Putin Bitch Slaps Orwellian “National Endowment for Democracies”

Oh, the horror of it all, big bad Putin has done it again.  Just days after the worst human rights abusers on the planet called for global sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses, Putin bitch slaps them by banning Orwellian “National Endowment for Democracies” from Russia. 

BBC News Excerpt:  

Russia has said it will not tolerate "interference" by foreign organisations after it put a US pro-democracy foundation on a blacklist.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), funded by the US Congress, is the first organisation to be labelled "undesirable" under a new Russian law.

Russia's Foreign Ministry warned that "we will never tolerate mentoring and open interference in our affairs by foreign structures".

US officials condemned Russia's move.

The US Department of State called the blacklisting "a further example of the Russian government's growing crackdown on independent voices and another intentional step to isolate the Russian people from the world".

Russia's Foreign Ministry hit back by saying the NED's name was "deceptive" because "it is only non-governmental on paper, while in reality it has, from the moment it was set up, received funding from the US budget, including funding via the channels of intelligence bodies".

The ministry said that analysis of NED projects "shows that they are aimed at destabilising the internal situation in countries which pursue independent policies in line with their own national interests, rather than following instructions from Washington".

Ha ha, bitch slapped by Putin again.  So who is this “National Endowment for Democracies?”  Are they some even-handed altruistic group that wants to spread Democracy across the world?  Are they purveyors of goodness?  Let’s see what their website says:  

Introduction

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, WITH FUNDING FROM THE US CONGRESS, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.

Further investigation of their website reveals a couple places their “democratic goals” are in full force are Ukraine and Eritrea.  If the “democratic goals” are endless war and displacing your population into refugee camps filled with hunger, despair and disease, then NED gets an A+.  

So I wanted to find out more about this “private, nonprofit” NGO that the U.S. Congress is funneling billions of dollars into and took a stroll over to Consortium News, Robert Perry’s site.  Here’s what Perry had to say in December of 2014:

Excerpt:

Exclusive: A shadow foreign policy apparatus built by Ronald Reagan for the Cold War survives to this day as a slush fund that keeps American neocons well fed and still destabilizes target nations, now including Ukraine….

The National Endowment for Democracy, a central part of Ronald Reagan’s propaganda war against the Soviet Union three decades ago, has evolved into a $100 million U.S. government-financed slush fund that generally supports a neocon agenda….

NED has invested in projects in Russia’s close neighbor, Ukraine, that fueled violent protests ousting President Viktor Yanukovych, who won election in 2010 in balloting that was viewed by international observers as fair and reflecting the choice of most Ukrainian citizens.

My, my, my.  I wonder how much of that $8 trillion missing at the Pentagon has gone to those neocons over at NED.   Since the overthrow of the American government on December 12, 2000 those neocons have all become millionaires.  And don’t forget, just a couple days ago, the U.S. was agitating for global sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses in the form of an expanded “Global Magnitsky Act.”  From Sputnik News:

Excerpt:

The Global Magnitsky Act would expand Russia-specific sanctions passed in 2012 to apply globally, by denying corrupt officials and human rights abusers from any country entry into the United States and prohibiting the use of US financial institutions.

Ha ha, they’re banned from using the most corrupt banking system in the world.

The Magnitsky Act allowed the US Treasury to apply sanctions on dozens of Russian officials believed to be responsible for the death in pre-trial detention of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who alleged official corruption at the highest levels of government.

Magnitsky, a managing partner of Moscow law company Firestone Duncan, was detained in 2008 and accused of conspiracy and abatement for tax evasion by a group of individuals. Less than a year later, Magnitsky died of heart failure while still in custody…

Hmmm, so who’s this Magnitsky dude and why has the U.S. congress passed a law in his name? I guess I’ll mosey on over to Wikipedia and see what I can find.  

Excerpt:

The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and President Obama in November–December 2012, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

The Obama administration made public a list of 18 individuals affected by the Act in April 2013. [13][14][15] The people included on the list are….

Artyom Kuznetsov, a tax investigator for the Moscow division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Pavel Karpov, a senior investigator for the Moscow division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Oleg F. Silchenko, a senior investigator for the Ministry of Internal Affairs

Olga Stepanova, head of Moscow Tax Office No. 28

Yelena Stashina, Tverskoy District Court judge who prolonged Magnitsky's detention

Andrey Pechegin, deputy head of the investigation supervision division of the general prosecutor's office…

Hmmm, I see a pattern here, they are all tax investigators and a judge that sentenced this Magnitsky guy.  So this Magnitsky Act was a “sanction against human rights violators.”  And what was Putin’s reaction?

On April 13, 2013, Russia released a list naming 18 Americans banned from entering the Russian Federation over their alleged human rights violations, as a direct response to the Magnitsky list.[22] The people banned from Russia are listed below:

US officials involved in legalizing torture and indefinite detention of prisoners:

David Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney (2005–2009)

John Yoo, Assistant US Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice (2001–2003)

Geoffrey D. Miller, retired US Army Major General, commandant of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), the organization that runs the Guantanamo Bay detention camps (2002–2003)

Ah, ha ha, stop my sides hurt, Putin banned Bush’s neocon torture team.  Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to know more about this subject.  Here’s an interesting article from ArmstrongEconomics:

Excerpt:

So Who Really Tried to Blackmail Yeltsin & Takeover Russia – NSA-CIA-or Investment Bankers?

Perhaps the number one question I always get about the ordeal I went through and the sheer chaos that surrounded everything, was just who really was behind the plot to blackmail the former head of Russia Boris Yeltsin to stop him from running for reelection in 2000 and hand-pick Boris Abramovich Berezovsky?....

Wow, that sounds interesting. 

Bereszovsky, who fled to Britain obtaining political asylum, suddenly hangs himself. Then there is the lawyer/accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who represented Safra’s Hermitage Capital Management mysteriously dies in prison awaiting trial and then is given a posthumous trial and found guilty.

While he was portrayed in the West as a whistle-blower, don’t forget so was Safra against Bank of New York.

Well, after the overthrow of the American government in 2000 whistle-blowers are tortured and killed or locked up for life.  That’s the new America; that’s why Edward Snowden had to seek asylum in Russia.

This is curiously strange for a foreign act to prompt Congress to pass a law in the USA. We cannot leave out Edmond Safra’s own mysterious murder in Monaco (Death in Monaco) that took the fire company hours to reach being just 10 minutes away while his more than 20 bodyguards were all given the night off and reported bullets in his body with his nurse saying Russians dressed as ninjas showed up….

Man, that crap sounds like the Bush/Cheney, Obama/Biden modus operandi.

Yeltsin was convinced to take $7 billion from the IMF funds to refurbish the Kremlin – a staggering amount of money. The funds were wired to a largely unknown company in Switzerland. The wire was steered through Bank of New York and as soon as it was made, Safra had his bank run to the Feds and report that Bank of New York had just conducted a money laundering event…

It was at this time that THE CONSPIRATORS threatened Yeltsin with exposure of his theft of $7 billion on the world stage. The demand was to appoint Berezovsky as the new President of Russia and for Yeltsin to step down and not run in 2000.

Yeltsin, realizing he was set up, turned to Putin who nobody had heard of. As the story goes, Putin promised to take care of everything if Yeltsin appointed him instead, Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999, after Safra was killed on December 3rd in Monaco. The Presidential elections were held in Russia on the 26th of March 2000 formally electing Putin.

Aha! That is why they hate Putin so much.

Berezovsky and Gusinsky fled Russia with their assets confiscated with the former gaining political asylum in Britain and the latter taking off to Israel. I even had a meeting with the Assistant US Attorney in NY in April 2000 about this mess because they ran into huge problems with the whole Bank of New York alleged $7 billion Money Laundering. They could not get any cooperation from the Russian government.

It was Edmond Safra’s Republic National Bank then ran to the US Government in August 1999 and informed them that the Bank of New York had just wired $7 billion to Switzerland in a money laundering scam…

The wire was sent to Mabetex, which was the Swiss based company ran by Kosovo/Swiss entrepreneur Behgjet Pacolli who claimed to have the contract to refurbish the Kremlin. He became President of Kosovo in 2011….

Putin, unlike most politicians, is renowned for being very smart and an extremely rare type personality that is well suited for a head of state unlike most leaders in the West.

And there you have it.  Putin bitch slapped the Orwellian “National Endowment for Democracies”, made a mockery of the Magnitsky Act and exposed the corruption of the entire EU, US and Canadian cabal in one fell swoop.  Well done Pooty Poot.  But then unlike “most leaders in the West” you are smart and an extremely rare type of personality well suited for a head of state.  Bravo.

By Patricia Baeten

ABC’s of Armageddon Part III: Starved Beast Hooked on Heroin

The ABCs of Armageddon, America Britain and Canada, have perfected the “conservative style of governing” created by the Chicago gang of Milton Freidman called starving the beast and have brought it to its intended outcome.  That outcome is a sick, starving, financially devastated populous serving an engorged ruling class. 

Back in October of 2014, in an interview conducted by Truth-out’s Michael Nevradakis with Henry Giroux called “Henry Giroux on the Rise of Neoliberalism” some very revealing observations were made regarding the absolute global human devastation that has resulted.

Excerpt:

Henry Giroux: I think since the 1970s it's been the predominant ideology (neoliberalism), certainly in Western Europe and North America. As is well known, it raised havoc in Latin America, especially in Argentina and Chile and other states. It first gained momentum in Chile as a result of the Chicago Boys. Milton Friedman and that group went down there and basically used the Pinochet regime as a type of petri dish to produce a whole series of policies….

We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs…

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. These massive dislocations have also produced serious mental health crises. We are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions, jobs and dignity.

One segment of society that has suffered mightily and found no relief for the resulting demons invading their psyche are the military personnel who are sent to kill or be killed in the battlefield for world domination. 

I’m speaking of the military and their families that were sent first to Afghanistan to kill goat herders in retaliation for the “9-11” attacks on a deregulated financial center located in the World Trade Center, then the expanded wars for profit in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Egypt and all across the world. 

The brave, selfless citizen soldiers are discarded like broken toys when the ruling class no longer makes a profit off them.  Suicide rates are extremely high in the ABC’s of Armageddon.  For Example:

America

            From CNN: 

Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That's a suicide every 65 minutes. As shocking as the number is, it may actually be higher….

Who wasn't counted?

People like Levi Derby, who hanged himself in his grandfather's garage in Illinois on April 5, 2007. He was haunted, says his mother, Judy Casper, by an Afghan child's death. He had handed the girl a bottle of water, and when she came forward to take it, she stepped on a land mine.

When Derby returned home, he locked himself in a motel room for days. Casper saw a vacant stare in her son's eyes. A while later, Derby was called up for a tour of Iraq. He didn't want to kill again. He went AWOL and finally agreed to an "other than honorable" discharge…

Who else might not be counted?

A homeless person who has no one who can vouch that he or she is a veteran, or others whose families don't want to divulge a suicide because of the stigma associated with mental illness; they may pressure a state coroner to not list the death as suicide

If a veteran intentionally crashes a car or dies of a drug overdose and leaves no note, that death may not be counted as suicide.

An investigation by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper last year revealed an alarmingly high percentage of veterans who died in this manner in Texas, a state that did not send in data for the VA report….

Nikkolas Lookabill had been home about four months from Iraq when he was shot to death by police in Vancouver, Washington, in September 2010. The prosecutor's office said Lookabill told officers "he wanted them to shoot him." The case is one of many considered "suicide by cop" and not counted in suicide data.

Carri Leigh Goodwin enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2007. She said she was raped by a fellow Marine at Camp Pendleton and eventually was forced out of the Corps with a personality disorder diagnosis. She did not tell her family that she was raped or that she had thought about suicide. She also did not tell them she was taking Zoloft, a drug prescribed for anxiety.

Her father, Gary Noling, noticed that Goodwin was drinking heavily when she returned home. Five days later, she went drinking with her sister, who left her intoxicated in a parked car. The Zoloft interacted with the alcohol, and she died in the back seat of the car. Her blood alcohol content was six times the legal limit.

Britain

From BBC:

More British soldiers and veterans took their own lives in 2012 than died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan over the same period….

Some of the soldiers' families say the men did not get enough support. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said every suicide was a "tragedy"….

Seven serving soldiers have been confirmed as having killed themselves last year, and inquests are pending for a further 14 deaths where suicide is suspected.

The British government, unlike its American counterpart, does not record the suicide rate among ex-soldiers.

But Panorama has independently established that at least 29 veterans took their own lives in 2012….

One serving soldier who killed himself was L/Sgt Dan Collins, who had fought in Operation Panther's Claw in Helmand province, Afghanistan, in the summer of 2009.

Deana Collins, the mother of L/Sgt Collins, said her son was a "victim of war"…

L/Sgt Collins, a Welsh Guardsman, twice survived being shot and was blown off his feet by a roadside bomb….. His friend, L/Cpl Dane Elson, was blown to pieces just yards away from him.  … Collins's mother Deana had noticed a difference in her son during his time in Afghanistan….

"The phone calls changed and I remember him telling me, 'Mum, this place is hell on earth and I just want to get out of here'," she said….  After 10 months of intermittent treatment, the Army told L/Sgt Collins he had recovered and would soon be ready to return to duty…  Over the next three months, he twice tried to kill himself…

He recorded a farewell video on his phone and then hanged himself. He was 29.

Canada:

From CBC:

The recent deaths of two Canadian soldiers who fought in Afghanistan have renewed public debate about how to deal with military suicides. But veterans advocates say that the data collected by the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada on how many active and retired army personnel have committed suicide is incomplete, and makes it difficult to help soldiers who may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND) has confirmed that two soldiers died in the past week.  Corporal Alain Lacasse, 43, of Valcartier, Que., was found dead in his home on March 17. Police said it was a suicide.

Master Cpl. Tyson Washburn, 37, of Pembroke, Ont., was found dead on March 15. Officials aren't releasing details about his death, but CBC News has learned Washburn appears to have taken his own life….

There has been a spate of soldier suicides in recent months, including three in the span of three days in November.

Three more soldiers died in January. On Jan. 3, Cpl. Adam Eckhardt, a native of Trenton, Ont. who was based with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry at CFB Suffield in Alberta, was found dead…

Alain Lacasse, 43, served six tours of duty including two in Bosnia and one in Afghanistan. He was found dead in his home in Valcartier, Que., on March 17. (Facebook)

On Jan. 8, Cpl. Camilo Sanhueza-Martinez, a member of The Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment based in Kingston, Ont., who had fought in Afghanistan, was found dead.

On Jan. 16, Lt.-Col. Stephane Beauchemin, a 22-year veteran who had been deployed to Haiti and Bosnia, died in Limoges, Ont, a small town east of Ottawa.

The deaths of Master Cpl. Washburn and Cpl. Lacasse bring the number of confirmed suicides of Canadian soldiers in 2014 to five.

The difficulty of getting accurate numbers

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has published figures on soldier suicides up to and including 2012. The numbers show there were 10 suicides in 2012, 21 in 2011 and 12 in 2010.  Poulin says the figures published by the CAF are incomplete…

The ABC’s of Armageddon have nothing but disdain for the military lives that are lost and destroyed, especially if they cut into their war profits.  As Henry Giroux stated in his interview in Truth-out:

We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class…

Dismantling of the welfare state and privatization of public services and public assets are essential for unending war for the ruling class of the ABC’s of Armageddon.  They care not about the suffering their trillion dollar wars cause across the world, because there’s gold in them thar hills. 

America:

From GlobalResearch:

Excerpt:

Yahoo Money’ The Daily Ticker  quoting a Reuters investigation that reveals that $8.5 trillion – that’s trillion with a “T” – in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for…

While Republican politicians rush to slash food stamps for the 47 million Americans living in poverty – the highest amount in nearly two decades – Republican U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has the audacity to complain that $20 billion dollars in automatic sequester cuts to the massive and secretive $565.8 billion Defense Department budget are “too steep, too deep, and too abrupt,” all while the Pentagon and the Defense Department are overseeing massive fraud, waste, and abuse.

Britain:

From World Socialist Network:  

Tales of “profligate” Greece, with its population living beyond their means, have long been central to the British and other European governments’ insistence on austerity. “Take the medicine, or you will end up like Athens” is the mantra.

Naturally, nothing is said of the criminal policies of the ruling elite in Europe, involving huge bailouts to the banks that have reduced working people in Greece to penury….

Described privately by some Conservatives as a “moment of maximum pain,” Osborne set out measures that will plunge millions of workers and youth further into economic insecurity and poverty.

Welfare cuts are intended to raise £34.9 billion…   Working age benefits, including tax credits introduced by Labour as a means of subsidising low pay, are to be frozen, reduced and/or phased out. The government pledged to slash the numbers eligible for one or another benefit from nine out of ten people in 2010, to just half.

Tax credits and universal credits will be restricted to the first two children in a family. From April 2017, those with larger families will receive no extra help.

Only last week, the government changed the measure through which child poverty was calculated. This came after official figures revealed that 4.1 million children are in “absolute poverty”, an increase of 500,000 children (or 14 percent) in the lifetime of the coalition. Now, families with more than two children (12 percent of the total) are to be hit harder still.

Canada:

From The Star: 

Unions, teachers, students and community groups have taken to the streets across Quebec this week to protest expected public service cuts as a provincial budget is set to be unveiled this spring.

A coalition of community groups was formed to oppose the government’s austerity measures, which they say will slash education, health care, youth and other programs across the province….

In December, Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said Quebec was on track to get rid of its $2.35-billion deficit by 2015-16.

To do so, the province announced it would cut $700 million in public service jobs, $300 million in payments to municipalities and $200 million to the health-care system, as well as raise some fees.

So the ABC’s of Armageddon are slashing a swath across every democratic institution vital to the health, safety and wellbeing of their people in order to fund a war based economy.  And as Henry Giroux put it in the Truth-out article, they have no remorse.

What shocks me about neoliberalism in all of its forms is how utterly unapologetic it is about the misery it produces. And it is unapologetic not just in that it is indifferent to the violence it causes, but it also blames the very victims that suffer under these policies.

The heroine epidemic is part of these conservative neoliberal policies.  First pharmaceutical companies flood the market with drugs to control ADD in the schools and over prescribe medications like OxyContin and opiate based pain medications to relieve suffering.  Next the ruling class enacts laws restricting dispensing of the pain medication that results in a shortages and opens up a lucrative, illegal black market for cheaper substitutes like heroine.  From CNN:

Excerpt:

Back in the 1960s, heroin users were usually young men, who started using around an average age of 16. They were most likely from low-income neighborhoods, and when they turned to opiates, heroin was their first choice.

Now, more than 50 years later, a study from JAMA paints a very different picture.

Today's typical heroin addict starts using at 23, is more likely to live in the affluent suburbs and was likely unwittingly led to heroin through painkillers prescribed by his or her doctor.

While heroin is illicit and opioid pills such as oxycontin are FDA-approved, each is derived from the poppy plant. Their chemical structures are highly similar and they bind to the same group of receptors in the brain. (A few opioids, like fentanyl, are totally synthetic but designed to bind with those same receptors).

In any case, the various drugs produce the same result: an increase in pain tolerance and a sense of euphoria, along with drowsiness, occasional nausea and, at higher doses, a slowing of the user's breathing.

All these drugs trigger "tolerance" -- the need to take higher doses for the same effect -- and a craving for the drug in its absence.

It is precisely because there are so many similarities that pain pill addicts frequently turn to heroin when pills are no longer available to them.

Heroin is usually cheaper than prescription drugs. Opiate pain medications cost the uninsured about $1 per milligram; so a 60-milligram pill will cost $60. You can obtain the equivalent amount of heroin for about one-tenth the price…

Last year, the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte spent time trying to better understand the patients who were coming into detox for heroin. What they found were cops, lawyers, nurses and ministers who came from some of the best neighborhoods in the area.

Most of them shared a common story: "We used to take pills, but now we inject heroin."

Those are the human costs of the ABC’s of Armageddon’s conservative ideology of starving the beast.  For the ABC’s of Armageddon, the pain and suffering is nonexistent in their ivory towers.  They could care less about the horrors of a war based economy that leaves nothing but waste and devastation in its wake, because for them if they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. 

By Patricia Baeten.

ABC’s of Armageddon Part II: The Holocaust of Working People

There has been a worldwide holocaust of working people perpetrated by the ABC’s of Armageddon.  The anti-democratic governments that came to power by hook or by crook in America, Britain and Canada have annihilated working people not only in their own countries but in countries they invaded on the pretext of promoting democracy.

These “Christian” nations have invaded countries, removed their elected leaders, destroyed their social programs, stolen their mineral wealth, emptied their pension funds and condemned them to death in the gas chambers of poverty and hunger in the barren wastelands left behind or what Pope Francis referred to as “an immense pile of filth.”

The Iran nuke deal is panning out to be a windfall for the banking cartels that control the ABC’s of Armageddon.  Time Magazine refers to the Iran Nuke deal, as a Gold Mine for U.S. and International Businesses:  

Excerpt:

 U.S. and International Businesses Eye an Iranian ‘Gold Mine’ After Nuclear Deal

Even before the crowds on Tehran’s streets staggered home on Tuesday night from partying to celebrate the nuclear deal, Iranians and Americans were both assessing the mammoth new potential for business in the country….  Iran has around $150 billion frozen in international banks, which when sanctions are lifted will begin filtering into the domestic and international economy….

In recent months, as the nuclear talks began to seem like they might succeed, American and European executives have rushed to Tehran to meet business people and to try position themselves to open operations there once sanctions end…..

“We’ve seen a lot of venture capital companies come from the U.S.”

At this point, almost every sector is rich pickings for Western business.

Yes, Iran is rich for pickings for Western businesses and “vulture” capital companies especially for the military industrial complex and banking cartels who are enriched from human suffering. 

Iran is also planning to upgrade its airplanes after decades. Since sanctions shut out the two dominant airplane manufacturers, the U.S.’s Boeing and Europe’s Airbus…

Last year Iran Air CEO Farhad Parvaresh told Reuters that it urgently needed about 100 new planes, and would buy them from China or Russia if Western sanctions did not end soon….

…the energy executive, says he expects “second and third tier” U.S. companies to open Iran operations first.

Oh, happy days are here again for the people of Iran the Western sanctions will be lifted and the milk and honey will flow.  But wait, maybe the people of Iran should take a look at how previously liberated peoples have fared.  In December of 2014 Sinhalanet.net warned the people of Sri Lanka to beware of the gifts of the false gods of the ABC’s of Armageddon:

Excerpt:

LIBYA BEFORE ARAB SPRING AND UNDER GADDAFI…

Gaddafi brought the Libyan government from poverty and debt, to prosperity and debt-free status in 41 years

Under Gaddafi, Libyans had free education, electricity, health care and land, seeds and livestock for people who wished to farm

Education from grade school through to college was free in Libya.

Healthcare was free and Libyan pharmacies and hospitals were comparable to high-quality European facilities. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse

Libya gave free land and seeds to anyone who wants to farm that land. Gasoline cost 14 cents a gasoline and there was 50% subsidy on car purchases

Gaddafi insisted on keeping oil revenues to benefit his people instead of handing them over to US corporations….

Under Gaddafi’s oil-revenue-sharing program, each Libyan got $500 (Dollars) deposited into his or her bank account each month

Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa (even better than South Africa, Mauritius and Seychelles).

No one was homeless in Libya as everyone was given a home (the story has change post-2011)

Libyans enjoyed free electricity

Women in Libya had equal rights, not only as a philosophy, but in practice. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights.

On marriage, each couple was gifted $60,000

LIBYA AFTER ARAB SPRING AND UNDER WEST…

Libyan is 4 years on in complete chaos.

Freedom as promised to the people of Libya from the dictator Gaddafi has meant – daily kidnappings, of torture, wrongful imprisonment, assassinations, bombings, raids and bloody clashes between rival militias, armed extortion, strikes that have reduced the oil sector…

over 50,000 Libyans who have lost their lives since 2011…

… NATO forces killed tens of thousands, built up militias and then left the country under differing factions who have unleashed a reign of terror in the society….

The Libyan economy is in shambles

There are some 1700 militias with a combined total of 250,000 men with arms –

…. foreign embassies are closing shop …the western news agencies have a vested interest in keeping the issues unclear so as to keep Libya destabilized and destroyed

What has been kept from the citizens of the USA is the role of financial enterprises such as Goldman Sachs…. and private-equity firm Blackstone Group in their dealings with the Libyan Investment Authority…

…. in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.

The ABC’s of Armageddon molded their financial gas chamber template in the Reagan/Thatcher years. Here is the Daily Mails’ proscription for the holocaust of the working man:

Back in 1985, the miners' defeat seemed like a watershed in Britain's political history. For two decades, successive governments had struggled to control the tide of strikes, with foreign observers nicknaming Britain 'the sick man of Europe'.

But Mrs Thatcher's victory after a gruelling 12-month strike not only defined her premiership, it hammered the last nail into the unions' coffin. Never again would an over-mighty union leader, burning with socialist fervour, defy the law and take on the government — or so it seemed.

Yet if one of Britain's most powerful political figures has his way, we could well be plunged back to the worst days of savage industrial confrontation and open class conflict….

Mr Cameron should remind Mr McCluskey that almost 12 million people voted Conservative in 2015 — 78 times as many as voted for Mr McCluskey to lead Unite.

And the Prime Minister must make it clear that if Unite defies the will of the people and the law of the land, then he will use all possible means to win the ensuing battle, including, if necessary, using the courts to sequester the union's assets.

Not to be outdone, Canada has pledge to destroy the working man with all guns and no butter.  From WorldSocialist Website:

Canada’s Conservatives pledge more austerity and war

By Keith Jones

24 April 2015

Canada’s Conservative government tabled its pre-election budget Tuesday. It is a blueprint for the continued dismantling of public services, redistribution of wealth to the most privileged sections of society, and expansion of the military and national-security apparatus.

The budget had two main audiences: Canada’s ruling big-business elite and the more privileged and reactionary sections of the middle class.

To the former, its principal constituency, the Conservatives pledged that there would be no let-up in its austerity drive and the intertwined push for ever-lower taxation of big business, the rich and super-rich. 

With its boasts of “strong leadership” and a “low tax plan for jobs, growth and security,” the budget also constituted an implicit pledge that once the elections are over, Stephen Harper’s nine-year-old government will press forward with unpopular “structural reforms.”

Since winning a parliamentary majority in the 2011 federal election, the Conservatives have raised the retirement age to 67, slashed Employment Insurance eligibility and benefits, imposed a health-care financing “accord” that cuts tens of billions from Medicare, and effectively outlawed strikes in the federal public sector and federally administered industries.

In America’s working man’s gas chamber, the U.S. Senate has done their part to ensure annihilation of working people and their earned benefits called “entitlements”:  

Excerpt:

Some Union Pension Cuts Likely As New Federal Rules Take Shape

The likelihood that hundreds of thousands of union members nationwide won’t be receiving the full pension benefits promised to them is becoming clearer as federal regulatory agencies in Washington, D.C., move to implement new pension legislation quietly approved in the final weeks of 2014.

As reported by Cole Stangler in In These Times late last year, legislators rushed to amend a 40-year-old law governing private-sector multiemployer pension plans as part of broader budget legislation that was considered “must pass” by both Republicans and Democrats.

The new law, which has been the subject of heated debate in Washington for more than a decade, is aimed specifically at union pension plans facing long-term insolvency and gives the trustees of such plans new freedom to cut benefits to retirees as a way to reverse the declining fortunes of those plans. President Barack Obama signed the measure, called the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA), into law on December 16….

The fear now emerging among pensioners in the Central States Fund is very real, comments Sue Cole, a union activist and spouse of a retired Teamster in St. Louis, Missouri. “My phone started blowing up” with calls from retirees worried that their benefits will be slashed, she says. If rumored pension cuts are enacted, “People are going to have to go on food stamps, people are going to lose their homes.”

As the working people of the world watch the Greek people herded onto cattle cars for the German imposed austerity death camps sanctioned by the ABC’s of Armageddon, the people of Iran cheer in the streets, their sanctions will be lifted.  The Iranian people will be liberated by the ABC’s of Armageddon. 

Let’s all raise a toast to the ABC’s of Armageddon’s Holocaust of the Working Man.

By Patricia Baeten

Pope Francis’ Encyclical: It’s the Economic Terrorism Stupid

To steal a quote from James Carville in the Presidential campaign of William Jefferson Clinton in 1992, “it’s the economy stupid”, for the one world banking system foisted upon the people of the world by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank “it’s the economic terrorism stupid.”

The definition of terrorism is described as such:

ter·ror·ism

ˈterəˌrizəm

Noun

the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims

While the physical terrorism of the poor people of the world takes place in Somalia, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Palestine to name a few, every bit of wealth and self-identity is stripped away and people are scattered to the ends of the earth, never to return home.  Banks like Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank and the IMF are ushered in to claim rights to the land, minerals and gold.

While the climate change portion of Pope Francis’ encyclical has gained a lot of attention, particularly from the most powerful financial terrorist nation in the world, the Christian Nation of United States of America, financial terrorism portion has been pretty much overlooked.  And, that is for evil reason, to protect the cockroaches who populate the bowels of these financial institutions. 

Most recently in Greece, after the people were allowed to determine their economic future through a vote in the form of a referendum on the IMF financial terrorist demands, they voted to pursue life, liberty, dignity and happiness rather than crippling austerity that has driven thousands to commit suicide.  

 

Greece Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis Euclid Tsakalotos Motorcycle 

As a result, the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resignedafter the economic terrorists refused to negotiate with him, feigning outrage at Varoufakis calling them what they are “economic terrorists.”

 As reported in TruthDig, Pope Francis’ encyclical called “Praised Be” leveled a scathing criticism of the current banking cartels’ terrorism against the people of the world.

Excerpt:

Pope Francis’ June 2015 encyclical is called “Praised Be,” a title based on an ancient song attributed to St. Francis. Most papal encyclicals are addressed only to Roman Catholics, but this one is addressed to the world. And while its main focus is considered to be climate change, its 184 pages cover much more than that. Among other sweeping reforms, it calls for a radical overhaul of the banking system….

In the Middle Ages, the financial parasite draining the people of their assets and livelihoods was understood to be “usury” – charging rent for the use of money. Lending money at interest was forbidden to Christians, as a breach of the prohibition on usury proclaimed by Jesus in Luke 6:33. But there was a serious shortage of the precious metal coins that were the official medium of exchange, creating a need to expand the money supply with loans on credit….

The dire effects can be seen particularly in the financialization of food. The international food regime has developed over the centuries from colonial trading systems to state-directed development to transnational corporate control.

Today the trading of food commodities by hedgers, arbitrageurs and index speculators has disconnected markets from the real-world demand for food.

The result has been sudden shortages, price spikes and food riots. Financialization has turned farming from a small scale, autonomous and ecologically-sustainable craft to a corporate assembly process that relies on patented technologies and equipment increasingly financed through debt.

To hear about the Greek referendum vote from the world-wide corporately controlled media empire that Rupert Murdoch built with the assistance of the governments of America, Britain, Canada and the European Union, one would be led to believe that Greece has been a slacker, with its people too lazy to work and wanting what Reagan and Thatcher would refer to as a nanny state.

The IMF, the ECB and EU are not Altruists but a bunch of parasitic predators that lighted down upon the country of Greece.  Like crocodiles attacking a wildebeest they have sucked out every bit of the serum of life.  Or, as Pope Francis’ encyclical called it “, the financial parasite draining the people of their assets and livelihoods.” From Global Research.

Excerpt:

The IMF Has Made €2.5 Billion Profit Out of Greece Loans

 By Jubilee Debt Campaign / jubileedebt.org.uk

Ahead of the payment of €462 million by Greece to the IMF on Thursday 9 April, figures released by the Jubilee Debt Campaign show that the IMF has made €2.5 billion of profit out of its loans to Greece since 2010. If Greece does repay the IMF in full this will rise to €4.3 billion by 2024….

The IMF has been charging an effective interest rate of 3.6% on its loans to Greece. This is far more than the interest rate the institution needs to meet all its costs, currently around 0.9%...

Out of its lending to all countries in debt crisis between 2010 and 2014 the IMF has made a total profit of €8.4 billion, over a quarter of which is effectively from Greece….

“The IMF’s loans to Greece have not only bailed out banks which lent recklessly in the first place …  This usurious interest adds to the unjust debt forced on the people of Greece.”

The vitriol that has been heaped upon the Tspiras Administration and the people of Greece by their creditors has only served to bring to light the nefarious nature of the troika “beast” as described by Joseph Stiglitz in the Financial Review:

Excerpt:

Greece debt crisis: Joseph Stiglitz says Europe is attacking Greek democracy

… European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics….

…the economics behind the program that the "troika" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25 per cent decline in the country's GDP.

I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece's rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60 per cent.

Did you get that?  The youth unemployment in Greece now exceeds 60 percent because of the usurious interest levied by the EU, ECB and IMF and they are outraged that Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis calls them economic terrorists. 

In voting “No” Greece has stood up to the “beast” in spite of, as Paul Krugman put it in the Business Insider, “a truly vile campaign of bullying and intimidation”, a shameful moment in modern European history.

Excerpt:

Greek no vote win for Europe

Krugman writes that, "we have just witnessed Greece stand up to a truly vile campaign of bullying and intimidation, an attempt to scare the Greek public, not just into accepting creditor demands, but into getting rid of their government. It was a shameful moment in modern European history, and would have set a truly ugly precedent if it had succeeded."

And so with the Greek people shooting down the vision that other Europeans had for their economy and future prospects, Krugman believes that all Europeans - as voters and participants in democracy - won on Sunday.

But that is what the world has devolved into since the America’s elected government was overthrown December 12, 2000 by the banking cartel and their minions in the United States Senate and Supreme Court. 

With the overthrow of the American government came “financialization” of all government services necessary to survival of a Democratic United States.  From the TruthDigArticle above:

Excerpt:

Land and natural resources, once considered part of the commons, have long been privatized and financialized. More recently, this trend has been extended to pensions, health, education and housing.

Today financialization has entered a third stage, in which it is invading infrastructure, water, and nature herself. Capital is no longer content merely to own. The goal today is to extract private profit at every stage of production and from every necessity of life.

The American government is a puppet run out of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans a subsidiary of RAND Corporation.  In a November 2014 vote at the United Nations denouncing Nazism and Holocaust Denial there were only three countries voting against the measure.  From InformationClearing House:

Excerpt:

U.S. Among Only 3 Countries Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial

By Eric Zuesse

In a U.N. vote, on November 21st, only three countries  — the United States, Ukraine, and Canada — voted against a resolution to condemn racist fascism, or “Nazism,” and to condemn denial of Germany’s World War II Holocaust against primarily Jews.

This measure passed the General Assembly, on a vote of 115 in favor, 3 against, and 55 abstentions (the abstentions were in order not to offend U.S. President Obama, who was opposed to the resolution).

55 abstentions in order not to offend President Obama.  President Obama who lost the Democratic Primary and was advanced as the Democratic candidate for President after the votes in the primaries in Florida and Michigan were cancelled as punishment for voting for Hillary Clinton.  That is how elections are conducted in America after the overthrow of the elected government in 2000.

The measure had been presented to their General Assembly after a period of more than a decade of rising “neo-Nazi” (i.e., racist-fascist) movements in Europe, including especially in Ukraine, where two Ukrainian Nazi parties were installed by the U.S. into high posts in Ukraine’s new government, immediately after the democratically elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup in Kiev during February of this year.

The entire Ukrainian ‘defense’ establishment was then immediately taken over by the leaders of these two Nazi parties, which rabidly hate ethnic Russians, and Ukraine is now led by the first — and so far, the only — Nazi government to take charge of any country after the end of WW II.

Within less than a mere three months after the coup, this new Government began an ethnic-cleansing program in Ukraine’s own ethnic-Russian southeast, where around 90% of the residents had voted for the man who had been overthrown in the coup — this was a campaign to isolate and exterminate those people, so that those voters could never again participate in a Ukrainian national election. Unless those voters would be eliminated, these Nazis would be elected out of power — removed from office.

That is the new American election system, “one man, one vote, one time.”  Pope Francis was in Ecuador where he made the following statements:  From CNN News:

Excerpt:

Pope notes: Francis says the rich shouldn't rule the world

(CNN)Taking his eco-friendly message to the masses, Pope Francis called for a new system of global justice based on human rights and care for the environment rather than economic profits.

"The goods of the Earth are meant for everyone," the Pope said, "and however much someone may parade his property, it has a social mortgage…."

In recent months, indigenous groups have protested Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, saying that his promotion of drilling and mining near the Amazon rainforest could ruin their ancestral homeland.

On Tuesday night, the Pope left little doubt about whose side he takes.

"The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits," Francis said.

The Pope’s encyclical and comments during his tour of South America have incited the hatred of one group that is demanding the Pope be put on trial for his heresy against “Nazi-Capitalism.”  From Israel News:

Excerpt:

“And you shall discern from among the entire people men of accomplishment, God-fearing people, men of truth, people who despise money and you shall appoint them leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, and leaders of tens. so they shall judge the people at all times.” (Exodus 18:21)

A re-established and self declared Israeli Sanhedrin, the religious High Court composed of 71 sages, has declared that it is putting Pope Francis on trial unless he retracts his statement that the Jews have no right to the land of Israel or to Jerusalem.

In February 2013, the Vatican officially recognized the “State of Palestine” but more significantly, the Vatican signed a treaty in June with “Palestine” in which the Holy See switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the “State of Palestine”. This treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state and as such, constitutes an official recognition.

The trial and judgment will be on September 20th, 2015. If Pope Francis chooses to ignore the summons, he will be judged in absentia….

The letter was signed, “The Secretariat of the Court of Mount Zion”…. The Sanhedrin has no political or legal status, and clearly has no authority over the Vatican.

Meanwhile, America has announced they are slashing the military by 40,000 troops in order to save money.  From USA Today:

Excerpt:

The Army plans to cut 40,000 soldiers from its ranks over the next two years, a reduction that will affect virtually all of its domestic and foreign posts, the service asserts in a document obtained by USA TODAY….

An additional 17,000 Army civilian employees would be laid off under the plan officials intend to announce this week. Under the plan, the Army would have 450,000 soldiers by Sept. 30, 2017, the end of the 2017 budget year. The reduction in troops and civilians is due to budget constraints, the document says.

The Pentagon's budget, released in February, envisioned the reduction to 450,000 would occur by Sept. 30, 2018.

And as the US slashes its all-volunteer American troop levels due to sequestration, the congress has appropriated funds to pay “moderate terrorists” to fight in Syria in order to depose President Assad.  From UpRooted Palestinians:

Excerpt:

A crucial part of the United States’ plan to train moderate Syrian rebels to combat the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group is locating those so-called “moderates.” The problem: those are becoming harder and harder to find.

Last June, the White House asked Congress for $500 million to train and arm Syrian rebels who could help stem the growing influence of the Islamic State. The effort was seen as a necessary way to fulfill President Obama’s pledge of keeping American ground troops out of the conflict, and as an important caveat, the administration assured lawmakers that it would screen any potential trainees to filter out extremists.

That’s right the illegitimate banking servants in the American government installed by the Federal Reserve Bank is slashing our military and handing over a half billion dollars to pay “moderate” terrorists to terrorize the Syrian people and remove their elected leader.

So with the 2016 Presidential “election” and I use the term “election” loosely, the campaign slogan should be “It’s the Economic Terrorism, Stupid.”

By Patricia Baeten