Nicaragua, unraveling a plot

The United States’ National Endowment for Democracy distributed some 4.2 million dollars in Nicaragua, between 2014 and 2017, to train “new leaders” to overthrow the Sandinista government | Francisco Arias Fernández*

(June 29) – AS early as 2016, talk of war against Nicaragua could again be heard in Miami, at a time when the streets of this nation were a regional example of security, peace, and prosperity, where a hardworking, tranquil people proudly enjoyed the social and economic advances achieved by the Sandinista government, that had established a national consensus, in the wake of one of the worst interventions carried out by the United States in Central America. 

The Arab Spring: US black ops and subversion

Book review of Ahmed Bensaada, Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes (Investigation into the US Role in the Arab Uprisings) by Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

‘Panama Papers’: ‘Corruption’ as a weapon of propaganda and disinformation

Monopoly journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Vladimir Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes ROBERT PARRY*.

Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.”

Why Russia shut down US NGOs – fronts of the US state

The neocon-flagship Washington Post has fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), but left out key facts like NED’s US government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow, writes ROBERT PERRY in Consortium News. The Harper government’s Dept. of Foreign Affairs has been covertly awarding millions of Canadian taxdollars to NED, and its subsidiaries, the National Democratic Institute (e.g., $374,206 on June 18, 2015; $426,054 on March 5, 2015; $698,227 on October 24, 2014) and the International Republican Institute (e.g., $6,000,000 on April 28, 2014 for “Strengthening Multiparty Democracy” in Ukraine and $1,000,620 and $1,125,390 on December 8, 2015). – TS

(July 30) – The Washington Post’s descent into the depths of neoconservative propaganda – willfully misleading its readers on matters of grave importance – apparently knows no bounds as was demonstrated with two deceptive articles regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin and why his government is cracking down on “foreign agents.”

US aggression against Venezuela: fact, not fiction

BY EVA GOLINGER*

(Feb. 25) – The U.S. has a substantial history of aggression toward Venezuela.

Recently, several different spokespersons for the Obama administration have firmly claimed the United States government is not intervening in Venezuelan affairs. Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki went so far as to declare, “The allegations made by the Venezuelan government that the United States is involved in coup plotting and destabilization are baseless and false.” Psaki then reiterated a bizarrely erroneous statement she had made during a daily press briefing just a day before [February 19]: “The United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means.”

US ‘perception management’: CIA’s hidden hand in ‘democracy’ groups

Freedom House, New York City

Special Report: Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting “democracy” and “freedom” — Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy — worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s, reports ROBERT PARRY*. Both these agencies operate inside Canada and are funded by the Harper government.

US ‘perception management,’ Libya and use of human rights impostors to spawn NATO’s war of aggression

Anti-War Protestors at Halifax’s Spring Garden Library during federal election, March 26, 2011

The names change but the methods remain the same. In Iraq the imperial war facilitator was Ahmed Chalabi. In Libya he went by the name of Soliman Bouchuiguir, a shadowy figure whose baseless allegations against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi were endorsed by the UN system and its affiliated “human rights” agencies without the slightest verification. The warmongering chorus included one Nazanin Afshin-Jam, the sole Canadian signatory, a Harper appointee to the board of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and an advocate of aggression against Iran; she married Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who despatched Canadian warplanes to bomb Libya.

In this article originally published on October 17, 2011, MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA* in text and JULIEN TEIL in video shed light on a failed system of international law and justice, which made itself complicit in NATO’s war crimes in Libya.

The analysis has been borne out by the passage of time: the overthrow of Libya’s government by NATO and Gulf Arab powers, at the cost of over 30,000 deaths, has led to a complete collapse in human rights and social conditions. Benghazi is now the centre of a bloody tribal-based revolt against the NATO government. The Harper war government must be held to account.