FOOLISHNESS OF THE WEST

British Prime Minister, David Cameron

By Kwesi Pratt, Jnr.

What is the substantial difference between leaders of the West who led  a mass demonstration against extremism in Paris and the terrorists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack?

None whatsoever?

Indeed, if there are any differences they could not be substantial because both the terrorists and the Western leaders believe that if you disagree with them, you ought to be killed.

It was the leaders of the West who conspired to assassinate the duly elected Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba because he disagreed with them.

Lumumba’s body was eventually cut into pieces and dissolved in acid and his front teeth were kept as a souvenir.

In another Western conspiracy, the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende was murdered because he disagreed with the West.

In Ghana, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Founder of the Republic was overthrown in a most bloody coup because he also disagreed with the West.

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

It is estimated that several hundred Ghanaians died in that inglorious coup which marked the decline in the standard of living of Ghanaians.

Jack Mahoney writing in his book “JFK Ordeal In Africa” reveals that before the coup at least 300 Ghanaians had been murdered by agents of the United States of America, just to make the point that they hated the guts of Nkrumah.

The US President, Barack Obama may come in designer suits and speak impeccable English but when he dispatches drones into the Middle East and Asia to kill innocent women and children, he acts in the same vein as the terrorists.

The actions of the US, Britain and their allies in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf has led to the deaths of millions of people.

The deadly attempt to export “democracy” around the world is in essence fuelled by an Al Qaeda type mentality which says that “everybody must be like us.”

The hundreds of attempts made to assassinate the Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro cannot in essence be different from what the terrorists have done in Paris.

One of the most important discoveries in the search for accomplices in the Paris attacks is the discovery by French security forces that one of the alleged accomplices is in Syria doing the bidding of David Cameron, Francois Hollande and Barack Obama.

Here is where the foolishness of the West gets manifest.

French President Francois Hollande

Led by the United States of America, the West recruited all kinds of people and groups trained and armed them to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

In the end, the Al-Qaedas and the Talibans turned their guns on the West and 9/11 occurred to provide a worthwhile lesson in offering sponsorship to terrorists.

But that important lesson has not been learnt by the West and they have repeated the same foolish error in Syria where they appear determined to overthrow Bashir Assad.

It is the very people and groups which are recruited, trained and armed by Western intelligence agencies who are returning to Western Europe and are carrying out the terrorist attacks.

The foolishness of the West lies in the fact that it is financing its own doom and creating most favourable conditions for the terrorist’s outburst in its capitals.

The West has unwittingly also thrown itself into a whirlwind of hypocrisy which fuels fundamentalism.

Is it possible to explain why France has anti-Semitic laws on its statutes but permits its citizens to denigrate other people’s beliefs?

Is the double standard not obvious even to the casual observer?

Terrorism in all its forms including the terrorism of Western States must be rigorously condemned.

Editorial

A FINE DIPLOMAT

By close of day on 14th January, 2015 His Excellency Larbi Katti, Algerian Ambassador to Ghana would return home after his duty tour.

It is important to note that Ambassador Katti run a mission which was opened by the distinguished Pan-African revolutionary Frantz Fanon and that in selecting him for Ghana, the Algerian authorities must have taken his exceptional qualities into consideration.

Those who worked with Mr Katti in the United Nations speak of his passionate dedication to the cause of Africa.

Indeed for those of us at “The Insight’ it has been a pleasure and a privilege to be associated with this fine diplomat.

He did not have the snobbery which is usually associated with diplomats and his doors were always open to all those who wished to contribute to improving Ghana’s relations with Algeria.

On the eve of his departure from Ghana, “The Insight” salutes him as one of the finest diplomats to work in Accra and we wish him well in his future endeavours.

KUMAWU GETS NEW CHIEF?

Osei Tutu II

Persons styling themselves as the majority kingmakers of Kumawu have defied Otumfuo the Asantehene and installed a new chief at Kumawu.

The new chief, Barima Twenebaoh Kodua the fifth was installed at dawn last Monday.

Sources at Kumawu say that he has to swear the oath of allegiance to the Asantehene.

The problem however is that the Asantehene has already given apparent support to a Dr Sarfo as Kumawuhene.

In private life, Nana Tweneboah Kodua is known as Akwasi Duro and is a telecommunications engineer resident in London, England.

The “majority kingmakers” of Kumawu insist that the Asantehene cannot impose Dr Sarfo on Kumawu as chief.

They allege that the installation of Dr Sarfo was marked by intimidation and runs counter to Kumawu custom and tradition.

Fears that the installation of the new chief could spark disturbances have been dismissed by security services.

A highly placed security source said “we are watching the development closely and so far there is no cause for alarm.”

Government to build military base in Alavanyo and Nkonya – Veep

Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah Arthur

Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has hinted that government intends to build a permanent military base in the disputed area of Alavanyo and Nkonya in the Volta Region.

He said the base would continue to offer training to the military personnel who would be stationed at the place.

He expressed the hope that the resources would be found in this year’s budget to begin the construction of permanent structures in the zone.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur announced this when he visited the Military and Police personnel stationed at both Alavanyo and Nkonya sides of the disputed area.

In December last year, there were renewed clashes following gunshots that left one person dead. The violence in the two communities has persisted for years, despite several mediation attempts.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur also announced that government is also working with other prominent chiefs in the area to find a lasting solution to the decade-old conflict over the disputed land.

He said Togbe Dagadu the Eighth, Paramount Chief of Kpando, has offered to initiate a process of consultation and mediation, and expressed the confidence that it would succeed.

He said Togbe Dagadu has been given some few weeks to start his mediation effort, and to ensure that there is peace in the area.

Vice President Amissah-Arthur commended the military and police personnel stationed in the area for their hard work, and urged them to be neutral in the dispute.

He said people from the two communities have lived together for a long time, and because they have inter-married, it is almost difficult to separate them because they belong to both sides.

Brigadier-General Sampson Kudjo Adeti, General Officer Commanding the Southern Command of the Ghana Armed Forces, welcomed the move by government to build permanent structures for the military in the area.

He said despite the fact that most of the military personnel were currently staying in people’s houses within the community, they would ensure that the close interaction and fraternization between the military and the people were reduced, to enhance their neutrality in the dispute.

GNA

When a Drum Begins to Play a Higher Pitch it's About to Break

President Robert Mugabe

Dr. Gary K. Busch

As the old Shona proverb suggests, if the MDC drum plays at this pitch any longer it will certainly break. The cracks are already appearing in the structure. Today the MDC leadership announced that it still hadn’t decided to participate in the Presidential election runoff as is its Constitutional obligation. This has been the fundamental problem all along.

When the votes were counted for the Assembly (the lower house) and the Senate the results were seen as free and fair. The system was transparent. Everyone in any position of authority or responsibility knew the results of the ballot. The MDC won a majority (combined) in the Assembly and had a very high percentage of the non-appointed Senate seats. SADC observers monitored the election and the ballot casting and had no major complaints.

The results at every polling station were exhibited as a printed and attested sheet outside each polling place. The Zimbabwean entrepreneur, Strive Masiyiwa – the founder of the mobile phone network Econet, had given hundreds of mobile phones to his friends in the MDC. As soon as the results were officially prepared and posted outside the polling station the MDC ward captains called these results through to Harare. Often they arrived in Harare before the official information was passed from the voting stations to the ZEC, the electoral commission.

When the official confirmations were sent to the ZEC these results were announced. There was no substantial disagreement or controversy between the MDC and ZANU-PF or the ZEC on these. Indeed a re-audit of these results proved no alterations needed to be made.

The tallying of the votes for the Presidential contest was also made. The race was very close so the physical tally of the ballots had to be made by the ZEC not just at the polling stations. This involved the logistical nightmare of transporting the physical ballots from rural areas to Harare; a lengthy process. On the second day of the count the political leadership of both sides knew from the ward captains of both parties that the unaudited count of the Presidential ballots showed Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC with around 48% of the vote and Mugabe 43%. There was no mystery about this. I published these exact figures three days after the election. It was clear that there would need to be a runoff election.

That is when the problem emerged. The MDC leadership embarked on a campaign of manipulation through issuing false and misleading statements which were delivered by the MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti. His wild claims of a 60% sweep of the election were entirely figures made up for the occasion. Even most of the others in the MDC did not believe them. His tales of ballot-rigging and violence against voters had no basis in fact. Biti attempted to create an image, primarily designed for the international audience, that somehow the ZANU-PF were rigging the election and that the MDC was their innocent victim.

The reason for this, other than the fact that his outside sponsors in Britain and South Africa suggested taking this line, was because the MDC was not sure that they would not automatically win the runoff. The newly-elected MDC Assemblymen and Senators wanted to take their seats in the new government. They realised that the country, while supporting change, especially the business community, did not support the current leadership of the MDC. The business community did not relish the thought of putting the labour movement in power, especially a labour movement dependent for funds, support and guidance of COSATU in South Africa. They reckoned that if Mugabe indicated that he would only stay for a while after the election before retiring to let someone like Sidney Sekeremayi (former security chief) take over, the Zimbabwe people would be happy to escape the violence and confrontation of a root and branch change in the country by waiting to see how the new Assembly and Senate would operate and if could get international support in fixing the economy.

Morgan Tsvangarai

Tsvangirai and Biti announced, to the horror of the security chiefs in the Army and the Police, that the MDC would give back the farms which had been taken from their owners by ZANU-PF. Irrespective of the merits and morality of such an action a precipitate dislodging of the current occupiers would present the authorities with a security nightmare they knew they couldn’t control.. It was a recipe for conflict which no one could control. The security forces were alarmed. Even worse, when the issue of a transition to a possible new MDC government arose at the meeting in Lusaka, the MDC leadership told the African presidents that there were British Special Forces standing by at a ‘secret airbase’ in Botswana run by the Americans who would come in, arrest the Zimbabwe security chiefs, and take over internal security until order was re-established.

Both the British and the US adamantly denied that they had any intention of sending troops to Zimbabwe or physically intervening in any way. Yes there is a base the US is using in Botswana. Yes the British Special Forces were (are) at the base doing training ever since their normal training base in Kenya had become less secure. However, the US does not want to jeopardise its opportunities in Africa to set up AFRICOM centres which will allow them to fight terrorists and the drug trade. The British, too, have little desire to extend their military reach in attacking Zimbabwe without regional agreement in advance. This is why the tale told by the MDC was so pernicious.

Even when the vote tally was finally made, and the 48% and 43% votes confirmed, the MDC leadership still refuses to participate in a runoff. However, in the interim its campaign of lies, smears and character assassinations aimed at seeking international support has alienated its own supporters in the country and unleashed a crescendo of violence which everyone was desperately seeking to avoid.

Biti continues to violate the Constitution by asserting that the results of the election show, on his say-so alone, that the MDC has won the first round of the election with a clear majority. It isn’t true and every observer affirms that this is not true. The tragedy is that the ‘international community’ buys this fiction because it is convenient to them. A Presidential election result is not made by a failed Trotskyite turned democrat deciding what the vote should be. Fair elections result from the observed and monitored counting of the ballots. Until that happens and is accepted, the newly-elected MDC Assemblymen and Senators will have to wait, the country will remain in suspension and the violence will likely continue. What a pity!

Source: academia.edu

Close Guantanamo—then give it back to Cuba

By Amy Goodman

This week marks the 13th anniversary of the arrival of the first post-9/11 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, the most notorious prison on the planet. This grim anniversary, and the beginning of normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S and Cuba, serves as a reminder that we need to permanently close the prison and return the land to its rightful owners, the Cuban people. It is time to put an end to this dark chapter of United States history.

“The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable,” President Barack Obama wrote nearly six years ago, in one of his first executive orders, on Jan. 22, 2009. Despite this, the prison remains open, with 127 prisoners left there after Kazakhstan accepted five who were released on Dec. 30. There have been 779 prisoners known to have been held at the base since 2002, many for more than 10 years without charge or trial. Thanks to WikiLeaks and its alleged source, Chelsea Manning, we know most of their names.

Col. Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor in Guantanamo from 2005 to 2007. He resigned, after an appointee of George W. Bush overrode his decision forbidding the use of evidence collected under torture. Davis later told me, “I was convinced we weren't committed to having full, fair and open trials, and this was going to be more political theater than it was going to be justice.” Obama did create a special envoy for Guantanamo closure, although the person who most recently held the position, Cliff Sloan, abruptly resigned at the end of December without giving a reason. In a just-published opinion piece in The New York Times, Sloan wrote, “As a high-ranking security official from one of our staunchest allies on counterterrorism (not from Europe) once told me, ‘The greatest single action the United States can take to fight terrorism is to close Guantanamo.’”

The U.S. has imposed a crushing embargo against Cuba for more than half a century, ostensibly to punish the small country for its form of governance. What kind of alternative does the United States show Cubans on that corner of their island that the U.S. controls? A hellish, military prison beyond the reach of U.S. laws, where hundreds of men have been held, most without charge, and many beaten and tortured.

President Obama rightly chastises Egypt for imprisoning three Al-Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. “They should be released,” Obama told reporters last August. Yet, sadly, Egypt only needs to look to the U.S. to determine acceptable treatment of Al-Jazeera journalists. Sami al-Hajj was a cameraman for the network. He was covering the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 when the Pakistani military picked him up and handed him over to U.S. forces. After 17 brutal days at Bagram Air Field, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held without charge for more than six years. He was tortured, beaten and humiliated. Al-Hajj went on a hunger strike for 480 days, and was subjected to forced feeding through nasal tubes. He was released in May 2008.

I sat down with Sami al-Hajj in December 2012 at Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, where he was heading the network’s Human Rights and Public Liberties desk. He said the U.S tried to coerce him into spying while he was imprisoned:

“They [offered] to give me a U.S.A. nationality and take care about my family if I work with them in CIA to continue my job being journalist with Al-Jazeera, just send them information about the link between Al-Jazeera and al-Qaida and the terrorist people and some people in the Middle East. Of course, I refused to do that. I told them, ‘I’m journalist, and I will die as a journalist.’”

The United States knew he was innocent, but wanted him to spy on Al-Jazeera, so it subjected him to years of harsh imprisonment in an attempt to break him.

The United States took Guantanamo Bay by force in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, and extracted an indefinite lease on the property from Cuba in 1903. Returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuba will begin to right more than a century of wrongs that the U.S. government has perpetrated there. Most importantly, the return of the Guantanamo Bay prison and naval base will make it harder for any future war criminals, whether in the White House, the Pentagon or the CIA and their enthusiastic cheerleaders in Congress, to use Guantanamo as their distant dungeon, to inflict torture and terror on prisoners, many of them innocent, far from the eyes of the people of the United States, and far from the reach of criminal courts.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

This article originally appeared on truthdig.com.

AN/HRJ

Source:www.presstv.com

‘Extremists more offensive to Islam than cartoons’

Lebanon Hezbollah Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah

Islamic extremists following a ‘takfiri’ ideology are more offensive to the Prophet Mohammed than Western satirical cartoons, chief of the Lebanese military faction Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, said following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.

"The behavior of the takfiri groups that claim to follow Islam have distorted Islam, the Koran and the Muslim nation more than Islam’s enemies ... who insulted the prophet in films... or drew cartoons of the prophet," the Hezbollah leader said in a televised speech to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, according to Lebanon’s Daily Star.

Militant Islam practices a ‘takfiri’ doctrine that allows it to brand other Muslims apostates for allegedly going against the faith’s true teachings.

A tragic attack on Wednesday took the lives of 12 people, when armed gunmen stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, prompting a citywide manhunt. The magazine had printed cartoons that mocked the Prophet.

Nasrallah went on to say that “Takfiris are the biggest threat to Islam, as a religion [and] as a message.”

The Charlie Hebdo terror attack should be taken as “revenge for the honor” of Islam’s prophet, according to a source allegedly belonging to Yemen’s branch of Al-Qaeda, who wrote to several news outlets with the message.

The reaction to the attack was one of global outrage, both in the Christian and Muslim worlds. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi sent his condolences to President Hollande, saying, “terrorism is an international phenomenon that should be faced and terminated through joint international effort.”

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke out against radical Islam, calling the incident “a murderous attack on free expression” and an indication “of the disdain of radical Islam for the values we hold dear.”

The Israeli PM drew parallels between the Paris massacre and rocket attacks on Israeli cities by the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas.

Hamas released a statement in French on Saturday, in which it also condemned the Charlie Hebdo attack.

“Differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder," the group said in a statement, cited by AFP.

Hamas also slammed Netanyahu for his “desperate attempts… to make a connection between our movement and the resistance of our people on the one hand and global terrorism on the other.”

Similar comments came from the Palestinian authority, who called the attack a “heinous crime.”

As for Lebanon’s own government, Prime Minister Tamman Salam has condemned Wednesday’s actions as an “unacceptable and unjustifiable terrorist act.”

The manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo terror attack suspects, Cherif and Said Kouachi, ended dramatically on Friday. Both were killed in a shootout with police in Dammartin-en-Goele northeast of Paris, while one policeman was injured. A worker who was taken hostage by the attackers was freed.

However, other hostage situations in France arose promptly, with at least one carried out by accomplices of the Kouachis.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday that he is not ruling out the possibility of more terrorist attacks against the country.

Hebdo, Hypocrisy and the Way Forward

For those who scream blue murder about freedom of the press and freedom of expression being the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, let us take a deeper look and see to what extent the West in general is engaged in censorship and spreading lies. For those who complain about terrorism, let us not be hypocritical.

Let us start where we should, namely paying respect to the victims (and their families and loved ones) of the shocking attack which took place at the editing rooms of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris on January 7 2015, the first big event to mar the New Year, the first benchmark in the news which will constitute 2015.

Let us also start by underlining a universal human value, the right to life and let us condemn those who take it away in any shape or form. This involves an unqualified attack against terrorist acts anywhere at any time against any target; these must be condemned in the very strongest words possible whether they are perpetrated by some demented fanatic at the end of a Marathon, by Islamist fundamentalist jihadis avenging the Prophet, by some coward flying at 30,000 feet in the sky blasting the faces off civilians at a wedding party or by a Government which takes part in an uprising in a foreign country using terrorists as its tool.

France, unfortunately, did exactly this and was a leading member of the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US) attack on Libya, a sovereign state enjoying the highest Human Development Index in Africa, living at peace, disturbing nobody. This is not to justify or gloat about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but let us call a spade a spade: all terrorist attacks are wrong, including those perpetrated by NATO in Libya, in Syria and elsewhere.

So, you throw the boomerang and it comes back to hit you square in the face. You spend months demonizing "Assad", saying "he must go", then what happens? Thousands of youths with empty lives jet off to Syria to become Jihadis, many of them thinking they are doing their duty for their religion (although because President Assad is a Moslem therefore any act against him is unjustified) and their country. And now what? Many of these Jihadis are totally demoralized because they see the Syrian "Opposition" for what it is, namely a bunch of thugs and terrorists impaling kids on metal spikes, slicing the breasts off women in the streets, decapitating them then raping the bodies, using Downs Syndrome children as suicide bombers and so on. Just as the West's darling terrorists did in Libya. But they are radicalized, have no lives to come back to and have learnt some new tricks among the terrorists trying to topple President Assad.

And the next move on the social and political chess board is for radical extremist groups to pop up like mushrooms across Europe calling for moves against Moslems in particular and immigrants in general, as Fortress Europa continues to be assailed by hundreds of migrants a day looking for a slice of the cake, while up to 60 per cent of Europe's youth in some areas are endemically unemployed.

A positive situation it is not, and it seems things can only spiral downwards from here. While every problem has a solution, this one is very complex and it would appear there is no easy way out of a situation which has been brewing for decades.

When a terrorist group is localized and has a cause which is regional or local in its scope, it is relatively easy to engage the organization on two levels - officially, through military operations and the security services, and unofficially through negotiations to bring the action onto the political stage. Examples of success are the IRA, ETA and several groups in Africa, for instance in the DR Congo.

But when you have terrorist acts being perpetrated by cells of disaffected youths without any particular cause, except for a misty and vague idealistic chimera about defending Islam, no such approach is possible.

It is important to contextualize the situation with the example of a group of Portuguese Jews in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Banned from Portugal by the Inquisition, they fled to Amsterdam, where they were also banned by the Inquisition, so they fled to London where they were banned by the Christian King and then went to Italy, where they were again banned by the Christians, and ended up enjoying their freedom and hospitality protected by the Moslem Ottoman Empire.

So Islam and Moslems are one thing, Islamist fundamentalism is another, and in fact this movement is a blasphemy to Islam itself because Islam is, more than a religion of peace, a way of life which involves respect for all living beings, including animals and plants.

Why these youths have been radicalized cannot be blamed on the western education system in general because most people do not go around blowing themselves up on trains or planting bombs indiscriminately in public places. However, how many of these youths are engaged inside the societies in which they live, with stable jobs and hopes for the future? How many of those young radicals in Paris come from the banlieues, the suburbs, rings of poverty around the main cities of France?

How many of Britain's radicalized youths come from the Inner Cities, where once again they are marginalized and feel they do not belong to the society in which they grew up and find in radical Islamist doctrine an escape, as others find an escape in drugs?

The problem, therefore, is not a complex one of religion, it is a simple socio-economic question. The way forward therefore, is to engage the community leaders in the banlieues and inner cities, giving reinforced powers to local authorities, including structuring the education program so that it makes sense to individuals in certain areas. The legacy of Muammar al-Gaddafy was to teach us that the human being thrives when the system of governance is localized and when small communities govern themselves - this was the Jamahiriya, which France and its Anglo-Saxon bedmasters helped to destroy.

Let us end where we should, once again sympathizing with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack and their families and loved ones. And for those who scream blue murder about freedom of expression and freedom of the press after this outrage against a French satirical publication (very much a French tradition dating back to the times of the Revolution), let us remember the hacking attacks by western agents against social media, let us remember the purposeful taking over of social media accounts by western agents, let us remember the hacking of emails by western agents. Is this freedom of expression?

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru

(timothy.hinchey@gmail.com)

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. He is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights.

American Exceptionalism and American Torture

By William Blum

Global Research, December 20, 2014

In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979 the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds. 

That’s how they handle such matters in what used to be called The Third World. In the First World, however, they have no need for such legal niceties. In the United States, military torturers and their political godfathers are granted amnesty automatically, simply for being American, solely for belonging to the “Good Guys Club”.

So now, with the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, we have further depressing revelations about US foreign policy. But do Americans and the world need yet another reminder that the United States is a leading practitioner of torture? Yes. The message can not be broadcast too often because the indoctrination of the American people and Americophiles all around the world is so deeply embedded that it takes repeated shocks to the system to dislodge it. No one does brainwashing like the good ol’ Yankee inventors of advertising and public relations. And there is always a new generation just coming of age with stars (and stripes) in their eyes.

The public also has to be reminded yet again that – contrary to what most of the media and Mr. Obama would have us all believe – the president has never actually banned torture per se, despite saying recently that he had “unequivocally banned torture” after taking office.

Shortly after Obama’s first inauguration, both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated that “rendition” was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time: “Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.”

The English translation of “cooperate” is “torture”. Rendition is simply outsourcing torture. There was no other reason to take prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, amongst other torture centers employed by the United States. Kosovo and Diego Garcia – both of which house large and very secretive American military bases – if not some of the other locations, may well still be open for torture business, as is the Guantánamo Base in Cuba.

Moreover, the key Executive Order referred to, number 13491, issued January 22, 2009, “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations”, leaves a major loophole. It states repeatedly that humane treatment, including the absence of torture, is applicable only to prisoners detained in an “armed conflict”. Thus, torture by Americans outside an environment of “armed conflict” is not explicitly prohibited. But what about torture within an environment of “counter-terrorism”?

The Executive Order required the CIA to use only the interrogation methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs, environmental manipulation such as temperature and noise, and stress positions, amongst other charming examples of American Exceptionalism.

After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote that he had

“left open the possibility that the agency could seek permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited menu that President Obama authorized under new rules … Mr. Panetta also said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of ‘rendition’ … But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions ‘that violate our human values’.”

The last sentence is of course childishly absurd. The countries chosen to receive rendition prisoners were chosen precisely and solely because they were willing and able to torture them.

Four months after Obama and Panetta took office, the New York Times could report that renditions had reached new heights.

The present news reports indicate that Washington’s obsession with torture stems from 9/11, to prevent a repetition. The president speaks of “the fearful excesses of the post-9/11 era”. There’s something to that idea, but not a great deal. Torture in America is actually as old as the country. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of international torture centers, kidnaping people to these places, solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

In 2011, Brazil instituted a National Truth Commission to officially investigate the crimes of the military government, which came to an end in 1985. But Mr. Obama has in fact rejected calls for a truth commission concerning CIA torture.  On June 17 of this year, however, when Vice President Joseph Biden was in Brazil, he gave the Truth Commission 43 State Department cables and reports concerning the Brazilian military regime, including one entitled “Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected Subversives.”

Thus it is that once again the United States of America will not be subjected to any accountability for having broken US laws, international laws, and the fundamental laws of human decency. Obama can expect the same kindness from his successor as he has extended to George W.

“One of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.” – Barack Obama, written statement issued moments after the Senate report was made public.

And if that pile of hypocrisy is not big enough or smelly enough, try adding to it Bidens’ remark re his visit to Brazil: “I hope that in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the immense promise of the future.”

If the torturers of the Bush and Obama administrations are not held accountable in the United States they must be pursued internationally under the principles of universal jurisdiction.

In 1984, an historic step was taken by the United Nations with the drafting of the “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (came into force in 1987, ratified by the United States in 1994). Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back. If today it’s deemed acceptable to torture the person who supposedly has the vital “ticking-bomb” information needed to save lives, tomorrow it will be acceptable to torture him to learn the identities of his alleged co-conspirators. Would we allow slavery to resume for just a short while to serve some “national emergency” or some other “higher purpose”?

If you open the window of torture, even just a crack, the cold air of the Dark Ages will fill the whole room.

Cuba … at long, long last … maybe …

Hopefully, it’s what it appears to be. Cuba will now be treated by the United States as a country worthy of at least as much respect as Washington offers to its highly oppressive, murdering, torturing allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Honduras, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis, and even more abroad, but Cuba needs to do it. Maybe the Cubans can civilize the Americans a bit.

Let’s hope that America’s terrible economic embargo against the island will go the way of the dinosaurs, and Cuba will be able to demonstrate more than ever what a rational, democratic, socialist society can create. But they must not open the economy for the Yankee blood-suckers to play with as they have all over the world.

And I’ll be able to go to Cuba not as a thief in the night covering my tracks and risking a huge fine.

But with the Republicans taking over Congress next month, all of this may be just a pipe dream.

Barack Obama could have done this six years ago when he took office; or five years ago when American Alan Gross was first arrested and imprisoned in Cuba. It would have been even easier back then, with Obama’s popularity at its height and Congress not as captured by the Know-Nothings as now.

So, Cuba outlasted all the punishment, all the lies, all the insults, all the deprivations, all the murderous sabotage, all the assassination attempts against Fidel, all the policies to isolate the country. But for many years now, it’s the United States that has been isolated in the Western Hemisphere.

Reason Number 13,336 why capitalism will be the death of us.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – the “superbugs” – if left unchecked, could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. New drugs to fight the superbugs are desperately needed. But a panel advising President Obama warned in September that “there isn’t a sufficiently robust pipeline of new drugs to replace the ones rendered ineffective by antibiotic resistance.”

The problem, it appears, is that “Antibiotics generally provide low returns on investment, so they are not a highly attractive area for research and development.”

Aha! “Low returns on investment”! What could be simpler to understand? Is it not a concept worth killing and dying for? Just as millions of Americans died in the 20th century so corporations could optimize profits by not protecting the public from tobacco, lead, and asbestos.

Corporations are programmed to optimize profits without regard for the society in which they operate, in much the same way that cancer cells are programmed to proliferate without regard for the health of their host.

Happy New Year. Here’s what you have to look forward to in 2015.

January 25: 467 people reported missing from a university in Mexico. US State Department blames Russia.

February 1: Military junta overthrows President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Washington decries the loss of democracy.

February 2: US recognizes the new Venezuelan military junta, offers it 50 jet fighters and tanks.

February 3: Revolution breaks out in Venezuela endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines land in Caracas to quell the uprising.

February 16: White police officer in Chicago fatally shoots a 6-year old black boy holding a toy gun.

March 6: Congress passes a new law which states that to become president of the United States a person must have the surname Bush or Clinton.

April 30: The Department of Homeland Security announces plan to record the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.

May 19: The Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.

May 27: The Transportation Security Administration declares that all airline passengers must strip completely nude at check-in and remain thus until arriving at their destination.

June 6: White police officer in Oklahoma City tasers a 7-month-old black child, claiming the child was holding a gun; the gun turns out to be a rattle.

July 19: Two subway trains collide in Manhattan. The United States demands that Moscow explain why there was a Russian citizen in each of the trains.

September 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republican Party so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check.

September 12: White police officer in Alabama shoots black newborn, confusing the umbilical cord for a noose.

November 16: President Obama announces that Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba all possess weapons of mass destruction; have close ties to the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Taliban; are aiding pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine; were involved in 9-11; played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor; are an imminent threat to the United States and all that is decent and holy; and are all “really bad guys”, who even (choke, gasp) use torture!

November 21: The United States invades Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.

December 10: Barack Obama is awarded his second Nobel Peace Prize

December 11: To celebrate his new peace prize, Obama sends out drones to assassinate wrong-thinking individuals in Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen.

December 13: Members of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties, which hold several high positions in the US-supported government, goose-step through the center of Kiev in full German Storm Trooper uniforms, carrying giant swastika flags, shouting “Heil Hitler”, and singing the Horst Wessel song. Not a word of this appears in any American mainstream media.

December 15: US Secretary of State warns Russia to stop meddling in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of wanting to re-create the Soviet Union.

December 16: White police officer shoots a black 98-year-old man sitting in a wheel chair, claiming the man pointed a rifle at him. The rifle turns out to be a cane.

December 28: The Washington Redskins football team finish their season in last place. The White House blames Vladimir Putin.

The UN Anti-Nazi Resolution, the Prague Declaration and the History of “US Accommodation with Nazism”

By Carla Stea Global Research, January 04, 2015

The Syrian Arab Republic, together with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia are among the many co-sponsors of this UN Anti-Nazi Resolution, adopted by a majority vote of 133 by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 2014. There were 51 abstentions. Only 4 nations opposed this resolution: the United States, Ukraine, Palau and Canada. Excerpts from the Resolution state:

 “1. Reaffirms the relevant provisions of the Durban Declaration and of the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference, in which States condemned the persistence and resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism and violent nationalist ideologies based on racial and national prejudice and stated that those phenomena could never be justified in any instance or in any circumstances.

4. Expresses deep concern about the glorification, in any form, of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials and holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, as well as by declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movement participants in national liberation movements;

6. Emphasizes the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that ‘any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS.

7. Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of the Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;

11. Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial.”

PRIOR U.S. ACCOMMODATION WITH NAZISM;

On October 27, 2014, the front page of The New York Times reported: “In Cold War, U.S. spy Agencies used 1,000 nazis.” What the headline fails to say is that the U.S. employed and protected men whom they knew were among the most barbaric nazi war criminals. “When the Justice Department was preparing in 1994 to prosecute a senior Nazi collaborator in Boston, named Aleksandre Lileikis, the CIA tried to intervene. The agency’s own files linked Mr. Lileikis to the machine-gun massacres of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania. He worked ‘under the control of the Gestapo during the war,’ his CIA file noted... U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes”

“In 1968 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover authorized the FBI to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, ‘a potential threat to national security.’ In Maryland, army officials trained several Nazi officers in paramilitary warfare for a possible invasion of Russia. In all, the American military, the CIA, the FBI and other agencies used at least 1,000 ex-nazis and collaborators as spies and informants after the war, according to Richard Breitman, a Holocaust scholar at American University who was on a government-appointed team that de-classified war-crime records.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hated the Nazis, and to provide assistance to the anti-nazi struggle in Europe, he often had to circumvent highly placed pro-nazi and anti-semitic State Department officials, who not too covertly wanted Hitler to win World War II and destroy Soviet communism. Roosevelt’s great skill succeeded in arranging for U.S. Lend-Lease policies to aid the anti-nazi struggles of the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and it was his original, fierce determination to put on trial for treason the major U.S. corporations which he knew were engaging in business with the Nazis throughout World War II.

FDR died early in his fourth term as President, and subsequent U.S. Presidents did not suffer such anguish colluding with Nazis or nazi collaborators throughout the entire Cold War, as this October 27, 2014 New York Times article reports. Indeed, today, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs very recently supervised and micromanaged the destabilization and overthrow of Ukraine’s anti-nazi President, Viktor Yanukovich, and installed a new Ukranian government permeated with neo-nazis and nazi sympathizers.

In one of his first official acts, Ukraine’s new U.S. puppet President Poroshenko made October 14 the Ukranian National Day of Celebration commemorating the day in 1943 that Stepan Bandera’s nazi army was established. During World War II, Bandera’s OUN prepared two assassination attempts against United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a fact ignored by both Poroshenko and his U.S. supporters. Poroshenko’s shameful action is a desecration of the memory of the more than 300,000 heroic Ukranians murdered by the Nazis during the second battle of Kharkov, in May 1942, a battle which, though ending in defeat for the anti-nazi Ukranians, succeeded in slowing and weakening the invading nazi army, thereby contributing, ultimately, to the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad, the turning point in World War II.

There were 51 abstentions voted on Resolution 69/160, largely, and alarmingly, by European countries which had been ravaged by the nazi slaughter during World War II. These abstentions (however they were parsed in “explanation of vote”) suggest that Nazism is no longer abhorrent in parts of these countries, whether as a result of failure of historic memory, particularly in the younger generation, or more likely as a result of the current economic crisis, exacerbated by the noxious austerity measures being imposed upon most countries of the European Union, policies decimating the standard of living throughout Europe and leaving these destitute citizens prey to resurgent nazi propaganda today, as were the 25 million starving Germans in 1923.

Although throughout the past decade, the United States had consistently opposed the anti-nazi resolution, this year, Ukraine, though previously abstaining, for the first time actually opposed the anti-nazi resolution, an ominous development, as on December 14, 2014 the U.S. Congress approved sending lethal weapons to Kiev, including anti-tank weapons, ammunition and troop-operated surveillance drones, anti-mortar radar systems, etc. as part of $350 million worth of weapons, raising the terrifying spectre that the U.S. is actually militarily supporting a pro-nazi resurgence in Ukraine.

THE ASSAULT ON TRUTH: THE “PRAGUE DECLARATION”

In its explananation of vote, Ukraine “condemned Hitler and Stalin alike as international criminals.” This despicable allegation of a false equivalence, which has no basis in reality, is tantamount to Holocaust denial. It is based upon the ideological “normalization” of Nazism in one of the most dangerous and pernicious doctrines now being promulgated throughout Europe, the “Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism,” a doctrine of intellectual cowardice and moral depravity, falsifying reality and historic fact. It attempts to obscure the historically unique horrors and atrocities of Nazism by subsuming them in the general category of “totalitarian,” thereby erasing the racist and genocidal character of the nazi scourge. This is the beginning of the effort at “normalization” and ultimately the legitimization of nazism. This cancerous assault on truth, contaminating European thought since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a new propaganda weapon for the intellectually feeble, which calls for: “adjustment and overhaul of European history textbooks so that children could learn and be warned about Communism and its crimes in the same way as they have been taught to assess the Nazi crimes.”

Among the supporters of the Prague Declaration are Margaret Thatcher and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The Prague Declaration is refuted, intellectually, historically and morally by many of the most illustrious scholars, historians and members of the European Parliament, notably in:

THE SEVENTY YEARS DECLARATION 0f 20 January 2013, signed by more than 80 of the most distinguished members of the European Parliament from countries throughout Europe, and which states:

“On the Anniversary of the Final Solution conference at Wannsee,”

“Remember:

“The horror and brutality of the genocidal campaign of total annihilation of European Jewry conducted by the Nazis and their collaborators

That the mass killing of European Jewry preceded that formal adoption of the Final Solution plan by half a year, and began on the Eastern Front in 1941 upon the initiation of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union,

That millions of non-Jews suffered in numerous ways under the Nazis...

“Recognize:

The Nazi campaign of annihilation of the Jewish people was philosophically, qualitatively and practically profoundly distinct and different to other forms of oppression

“Reject:

Attempts to obfuscate the Holocaust by diminishing its uniqueness and deeming it to be equal, similar or equivalent to Communism as suggested by the 2008 Prague Declaration,

Attempts to have European history school books rewritten to reflect the notion of ‘Double Genocide’ (‘equality’ or ‘sameness’ of nazism and communism)

As unacceptable the glorification of nazi allies and of Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators, including the Waffen SS in Estonia and Latvia and the Lithuanian Activist Front in Lithuania

Attempts to legalise or sanitize the public display of the swastika by racist and fascist groups.”

Among the great parliamentarians supporting the Seventy Years Declaration is the brilliant Lithuanian statesman, Justas Paleckis, whose own son was brutally persecuted by the current Lithuanian government for questioning Lithuanian government dogma, much as Galileo was persecuted for questioning the false dogma of the Catholic Church

Numerous other distinguished European intellectuals respond with repugnance to the intellectual vulgarity of the Prague Doctrine. The Declaration on Unequal Regimes: Contra Prague, June 22, 2010 states:

“We Disassociate From and Reject:

1. The language of the Prague Declaration that promotes the ‘Double Genocide’ model and Holocaust Obfuscation, by calls inter alia to: ‘recognize Communism and Nazism as a common legacy, proclaim substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism,

6. Unacceptable expenditure of state (and EU) treasure and political capital on the revision of history in an effort to obfuscate and minimize the Holocaust, legally and mechanically equating it with other crimes, inter alia by the capricious and ad-hoc redefinition and semantic inflation of the notion of ‘genocide.’”

On October, 2009, the UK Chair of the All-Party Group against Antisemitism, John Mann, MP, described the Prague Declaration as “a sinister document,”; Lithuanian politician Leonidas Donskis states: “The Holocaust should not be equated with other tragedies.” Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center describes the Prague Declaration as “the main manifesto of the false equivalency movement,” stating it is supported by right-wing parties in countries in Eastern Europe.

“UK parliamentarian Denis Macshane MP ‘delivered a letter to the Lithuanian ambassador in London, signed by Lord Janner of Braunstone QC and academics opposed to the Prague Declaration, accusing the Lithuanian government of using ‘embassy-sponsored events’ to manipulate the debate: ‘We find these events consistent with Lithuania’s nationalistic rewriting of history, and with its efforts to limit the freedom of debate on “Double Genocide” and the Prague Declaration.’”

NAZISM

Nazism is explicitly both racist and genocidal. Governments may be totalitarian without being racist, nor genocidal. Any attempt to equate the two, or describe Nazism as merely totalitarian, is a fatal attack on truth and history. In one of the great documents following World War II, “The Plot Against the Peace,” by Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn, the unique character of Nazism is described: “It was against the Slav peoples, the traditional enemy of Pan-Germanism, that the policy of genocide was most extensively applied. ‘It will be one of the chief tasks of German statesmanship,’ Hitler had told Hermann Rauschning, ‘for all time to prevent, by every means in our power, the further increase of the Slav races. Natural instincts bid all living beings not merely conquest their enemies, but also destroy them. In former days, it was the victor’s prerogative to destroy entire tribes, entire peoples.”

“Following the liberation of Lublin in the summer of 1944, a group of some thirty foreign correspondents visited the Maidenak Death Camp. Among the correspondents was the American newspaperman, W. H.

The “Holodomor,” a famine that occurred in 1932, is currently cited by right-wing Ukranians as evidence that Stalin was trying to exterminate them, and they call this a “man-made” famine. They forget that 1932 was one of the worst years of the great depression, with starvation rampant throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia. In the United States, President Hoover slaughtered a massive number of starving American veterans camped in Washington, attempting to get the “Bonus” they were promised in payment for their military service. The shacks they were living in were incinerated, and Generals such as MacArthur and Eisenhower were involved in the eviction and extermination of these impoverished veterans. This global famine was also “man-made.” It was the great crisis of capitalism. And there were capitalists who made fortunes out of that crisis.

In “explanation of vote,” the United States representative states she is “concerned about the overt political motives that had driven the main sponsor of the current resolution. That government had employed those phrases in the current crisis in Ukraine.” Nowhere in this resolution was Ukraine mentioned or singled out. This was not a country-specific resolution. In previous years the U.S. delegation cited “freedom of speech” as their reason for opposing the resolution. Whatever their reasons, and however contorted the “reasoning,” the U.S. continues to condone the resurgence of Nazism. And it cannot be ignored that among the co-sponsors of the Anti-Nazi resolution is the Government of Syria.

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