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zondag 13 oktober 2019

Remember: Update on the MH17 Case


Update on the MH17 Case


Submitted by Eric Zuesse…
The Netherlands Government is resisting an effort by Dutch victims’ families to find out why Ukraine’s Government, on 17 July 2014 — when the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down while flying over Ukraine’s civil-war zone — this passenger-plane had been guided by Ukraine’s air-traffic control to fly through, instead of around (as it instructed other airliners), the war-zone. On 1 October 2019, now more than five years after 196 Dutch nationals had died from that incident, Holland’s RTL News headlined (as autotranslated into English) “Cabinet considers research into Ukraine’s role in disaster MH17”, and reported that “The cabinet will examine whether further research is possible on the role of Ukraine in the disaster with flight MH17,” because “A proposal … for the investigation received the support of all Parties present in the second chamber” of Holland’s parliament. This news-report said that, “So far, the cabinet has not taken any steps against Ukraine. As far as we know, nothing is happening behind the scenes.” Furthermore: “Last year, the Netherlands, together with Australia, decided to make Russia as a country liable. For the liability of Ukraine, according to the cabinet, there was ‘no evidence’ and also ‘no research needed’.” Moreover, Dutch Foreign Minister Stefan Blok said that “We don’t see any reason for an investigation” into that, because “The government is trying to maintain its relationship with Ukraine,” and “because then both the airspace of Ukraine and that of Russia should be looked at,” and because “there are still no indications that Ukraine can also be held liable.” But actually, from the very start of that investigation, there has been a secret agreement not to blame Ukraine for anything having to do with the incident. This agreement is kept secret from the Dutch people. Blok, in resisting to investigate why the MH17 was guided over the civil-war zone, was simply adhering to the secret agreement that Netherlands had signed with Ukraine on 8 August 2014. If he were to agree to the families’ demand, he still would be obligated, by Holland’s 8 August 2014 agreement with Ukraine, to find Ukraine not to have perpetrated the downing. But the families don’t know this.
As I reported back on 24 August 2014, a secret agreement had been signed on August 8th between Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia, that Ukraine would have veto-power over any finding that their official “Joint Investigation Team” (“JIT”) would issue regarding the shoot-down of the MH17. Malaysia was excluded from the Team, but was finally admitted, after agreeing to their secret terms — including not to blame Ukraine. Russia’s RT headlined on 20 November 2014 “Dutch government refuses to reveal ‘secret deal’ into MH17 crash probe” and revealed that the Dutch Government was refusing to comply with its own Freedom of Information law by keeping this agreement secret. On 14 June 2016, the website “What Happened to Flight MH17” headlined “The vague role of Malaysia in the Joint Investigation Team” and reported that the JIT had actually been officially formed on 7 August 2014, and noted that, “In the limited number of public communications by JIT it is not mentioned what the role of Malaysia is in the criminal investigation.” (Malaysia, unlike those other four nations, isn’t a member of America’s core anti-Russia alliance, which includes NATO and Australia, but is instead a neutral nation and therefore considered untrustworthy by the others.) Subsequently, on 21 July 2019, John Helmer and Max van der Werff revealed that Malaysia’s Government rejects the ‘findings’ by the JIT (which, with no reservations, blame Russia for downing the MH17), but that Malaysia isn’t violating the 8 August 2014 secret agreement, since Malaysia isn’t saying Ukraine did it. Instead, Malaysia is saying that further investigations are needed, and that Malaysia possesses the black boxes and other crucial evidence.
The present report is an update regarding the entire matter of the shoot-down on 17 July 2014 of the MH17 Malaysian airliner over the breakaway Donetsk region of Ukraine. The additional facts which will be reported here regarding the MH17 incident shock me. I knew that U.S. President Barack Obama had become desperate for something to happen that would persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to endorse added sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine, but I had had no idea, until now, as to what direct involvement, if any, he had had in the actual setting-up of the MH17 shoot-down. All of the source-evidence for the following can be clicked-through-to here by the reader, and this is important to do, for any reader who is skeptical (as all ought to be) and who wants to see source-evidence, for any assertion that seems outlandish. It’s important especially because the case which will be presented here stuns even me, who had voted three times for Obama, first in his 2008 primary against Hillary Clinton, then once again in his 2008 general election contest against Republican John McCain; and then, finally, once more, yet again, in his 2012 general election contest against Republican Mitt Romney (who, incidentally, right now, is arguing for Trump’s impeachment and replacement by Mike Pence; and who is famous for having said, in his 2012 campaign against Obama, that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”). I knew that Obama was the lesser of two evils, but I now recognize that I had had no idea of how evil that actually was. Here I shall report what I now know. This extensively documented reconstruction, of the MH17 incident and of how it came about, seems to me to disprove the fundamental Western ‘historical’ narrative about contemporary international relations, and to signal the necessity for a fundamental rewrite of the mainstream view of world history in our era. At the very least, it disproves that view — the mainstream view or ‘history’ of our time. Whatever the truth might be, it certainly cannot be anything even approximating that ‘historical’ mainstream. Mainstream recent ‘history’ is, now more clearly than ever before, a sinister and carefully orchestrated myth, as will be demonstrated here in what follows.
The essential background information regarding the MH17 must be presented at the start, and it’s accurately portrayed in an 11-minute video. The first-ever news-report to display and assemble in an easily comprehensible way all of the crucial facts constituting the background context that’s necessary in order to understand the MH17 event and what caused it, was an 11-minute video compilation, which was uploaded to youtube on 12 March 2014, and which you can see here. It’s 100% true, nothing at all deceptive in any way, and it still remains, in my opinion (after my seeing it around 50 times and considering it from a multitude of different perspectives), absolutely a masterpiece, the only perfect public-affairs video that I have ever seen. Beyond that essential background information to the MH17 event, now follows (and entirely within that factual background-context), a summary in more detail, focusing in, or zooming onto, the MH17 event itself, more closely:
This will be a summary, which — since it might seem incredible to anyone who doesn’t already know the evidence — will immediately be followed by the evidence, all clickable here to each source (though not necessarily via only a single click). The first sentence of the summary will summarize the essential background information to the MH17 event — meaning here only information on the background that’s essential in order to be able to understand the context in which the information that is to be newly introduced here regarding the MH17 event will fit into that bigger picture — and this opening sentence will therefore itself be linked to more-detailed summaries of key aspects of that background part, each aspect of which itself contains links to all of the source-evidences there regarding that aspect of the deepest background, so that the full background will be accessible from the links that are provided here, and the new information, which is to be provided at the end, will be entirely understandable within the context of that full background.
Here, then, is the overall summary, including the heavily-linked opening sentence regarding this event’s deep background:
President Obama not only perpetrated the February 2014 bloody coup in Ukraine which he had started by no later than 2011 to plan and placed into operation on 1 March 2013 inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev (months before the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom he was to overthrow decided for Ukraine not to accept the EU’s offer of membership), but Obama and his NATO were so determined to reverse the coup’s resulting breakaway, from Ukraine, of Ukraine’s two most anti-nazi districts, Crimea and Donetsk, that Obama and his NATO then set up the shoot-down of the MH17 airliner by Obama’s newly-installed nazi Ukrainian government, with the objective being to promptly blame it against Russia. Obama was, at that time, in early July 2014, desperate for there to be a pretext on which the European Union would join the U.S. in greatly hiking sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine. What the most-recent information will show is this: Obama and his NATO were intending to use this false accusation against Russia as a pretext not only to hike anti-Russia sanctions but ultimately to invade both Donetsk and Crimea and risk WW III in order to coerce those two regions back again into Ukraine — now to become (like the rest of Ukraine) under the control of the U.S. regime. The reasons why that plan failed (was aborted) were, first, that Malaysia’s Government held in international law the unchallengeable right of ownership over the airliner’s black boxes; and, second, that there was especially one member of NATO, Angela Merkel, who refused to risk WW III and to join into Obama’s extremely psychopathic scheme, since it risked the whole world over his determination to grab the entirety of Ukraine. Obama always refused to proceed forward with a geostrategic plan if it was strongly opposed by at least one core ally — in this particular instance, he knew enough not to drive Germany to abandon NATO and to ally with Russia (especially since Russia itself was his actual target in his coup to take over Ukraine). By declining to move forward without Merkel, all of those immediate risks to the world were avoided. Furthermore, Malaysia’s holding the black boxes was especially a problem for Obama and NATO, because any preparation for a U.S.-NATO invasion of Donbass and Crimea would spark Malaysia to go public with what it already knew about the U.S.-NATO lies regarding the MH17 incident. Obama possessed no ability to prevent that response from Malaysia. Not only Germany, but also Malaysia, possessed power in this situation, and Obama, fortunately, yielded to it. (Of course, the great worry about Trump is that if he gets into a similar situation, he might move forward regardless.)
Also noteworthy — especially for Dutch citizens and the families of the passengers on that airliner — the Netherlands Government had been one of the largest financial backers of the February 2014 U.S.-planned overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President. For example, it was the largest single donor, listed at $793,089, to Hromadske TV, which was the leading station that advocated for forcing that President out of power. Whereas the U.S. Government had organized and ran the overthrow, and spent far more on it (over $5 billion) than did any other nation or individual, the U.S. was only the second-largest donor to that station, at $399,650. So: Holland’s government had a significant investment in the post-coup regime, even before that post-coup regime shot down the MH17 plane and thereby slaughtered its 283 passengers, of whom 196 were Dutch. This is yet another reason why the Dutch Government’s heading this investigation in which Ukraine — another member — should be a suspect but is instead a juror, nullifies any rational authority to its ‘findings’.
One of my more important early news-reports regarding the MH17 case was the 24 August 2014 “MH-17 ‘Investigation’: Secret August 8th Agreement Seeps Out”, which article, referenced near the opening of the present article, documented that the secret agreement amongst the 4-party official MH17 ‘investigative’ team — Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Ukraine — gave each one of those governments an absolute veto over any public announcement or ‘finding’ from the ‘investigation’, so that if Ukraine, which was a prime suspect in the incident, were to disapprove a ‘finding’, then the team wouldn’t be allowed to issue it. This is like giving a murder-suspect veto-power over the investigation into the murder. It shows how poisoned that whole official ‘investigation’ was, even at its very start. This is important to understand.
Another especially relevant news-report from me was the 7 June 2015 “Obama Sidelines Kerry on Ukraine Policy”, which noted that Obama supported the position of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, who favored the U.S. backing an all-out invasion of Crimea and Donbass by Ukraine, and that Obama rejected the position of her boss, John Kerry, the Secretary of State, who opposed that policy. “Kerry, for his part, now faces the decision as to whether to quit … or else for Kerry to stay in office and be disrespected in all capitals for his staying on after having been so blatantly contradicted by his subordinate.” (This wasn’t the only instance when Obama trashed Kerry’s work: he likewise did it when Kerry favored the U.S. agreeing with Russia that, in a Syrian-war cease-fire, not only ISIS but also Al Qaeda-led forces in Syria could continue to be bombed. Russia was bombing both, but Obama refused to accept a ceasefire in which Russia would be allowed to continue its bombing of Al Qaeda, not only of ISIS. It was the ultimate humiliation of Kerry, and effectively ended his career in government.) This displays Obama’s profound hatred of Russia.
My last major report on MH17 was on 31 December 2018, “MH17 Turnabout: Ukraine’s Guilt Now Proven”. That presents conclusive checkmate against the U.S.-NATO case blaming Russia for MH17 (that case being run by the Netherlands Government, which simply ignores its case having become disproven by that evidence).
Here’s the more-recent report, what I did not previously know, which comes from the great independent Western journalist living in Moscow, John Helmer; and presented here are the highlights from his report — a report that fills-in crucial additional details of the same historical narrative that I have previously documented regarding the MH17 incident:
John Helmer, 21 July 2019
A new documentary from Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials; suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes; and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time.
The sources of the breakthrough are Malaysian — Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamad Mahathir; Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the officer in charge of the MH17 investigation for the Prime Minister’s Department and Malaysia’s National Security Council following the crash on July 17, 2014; and a forensic analysis by Malaysia’s OG IT Forensic Services of Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) telephone tapes which Dutch prosecutors have announced as genuine. …
Watch it in full here. …
The film reveals the Malaysian Government’s evidence for judging the [Joint Investigative Team] JIT’s witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution in a Malaysian or other national or international court.
For the first time also, the Malaysian Government reveals how it got in the way of attempts the US was organizing during the first week after the crash to launch a NATO military attack on eastern Ukraine. The cover story for that was to rescue the plane, passenger bodies, and evidence of what had caused the crash. In fact, the operation was aimed at defeating the separatist movements in the Donbass, and to move against Russian-held Crimea.
The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing the US and Ukraine from seizing them. The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government’s opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch to call off the invasion on July 27. …
Although German opposition to military intervention forced its cancellation, the Australians sent a 200-man special forces unit to The Netherlands and then Kiev. …
The new film reveals in an interview with Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, what happened next. Sakri’s evidence, filmed in his office at Putrajaya, is the first to be reported by the press outside Malaysia in five years. A year ago, Sakri gave a partial account of his mission to a Malaysian newspaper.
“I talked to my prime minister [Najib],” Colonel Sakri says. “He directed me to go to the crash site immediately.” At the time Sakri was a senior security official at the Disaster Management Division of the Prime Minister’s Department. Sakri says that after arriving in Kiev, Poroshenko’s officials blocked the Malaysians. “We were not allowed to go there…so I took a small team to leave Kiev going to Donetsk secretly.” …
Sakri goes on to say he was asked by the [nominally nonpartisan] OSCE’s special monitoring mission for Ukraine to hand over the black boxes; he refused. He was then met by agents of the FBI (Min 6:56). “They approached me to show them the black box. I said no.” He also reports that in Kiev the Ukrainian Government tried “forcing me to leave the black boxes with them. We said no. We cannot. We cannot allow.”
The handover ceremony in Donetsk, July 22, 2014: on far left, the two black boxes from MH17; in the centre, shaking hands, Alexander Borodai and Mohamad Sakri…
Van der Werff and Yerlashova contracted with OG IT Forensic Services, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, to examine the telephone tapes. The Kuala Lumpur firm has been endorsed by the Malaysian Bar. The full 143-page technical report can be read here.
The findings reported by Akash Rosen and illustrated on camera are that the telephone recordings have been cut, edited and fabricated. The source of the tapes, according to the JIT press conference on June 19 by Dutch police officer Paulissen, head of the National Criminal Investigation Service of The Netherlands, was the Ukrainian SBU. Similar findings of tape fabrication and evidence tampering are reported on camera in the van der Werff film by a German analyst, Norman Ritter. …

CLOSING NOTE: The present article was offered as an exclusive to virtually all mainstream news-media in the U.S. and its major allied countries, none of which responded. It therefore is not copyrighted, and is instead available to all news-media, free of charge, for publication. Readers are therefore encouraged to distribute it to others without any limitation.


Waarom verdedigen wij ons?

Heeft iemand nog een copie van het pamflet: 'Waarom verdedigen wij ons,' essay, 1964? over het belang van de NAVO? Laat het me weten. stanvanhoucke@gmail.com

stan van houcke.

De Roofzucht van het IMF

Met hulp van IMF worden landen zoals #Ecuador leeggeroofd

123rf Porto - Portugal
De bevolking van Ecuador is in opstand gekomen tegen de IMF bezuinigingen en maatregelen die transnationale ondernemingen bevoordelen om het land te beroven van haar bodemschatten. Het IMF speelt al jaren hetzelfde spel. Het meest bekende slachtoffer in Europa is Griekenland, maar ook Portugal heeft de praktijken van het Internationale Monetaire Fonds leren kennen. Dit jaar viert het IMF haar 75 jarige bestaan. Dit is het eerste deel waarin we aandacht besteden aan de werkzaamheden van deze organisatie en de reacties van drie verschillende landen op het roofkapitalisme.
De aanpak komt op het volgende neer en geldt in het algemeen voor de meeste landen die zich via het IMF in de schulden steken. In ruil voor de lening van 4,2 miljard dollar (tegen marktrente) is de regering van Ecuador verplicht een pakket van zogenaamde “hervormingsmaatregelen” uit te voeren, namelijk:
– het aantal overheidsbanen te verminderen,
– lonen van ambtenaren verlagen,
– de centrale bank een grotere onafhankelijkheid geven,
– belastinghervormingen doorvoeren,
– de arbeidsmarkt hervormen (dat wil zeggen lagere lonen),
– overheidsschuld terugbrengen
– de regels van de kapitaalmarkt versoepelen.
(lees IMF rapport)
De prijs voor het aangaan van de lening wordt op deze manier afgewenteld  op het armere deel van de bevolking, terwijl transnationale en grote ondernemingen hiervan profiteren. Zij krijgen belastingvoordelen en hun loonkosten dalen doordat de lonen verlaagd worden of de rechten van de werknemers wordt aangetast. Ook krijgen ze ruimschoots de gelegenheid bezittingen van de staat die geprivatiseerd worden tegen een prikkie op te kopen.

Ecuador

De huidige regering van het land, in de ban van de maatregelen overeengekomen met het Internationale Monetaire Fonds, beweert dat er geen alternatief voor hun draconische bezuinigingsmaatregelen is. (waar hebben we dit vehaal meer gehoord, in Nederland misschien?). Zij zeggen dat als de brandstofsubsidies niet stopgezet worden hun valuta stelsel zal instorten (Ecuador heeft de Amerikaanse dollar als betaalmiddel). Ook beweren zij te handelen in het algemeen belang door de kapitaalbelasting en invoerrechten te verminderen.
De armoede zal echter juist toenemen. De overwegend arme bevolking zal nog meer moeten inleveren van het beetje dat zij verdienen. Dit is namelijk het gevolg van de maatregel waarbij subsidies op brandstoffen worden afgeschaft. De prijzen van benzine en diesel zullen hierdoor met meer dan 50% stijgen. Hierdoor stijgen onder andere ook de vervoerskosten van voedsel waardoor deze prijzen ook zullen stijgen. De armoede was al tot 43,8% gestegen in juni 2019.
De regering verlaagt de ambtenarensalarissen, tijdelijke contracten worden met 20% gekort. Ondertussen is de groei van het land negatief en worden de lonen verder bevroren. Dit alles heeft tot gevolg dat de koopkracht moet dalen. Hierdoor dalen ook de belastinginkomsten en moeten om toch aan de verplichtingen te volddoen (zie bijvoorbeeld Griekenland) zullen overheidsbezittingen verkocht moeten worden, lees geprivatiseerd. En dat is nu net wat de intentie is achter de inmenging van het IMF ondanks dat zij het tegendeel beweren. Door privatisering komen er ‘business opportunities’ voor grote investeerders en transnationale ondernemingen. Dit opent de deur voor de rijken van de wereld ten koste van een verpauperende bevolking en kunnen de nationale bezittingen in de uitverkoop.
De voordelen van deze bezuinigingen worden voordelen voor de diverse bedrijfssectoren, doordat als onderdeel van het pakket maatregelen diverse belastingen in het voordeel van grote ondernemingen verlaagd worden.

Griekenland

De Grieken zijn al veel verder in een neerwaarste spiraal. Zij hebben de zogenaamde Troijka (the ECBIMF, en de EU) op hun dak gekregen die hen heeft gedwongen om wurgleningen te accepteren met het bijbehorende ‘pakket’ bezuinigingsmaatregelen waar het IMF zijn beruchte naam aan te danken heeft.
In juli van dit jaar is er een nieuwe regering gekomen, als opvolger van de Syriza regering, die beloofde de Trojka te zullen weerstaan. Aanvankelijk probeerden zij met de EU tot overeenstemming te komen om niet de opgelegde bezuinigingsmaatregelen te hoeven uitvoeren. Hierover hield de Griekse regering zelfs een referendum, waarbij de Grieken zich keerden tegen de bezuinigingen. De regering gaf zich echter over aan de Trojka en legde de uitslag van het referendum naast zich neer.
Vervolgens heeft de regering van Tsipras geprobeerd de eisen van de Trojka in te voeren. Dat betekende (let op overeenkomst met Ecuador)
– verlagen van pensioenen
– overheidspersoneel ontslaan
– lonen bevriezen
– belastingen zijn gestegen
– staatsbezittingen zijn uitverkocht
Het gevolg van al deze maatregelen is de werkloosheid, met name onder jongeren, toren hoog is, veel hoger dan het gemiddelde binnen de EU.
De staatsschuld is niet gedaald, nee zelfs gestegen tot 180% van het BNP.
De Griekse economie stortte in met 30%, pensioenen en lonen daalden met 40%; duizenden jongeren emigreerden, overheidsdiensten en banen zijn tot een minimum teruggebracht.
De New Democratic Party heeft sinds kort de leiding van het land overgenomen na het winnen van de verkeizingen. Het zal niemand verbazen dat de regering van Mitsotakis verder wil privatiseren, belastingen voor de rijken verminderen, buitenlandse inveseerders aanmoedigen, en ondertussen de lonen en pensioenen laag houden. Daarnaast de overheidsdiensten tot een minimum beperken. Met andere woorden de neoliberale agenda rollen ze uit.

Portugal

In ruil voor een lening van 78 miljard euro aan Portugal moest het land het zogenaamde ‘stabiliseringsprogramma’ uitvoeren vanaf 2011. Het jaarlijkse begrotingstekort was gestegen van 3,7 % in 2008 naar 10,2 % in 2009 en 9,9% in 2010. De lening ging vergezeld van een hard programma van privatiseringen, terugdringen van overheidsuitgaven en “verlichting” van arbeidsrechten. (zie Griekenland en Ecuador voor de overeenkomsten)
Als gevolg van dit programma werden de overheidsinvesteringen drastisch teruggebracht, van 3,8% van het BBP in 2010 naar 1,4 % in 2013. Private investeringen zijn sindsdien ook teruggevallen, met een heel beperkt herstel in de eerste helft van 2013. Sinds de aankomst van de “Trojka” is het BBP voortdurend gekrompen (- 1,3% in 2011, -3,2 in 2012 en -1,4% in 2013).
In Portugal zien we echter licht aan de horizon. Doordat eind 2015 een nieuwe regering onder Costa wordt gevormd die de bezuinigingsmaatregelen van zijn voorganger terugdraait. De bezuinigingen van 2011 hadden overigens enorme demonstraties tot gevolg in 2013 waarbij vele honderdduizenden mensen de straat op gingen.
Costas Socialistische Partij kwam met het Links Blok en de Communistische Partij overeen om allerlei bezuinigingsmaatregelen uitgevoerd door de vorige regering (van Passos Coelho) en afgedwongen door de Trojka terug te draaien, zoals:
– niet meer te bezuinigen op de verzorgingsstaat
– verlagingen  van lonen en pensioenen worden teruggedraaid
– minimum loon wordt verhoogd tot ca 600 in 2019
– privatisering wordt stopgezet
– cao onderhandelingen voor werknemers weer in ere hersteld
– verbieden van huisuitzettingen,
Zo werd ook de privatisering van de Portugese luchtvaartmaatschappij TAP teruggedraaid. Ook de extra belasting die was ingevoerd wordt met twee derde verlaagd voor de meeste midden inkomens en komt te vervallen voor diegenen die minder dan 800 euro verdienen. (lees hierverder)

Ecuador, Griekenland en Portugal, drie opties

In tegenstelling tot Griekenland vindt de Portugese regering de kracht om drastische bezuinigingen teniet te doen. Dit in tegenstelling tot de Grieken waar het er naar uitziet dat de bezuingingen gehandhaafd zullen blijven. Voor Ecuador is de toekomst nog onzeker. De huidige regering wil met alle kracht het bezuinigingsbeleid uitvoeren. Zij bevinden zich nog midden in de krachtmeting tussen bevolking en machthebbers ondersteund door het IMF (met op de achtergrond de VS).
 Rob Vellekoop, 12 oktober 2019


THE COVERT WAR AGAINST LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S REPUTATION

THE COVERT WAR AGAINST LOUIS 

ARMSTRONG’S REPUTATION

WHO CHANGES HISTORY 

AND WHY?

CLICK HERE FOR A GREAT JAZZ WEBSITE

We’re all familiar with the uneducated, foaming-at-the-mouth racist type.
What we’re less familiar with are super-wealthy US families who have been racists for generations.
We’re even less familiar with “researchers” and ‘historians” who make up “facts” to subtly and not-so-subtly and diminish the reputations of the leaders of non-white communities.
Here’s a strange case: The covert war being waged by certain “jazz historians” against Louis Armstrong – after his death.
Did you know that we also run Jazz on the Tube, a free service.

Karen Kwiatkowski: Run!

Run!


Julian Assange is reported to very thin, very sick and being treated at this point, as little more than a “lab rat” by his state doctors and interrogators at Belmarsh.  Word is that his encryption key ring (with his private keys that unlock his various public keys) has already been extracted, under physical duress, cold, light and noise torture, food deprivation, BZ variants, some experimental, and now that he is very physically weak, PCP.  The arrests have started and they won’t stop until the injured parties –mainly the US government – have satisfied their bloodlust.

If the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of donors of information to Wilikeaks around the world haven’t begun to already, they need to rapidly take cover – legal, physical, operational and otherwise.

The US, its allies and understudies, its lackeys and satraps, both of the state and corporate type, want to know where the leaks are.  And they will find them.

Was Julian Assange the publisher (like Google and Facebook)?  Was he some kind of fake whistleblower (like the CIA guy on loan to the White House)?  Might he be considered an actual whistleblower like Chelsea Manning or Ed Snowden and Bill Binney and many, many more driven by a sense of real patriotism and justice to share with the people what is being done in their name? 

Let’s walk it out.  If Assange is a publisher, as any newspaper that conducts investigates and uses protected sources, utilizing Wikileaks, as much as a “bulletin board” as is Google and Facebook – then under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which “immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content”), we as a people or the US State have no legal issues with Wikileaks.  Julian Assange should not be held indefinitely, tortured, and chemically interrogated. Donors or contributors to Wikileaks, if lawbreakers, are subject a different kind of investigation, conducted in their own countries by their own courts. Nothing released on Wikileaks has subsequently been found to be untrue or libelous (which was part of the publisher protection provided by Section 230).  Confirming by omission that Assange is a publisher, the USG case filed against Assange is playing a different game, one that simply required Assange’s private key ring, not his physical presence or testimony in the US District Court of Eastern Virginia, not in 2020, not ever.

Maybe Assange can be considered a partisan friendly hack whistleblower as in the case of the CIA agent who heard about things, consulted with a lawyer, shared his lawyerized second-hand information (possible gained through CIA spy  activities against a sitting president) with Congressman Adam Schiff and others, and then filed it with the ICIG, in order to create a comfortable nest of righteous urgency.  That this “whistle” blew shortly after Bolton, his key staffers, and a cadre of contractors he had brought into the National Security Council from JINSA and other neoconservative hangouts should not go unnoticed.  Trump’s many enemies have been insulted, degraded, and have temporarily been deprived of power and influence… this will not stand!

Assange clearly doesn’t trust big corporations and big government to always do the right things or have the interests of their employees, customers or citizens at heart.  He values transparency.  If transparency in government is a partisan position, it certainly isn’t one held by any of the major parties in the US, the UK, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China or Russia or Iran or India and the list goes on.  Contrasting with the kid-glove treatment and moral elevation gracing the introduction of our new CIA whistleblower, we see American Chelsea Manning re-imprisoned, and under new interrogation now that she has been moved from Alexandria to Leavenworth, based on information pried and squeezed out of Julian Assange at Belmarsh.

The (deep as well as overt) state reactions to Assange and the soon-to-be-named CIA White House “whistleblower” have been so markedly different that we must conclude that one of the two are not whistleblowers at all.  In fact, neither are whistleblowers.  Assange is a publisher and the current belle of the DC ball is a political tool, one worthy of study, as he could be part and parcel of a larger inter-agency coup.

Our third category, an actual whistleblower who sacrifices everything most people hold dear, in the name of justice or truthfulness, transparency or righteousness, or simply pure patriotism, is generally treated by the US government with contempt and charges.  In the case of the Australian who created Wikileaks, the USG charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 that Assange hacked into US government classified systems to get the data that was later published on Wikileaks.  The case against Assange is mainly about finding out the who, where, when and how of a whole host of leaks from US and US allied interests.  Hence the need for his private keys, his torture, and his physical and mental demise long before any extradition hearings.

Assange must not be tried in a court of law, even the dubious law of the Eastern District Court, because his “crimes” if any, will be found invalid, or invalidated.  He himself is not a whistleblower, and the charges in the US case against him thus relate to hacking and “encouraging” an existing whistleblower.  Decisions were made at the highest levels of both US and UK governments that Assange will be sacrificed in the name of the higher goal of tamping out current leaks, punishing past leakers, and discouraging future leakers, as well as improving information and technical security at NSA and other parts of the USG.   Part of this project is recent. Coming arrests and trials of people who may have violated their employment agreements in sharing classified information with Wikileaks, will, even if it must use parallel reconstruction as Judge Napolitano explains, will be enough for a trial.  Even kangaroo courts have their standards.

As Caitlyn Johnstone explains in the current US case, what we are witnessing is beyond a double standard and indicates CIA readiness to take on a president inclined to restrict it.  Perhaps, hope of hope, Trump was planning to fire its budget hungry and war-inflamed Director Pompeo? Meanwhile, Trump fails to rein in his IC, and fails to protect Assange, a man he once admired, if one can believe his tweeting.  Another man who once praised Wikileaks, and now leads England, was just this week praising Egypt for its freedom, and silent on Assange.  This summer’s first ever Media Freedom Conference was held in London not far from Belmarsh, with a several day, 14 page agenda studded with famous people.  Illustrating the very “deep fake” conundrum they did talk about at the conference, the agenda contained not a single mention of Wikileaks or Julian Assange.

This world is not for freedom lovers, or truth tellers.  Run!

The Best of Karen Kwiatkowski

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia's 6th district in 2012.
Copyright © 2019 Karen Kwiatkowski

Previous article by Karen Kwiatkowski: What’s Happening to Our Peaceful World?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/10/karen-kwiatkowski/run/


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