As a history student years ago I remember our teacher explaining how past events are linked to what happens in the future. He told us human behaviour always dictates that events will repeat in a similar way as before. I remember we studied 20th century history and discussed World War I and the links to World War II.
Gilad Atzmon The Jewish world is outraged this morning [14/04/19] with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who apparently said he believes the crimes of the Holocaust can be forgiven, but not forgotten. The far-right leader made the comments on Thursday night at a meeting with evangelical pastors in Rio de Janeiro. “We can forgive, but we cannot forget. That quote is mine. Those that forget their past are sentenced not to have a future,” Bolsonaro said, adding that actions are needed for the Holocaust not to be repeated. Bolsonaro is probably not the most forgiving person around. He freely spews misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, and racist statements. However, he is a devout Christian and forgiveness is central to Christianity of all denominations. Forgiveness is not an ‘option’ as far as Christianity is concerned, it is actually a must. Forgiveness in Christianity is a manifestation of submission to Christ. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not …
Dr. Ana L. Scheer On April 11th, the majority of Parliament of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, upon request of the three parliamentary groups: the Christian Democratic Party, the Socialist Party and the Liberal Party, voted for the proposal of the reinstatement of visas for Albanian citizens due to the growing criminality as well as the increase of the illegal emigration in Holland. Yesterday, on April 17th, the Parliament of the Netherlands voted in favor of the reinstatement of visas for Albania proceeding with the formal request for the approval of the EU institution to implement such a decision. This came as a big blow for Albania’s government which most likely will face another refusal from Brussels on the invitation of opening the negotiations for the EU membership. Whilst there has been no official response by the Albanian government on this decision, the opposition and the Albanian political spectrum was quick to blame premier Edi Rama and his government for this grievous action by the Parliament of the Netherlands. “This is a harsh punishment for …
James O’Neill Reacting to the arrest and detention in British custody of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that the arrest confirms “that no one is above the law.” This was a phrase repeated multiple times by members of her government. It is, or ought to be, a fundamental principle of a society based upon the rule of law, that this is indeed the case. If an individual, or group of individuals, transgress upon the law then they ought to be held accountable. That ought to apply regardless of that person’s status. We know of course that this is an ideal not always applied. There is ample sociological evidence to that effect. A related principle is that a person is presumed innocent until they either plead guilty or are found guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction applying the law to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. Whether or not Mr Assange will ever receive a fair trial is a moot point. There has been a veritable torrent …
Edward Curtin “About suffering they were never wrong,” wrote W. H. Auden in the poem “Musée Des Beaux Arts.” These lines occurred to me last week when all eyes were focused on the brutal British seizure of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. No one should have been surprised by this despicable spectacle carried out in the noonday light for all to see, for the British government has not served as America’s jailer for the past seven years for no reason. It doesn’t take x-ray eyes to see that the British and the Moreno government in Ecuador are twin poodles on the American leash. After a phony display of judicial fairness, the British, as required by their American bosses, will dispatch Assange to the United States so he can be further punished for the crime of doing journalism and exposing war crimes. Assange has suffered mightily for American sins. The Anglo-American torturers know how to squeeze their victims to make old men out of the young. Abu Ghraib was no aberration. The overt …
Eric Zuesse Unlike America under Donald Trump, who is proudly psychopathic and went so far as to blurt out that his followers would accept his leadership even if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, the European Union is so rabidly hypocritical (Trump would probably call it “politically correct”) that its leaders routinely moralize about ‘human rights and democracy’ even while their governments indiscriminately rob and slaughter people in foreign lands (as will be documented here). EU leaders assist U.S.-led atrocities while using prettier language to describe their alleged motivation for these policies. Though the U.S. Government also occasionally employs such verbal sucker-punches (insincere or “politically correct” rhetoric), such moralizing is now the exception for the U.S. Government, and is no longer (as it had been under the immediately prior U.S. President, Barack Obama) the routine American practice — very much like the EU’s was, and still remains: such ‘idealistic’ hypocrisy. But even Obama wasn’t as hypocritical as EU leaders still are. The biggest difference between the U.S. and the EU is that, whereas …
Renee Parsons Reviewing AIPAC’s history since its 1963 creation reveals a consistently well organized campaign of manipulation and evasion of the US election law as one necessary ingredient to its invincible image on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Political Affairs Committee has long claimed it is not a political action committee, that they do not endorse candidates nor provide financial donations to political campaigns. As with all things involving AIPAC, there is another side to the story. As the result of a 1988 Sixty Minutes interview by Mike Wallace, it became clear that AIPAC had a long history of involvement in US electoral politics as it targeted non-AIPAC members of Congress for defeat with the use of “80 shell-front pro-Israel PACs.” Unfortunately, Wallace never inquired whether AIPAC was in compliance with the Federal Election Commission laws. It comes as no surprise to know they were not and continue to resist efforts at accountability or adhering to the standard rule of registering as a foreign entity. Soon after Sixty Minutes aired, a memo written by AIPAC’s …
Philip Roddis Do you know the Swedish Chief Prosecutor initially handling the allegations of rape against Julian Assange found no case to answer? Are you aware she was succeeded by Marianne Ny, who has pursued a legally dubious course? Have you read Assange’s detailed statement? Yesterday’s Guardian ran with Failure to extradite Assange to Sweden would endorse ‘rape culture’, say women’s groups. Four paragraphs in, it says: Sarah Green, co-director of End Violence Against Women, an alliance of more than 80 organisations, said Assange’s portrayal as a victim was an affront to rape survivors. “He’s always benefited from his cult hero status, painting himself as a victim and being very righteous. Yet this is about rape, it’s what he is accused of. It’s extremely serious.” This is about rape? Really? Here’s me thinking the pretext for his arrest a technicality on bail, with the unsealed extradition request from Virginia speaking of conspiring to crack a password; end of. Should Assange be extradited there’s no knowing, of course, what other charges may be added, including capital …
The US has been planning to have Julian Assange handed over for a longtime, that much is obvious. Mike Pence, the Vice President, was visiting Ecuador last year, notionally to discuss the Venezuela situation, and trade. But it was fairly obvious at the time, and even more so now, that they were discussing the details of Assange being handed over to UK authorities, and eventually extradited to the US. “Trade”, indeed.
With yesterdays arrest of Julian Assange, we thought it important to remember WHY he was in the Empire’s crosshairs. The video Collateral Murder is WikiLeaks’ most famous, most shocking release. Footage of US military personnel murdering civilians and journalists and laughing about it.
Gilad Atzmon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a decisive victory yesterday. He is likely to carry on to a fifth term in office. As of this morning, the right-wing bloc has a clear advantage of 65 seats (out of 120) over the centre/left parties and seems more likely to form a coalition. The meaning of yesterday’s election results are obvious and undeniable. The Israeli left is now marginal, verging on non-existent. The Israeli Labour party has been reduced to a miniature caricature, pretty much the size of Meretz, themselves a parody of left thinking. Needless to mention that these two parties are Zionist to the core. They deny the Palestinian right of return and believe in segregation between Jews and Arabs by means of a two-state solution. Netanyahu is, beyond doubt, the most sophisticated player in the Israeli political theatre. In the weekend he vowed to annex the West Bank Settlements. By performing this election ploy, he managed to completely obliterate his hard-line rivals on the right such as Bennett-Shaked’s New Right and even Zehut, …
This morning, officers of the Metropolitan police were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy by President Lenin Moreno. They proceeded to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and literally drag him out of the building.
The Brexit roller-coaster ploughs on unpredictably with moves by the House of Commons to block the ‘no deal’ Brexit that most Brexiters voted for. The media often brand this a ‘hardline’ position but this is misleading since this is the only option that delivers a clean exit from the EU, one of the two referendum options available. Anyone taking the temperature of views in Britain could be forgiven for thinking that Remainers and Brexiters inhabit different planets but why might this be the case?
Ivan Kesić Since March 19th, devastating floods swept across large areas of Iran, triggered by the heaviest downpours in many years. Heavy rainfall began two and a half weeks ago, overflowing rivers, washing away bridges, inundating houses and destroying infrastructural establishments in the northern, western and central parts of the country. According to the Iran Legal Medicine Organization, at least 62 people have so far been killed nationwide in the natural disaster so far, which has also forced tens of thousands of people, mostly in villages, to evacuate their homes and move to emergency shelters. Hundreds of people have also been airlifted from the affected regions. The flooding caused the destruction hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure in 24 out of Iran’s 31 provinces. At least 25,000 houses were completely destroyed, while another 60,000 sustained some form of damage. The Government of Iran declared a state of emergency in several provinces and cities, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani have urged officials to take full advantage of all available technical capacities …
Andre Vltchek Several years ago, the renowned linguist and thinker, Noam Chomsky, asked me, point blank, as we were working on our book: “On Western Terrorism – From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare”: Do you think it is possible that most of Europeans really don’t know about crimes their countries committed all over the world?” “They don’t know… They don’t want to know… They make sure that they will never know,” I replied. That Europe and North America have been constructed on hundreds of millions of corpses of, what George Orwell used to call, un-people, is fairly well established and proven fact. But somehow it never entered the sub-consciousness of the white race which is inhabiting what we now call the West, but also many parts of the ‘conquered’ world, from Latin America, to Africa and Asia. Horrors of the past are carefully softened by shock-absorbing academic jargon, when they are addressed at such institutions like Cambridge, Oxford or Sorbonne universities. Or they are belittled, even dismissed, by loud cheers and clicking of the glass, in …
Eric Zuesse If “far-right” or “nazi” refers to proponents of racism, capitalism, and dictatorship, then all of Israel’s Presidential candidates are nazis — not German ones, of course, not members of Hitler’s German (the original) Nazi Party and a dictatorship of and by Aryans against Jews, but instead Jewish nazis and a dictatorship of and by Jews against Palestinians. On April 6th, Joel Greenberg, of BBC Monitoring, headlined “Israel election: Who are the key candidates?” and he described each of the seven, and the proposals from each. Here are highlights from his descriptions: Benjamin Netanyahu is the only one who needs no introduction to foreign audiences: He is well-known to be a racist against Palestinians, and he is a strong supporter of corporate Israel, and of apartheid in which Palestinians are legally discriminated-against and in which Jews have the right to take Palestinian land and used it for new settlements by Jews. “During the election campaign, he has warned that his challengers would allow the creation of a Palestinian state, calling it a mortal threat …
Between the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia: Overview of the book by Paul L. Williams Antony C. Black On the hot summer morning of Aug. 2, 1980 a massive explosion ripped apart the main waiting room of the Bologna railway station. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds more injured. Though at first blamed on Italy’s legendary urban guerrillas, The Red Brigades, it soon emerged that the attack had, in fact, originated from within the ‘deep state’ of the Italian government itself. The full nature of this secret parallel state would only come to light a decade later when the Italian premier, Giulio Andreotti, under questioning from a special commission of inquiry, revealed the existence of arms caches stashed all around the country and which were at the disposal of an organization which later came to be identified as ‘Gladio’. The members of this group turned out to include not only hundreds of far-right figures in the intelligence, military, government, media, Church and corporate sectors, but a motley assortment of unreconstructed WW2 fascists, psychopaths and …
Michael Antony This week, appropriately beginning 1st April, Brexit descended into farce after merely being a two-year comedy of errors. In fact it went beyond farce and became more like one of those Shakespearian tragedies like King Lear where doomed tragic heroes begin behaving like clowns and demented court jesters. The doomed tragic hero in this case is the United Kingdom itself and its venerable (some would say senile) parliamentary system. Brexit had two toxic characteristics built into it. The people voted to leave the EU by a clear majority, but they elected a parliament that was 75% in favour of Remain. This is because of the class bias of the Brexit vote (the Remain chattering classes versus the Brexit deplorables.) This required a superhuman abnegation on the part of MPs to implement the will of the people when they thought the people had gone mad. Some MPs were capable of this spirit of intellectual self-sacrifice for democracy’s sake. Most were not and fought tooth and nail to stop Brexit or water it down to …
Yes, the latest research confirms that Venezuela is so rich in natural resources, that it could single-handedly satisfy all global demand for oil, for over 30 years. And it has much more than oil to offer, in its Orinoco basin and in other areas of the country.
But it is not all ‘about oil’; actually, far from it.
Viktors Domburs It is obvious, that if a person is planning his or her travelling through the Baltics, it is absolutely necessary to conform the movements with the schedule of military events. National police, of course, usually warns when you should be especially attentive and responsible on the road and what places you should not visit at all. Thus, you may start planning your unforgivable summer travelling in Latvia, being fully familiarized with the plans of the military. But it turns out not to be so simple. Openness and transparency are the declared principles of all NATO military activity. It is said that “many NATO exercises are open to partners beyond the Alliance. International organisations, including the European Union, are also invited to observe or participate in NATO exercises. As part of this commitment to transparency, NATO exercises are announced months in advance and published on: http://www.shape.nato.int/exercises. As for the Baltic States, they always keep the general NATO course and never challenge Alliance’s decisions. According to NATO’s homepage, numerous manoeuvres at national and multinational levels …
