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.

US ‘perception management’: The ‘evil enemy’, from Reagan to Obama

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy in to endless war, writes ROBERT PARRY*.

(Dec. 28) – To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war.

While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence.

Protest and destabilization in Venezuela: Following scripts that suggest a degree of premeditated coordination

The Obama Doctrine in action

STEVE ELLNER*, NACLA

Schemes designed to demonstrate that governments considered hostile to U.S. interests are ruthless and undemocratic span many decades and continents. There is one highly effective type of manipulation that is frequently employed: Peaceful protests are combined with violent ones as the media and opposition conflate the tactics used by security forces against the former and the justified use of force against the latter. The key actors in this display of deception know exactly what their role is and how to act in order to ensure success. Often, support for regime change opens opportunities for blatantly anti-democratic political movements, some of which employ terrorist tactics.

Machado ‘visit’: Harperites’ continuing subversion of Venezuela

By TONY SEED

ON MAY 8, peaceful protestors were assaulted by supporters of Maria Corina Machado, a former opposition member of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, inside and outside of a scheduled talk at the University of Ottawa.

About 30 concerned Canadians had gathered to protest Machado’s visit to Ottawa to meet with representatives of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian big capital.

Ukraine and NATO: the authorities v gangsters

Ukrainians including veterans protest “visit” of USS Vella Gulf, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in January 2012. Their slogans included “Yankee, go home!” and “No to NATO!” The protesters also burned a U.S. flag featuring Nazi swastika instead of stars. Yevhen Dubovik, a protest organizer, said the visit of a ship with offensive weapons was illegal because it had not been authorized by Ukraine’s parliament.

Following the overthrow of the government by an armed coup d’état, the goal of turning Ukraine into NATO territory complete with US military bases tops the agenda under the anti-Russian flag. This has been a consistent thrust of all governments since 1999, of both Yushchenko and Yanukovych, in the context of broad resistance by the people of Ukraine to the imperialist project.

In July 2008, anti-NATO protestors moved ten boats into positions blocking the exits from the port of Odessa, preventing NATO ships from participating in the Sea Breeze 2008 exercise. According to their statement, “The NATO drill in Odessa is being accompanied by numerous protests by local residents. This demonstrates the public mood in Ukraine over the government’s course toward early admission to the alliance.” A branch of the Ukrainian Communist Party in Donetsk said over 1,000 people had taken part in anti-NATO rallies in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine. In 2006, protests forced U.S. Marine reservists who came to prepare for the exercises to leave without carrying out their mission.

The extent of the anti-NATO resistance amongst Ukrainians was so broad that it could not be dismissed as something “ethnic” or “communistic.”

Venezuela: Who is Leopoldo Lopez?

By MAX BLUMENTHAL

Far right leader Leopoldo Lopez, who participated in the failed 2002 coup against then President Hugo Chávez, addresses a crowd on Feb. 18 in Caracas

(Feb. 20) – IT IS HARD to argue that many of those involved in anti-government protests in Venezuela don’t have legitimate grievances — widespread insecurity and media repression cannot be ignored — or that the government’s charges against opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, including “terrorism,” have been filed with sufficient substantiation.

But who is Lopez, and is there any evidence that his own methods are more democratic than those of the government he paints as corrupt and aims to topple through extra-constitutional means?

Venezuela beyond the protests: The revolution is here to stay

By EVA GOLINGER, Postcards from the Revolution

(Feb. 20) – FOR THOSE of you unfamiliar with Venezuelan issues, don’t let the title of this article fool you. The revolution referred to is not what most media outlets are showing taking place today in Caracas, with protestors calling for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The revolution that is here to stay is the Bolivarian Revolution, which began in 1998 when Hugo Chávez was first elected president and has subsequently transformed the mega oil producing nation into a socially-focused, progressive country with a grassroots government. Demonstrations taking place over the past few days in Venezuela are attempts to undermine and destroy that transformation in order to return power to the hands of the elite who ruled the nation previously for over 40 years.

Halifax International Security Forum: The network of subversion, annexation and war in the making – the ‘Halifax Canada Club’

By TONY SEED

This article is part of an ongoing investigation into the Halifax International Security Forum (HISF), which was formed in 2009 as a covert arm of the U.S. state that presents itself as an “independent” and “non-partisan” body with quasi-permanent status. It was originally published on November 21, 2013 and revised on April 15, 2014; November 17 and 21, 2014; February 17, 2016; and February 28, 2021. 

Topics at the 2014 HISF Forum include: “Pipeline Corridors: The Geopolical Role of Energy Infrastructure.” Given that one of the opening plenary sessions is titled “O Say, Can’t You see? The Indispensable Role of the Exceptional Superpower,” one must ask, what is behind this?

THE Halifax International Security Forum (HISF) aka the Halifax War Conference was formed in 2009 by the Washington-based German Marshall Fund and the Harper ruling clique as a parallel body to established agencies of the Canadian state such as the departments of foreign affairs and national defence. The U.S. board of directors of the HISF includes three members of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), the president of Freedom House, and two experienced agents with the National Endowment for Democracy, whose work in subversion throughout the world is nefarious and well-documented. The programmatic work of the CFR, which is also the “media partner” of the HISF, for the integration of Canada into the United States, has also been well exposed.

Canada’s role in organizing electoral coups in Middle East and North Africa

By ENVER VILLAMIZAR

TML Daily – ON JULY 18, Canada’s new Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Lynne Yelich announced two Canadian projects to train women in electoral campaigning in the Middle East and North Africa, namely in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. The announcement comes as the U.S. imperialists are scheming to invade Syria in various ways. Jordan and Lebanon border Syria and the U.S. and Israel are active in Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. In North Africa, the U.S. carries out drone strikes in Tunisia and NATO forces, including Canada, invaded Libya in 2011 and overthrew its government. Meanwhile, foreign interference continues in Egypt.

Canada’s ‘democracy promotion’ in Venezuela

By ANTHONY FENTON

The Dominion  (April 7) – Canada’s foreign policy, as that country which is closer geographically, economically, and militarily with the US than any other, has long been circumscribed by the whims of the world’s lone Superpower.

Part of the ‘hidden wiring’ of the US-Canada relationship is premised on the belief that there is a role for Canada in places where the US carries a lot of counter-productive baggage. New records obtained by The Dominion show just how actively intertwined Canada’s foreign policy is with the US-led ‘democracy’ promotion project in Venezuela.

Reporters Without Borders unmasked: Its well-financed private arrangement with Otto Reich to destroy Cuba’s economy

By DIANA BARAHONA*, Council on Hemispheric Affairs

• Robert Ménard, founder of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), is out to bring down Castro rather than protect journalists.
• Tens of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars go to finance an organization that critically misuses its calculated similarity to the name of a highly regarded group, Doctors without Borders (MSF).
• Rather than a bona fide NGO, RSF is an extremist anti-Castro shock brigade.
• Ménard is a propagandist extraordinaire and committed zealot on taxpayer funds.
• Saatchi and Saatchi teams up with Bacardi in an attempt to trash the Cuba tourist industry.
• Vivendi Universal provides hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of in-kind resources to Ménard.
• Concern about journalists is an afterthought.