Wednesday February 20, 2019
US President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisor John Bolton appears dead set on resuming his decades-long stand-off with Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, hinting that Washington-backed regime change may be in the offing.
“The Ortega regime has sentenced three farm leaders to 550 years in prison for their roles in protests in 2018, where Ortega’s police forces reportedly killed 300 activists. As President Trump said Monday, Ortega’s days are numbered and the Nicaraguan people will soon be free,” the national security advisor to the US president tweeted on Wednesday.
The leaders of anti-Ortega protests were given jail terms this week, after they were implicated in the deaths of four policemen and a teacher during a shootout last July.
The Central American nation has been rocked by unrest since April last year, with protesters demanding the resignation of Sandinista party leader Ortega, who has been president since 2007, and convincingly won another five-year term in 2016.
read on...
Wednesday February 20, 2019
In an astonishing Washington Times article this week, unnamed Trump Administration officials (who may or may not be called "John Bolton") are claiming that Iran, which has been battling al-Qaeda in Syria for nearly four years, is actually secretly allied with al-Qaeda and therefore Iran can be attacked with no further Congressional authorization. Are we seeing the old "babies thrown from incubators" lies resurrected to gin up a war with Iran?
read on...
Wednesday February 20, 2019
In recent times the international media, including many who promised to “resist” the dangerous commander-in-chief Donald Trump, have been awash with stories about Nicolas Maduro blocking US “humanitarian aid” reaching Venezuela. Maduro is said to have even blocked a bridge in his desperation to starve his own people (see, for example, CNN, CBC, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, ABC, Bloomberg, The Guardian). A constant flow of stories such as this have served to establish a narrative of a dictator blocking a benevolent US government from helping its desperate people. Something must be done!
read on...
Tuesday February 19, 2019
The recent Warsaw and Munich summits have proven disastrous to Trump's foreign policy as pursued by his neocon top advisors. They were supposed to line up for war on Iran and further isolation of Russia and China, yet none of the war bugles sounded. Have the Europeans had enough of "US global dominance"? Geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo joins today's Liberty Report...
read on...
Tuesday February 19, 2019
“Today, President Trump presented Venezuela’s military officers with a choice — work for a democratic future for all Venezuelans or see the financial circle close for their families and loved ones,” tweeted US National Security Advisor John Bolton today following a Miami speech by the president.
read on...
Tuesday February 19, 2019
Taking over the annual Munich security conference, the Atlantic Council has come out with a declaration of principles that seeks to legitimize the rogue behavior of the West after the Cold War as a "rules-based" world order.
For almost three decades now, Washington and its numerous clients and allies have insisted they were only upholding a “rules-based international order” against those who seek to challenge it, be it “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran or great powers such as Russia and China. In the process, this self-styled “international community” trampled actual rules and laws to sanction, bomb, invade, occupy, and regime-change countries that stood in its way – while claiming to be acting in the interests of the peace, democracy and commerce.
Back in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood up at the Munich Security Conference in Germany and denounced this behavior, arguing that the US has “overstepped its national borders in every way,” imposing “economic, political, cultural and educational policies” on other nations while holding itself exempt from any rules and limitations.
This past weekend, the Atlantic Council – a think-tank backed by the US, NATO and other allied governments – used the platform of the Munich conference to announce a “declaration of principles” that explicitly seeks to revise the international order along the very lines Putin criticized, essentially establishing its signatories as the judge, jury and executioner of international law as they write it.
read on...
Tuesday February 19, 2019
In the year 2001, what ought to be called the most controversial legislation in the history of the United States was rapidly passed through Congress with few objections. The Patriot Act was an almost entirely unconstitutional expansion of American governmental power, all of which could be and subsequently has been directed against American citizens who were otherwise entitled to constitutional protections of their lives, liberties and property. Enacted into law just two months shy of the ten year anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Patriot Act authorised infringements on the civil liberties of Americans that would make many former Soviet KGB officers blush.
In spite of these epoch making changes to the birth rights of all Americans, Congress was given precious little time to debate the Patriot Act, the corporate media was uncritical of Patriot Act and those who dared to speak out against the Patriot Act were scarcely given any meaningful air time in an age when the internet did exist, but when social media as we know it today, did not.
Making matters more frightening was the fact that had George W. Bush not governed alongside a Congress in which he knew he could gather support for his unconstitutional proposals, he would have likely used executive power to impose the terms of the Patriot Act by declaring a national emergency. The same President Bush that suspended the writ of habeas corpus in order to fill the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp with prisoners would have almost certainly not hesitated to impose the conditions of the Patriot Act on the American people single-handedly, had it come to that. Luckily for him though, Congress did what he wanted and no anti-Congressional executive action was required.
read on...
Monday February 18, 2019
Sen. Rubio (R-FL) travelled down to the Colombia/Venezuela border over the weekend to threaten a US invasion of Venezuela if a US "aid" convoy is not allowed to cross the bridge. Rubio's sudden concern for the humanitarian situation in Venezuela smacks of hypocrisy, as he supported all US sanctions that have made life for Venezuelans miserable. This is "regime change" masking as humanitarian concern. Will the neocons succeed?
read on...
Monday February 18, 2019
It’s late 2002, early 2003 again. This time, instead of the evil (former CIA asset) Saddam Hussein posing a dire threat to America, it’s Iran and Hezbollah stationed in Venezuela.
Throw in the perennial enemy of a post-colonial Caribbean, Castro’s Cuba, and we have the makings for yet another military intervention on our hands, according to Sec. State Pompeo.
Let’s talk about the important remarks made recently by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying how (#Iran-backed) Hezbollah has an active role in #Venezuela, as part of a “cocaine corridor.” pic.twitter.com/b05l4GwDwb
— RezaGhebresi (@RGhebresi) February 8, 2019
There is little evidence of any hanky panky vis-à-vis Hezbollah in Venezuela. If there is indeed a Hezbollah presence in Caracas or anywhere else in South America, this would be quite natural given the practice of international diplomacy. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government and representative of Shia Muslims in Lebanon. Like hundreds of other political parties and governments, it has a military or paramilitary component.
read on...
Monday February 18, 2019
In a fitting legacy for my friend Walter Jones, Jr. who passed away last week, the US House made history by voting in favor of H.J.Res. 37, a resolution “Directing the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.” As George O’Neill wrote in the American Conservative magazine this week, the historic 248-177 victory for a bill demanding the end of the US participation in the nearly five year Saudi war of aggression “reflects how many hearts and minds were influenced by the late Congressman's tireless efforts.”
read on...
