UKIP : THE RELENTLESS RISE OF THE XENOPHOBIC RIGHT

Letter from London

Rally denouncing UKIP’s program.

By Michael Faulkner

Just a few weeks away from the elections to the European parliament, the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) is expected to poll up to 30% of the votes cast in Britain. If this prediction is accurate it would make the anti-EU, anti-immigration party more popular than any other far right party in Europe. In six other EU member counties such parties are likely to poll more than 20% and in seven others between 4.4% and 18%. Such predictions need to be treated with some caution as turnout in EU elections has steadily declined over the years, falling from an average of 62% in 1979 to 43% in 2009.

In 2009 turnout in the U.K., at 34.7% was lower than anywhere else except the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, since 2009 the harsh austerity measures adopted to deal with the financial collapse of 2008 and the Great Recession throughout much of the EU, including Britain, have resulted in profound disenchantment with establishment political parties and the governments they lead. In much of Western Europe, particularly in countries of the “southern rim”, such measures have resulted in a collapse of living standards and welfare provision unprecedented since the end of the Second World War. Social inequality has increased dramatically and social unrest on a scale not seen since the 1930s has swept through countries such as Greece and Spain.

Rally in support of UKIP, as chronicled by the BBC. Such rallies have been taking place for the last few years, with increasing intensity.

The English Defence League is certainly part of the UKIP coalition. Their numbers are still small, compared to the anti-UKIP forces, but they are growing.

However, only in Greece where social breakdown has been catastrophic, has the crisis resulted in the emergence as an electoral force of a significant political party of the radical left. Syriza, which is expected to poll 24% of the vote has shown itself capable of mobilizing mass support for sustained resistance, presenting a clear alternative to the dominant neo-liberalism of the EU bureaucracy and governments of the centre-right committed to it. The openly fascist and thuggish Golden Dawn, by contrast, is expected to poll no more than 6.5%. Elsewhere, including in Britain, the main beneficiaries of the crisis are parties of the extreme nationalistic right.

It is not good enough for liberals and those on the left simply to bemoan the fact that this is so and to deplore the racism, opportunism and irrationality of the anti-immigrant, anti EU parties. The question that needs addressing is why such parties are gaining so much electoral support and why, in most cases, there has been no comparable movement on the left. References to the rise of European fascism in the 1930s and 40s and attempts to find parallels are of limited value. Although there are some obvious similarities between the right-wing nationalist parties today and their fascist predecessors, both the 21^st century nationalist parties and the circumstances that account for their success are very different. Italian and German fascism in the inter-war years arose initially as a petit-bourgeois reaction against Bolshevism and the post-war peace settlement s. These new phenomena were revisionist, revanchist, nationalist and racist. In most of its manifestations (Italy, Germany and Spain) fascism came to power during periods of intense class struggle in which economically and politically dominant elites faced strong, well organised left wing movements. The inter-war years saw the growth of an international communist movement which, for good or ill, was closely associated with the Soviet Union. Italian and German fascism were populist movements serving the interests of capital, masquerading as supra-class “people’s” movements committed to “national revolution”. Today’s anti-EU nationalist-racist parties do not face strong left-wing parties and powerful labour movements.

The similarity between the Great Depression that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Recession that resulted from the financial crash of 2008 is obvious. In Germany, which was hit hardest during the early 1930s, electoral support in 1933 was pretty evenly divided between the Nazis and German Nationalists on the right and the Communists and Social Democrats on the left. The Nazi party successfully tapped into the mood of widespread disenchantment with the “establishment” parties of the Weimar Republic, presenting itself as a new broom that would sweep clean the Augean stables. In Britain, Sir Oswald Mosley, a renegade from Labour, set up a “New Party” that would break decisively with tired and bankrupt parties of the Westminster establishment and restore Britain to its former greatness. This soon morphed into the British Union of Fascists. Fascism appeared on the European political scene as a supposedly new force, fresh and uncorrupted. A large part of its popular appeal was that it did not appear like a political party in the old sense at all. It presented itself as a “movement” to which everyone except non-national “aliens” could belong, that would defend traditional values, harking back to an imagined “golden age” free from the corroding influences of “modernism”. Fascism also claimed to be the sword and shield defending the people against myriad alien forces bent on tearing apart the national fabric and overturning all that had been decent in society.

Such movements were not new. They had predecessors in, for example, the early nineteenth century romantic movement in Germany and “Young England” in Britain. Both reflected nostalgia for a supposedly idyllic past destroyed by the industrial revolution. The anti-EU, anti-immigration, racist-nationalist movements in Western Europe today have arisen for similar reasons. In less austere times their appeal was more limited and in most countries they remained on the fringes of electoral politics. Their recent breakthrough can only be understood in the context of what has happened since the financial crash of 2008. Several factors, some that have been gestating for decades, others of very recent origin, help to account for the emergence and growth of these forces. Although many of the factors involved are evident throughout Europe, within and outside the EU, the main focus here will be on Britain and the emergence and growth of UKIP, to the point where it looks very likely to gain more support than any of the mainstream parties in the forthcoming EU elections.

Amongst the longer-term historic factors are: (i) the collapse in the early 1990s of the Soviet bloc, with the consequent migration westwards of ever-increasing numbers of East European workers as one country after another joined the EU. (ii) acceleration of neo-liberal economic policies everywhere in Europe resulting in deregulation, weakening the bargaining power of labour and depressing wages and living standards through destruction of trade unions. (iii) accelerating globalization, facilitating the free movement of capital and imposing supra-national trade agreements serving the interests of corporate power, beyond the reach of national parliaments. (iv) introduction of the euro throughout most of the EU despite serious imbalances in the economies of member states and failure to harmonize fiscal policy.

The financial crash of 2008 and the consequent Great Recession which was made worse by the coalition government’s punitive austerity programme, occurred as the result of a seriously dysfunctional form of capitalism (finance monopoly capitalism) which itself is symptomatic of the long-term stagnation of the real economy. Since the 1970s every bubble has grown bigger; every bust has been more devastating than the last, and the interludes between them have been shorter. And so it will continue.

During the last ten years or so, but particularly since the financial crash, public cynicism about parliamentary politics and contempt for politicians has reached a nadir only surpassed by the contempt in which bankers are held. Westminster politicians, like bankers, are widely regarded as self-serving, duplicitous careerists interested only in feathering their own nests. The ongoing scandal over MP’s expenses seems to provide ample proof that this assessment is correct. The steady decline in voter turnout in national elections provides further evidence of the public mood. But, it seems, UKIP has escaped this censure. It seems that a large and growing number of people, largely but not solely representative of the white lower middle class, are impervious to any negative publicity however well-substantiated it may be.

UKIP is really a one man band. It leader, Nigel Farage, is a public school educated ex-banker who manages to project himself as a jocular “hail-fellow-well-met” man of the people. Against the respectable image most public figures like to project, he is happy to be photographed, cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in the other. Actually his party is misnamed. It should be the English Independence Party as it has almost no support in Scotland and little in Wales. Farage is most at home in the home counties of southern England. UKIP is a very nasty party indeed and it is almost certain that without Farage it would enjoy far less support than it has now. Those of its election candidates who find themselves in the public eye usually do so because of outrageously racist and xenophobic statements. Typical is a member who recently opined that the black actor and comedian Lenny Henry, who criticised the television industry for its unrepresentative employment of black people, “should go and live in a black country”. This sort of thing, and worse, occurs regularly. When such statements attract public attention the “offenders” are sometimes expelled or reprimanded. But the fact is that such racist bigotry is widespread amongst UKIP members. More worrying is that none of this has dented the party’s popularity. Apart from withdrawal from the EU and stopping further immigration, it has no coherent policies. It functions as a protest group, which, like its overtly fascist predecessors harks back to a supposed golden age when traditional values prevailed and Britain was white and great. Its policy deficit and crude racism do not seem to matter to those who have decided to vote for it.

Amongst those who will vote for it there will be quite a few who either share its racist views or at least do not see them as an obstacle to supporting the party. But there will be many more who are not racists. They will vote for UKIP because they have lost all respect for the mainstream parties. And it must be said – and should be said by UKIP’s critics on the left – that hostility to the EU and support for Britain’s withdrawal is not necessarily motivated by a “little Englander” xenophobia. The experience of recent years has seriously dented the EU’s democratic credentials. The fiats imposed by the troika on Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and particularly Greece, have over-ridden their national sovereignty with the acquiescence of supine governments unprepared to stand up to the EU bureaucracy. As there is no coherent voice on the left in Britain prepared to take a stand in support of national sovereignty against the EU, we can expect to see more support going to UKIP. Also, in the absence of a clear left perspective on migration, UKIP’s alarmist racist scare-mongering will continue to gain support.

As well as consequences that are entirely foreseeable if UKP tops the poll in the EU elections, there may also be some unexpected and unintended consequences. At the moment the party does not have a single MP at Westminster. An impressive win in the EU elections is likely to be followed by a breakthrough at Westminster in 2015. If this happens it will almost certainly hit the Tories harder than Labour and could result in a majority Labour government, or at least in a Labour-led coalition.

But there is another possible consequence that has hardly flickered across the vision of most commentators. If UKIP does as well as is forecast in the May elections it could well give a great boost to the “yes” campaign for the referendum on Scottish independence later this year. Scotland is the one part of the U.K. where affection for UKIP is in very short supply. The prospect of Farage’s star rising in London may provide the final nail for the coffin of the United Kingdom. Not only would UKIP have to change its name, but nothing would be the same again thereafter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Correspondent Mike Faulkner is a British citizen. He lives in London where for many years he taught history and political science at Barnet College, until his retirement in 2002. He has written a two-weekly column, Letter from the UK,for TPJ Magazine since 2008. Over the years his articles have appeared in such publications as Marxism Today, Monthly Review and China Now. He is a regular visitor to the United Sates where he has friends and family in New York City.

The Story of Venezuela’s Protests

Much Different From What You’ve Heard

Antigovernment Venezuelans protest in London. Typical of the upper-class background of this insurgency supported by US agents. Notice the well-made signs.

By Mark Weisbrot

_In reacting to the protests in Venezuela, the biggest Western media outlets have drafted a charmingly simple narrative of the situation there. According to this story, peaceful protesters have risen up against a government because of shortages, high inflation, and crime. They have taken to the streets and been met with brutal repression from a government that also controls the media.

It doesn’t take much digging to take down this narrative. First, while there have been some peaceful opposition marches, the daily protests are anything but peaceful. In fact, about half of the daily death toll from Venezuela that we see in the media – now at 41 — are actually civilians and security forces apparently killed by protesters. A much smaller fraction are protesters alleged to have been killed by security forces. As for the media, state TV in Venezuela has only about 10 percent of the TV audience; the New York Times recently had to run a correction for falsely reporting that opposition voices are not regularly heard on Venezuelan TV. They are on TV, even calling for the overthrow of the government – which has been the announced goal of the protest leaders from the beginning. These are not like the protests last year in Brazil, or the student protests from 2011-13 in Chile, which were organized around specific demands.

Of course the increased shortages and rising inflation over the past year have had a political impact on Venezuela, but it is striking that the people who are most hurt by shortages are decidedly not joining the protests. Instead, the protests are joined andled by the upper classes, who are least affected.

In fact, the protests really got going largely as a result of a split within the Venezuelan opposition. Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chávez and then Maduro in the last two presidential elections, was considered too conciliatory by the more extreme right, led by Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado. They decided that the time was ripe to topple the government through street protests. Both were involved in the 2002 military coup against then President Chávez; María Corina Machado evensigned the decree of the coup government that abolished the elected National Assembly (AN), the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not defending the jailing of López or the Venezuelan AN decision to expel Machado, just as I would not defend the French government’sprosecution of far-right politicians for Holocaust denial, or the proposed banning of the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece. But we should be honest about who these Venezuelan opposition leaders are and what they are trying to do.

The strategy of Venezuela’s extreme right is to make the country ungovernable, so as to gain by force what they have been unable to win in 18 elections over the past 15 years. It is clear from the statements of Brazil’s former president Lula da Silva and current president Dilma Rousseff that they have no illusions about what is going on in Venezuela. It is now 50 years since Brazil’s coup brought in the military dictatorship that put them in prison, but they can remember what a coup looks like. So, too, can the other governments of South America, who have made similar statements. But they have also offered to mediate between the government and any opposition leaders who are willing to participate in a dialogue. This process looks encouraging so far. Let’s hope so; that is the only way forward in Venezuela.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and co-writer of Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border.” He is also President of Just Foreign Policy (www.justforeignpolicy.org).

Unite Against Imperialism!

If Not Now, When?
Hopelessness, fear and defeatism – this is how the Empire wants you to feel.

by ANDRE VLTCHEK, Counterpunch.org

French aircraft being prepared for attack on Libya. Dishonorably, France has become another complicit lapdog in American imperialist crimes.

French aircraft being prepared for attack on Libya. Most shamefully, France has become another complicit lapdog in American imperialist crimes.

_In countless interviews, in personal letters, in face-to-face discussions, the questions I keep being asked are becoming very similar: “Now that it is obvious that the West is ready and willing to destroy everything that stands in its way to the total domination of the planet, what can still be done?”

Some say: ‘Nothing’. There are plenty of discouraged, scared voices of people who have already fully given up, and come to the conclusion that the Empire is too powerful, too determined, and therefore, unstoppable.

Others are praying. And there are also some, who are putting all their trust into those few brave ones that are ‘still fighting’.

Hopelessness, fear and defeatism – this is how the Empire wants you to feel.

Do not! Defeat is only purposefully encoded in the propaganda that is being spread by the West. In reality, nothing is lost.

Actually, working all over the world, I am increasingly optimistic. People in the Middle East, in Africa, in many parts of Asia, are now waking up. People in Latin America woke up long time ago – they are alert, vigilant!

These are actually truly breathtaking moments in our human history. But nothing is free. To save the world, we will still have to stand firm against neo-colonialism, and all that insane propaganda that is being constantly disseminated by the West. We will have to be determined and strong. If we are, this is not going to be the end, but the beginning!

Of course if we just whine, everything will go to hell, and fall into the laps of the rulers of the world.

***

I actually think, and I have said it and written it on so many occasions, that right now there is absolutely no reason for nihilism.

Those dark days, some two decades ago, of disheartenment and gloom, are over. The era of the monsters like Reagan and Thatcher, the post-Reagan and post-Thatcher decades, of the Bush years, of the Yeltsin years, pre-Chavez years, pre-Morales years: Have all gone!

This is a new reality, and in many parts of the planet, it is quite a beautiful one!

Of course, most of the world is still extremely ugly, in pain and being governed by ruthless thugs, hypocrites, and even by mass murderers. Of course the West has not reformed itself, and it has never abandoned its ambition to dominate the planet. Of course there are millions of innocent people still dying, and the planet is being plundered by a bunch of degenerate morons belonging to the new religion called ‘market fundamentalism’… as this is being written.

Of course the propaganda and brainwashing campaigns coming from North America and Europe are intensifying dangerously. Of course it is not ‘the end of history’, but ‘the end of democracy’ as we have always perceived it…

Democracy has been totally kidnapped, perverted and humiliated by the most cynical manipulations from Washington, London and Paris. It has nothing to do with the ‘rule of the people’, nor about sticking some piece of paper into a carton box, in order to legitimize an entirely illegitimate ‘multi-party’ (really multi-party?) regime.

And of course, if there is no determined resistance, or defense of the basic values on which humanity is based, there will soon be nothing except absolute slavery, market fundamentalism, in brief a society much more appalling than Orwell or Huxley could ever envision.

***

The good news is, that there is resistance!

And there are people who are standing tall and fighting for the survival of mankind.

But equally as important, or even more important, is the fact that now there are also several countries that are totally determined not to allow this neo-Nazi European and North American system to choke the world.

These countries are not ‘perfect’, as nothing on this earth is. But they are historically peaceful, even if dirtied by the relentless disinformation campaign carried out by the global mass media. And they are all, without exception, much more interested in the well-being of humankind, than in religious concepts attached to business doctrines or world domination.

These countries – they all have different histories, economic and political systems, but all of them are fundamentally against Western neo-colonialism and imperialism. Needless to say, all of them have suffered greatly from it in the past, so they know what they are fighting against.

I am talking about Cuba and Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, Uruguay, China, Russia, Eritrea, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Iran, and many other nations of our wonderful and diverse planet.

Each and every one of them has been attacked in the past, by either Europe or the United States, or both.

China, one of the oldest and greatest nations on earth, was tricked, occupied and divided; plundered… Barbaric French hordes ransacked its cultural treasures, while the British colonized its cities, and in fact entire areas.

Symbolically, as recorded, the invaders even looted Chinese cultural treasures. As written in ‘The Telegraph’: there are Chinese artifacts, “1.5 million artifacts… in museums and collections across Europe and America, including the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.”

The West has been meddling in the internal affairs of China, financing, training and even arming its ‘opposition’. The narrative over Tibet, as well as its mostly internationalist approach towards Africa (I have interviewed hundreds of African people on the ground, in twenty odd countries, and most of them were appalled by the Western anti-Chinese narrative), has been totally kidnapped by the propagandists in London and Washington. The country has been antagonized and provoked on various occasions, its neighbors pitched artificially against it, again and again.

The outrageous provocative military actions of the US, Japan and South Korea against China and North Korea, are continuously bringing the world somewhere close to WWIII, as I have been told by most of the leading academics specializing in the region, including many of those from the West. Europe or the United States would never tolerate even one percent of what they are subjecting China, Russia and other countries to, with deadly regularity.

Is there any rational, historical reason why the world should fear China or North Korea, or Vietnam? Of course not! Except that the world is constantly being bombarded by a ‘religious’ and impossible to prove demagogy, which describes China (not the West!), as the true aggressor.

The historical and present-day violence against Russia is even more extreme. In recent history, the West has openly attacked Russia, on countless occasions. To name just a few of the most deadly ones: WWI, as well as several incursions against the young Soviet State by the French, Czech and others. According to the BBC Russia Profile:

“In northern Russia, British, French and US troops captured Murmansk and Archangel until 1919, while in the Russian Far East they occupied Vladivostok.”

WWII terminated the lives of twenty million Soviet citizens, who in the end defeated Nazism and saved further hundreds of millions of people worldwide, from definite annihilation.

While the Soviet Union supported most of the liberation struggles in the fight against Western colonialism, it never directly attacked Western Europe nor the United States.

In the end, the Soviet Union was dragged into the Afghan conflict in 1979, and was financially and mentally exhausted, exactly in accordance with the plan created by Zbigniew Brzesinski. As I was recently told, in the city of Kharkov, by a Ukrainian political analyst, Alexandr Oleinik:

“The essence of what is now happening is based on the doctrine of the United States, which has one major goal: To wipe out from the globe, first the Soviet Union, and then Russia, regardless of its form; whether socialist or capitalist… As is well known, these goals were already defined in the early 1980s, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his report to the US State Department, titled: “Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest.”

But it is Russia, not the US, UK or France, which is constantly defined by Western propaganda as the aggressor! No facts are given, except for many pseudo-facts about the Ukrainian famine, which, this author is intending to re-visit from his previous essays, together with the other ‘main pillars of Western anti-Communist propaganda’ – the Chinese famine and Cambodian bloodletting (both triggered by imperialism – by the US and Japanese ones), but about these topics, a little bit later this year.

Could all these vicious lies and manipulations be created precisely because Russia has always fought against Western imperialism?

And what about the world? Just ask people from the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa: Many see both Russia and China as two giants, two heroes, not as ‘aggressors’.

Iran: Is there any country (maybe except Cuba and Russia), which has suffered from Western terror more than this old cultural powerhouse?

Iran has been battered relentlessly! The democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, a true patriot who introduced great social changes in his country, was overthrown in a CIA and MI6 arranged coup, in 1953. It is not even denied in the West. The New York Times in 2000, reported (“The C.I.A. In Iran”) on that fact, and called the operation a ‘success’, lamenting ‘mishaps’:

“The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret history of its covert operation to overthrow Iran’s government in 1953 offers an inside look at how the agency stumbled into success, despite a series of mishaps that derailed its original plans.”

The West then pampered and supported its brutal implant, the Shah; his torture chambers, rapes, political murders and disappearances. And it armed and conditioned Iraq, which was under its close ally – Saddam Hussein – who invaded Iran in 1987, triggering a beastly war that took between 500,000 and 1.5 million human lives (historians can still not agree on the exact numbers).

Iran, naturally, has never attacked Europe or the United States, but we are told to fear its ‘potential nuclear capability’! Of course it did something much more ‘terrible’ in the eyes of the West; it dared to, under Mosaddegh, to nationalize its oil reserves. For that, millions of people had to die.

I don’t know about others, but while looking back at our planet’s history, I’d feel calmer if Iran were to have nukes, than when I know for certain, that the UK, France or US, some of the most aggressive countries on earth, actually have them.

And Cuba! Assassination plots against its President, the bombing of a passenger airliner, the bombing of restaurants and hotels, a direct invasion, an insane embargo, and even attempts to trigger drought and poison its crops, not to speak about the direct financing of the ‘dissidents’! The West, led mainly by the United States, did all that to Cuba. And it was done with absolute impunity.

All this because Cuba has been fighting, for decades, against imperialism and colonialism in Africa, because it helped to liberate Namibia and Angola, and tried to liberate the Congo; because it has been sending its doctors to the poorest parts of the world, because it has become a symbol of resistance against Western fascism…

Are we all scared of Cuba? Hands up who is! I am serious.

I can go on and on, about Venezuela and Bolivia, about Chile, even Brazil. But this time I just want to send a relatively short message: Just once, just for a few minutes, let us ‘censor’ our minds, to all the propaganda coming from the West. And let us, based on history and common sense, ask a very logical question: “Would it not be better to give a chance to those countries that are now standing against the Empire?”

We let Europe, the United States and their religious market fundamentalists rule the world, for many long centuries, and hundreds of millions of people vanished. Just let us have a glance at the map of the world, the way it looked at the very beginning of the 20th century. Are we getting the point? Everything colonized by Europe, all divided, messed up and enslaved.

Let us try something else. Let us all join the fight against Nazism and imperialism. Let us at least try!

***

Slowly but surely, non-Western countries are joining hands: Russia and Latin America, China and Latin America (yes, it was China which bailed out and saved Cuba, when that traitorous alcoholic Yeltsin, was busy destroying his country and the world, while at the same time taking direct Western dictates). Russia and China are getting closer, while Russia declared that it would support and defend Iran, if necessary. Venezuela and Iran, despite their cultural and social differences, are now as close as possible, and so are countries like Brazil and China.

The world is changing.

New and powerful media has emerged, sheltering the world from the one-sided Western indoctrination, offering great alternatives:

‘TeleSur’ in Venezuela (for which we are laboring relentlessly and proudly!). Press TV. RT! And there is even CCTV of China, although it still has to shed its ‘shyness’.

All this new and potent media is being read watched and relied on, by tens of millions of people starved of honest reporting and anti-imperialist stands! These media outlets are now standing tall and firm, alongside those several great opposition publications in the West (mainly in North America, very little in Europe) such as Counterpunch, Global Research, and Znet.

***

Public disobedience and “Occupy Wall Street” will definitely not save the world.

Whole countries, big and strong, will have to get involved.

There should be no appeasement. If the Empire dares to put its destroyers and military bases near Russia, China, Iran or Venezuela, these countries should do the same. And they are doing it, and they will.

The West is increasingly acting as a Nazi entity, and one does not do ‘peaceful protests’ in front of the Reichstag, when flames are consuming the world, when millions are being murdered!

Such protests will only be tolerated for as long as they are ineffective, but the moment when they truly become dangerous to the empire, they will be crushed. As they were!

I also believe that internal opposition in Europe and the United States should stop being so picky, demanding purity and perfection from the countries that are fighting against their own Nazi rulers, the system and the Empire. It’s not the time to be too fussy.

Resistance forces are diverse, they are not always ideal and to everyone’s taste, but they are already saving millions of human lives.

Let us first stop Western aggressions, imperialism and neo-colonialism, and only then, let us sort out our differences and determine the ideological way forward for the progressive forces on this planet.

Until then, to the barricades, to the battleships and to the television stations and magazines!

Of course we will win, but it will take some balls and ovaries, as they say in Latin America!

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. He has just completed the feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

Agents of Destabilization

by EVA GOLINGER

venezuela-s-president-nicolas-maduro-was-hand-picked-hugo-chavez_1.

_Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the US government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called “civil society” to execute a coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than$100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following 8 years.

At the beginning of 2011, after being publically exposed for its grave violations of Venezuelan law and sovereignty, the OTI closed its doors inVenezuela and USAID operations were transferred to its offices in the US. The flow of money to anti-government groups didn’t stop, despite the enactment by Venezuela’s National Assembly of the Law of Political Sovereignty and NationalSelf-Determination at the end of 2010, which outright prohibits foreign funding of political groups in the country. US agencies and the Venezuelan groups that receive their money continue to violate the law with impunity. In the Obama Administration’s Foreign Operations Budgets, between $5-6 million have been included to fund opposition groups in Venezuela through USAID since 2012.

The NED, a “foundation” created by Congress in 1983 to essentially do the CIA’s work overtly, has been one of the principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela
throughout the Chavez administration and now against President Maduro. According to NED’s 2013 annual report, the agency channeled more than $2.3 million to Venezuelan opposition groups and projects. Within that figure, $1,787,300went directly to anti-government groups within Venezuela, while another $590,000was distributed to regional organizations that work with and fund the Venezuelan opposition. More than $300,000 was directed towards efforts to develop a new generation of youth leaders to oppose Maduro’s government politically.

One of the groups funded by NED to specifically work with youth is FORMA (http://www.forma.org.ve), an organization led by Cesar Briceño and tied to Venezuelan banker Oscar Garcia Mendoza. Garcia Mendoza runs the Banco Venezolano de Credito, a Venezuelan bank that has served as the filter for the flow of dollars from NED and USAID to opposition groups in Venezuela, including Sumate, CEDICE, Sin Mordaza, Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones and FORMA, amongst others.

Another significant part of NED funds in Venezuela from 2013-2014 was given to groups and initiatives that work in media and run the campaign to discredit the government of President Maduro. Some of the more active media organizations outwardly opposed to Maduro and receiving NED funds include Espacio Publico, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Sin Mordaza and GALI. Throughout the past year, an unprecedented media war has been waged against the Venezuelan government and President Maduro directly, which has intensified during the past few months of protests.

In direct violation of Venezuelan law, NED also funded the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Table (MUD), via the US International Republican Institute (IRI), with $100,000 to “share lessons learned with [anti-government groups] in Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia…and allow for the adaption of the Venezuelan experience in these countries”. Regarding this initiative, the NED 2013 annual report specifically states its aim: “To develop the ability of political and civil society actors from Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia to work on national, issue-based agendas for their respective countries using lessons learned and best practices from successful Venezuelan counterparts. The Institute will facilitate an exchange of experiences between the Venezuelan Democratic Unity Roundtable and counterparts in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Argentina. IRI will bring these actors together through a series of tailored activities that will allow for the adaptation of the Venezuelan experience in these countries.”

IRI has helped to build right-wing opposition parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and has worked with the anti-government coaltion in Venezuela since before the 2002 coup d’etat against Chavez. In fact, IRI’s president at that time, George Folsom, outwardly applauded the coup and celebrated IRI’s role in a pressrelease claiming, “The Institute has served as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future…”

Detailed in a report published by the Spanish institute FRIDE in 2010, international agencies that fund the Venezuelan opposition violate currency control laws in order to get their dollars to the recipients. Also confirmed in the FRIDE report was the fact that the majority of international agencies, with the exception of the European Commission, are bringing in foreign money and changing it on the black market, in clear violation of Venezuelan law. In some cases, as the FRIDE analysis reports, the agencies open bank accounts abroad for the Venezuelan groups or they bring them the money in hard cash. The US Embassy in Caracas could also use the diplomatic pouch to bring large quantities of unaccounted dollars and euros into the country that are later handed over illegally to anti-government groups in Venezuela.

What is clear is that the US government continues to feed efforts to destabilize Venezuela in clear violation of law. Stronger legal measures and enforcement may be necessary to ensure the sovereignty and defense of Venezuela’s democracy.

Eva Golinger is the author of The Chavez Code. She can be reached through her blog.

• US/NATO false flag op apparently mounted to smear pro-Russia Ukrainians of anti-semitism

WE PRESENT A DOSSIER ON THIS ISSUE—

Underhanded operations is what the CIA specializes in so we should not be too surprised if, losing ground in Eastern Ukraine, it has apparently decided to play one of the dirtiest cards in its repertory, accusing Donetsk separatists of persecuting Jews.

If so, and logic points in that direction, this was a particularly cynical move by the agency, calculated to play big in the US where antisemitism is the third rail in American politics. The obvious goal was to inflame Jewish-American opinion, and the millions of Christian fundamentalist zealots who, for twisted reasons of their own, profess to be fierce supporters of Israel. Fortunately, the operation was so clumsily mounted that it is already falling apart at the seams (see report by the Guardian UK), but don’t trust the American media to investigate the truth too energetically. As it is, the CBS affiliate in New York was one of the first to break the news, but even that outlet hedged its bets again almost certain embarrassment by putting in a weak disclaimer. So far, there has been no real followup and no rectification.

The alarmistic news as first distributed by CBS New York (Channel 2). The transcript of the report is found immediately below.

Flyers Distributed In Troubled Eastern Ukrainian City Call On Jews To Register (CBS New York)

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – As Jews across the Tri-State area are celebrating Passover, a chilling new development is taking place in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, which has recently been caught up in awave of pro-Russian turmoil.

Flyers, purportedly distributed by pro-Russian rebels, are demanding Jews register with the “Nationalities Commissioner” and pay $50 or lose their citizenship and face deportation, according to a translation provided by the National Conference Supporting Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia (NCSJ).

It sent a chill around the world, reminiscent of a dark time from the last century.

“It is a stark example of anti-Semitism and a way of intimidating the Jewish community,” Michael Salberg with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said.

Secretary of State John Kerry blasted the flyers, saying their distribution is “grotesque.”

This flyer was distributed in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Apr. 15, 2014. (credit: The Coordinating Forum For Countering Antisemitism)

According to the NCSJ, the leaflets read:

Dear citizens of Jewish nationality! Due to the fact that leaders of the Jewish Community of Ukraine support the Bandera junta in Kiev and are hostile to the Orthodox Donetsk Republic and its citizens, the main headquarters of the Donetsk Republic declares the following:

• Every citizen of Jewish nationality older than 16 years, residing in the territory of a sovereign Donetsk Republic has to go to Donetsk Regional Administrator to see the Nationalities Commissioner, Office 514, for registration. The registration fee is $50.
• Persons should have with them with cash in the amount of $50 for registration, a passport to mark their religion, and documents of family members, as well as ownership documents for their properties and vehicles.
• In case of failure to register, the perpetrators will lose their citizenship and will be deported outside the republic, with their property confiscated.

The flyers were signed by the leader of Donetsk’s pro-Russian separatists, the NCSJ said.

The separatists denied they distributed the flyers and called them a provocation, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing news website tvrain.ru.

“In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled and all of the journey of history, this is not just intolerable; it’s grotesque,” said Kerry. “It is beyond unacceptable, and any of the people who engage in these kinds of activities – from whatever party or whatever ideology or whatever place they crawl out of – there is no place for that.”

New Yorkers said registration of Jews for any reason touches a raw nerve.

“I can’t imagine that that would really happen because that would just be a setback, a throwback of history that cannot be repeated,” Upper West Sider Karn Fittenhoff said.

malcolm honelein Flyers Distributed In Troubled Eastern Ukrainian City Call On Jews To Register

Full WCBS 880 Interview

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A rabbi in Donetsk said he assuring the world that no one in his community is registering with anyone.

In a news conference Thursday afternoon, President Obama said he’s hopeful, but also skeptical Russia will keep to an agreement with Ukraine to end the violence.

Talks to end the crisis come even as masked men lobbed molotov cocktails overnight trying to take a Ukrainian National Guard base. Blood was spilled when Ukrainian soldiers fought back, killing three and wounding 13.

Diplomats from the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and the European Union now say that from this point forward, the protests should stop, illegally seized buildings returned and international monitors allowed in to supervise the deal.

Russian president Vladamir Putin continues to deny any involvement in the Ukraine unrest and President Obama Thursday afternoon said he’s waiting to see if Putin’s actions match up with his rhetoric.

“My hope is that we actually do see follow through over the next several days. But I don’t think given past performance that we can count on that,” President Obama said.

For additional coverage of the situation in Ukraine, including recent diplomatic moves, head to our colleagues at CBS News.com.

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Take 2: The way this news should have been reported.

Antisemitic flyer ‘by Donetsk People’s Republic’ in Ukraine a hoax

City’s chief rabbi states pamphlet is fake, claiming it is meant to discredit pro-Russian protesters or Jewish community

Alec Luhn in Donetsk, The Guardian, Friday 18 April 2014

The barricades outside the Donetsk regional administration building are plastered with anti-fascist posters. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

•

_The barricades that mark the entrance to the “Donetsk People’s Republic” are plastered with anti-fascist posters, including an American flag with a swastika in place of the stars. The pro-Russian protestors who have set up their own government in the occupied administration building see the new Kiev regime as dominated by intolerant Ukrainian nationalists, which is why it was more than a little ironic when an antisemitic flyer appeared on Wednesday ordering Jews to register with these new authorities.

US secretary of state John Kerry soon waded into the media storm over the piece of paper, describing it as “grotesque” and “beyond unacceptable”. But on Friday the chairman of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the city’s chief rabbi both stated that the flyer was a fake meant to discredit the so-called republic or the Jewish community.

The hoax has nonetheless contributed to the tense, divisive atmosphere in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian protests have ended in violence in recent weeks. A vicious information war has raged around the military operation Kiev is staging to try to take back buildings from pro-Russian demonstrators and militia, with Ukrainian media vilifying the protestors as “terrorists” and Russian media regularly calling the Kiev government a “fascist junta”.

“I think it’s someone trying to use the Jewish community in Donetsk as an instrument in this conflict. That’s why we’re upset,” the chief rabbi, Pinchas Vishedski, told journalists on Friday.

According to Jewish community members at Donetsk’s only synagogue, which was founded 110 years ago, three masked men walked up to worshippers standing on the street after a Passover service on Wednesday and tried to distribute the flyers. They wore no insignia and quickly left when asked to identify themselves.

The flyer asks all Jewish citizens aged 16 and older to register with the “Donetsk Republic commissar for nationality affairs” and pay a $50 fee, “given that the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine support the Banderite junta in Kiev and are hostile to the Orthodox Donetsk Republic and its citizens.”

“Those who refuse to register will be deprived of citizenship and forcibly expelled from the republic and their property will be confiscated,” it read.

The order was allegedly issued by “people’s governor” Denis Pushilin, who denied the Donetsk People’s Republic had anything to do with the flyer at a press conference on Friday.

Prominent Jews in Ukraine have previously come out in support of the Euromaidan protests in Kiev that ousted president Viktor Yanukovich, although official Jewish leaders have stopped short of endorsing the Euromaidan movement. One of the three main leaders of the movement, Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the nationalist party Svoboda, infamously once said that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” was ruling Ukraine.

When seen by the Guardian on Friday, several aspects of the document immediately called into question its legitimacy. Pushilin is officially the chairman of the temporary government and has avoided being labelled its governor or leader. Also, the Donetsk People’s Republic stamp shown there is poor quality and a different size than normally used, and the order is not signed.

Nonetheless, it initially provoked a strong reaction among the local Jewish community, which numbers about 15,000 people, according to Vishedski.

“We were alarmed but now things have calmed down,” said worshipper Ari Schwartz.

“For people of the older generation, seeing this paper immediately brought up associations with what happened in Nazi Germany. It worried them,” said an assistant rabbi, Ieguda Kelerman.

Although Jews sometimes encounter “everyday antisemitism” in Donetsk, he added, the government has never adopted any discriminatory policies towards them. He said Jews in Donetsk include both supporters and opponents of the new Kiev government.

Vishedski said he reported the incident to law enforcement authorities and asked them for additional protection of the synagogue and Jewish school, and he plans to raise the issue with the Russian Orthodox leader, Patriarch Filaret.

“The rise of nationalism in this country is of course not comfortable for us,” Vishedski said.

But he declined to comment on the new Kiev government or the pro-Russian building takeovers in Donetsk and nearby regions.

“Some Jewish citizens participated in Maidan, they have a right to do this because they are citizens and this is a democracy,” he said, but maintained the community is not involved in politics.

Alexander Sheremyet, a protestor occupying the administration building, said the hoax was likely to have been staged by someone associated with the Kiev government to discredit the Donetsk People’s Republic.

“I don’t think it’s someone who wants to make money. It’s probably part of the information war,” he said.