why-evidence-will-probably-never-be-produced-in-the-indictments-of-russian-agents/

11. No Evidence In Mueller's Indictment Of 12 Russians - Release Now May Sabotage Upcoming Summit

By Moon of Alabama

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/no-evidence-in-muellers-indictment-of-12-russians-release-now-may-sabotage-upcoming-summit.html#more

12. Did DID [CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate) Do the ‘Russian Hacking’? Circumstantial evidence points in that direction, as Ray explains in this 16-minute video.

https://youtu.be/q75RKjfJ18M

13. War Is A Racket

By Smedley Butler

https://archive.org/stream/WarIsARacket/WarIsARacket_djvu.txt

14. PURPOSE GOES TO LATIN AMERICA

by Cory Morningstar with Forrest Palmer

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2018/08/08/purpose-goes-to-latin-america/

About the Author

Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Bookstein Projects. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 and 2016 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York.

HIROYUKI HAMADA—As we face the impending risk of nightmarish nuclear wars and climate change, our predicament is as obvious as the illegitimacy of the system imposing its framework of corporatism, colonialism and militarism on peoples as colonial wars, police violence, mass incarceration, austerity measures, elimination of legal protection and human rights violations. And the ones who are domesticated in the gated communities of privilege and exceptionalism are deprived of their humanity to feel the pain of “others” and their essential capacity to explore what it is to live as humans.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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This Is the Real, Americanized, Nazi-Dominated Ukraine

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Azov battalion thugs: in the new bizarre Ukraine created by Washington, these Nazis are also supported by Jewish oligarchs with dual Israeli/Ukraine nationality.

ERIC ZUESSE | 07.08.2018 | SECURITY / WAR AND CONFLICT | WORLD / EUROPE

Under Obama the neocons set up a neonazi regime in Ukraine and most Americans simply don't know about it or care.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]uch important reality as is shown in this picture is virtually unpublishable in mainstream US ‘news’media, because US ‘news’media need to deceive their public about the most important international realities — such as that the US imposed upon Ukraine a nazi regime against Russia, and the US now lies to accuse Russia for doing what Russia must do in order to protect itself from the US nazi regime next-door.

This picture is among many which were originally published in the excellent 4 July 2018 article by Asa Winstanley at The Electronic Intifada. His article was headlined "Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine”. That article focuses upon Israel’s strong support for the racist-fascist (or ideologically nazi) Government of Ukraine. (Click onto it to see the documentation — it’s Israeli nazis, against Russians, not against Jews, though they’re allied with ones that are against both, which is why the US did this — aiming to conquer ultimately Russia.)

Israel does this as part of the US-led coalition in support of the current racist-fascist Government of Ukraine, which Government was installed in a bloody coup that US President Barack Obama started planning by no later than 2011 and started operationalizing on 1 March 2013 and carried out in February 2014 under the cover of US State Department and CIA-generated anti-corruption mass demonstrations on Kiev’s Maidan square, but some of whose US-funded snipers have already gone public (though not in US 'news'media) describing how they were hired to do it, and how they did it.

How, then, can anybody believe the US ‘news’media, which hide these clear realities, instead of ever having reported them to the duped American public?

The US Government’s anti-Russian sanctions, and its NATO exercises with US missiles and tanks on and near Russia’s borders, are based upon the US government’s lies, not upon the truths that this photo represents and which will here be explained.

In US ‘news’media, the overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected government was ‘the Maidan Revolution’, or ‘the 2014 Ukrainian revolution’, not Obama’s coup in Ukraine. They lie blatantly, and they’ll never be truthful about their having done it. Thus, George Friedman, the founder and owner of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor, called it “the most blatant coup in history,” but only when speaking to a Russian publication — and, then, when he got flak from the US regime for having said that, he denied he had said it. The lies are that mandatory.

Supernationalist Biletsky

The person at the center of this photo above, is Andrei Biletsky (or “Beletsky”), whose Battalion is directly armed by US taxpayers (i.e., by the US Government). He has publicly stated the Battalion’s and his own ideology, as being “socialism” defined as “negation of democracy”; “racism” as being defined as “against Semites and the sub-humans they use”; and finally as being defined as affirmation of “imperialism” so as “to create a Third Empire [a Ukrainian Third Reich]”; and, here are just a few excerpts from his ideological statement, which is lifted from Hitler but with “Ukrainian” replacing “German”:

Ukrainian Social Nationalism

The main idea of mystical Social Nationalism is its creation, consisting not of piles of separate individuals united mechanistically into something called “Ukrainian” and the presence of Ukrainian passport, but instead a single National biological organism, which will consist of a new people — a physically, intellectually and spiritually more highly developed people. From the mass of individuals will thus come forth the nation, and the faint start of modern man: Superman.

Symbol is presented here of the inverted Nazi Wolfsangel sign, the same symbol that’s behind Beletsky in that photo just above here.

Social Nationalism is based on a number of fundamental principles that clearly distinguish it from other right-wing movements. This triad is: socialism, racism, imperialism.

I. Socialism. We fight to create a harmonious national community. …

On the principle of socialism follows our complete negation of democracy and liberalism, which generate rozbytthya Nation isolated on gray power unit and a crowd of famous personalities (ochlocracy). Instead, we put forward the idea of national solidarity, the natural hierarchy and discipline, as the basis of our new society. Not a “democratic vote” crowd, who cannot give councils to their own life, much less to the life of the State, but instead natural selection of the best representatives of the Nation — born-leaders as Ukraine’s leaders. …

II. Racism. All our nationalism is nothing — just a castle in the sand — without reliance on the foundation of blood Races. … If Ukrainian spirituality, culture and language are unique, it is only because our racial nature is unique. If Ukraine will become paradise on earth, it is only because our Race turned it so.

Accordingly, treatment of our national body should start with racial purification of the Nation. … The historic mission of our Nation, a watershed in this century, is thus to lead the White peoples of the world in the final crusade for their survival. It is to lead the war against Semites and the sub-humans they use.

III. Imperialism. We change the slogans “Independent Ukraine,” “United Ukraine” and “Ukrainians,” by an imperial nation that has a long history. … The task of the present generation is to create a Third Empire [a Ukrainian Third Reich] — Great Ukraine. … Any living organism in nature seeks to expand, reproduce itself, increase its numbers. This law is universal. … Suspension means extinction in nature — death. The slowdown in population growth leads to biological death of Nations, the suspension of political expansion, and decline of the state. … If we are strong, we take what is ours by right and even more, we will build a superpower empire — Great Ukraine. …

Social Nationalism raises to shield all old Ukrainian Aryan values forgotten in modern society. Only their recovery and implementation by a group of fanatical fighters can we lead to the final victory of European civilization in the world struggle.

This stand is right, and cannot be otherwise!

Glory to Ukraine!

Andrei Beletsky

Banderista rally. Stepan Bandera was a prominent Nazi collaboratrs in World War II.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US-imposed regime has even perpetrated massacres against Ukrainians who speak Russian, and insists upon conquering or else killing them all.

This is being supported by the taxpayers of both the US and Israel, as well as of Netherlands, Poland, and other US allies who have contributed to Beletsky’s Azov Battalion, and who are funding Ukraine’s Government, which Obama installed in 2014.

Here are America’s taxpayer-financed Ukrainian nazis teaching children in today’s Ukrainian public schools, and even honoring and displaying a picture of Adolf Hitler’s face. Barack Obama was a liberal, but he was also a secret racist (against Russians) fascist; and this Ukrainian Government would not exist if the prior, non-fascist and non-racist Government of Ukraine had not been overthrown and replaced by him.

For as long as America’s Democratic Party continues supporting and endorsing this Obama-installed nazi Government in Ukraine, America’s Republican Party will continue to be able to call this support by the US Government, of nazism in our time, bipartisan — because it is — but bipartisan unity on an issue doesn’t mean that the policy is correct, nor even that it isn’t both racist and fascist: nazi. It means merely that the media continue supporting it, instead of exposing it. They keep lying about it.

American ‘news’media keep saying that if Trump were to condemn and reject the government of Ukraine, he’d then be anti-American or even un-American. With rare exceptions, America’s media consistently support the US-installed Ukrainian regime. Because those exceptions are so rare, the American public, and the publics in US-allied countries, also support it. They’ve been, and are, deceived.

The Hill newspaper once was courageous enough to post an exceptional article “The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda” in which the links documented that on a thoroughly bipartisan conservative-‘progressive’ basis, the US Congress is essentially united in support of the Obama-created nazi regime in Ukraine. That is a grim situation, but it’s undeniably true, and it remains hidden instead of reported in American ‘news’media.

And that’s why the dumb coward Trump continues Obama’s policies like this, instead of condemns and cancels them — it’s why he doesn’t blame Obama for having stolen Ukraine, instead of blame Putin for having ‘stolen’ Crimea. If Trump really wanted to expose the lies of America’s ‘news’media, that’s the first of Obama’s hoaxes he would be exposing, directly to the American people, in a major address to the nation, accompanied with video clips showing the actual evidence, which would shock the nation and begin the real debate, which America’s aristocracy have been blocking.

With media like that, how can there ever be democracy in America? Will World War III be able to be avoided?

This article is being submitted to all US media, but it’s not likely to be published by many (if any).

So, please send this article along to all your friends, in order that this drop of truth, in the potentially explosive bucket of US ‘news’media lies about Russia, will have a chance to achieve some impact. The situation is basically similar about America’s attempt to take over Syria, but the more easily exposed lies are the ones about Ukraine; and the links here document those — which are sufficient to indicate the reality of today’s US Government: a Government which doesn’t actually represent the American people.

This is the nonfictional, historical, version of George Orwell’s fictional novel, 1984. It is happening, right now.

WILLFUL BLINDNESS Except for the Donbass in the East, the neonazis can be found everywhere in the new Ukraine, as they do not attempt to hide their beliefs and are happy to brag about it. It takes wilfull blindness on the part of US media—with many Jewish journalists— to ignore such a conspicuous reality. Not to mention the silence and dissimulation about this issue in Israel itself.

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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HUMAN RIGHTS FRAUD FROM UKRAINE TO NICARAGUA

KNOWLEDGE IS A WEAPON. ARM YOURSELF.

The Kremlin Playbook

The Real ‘Russian Playbook’ Is Written in English

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution redux: Washington tries to destabilise China again

“Color Revolution”: Hong Kong’s Umbrellas are “Made in USA”

The Hidden Hand of the ‘Umbrella Revolution’:

Part I

Reposts are welcomed with reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW and/or The Greanville Post.

Appendix:

The battle against the Big Lie killing the world will not be won by you just reading this article. It will be won when you pass it on to at least 2 other people, requesting they do the same.

Imperial Mind Tricks: “Remember Pearl Harbor”, “Never Forget 9/11”, “Putin Did It”

This Is the Real, Americanized, Nazi-Dominated Ukraine