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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.unz.com/article/how-israel-and-its-partisans-work-to-censor-the-internet/\n← International Campaign Is Criminalizing...Is Israel Turning a Blind Eye as Israel... →\nAlison Weir Archive\nAlison Weir Archive Select Year/MonthAll Years = 10 ItemsDecade 2010s = 10 Items Year 2019 = 2 Items Year 2018 = 2 Items March 2018 = 1 Item Current Item November 2018 = 1 Item Year 2017 = 1 Item Year 2015 = 2 Items Year 2014 = 3 Items--- September 2019 = 1 Item May 2019 = 1 Item November 2018 = 1 Item March 2018 = 1 Item Current Item May 2017 = 1 Item July 2015 = 1 Item May 2015 = 1 Item May 2014 = 1 Item April 2014 = 1 Item March 2014 = 1 Item\nHow Israel and Its Partisans Work to Censor the Internet\nAlison Weir • March 8, 2018\nRecently, YouTube suddenly shut down the If Americans Knew YouTube channel. This contained 70 videos providing facts-based information about Israel-Palestine.\nPeople going to the channel saw a message telling them that the site had been terminated for “violating YouTube guidelines”—implying to the public that we were guilty of wrongdoing. And ensuring they didn’t learn about the information we were trying to disseminate.\nWhen we tried to access our channel, we found a message saying our account had been “permanently disabled.” We had received no warning and got no explanation.\nAfter five days, we received a generic message saying YouTube had reviewed our content and determined it didn’t violate any guidelines. Our channel became live once more.\nSo why was it shut down in the first place? What happened and why?\nAs it turns out, Israel and Israeli institutions employ armies of Internet warriors—from Israeli soldiers to students—to spread propaganda online and try to get content banned that Israel doesn’t want seen.\nPerhaps like our videos of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.\nA few days before the termination of our channel, we received a form email from YouTube, telling us we had gotten “one strike” for a short video about a Palestinian man killed by Israeli soldiers. The video was part of our series of videos to make Palestinian victims, usually ignored by US media, visible to Americans.\nIt takes three minutes to view the video and see that it contains nothing objectionable, unless revealing cruelty and oppression is objectionable:\nYouTube’s email claimed we had somehow violated their long list of guidelines but did not tell us which one, or how. It simply stated:\n“Your video ‘Ahmad Nasser Jarrar’ was flagged for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines. We’ve removed it from YouTube and assigned a Community Guidelines strike, or temporary penalty, to your account.”\nSuch a penalty is not public and does not terminate the channel.\nThree days later, before we’d even had a chance to appeal this strike, YouTube suddenly took down our entire channel. This was done with no additional warnings or explanation.\nThis violated YouTube’s published policies.\nYouTube policies say there is a “three-strike” system by which it warns people of alleged violations three times before terminating a channel. If a channel is eventually terminated, the policies state that YouTube will send an email “detailing the reason for the suspension.”\nNone of this happened in our case.\nWe submitted appeals on YouTube’s online form, but received no response. Attempts to find a phone number for YouTube and/or email addresses by which we could communicate with a human being were futile.\nYouTube’s power to shut down content without explanation whenever it chooses was acutely apparent. While there are other excellent video hosting sites, YouTube is the largest one, with nearly ten times more views than its closest competitors. It is therefore enormously powerful in shaping which information is available to the public–and which is not.\nWe spent days working to upload our videos elsewhere, update links to the videos, etc. Finally, having received no response or even acknowledgment of our appeal from YouTube, we decided to write an article about the situation. We emailed YouTube’s press department a list of questions about its process. We have yet to receive any answers.\nFinally that evening we received an email with good news:\n“After a review of your account, we have confirmed that your YouTube account is not in violation of our Terms of Service. As such, we have unsuspended your account. This means your account is once again active and operational.”\nOur channel was visible once more. And YouTube had now officially confirmed that our content doesn’t violate its guidelines.\nUltimately, the YouTube system seems to have worked, in our case. Inappropriate censorship was overruled, perhaps by saner or less biased heads. In fact, we felt that there might at least be one positive result of the situation—additional YouTube employees had viewed our videos and perhaps learned much about Israel-Palestine they had not previously known.\nBut the whole experience was a wakeup call that YouTube can censor information critical of powerful parties at any time, with no explanation or accountability.\nIsraeli soldiers paid to “Tweet, Share, Like and more”\nIsrael and partisans of Israel have long had a significant presence on the Internet, working to promote the Israel narrative and block facts about Palestine, the Israel lobby, and other subject matter they wish covered up.\nOpinionated proponents of Israel post comments, flag content, accuse critics of “antisemitism,” and disseminate misinformation about Palestine and Palestine solidarity activists. Many of these actions are by individuals acting alone who work independently, voluntarily, and relentlessly.\nIn addition to these, however, a number of orchestrated, often well-funded projects sponsored by the Israeli government and others have come to light. These projects work to place pro-Israel content throughout the Internet, and to remove information Israel doesn’t wish people to know.\nOne such Israeli project targeting the Internet came to light when it was lauded in an article by Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news organization headquartered in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.\nThe report described a new project by Israel’s “New Media desk” that focused on YouTube and other social media sites. The article reported that Israeli soldiers were being employed to “Tweet, Share, Like and more.”\nThe article noted, “It is well known nowadays that what happens on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has great influence on events as they occur on the ground. The Internet, too, is a battleground.” It was “comforting,” the article stated, to learn that the IDF was employing soldiers whose job was specifically to do battle on it.\nIsraeli students paid to promote Israel on social media\nScreen shot from a video about student program to spread pro-Israel content on the Internet and social media.\nAnother project to do battle on the Internet was initiated in 2011 by the 300,000-strong National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS). The goal was “to deepen and expand hasbara [state propaganda] activities of students in the State of Israel.”\nUnder this program, Israeli students are paid $2,000 to work five hours per week to “lead the battle against hostile websites.”\nAn announcement for the program (translated here into English) noted that “many students in Israel master the Internet and are proficient at using the Internet and social networking and various sites and are required to write and express themselves in English.” Students can work from the comfort of their own homes, points out the announcement.\n“Students work in four teams: Content, Wikipedia, Monitoring and New Media,” according to the program description. It details the responsibilities for each team:\nThe content team is responsible for creating original content in a news format.\nThe monitoring team is responsible for “monitoring efforts while reporting and removing anti-Semitic [sic] content from social networks in a variety of languages.” (The program conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism; see below.)\nThe New Media team is responsible for social media channels, “including Facebook accounts in English, French and Portuguese, Twitter, YouTube channels, and so on.”\nThe Wikipedia team is “responsible for writing new entries and translating them into languages that operate in the program, updating the values of current and relevant information, tracking and preventing bias in the program’s areas of activity.”\nThis program sometimes claims it is working against antisemitism, but it conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. This is in line with an Israel-backed initiative to legally define “antisemitism” to include discussing negative facts about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.\nCampaign to infiltrate Wikipedia\nThe pro-Israel organization CAMERA infiltrated Wikipedia for a time. (Illustration by Electronic Intifada.)\nSeveral years ago, another project came to light that targeted Wikipedia. While manipulating Wikipedia entries doesn’t directly impact YouTube, it provides a window into some of these efforts to manipulate online content.\nA 2008 exposé in the Electronic Intifada revealed: “A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.”\nWhile it is common and appropriate for individuals to edit Wikipedia entries to add factual information and remove inaccurate statements, this project was the antithesis of such editing. As EI, reported, its purpose was “to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.”\nAuthor Ali Abunimah reported that a source had provided EI with a series of emails from members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) that showed the group “was engaged in what one activist termed a ‘war’ on Wikipedia.”\nCAMERA Senior Research Analyst Gilead Ini organized a project to infiltrate Wikipedia.\nCAMERA called for volunteers to secretly work on editing Wikipedia entries. It emphasized the importance of keeping the project secret. Volunteers were schooled in ways to elude detection. After they signed up as editors, they were to “avoid editing Israel-related articles for a short period of time.”\nThey were also told to “avoid, for obvious reasons, picking a username that marks you as pro-Israel, or that lets people know your real name.”\nCAMERA also warned them: “Don’t forget to always log in… If you make changes while not logged in, Wikipedia will record your computer’s IP address.”\nA Wikipedia editor known as Zeq helped in the effort, telling volunteers: “Edit articles at random, make friends not enemies—we will need them later on. This is a marathon not a sprint.” He emphasized the importance of secrecy: “You don’t want to be precived [sic] as a ‘CAMERA’ defender’ on wikipedia that is for sure.”\nZeq recommended that they work with and learn from an independent, pro-Israel Wikipedia editor known as Jayjg, but directed them to keep the project secret even from him.\nWhen this all came to light, Wikipedia took measures against such manipulation of its system and the CAMERA program may have ended.\nIf it did, others stepped into the breach. In 2010 two Israeli groups began offering a course in “Zionist editing” of Wikipedia entries. The aim was “to make sure that information in the online encyclopedia reflects the worldview of Zionist groups.” A course organizer explained that the use of the word “occupied” in Wikipedia entries “was just the kind of problem she hoped a new team of editors could help fix.”\nIsrael’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported: “The organizers’ aim was twofold: to affect Israeli public opinion by having people who share their ideological viewpoint take part in writing and editing for the Hebrew version, and to write in English so Israel’s image can be bolstered abroad.”\nThere was to be a prize for the “Best Zionist Editor”—the person who over the next four years incorporated the most “Zionist” changes in the encyclopedia. The winner would receive a trip in a hot-air balloon over Israel.\nHigh tech millionaire Naftali Bennett, a right-wing minister close to the settler movement, describes the program:\nThe UK Guardian reports: “One Jerusalem-based Wikipedia editor, who doesn’t want to be named, said that publicising the initiative might not be such a good idea. ‘Going public in the past has had a bad effect,’ she says. ‘There is a war going on and unfortunately the way to fight it has to be underground.’”\nAgain in 2013, there was evidence of pro-Israel tampering with Wikipedia. Israel’s Ha’aretz reported that a social-media employee of NGO Monitor edited articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an allegedly biased manner. “Draiman concealed the facts that he was an employee of NGO Monitor, often described as a right-wing group, and that he was using a second username, which is forbidden under Wikipedia’s rules,” according to the paper.\nSuch actions have had an impact. A website critical of Wikipedia said in 2014 that there were “almost ten times as many articles about murdered Israeli children as there are articles about murdered Palestinian children,” even though at least 10 times more Palestinian children had been killed.\nThe website also pointed out: “While editors like Zeq (T–C–L) and CltFn (T–C–L) may get banned in the end, the articles they started remain.”\nIf YouTube reviewers and others use Wikipedia in their determination about whether content should be removed or not, these efforts to censor Wikipedia could adversely affect their decisions.\nSocial Media Missions for Israel\nTitle image from Forward article about the Act.IL campaign.\nIn 2017 yet another project to target Internet platforms was launched. Known as Act.il, the project uses a software application that “leverages the power of communities to support Israel through organized online activity.”\nThe software is a joint venture of three groups: Israel’s IDC University; the Israeli American Council, which works to “organize and activate” the half million Israeli-Americans who live in the U.S.; and another American group called the Maccabee Task Force, created to combat the international boycott of Israel, which it terms “an anti-Semitic movement.” Maccabee says it is “laser focused on one core mission—to ensure that those who seek to delegitimize Israel and demonize the Jewish people are confronted, combatted and defeated.”\nImage from Maccabee end of year report.\nIn addition, the project is supported by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry and Israel’s intelligence community. Its CEO is an eight-year veteran of Israeli army intelligence.\nIsrael’s Jerusalem Post reports that Act.IL is “a wide-ranging grassroots campaign app that lets individuals combat BDS in the palm of their hand” or, as we will see, from public computers in the US.\n“Act.IL is more than just an app,” the Post article explains. “It is a campaign that taps into the collective knowledge of IDC students who together speak 35 languages, hail from 86 countries and have connections to the pro-Israel community all over the world.”\nThe article claims: “A platform like Act.IL offers world Jewry an opportunity to fight for one thing the majority can rally behind: Israel.” (This ignores the fact that there are many Jewish individuals who oppose Israeli policies.)\nIsrael partisans around the world download the app, and then “in this virtual situation room of experts, they detect instances where Israel is being assailed online and they program the app to find missions that can be carried out with a push of a button.”\nAn organizer notes: “When you work together, with the same goals and values, you can be incredibly powerful in the social media landscape.”\nSome missions ask users to report videos. Israeli government officials say that the Act.il app “is more effective than official government requests at getting those videos removed from online platforms.”\nThe project is led by former Israeli intelligence officers and has close ties to American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Another funder is the Paul R. Singer Foundation, funded by the Republican hedge fund billionaire.\nThe Forward calls Act.IL a new entry into the “online propaganda war” that “has thousands of mostly U.S.-based volunteers who can be directed from Israel into a social media swarm.”\nAccording to the Forward, “Its work so far offers a startling glimpse of how it could shape the online conversations about Israel without ever showing its hand.”\nThe Forward reports: “Act.il says that its app has 12,000 sign-ups so far, and 6,000 regular users. The users are located all over the world, though the majority of them appear to be in the United States. Users get ‘points’ for completed missions; top-ranked users complete five or six missions a day. Top users win prizes: a congratulatory letter from a government minister, or a doll of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister.”\nPhoto of group that participated in Act.IL training\nAct.IL’s CEO, a veteran Israeli army intelligence officer, said the Israeli military and its domestic intelligence service “‘request’ Act.il’s help in getting services like Facebook to remove specific videos that call for violence against Jews or Israelis.” This according to the Forward report.\nThe officer later tried to walk back his statement, “saying that the Shin Bet [intelligence service] and the army don’t request help on specific videos but are in regular informal contact with Act.il. He said that Act.il’s staff is largely made up of former Israeli intelligence officers.”\nTeens in American JCCs carry out missions assigned from Israel\nNew Jersey “Media Room,” a project of IAC New Jersey in partnership with Act.IL.\nThe project recruits Jewish teens and adults and sometimes operates out of local Jewish community centers, the Forward says. The paper describes one example:\n“The dozen or so Israelis sitting around a conference table at a Jewish community center in Tenafly, New Jersey, on a recent Wednesday night didn’t look like the leading edge of a new Israeli government-linked crowdsourced online propaganda campaign.\n“Tapping on laptops, the group of high school students and adult mentors completed social media ‘missions’ assigned out of a headquarters in Herzliya, Israel.”\nIn addition to the Tenafly “media room” another operates in Boston in cooperation with the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. There are also regular Act.il advocacy-training sessions at The Frisch School, a Jewish day school in Paramas, New Jersey. Other media rooms are reportedly in the works, with one in Manhattan, hosted by The Paul R. Singer Foundation, scheduled to open soon.\nThe Forward reports: “In November, the Boston media room created a mission for the app that asked users to email a Boston-area church to complain about a screening there of a documentary that is critical of Israel. The proposed text of the email likens the screening of the film to the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and calls the film’s narrator, Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, a ‘well-known anti-Semite.’”\nPhoto of Boston Media Room published by Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which states: “Media Room Ambassadors are students and adult mentors who are trained with the knowledge, skills, and tools to positively influence public discourse by developing pro-Israel social media campaigns.”\nAccording to the Forward, Act.il also produces “pro-Israel web content that carries no logo. It distributes that content to other pro-Israel groups, including the Adelson-funded Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and The Israel Project, which push them out on their own social media feeds.”\nThe Forward predicts: “Initiatives in cyberspace seem likely to increase.”\nScreenshot from video promoting the project, posted on the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston website.\nIsraeli media report that the Israeli military “has begun scouring Jewish communities abroad for young computer prodigies” to recruit for its ranks.\nAn Israeli official described the process: “Our first order of business is to search Jewish communities abroad for teens who could qualify, Our representatives will then travel to the communities and begin the screening process there.”\nIsraeli Government Ministry backs secret online campaigns\nGeneral Sima Vaknin-Gil told Israeli tech developers to “flood the Internet” with pro-Israel propaganda. As Israel’s Chief Censor, she said: ” “We censor information that is critical to our enemies, who have no capabilities like us, do not have a Jewish brain, and therefore our enemy relies to a large extent on open information…”\nIsrael’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, which is behind this and similar projects, has mobilized substantial resources for online activities.\nIsrael’s Ynet news reports that the Ministry’s director “sees it as a war for all intents and purposes. ‘The delegitimization against the State of Israel can be curbed and contained through public diplomacy and soft tools,’ she says. ‘In order to win, however, we must use tricks and craftiness.’”\nThe director, General Sima Vaknin-Gil, told a forum of Israeli tech developers at a forum: “I want to create a community of fighters.” The objective is to “curb the activities of anti-Israel activists,” and “flood the Internet” with pro-Israel content.\nAn Israeli report in December stated that the ministry has acquired a budget of roughly $70 million to “stand at the forefront of the battle against delegitimization, adopting methods from the fields of intelligence and technology. There is a reason why ministry officials define it as ‘a war on consciousness terrorism.’” [‘Delegitimization’ is a common Israeli term for criticism of Israel. See here for a discussion of the term.]\nA Ha’aretz article reports: “The Strategic Affairs Ministry’s leaders see themselves as the heads of a commando unit, gathering and disseminating information about ‘supporters of the delegitimization of Israel’—and they prefer their actions be kept secret.”\nThe article reports that the Ministry includes a job role entitled “Senior official—new-media realm,” responsible for surveillance and activities “in the digital realm.”\nThis individual head is responsible for analyzing social media and formulating a social media campaign against sites and activists who are deemed a threat to Israel.\nAmong the job’s responsibilities are:\n“Analysis of the world of social media, in terms of content, technology and network structure, emphasizing centers of gravity and focuses of influence, methods, messages, organizations, sites and key activists, studying their characteristics, areas, realms and key patterns of activities of the rival campaign and formulating a strategy for an awareness campaign against them in this realm and managing crises on social media. That is, surveilling of activities mainly in the digital arena.”\nOfficials at the ministry are charged with “construction and promotion of creative and suitable programs for new media.”\nThe unit works to keep its activities secret from the public. For example, a program to train young Israelis for activities on social media was exempted from publishing a public bid for funding. Similarly, the ministry’s special unit against delegitimization, “Hama’aracha” (The Battle), is excluded from Israel’s Freedom of Information Law.\nThe 29th floor of Tel Aviv’s Champion Tower is the nerve center of a 24-7 ‘war’ in which Israeli agents working behind the scenes advance U.S. legislation, torpedo events, organize counter-protests, & close bank accounts.. The Director says: ‘In order to win we must use tricks and craftiness.’\nIts activities reportedly include a “24/7 operations room monitoring all the delegitimization activities against Israel: Protests, conferences, publications calling for an anti-Israel boycott and international bodies’ boycott initiatives. The operations room will transfer the information to the relevant people to provide a proper response to these activities, whether through a counter-protest or through moves to thwart the initiative behind the scenes.”\nOther programs include a 22-million-shekel project to work among labor unions and professional associations abroad “to root out the ability of BDS entities to influence the unions,” and a 16-million-shekel program focused on student activities throughout the world.\nIsrael’s UNIT 8200\nPhoto from article about Unit 8200 on Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre website.\nAnother Israeli entity that plays a role in covert Internet activity is the Israeli military’s legendary high-tech spy branch, Unit 8200. This unit is composed of thousands of “cyber warriors” primarily 18 to 21 years of age; some even younger. A number of its graduates have gone on to top positions at tech companies operating in the U.S., such as Check Point Software (where the spouse of the Jewish Voice for Peace head is employed as a solutions architect).\nIn 2015 Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced plans “to establish a special command to combat anti-Israel incitement on social media.” The command would operate under the foreign ministry’s hasbara [propaganda] department and would especially recruit from graduates of Unit 8200.\nAn article in the Jewish Press about the new command reports that Unit 8200 “has developed a great reputation for effectiveness in intelligence gathering, including operating a massive global spy network. Several alumni of 8200 have gone on to establish leading Israeli IT companies, including Check Point, ICQ, Palo Alto Networks, NICE, AudioCodes, Gilat, Leadspace, EZchip, Onavo, Singular and CyberArk.”\nCheck Point Software headquarters in Tel Aviv. Founded by a former Unit 8200 member, it also has offices throughout the U.S. Israeli tech companies sometimes assist in online spying efforts.\nNumerous Israeli tech companies, many of them headed by former military intelligence officers, assist in these online spying efforts, sometimes receiving Israeli government funding “for digital initiatives aimed at gathering intelligence on activist groups and countering their efforts.”\nAccording to the ministry’s statement, among the Command’s activities is “finding videos with inflammatory content and issuing complaints to the relevant websites.”\nTo be clear, this is an occupying military working covertly to achieve censorship of reporting on its atrocities.\nYouTube & Google officials meet with Israeli Minister\nYouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki speaking to the Israel Collaboration Network’s Israeli Women in Tech Group on August 25, 2016.\nMajor Internet companies have reportedly been cooperating in this effort.\nIn 2015 Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely announced that she had visited Silicon Valley and met with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google’s Director of Public Policy (it is unclear whether this was was Jennifer Oztzistzki or Juniper Downs; Hotovely’s announcement referred to “Jennifer Downs”).\n“At the end of the meeting,” Israeli media reported, “it was agreed that Google would strengthen bilateral relations with the Foreign Ministry and build a collaborative work apparatus.”\nAnother Israeli news report about the meeting states: “…it was agreed that the companies would strengthen ties with the Foreign Ministry and build a regular mechanism of control to prevent the distribution of those incendiary materials on the network.”\nGoogle, which owns YouTube, denied the Foreign Ministry’s report. The Ministry accordingly “clarified” its statement somewhat, but continued to say that Israeli officials would be in “regular contact with Google’s employees in Israel who deal with the problematic materials.”\nSuch officials often have close ties to Israel. For example, Facebook’s Head of Policy in Israel, Jordana Cutler, had previously been employed for many years by the Israeli government. (More about Facebook can be found here.)\nThe Linkedin page for Facebook’s Jordana Cutler\nThe meetings seem to have had a significant effect.\nIn 2016 Fortune magazine reported: “Facebook, Google, and YouTube are complying with up to 95% of Israeli requests to delete content that the government says incites Palestinian violence, Israel’s Justice Minister said on Monday.”\nMore recently, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said that its cyber unit handled 2,241 cases of online content and succeeded in getting 70 percent of it removed.\nAccording to a 2017 report, Google, in its capacity as the operator of Youtube, announced that it was updating the steps it was already taking on this score.\nAmong other things, Google said it would increase the number of members of the “Trusted Flagger program,” which enables certain organizations and government agencies to report content. It also said it would “increase support for NGOs and organizations working to present a ‘corrective voice.’”\nGiven the record of infiltration and orchestrated activities described above—many financed by a combination of certain influential billionaires and the Israeli government itself—it’s hard to imagine that Israeli organizations and partisans are not thoroughly embedded in this program. In fact, one of the NGOs already working with YouTube as a “trusted flagger” is the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission includes ‘standing up for Israel.’\nAnti-Defamation League celebrates Israel at 2017 New York City parade.\nA leaked secret January 2017 ADL strategy paper detailed how to counter the pro-Palestine movement. Among its many strategies were some focused on the importance of efforts in cyber space.\nThe paper was produced in collaboration with the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, and included an endorsement by Sima Vaknin-Gil, who stated that “the correlation between the Ministry’s mode of operation and what comes out of this document is very high, and has already proven effective… ”\nThe document’s executive summary noted: “Cyberspace, broadly defined, stands out as a crucially important arena (for monitoring and counter and pro-active strategies) which requires more resources and attention due to its current influence, rapid growth and growing complexity.”\nThe paper called for “a mix of policy advocacy and industry engagement with corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter in a manner consistent with the ADL Center for Technology and Society and its Anti-Cyberhate Working Group.”\nAn illustration in the ADL-Reut working paper on improving Israel advocacy. It noted: “While the pro-Israel network increasingly is active in this domain, much more can be done.”\nThe paper also recommended: “‘Bottom-up efforts’ of crowd-sourcing to enhance the adaptive capacity of the pro-Israel network.”\nAt the same time, it urged:\n“Strengthening pro-Israel organizations that mobilize and coordinate a network of ‘nodes’ e.g. Jewish Community Public Affairs (JCPA) and its network of Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRCs) in the USA; Hillel, which is present in nearly five hundred locations in the U.S. and globally; the Israel Action Network (IAN) that reaches nearly 160 federations in the U.S.; or the Jewish Congress (WJC) that represents dozens of Jewish communities around the world.”\nThe detailed, 32-page document reported that in recent years “a massive investment of resources and talent” had been directed against the pro-Palestine movement. One of the results, the paper said, was to create a “world-wide pro-Israel network.” It was this network that the report wished to mobilize. One of the paper’s concerns was that since Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza “a growing number of Jews have become more critical of Israel.”\nThe document recommended a degree of stealth, noting: “high-visibility response by the pro-Israel side can be counterproductive.”\nNevertheless, despite all these forces arrayed against information about Palestine reaching the American public, our channel is back up on YouTube. In fact, we’ve just uploaded a new video:\nThis one is about the death of a nine-year-old boy. [Perhaps the Israeli government would consider this incitement to Palestinians to rebel against occupation; we see it as incitement to the world in general, and Americans in particular, to care.]\nIn other words, Israel’s efforts at censorship don’t always succeed.\nBut sometimes they do, and other YouTube users have not always been so fortunate. For example, YouTube has terminated several Palestinian news organizations.\nOne was the al-Quds network, which, according to a report in Middle East Eye, “relies on young reporters and volunteers using phones and other digital devices to cover local news across the Palestinian territories.” They would often report Israeli soldiers committing various human rights violations.\nIts YouTube channel was terminated in 2011, and its editor says they had to “to create a new channel from scratch.” By 2017 its new channel had gained almost 10 million views before it was suddenly suspended without warning again last October. It now, however, appears to have a YouTube channel in operation.\nAccording to the MEE report, YouTube also suspended the Filisten al-Youm TV channel last August, and in 2013, apparently following complaints by the Anti-Defamation League, YouTube closed down Iran’s PressTV channel. (A Press TV YouTube channel now also appears to be available again.)\nPalestinian social media users risk even greater consequences.\nThe Israeli government has arrested Palestinians for videos, poems, and other posts it dislikes. A 2016 report estimated that “more than 150 arrests took place between October and February 2016 based on Facebook posts expressing opinions on the uprising. A recent video posted on social media led to the imprisonment of a 16 year old girl, her mother and cousin.\nIn addition, Palestinian access to social media is somewhat controlled by Israel. As a Huffington Post article reports, ”Palestinians’ digital rights and access to the Internet are compromised in very basic ways, because Israel controls the infrastructure and services of Palestinian telecommunication companies in the West Bank.”\nWhile the situation has greatly improved in recent years – the Israeli government finally announced in 2016 that it would allow Palestinians in the West Bank to access 3G wireless networks, making this one of the last regions in the world with such access after years of Israeli restrictions – it is important to remember the enormous power Israel wields over this largely captive population.\nWhile Israel is able to organize entire campaigns to filter and flood social media, its immense control over Palestinians impedes their access to the same media.\nGiven these facts, it is extremely important for people to search out information for themselves, go directly to our websites and others, subscribe to diverse email lists, and not rely on social media for information. [Please subscribe to our news posts here.]\nFacebook, YouTube, Twitter and others are private companies. In the end, they have the power to censor information, and they periodically do so. For a few days, we felt acutely what that was like. If Facebook had joined the ban, as has happened with others, we would have been even more cut off from what is essentially today’s “public square.”\nThe Internet and social media give us far more access to information and tools for communication and activism than ever before, but they, too, can be controlled—and they are.\nIt is up to us, as always, to overcome.\nOur videos are also being uploaded to Daily Motion, Vimeo, and BitChute, and many are already on our news blog, Timeline, and main website, where all of them will eventually be available.\nAlison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of “Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.”\nThe section on the ADL was expanded on March 9.\n(Republished from If Americans Knew by permission of author or representative)\n• Category: Foreign Policy, Ideology • Tags: American Media, Censorship, Israel, Israel/Palestine, Youtube ban\nWill Pro-Israel Rabbi Heading Top Theology Center Change Its Direction?\nView the Frontline Documentary on Gaza That PBS Pulled\nIs Israel Turning a Blind Eye as Israeli Scammers Swindle Victims in France, US, Elsewhere?\nInternational Campaign Is Criminalizing Criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’\nDonald Neff (1930-2015)\nWe Are All Palestinians\nSome in congress are beginning to see the light\nIsrael's War Criminals In Their Own Words\nShooting unarmed Palestinian demonstrators \"preserves Israeli values\"\nFacebook Censorship: White Supremacy of the Most Hypocritical Type\n\"How Israel and Its Partisans Work to Censor the Internet\"\nschnellandine says:\nApril 9, 2018 at 4:45 am GMT\nWondering what hell awaits once AI bots flood internet. Damned sure a political ass will demand gov’t ID and approved login/connection required to use internet. For your protection.\nApril 9, 2018 at 4:46 am GMT • 100 Words\nPlease rank the following as most likely to win a “Humanity Stuffed in a Cage” Award.\nGoogle, Facebook, Intel, ATT, CIA, Mossad, Microsoft, Homeland Security, World bank, British government,\nFrench Government, USA, Israel, Germany, Julian Assange.\nYour choice will not be spied on, stored, processed, forwarded to the authorities or tracked back to you by\nme, but be assured someone is back tracking your every move.\n, @Reality Check\nMark James says:\nVery informative piece and I hope someone this morning gets it to 60 Min’s producers. Perhaps we can see something similar on network (CBS) prime-time TV. I won’t be holding my breath… but who knows?\nImagine the face of man under a jackboot forever.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Filip Lagey\"] says:\nHi Alison Weir, the situation is much worse: they attack the computers of people who oppose their power. Two years ago, immediately after I had an online row with Esther Voet, who is an important zionist in the Netherlands, my computer was uncontrollable for at least an hour. Hard disk ticking, doing its tasks very slowly etc., as if it had a virus. I had precisely the same phenomenon a couple of months ago, when I reacted to a YouTube video of Vincent Reynouard, a famous French dissident. Notice that I’m not a Holocaust denier, I’m not even against Israel’s existence, all I do is expose the power of the global zionist maffia. So they attack my computer whenever I go too far (in their humble opinion). Please find a researcher who knows more about this covert operation of attacking computers directly.\n• Replies: @Freedom\nUSAMNESIA says:\nI will be quite surprised if you survive through the next round of censorship.\nAn anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.\n• Replies: @Z-man\nGoggle is totally under Jewish Israeli control. I first noticed they changed their search results back in 2006.\nTo illustrate do this….enter Muslim terrorist–you will get results for Muslim terrorist. Then enter Jewish terrorist—you will get 250,000 hits for ‘terrorist attacks on Jews’..not Jewish terrorist.\nEnter for example ‘text document of US-Israel MOU of 1973’ —you will get zero–only some general sites referring to it.\nGoggle has buried access to thousands of the original official documents concerning Israel —-whereas before something like the 1973 MOU would come up immediately you now have to know the exact government agency it comes under then go to that agency and search for it in the archives—very time consuming and most people wont do that.\nGoggle has also listed Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel for several years now.\n, @Simon in London\njilles dykstra says:\nAny time Israel is in propaganda trouble, lots of jews are recruited to write on any site, in any language.\nLong ago Israel paid $ 3.5 or $ 4.5 dollar per comment.\nBut this trick is losing effectiveness, as regular commenters notice that when the need is there all of a sudden new commenters pop up, pro Israel.\nThey are recognised immediately.\nWhen the crisis is over, they disappear.\nThat jews influence social media, nothing new.\nGerman wiki editors were removed because they criticised Israel.\nA few primate remarks.\nWhy in the first place rely on intermediates: wikkipedant, fecesbook, tweeter, gaggle, gagglemail, and not systemically divert readers to an ip and serving simple pages? As a two-step, a “real” full text search engine, that scrapes all of these pages, a search engine ruled by free, and open source code. Why not open for review the map of internet hardware on a real time basis for the whole of the internet. All of this without interference of the human intermediate predator-victim-greedmonger.\nThe short answer, to tango, we need to be two …at least. Meaning the level to which to up understanding of the digital and internet goes beyond human average comprehension, probably because of lack of formal learning, lastly because of lack of cognitive ability(of course, and “intellectuals” mostly included, how can one pose as “harvard” or “jale” when no cognizance of man – machine communication is present). If at that, the one side pushes information, it then needs to be accredited for at the receiving end, too much to ever dream of. Could it be added that if never, the internet and information permeability would become a dead zone for greed, and instead of an asset to the few for “scraping” the bucket of commoners, a dime at a time, would become a liability to them, and an asset for escaping the commoner fairy tale, an asset for outliers and “unacceptable ideas” . What it should be to beat the barrier of “technology neutral”.\nAs for manually editing, and yoursteevee cancelling of “your channel”, primitive indeed. Little to be learned there, seeing a trap, sticking one’s head in there, do it repeatedly, …and denouncing the trap according to individual preference, is lame. Pi-spool, patron, the Amazons, name them, who prey on “dumbstruck masses”(not our term, not to be at risk of censoring by an unknown anonymous).\nIntellectual languor, consumer tales applied to information, the lay of the land.\nAgain(not a first in denouncing), the 99.5 of universally shared DNA material might be the matter, meaning lack of comprehension of human interests on both, elites’ and commoner’ side. As a prediction, the “problem” will get worse, in an escalating manner, the battle to “control” the internet is won.\nThe browser becoming a server, of the client in all of his nudity(some people surf the “internet” in underware), just one more example of two way manipulation of proprietary hardware. Share!, share!, share.\nmark green says:\nExcellent article. It is also heartening to see Alison Weir on UNZ. For the better part of two decades, she has been doing meticulous research on the corrupting impact of pro-Zionist political activism. And her job has not been easy.\nWeir has had her character impugned, her scholarship marginalized, and she has faced unscrupulous opposition in countless instances. But she has prevailed.\nTypically, Judeo-supremacists refuse to debate Ms. Weir or her political allies since this tactic would shed far too much light on Israeli behavior as well as its unsavory core beliefs. Thus, Weir and others like her are routinely ignored and/or ridiculed. I suspect Ron Unz gets similar treatment.\nFree speech (when it goes both ways) is the enemy of Zion.\nSo the Zionist message is this: Shut up.\nIndeed, Israel’s multi-faceted campaigns to propagandize, intimidate and censor are legendary, though rarely discussed in our ‘mainstream media’. The deafening silence here is no accident. It is a calculated end-product of Jewish-cultivated taboos.\nWeir’s report gives us a rare glimpse into the Talmudic State’s secret world of information manipulation. Her discoveries however are as worrisome as they are explosive. And what she reveals may be just the tip of the iceberg.\nWhen one factors in the amount of money that flows into Washington from pro-Israel lobbies, billionaires, and NGOs, it is clear that Israel plays a far bigger role in US elections than Russia could ever even dream about. But unique taboos protect Israel from any scrutiny in this area.\nWitness Israel’s organizational prowess and real-world success in shaping, restricting and dominating political discourse. The level of control is both infuriating and chilling. Taking on the Israel Lobby has ruined countess careers. In the case of Palestine, countless lives have been lost or ruined. Countless.\nOn top of that, since many crypto-Israelis own/manage/operate new media institutions such as Facebook, YouTube and Google (in addition to most of our ‘mainstream’ media) open political discourse in America is under increasing pressure. There are some things you simply cannot discuss. Don’t say that word!\n(((Liberals))) call it ‘Hate Speech’.\nIndeed, not only do our guardians of discourse hate certain words and concepts, but some of these speech regulators want to put you in jail just for uttering them\nThus, publicly discussing the JQ is next-to-impossible. (Unless it’s an all-Jewish panel of ‘experts’)\nBut if simple ‘truth’ was a primary political value in America, today’s information titans would be supporting–and maybe even sponsoring–open discussions on this subject. Why not?\nWhat better way to arrive a truth and understanding than free and open exchange of facts, opinions and ideas?\nBut it’s not so simple. These lofty objectives are no longer tantamount. What’s become a top US priority is maintaining the pro-Zionist status quo. But achieving this will require, among other things, increased censorship. The stakes are huge.\nAnd So far, the other side is winning.\nOne request to Alison Weir: Please avoid using the insidious and manipulative term ‘antisemitism’. (Please note that it was recently spelled ‘anti-Semitism’, but Jewish leaders realized that\n‘anti-Semitism’ is not anti- ‘Semites’ at all. It’s simply anti- Jews. So the charde was up. What to do? Change the spelling.\nSo the term is now just ‘antisemitism’ (no hyphen). This reduces the semitic nature of the ‘disease’ while maintaining the term’s powerful, diagnostic authority.)\nSo the pseudo-scientific term, ‘antisemitism’ is still with us. It has been concocted and popularized however for purely political reasons. It’s also been insidiously conflated with ‘genocide’. Very crafty. Very manipulative.\nBut the simple truth is this: ‘anti-Semites’, are not ‘anti-semitic’; they are simply anti-Jewish. (And sometimes is for a damned good reason.)\nDespite myths to the contrary, anti-Jewishnes (anti-Semitism’) is not a virus or a psychological illness. it reflects an attitude; often an informed attitude. Nothing more.\nBut they want you to feel ashamed.\nResist.\nBesides, no thought or attitude or belief should ever be criminalized. What matters is conduct. Behavior. Words may bruise but it is physical behavior that maims and kills.\nSo please resist the deceptive efforts to manage speech, Ms Weir. This includes circulating the insidious term, ‘antisemitism’. Thank you!\n• Replies: @jilles dykstra\n, @smaragdus\nWe are all Joseph K’s now. Ironically, it’s Jewish Power that plays judge over us.\nApril 9, 2018 at 11:35 am GMT • 100 Words\nTwo words are repugnant to Israelis and their world-wide army of orcs; peace and truth. Use either of these together with the word Israel and you will be attacked online by their trolls, or banned from making comments or even get direct threats to your life as I have.\nPro-Israeli sadists have called me names, cussed me out, said I was in to bestiality, was having a incestuous affair with my Mother and threatened me with physical harm, one even going so far as to claim he/she was sending a Mossad hit team to take me out.\nYou see what the unhinged Israelis do to the Palestinians, and that’s what will happen to Americans when they finally take full control of the USA. We’ll be the ones being used for target practice by snipers, herded into concentration camps and hounded out of our homes.\n• Replies: @Miro23\nThese practices are well known, for a long time.\n80% of the western media are owned by jews, Murdoch, Chaim Saban.\nSoros recently bought the independent British Guardian, end of independence.\nThe Netherlands has just one independent newspaper, a small christian one, property of an organisation of members.\nThe head of our more or less official news, NOS, is a jew, Gelauff.\nThe proportion of journalists that are jews with us is highly disproportional.\nThe BBC became a jew as director after the BBC had exposed Tony B-liar’s lies about Saddam’s 45 minutes WMD’s.\nFormer French president Hollande, a jew, had a lot of editors in chief fired.\nCharlie Hebdo is Rothschild property.\nAs to comments in internet, any time there is an Israeli crisis they pop up in large numbers, in any language.\nThis trick is not effective any more, regular commenters recognise them immediately.\nWhat they are, were, paid is known, it was, if I remember correctly, $ 4.5 per comment.\nThey have software to see where to respond, get their answers from a database.\nWhenever they run into serious knowledge they are silent.\npropagandist hacker says: • Website\nApril 9, 2018 at 12:43 pm GMT • 100 Words\nI am fairly certain that israeli partisans are the ones behind the “magic jew theory” comment brigade on youtube, gab, twitter etc…this brigade posts comments on these sites, and the comments push the theory that jews are behind globalism, mass immigration etc…they are trying to persuade new alt-right youtube vloggers etc to make jews the primary focus of alt-right activism….this comment brigade is especially interested in new alt-right female vloggers…the brigade attempts to get these alt-right females to take a jew-centric stance.\nbecause that disables these new female vloggers…it stunts their potential growth…most white normies, upon hearing those vloggers argue that jews are behind mass immigration/multiculturalism etc would just assume they have a screw loose…yes, jews are influential in the globalist cadre, but they are far from being the only force behind it…anyone with any sense knows that.\nApril 9, 2018 at 12:49 pm GMT\nZionist Israel is the worlds warmonger and instigator and the 911 perpetrator and the cancer on the body of America.\nTest. Can’t comment.\nDoes the expression “Jewish conspiracy” have any meaning ?\nI mean, would any of the sheeple be capable of even comprehending this material ? Would it appear as a writing exercise in ancient\nGreek ?\nThese…”patriotic” people are obsessive to new monumental levels of self caricature.\nFunny, its a bit “peter & the wolf” . Years ago people cried Jewish conspiracy, to a somewhat receptive audience (& no doubt organized Jewry were up to some shenanigans)…but compared to today ? Like comparing a gold fish to Melville’s whale….& no one believes, listens, to a negative thing about “Jews”. Many don’t even understand there IS a link between “Jews” & Israel. (Of course, those with a little knowledge & position in the world are shit-scared of the LABEL….)\nApril 9, 2018 at 1:13 pm GMT • 100 Words\nThe only way this will work is to require monopolistic access providers such as Google, YT, Facebook, and the domain registrars, to adhere to the First Amendment. That is, as long as the content they host does not violate any laws, it must be allowed. By giving private owned infrastructure and monopoly content providers control over what people post allows them to effectively censor speech.\nLibertarians argue that since it is not government that is doing the censoring, it is all OK. This just shows how libertarianism is an intellectual fraud. The radical left (now the mainstream) is more “honest” about their motives, openly admitting they want to “shut it down,” charging TOS (terms of service) violations affecting “hate, racism, and anti-Semitism” whenever they see something they don’t like.\n• Replies: @schnellandine\n, @Eagle Eye\nThis site has been jammed all morning across multiple browsers, perfect example of what this article is all about!\nI can relate to the post about computer jamming, I had it happen a few times after posting pro-Palestinian comments. And a complete computer freeze years ago an hour after I posted a notice I found on the State Department’s website announcing a requisition to Congress by Hilary Clinton for $15,000,000 of our tax dollars to be given to subsidize Jewish war memorials in Europe. Very generous subsidy considering America’s own veterans are living in tent cities.\nWelcome to the Jewish police state.\n• Replies: @Jake\n, @Ron Unz\nDissident X says:\nIt is depressing that the monster seems to be winning.\nThat is what it is.\nThat is what each and every participant in these programs is part of, the monster.\nPsychologically conditioned/tortured from birth to accept the necessity of discrimination, hatred, impunity and systematic lying and deception against all out-groups, the vast majority of humanity, even if it means destroying all.\nThis is what is at the root of being a jew, The Cult of Moloch.\nOf course, the more appropriate description of the international collective is: Torah-Pharisees-Talmud extremists adherents, there is nothing spiritual about it, it is an extreme, maniacal form of cultural narcissism.\nOne day, maybe even one day soon, this extreme hateful discrimination will be made illegal on the planet; the day cannot come soon enough.\nThe illegitimacy of the occupation of the Palestinian lands by the zionists/Torah-Pharisees-Talmud extremists is beyond doubt in a fact-based, equitable universe; it is a blight upon humanity.\nEvery one should know the facts about Deir Yasin\nhttp://www.israel-palestina.info/english_section-html/\nhttp://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Dayr-Yasin/\nSome quotes from a coherent Israeli scholar, Yuval Harari, his book, “Sapiens”\np. 195 It’s for your own good: “… Evolution has made Homo sapiens. like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We were always distinct from them, we owe them nothing. We don’t want to see any of them in our territory, and we don’t care an iota what happens in their territory. They are barely even human. …”\np. 242 Blind Clio: “… Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their host. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They multiply and spread from one host to another, occasionally weakening the host and sometimes even killing them. … – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that idea, even at the price of death. The human dies, but the idea spreads. …. … Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts. … Similar arguments are common in the social sciences, under the aegis of game theory. Game theory explains how in multi-player systems, views and behaviour patterns that harm all players nevertheless manage to take root and spread. …”\nEach and every participant in these perception manipulation programs, yes, we know that you reading this, is committing crimes against humanity, and one day, on this world or hereafter, you will be called for these sins.\nHow much more of this infection can the planet stand?!\nI urge all people, including self-identifying jews to research and fully understand what this is.\nRegardless of the perception management which has been inflicted upon you, the best place to start with a fact-based review of the historic progress and impartial analysis is the seminal work by Douglas Reed, “The Controversy of Zion“, unfortunately censored (surprise, surprise), but available online using the keywords in a search.\nPlease protect your identity as best as possible, since those referred to in this article are monitoring, keeping records, and taking punitive actions.\nI honestly, and with good intentions only, believe that many self-identifying jews would renounce this religion if they knew the facts.\nIf you are working for one (or more) of these perception management organizations, (i.e. deception organizations), don’t you think it is incumbent upon you to really know about that for which you fight (so dirtily)?!\nWhy not read it?!\n@mp\nLibertarians argue that since it is not government that is doing the censoring, it is all OK.\nStraw man, deployed in aid of installing the penultimate monopoly as protector against monopolies. What could go wrong? Better, skip those fed pansies; World Government is the natural protector of speech for the free man. Oh, it will be speech protection to end all speech protection.\nMust be some embarrassing psychology at the root of the straw men regularly set up as representing the view of the political philosophy perhaps least likely to ever succeed unless Skynet is ruthlessly and correctly libertarian. Libertarians don’t threaten your sick federal fantasies, so why piss on them? They’re your excuse for feigned capitulation.\nNo, as with O’Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, the state got you long ago. Blame it on Fruitatarians or something next time though. Mix it up. When you can make your opponent say anything conveniently stupid, options are wide.\n• Replies: @mp\n@mark green\nI’m not so sure jews are winning.\nThere are the votes with UN and Unesco, where Israel is isolated more and more.\nThen there is the increasing number of Israel critical comments, in the USA, in Germany, in the Netherlands, despite all efforts by jews to control these.\nJust now the anti Soros president of Hungary was re-elected.\nForgot what incident it was, where, on a generally pro jewish Dutch site, there was so much negative comment on Israel that someone exclaimed ‘this cannot be representative’.\nFrench jews feel so threatened that more an more leave France.\nIn the Netherlands any jewish institute is guarded, even jewish restaurants want protection, after a few incidents.\nNo Dutch jew goes into the street wearing the traditional jewish headdress.\nLast but not least, Trump may have good jewish connections, he’s not a jewish puppet.\nAnd, I read here, some 50% of the USA citizens now recognise that Deep State does exist.\nWhat, in my opinion, the zionists never anticipated is how Israel would advertise judaism.\nThe holocaust is more than 70 year ago, the fairy tale of ‘land without people for people without land’ no longer is believed.\nJewry in the present USA should ask themselves if the Weimar Republic situation resembles the USA situation.\nJewish sociologist Stephen Steinlight already years ago feared immigration from the south ‘they did not know the holocaust, for them jews are just rich Americans’.\nBut, wrote Steinlight, there is always the lifeboat Israel.\nSteinlight does not understand that this lifeboat is dependent on jewish influence in the USA.\nAs I wrote before, around 1890 or so one Rothschild wrote to another ‘the only enemy of jews is jews’.\n• Replies: @jacques sheete\n@USAMNESIA\nBears repeating. Sobran, back stabbed by that disgusting to watch traitor Buckley.\nBTW, most of those Zionist trolls were born and bred in the good ol’ USA. Sad.\nBDS and Free Palestine!\n@schnellandine\nYes. You are right. We don’t need any government regulations on this stuff. If people don’t like what Jews in Israel and their extended Jewish Web monopoly are doing, they should just suck it up, and go create their own Internet. It’s as simple as that. It’s the free market, and all that. Go John Galt… or is it Howard Roarke? I keep mixing up those cardboard characters from that Jewess author’s book.\n• LOL: Kiel\nApril 9, 2018 at 3:41 pm GMT\n@Freedom\nIt took me 7 or 8 tries over nearly an hour to get onto this site today.\nRon Unz says:\nYes, our website was hit by an exceptionally large wave of bots from a very wide variety of different IP addresses, and it began soon after we released this particular article. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.\nWe finally managed to block them all earlier this morning using some temporary measures. I’ll be spending the next day or two adding some further defenses in hopes of preventing something like this from happening in the future.\n, @jilles dykstra\n, @hyperbola\n, @Dissident X\n, @FKA Max\n, @Wizard of Oz\n@Ron Unz\nBeware the POWER of the Cabal.\nPS. FYI, I still can’t access my comments.\nSteve Gittelson says:\nIsraelis own almost all media. Thus, they control publishing, the Internet, TV, and radio broadcasting. Simple fact, and nothing can be done. Full corruption and dominance of the US government, Congress, judiciary, and the executive branch is in place and impossible to remove or even reduce.\nI remember 1994, when the Internet appeared for ordinary people to use, primarily on the “forum” side, as various alt.net incarnations. Virtually every one, even at that early point in time, was controlled and censored by Israelis.\nNothing can, or will, be done. 1984 arrived a few years late, but more monstrous than Blair ever imagined.\ngwynedd1 says:\nWelp , looks like Assad is making soap out of babies again(after gassing them of course). Ya need to push the propaganda out like 3 or 4 times for it to stick .\nRobinG says:\nNow today Israel bombed SAA air base, killing 14. No comment. The Zionists can’t tolerate ISIS losing.\nVanessa Beeley on the latest propaganda rush to condemn Syria —\nhttp://21stcenturywire.com/2018/04/08/syria-the-egregious-western-media-chemical-weapon-fraud-in-eastern-ghouta/\nSYRIA: The Egregious Western Media ‘Chemical Weapon’ Fraud in Eastern Ghouta\nVanessa Beeley walks-and-talks thru a rebel chemical factory. She is side-by-side with CNN “warmonger correspondent” Frederick Pleitgen:\nFrederick Pleitgen was with me when we visited a terrorist chemical weapons lab in Erbin, Eastern Ghouta two days ago. He does not mention it in his sensationalist report “live” from Damascus.\nNor does he mention the estimated 3500 plus prisoners being held by Jaish Al Islam terrorists in their “repentance” prisons, many women and children among them who are very probably now being murdered to produce the last ditch attempt chemical weapon attack” ~ Vanessa Beeley . . .\nIn other words, the corporate media lies are becoming more blatant as the SAA and allies march inexorably towards full and final liberation of Eastern Ghouta which has long been recognised here as a pivotal strategic stronghold for Israel. . .\nChuckOrloski says:\nThank you, Alison Weir and Ron Unz!\nWithin 24-48 hours, looks like the Trump administration is poised to criminally attack both Syria and Iran.\nAm concerned that web site-censorship will be soon accomplished in the name of patriotism &\nkeeping Americans united & safe.\nWeird coincidence.\nI’m inclined to think no coincidence, if so, what a stupid reaction, proof of what the article says, what, except some particulars, is nothing new, as I explained.\nFelipe Fernández-Armesto, ‘Truth, A History and a Guide for the Perplexed’, New York 1997\nThe book describes the development of the concept ‘truth’.\nThe idea of an objective truth is relatively new, may have existed with people like Archimedes, he did experiments, but then disappeared until Galileo.\nTruth, most of the time was, and alas even today is, what a leader says.\nAround 1870 the catholic church expressed this explicitly, what the pope says is true.\nSome even today believe that.\nI often wondered if jews never left the ‘true is what the leader says’ idea.\nHow they keep asserting obvious nonsense as truth, I cannot understand it.\nBut there is the assertion that jews have a high capacity for self delusion.\nArthur Koestler blamed jiddish for that jews of his time never said anything rational.\nI wonder if language was, maybe is, the cause.\nWith the exception of jews as Norman Finkelstein, Ilian Pappe, Davidsson, Gilad Atzmon, and the Dutch Hamburger, to name a few.\nhyperbola says:\nHow about publishing the list of IP addresses that participated in the attack. If all such attacks were accompanied by published lists, we could begin to analyze who is behind attacks/manipulations associated with various topics. That the “US intelligence agencies” published such a list was one of the early indications of the absurdity of Russia-Gate.\nThe U.S. Government Thinks Thousands of Russian Hackers May Be Reading My Blog. They Aren’t.\nhttps://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/the-u-s-government-thinks-thousands-of-russian-hackers-are-reading-my-blog-they-arent/\n• Replies: @Dn\nescobar says:\n“Those to whom evil is done/do evil in return.” W.H. Auden\nCan’t break that cycle, too late to build a “wall” around those who worship Yahweh or Allah to protect the shreds left of humanism in the West. All the while our “best and brightest” toss shreds into the dust heap.\n@ChuckOrloski\nfrom SicSemperTyrannis, Pat Lang’s blog:\nAn appeal to James Mattis\nhttp://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/04/an-appeal-to-james-mattis.html\nI beseech you, sir, to consider the possibility that the supposed chlorine gas attack at Douma, Syria may have been a carefully constructed propaganda fraud on the part of the rebels encircled in Douma. Such a fraud would have as its purpose the elicitation of exactly the kind of response that we are seeing in the Western media. . . .\n• Replies: @RobinG\n, @ChuckOrloski\nDear Ron, thank you for all of your good work.\n• Agree: Moi, Talha\nmost white normies, upon hearing those vloggers argue that jews are behind mass immigration/multiculturalism etc would just assume they have a screw loose…\nNot anymore. The goyim are waking up.\nAccording to the MEE report, YouTube also suspended the Filisten al-Youm TV channel last August, and in 2013, apparently following complaints by the Anti-Defamation League, YouTube closed down Iran’s PressTV channel.\nThe Jews are a tribe of assassins – physical and social. That is their modus operandi. They think clandestine covert murder when confronted. They are more than willing to escalate confrontations into social or physical covert murder. They celebrate this trait – with joy they put it in your face.\nThe Jew doesn’t think “I will change my ways” – he thinks “how will I get back at them.”\nThe Jew thinks “don’t get mad get even.”\nThat is why it always comes down to the many millennia old JQ.\nThink Peace — Do No Harm — Art\nMe neither. Multiple comments have disappeared into the ether and the site itself was inaccessible for hours.\n“The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) announced yesterday that its elite hi-tech Intelligence Directorate, Unit 8200, prevented an ISIS plot to attack an Etihad airways flight from Australia to Abu Dhabi last summer.\n“Unit 8200 provided exclusive intelligence that led to the thwarting of an airliner bombing by Islamic State at the end of 2017,” an IDF statement said.\n“The cooperation with the Israeli intelligence community allowed for the transfer of information to the local security authorities and led to the arrest of the suspects, who were in the advanced stages of preparations and close to executing the attack.”\nhttp://www.bicom.org.uk/news/israeli-army-helped-prevent-isis-airline-bomb-plot/\nUnit 8200 and most of the organizations named in a derogatory way in this article are doing great work!\n, @Art\n@RobinG\nIsrael fights against ISIS. Yet the state will also not turn its back on wounded ISIS fighters, as is required by the solemn pledge of the medical profession.\nLook at Weir’s own link:\nTruth, for many on this website, is only material that is 100% anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. Amazing!\n• Replies: @Steve Gittelson\nI am an admirer of Ms. Weir’s work, but look who owns Google/FB and major media. Israel and its supporters are in charge of our government and major institutions. It’s really that simple. Muslims think their duty ends with praying five times a day to God. But this same God tells the Muslims/humans that God does not change the condition of a person until that person changes what’s within his/herself. And its true, whether you do or don’t believe in God.\nIn a less than perfect world, only power is respected.\nNot surprised. Google/YT and FB need to be broken up. Each is in fact a monopoly.\n@jilles dykstra\nGreat post. And there is no daylight between the US and Israeli “security” apparatus.\nI’ll bet the average IDF disinfo scummer long ago figured out how reply buttons work–placing him higher than you.\nDo IDFers ever salute your ideological Third Reich forefathers? If so, how does that go? Is it the ceremonial Heil or an office heil? You’re a ceremonial type, I can tell, but what do most do?\nLol! You’re selling a propaganda press release from a propaganda outfit. Seriously?\nI can almost hear those sweet, sweet 0.74 shekels hitting your account. How does it feel?\nEasy to feel helpless, but even LTE to local paper can be useful; those are read by your Senators and Congressional Reps.\nBetter yet, CALL your Sen. (2) and Rep. This is the easiest thing. Takes 1 or 2 minutes. All they ask is your town/zip. What you say is up to you. Don’t bomb Syria. Give a reason if you can.\nPhone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. A switchboard operator will connect you directly with the Senate or House office you request.\nTo locate your Member on-line:\nU.S. House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov\nU.S. Senate: http://www.senate.gov\nWhite House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/\nTerrorist capabilities laid bare in an Eastern Ghouta chemical lab\nhttps://www.rt.com/op-ed/421515-ghouta-syria-chemical-weapons/\nBy implication, you are saying that Alison Weir’s article is lies.\nGotcha, Israeli. Been watching you do shit like that since 1967.\n@Moi\nThe best way to understand the insanity of our Middle East policies is to know that the CIA, the Mossad, and the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency are all children of British secret service.\nCNN journalist finally calls out Rand Paul for his obvious Nazi tendencies\nby failing to advocate for the bombing and utter destruction of Syria, he’s demonstrating his anti-Semitism – and why the Holocaust happened in the first place.\nhttps://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/politics/rand-paul-smercinish-cnntv/index.html\nat 2:10 into the video, the journalist says Paul’s reluctance to destroy Syria, demonstrates an “historical parallel”, going back to America’s reluctance to bomb the rail tracks leading to Auschwitz.\nclearly, Assad is Hitler, and if we don’t destroy Syria utterly, and plunge that nation into the abyss, (like we did Libya and Iraq), then Rand Paul is Himmler and wants to gas the Jews.\nEvery day that the Golan Heights is not recognized by the UN as Israel’s sovereign and eternal lands, is a Holocaust!\nevery day that Trump sits on his hands, more Jews are going into Assad’s ovens. (figuratively of course)\nand Rand Paul, by saying Trump doesn’t have a blank check to bomb anywhere he wants to- because of 9/11- is showing us all that Rand Paul is Himmler, reincarnated!\nwasn’t two thousand years of persecution enough for you Rand Paul?!\nwasn’t six million enough for you Rand Paul?!\ndo we all have to sit by and watch Assad make soap and lampshades of every Jew in Israel before you’ll put down Mein Kamph long enough to do your job?!\n, @Z-man\nYiddish is German. Many people apparently assume that Yiddish is some dialect of Hebrew or Aramaic with a few Germanic words and phrases. It is the opposite. Yiddish is Jewish German, a dialect of German.\nThat Jews across many centuries and in multiple countries continued to use Yiddish as their main language is very telling. In Yiddish, Jews who were citizens of Russia wrote diatribes about the inferiority of all things Russian and Slavic to German language and culture.\nThe 20th century saw the replacement of Yiddish as the language of Ashkenazi Jews with English. Angles and Saxons were Germanic. Old English is virtually identical to Old Continental Saxon.\nSo what is the deal with Jews and things Germanic?\nIf Koestler is correct in that assertion about Yiddish leading to Jews being irrational, then what is said about Jews and Germanic culture? And then, what is said about Jews and WASP culture (Angles and Saxons are Germans) and the Anglosphere?\n, @UncommonGround\nSolontoCroesus provided the honorable Pat Lang’s “appeal to James Mattis.”\nHi S2C,\nI trust you shall consider the following sentence as healthy scepticism which by no means signals disrespect for Pat Lang’s effort.\nPrior to assuming his present Trump cabinet-leadership role, James Mattis accepted a demotion into the U.S. Zionized military.\nThanks, S2C!\n@gwynedd1\nIt is a “Shindler list” remake with the Israelis as Wehrmacht military personnel shooting at their pleasure the unarmed, unwashed and hungry Palestinians that play today the role of European Jews living in a ghetto/concentration camp.\nThe IDF is not for normal human beings with decency and a sense of responsibility. The IDF subhumans enjoy shooting civilians, killing them or making them handicapped for life.\nThe 52 major American Jewish organizations have been nurturing a monster. And this monster is ready to destroy the millions of non-chosen people because the monster wants to become the most powerful and the wealthiest.\nI agree with Rothschild that Jews are the worst enemy of Jews. What other people work so hard on destroying their own security and livelihood in Europe and the US?\n• Troll: SolontoCroesus\nDn says:\n@hyperbola\nUnfortunately such IP list would not help much. Those addresses are maybe output addresses from Tor proxy or addresses from VPS, hired from some company, that will not give info about their clients.\nHow come you Jews didn’t do that for America on 9/11/2001?\nThink Peace — Art\nThank you for reminding that Israelis killed hundreds of Palestinian children — the whole families of civilians — during their operation named after menorah. “1,268 people were killed, among them 288 children and 103 women, and 85% of those killed were not combatants.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008–09)\nThe moral midget of Jewish State has practiced all kinds of discrimination and all kinds of crime against non-Jews, which the Jews used to accuse of other people.\nAs for the “solemn pledge of the medical profession,” it has been preempted by the policies of killing, torturing, mutilating, robbing, and keeping locked in the occupied territories the native population of Palestinians.\nWhat morality can be expected from the Moldovan thug Avigdor Lieberman? Or from your amoral Bibi and Herzog? The latter idiot demands bombing the sovereign state of Syria to “protect children” in the absence of evidence for the alleged poisoning, and yet Isaak Herzog is very content with the death of hundreds of Palestinian children. Looks like Herzog suffers a severe cognitive defect. http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israeli-officals-US-must-strike-in-Syria-549144\nAnother Voice of Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp4bUFDhZ84\nTick Tock says:\nFor want of some ovens, the world was destroyed.\nWW3 is in the cards.\n“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”\n― Hermann Göring\nFKA Max says: • Website\nMr. Unz,\nI just left a message for you here: https://www.unz.com/announcement/books-book-comments-and-other-website-enhancements/#comment-2281000\nVice News just did a short report on Israeli cyber capabilities:\nHow Israel Rules The World Of Cyber Security, VICE on HBO, Full Episode\n… and it began soon after we released this particular article. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.\nMy thoughts and intuition exactly last night when the website was first down.\nThank you for everything you do for us and for America.\n• Agree: Talha\nBizzaro world ain’t it.\nIsraeli agencies passed on all info to U.S. However, the info was not unique among many similar ones filtering in for at least a decade. Thus a preparedness for the attack was not put into place. I cannot help you if you have already succumbed to conspiracy theories.\n• Replies: @Art\n, @jeff davis\nJim Christian says:\nThey’ve really mobilized and weaponized their women. Those photos, 85% women. Beefy, big-nosed, snow-White Jewish women, just like back in DC!\nThese am-be White folks for sure!\n@Steve Gittelson\nIn the least, Unit 8200 used by Weir as an example of a sinister organozation fails to stand on its own merit since Unit 8200 per the article she linked, fights against ISIS. Elementary logic.\nWell, that article was linked to the jpg for Unit 8200 by Weir herself!\nYou are annoying as hell with the WWII analogies, annamaria.\ngive it a rest.\n• Agree: L.K\n@FKA Max\nso there’s no reason to not speculate that the van that crashed into diners in Munster was not hijacked by cyber warriors.\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/world/europe/munster-germany-van.html\nor the truck in New York City\nhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/01/new-york-attack-eight-dead-truck-hits-cyclists/\nIt ain’t easy being sleazy..\nYou’re gonna need more keyboards.\nAll your “antisemetic” hoaxes, hate crimes and deception are about to come back bite you in the rear.\nProverbs 11:3 – The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.\nProverbs 12:22 – Lying lips [are] abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly [are] his delight.\nI think a lot of attacks can be stopped before they even happen just by judicious editing of the article’s title. Avoid the following formula “Israel + does something nasty”. You can put ‘Israel’ in the subtitle, you can put an Israeli flag in the photo, etc. Tone down the headline. Prudence is the better part of valor. It’s more important to get the info contained in the text out.\nAnonymous [AKA \"dr,yoyboly\"] says:\n..one more proof!! this sad and pathetic ”history” of ‘humans’ on this planet…..sooner or later every organized ‘human’ activity( party, state , ”NOG” and on and on). become criminal!!!!!. 100% …\nEagle Eye says:\nREAL libertarians would never make such a silly argument.\nMore than 100 years ago, it was well understood by everyone who cared that natural monopolies (rail, oil, etc.) can be far more oppressive within their spheres of influence than any government entity. Anti-trust laws were one of the responses.\nAnother response is the doctrine of the “common carrier”: Greyhound, Google, Pacific Railroad, Facebook, United Airlines, Twitter etc. are NOT allowed to refuse service to people except in cases of narrowly defined OPERATIONAL reasons, e.g. a drunk and rowdy rail passenger. In particular, common carriers are NOT permitted to deny service based on a person’s political views.\nArbitrary denial of service by Google, Facebook, Twitter and even domain name administrators is a gross violation of long-established EXISTING law.\nSimilarly, informal cooperation among market-dominating monopolies such as the Amazon/Washington Times, Google/Youtube, Facebook etc. violates existing anti-trust laws and various other provisions of federal and state law.\nAnd you don’t see where it must be pushed against the hypocrites. If you have better methods to fight the supremacist scum during this dangerous time, teach them, instead of grumbling. At least the scum pricks the ears when the holocaust biz is mentioned and used against the Jewish sanctimony.\n• Replies: @ChuckOrloski\n, @SolontoCroesus\nJust another Hasbara FYI: Ever wonder why Mid East articles are so overwhelmingly anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinians, anti-Iran, anti-Assad and pro-israel? Read this: act.il : “A new app ‘arms’ thousands of motivated civilians worldwide, defending Israel’s image online” … “We had about 1,000 volunteers, most of them students from the IDC, who created pro-Israel PR content in 35 different languages, reaching some 40 million web users.” …\nwe started working from the operations room on a regular basis. We had a database of student volunteers from dozens of countries, and it became more and more organized. We started setting up departments: One department created pro-Israeli marketing content, another department found and marked online articles that required our attention, and a third department dealt with finding and reporting pages that incite against Israel.” … Within only two weeks, it was downloaded by over 6,000 people in 27 countries around the world …\n“In the months before the app’s launch, we ran it a pilot among a group of some 800 students, most of them Americans,” … During the pilot period, we were able to remove 2-5 inciting pages or videos every week. We’re working with the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] and the Shin Bet [Israeli version of the FBI], who are giving us information on such inciting content, and even they couldn’t keep us with how fast we were getting things removed.” … “Companies, such as Facebook, remove content following reports from the community,” Ben-Yosef explains. “If there is only one person reporting it, he usually gets told by Facebook the content doesn’t meet the criteria for removal. If 300 report it—the content is removed immediately. As soon as content inciting against Israel is posted online, we send a message through the app and all of its subscribers immediately report it.” …\n“Students from the University of California (UC), where there are a lot of anti-Israel activists, came to us for help,” Briga says. “We organized a joint campaign, in which we opened Skype chats at the IDC and at UC campuses and we let random students just sit down and have a conversation with someone from here [Israel].\nhttps://www.israelandstuff.com/want-to-defend-israel-heres-a-lesson-in-hasbara\n• Replies: @ThreeCranes\nHi annamaria,\nUnless S2C’s at extended “Cocktail Hour,” he is typically pleased when commenters turn to serious “revisionist” WW II history.\nSorry to intrude & thank you very much.\nOne more thing. *\nAs you know, despite occasional differences that happen here at U.R., we battle the same Enemy.\n*. Thanks to the late-Jewish Peter Falk; a.k.a., Detective Colombo.\nFlummery. Diversion. More bullshit.\nYou said the article is delivered as “Truth, for many on this website, is only material that is 100% anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.”\nBut, called on that misconstrual of fact, you segue with appeal to logic. What happened to appeals to logic the first time around, hasbarat scum?\nApril 10, 2018 at 12:10 am GMT • 100 Words\n@Greg Bacon\nAmericans can’t imagine this, but then neither could the Russians after the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1917.\nTheir reaction was “Why are you doing this? – There must be some mistake.” “I haven’t done anything wrong”, “This is criminal – the authorities need to deal with this”, “Where are the police etc.”\nTotalitarianism takes some getting used to.\n, @TheBoom\nWho did these Israeli agents talk to at the CIA? Just what did they tell the CIA? (Maybe the CIA waterboarded the wrong side?)\nHmm – post 9/11 – what did the NSA disclose about all this?\nWhy does any mention of a new investigation panic the deep state government?\np.s. Assassinating the character of those who question Jew connections to 9/11, is standard Hasbara Central 101. We know you guys.\nHere is a celebrated presstitute Christiane Amanpour: https://off-guardian.org/2017/09/14/the-bloviations-of-christiane-amanpour-queen-of-fake-news/ Amanpour is married to James Rubin, the spokesperson for the Clinton State Department from 1997-2000 and Madeleine Albright’s “right-hand man.” (“Rubin was born into a Jewish family in New York City:” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rubin)\nAmanpour is a real scum. She is as good at profitable fakery as Judy Miller.\n“This hack [Amanpour] had the gall to warn us about the dangers of “fake news.” This, from the mouthpiece who had a major hand in the media demonization of the Serbian people that made it easier for the US to intervene in the Balkans wars and finish off the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They bombed Serbia for 78 days, killing around 500 people.”\nGuess the slaughter was just another “worth it” for Amanpour.\n“In late 2013, Amanpour raised the argument for intervention in Syria against the Assad government… She has appeared on several news programs in the UK and criticized the Obama administration for its non-interventionist approach to Syria.”\n— Hey, the warmongers, send your son Darius John Rubin to the front line!\n• Agree: Z-man\nAnthony Aaron says:\nExcellent article, Ms. Weir — but hardly news for those of us who’ve been around the internet for more than 25 years.\nI remember this phenomenon way back in the mid-’90s, when any web page even remotely critical of israel or the jews would disappear within about 2 hours.\nOf course, back then there weren’t anywhere near the numbers of web sites and web pages to censor — they had it pretty easy back then.\nAs someone commented in these pages in the past couple months, quoting someone or another — if you want to find out who’s really in power, find out who you cannot speak against.\nIn today’s United States, even the sacrosanct mexicans and other illegal aliens, the palestinians, the gays and lesbians and transgender folks are fair game for any and all criticism compared with the jews and/or israel.\nApril 10, 2018 at 1:15 am GMT\nAbsolutely. Most whites in the US have no idea how ugly it’s gonna get when they become a minority in their own country. Probably sooner since all the other races are getting indoctrinated by the (((establishment))) to hate the whitey.\nApril 10, 2018 at 1:35 am GMT • 200 Words\nGood points. I have often suspected that part of hasbara operations includes posting anti-semitic material that they then “discover” and attack with gusto for propaganda purposes.\nThe alt-right and the far-left’s obsession with seeing conniving Jews behind absolutely every nefarious action is a way of absolving Americans and Europeans from complicity in their countries crimes of Empire. And having a cartoonish Jew super-villain to take the fall makes a complicated and ambiguous world easy to understand and explain. No self-reflection and thinking required.\nThis kind of nutty paranoia and magical thinking is more a cognitive dissonance avoidance strategy than an expression of deep seated anti-semitism but it provides fodder for the hasbara propaganda mill which can easily paint these cranks as hardcore Jew haters.\nThe influence and respect that Zionist Jews enjoy in western society is unmatched by any other religious, cultural or ethnic group and a big enough challenge as it is. Self-defeating cranksterism is a gift to hasbara propagandists and one they can easily exploit and manufacture and use to score points against legitimate critics of Israeli and Jewish power.\n@Jake\nYup, if you understand German you understand Yiddish. It has some Polish and Hebrew mixed in I believe but it is essentially a dialect of German. Younger Jews love Germany, especially Berlin which has seen a huge increase in Jewish immigration, mainly from Russia and Israel.\nThe Israeli government a few years ago launched a PR campaign in an attempt to shame Jews from moving to the “land of the Nazis.” Which is funny because Germans are generally extremely deferential to Jews (it’s embarrassing really how cowed they are) and the chances of a 4th Reich coming out of the present-day Federal Republic of Germany is zero to nil.\nBeware of VICE news. They are basically liberal establishment propaganda packaged to appeal to snowflake millennials and Williamsburg hipster artfags.\nBill jones says:\nOne more time. It’s not anti-semitism, it’s Counter-Semitism.\n• Agree: Steve Gittelson\nTheBoom says:\nSouth Africa is probably the most likely preview of what will happen to whites after they become a minority. At the very least there is less risk for whites in seeing SA as a harbinger of what life will be like for their descendants. Unfortunately too many whites think they don’t have to care what happens to the country as long as they have a gun and can find a largely white area in which to live now, just like they don’t think that they need to care about the leftist indoctrination in the school system as long as they homeschool. Their descendants will find out otherwise.\nThey knew it and were warned by many. I think Hannah Arendt was one who warned and I’m pretty sure I can dig up a quote on that if you’re interested. Many Jews resisted the Zionist project for exactly that reason among others, I believe.\nThe left plays shenanigans like these as well. I’ve seen emails/flyers for Wikipedia editing sessions by feminist and other leftist groups at Universities, seen flyers advertising for paid protesting positions, etc. If you have to astroturf to have a grassroots movement supporting your cause, what does that say about the real support for your position?\n“Why of course the people don’t want war…\nGoering was correct.\nWhat most people don’t know is that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t want war, either.\nNote: While I don’t agree with a lot of Buchanan’s politics, I consider him a first rate historian. This is an excellent piece.\nDid Hitler Want War?\nhttp://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068\nsooner or later every organized ‘human’ activity( party, state , ”NOG” and on and on). become criminal!!!!!. 100% …\nYer preaching my sermon! You are 100% correct and I hope you comment more often.\nHave your own You Tube. That means also ti have your own internet server It also means to have your own internet . Can the countries Russia Iran Venezuela Syria Sudan Hungary and Uruguay pull it off?\n@Bill jones\nHa ha! Good one.\nSkripal affair: SALISBURY HOSPITAL BECOMES SECRET RENDITION CENTER FOR YULIA SKRIPAL, by John Helmer: http://johnhelmer.org/?p=17676\n“Salisbury Hospital’s chief administrator and chief doctor refuse to say they are holding consent forms signed by Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal. Without those forms, and proof the hospital has obtained them from the Skripals since they regained consciousness last week, the hospital is making claims about their privacy which are improper, according to the practice rules of the British National Health Service, and unlawful violations of their human rights, according to British and European law.”\n— The Friends of Israel in the UK have their own set of rules.\nniteranger says:\nRon needs to set up a mirror site or two in some place like Iceland. Furthermore, there are ways to set traps for these Jewish Slugs and embarrass them publicly (if it’s possible to embarrass a Zionist). Israel wants 24 hour control of all civilizations. It’s time to set traps all over the internet for them including false sites and videos so that they just keep chasing stuff. The best defense is always a never let up offense.\nsaid:\n” and why the Holocaust happened in the first place.”\nExcept that the ‘6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers’ have been debunked, with ease.\nWhich make sense since the claims are utterly impossible.\nAnd after reading this article why would anyone be surprised that Jew propaganda conjured up the fake ‘holocaust’ tall tales? After all, they have tried ‘6,000,000’ lie since at least 1823.\nThe ‘6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers’ are scientifically impossible frauds.\nsee the ‘holocaust’ scam debunked here:\nhttp://codoh.com\nNo name calling, level playing field debate here:\nhttp://forum.codoh.com\nHolocaust Handbooks, Documentaries, & Videos\nhttp://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?main_page=1\nsaid in jest, I’m sure:\nExcept there were no laughable humans skin lampshades or soap made from Jews and no one can show us any.\nhttps://forum.codoh.com/search.php?keywords=soap+lampshade&fid%5B0%5D=2\nWhich ‘translation’ of Mein Kampf is the question.\nAnd where’s the proof that Himmler did what propganda creating Jews say he did?\nhttp://www.codoh.com\nBiafrans killed by Nigerian occupation-2 million\nDarfuris killed by Sudanese occupation-800 000\nPapuans killed by Indonesian occupation-500,000\nSyrians killed by Alawite occupation-500,000\nTibeteans and Xinyang killed by Chinese occupation -250,000\nChechnyans killed by Russian occupation-150,000\nKurds and Cypriots killed by Turkish occupation-77,000\nWestern Saharans killed by Moroccan occupation- 40,000\nIsrael Palestinian conflict-23,000 killed\nWhen are your youtube videos coming out ????\nJews own the platforms. Jews own the media. Jews own the whore politicians like so many nickels and dimes. Jews fund the watchdog groups.\nHyman Roth controls America.\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqI4wkIrDdM\nRussia(worlds largest country) is currently occupying Chechnya,Dagestan,Kaliningrad,Crimea. Also embroiled in the Syrian war .Talk about war mongering greed .\nIndeed, Goering is referring to the ‘Allies”.\nBTW, Britain & France declared war on Germany for it’s justifiable attack on Poland, but did not declare war on communist USSR which invaded Poland from the east.\nThe “Holocau$t Industry” in court:\n‘Please your honor, there really are remains of millions buried in huge mass graves, we know where the mass graves are, … but, but, well, umm, we can’t show the court the human remains. You must trust us, we’re Zionists.’\n• Replies: @Uebersetzer\n@Z-man\nFree Chechnya,Dagestan,Crimea,Biafra,Papua,\nCyprus,Kaliningrad, Kurdistan,Tibet,Xinyang,Western Sahara,Darfur……..\nWhy should PaLie$tinian$ and Israelis fight over crumbs when Jordan occupies 78% of “Palestine”.\nThere are probably a lot of Israeli ADL AJC and AIPAC operatives working as ordinary employees of youtube who close down videos that are not pro communist, Israeli, gay black criminal and Jewish plus the rest of the Jewish causes of the week.\n” I suspect Ron Unz gets similar treatment.”\nI certainly would like to hear what Ron Unz says of the treatment he gets. He’s gotta be tough as nails.\nA big ol bear hug to The Ron.\nrecommended from the CODOH Revisionist Forum at http://forum.codoh.com\n‘The JEWISH REVISIONISTS thread’\nhttps://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6912\nI looked at UNZ 8/am this morning and now 9/ pm and a couple times during the day.\nI find that my phone works better for most things than my computer or even getting Netflix. Watching a movie on this tiny screen is not fun but unlike on the TV or computer screen, the movie just starts and cintinues to the end.\nI had no problems getting UNZ at any time today. It was a bit slow around noon.\nIt might not work for others but my phone worked fine today.\nThanks so much for fixing things today Ron.\nPhone is an apple carrier AT&T. I don’t know if that makes a difference.\nSaw some kind of headline about Assad gassing people. I admire that family so much. They have held out for what, 30, 40 years now?\nThey are like the Gonzagas d’estes Medicis Colonnas and the rest of those macho Italians.\nHow did I realize the Assad’s were the good guys and America the bad guy?\nVery simple. I just noticed that the print media hated Assad Sr. So I knew he must be the good guy. Same thing with that war in Kosovo Serbia and Croatia in the 90s. Print media claimed Muslims good Serbians and Croatians bad.\nSo I knew the Kosovians were Muslim supremacists getting a religious and human trafficking smuggling drug and weapons dealing criminal enterprise into Europe. And the non Muslim countries were just fighting against invasion.\n“Vincent Reynouard, a famous French dissident”\nVincent Reynouard here:\nIf Jews were really so smart then they would have conjured up a better, more believable method of mass murder than what they falsely claim for their impossibly fake & stupid ‘6,000,000’.\nLike most elderly enlightenment still fighting the reformation anti catholic old communist useful idiot “ intellectuals” you got it totally wrong about what the Pope said around 1870.\nThe Catholic Church never stated that the what the Pope said was true.\nWhat was stated was that the Pope was the supreme arbiter of matters of Catholic doctrine, faith and morals.\nThe Pope is always right about specifically catholic doctrine only as it applies to faith morals.\nThe Pope has no authority nor pretensions to, other religions and or secular positions on this or that.\nBeing such a great intellectual and historian albeit biased and prejudiced you might look into your own pathetic little country’s history.\nShortly after the return to the Old Testament known as the reformation, your own Dutch reformed cities and provinces invited the Jewish insurers who had been expelled from Spain in\nFrom their base in Amsterdam the Jewish usurpers backed by the Dutch Reformed church took over England and N Europe.\nSorry old man, you can’t be anti Israel, anti Jewish influence and anti catholic at the same time.\nWho fought communism for 70 years? The Catholics. Which churches joined a notorious soviet communist front the World Conference of Churches?\nEvery stupid Protestant church in the world despite that it was well known that the WCC was a soviet communist front.\nDo you have any idea how ancient and old fashioned your pseudo intellectual anti Catholicism is? You sound like a 1930s Jewish communist professor.\nAnd who cares about this Pope. He’ll be dead soon. Didn’t the tiny insignificant Netherlands recognize Israel in the 1940s? And didn’t the Vatican refuse to recognize Israel until very recently?\nMaking snide remarks about the one organization on earth that fought detrimental Jewish influence in Europe for 16,00 years and fought the Soviet Union while most Protestant churches gladly joined a well known soviet communist front just shows you are a brainwashed leftist pseudo intellectual\nRudyM says:\nMoon of Alabama and Sic Semper Tyrannis both down. Kind of scary, considering the timing.\nSpeaking of Yiddish, it was the official\nlanguage of the communist party of the USA for about 15 years. With the exception of useful idiot pseudo intellectual John Reed and a few others the founders of the CPUSA were all jumped up Russian shetl Yiddish speaking immigrants who didn’t speak English.\nFinally on the early 1930s Stalin realized that a Yiddish speaking NYC organization wouldn’t make much progress in an English speaking nation.\nSo Stalin decreed 4 rules:\n1 the CPUSA headquarters be moved from Jewish NYC to Chicago.\n2. That the communists learn English and use it in personal and official CPUSS life And all meeting and publications be in English.\n3. That Jews be no more than 40 percent of the CPUSA instead of 80 to 90 percent as it was during the 19 teens and 20s.\n4. That the head of the CPUSA not be a Jew or have Jewish grandparents. Which is how they got Gus Hall for decades as there were so few goyim to hold that office.\nAnd what American organization fought communism all those years while the government hired thousands of them and useful idiot pseudo intellectuals worshipped the CPUSA\nThe Catholic Church that old lefty jilles dykstra so despises.\nIt’s telling that after centuries in Russia and the polish provinces of Russia the Russian Jews still spoke Yiddish.\n@escobar\nAssuming 911 wasn’t even an inside job, do you then understand why Muslims would commit that evil? If you don’t then enjoy the darkness and smells, with your noggin firmly up the hole.\ntoo late to build a “wall” around those who worship Yahweh or Allah\nLOL! So, who will build a wall around the white psychopaths who worship various forms of human-like deities, who go around perpetuating evil around the world?\nhttp://www.badnewsaboutchristianity.com/db0_onegod.htm\nhttp://www.badnewsaboutchristianity.com/m01_religion.htm\nto protect the shreds left of humanism in the West.\nHumanism in the context of the west? Yeah, enjoy the darkness and smells.\nThe influence and respect that Zionist Jews enjoy in western society is unmatched by any other religious, cultural or ethnic group and a big enough challenge as it is.\nOh my — a another clever Hasbara Central worker..\nHe hides his identity with “Anonymous.”\nHe assassinates his opponents character with the charge of stupidity.\nHow totally typical – pure Hasbara 101.\np.s. “Respect for Jews” — REALLY — the representatives of 7,000,000,000 voted against the Jews in the UN.\nEven better source\nA J P Taylor, ‘The Origins of the Second World War’, 1961, 1967, Londen\nHow unprepared Germany was for war:\nHeinz Guderian, ‘Panzer Leader’, London 2000, 1952\nHow very bad French military leadership made it possible to knock out France in three weeks:\nA. Goutard, ‘1940 La Guerre des Occasions Perdues’, Paris 1956\n‘The war of the lost opportunities’.\nUebersetzer says:\nWhy was the German invasion justified and the Soviet one not? Is it that “Wally” is a Nazi and therefore thinks all Nazi actions are justified for that reason alone?\nMuslims think their duty ends with praying five times a day to God.\nNot sure what point you are trying to make here. That Muslims don’t fully understand what is required of them, as commanded of us by the Almighty One?\nTrue Muslims live by the following verse;\nAnd those who have believed and done righteous deeds – We will surely assign to them of Paradise [elevated] chambers beneath which rivers flow, wherein they abide eternally. Excellent is the reward of the [righteous] workers [29:58]\nPraying regularly is just one of the manifestations of, “those who have believed,” that is, belief in True Monotheism.\nRighteousness is refraining from the many ills of mankind; Murder, Rape, Intoxication, Promiscuity, Immodesty, Greed, Fraud, Thievery, Usury, Gambling, etc.\nTaking up arms against evil, if you are so inclined (and good for them, who do), is also righteousness in my view, if one does not cross the line between a just fight (any area of enemy military scope), and committing evil (slaughter of innocents).\nAnd, most Muslims do a pretty good job in some of those contexts (promiscuity, immodesty, gambling, etc.), while others require improvements (e.g. greed, bribery, etc.).\nPerhaps when the evil ziowest stops bombing and raping our resources, then perhaps we can rebuild and fill in the gaps which require improvements.\nNot for that reason, assimilated jews felt offended by zionism.\nThis began already at the time of the Balfour Declaration, the, at the time, under secretary for India was a jew, he objected vehemently.\nNever read anything that there were jews who foresaw zionist brutalities, just Jabotinsky in The Iron Wall in 1923, but Jabotinsky did not foresee the consequences.\nUnderstandable, at the time colonialism had not been condemned.\nIt was Uri Avernery who wrote, I think, that zionism was 200 years too late.\nWhy the 200, I never understood, 100 would have sufficed, for an acceptable colonial war.\nThe problem is, in my opinion, that many in the west who since WWII supported Israel, now understand how they have been cheated, and feel guilty about what was done to the Palestinians.\nIf any language was and is used for precise thought and expression it is german, arabic is even better.\nIn comparison english is baby talk.\nI can read german easily, when writing it I make many mistakes.\nAbout the origin of yiddisch, nott so simple:\nKevin Alan Brook, ‘The Jews of Khazaria’, Northvale NJ, 1999\nI have not yet read the book.\nIf it is that the Polish state was oppressing its German minority, the Soviets maintained that Poland was oppressing Ukrainians and Belorussians and that the USSR was liberating them.\nSimon in London says:\n>>To illustrate do this….enter Muslim terrorist–you will get results for Muslim terrorist. Then enter Jewish terrorist—you will get 250,000 hits for ‘terrorist attacks on Jews’..not Jewish terrorist.<<\nI just did this on DuckDuckGo and ironically got the opposite – Jewish Terrorist got results about Jewish terrorism, Muslim Terrorist got mostly a bunch of \"Islam is a religion of peace\" stuff.\nmcohen says:\nAlison weir whining about censorship. You poor thing.Did you actually believe that israel would not fight back and allow you to spread your nazi inspired lies on the internet.\nHalla igbal\nPeace alison.\nI apologize, annamaria, for attacking you personally and also for failing to read and understand your comment as a whole. I had Frank Raymond’s talk to the Justice for Germans Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkHJyeFaMg in my head: “No people in history have been shamed as have the German people . . .”\nI agree with Art; your comments are providing tremendous value to this forum.\n• Agree: Rurik\nUncommonGround says:\nYiddish isn’t German even if they use many German words. I’ve read an article some years ago telling the history of historical research about Yiddish. There was an old theory that Yiddish was of German origin, but more modern ideas show that its origins is a turkish language. This is confirmed in any case by what Shlomo Sand says in his book about the origins of the Jewish people, a book that is a definitive about about this theme and also extremely interesting. Central European Jews didn’t come from Germany and then moved to the East. They came originally from West Asia and moved to East Europe.\nJett Rucker says: • Website\nApril 10, 2018 at 1:30 pm GMT\nNot just the Internet. Not just the press. Not just academia. Not just the government. Not just the banks.\nThey got BOOKS, too, as described in this Unz Review article. https://www.unz.com/article/books-banned-by-banned-books-week\nI respect your wisdom and knowledge.\nanon No. 257 complained:\nHi # 257,\nIs it possible that the “old lefty,” j. dykstra, actually resents the present right-wing (conservative) intellectual wing of the ZUS Roman Catholic Church?\nBelow is a rather waffling (deceitful?) new article written by the great Patrick Buchanan.\nAn experienced politician,”revisionist” historian, author, Pat Buchanan knows that Trump’s presidential campaign was financially supported by billionaire Sheldon Adelson — a born-again character right out of the Protocols, & an uptown nut who wants Iran annihilated.\nPreZident Trump is not merely hooked by a “War Party.”\nPat Buchanan knows better. Adelson and Jewish Neoconservatives are pulling Trump’s puppet strings. (Article below)\nhttp://buchanan.org/blog/has-the-war-party-hooked-trump-129088\nOh well, # 257, I offer suggestion that “old lefty,” j. dykstra, might actually despise the Vatican City Lowerarchy and ZUS Roman Catholic political-intellectuals, (other examples, Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, Governor Andy Cuomo), whose public deeds are regrettably opposite to those offered by Catholics, Philip Giraldi and Ray McGovern.\nServus, # 257.\nj. dykstra might support the “lefty” work of the brave Chicago-based peace activist,\nKathy Kelly. Her organization’s web site, http://www.vcnv.org, [email protected]. Kathy did months of jail time for protesting at a U.S. military base HQ that specialized in killing by drones. F.Y.I., I co-wrote an “Open Letter to the Catholic Church” which requested Pope Francis to meet with Kathy Kelly while he visited the U.S. Par for the course, not one Catholic magazine/web site published the open letter.\nIsraeli soldiers CHEER as a sniper shoots ‘unarmed’ Palestinian protester in video filmed through rifle sight\nhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5598681/Israeli-soldiers-CHEER-sniper-kills-unarmed-Palestinian-protester-video.html#ixzz5CHxiY828\nHow to make the Jews hated by any rational person: https://ahtribune.com/us/israelgate/2212-bipartisan-pandering-to-jewish-interests.html\n“The pandering to Jewish interests is widespread in the federal government and is bipartisan. Israel runs a large trade surplus with the United States because it has free access to the U.S. market and can also bid on government contracts, a privilege normally afforded only to NATO allies. Plus Washington foots the bill for more than 20% of Israeli defense spending, even allowing Israel to use American taxpayer provided dollars to buy weapons from its own defense industry, which competes with that of the U.S.\nIndeed, in the past year, there has been a virtual flood of legislation that has been favorable to Israel and some Jewish-related issues even though there is no actual interest in play for other Americans. On the contrary, much of the legislation actually denies to citizens and residents the Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association. The most recent legislation benefiting Israel and punishing Israel’s host of enemies was rolled into the omnibus spending bill that was signed into law on March 23rd. Israel received additional money for its “defense” while the Palestinians saw money going both to the Palestinian Authority as well as to the United Nations to help refugees in the Middle East cut dramatically.\nTwenty-four states are now requiring statements pledging not to boycott Israel from those citizens and organizations that receive government funding or even seek local government employment. Two bills in Congress also seek to define as anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel. On December 12th 2017 the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting “no.” The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through the Congress would far exceed what is happening at the state level and would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison.”\n— Again, why the Jews hate Egypt, Persia, Russia, Germany…? — For the natives’ attempts to get rid of the parasite?\nZiocons have ordered the US military to invade the airspace of the sovereign Syria: https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/04/breaking-us-spy-plane-gathers-intel-data-in-syria-attack-expected-in-few-days/\n“The US Navy P-8A Poseidon, which is a reconnaissance aircraft able to penetrate deep into enemy territory is carrying out a multi-hour flight near the coast of Syria, where the Russian air base Khmeimim and the logistics base of the port of Tartus are located.\nThe spy plane with the onboard number 168439 flew from the Sigonella airbase on the Italian island of Sicily and is now at an altitude of 8,000 meters, circling the distance of 40 kilometers from the air base of Khmeimim and the Russian Navy base in Tartus.\nIts flight path passes over the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. According to the Turkish press, 100 kilometers from the Russian base in Tartus there is also the American destroyer Donald Cook, equipped with 56 Tomahawk cruise missiles.\nAccording to The Wall Street Journal, the White House is preparing to strike Syria in response to reports that allegedly on April 7, in the vicinity of the city of the Douma, chemical weapons were used. Washington accused Damascus officially – but Russia had warned of a rebel attack being planned a number of days prior.”\n— The Israel-firsters want to dismember Syria… All according to Oded Yinon plan for Eretz Israel. The 52 major American Jewish organizations are silent; they approve the mass slaughter.\nWhat can go wrong?\nJosecanuc says:\n“After you – O Israel – have inherited the earth… and achieved dominion over every living thing on earth…then… shall mankind beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; then (and only then) shall one nation not lift up sword against another nation, neither shall they learn war anymore..” The Torah\n“Israel (“man chosen by YHWH” and “May YHWH rule”) is above all the nations, as the head is above the body.” Josephus, 24 CE\nIn the Alenu, the prayer that closes every Jewish service the Jews chant: ‘Lord We await to see your Splendor Perfecting The World. Then will humanity RECOGNIZE & KNOW that to you EVERY KNEE MUST BEND, EVERY TONGUE PLEDGE LOYALTY & may they all accept the YOKE OF YOUR JEWISH KINGDOM – and MAY YOU RULE OVER THEM (thou the holy chosen Jews) SOON & FOR ALL TIME.’\n‘Just as, in the 16th and 17th centuries, (so in the 19th century) Jewish antennae everywhere were ever alert to pick up murmurs of an act of injustice to Jews anywhere that stirred emotions in the growing Jewish urban centres.’ Paul Johnson, History of the Jews\n“If you are chosen, you cannot choose! We are chosen; the choice is outside of us. We are Jews! Defined as Jews! Essentially Jews!” In Search of American Jewish Culture\nArthur Koestler: “If one looks with a cold open eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted By some built-in mental disorder which drives him toward self-destruction.”\nGeorge Orwell: “We shall get nowhere until we start…recognizing that the world is suffering from some kind of mental disease which must be diagnosed\nBerdynaev: “We are not aware that we live in madness which is but superficially concealed.”\nWilliam Barrett: “Nothing can be accomplished by denying that man (esp an appointed one) is an essentially troubled (afflicted, being, except to make (encourage) more trouble (affliction, torment).”\n@RudyM\nMust be retribution for b. exposing media fraud and Pat Lang’s letter to Mattis.\nA repost of the appeal to James Mattis, the United States Secretary of Defense, from the honorable Colonel Patrick Lang: http://www.turcopolier.typepad.com\nI beseech you, sir, to consider the possibility that the supposed chlorine gas attack at Douma, Syria may have been a carefully constructed propaganda fraud on the part of the rebels encircled in Douma. Such a fraud would have as its purpose the elicitation of exactly the kind of response that we are seeing in the Western media. The rebels have been defeated in East Gouta. Their fighters and families are being evacuated to Turkish occupied Jarabulus by air-conditioned bus. How would it benefit the Syrian government to make such an attack in this situation?\nI hope that you will determine the exact facts of what occurred at Douma before any action is taken.\nI recommend that you send someone competent to Syria to make an on the ground investigation.\nColonel (Ret.) US Army\n• Replies: @mcohen\nApril 10, 2018 at 10:14 pm GMT • 100 Words\n@Jett Rucker\nThis book is BANNED by AMAZON ___________\nGRAND DECEPTION: THE BROWDER HOAX\nBy Alex Krainer\nhttps://thirdalliance.ch/product/grand-deception-the-browder-hoax/\nIn 2015, Bill Browder published “Red Notice” – purportedly a true story about his experience in Russia. Upon closer scrutiny however, his story doesn’t add up and demonstrably fails to stand up in a court of law. Nonetheless, on the dubious strength of that story, Browder has been able to lobby the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012 which needlessly damaged the relations between the U.S. and Russia.\nHe is really….the honorable retired colonel\nHRC with oak leaf and acorn on chest\nPeace art peace robin\n@Uebersetzer\nAnother dumb, childish hasbarist response. Yawn.\nThe communist & violent Zionist heavy USSR had no justification, the Germans had plenty.\nRecall the seizing of German land under the widely denounced cruelty of the Versailles Treaty, terror against Germans in ‘Poland’, and Polish warmongering .\nPolish Atrocities against Germans before 1. September 1939\nhttps://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7525\na taste:\n“Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it even if she wants to.”\n– Polish Marshal Rydz-Smigly as reported in the Daily Mail, August 6th, 1939)\nand:.\n”under Polish pressure the Germans in the southern and eastern districts were subjected to oppressive treatment. On Aug. 19 1920 the Poles felt strong enough, indeed, to make an attempt to seize the country by force. On all sides bands of Poles, chiefly recruited from Congress Poland, usurped authority. A number of Germans were forcibly carried across the frontier into Poland, and many were killed. Several weeks elapsed before it was possible to quell this rising and restore order…It had been suggested by the Entente that non-resident Upper Silesians of the German Reich should vote outside Silesia, at Cologne. Germany protested against this, and her protest was recognized as valid by the Entente. In January 1921 the date of the plebiscite was fixed for March 20 1921.\nAn immediate revival took place in the use of terrorism by the Poles, especially in the districts of Rybnik, Pless, Kattowitz, and Beuthen. It reached its climax in the days preceding the plebiscite. Voters from other parts of the German Reich were frequently refused admission to the polls; sometimes they were maltreated and even in some instances murdered; and houses where outvoters were staying were set on fire… The day after the plebiscite the Polish excesses recommenced, and from that date onwards continued without interruption… Practically all the towns voted for Germany… the first days of May witnessed a new Polish insurrection which assumed far greater proportions than the former one. Korfanty had secretly raised a well-organized Polish force which was provided with arms and munition from across the border, and was reinforced by large bodies of men from Poland…\nBy June 20 the British troops had again occupied the larger towns, while the Poles had the upper hand in the rural districts. As a result of the difficulties in paying his men and providing them with food Korfanty now lost control over his followers. Independent bands were formed which plundered the villages, ill-treated the Germans, and murdered many of them.”\n– 1922 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “SILESIA, UPPER”\nResponsibility for WW2\nOur problem is most people don’t even get that this war is taking place right under their noses, trying to explain ends up in conspiracy territory.\n@mcohen\nKind of undermines the ‘pro-Israel’ hasbara doesn’t it. Because for you people it’s all about whining, trolling, disruption and the rest.\n110 coming up.\n@Lurker\nNah not even classic\nhttps://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish-voice-for-peace-statement-on-our-relationship-with-alison-weir/\nA few years ago she was caught out associating with the horribles.it was dealt with on mondoweiss.check it out.she slithered away hoping people would forget.\nPeace lurker\nAlison Weir does not slither.\nNot long after Mondoweiss “horribles”, including the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing horrible (peace, RobinG) JVP attacked Ms. Weir, she spoke to a packed room at Florida University. The room was salted with former IDF who monopolized the Q&A. Weir faced them all down and did not lose her cool for one instant.\nTry again ajpl, we’re on your case.\n• Agree: mark green, Cloak And Dagger\n, @RobinG\n, @mcohen\nJVP is a gatekeeper organization that has taken over the Palestinian movement in America to prevent any real hardhitting Palestinian movement from taking root in America. They dont want any activism that shows the connection between mainstream jewish organizations and antimuslim hate organizations in this country. If JVP harasses Allison Weir that means she is doing something right\nIsraeli agencies passed on all info to U.S. — ( on 9/11)\nSure thing – we believe that 100 %.\nScratch 9/11 and it bleeds Jew.\np.s. Time for a real investigation into 9/11 run by Americans.\nThanks for sparing me the cooties of writing directly to that pustule. As for Alison being “dealt with” on Mondoweiss, it was a battle royal within the trbe, with Rebecca Vilkomerson getting thoroughly thrashed, and I notice her name is no longer on the JVP page.\nAs for mcohen…\nNO PEACE FOR YOU!!!!!\n[In “Soup-Nazi” (peace, indeed) fashion.]\n*Excellent your post to Olde Wizzer about Graetz.\nOops… Vilkomerson is on JVP “Academic Advisory Council” – less prominent that Chair of Directors, but no less dangerous.\nhttps://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/campus-organizing/academic-advisory-council/\nThank you, Alison Weir! You have been a warrior!\nFor those who have not yet, pick up a copy of A. Weir’s excellent, packed full of info book,\nAgainst Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.\nIf you decide to read just one book on the issue of Zionism, make it Alison’s book.\n• Replies: @Paul C.\nstill no mention of alison weirs connection to clay douglas.just the usual burp and fart.let’s address this issue now.I suppose when you have a book to promote like “against the Jews” it is not what you know but who you know.\npeace solonto .peace robin g.peace art\nthink peace not hate.\nNever heard of Clay Douglas. Just tuned in to one of his programs so I’d know what the beef is. He seems like a pretty marginal character.\nDouglas is probably not a member of Skull and Bones or even of AEP.\nAppears he appeals to a different demographic than those two groups; what do you have against diversity and multiculturalism, mcohen???\nre your closing sentiment, “think peace not hate.” Hate to sound cynical, but I don’t think you really mean that.\nOR maybe you subscribe to your co-ethno-religio-tribe member, self-proclaimed “proud Levite,” Michael Ledeen’s definition of peace:\n“Peace is not the opposite of war, it is the result of war. It’s what happens when a war is fought and one side beats the other side and the winning side imposes terms on the loser, and those terms are called peace and are generally hammered at a peace conference and sometimes it takes the form of a peace treaty.”\nYou’ll get a kick outa this, mcohen: a Black guy called in to C Span Washington Journal and complained that C Span does not pay appropriate attention to what Jews in Israel are doing to Palestinians in Gaza, and also that Israel is expelling tens of thousands of Black Africans. He said, “We [Blacks] have supported Israel for years, and this is the thanks we get.”\nThe C Span MOD basically ignored the comment — Move along, nothing to see — but you can be sure CAMERA will write it up and demand that C Span mend its ways or No Soup for You.\nBut I thought it was interesting that the BLACK community is showing cracks in its slavish (isn’t it weird how words pop into your brain?) support for Jews and Israel, as if NAACP or BLM has ever done anything for them. Slowly the giant awakes.\nThe squamous mcohen must be referring to the ‘guilt by association’ with which JVP’s Vilkomerson tried to tag Alison.\nWas it to Clay Douglas’ radio show that she accepted an invitation to speak about her book, Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel? Alison was castigated for (1) accepting to go on the show, and (2) not sufficiently berating the host for his (apparent, or alleged, ’cause I’m no witness) anti-Semitism. LOL.\nGenerally despised at Mondoweiss, mcohen is now trolling fetid hasbara here, as well. Pffft… a shitstain on the page. Thanks again for your response, but at what point is it best to ignore?\n[You were already warned that unless your greatly improved your punctuation, capitalization, and grammar your comments would not be published.]\nThe Israeli “art students” — Mossad — were in the US to monitor and chaperone the coming 911 attack. The wanted it to succeed. They were ready to help. Perhaps they did help. They certainly danced in celebration on the day of the attack. The Zionist state is no friend of the US. In fact, it is no friend to anyone.\nTheir are many problems confronting the Zionists in their information war. Among them:\n(1) Though very well organized, the Zionists effort is vastly outnumbered: thirty million Jews worldwide vs seven billion non-jews.\n(2) Though control of the mass media once enabled the dominance of the Zionist “narrative” (ie the big lie), the internet and smart phone cameras have ended that monopoly. It’s very nearly impossible to convince someone of a lie when they already know the truth and witness it daily with their own (lying?) eyes.\n(3) The underlying mental defect of garrison state, siege-mentality Zionism, that more violence will somehow solve the problem.\n(4) The decline of American power in the world, the decline of American support for Israel, growing awareness of disproportionate Israeli influence (ie “subversion”) of the American political system, and the decline of support for Israel by the younger generation of American Jews.\n(5) Other factors you might wish to add.\nAnd one last thing: I’m an American and a Jew, just not a supporter of criminal Zionism.\n@jeff davis\nIrrelevant. Money buys votes, money buys support, money buys censorship, money buys total media control.\nMoney wins, thus Israel wins. Every time.\nPat Kittle says:\nHasbara trolls are easy to spot, now that I’ve had plenty of experience with their shamelessly dishonest (& relentlessly maudlin) behavior.\nI know decent people who happen to be Jews.\nBut these trolls embody every negative stereotype of Jews that ever came down the pike.\n@L.K\nYes, thank you Alison Weir! Her book is required reading.\nWebsite: http://ifamericaknew.org\nhttps://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-partisans-work-censor-internet/\n• Agree: Cloak And Dagger\n“O, what a tangled web (((we))) weave when first (((we))) practice to deceive” ~ Walter Scott\nParentheses added.\nFAKE, PHONY, COUNTERFEIT, IMPOSTER “Jews” in equally counterfeit (((Rothschild)))-“Israel”.\nWhy counterfeit, fake, phony, IMPOSTER “Jews”? Read on to find out.\nWhy do I call them FAKE, PHONY, COUNTERFEIT, IMPOSTER “Jews”, and what is the real meaning of ZION-ist? Read on:\nThe so-called “Sephardi” “Jews” (10% of all “Jews” today) are of BERBER-ARAB descent. The remaining 90% of so-called “Jews” today (the “Ashkenazi”) are of SLAVO-TURKIC descent. This means, that they have NO LEGITIMATE CLAIM to being the direct lineal descendants of the original, true IBERI (Hebrews) of the Old Testament era! NONE. WHAT-SO-EVER. Read Paul Wexler’s work in _The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews_, and _The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity_. Also, read THE GREAT DECEPTION: SYRIA, BRITAIN AND THE ROMAN CONSPIRACY, by Comyns Beaumont, IF you wish to discover the TRUE geographic location of the people, places & events described in both the Old & New Testament.\nAnd, (((they))) ADMIT AS MUCH, in (((their))) own publications:\nEncyclopedia Judaica 1971, Vol 10:23: “Jews began to call themselves Hebrews and Israelites in 1860 [AD].”\nPage 3 of the 1980 Jewish Almanac states: “Strictly speaking it is incorrect to call an Ancient Israelite a Jew or to call a contemporary [modern] Jew an Israelite or a Hebrew.”\n(You see, what these BERBER-ARABS & SLAVO-TURKS did, was HIJACK the very much VENERATED name & identity of the TRUE, ORIGINAL IBERI, or IBRI (Hebrews) of the Old Testament era, on their way to HIJACKING the entirety of Western Civilization! When did they do it? 1860 AD.\nWith regard to the meaning of ZION-ism, read these three extremely relevant quotes about “Jew”-ish SUPREMACISM (i.e., ZION-ism):\n1) “We Jews regard our race as superior to all humanity, and look forward, not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them.” (Goldwin Smith, Jewish Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, October, 1981)\n2) “We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own.” (You Gentiles, by Jewish Author Maurice Samuels, p. 155).\n3) “We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).\nSource: 1001 Quotes By and About Jews: https://www.stormfront.org/posterity/13texan/q351-400.htm\nWHY, is all the foregoing SO VITAL for ALL AMERICANS to FULLY comprehend? Read on:\nStudy the history of the so-called “Russian” “Revolution”. It was (((Rothschild)))-agents, (((Paul Warburg))), and (((Jacob Schiff))) who FINANCED fellow-tribesman (((Lev Bronstein))) alias (((Leon Trotsky))) to the tune of $20 Million (USD) in gold, when (((Bronstein/Trotsky))) boarded a ship in New York Harbor!, bound for Russia, and the (((Rothschild)))-financed overthrow (really massacre) of the 300-year-old ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN Romanov Family Dynasty. It is historically significant, that the so-called “Russian” “Revolution” was a FAKE, PHONY, COUNTERFEIT, IMPOSTER “Jew”-ish operation, from beginning to end.\nAll America Must Know the Terror That is Upon Us\nhttps://www.amfirstbooks.com/IntroPages/ToolBarTopics/Articles/Featured_Authors/strom,_kevin/kevin_strom_works/Kevin_Strom_1991-1994/Kevin_A._Strom_19930814-ADV_All_America_Must_Know_the_Terror_That_Is_Upon_Us.html\nAgain, WHY is ALL the foregoing information SO VITAL for EVERY AMERICAN to comprehend? Read on:\n1) Dual Citizenship — Loyal to Whom?, by Dan Eden for View Zone:\nhttp://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html\n2) Zionists Are a Fifth Column in America:\nhttp://www.henrymakow.com/zionists_fifth_column_in_ameri.html\nThe evidence is right in front of your nose. Wake up, America!\nJuly 5, 2018 at 2:16 pm GMT\nAnd what was so remarkable about the Catholic church’s contribution to the defeat of Communism was that it was done without there being any supernatural being to help.\nJuly 5, 2018 at 2:36 pm GMT • 200 Words\nRon, is there any chance someone could make a go of a http://www.banned.com competitor for YouTube, Facebook and any other censors?\nThe legal problem of defamation law could presumably be dealt with by making sure that viewers couldn’t miss the message that the site moderator warns that there is a substantial chance that anything posted contains untrue material because the main content of the site is material banned from other sites but made available on BANNED so that viewers can make their own assessment of the impact censoring practices of private businesses my have on First Amendment rights.\nIt would surely be possible to attract advertising revenue and changing the published list of those who had been invited to advertise and did advertise on Facebook etc. but declined to BANNED might be of interest to many. Maybe there would be scope for charging for subscriptions, especially for those who wanted notifications when something was posted that had been allegedly banned from X and referred to Y.\nDo you see problems?\nThreeCranes says:\nApril 18, 2019 at 11:55 am GMT\n@Reality Check\nAnd after all that, they have the chutzpah to claim that they don’t collude or act in concert and that Judaism is not a group evolutionary strategy.\nsmaragdus says:\nExcellent post, thank you!\nSubscribe to This Comment Thread via RSS Subscribe to All Alison Weir Comments via RSS\nAuthor? Alison WeirRon UnzGustavo ArellanoGilad AtzmonKevin BarrettRobert BonomoPat BuchananPatrick CockburnStephen F. CohenJonathan CookJohn DerbyshireLinh DinhGuillaume DurocherTom EngelhardtPepe EscobarBonnie FaulknerEamonn FingletonNorman FinkelsteinPeter FrostPhilip GiraldiPaul GottfriedC.J. HopkinsMichael HudsonE. Michael JonesJay ManW. Patrick LangPeter LeeTrevor LynchEric MargolisIlana MercerAndrew NapolitanoRon PaulJames PetrasTed RallFred ReedPaul Craig RobertsThe SakerIsrael ShamirEric StrikerJames ThompsonAndre VltchekWhitney WebbMike WhitneyAlexander CockburnSam FrancisRobert ScheerJoseph SobranPaul KerseySteve SailerRazib KhanAnatoly KarlinAudacious Epigone---A. GrahamA.D. HemmingAdam HochschildAedon CassielAgha HussainAhmet ÖncüAlan MacleodAlan NasserAlejandro LópezAleksandar PavicAlex GrahamAlexander HartAlexander MercourisAlfred Mc CoyAlison Rose LevyAllegra HarpootlianAmalric de DroevigAmr AbozeidAnand GopalAndre DamonAndrei MartyanovAndrew CockburnAndrew FraserAndrew J. BacevichAndrew JoyceAndrew LowdenAndrew S. FischerAndy KrollAnn JonesAnonymousAnthony Di MaggioAntiwar StaffAntonius AquinasAnya SchiffrinAriel DorfmanArlie Russell HochschildArno DevelayArnold IsaacsArtem ZagorodnovAstra TaylorAugis BarkovAusten LayardAviva ChomskyAyman FadelBarbara EhrenreichBarbara GarsonBarbara MyersBarry LandoBarton CockeyBelle CheslerBen FountainBen FreemanBeverly GologorskyBill BlackBill Mc KibbenBill MoyersBob DreyfussBob TriversBookBoyd D. CatheyBrad GriffinBradley MooreBrent NelsonBrenton SandersonBrett Redmayne-TitleyBrian DewC.J. HopkinsCaitlin JohnstoneCarl BromleyCarl HorowitzCatherine CrumpCésar KellerChalmers JohnsonChanda ChisalaCharles BausmanCharles GoodhartCharles WoodCharlie O'NeillCharlotteville SurvivorChase MadarChip WardChris AppyChris HedgesChris RobertsChris WoltermannChristian AppyChristopher CalabreseChristopher De GrootChristopher KetchamChristopher MoldesChuck OrloskiChuck SpinneyColeen RowleyColin LiddellCooper SterlingCraig MurrayDahr JamailDan E. 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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.unz.com/tsaker/saker-interview-with-michael-hudson-on-venezuela/\n← The US Aggression Against Venezuela as ...The Tulsi Gabbard Phenomenon as a Diagn... →\nBlogviewThe Saker Archive\nBlogviewThe Saker Archive Select Year/MonthAll Years = 268 ItemsDecade 2020s = 8 Items Year 2020 = 9 ItemsDecade 2010s = 259 Items Year 2019 = 50 Items January 2019 = 5 Items February 2019 = 3 Items Current Item March 2019 = 3 Items April 2019 = 5 Items May 2019 = 3 Items June 2019 = 5 Items July 2019 = 3 Items August 2019 = 5 Items September 2019 = 4 Items October 2019 = 6 Items November 2019 = 4 Items December 2019 = 4 Items Year 2018 = 52 Items Year 2017 = 58 Items Year 2016 = 62 Items Year 2015 = 37 Items--- January 2020 = 9 Items December 2019 = 4 Items November 2019 = 4 Items October 2019 = 6 Items September 2019 = 4 Items August 2019 = 5 Items July 2019 = 3 Items June 2019 = 5 Items May 2019 = 3 Items April 2019 = 5 Items March 2019 = 3 Items February 2019 = 3 Items Current Item January 2019 = 5 Items December 2018 = 3 Items November 2018 = 5 Items October 2018 = 3 Items September 2018 = 6 Items August 2018 = 5 Items July 2018 = 3 Items June 2018 = 4 Items May 2018 = 4 Items April 2018 = 6 Items March 2018 = 5 Items February 2018 = 4 Items January 2018 = 4 Items December 2017 = 5 Items November 2017 = 4 Items October 2017 = 5 Items September 2017 = 6 Items August 2017 = 5 Items July 2017 = 4 Items June 2017 = 5 Items May 2017 = 4 Items April 2017 = 7 Items March 2017 = 2 Items February 2017 = 6 Items January 2017 = 5 Items December 2016 = 7 Items November 2016 = 4 Items October 2016 = 5 Items September 2016 = 6 Items August 2016 = 2 Items July 2016 = 5 Items June 2016 = 4 Items May 2016 = 6 Items April 2016 = 5 Items March 2016 = 7 Items February 2016 = 5 Items January 2016 = 6 Items December 2015 = 6 Items November 2015 = 9 Items October 2015 = 5 Items September 2015 = 6 Items August 2015 = 5 Items July 2015 = 6 Items\nSaker Interview with Michael Hudson on Venezuela\nThe Saker and Michael Hudson • February 7, 2019\nIntroduction: There is a great deal of controversy about the true shape of the Venezuelan economy and whether Hugo Chavez’ and Nicholas Maduro’s reform and policies were crucial for the people of Venezuela or whether they were completely misguided and precipitated the current crises. Anybody and everybody seems to have very strong held views about this. But I don’t simply because I lack the expertise to have any such opinions. So I decided to ask one of the most respected independent economists out there, Michael Hudson, for whom I have immense respect and whose analyses (including those he co-authored with Paul Craig Roberts) seem to be the most credible and honest ones you can find. In fact, Paul Craig Roberts considers Hudson the “best economist in the world“!\nI am deeply grateful to Michael for his replies which, I hope, will contribute to a honest and objective understanding of what really is taking place in Venezuela.\nThe Saker: Could you summarize the state of Venezuela’s economy when Chavez came to power?\nMichael Hudson: Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and other necessities that it could have produced at home. Its trade was largely with the United States. So despite its oil wealth, it ran up foreign debt.\nFrom the outset, U.S. oil companies have feared that Venezuela might someday use its oil revenues to benefit its overall population instead of letting the U.S. oil industry and its local comprador aristocracy siphon off its wealth. So the oil industry – backed by U.S. diplomacy – held Venezuela hostage in two ways.\nFirst of all, oil refineries were not built in Venezuela, but in Trinidad and in the southern U.S. Gulf Coast states. This enabled U.S. oil companies – or the U.S. Government – to leave Venezuela without a means of “going it alone” and pursuing an independent policy with its oil, as it needed to have this oil refined. It doesn’t help to have oil reserves if you are unable to get this oil refined so as to be usable.\nSecond, Venezuela’s central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all assets of the state oil sector (including Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This meant that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing to make timely payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal position to take possession of Venezuelan oil assets.\nThese pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy. Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and IMF. The indigenous population, especially its rural racial minority as well as the urban underclass, was excluded from sharing in the country’s oil wealth. The oligarchy’s arrogant refusal to share the wealth, or even to make Venezuela self-sufficient in essentials, made the election of Hugo Chavez a natural outcome.\nThe Saker: Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he do right, and what did he do wrong?\nMichael Hudson: Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue – mainly from oil, of course – to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity for his electoral constituency.\nWhat he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad – while running away themselves.\nThis was not “wrong”. It merely takes a long time to change an economy’s disruption – while the U.S. is using sanctions and “dirty tricks” to stop that process.\nThe Saker: What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela – is it primarily due to mistakes by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?\nMichael Hudson: There is no way that Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.\nBy imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela’s oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer hedge fund sought to do with Argentina’s foreign assets.\nJust as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s “economy scream,” so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a “demonstration effect” to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.\nThe Saker: What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does not overthrow him) to rescue the Venezuelan economy?\nMichael Hudson: I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing. At best, he can seek foreign support – and demonstrate to the world the need for an alternative international financial and economic system.\nHe already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela’s gold from the Bank of England and Federal Reserve. This is turning into “asymmetrical warfare,” threatening to de-sanctify the dollar standard in international finance. The refusal of England and the United States to grant an elected government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire world that U.S. diplomats and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an extension of U.S. nationalism.\nThe price of the U.S. economic attack on Venezuela is thus to fracture the global monetary system. Maduro’s defensive move is showing other countries the need to protect themselves from becoming “another Venezuela” by finding a new safe haven and paying agent for their gold, foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro areas.\nThe only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the ante to move “outside the box.” His plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan – is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S. dollar standard. It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it can emerge from this fight as an honest financial broker, honest banking system and supporter of democratically elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!\nOver the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture, along much the same lines that the United States protected and developed its agriculture under the New Deal legislation of the 1930s – rural extension services, rural credit, seed advice, state marketing organizations for crop purchase and supply of mechanization, and the same kind of price supports that the United States has long used to subsidize domestic farm investment to increase productivity.\nThe Saker: What about the plan to introduce a oil-based crypto currency? Will that be an effective alternative to the dying Venezuelan Bolivar?\nMichael Hudson: Only a national government can issue a currency. A “crypto” currency tied to the price of oil would become a hedging vehicle, prone to manipulation and price swings by forward sellers and buyers. A national currency must be based on the ability to tax, and Venezuela’s main tax source is oil revenue, which is being blocked from the United States. So Venezuela’s position is like that of the German mark coming out of its hyperinflation of the early 1920s. The only solution involves balance-of-payments support. It looks like the only such support will come from outside the dollar sphere.\nThe solution to any hyperinflation must be negotiated diplomatically and be supported by other governments. My history of international trade and financial theory, Trade, Develpoment and Foreign Debt, describes the German reparations problem and how its hyperinflation was solved by the Rentenmark.\nVenezuela’s economic-rent tax would fall on oil, and luxury real estate sites, as well as monopoly prices, and on high incomes (mainly financial and monopoly income). This requires a logic to frame such tax and monetary policy. I have tried to explain how to achieve monetary and hence political independence for the past half-century. China is applying such policy most effectively. It is able to do so because it is a large and self-sufficient economy in essentials, running a large enough export surplus to pay for its food imports. Venezuela is in no such position. That is why it is looking to China for support at this time.\nThe Saker: How much assistance do China, Russia and Iran provide and how much can they do to help? Do you think that these three countries together can help counter-act US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?\nMichael Hudson: None of these countries have a current capacity to refine Venezuelan oil. This makes it difficult for them to take payment in Venezuelan oil. Only a long-term supply contract (paid for in advance) would be workable. And even in that case, what would China and Russia do if the United States simply grabbed their property in Venezuela, or refused to let Russia’s oil company take possession of Citco? In that case, the only response would be to seize U.S. investments in their own country as compensation.\nAt least China and Russia can provide an alternative bank clearing mechanism to SWIFT, so that Venezuela can by pass the U.S. financial system and keep its assets from being grabbed at will by U.S. authorities or bondholders. And of course, they can provide safe-keeping for however much of Venezuela’s gold it can get back from New York and London.\nLooking ahead, therefore, China, Russia, Iran and other countries need to set up a new international court to adjudicate the coming diplomatic crisis and its financial and military consequences. Such a court – and its associated international bank as an alternative to the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank – needs a clear ideology to frame a set of principles of nationhood and international rights with power to implement and enforce its judgments.\nThis would confront U.S. financial strategists with a choice: if they continue to treat the IMF, World Bank, ITO and NATO as extensions of increasingly aggressive U.S. foreign policy, they will risk isolating the United States. Europe will have to choose whether to remain a U.S. economic and military satellite, or to throw in its lot with Eurasia.\nHowever, Daniel Yergin reports in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 7) that China is trying to hedge its bets by opening a back-door negotiation with Guaido’s group, apparently to get the same deal that it has negotiated with Maduro’s government. But any such deal seems unlikely to be honored in practice, given U.S. animosity toward China and Guaido’s total reliance on U.S. covert support.\nThe Saker: Venezuela kept a lot of its gold in the UK and money in the USA. How could Chavez and Maduro trust these countries or did they not have another choice? Are there viable alternatives to New York and London or are they still the “only game in town” for the world’s central banks?\nMichael Hudson: There was never real trust in the Bank of England or Federal Reserve, but it seemed unthinkable that they would refuse to permit an official depositor from withdrawing its own gold. The usual motto is “Trust but verify.” But the unwillingness (or inability) of the Bank of England to verify means that the formerly unthinkable has now arrived: Have these central banks sold this gold forward in the post-London Gold Pool and its successor commodity markets in their attempt to keep down the price so as to maintain the appearance of a solvent U.S. dollar standard.\nPaul Craig Roberts has described how this system works. There are forward markets for currencies, stocks and bonds. The Federal Reserve can offer to buy a stock in three months at, say, 10% over the current price. Speculators will by the stock, bidding up the price, so as to take advantage of “the market’s” promise to buy the stock. So by the time three months have passed, the price will have risen. That is largely how the U.S. “Plunge Protection Team” has supported the U.S. stock market.\nThe system works in reverse to hold down gold prices. The central banks holding gold can get together and offer to sell gold at a low price in three months. “The market” will realize that with low-priced gold being sold, there’s no point in buying more gold and bidding its price up. So the forward-settlement market shapes today’s market.\nThe question is, have gold buyers (such as the Russian and Chinese government) bought so much gold that the U.S. Fed and the Bank of England have actually had to “make good” on their forward sales, and steadily depleted their gold? In this case, they would have been “living for the moment,” keeping down gold prices for as long as they could, knowing that once the world returns to the pre-1971 gold-exchange standard for intergovernmental balance-of-payments deficits, the U.S. will run out of gold and be unable to maintain its overseas military spending (not to mention its trade deficit and foreign disinvestment in the U.S. stock and bond markets). My book on Super-Imperialism explains why running out of gold forced the Vietnam War to an end. The same logic would apply today to America’s vast network of military bases throughout the world.\nRefusal of England and the U.S. to pay Venezuela means that other countries realize that foreign official gold reserves can be held hostage to U.S. foreign policy, and even to judgments by U.S. courts to award this gold to foreign creditors or to whoever might bring a lawsuit under U.S. law against these countries.\nThis hostage-taking now makes it urgent for other countries to develop a viable alternative, especially as the world de-dedollarizes and a gold-exchange standard remains the only way of constraining the military-induced balance of payments deficit of the United States or any other country mounting a military attack. A military empire is very expensive – and gold is a “peaceful” constraint on military-induced payments deficits. (I spell out the details in my Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972), updated in German as Finanzimperium (2017).\nThe U.S. has overplayed its hand in destroying the foundation of the dollar-centered global financial order. That order has enabled the United States to be “the exceptional nation” able to run balance-of-payments deficits and foreign debt that it has no intention (or ability) to pay, claiming that the dollars thrown off by its foreign military spending “supply” other countries with their central bank reserves (held in the form of loans to the U.S. Treasury – Treasury bonds and bills – to finance the U.S. budget deficit and its military spending, as well as the largely military U.S. balance-of-payments deficit.\nGiven the fact that the EU is acting as a branch of NATO and the U.S. banking system, that alternative would have to be associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the gold would have to be kept in Russia and/or China.\nThe Saker: What can other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and, maybe, Uruguay and Mexico do to help Venezuela?\nMichael Hudson: The best thing neighboring Latin American countries can do is to join in creating a vehicle to promote de-dollarization and, with it, an international institution to oversee the writedown of debts that are beyond the ability of countries to pay without imposing austerity and thereby destroying their economies.\nAn alternative also is needed to the World Bank that would make loans in domestic currency, above all to subsidize investment in domestic food production so as to protect the economy against foreign food-sanctions – the equivalent of a military siege to force surrender by imposing famine conditions. This World Bank for Economic Acceleration would put the development of self-reliance for its members first, instead of promoting export competition while loading borrowers down with foreign debt that would make them prone to the kind of financial blackmail that Venezuela is experiencing.\nBeing a Roman Catholic country, Venezuela might ask for papal support for a debt write-down and an international institution to oversee the ability to pay by debtor countries without imposing austerity, emigration, depopulation and forced privatization of the public domain.\nTwo international principles are needed. First, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt in a currency (such as the dollar or its satellites) whose banking system acts to prevents payment.\nSecond, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt at the price of losing its domestic autonomy as a state: the right to determine its own foreign policy, to tax and to create its own money, and to be free of having to privatize its public assets to pay foreign creditors. Any such debt is a “bad loan” reflecting the creditor’s own irresponsibility or, even worse, pernicious asset grab in a foreclosure that was the whole point of the loan.\nThe Saker: Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my questions!\nFollow @VineyardSaker\n• Category: Economics, Foreign Policy • Tags: Dollar, Gold, Neoliberalism, Oil, Venezuela\nThe Saker Interviews Michael Hudson\nAmerica Escalates Its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East\nIMMR CoffeeHouse Discussion Forum # 8\nAsset-Price Inflation and Rent Seeking\nTrump’s Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony\nMichael Hudson and Bonnie Faulkner\nThe Saker and Michael Hudson\n\"Saker Interview with Michael Hudson on Venezuela\"\nkauchai says:\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 1:51 am GMT • 100 Words\n” Second, Venezuela’s central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all assets of the state oil sector (including Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This meant that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing to make timely payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal position to take possession of Venezuelan oil assets.”\nSolid proof that it was the empire who invented the practice of “debt trap” and is still flourishing with it.\n• Agree: Tom Welsh\n, @Mefobills\nIlyana_Rozumova says:\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 5:49 am GMT\nMain factor here is that US due to fracking become self sufficient, what actually nobody could foresee. Just a bad luck.\n• Replies: @Matthias Eckert\n, @Winston2\nhunor says:\nThank you ! Made it very clear.\nPerfect reflection of the ” Values of Western Civilization ” .\nReaching to grab the whole universe , with no holds barred .\nAnd never show of any interest for the ” truth”.\nThey are not even pretending anymore , awakening will be very painful for some.\n• Agree: Johnny Walker Read\nThese pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy. Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and IMF.\nNo amount of needle point proof can pop the ballon that is the collective brains of Americans that have a CIA propaganda(via the media) myth inserted in their head that “it’s because of socialism!” Venezuela is in economic turmoil.\nOther CIA created myths(that happen to work):\n“They need democracy restored”\n“They need our help”\n“They have weapons of mass destruction”\n“They harbor terrorists”\n“They peddle fake news”\n“They hack our elections”\nCollect your own, and trade them with your friends.\n• Agree: bike-anarkist\n• Replies: @Sowhat\n, @Mike G\nAt least China and Russia can provide an alternative bank clearing mechanism to SWIFT, so that Venezuela can bypass the U.S. financial system and keep its assets from being grabbed at will by U.S. authorities or bondholders. And of course, they can provide safe-keeping for however much of Venezuela’s gold it can get back from New York and London.\nThere’s a good general rule here to keep independent country assets and financial transactions away from the US – especially making them non- US dollar based.\nEurope would have to make this choice – and it looks like the European public is in fact already starting to make it – which greatly troubles the US’s elite European collaborators.\nTrue. Now is reflection time for any country that holds physical gold in New York or London. Also time to think in general about reserves held in US dollars (Treasury bonds).\nWhatever happens Venezuela is going to get austerity, but it could be a difficult self respecting and self sufficient kind, excluding the US (the primary source of its problems) and taking assistance from any friends that it may have.\nHiHo says:\nAnother Saker article that ignores the elephant in the room completely…\nA great idea but the world banks are NOT US controlled. They are run by the Rothschilds, and until writers like Saker face up to this fact the problems will not be resolved. Rothschild has to be dealt with, put out of business and closed down permanently.\n• Agree: Rurik, Vojkan\n, @Wade\nslorter says:\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 10:40 am GMT\nGood article will certainly spread this one around!\nMichael Kenny says:\nWhat Mr Hudson’s answers make clear is that Putin is increasingly bogged down in yet another fight, a fight which Mr Hudson tacitly believes to be unwinnable.\nCommentator Mike says:\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 10:47 am GMT • 100 Words\nBeware those western government criminals. Not only do they print paper money without the backing of a gold standard, they also fake the gold they sell or claim to have in their reserves:\nhttps://anationbeguiled.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/us-sells-fake-gold-bars-to-china/\nIt seems Fort Knox isn’t even worth robbing except in Hollywood movies.\nMatthias Eckert says:\n@Ilyana_Rozumova\nDespite huge increases in domestic oil production in the last years the USA is still the second largest net oil importer in the word (behind China).\nAlso the USA is extracting its proven reserves at a much faster rate than any other large producer (a pattern it also had in the past, leading to high fluctuation in its production) so unless new reserves are discovered US production will likely start to decline again within a few years.\nThis interview is a whitewash for the Venezuelan government. While I don’t doubt that the described sabotage and subversion orchestrated by the US the Chavistas are clearly incompetent and corrupt.\nThey had 20 years to diversify the Venezuelan economy and failed completely. Instead of decreasing the reliance on oil exports the increased it.\nMost of what was left off the venezuelan agricultural sector got destroyed by handing it to Chavez followers. Similar with almost all other economic sectors. Even the oil production is much lower than it was in 1998 and this is not because of sanctions. They simply didn’t invest enough into replacing equipment that got worn out. They had 20 years to build refineries for venezuelan oil in Venezuela, China or somewhere else out of US influence, they didn’t.\n, @mike k\n, @EliteCommInc.\n@Matthias Eckert\nSame goes for almost anything else. Why does Venezuela still have gold deposited in the US and Britain? it’s not like these never seized (not to say stole) foreign assets before.\nJust because the Chavistas are enemies of the American oligarchy doesn’t mean the aren’t oligarchs themselves.\nps. That Anglo habit to start nationalities with a capital letter even when used as adjective is an insult to logic\n, @Hibernian\n, @Ovidiu\n@Commentator Mike\nPlease prove that you know anything about the gold standard and aren’t just like those ignoramuses spouting rubbish about “fractional reserve banking”. Wasn’t the most famous and influential economist of the 20th century right in calling the gold standard “A barbarous relic”?.\nPS Do you think government’s should set a fixed price for gold? And does it make any difference if new discoveries lead to much more gold being available? Should private person’s be entitled to hoard gold?\n“… need to set up a new international court to adjudicate the coming diplomatic crisis and its financial and military consequences.”\nYes, as if the US and its allies are going to recognise that court and its judgments. Face it, the gold and money held abroad in the Western countries is gone (see South Park for an illustration).\nI remember paing $0.19 per gallon of AvGas a couple decades ago, and locals wete getting auto fuel for a lot less than that, back in the days when the country was still in Uncle Sugar’s good graces and getting the refined goods from US. Maybe they should earmark a few dollars for a refinery or two to solve that one little problem.\nThey might also start expropriating and redistributing the assets and land of the compradors carrying out Uncle Sugar’s current coup attempt; what’s going to happen, a coup?\nAnd what kind of dictator lets his main rival hold a competing political rival at the same time in the same city? Time for Maduro to man up and personally shoot the guy. The Colombians will get the imagery.\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 12:09 pm GMT • 100 Words\nDo you think government’s should set a fixed price for gold?\nGovernments deciding what the value of a commodity is? Yea, good luck with that.\nShould private person’s be entitled to hoard gold?\nThat’s the way most of the old world(east Asia) still works – and after many centuries nobody has yet to come along and fuck it up. I’m poor with only about fifty grams, but I know others with a kilo or two.\nSergey Krieger says:\nIt is all moving same pieces of capitalistic BS around. Basic imperialistic struggle among former hegemony who is going down due to stupidity and bad choices and newly rising hopefuls. Once USA is safely put out and hopefully down, new great powers will suck lesser powers dry probably by smarter and less aggressive means but nevertheless. Souverenity is being used as a tool now, but truly sovereign can be only few great powers in capitalistic world and Venezuella will never be sovereign. Sacker as usually lacks imagination to go beyond his narrow views. He is also contradictory. Fighting the only successful socialist state in the world which was the only one capable to put his anglozios in place yet defending this pathetic entity pretending to be socialist. If it is socialist how come all those oligarchs and their base is still around to keep creating troubles? They should have gotten rid off long time ago and their all assets and capitals nationalized for common good.\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 12:21 pm GMT\nRegarding USA I have never had any illusions about this entity. Not even in 80s. All those birth Mark’s were there from the start. As with every old person they turned into marasm at certain age.\nWinston2 says:\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 1:37 pm GMT • 100 Words\nCondensate,not oil.Only good for gas or lighter fluid.It may be called oil but that’s a deliberate\nmisnomer.Only financial engineering makes it appear profitable.Its a money losing\npsychopaths power play,not a business.Without a heavy real oil to blend it with its useless,\nheavy oil is where Venezuela comes in.\n• Replies: @Ilyana_Rozumova\nCaptain Willard says:\nThis just beggars belief. To men with hammers (and sickles), everything looks like a nail.\nAmericans couldn’t care less what happens in Venezuela. I’m not even sure the Deep State cares. If any Latin country fails, it has to be a Yanqui conspiracy? It wasn’t the 25 years of Chavista incompetence.\nWe’re presently trying to extricate ourselves from Iraq, for f**k’s sake! We haven’t even bothered to stick around and steal Iraq’s lighter, sweeter and more plentiful crude. And that’s after waging a stupid, ill-advised, huge and expensive war.\nSo now we’re supposedly ogling Venezuela’s crappy heavy oil and rotting production infrastructure. I call BS. The only thing in Venezuela worth coveting is all the pretty girls. From what I can tell, most of them are moving to Miami anyway.\nSince the Russians are experts in heavy oil (and pretty girls), let them try and fix it. We’ve had enough Iraqs for five lifetimes.\n• Replies: @Johnny Walker Read\nJohnny Walker Read says:\nThis is nothing more than the continuation of America’s foreign policy. Ours has been a policy of the guy with the big stick will beat you senseless until you give him everything he wants at basically no charge. Insider John Perkins lays it all out in this short DOC.\nOh god yes….nothing about the US is to be trusted. One of the dumbest, dumb-ass things a country can do is put their gold reserves in a foreign country, especially US or UK.\n• Replies: @Whitewolf\nReuben Kaspate says:\nWhy would the U. S. based White-Protestant aristocracy care a hoot about the Brown-Catholic elites in the far off land? They don’t! The comprador aristocracy in question isn’t what it seems… It’s the same group that plagues the Americans. The rootless louts, whose only raison d’ê·tre is to milk everything in sight and then retire to coastal cities, i.e. San Francisco, if you are a homosexual or New York City and State, if you are somewhat religious. Poor Venezuelans don’t stand a chance against the shysters!\nFebruary 7, 2019 at 2:41 pm GMT\n@HiHo\nRothschild has to be dealt with, put out of business and closed down permanently.\nBig talk….no ideas.\n@Michael Kenny\n@Captain Willard\nAs stated above, Venezuela has no refineries, so its oil must be refined by America. Much money to be made in this operation by American corporations.\n“Venezuela is awash with natural resources such as diamonds, bauxite, gold, iron ore, natural gas and petroleum.”\nhttps://www.azomining.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=73\n• Replies: @Captain Willard\n, @/lasse\n“I spell out the details in my Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972), updated in German as Finanzimperium (2017)”.\nThe name of the German edition is actually Finanzimperialismus (according to Amazon).\n@kauchai\nObviously. They have been doing it for more than a century now.\nNo one should be fooled by the fact that the Americans are now blaming China for creating “debt traps”. One of their most consistently used “dirty tricks” is to blame others for the crimes they themselves commit.\nBad luck for the USA. They have fallen into an elephant trap, because fracking has already become unprofitable and is only being financed by ever-increasing debt.\nAdmittedly this gives them some advantage, but only in the very short term.\nOf course, it doesn’t really matter – in the short to medium term – whether fracking is profitable or grossly unprofitable. They can still pay for it by printing more dollars, as long as the “greater fools” (or heavily bribed officials) in other countries go on accepting dollars.\n• Agree: bluedog\n‘Wasn’t the most famous and influential economist of the 20th century right in calling the gold standard “A barbarous relic””?’\nJohn Maynard Keynes was making very idealistic assumptions about human altruism and cooperation. Like many good and clever people, he was too prone to think others were like himself.\nKeynes and others of his close acquaintance, such as Bertrand Russell, knew very well that, even in the 1920s, advanced nations could easily function and provide a good standard of living if everyone worked a 30-hour week.\nWhat they completely failed to recognise was that the rich and powerful would do everything to stop such improvements, so that they could grab as much as possible of the world’s wealth.\nMuch like the experimental monkeys who became so addicted to electric stimulation of the pleasure centre that they went on pulling the lever that supplied it until they literally died of thirst or hunger.\n, @Vidi\n, @map\nGuiado [sic] should certainly be arrested, prosecuted and presumably punished severely. That is the usual recipe for acts of gross treason in any civilised nation.\nJohn Q Public says:\nSounds like bullshit.\n@Winston2\nIf for Canadians is economical extraction from tar sands, than I do think that Venezuelan oil is more economical to extract..\nWhen you are talking about Condensate are you talking about fracking?\nThan even Gasoline has a high loss by evaporation.\nVenezuela is another case of the Zionist banking kabal proving that it controls the FED and the Bank of England and the IMF and the World Bank etc., etc., ie every central bank in the world is Zionist owned and there in lies the problem as these bastards lie and cheat and steal!\nThe Zionist actually own every country that has a central bank which is just about every country in the world and as in the U.S. the Zionist privately owned FED controls the U.S. government and the lives of every American and just as in Venezuela we are slaves of the Zionist banking kabal!\nThe U.S. has no right to interfere in Venezuela but that makes no difference to the Zionist banking kabal that rules the world, just look at Afghanistan/ Iraq/ Libya / Syria/ Yemen, they have no right to interfere in these countries, but wars make money for the bankers in fact all wars are banker wars and so the butcher shops were opened and the money flowed in for the Zionist banking kabal!\nInterfering in South America and Central America is nothing new to our Zionist rulers, see the book The Secret Team by L. Fletcher Prouty and War is a Racket by Gen. Smedley Butler and Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed , all can be had on Amazon.com , or just read the customer comments of Amazon.\nThe 5lies keep bleating about their ‘rule based system’ 24×7.\nThese are the two rules that determine their ‘foreign policies’,..\n1] The George Kennan’s rule.\nBrook no peer competitors.\n2] The Nixon/Kissinger rule.\n‘Democracy is too important to leave up to the people to vote’\nCorrollary\nFor either of the above offenders, put their economy thru the grinder and make them scream.\n• Replies: @Antiwar7\npeter mcloughlin says:\nThe US should be wary of unleashing a Latin American Spring. Already the two major countries in the region, Brazil and Mexico, are lining up on opposite side over Venezuela. The consequences of the Arab Spring have been catastrophic for the Middle East – and Europe. A similar ‘plan’ for South America is likely to have the same result. On a global scale, the different regional confrontations are in danger of coalescing into a single conflagration: the South China Sea, Ukraine, Syria, Iran etc. One location might trigger it, but the interconnectedness of the disparate conflicts will drag all into the flames. The demise of the INF Treaty means the big powers are now racing to re-arm like in the 1930s. We are on course for another world war – nuclear war. The pattern of history is clear.\nhttps://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/\nAnonymous [AKA \"John D Welsh\"] says:\nThanks Tom. Dave Welsh who has a son Tom Welsh residing a few blocks from the Pentagon. Works in the field of obtaining govt. contracts.\n@Johnny Walker Read\nWe just got done conquering Iraq. We haven’t stayed to loot the oil. So now you believe we’re going to Venezuela to take their crappy heavy oil? It would be easier for us just to build a pipeline to Alberta and import all their cheap, shut-in heavy crude. Mr. Hudson apparently doesn’t read Platt’s.\nAfghanistan has more minerals than Venezuela. Why are we leaving then?\nThis article has many inaccuracies. You accept them at face value, knowing nothing about the oil business. In fact, Venezuela has 10x the refining capacity of Trinidad. And Texaco gave up on it years ago. Heavy Ven crude takes special refining equipment and usually has to be blended with lighter crudes. Oddly enough, Ven. has to import oil for this reason.\nAnd in 2008, Ven. produced around 2.4 mmbbls/day. Their stated refining capacity is around 2/3 of this figure. PDVSA has raised all kinds of financing over the years including in the US. To say they’ve been starved of refining capacity or capital is just absolute BS.\nYes, American foreign policy is a mess. But folks thinking we have designs on Venezuela are just nuts. Meanwhile, Mr. Hudson continues to talk out of his asshole on subjects about which he is manifestly ignorant. Every interview and article is the same : “The US is responsible for all the problems in “fill in the blank””.\nI wish we had the power he ascribes to us. Lately we mess up everything. The best thing that could happen to Ven. is that we invade it bloodlessly, mess it up more and inject $3Trillion into it the way we did in Afghanistan. Sheesh!\n, @RI\n, @tac\n, @Matthias Eckert\nJust the kind of thing I come to Unz to read, and get a glimmer at the man behind the curtain.\nI’ll share an anecdote, for what it’s worth. Some years back I went into the local bank. The (young and attractive) gal who helped me out, was- it turned out, from Venezuela.\nThis was when Chavez was still alive, and after he had mocked the chimp at the UN, talking about the smell of sulfur. I remember being impressed by his antics, and thinking ‘wow, there’s a guy who not only hates Dubya almost as much as I do, but has the cajones to call the bitch out in front of the whole world.\nSo I was curious what this pretty (many of them are) Venezuelan girl thought of Chavez, and I asked her.\nShe did not like him. No effn’ way. It turns out her father was a hard working schlep who came from nothing, but had worked his arse off his entire life, to build a second home, and to rent the first one out, as a retirement income of sorts.\nWell, according to this gal, the Chavez regime had confiscated the rental home because it was exploitation in their view. So I had to re-think my opinion of this guy, if her story is true. Why don’t these commies ever go after the One Percent’s wealth? Why do they always go after the working and middle class?\nJust an anecdote for what it’s worth.\nAlso glad someone posted the Economic Hit Man video.\nThe last sentence of this article, (in particular) made me think of that video.\n• Replies: @map\nnever-anonymous says:\nEconomic hitman Hudson recommends asking the Catholics for help. Clearly the quality of propaganda from the spooks has reached the bottom of the barrel. If you believe the Catholics will get the gold to its rightful owners I have a bridge to sell you with a special price for those paying with gold. The Jesuit liars urged the stupid to vote Trump. Paul Craig Roberts fondly remembers the days when US troops would force the native slaves of Central America to work for US Corporations or die. Trump = Obama = Reagan= CIA meddling in every country with war crimes, not just terrorism. Trump ran on a ticket of ending wars but lied through his teeth. Just another war mongering billionaire. Here comes WWIII to fix the economy with murdering poor people.\nBut folks thinking we have designs on Venezuela are just nuts\nthe first thing that’s necessary is to define who “we” are.\nBecause there are two Americas, and we should make the distinction.\nFirst there is the America of the American people. Poor, working class, middle class, and somewhat well-off upper-middle class. These are the “we” that had nothing whatsoever to do with the wars, except to vote relentlessly for politicians to end them, and are always betrayed.\nWhich brings us to the other “we”. The Deepstate scumfucks who bomb and loot nations, when they aren’t looting the American working and middle class to fund their Eternal Wars, or selecting cannon fodder from the working class or poor, to act as their Janissaries for globo-domination and rapine.\nJoe the Plumber is the poster boy for the first “we”, and yes, there are lots and lots of butt-hurt arseholes who would like to pin it all on Joe. He’s white, CIS, American and the perfect scapegoat for butt-hurt loser’s (of all stripes) hate.\nJohn McBloodstain in the perfect (if rotting) poster boy for the other “we”. The Deepstate scumfucks who are just as much the enemy of the American people as they are the enemy of all who don’t bow down to the Fiend.\nSo there are two very separate and very distinct “we”s.\nThe reason we can be sure the problems being caused in Venezuela are being done so by the Deepstate ‘Americans’, is because Trump appointed one of the worst Deepstate scumfucks to look after “our” interests down there; Eliot Abrams – a scumfuck of the highest order, and an existential enemy of Joe the Plumber and all Americans of good will.\nIt would be good if this distinction between the two “we”s, could be made more routinely. IMHO\n• Replies: @Mike P\n, @Liberty Mike\n, @Captain Willard\n, @Rubicon 727\nolde reb says:\nOPEN LETTER TO CON gress\nDear CONGRESSCRITTER,\nWhy is congress allowing the continual buildup of military forces in Syria for an oil pipeline for Wall Street, assisting a coup in Venezuela to have Wall Street acquire control of their oil and gold sources, and continuing the occupation of Afghanistan for the growth of opium—among many other examples ? The death of our sons and daughters for world domination, and the fiscal destruction of our nation, to satisfy the economic objectives of Wall Street is not adequate justification.\nWhen I see that congress understands and investigates how the Federal Reserve is used by Wall Street to embezzle trillions of dollars from the people [via government] (Ref. https://thedailycoin.org/2018/08/16/a-look-at-the-federal-reserve-through-a-different-lens/) , and how the fraudulent income tax is perpetuated on an uninformed citizenry (http://www.usa-the-republic.com/revenue/liberty/index.html), then I will believe congress is not a disguised deep state minion and extorting the public by taxation and inflation to secure an affluent life style for themselves.\nYour constituent,\nBut folks thinking we have designs on Venezuela are just nuts. ”\nHow does one prove what is in the mind of someone else?\nEliteCommInc. says:\nHere’s an idea. Venezuelan politics is none of our business. We have been sorting out South American polity since the 1800’s — it might be a novel idea to let them figure or fight it out among themselves.\nAs for the banking and financial practices, it is my understanding that since BAsel 1 and 2 and 3 —\nwe have been following their lead and that of europe — we should leave that alone as well.\nFeb 4, 2019 Abby Martin: Hands Off Venezuela\nWe need your voice to speak up against another U.S. war for oil.\nFeb 3, 2019 Venezuela’s Oil Enough for World’s 30 Year Energy Needs\nThe long bankrupt fiat financial system is pushing the Deep State to target Venezuela for the latter’s natural resources that dwarfs that of its satellite province Saudi Arabia.\nhttps://geopolitics.co/2019/02/03/venezuelas-oil-enough-for-worlds-30-year-energy-needs/\nThe US is sitting on a veritable ocean of oil.\nAmerica’s Oil And Gas Reserves Double With Massive New Permian Discovery\nhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/12/21/americas-oil-and-gas-reserves-double-with-massive-new-permian-discovery/#60fceb432c91\nexc.:\n“America’s energy security just got a lot more secure. On November 28 The United States Geological Survey (USGS) published an assessment of continuous (unconventional or ‘tight’) resources in a part of the prolific Permian oil and gas basin that straddles Western Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. Located in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation, the unproven, technically recoverable reserves are officially the largest on the planet.”\nThen add in the rest of the continental US and then Alaska … oil galore.\n• Replies: @Vidi\nThose that sell it need to do so as much if not more than those that buy it. The world is awash in oil.\nDollars will continue to be gladly accepted as long as other countries central banks do what ours does, if not worse than what ours does.\nThe empire of crooks and fakery: https://anationbeguiled.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/us-sells-fake-gold-bars-to-china/\n“…an admission that the Federal Reserve has been involved with the fake gold bar swaps and that it refuses to disclose any information about its activities!”\n/lasse says:\nNatural resources get its value by the knowledge to create something useful out of them. The economy is human activities, the way we create value by using our knowledge and talents.\nAs Hudson say Chavez tried to create at mixed economy. Its not an easy task, something that takes long time, e.g. raising the general educational level, infrastructure, health and so on.\nIf Chavez and PSUV did approach this task good or bad I do not know.\nAs I understand are Venezuela a country riddled with enormous obstacles to achieve this. It probably needs a high amount of social capital. Add on western hostility that third world countries do this.\nThe prime example of success in fairly modern times are countries in Asia with national unity and rather authoritarian government.\nTo which I reply, with Nancy Pelosi: (((that is who we are))) !\nBlaming the victims of US aggression.\n“This interview is a whitewash for the Venezuelan government … They had 20 years …”\n— You are not a child, aren’t you? How about the industrial base in the mighty US?\nThere is also the US infrastructure, the improvement of which requires some $4 trillion… “They” (the richest country in the world) had how many years?\nBesides, the main point of the article is in a color graph showing % of votes /% of all registered voters.\nLook again at the graph, carefully. What are the numbers for Mr. Guaido? Have not we seen enough of “democracy on the march” and other US-led “improvements” and “humanitarian interventions” in Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine?\nDid they pick Guaido just ecause he looks Obamoid ?\nHudson says that he cannot think of anything Maduro can do that he is not already doing.\nPaul Craig Roberts says that Hudson (University of Missouri-Kansas City) is the best economist in the world.\nWikipedia says that Hudson calls himself a Marxist economist. He used to teach at the New School.\nLet’s get real. According to the Fraser Institute index, on a scale where ‘0″ is pure, hard-core socialism (think North Korea) and 10 is pure capitalism (Hong Kong is close to ‘9’ and Chile is close to ‘8’), Venezuela is 2.88, a lower figure than China had in 1980, when its average living standards were comparable to those in Nigeria, Kenya, and Mozambique.\nUS policymakers may well be nefarious, but Venezuela would not be in crisis if it were governed like Chile.\nThe Saker is correct when he admits that he himself knows next to nothing about economics, but The Saker is nevertheless a great read when it comes to Russia, Israel, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Thanks to Ron Unz for making his writings accessible to a broader audience.\n• Replies: @EliteCommInc.\nI hear this a lot and for all I know it might be entirely true. However, I *never* see anyone reference any proof that the Rothschild family actually controls the IMF or World Bank. Circumstantially, it makes sense. The official history is that the IMF took over the roll of lender of last resort to nations from the Rothschilds sometime I believe after WWII. Being a lender of last resort implies huge amounts of power over nations via influencing their internal political system and economic development. Why would the Rothschild family give up that level of power voluntarily to a democratic body if they weren’t forced to? So, it’s entirely possible that they control the IMF and/or World Bank through some back-channel means.\nStill, I’ve never seen this documented anywhere. Am I missing some crucial book or historical account that convincingly establishes that the Rothschilds (or some other private set of families, Schiffs, Warburgs, Goldman, Sachs, etc.) control the international banking system?\nI feel strongly that the IMF/World Bank, like The Fed, are indeed controlled by private interests. I would appreciate someone pointing me to something that demonstrates the “who” and “how” of this theory though.\nVidi says:\n“America’s energy security just got a lot more secure …. Located in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation, the unproven, technically recoverable reserves are officially the largest on the planet.”\nNone of these breathlessly optimistic articles say how expensive it will be to get this oil. If a dollar’s worth of oil costs you more than a dollar to recover, you are obviously losing in the deal. If you print the dollars, your entire economy loses.\nCyrano says:\nYou’d think that US and Venezuela have lot in common and that they should build their relationship based on some similar bad experiences that they have suffered in the last few years.\nAfter all, both countries had their presidents installed by an unfriendly foreign power – in the case of US – that was Russia and in the case of Venezuela – that’s US that did them the favor of choosing the proper president for them.\nIt’s common knowledge now that without the Russian interference in the US electoral system – which as we all know works like a clockwork (orange), Trump would have never been elected as president of US – because that’s not who they are.\nAnd now the US – embittered by that experience -has decided to do the same thing to Venezuela. I see bad Russian influence everywhere. I think that indirectly – Russia is responsible for the crisis in Venezuela. If they hadn’t elected Trump for president in US, it would have never occurred to the Americans that it could be done. That’s not how democracies work.\n• LOL: apollonian\n• Replies: @m___\nA magical country of Canada, where banderites unite with zionists: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/06/bloody-canada-cheerleading-the-lima-groups-plot-to-overthrow-the-government-of-venezuela/ “Bloody Canada: Cheerleading the Lima Group’s Plot to Overthrow the Government of Venezuela”\nGuaido’s party Voluntad Popular (VP), is the most violent and right wing opposition party in Venezuela. One of its leaders, Maria Corina Machado was interviewed on the public Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) on Feb. 1. She has openly, repeatedly, shamelessly and in front of numerous TV and radio cameras, urged mobs to violence and she has most recently publicly threatened the life of President Maduro. She has also been invited to speak with Ottawa politicians.\nGuaidó and his party carried out the terrible street violence of 2014, which they named “La Salida” (The Exit). It resulted in 114 innocent people being killed. Several young men were burned alive suspected of being “Chavistas”. This was the worst street violence ever seen on the streets of Venezuela. The leader of the party, Leopoldo López was jailed, after a long and fair trial with the best lawyers money can buy, sentenced for his responsibility for unleashing this terror and the ensuing 114 deaths.\nGuaidó, a son of Spanish immigrants, is a useful idiot, a thug who will be thrown into the trashcan of history for his treason. He does not command any type of institution, not one policeman, not one ministry, no official agency of any sort. He is a president in his own mind and that of the USA Embassy where he is holed out.\nAnd who is the ideological leader of Canada? — Certain Chrystia Freeland, a proud progeny of a famous Nazi-collaborator Chernyak and an active banderite herself (and, unsurprisingly, a darling of Jewish Community of Canada and Israel: https://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/chrystia-freeland-discusses-her-trip-to-israel-during-speech-at-toronto-shul).\nExxon Mobil wants the oil. The international banks want the gold. Colombia wants to control or possess the eastern oil rich area next to its border. Brazil wants carte blanche for its big energy corporation. Guyana wants the Esequivo region on the eastern border handed to them – that is, to Exxon Mobil, and Paraguay wants the huge debt it owes to Venezuela to quietly disappear. And it is not a wild guess to think that Canada obtained its recent Free Trade deal with Trump as a quid-pro-quo: lead the charge against Venezuela and you get your deal. And the oil producers in Canada (mostly USA owned) will shed no tears over the destruction of Venezuelan crude production. Make no mistake about it, these are the modern carpetbaggers.\n• Agree: Robjil\nSuppose everything you say is spot on accurate. I am unclear why I need to support meddling in their affairs.\nI suspect we have plenty of corruption, malfeasance, infair practices right here at home.\nIn 2015, 52% of international payments used the US dollar (link).\nIn 2017, 40% of international payments used the US d0llar (link). Just two years later.\n(Those links are to SWIFT, the system used for international payments; if anyone should know, it’s these people.)\nIn other words, countries are using the US dollar less and less, and the need for dollars grows less and less, quite rapidly.\nI can certainly support a case against intervention without embracing Dr. Hudson’s advocacy for socialist and marxian correction — or rather national economic and social overhaul.\n@Reuben Kaspate\nAmericans BS themselves by thinking they are basically nice people. Obviously, they’ve not read their own history.\nI’m not familiar with Michael Hudson, but from his answers he is clearly inept as an economist.\nMichael Hudson: I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing.\nSo, it wouldn’t help for Maduro to eliminate the preposterous centrally-dictated price controls that preclude all profit making enterprise?\nIt wouldn’t help to end hyperinflation by not paying government bills with printed money?\nIt wouldn’t help to privatize the crony-run government oil industry that can’t even manage to pump free oil out of the ground?\nIf Hudson can’t look at the single worst-run economy in the world and come up with at least one positive recommendation for change, he is pretty useless indeed.\nJ. Gutierrez says:\nThe US has been working to get to the point of invading Venezuela for a while now. They just needed to wait for 2 things to fall into place. The election of Duque in Colombia and Bolsanado in Brazil. Now that they have these two ultraright wing leaders to provide the brunt of the invasion force, they can begin to execute their plan. There’s a youtuber in Florida that has been on top of this plan for a while now, informing his followers. Here’s a link to his Florida Maquis site:\n10 steps to understand what really happened in Venezuela\nI’ll attach a couple more links about Chavez talking about the Jews and the Assasination of Chavez.\nShocking! Netanyahu\nThe Assasination of Hugo Chavez\nBlackstone Intelligence has an interesting video that focuses on articles from The Economists. I will also attach:\nHow NeoCons are helping the Bankers take over Venezuela\nThere are also three or four books written by Anna Lilia Perez with regard to the sacking of PEMEX by the previous 4 presidents. She names Blackrock, the Carlyle Group and numerous Banks in the conspiracy. 60% of Mexican oil was being loaded on Tankers and sold in the Black Market. Google her name and you can get a list of her books. There is so much information in her books, information she had to fight in court to get copies. She had to move to Germany because of threats she received.\nToday the new president shut down 26 of the 56 shell companies created under another shell company of PEMEX, PEMEX International. The government is having a hard time investigating these company’s books because they claim to be private companies. They found a refinery in Texas that they didn’t even know existed, that is half owned by Royal Dutch Shell. 200 million dollars a year in buisness and none of it is shown on PEMEX’s books.\nNew York Times Article:\nMexico could press bribery charges, it just hasn’t\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/world/americas/mexico-odebrecht-investigation.html\nAnonymous [AKA \"McBride\"] says:\nPutin does not need to win, only impose more pain on the US than he himself suffers. If Maduro stays in power, that is a big win for Russia and further proves their ability to stand up the US of A. Venezuela would prove Syria was not just luck but the start of a changing tide. If Guaido eventually takes power, it will have costed the US much more now that Russia is there. A couple old planes and 400 Russian special forces means that the US needed to put 5000 troops in Colombia. When you stand up to a bully, you don’t need to win, but to prove it’s not worth going after you in the future.\n46 billion barrels of oil sounds a lot but isn’t so much when considered that the US is currently extracting about 13 million and burning about 20 million barrels a day.\nBesides this I second Vidi. It is an assessment. Even when made in good faith it can be far off the mark for bad or worse. If made to reinforce the fracking hype/bubble it is likely higher than the real reserves.\nLiberty Mike says:\nThat there have been the likes of Lincoln, Sherman, McKinley, Roosevelt the Elder, Wilson, Rhodes, Churchill, Roosevelt the Younger, Eisenhower, Dulles, Casey, Abrams, Bush the Senator, Poppy Bush, and Junior Bush, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Kristol the Elder, Kristol the Younger, Lodge, Moynihan, Javits, Perles, Wolfowitz, Feith, Krauthammer, Frum, Kagan, Libby, Kissinger, Ford, Reagan, Carter, Turner, Hoover, Colby, Podhoretz the Elder, Podhoretz the Younger, Pipes, Boot, Ashcroft, Carter, Vance, Mika’s dad, Tower, Simpson, Percy, Cranston, Glenn, Rubio, Proxmire, Graham of Florida, Graham the sissy of South Carolina and his top, the “war hero” McCain, Metzenbaum, Humphrey, Mondale, Schwartzkopf, Wilson, DeConcini, Weicher, Ribicoff, Levin, Specter, Kohl, Lieberman, Feinstein, Schumer, Comey, Mueller, Clinton the chubby chaser and his bridezilla, Albright, Kerry, Cohen, Blumenthal, Dole, Sessions, and all of the crony-capitalists of the last 150 years,\nDOES NOT THEREBY MEAN THAT THERE ARE NOT ROTTEN, MURDEROUS SOCIALISTS AND COMMUNITSTS ELSEWHERE.\n, @Rurik\njoe webb says:\nWhat is the sound of two True Believers in the great sentimental lie, Racial Equality, clucking.\nThis article . It is the Colossus of the North….and those damned anglo-zionists exploiting the poor folks, especially if they are coloreds.\nJoe Webb\n@Cyrano\nAppreciating the humor, BMI of the actors, and the elegance of the choir.\nDespite not being a child I don’t know whats wrong with being a child, as long as the child is well mannered and doesn’t resort to name calling when addressing people with different views.\nNowhere did I blame the Chavistas for not building a first world infrastructure within 20 years. I blamed them for worsening the situation in Venezuela which they, I have visited Venezuela and have contacts there, did. And they did that despite having the blessing of high oil prices and the USA being busy in the “war on terror” for much of the start of this century.\nTaking down such a topic to a graph seems pretty superficially to me. But even if you believe the Venezuelan elections of 2018 weren’t rigged, even by the official numbers the opposition won the parliament elections in 2015 but Maduro simply chose to ignore the parliament.\nFurthermore I never advocated an american intervention in Venezuela. I also oppose foreign interventions in Iraq, Libya or Ukraine, be them American or Russian.\ntac says:\nVenezuela has claimed to have unveiled a mass conspiracy involving military personnel and politicians trying to unseat the country’s government by force, as well as plans of potential U.S. military action.\nVenezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez has alleged that Julio Borges, an opposition politician and former head of the National Assembly, was behind both a failed 2014 coup and an assassination attempt last August against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The information was allegedly gathered by confessions from recently-arrested Colonel Oswaldo García, who was behind another unsuccessful conspiracy to unseat Maduro last year and was seen confessing on video during Thursday’s conference.\nhttps://www.newsweek.com/venezuela-plot-kill-president-us-action-1322816\nThe (un)constitutionality of Juan Guaido’s claim to power\nLabour Party Rejects EU’s Recognition of Guaido, Meddling in Venezuela’s Affairs\nThe Paraguaná Refinery Complex is a crude oil refinery complex in Venezuela. It is considered the world’s third largest refinery complex …\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguan%C3%A1_Refinery_Complex\nThere might be quality problems, or maybe this article is propaganda.\nVenezuela’s deteriorating oil quality riles major refiners\nhttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-insight/venezuelas-deteriorating-oil-quality-riles-major-refiners-idUSKBN1CN2EO\nWe just got done conquering Iraq. We haven’t stayed to loot the oil.\nThe US has NOT successfully conquered Iraq (has not pacified the country). Oil is not like a bag of diamonds, which you can grab and run. In order to steal a worthwhile amount of the greasy stuff, you have to make a substantial investment up front, in wells and shipping terminals. Not even the greediest thief will risk his money if there is even the slightest chance that his wells and terminals will be blown up by righteous nationalists. This is why the US hasn’t stolen much from Iraq.\nSo now you believe we’re going to Venezuela to take their crappy heavy oil?\nThat the US hasn’t been able to steal much from Iraq tells us little about whether the Americans have larcenous motives with regard to Venezuela. Especially as Trump has been talking loudly about the oil.\nIt would be easier for us just to build a pipeline to Alberta and import all their cheap, shut-in heavy crude.\nNever underestimate the greed.\n, @Johnny Rico\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html\nThe Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.\nBut one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.\nAmerican officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration’s willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a presiden\nBeyond the coup plot, Mr. Maduro’s government has already fended off several small-scale attacks, including salvos from a helicopter last year and exploding drones as he gave a speech in August. The attacks have added to the sense that the president is vulnerable.\nVenezuelan military officials sought direct access to the American government during Barack Obama’s presidency, only to be rebuffed, officials said.\nThen in August of last year, President Trump declared that the United States had a “military option” for Venezuela\nIn a series of covert meetings abroad, which began last fall and continued this year, the military officers told the American government that they represented a few hundred members of the armed forces who had soured on Mr. Maduro’s authoritarianism.\nThe officers asked the United States to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government to run the country until elections could be held.\nAmerican officials did not provide material support, and the plans unraveled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters.\nThey later planned to take power in March, the former officer said, but that plan leaked.\nIt is unclear how many of these details the coup planners shared with the Americans. But there is no indication that Mr. Maduro knew the mutinous officers were talking to the Americans at all.\nFor any of the plots to have worked, the former commander said, he and his comrades believed they needed to detain Mr. Maduro and other top government figures simultaneously. To do that, he added, the rebel officers needed a way to communicate securely. They made their request during their second meeting with the American diplomat, which took place last year.\nthe Venezuelan plotters could view the meetings as tacit approval of their plans, argued Peter Kornbluh, a historian at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.\nAnyone with a brain always knew that Maduro is more legitimate than Trump, May, Sanchez, or Macron. Now we have the numbers confirming that. Anyone with a brain knew that the Guaido personage is no more than the puppet of the Empire, a nonentity with zero legitimacy.\nBut key point is, the US actions against Venezuela are not about legitimacy, they are about oil and money. A robber takes your valuables not because you are not legitimate enough, but because he is a robber. That’s the whole point, the rest is hot air.\n• Replies: @yurivku\n@mike k\nI try to separate the effects of US aggression from that effects of the Venezuelan governments own failures.\nI agree with what another commentator pointed out. US influence in Latin America is often overestimated. In my opinion by both the “left” who see it as cause of most problems and the “right” who tend to see it positive.\nCertain groups in Latin America tend to ally with the US. But they do this so they can easier to pursue their own interests. For example imho Pinochet would have successfully overthrown Allende in Chile even without US support. Latin Americans aren’t mindless puppets that are controlled and played from Washington. Moscow or Beijing.\nLet us not forget the following about Hugo Chavez:\n1. He grew up idolizing Castro and Mao.\n2. Almost all of his adult life was spent in the public sector playing the parasite.\n3. He never made, produced, or traded upon a voluntary, consensual basis.\n4. He attempted seize power in 1992 by violence resulting in the deaths of scores of civilians. Note that he resorted to thuggish, violent means, like all socialists, to achieve his ends.\n5. While visiting the Chi-coms, he admitted that he had been a Maoist all his life.\n6. He seized small businesses, medium sized businesses, and large businesses. He seized radio stations, tee vee stations, banks, trucking companies, sugar plantations, sugar processing plants, cement companies, construction companies, and oil service companies to name a few.\n7. Caracas became the murder capital of the world under him. Sure, some of this is to be attributed to the lesser moral and spiritual stock of black and brown people, but much of it was attributable to Chavez and his gangster state.\nSowhat says:\nWhy does it continue to work?\nWhat could Americans do to stop the madness?\n@EliteCommInc.\nI don’t advocate and American (supposed you are American or British) intervention in Venezuela. I merely wanted to point out that this article/interview one sided and and therefore not better that the bullshit the Murdoch media and their likes are probably spreading lately.\nA key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector. There is the grave possibility that some 70 percent of the country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010. Water levels at the Guris dam are dropping, and Chavez has been unable to reduce consumption sufficiently to compensate for the deteriorating industry. This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system. This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs. Alliances with the military could be critical because in such a situation of massive public unrest and rejection of the presidency, malcontent sectors of the military will likely decide to intervene, but only if they believe they have sufficient support. This has been the pattern in the past three coup attempts. Where the military thought it had enough support, there was a failure in the public to respond positively (or the public responded in the negative), so the coup failed.—\nThe GiFiles,\nFiles released: 5543061\nThe GiFiles\nSpecified Search\nhttps://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=218642\nFor example imho Pinochet would have successfully overthrown Allende in Chile even without US support”\nThis is called softening of arguments and doubt and making room for possible exoneration of US.\nTomorrow we will hear that Haiti’s Aristides would have been forced by Haitian to board plane and leave\nTomorrow we will know that Honduran president would have been anyways sent to the pasture of retirement by some military without Clinton’s ( Mrs this time ).\n1 “Soldiers eat out of garbage cans & their families go hungry in Venezuela while Maduro & friends live like kings & block humanitarian aid,” Mr. Rubio wrote. He then added: “The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator.”\nIn a speech in April, when he was still White House policy chief for Latin America, Mr. Cruz issued a message to the Venezuelan military. Referring to Mr. Maduro as a “madman,” Mr. Cruz said all Venezuelans should “urge the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions. Honor your oath.”\nRoberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico who preceded Ms. Aponte as the top State Department official for Latin America policy, said that while Washington has long regarded the Venezuelan military as “widely corrupt, deeply involved in narcotics trafficking and very unsavory,” she saw merit in establishing a back channel with some of them\n4. Mr. Tillerson raised the potential for a military coup.\n“When things are so bad that the military leadership realizes that it just can’t serve the citizens anymore, they will manage a peaceful transition,” he said.\nwhat more do you to see or hear or read before you believe that US had been hyper -focused and heavily engaged and entirely illegally to destroy Valenzuela independence form crony capitalism?\nYou remind me to see if I can find time to read the book of essays or lectures which recently followed up Keynes’s 1930/31 “Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren”. I think he clearly overestimated the likelihood of the average human devising and enjoying a modern equivalent of our luckier Paleo ancestors’ 15 hours a week to feed themselves and the rest fun and music, dance, painting and sculpture. Advertisers’ creating wants was only just beginning when he wrote and the ruling classes weren’t so ruthlessly selfish as they now appear to be. But increased life expectancy is another factor. And I have seen it suggested that Keynes wasn’t wrong about the extra leisure, merely about its distribution over a lifetime. I don’t suppose he factored in the pressure to keep education going to the late 20s and, in every case, beyond the age of 14….\nAs to you PS… What do you say about “that’s a typical Labour/Conservative/Liberal policy” or “I prefer Georgian to Victorian furniture”?\n@Liberty Mike\nAnd yet that’s Venezuelan choice or problems none of the shinning light upon the hill,but I forget the empire is in decline and some say the decline is much faster than they had thought,and look at it this way how many can say that they saw an empire fade away before their eyes.,Indeed what a blessed day that will be.!!!\n• Agree: Sowhat\n@J. Gutierrez\ngood stuff. thanks\n• Replies: @J. Gutierrez\nI don’t subscribe the socialist agenda, but I am mindful of the critique that the US is exacerbating an issue that is the internal business of Venezuelans. I support this executive, I support the US. I support our military and intelligence community.\nHowever, I am loathe to stay silent about another needless intervention, that violates the sovereignty of another state, that poses no threat to the US or in violation of some humanitarian wrong being perpetrated — and in that the magnitude of which isn’t a mist drop case for forceful intervention in Venezuela.\nAs to your list . . .\nNonsense. This mish-mash of leaders who engaged a multitude of dynamics is a mighty threadbare case for the very same reasons.\n• Troll: Rurik\nTruly, you are a giant among pygmies.\nIt was in The NY Times, so it must be true\nExactly. Thanks\n@bluedog\nYou have a peculiar notion of “blessed” the departure of the US depending on how abrupt and in what manner will earthquake the planet by several magnitude 9pts plus and it will do so multiple times.\nAnyone hoping for the demise of the US doesn’t comprehend the scale or the dimension of US influence.\n@Vidi\nWe just got done occupying Iraq for years at great expense. We could’ve easily taken the oil if we were so inclined, especially since a lot of it is in Kurdistan where we have allies who would’ve welcomed our protection.\nMeanwhile Iraq has pipelines, terminals at Basra etc we could have refurbished and operated.\nYou’re comically ignorant about the oil business.\nBut now give us your insights into Venezuela please.\n, @Biff\nWell said. I’m no fan of our foreign wars or Elliot Abrams. Average Joe Sixpack guys like me have no interest in Venezuela. I haven’t been there in years, or at least since the preChavez days. My friends down there all left. Sad.\nI hope we stay out of it. Even our Deep State can’t be stupid enough to get involved.\nHibernian says:\nEvery language has its peculiar rules. Condemning them is worthy only of a junior high school kid.\nJohnny Rico says:\nIraq currently produces on a daily sustained basis at least 50 percent more oil than it ever did prior to 2003. Fact.\nThat oil flows to American allies and China to maintain their economies under the protection of the U.S.Navy.\nThe U.S. doesn’t need to steal anything.\nSeekerofthePresence says:\n‘Murican Exceptionalist,\n“Democracy means never having to say you’re sorry.”\nSo US soldiers or mercenaries aren’t dying in Iraq anymore. Wait, they are still being killed? Securing the wells, pipelines, and shipping terminals needed to steal a substantial amount of oil will be done “easily”?\nAnd they would be blown up, continuously, and the U.S. would have to keep refurbishing them, continuously, to the point that the oil would not be profitable. This is why the US hasn’t been able to steal much from Iraq.\nSomething similar will probably happen in Venezuela, but that prospect doesn’t stop Trump from talking very loudly about taking the country’s oil.\nInsults are the tactics of losers.\nIt’s not always about taking oil – often it is about controlling the spigot, and keeping it out of the hands of other economies and their military.\nIndeed. In Russell’s 1932 essay In Praise of Idleness (link), he demonstrates this quite convincingly:\nModern technic has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor necessary to produce the necessaries of life for every one. This was made obvious during the War. At that time all the men in the armed forces, all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or government offices connected with the War were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of physical well-being among wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since.\nRI says:\nThen, why don’t you stop messing everywhere?\nNeocons do their rain dance with maracas.\nCan’t wait to make a carcass of Caracas.\nWhat ignorance displayed in such an assertion!!!\nI’ve posted on this very topic here before so I will not rehash except to provide you with search material so that you can research and learn or (if you are a troll) try a better argument than your fallacious one. The US NEVER needed Iraqi oil …. then why did they risk American soldiers’ lives to do so and invade Iraq? The answer: The elephant in the room=Israel!!!\nU.S. oil expert Gary Vogler discusses the plan for Israel to get Iraqi oil\nOil insider Gary Vogler writes of the Iraq war: “The oil agenda I discovered and experienced was to supply Iraq oil to Israel.” The players were the neocons in the Bush Administration… Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Lewis Libby, Marc Zell, and others\nhttps://israelpalestinenews.org/oil-for-israel-the-truth-about-the-iraq-war-15-years-later/\n• Replies: @Johnny Rico\n@tac\n• Replies: @tac\nPerhaps the [s]election of Trump will hasten what has been in works as a result of US’ foreign policy heretofore–induced by Israel and its fifth column, at the very least least since 9/11: a realization of US hegemony, arrogance and disdain for its own (populace) representative interests.\nThe need to get out from this imperious foreign policy disaster has had the side-effect of precipitous collaboration amongst some of unlikely bedfellows, as a result of the inescapable recognition of this pronounced and inevitable fate–sooner-than-later–to form alliances (even against their respective natural distrust in the face to this ever belligerent Goliath).\nThe growing multi-polar world is one that will, in the end, be the the best countermeasure to the runaway narcissism of [exceptional–as it believes itself to be ever more so arrogantly] the dominant empires of the world. For a mistake by an empire–any empire henceforth–has a real potential to extinguish life as we know it heretofore. Think of it as the ‘Oded Yinon’ plan for the Earth: the balkanization of [potential] world empires: the US a prima facie evidence thereof!\nNot sure why the video I posted in conjunction with my reply did not post. Here it is again:\n@Johnny Rico\nConvincing argument! TROLL alert…\n“But even if you believe the Venezuelan elections of 2018 weren’t rigged…”\n— Tell us, Matthias Eckert, what Venezuelan elections have been won by certain Mr. Guaido? What exactly makes this miserable puppet into a legitimate contestant to Maduro? http://thesaker.is/venezuela-the-straw-that-breaks-the-empires-back/\nthe NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the extended arm of the CIA, has for the last two decades trained funded and infiltrated ‘traitor’ agents into Venezuela, with the goal to assist the opposition to foment unrest, to carry out assassinations and other ‘false flags’, and to simply create chaos and unrest. However, some of these agents are also lodged in Venezuela’s financial institutions, as the Fifth Column, where they sabotage – often with threats – any economic policies that could rescue Venezuela from its economic predicament.\nBoth Chavez and Maduro had very little leeway of doing differently what they have already done. Sanctions, boycotts, outside money manipulations, driving inflation to astronomical levels and constant smear propaganda, these predicaments are biting hard. The US has a firm grip on Venezuela’s dollar dependency.\nLast week, Washington confiscated about US$ 23 billion Venezuela’s reserve money in US banks, blocked them from use by the legitimate Maduro government, and, instead, handed them to their US-appointed, puppet, never elected, “president”, Juan Guaidó. – He is now able to use Venezuela’s money in his US-EU-and Lima-Group supported “shadow” government. Will he dare?\nHow come that the most corrupt, amoral, and hypocritical profiteers of all stripes have been making “righteous” noises about “very bad” Maduro while supporting the agnus dei Guaido? The puppet has zero political capital in Venezuela but enjoys the well-established connections to the CIA and State Dept. http://thesaker.is/venezuela-the-straw-that-breaks-the-empires-back/\nIt seems that you are perfectly content with the US choice of the pliable and ambitious idiot that has never won Venezuelan elections and thus is protected from the accusations in “rigged elections.”\nand they are Russian Agents\nNixon got us off the gold standard.\nThe economists that recommended that were James Tobin and Milton Friedman.\nThe old Breton Woods system and the gold standard worked very well.\nThis is crude oil under the gold standard.\nBecause all communism is war against the bourgeoisie.\nThe bourgeoisie is the middle class.\nI hope someone can explain this to me.\nVenezuela’s oil “industry” was built entirely by US companies. They did not do so as a matter of charity. They did so to turn a profit. The Venezuelans were more than welcome to turn down any of the development if they felt the deal was not in their best interest. They chose not to do so and instead went ahead and took the hard bargain.\nNow, once all of the investment was made and production is up and running, a Chavista comes along and promises to change the deal by seizing all of these American assets so the Venezuelan people could get Free Stuff. The response was an attack by the US government for this blatant theft of US property.\nWhy does Michael Hudson see the US response as so unconscionable? If Chavez has a beef with the local oligarchs and he wanted them removed for the abuses against the Venezuelan people, then more power to them. Why not leave the American oil assets alone continue with the deal that existed before and simply redirect that wealth to benefit more Venezuelans?\nHad he left the oil companies alone none of Venezuela’s problems would now exist.\nInstead, there was this blatant attack on American oil assets. Why? And why should Chavez be rewarded for doing so with American credit access and market access and hold access? Every tin pot dictator should just be allowed to seize American assets? What if Chavez took American technicians and engineers hostage to keep the equipment going? Would that change Hudson’s opinion?\nVenezuela always has the simplest solution to this problem: develop petroleum engineering resources locally. Have your people become experts in this area and you will never be dependent on foreigners. Instead, these idiots want to blend comparative advantage theories with a Bolivarian revolution.\nThe world is awash in oil. All the oil ever drilled since it’s discovery would fill Lake Mead. The United States is the only country where property rights confer mineral rights, dobthere were huge incentives to develop drilling and mining technologies.\n, @cassandra\nThe US cannot steal the oil. Exxon is limited to 25% of the West Qurna oilfield, or 25% of the field’s current production of about 400,000 barrels per day, or 100,000 barrels per day, or about 2% of Iraq’s current production.\nThis isn’t nearly enough for Trump. Which is why he said (early last year, before he fired Rex Tillerson, former Exxon CEO, now former Secretary of State) that the U.S. “should have kept the oil, but, OK, maybe we’ll have another chance” (link).\nYes, Trump was clearly thinking of Iraq’s oil. Now the grifter wants to steal Venezuela’s oil.\nRussia and China also loaned Venezuela a lot of money during the Maduro dictatorship.\nGood luck collecting after his fat butt is locked up Gitmo.\n• Replies: @Curmudgeon\nThis handsome young politician of mostly Jewish ancestry (but practicing Christian) may end up the winner of the country’s free elections:\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrique_Capriles\nyurivku says:\n@AnonFromTN\nPlease see #62\n@Mike G\nas anybody else\nLike I mentioned before, the Venezuelan parliamentary elections in 2015 were won by the opposition, with Guaido winning a seat in that election. Strangely I never came across those CIA trained traitors in Venezuela, neither did any of the Venezuelans I know. Except you consider everyone opposed to the Chavistas a traitor. BTW isn’t it the task of a government to protect its nation from foreign trained and infiltrated traitors? Isn’t a government that in 20 years wasn’t able to clear the countries financial institutions from foreign agents, incompetent and not worth leading a nation. So thanks for making my point.\nBut I don’t expect you to really care about this. Given that after I criticize an article as biased and one sided you link, to support that articles views, to the page of the of the very same author. Who seems to be a Russian nationalist pretending he knows and cares what is best for people from Syria to Ukraine to Latin America. And luckily there is Mother Russia ready to defend these people and their interests. Basically The Saker seems no different than the myriad neocon propagandists, just working for another side.\nJust one more question. With all these Russian superweapons The Saker likes to write about. How come Israel and the USA can attack targets in Syria with impunity? When will the superior Russian missiles go into action sweeping the imperialist planes from the sky?\nI agree but think Putin would prefer a US attack on Iran. That would likely be costlier for the US than an attack on Venezuela. Will weaken Iran which really is competing for influence in Syria with Russia and will send oil and natural gas prices up a lot more than an attack on Venezuela will. With Russia as a net exporter profiting from higher prices.\n@Sowhat\nYour welcome…I live in Mexico and this shit feels to close for comfort. There is a lot o stuff people in the US don’t know. The majority of the information is in Spanish, I might have to break down and translate and share. I appreciate you looking at it.\n…and all of the crony-capitalists of the last 150 years,\nNice list Mike.\nSure, but there was a time when the people knew what to do about treasonous scum.\nWhat is wrong with two thirds of the British people?\nhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tony-blair-war-criminal-iraq-trial-convicted-yougov-british-people-uk-prme-minister-wmds-dossier-a7870341.html\nare they daft? Corrupt? Terrorized? Murderous?\nWhat explains their willingness to tolerate a known and obvious war criminal, whose jet setting around the world is mocking the English people as fools or worse.\nWe know the rats at the Hague are zio-stooges and corrupt to the bone, but what about the British people?\nThis is not off topic, because again we are witness to the machinations of the Fiend vs. Venezuela and Maduro and all people of good will on the earth.\nEliot Abrams is all the proof anyone needs for understanding who are the good guys (Maduro, Putin, etc..) and who are the minions of the Beast (Trump, May, Trudeau, etc..)\nhttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-07/wikileaks-reveals-us-military-use-imf-world-bank-unconventional-weapons ” US Military Use Of IMF, World Bank As “Unconventional” Weapons”\nThe document, officially titled “Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” and originally written in September 2008, was recently highlighted by WikiLeaks …\n…the World Bank and the IMF are listed as both Financial Instruments and Diplomatic Instruments of U.S. National Power as well as integral parts of what the manual calls the “current global governance system.”\nFurthermore, the manual states that the U.S. military “understand[s] that properly integrated manipulation of economic power can and should be a component of UW,” meaning that these weapons are a regular feature of unconventional warfare campaigns waged by the United States. …\nIn addition to choosing its president, the U.S. is also the bank’s largest shareholder, making it the only member nation to have veto rights. Indeed, as the leaked unconventional warfare manual notes, “As major decisions require an 85% supermajority, the United States can block any major changes” to World Bank policy or the services it offers. Furthermore, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs banker and “foreclosure king,” Steve Mnuchin, functions as the World Bank’s governor.\n… the U.S.-backed “interim president” Juan Guaidó – has already requested IMF funds, and thus IMF-controlled debt, to fund his parallel government.\n@map\nMoron!\nThere is not much technology in drilling technology.\nThere is technology in refining technology.\nAnd US did not build any refining complexes in Venezuela.\nSo please do not speak crap.\nExactly. How that in 20 years the Chavistas have not build a single refinery ?\n12Matthias Eckert says:\nChavistas can loot But the loot will remain in country and be used inside the country unless US allows and plans with it to loot and deposit in US. I doubt Chavsitas will be looting . In that scenario, US wouldn’t need a coup It already has one . It just needs the money to be deposited which Chavsita would do within a heartbeat because internal Venezuelan safe in the basement is not safe at all.\nNow come back to Panama paper – its where 3rd world countries legalize the loot The loot goes to US UK or Swiss . Pak Pres Nawaz kept billions . Indian corporate looted and stashed billion there. Why does the so called western democrat egalitarian honest just countries dos allows these and profit from it? Will Swiss economy survive oneway without the looted goods? Did Cuba did Chavsta ever use them anyway?\nVenezuela. I haven’t been there in years\nWhen I was there many years ago, our guide had an American flag in the window. I asked him why, and he said because of 9/11, and the sympathy the Venezuelan people had for Americans following such a tragic and horrible crime.\nThe irony is that as we drove around the outskirts of Caracas, there were huge boulders resting on crushed cars and houses, and other houses barely visible from the mud that had inundated them.\nOmar, our guide, explained to us that there was a recent mudslide that had killed 20 to 30 thousand people. And we in the ZUSA had not even heard a word about it. I guess such an event just isn’t important to the PTB.\nEven our Deep State can’t be stupid enough to get involved.\nI’d like to hope you’re right about this, but when I saw bb say he supports the Juan Guaidó coup, I knew the stooges of the West would follow suit.\nHopefully there will be enough of a protest from the right people to prevent a civil war down there.\nhttps://freebeacon.com/national-security/gabbard-us-should-stay-out-of-venezuela-claims-us-involvement-is-about-the-oil/\n@Ovidiu\nSend Mnukhin and his children to fight for the democracy on the march in Venezuela: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-07/wikileaks-reveals-us-military-use-imf-world-bank-unconventional-weapons\nhttps://www.rt.com/news/450993-maduro-us-open-letter/\n…politicians in Washington are ready to send their country’s “sons and daughters to die in an absurd war…\nAgain, Ovidiu, who has elected the cocky boy Guaido to Venezuelan presidency? — Ziocons?\nSome people are like bosses of Fed Reserve (which is neither federal nor reserve) — they are always ready for “humanitarian” intervention (by using other people’s children as cannon fodder). This cannibalistic plague has already made an epic bloody mess in the Middle East and, by extension, it messed up Europe. The Cheneys and Mnukhins of this world must learn how to live without cannibalizing other countries.\nTime to return to international law.\n@RI\nEveryone and anyone with the mentality that the world will stop with the demise of the empire should read about past empire’s as they came and then ended up in the dustbin of history, and this one will be no different except for those who are so in love with death and destruction that they can’t see that there’s a better way.!!!\nA hearty “Thank You” to the Saker, and to Mr. Hudson for the ‘telling’ interview, and a lusty “Thank You” to The Unz Review for posting. A follow-up comment, if I may, to the closing quote from Mr. Hudson:\n‘Usury’ is the technical expertise of the jew banking cabal; namely, the Fed, IMF, World Bank, Bank of England, Wall Street, City of London, etc., etc., etc. ‘Usury’ has no conscience. ‘Usury’ is soul-less. ‘Usury’ is the heart of the jew mentality. All of the above provocateurs are owned by the jew banking cabal. Coincidence? Not hardly. And please, before any of you begin to screech ‘anti-semitism’, the jew has nothing in common with the Tribe of Judah, one of the twelve descendants of Jacob, of whom the current international jew community has perverted the name of by calling themselves ‘Israel’. The supplanting process of Jacob to Israel is a heart condition; period. The international zion jew is nothing more than a satanic impostor to honesty. Can anyone say ‘Palestine’? (Actually, ‘Philistia’) And ‘semitism’ doesn’t mean what the international jew has told you it means. ‘Tis time to awaken, Sleepers, and don your righteous identities.\n• Agree: Ilyana_Rozumova, Mefobills\nPatricus says:\nWhenever a sordid socialistic regime rises then collapses they are sure to receive suport by the enlightened Russians, Cubans, Chinese, Nicaraguans, North Koreans, etc., etc. America and the West are flawed nations without a doubt but the totalitarians are repulsive.\nThe best thing that could happen to Ven. is that we invade it bloodlessly, mess it up more and inject $3Trillion into it the way we did in Afghanistan. Sheesh!\nYou didn’t inject 3 Trillion into Afghanistan. You injected 3 Trillion into your military-industrial complex.\n• LOL: Mike P\nThat “LOL” doesn’t mean disagreement – I very much agree, your pithy response just made me laugh.\nHow does it improve the living of the Venezuelan people when Chavistas use the looted money to buy foreign luxury goods or use looted real estate for their enjoyment? And what makes you believe Chavistas don’t have bank accounts in Switzerland, Cyprus, Panama or even Britain? Britain had no problem hosting Russian oligarchs (and their money) with close connections to Putin while standing on opposing side to Russia regarding Ukraine, Syria and getting hysterical about a Russian aircraft carrier steaming through the channel.\nDo you think a Russian supremacist and imperialist and judging by his articles The Saker and probably several of his followers here are exactly this, have any problem with Venezuela being looted as long as Mother Russia and not their hated Anglo competitors profit.\nHow come that the Bolivian economy, living standard and infrastructure improved substantially under Morales despite also being targeted by the US in a very similar manner than Venezuela. For me the conclusion is that the Chavistas have failed the Venezuelan people.\nOf course much of what the US and its media spreads is exaggerated, if Venezuelan soldiers and their families would be starving and 90% of them opposed to Maduro he would have been overthrown by now. But I know people in Venezuela, some critical of Chavez from the start some followers. All agree that the live has been getting harder for many years. The electrical grid and the whole infrastructure has been neglected for at least a decade.\n• Troll: L.K\nnothing like ignoring the specifics of what i noted.\nWhich indicated in what manner and how abruptly that would have would determine the level of impact.\nNo kidding the world will go on. No doubt and no argument, just as the world goes on despite hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes.\nThat is not the point, the point is that there will be\nhurricanes, tsunamis, floods, tornadoes and earthquakes . . . the question is only to severity.\nAntiwar7 says:\n@denk\nAgha Hussain says:\nWonderful, Hudson is, like so many others, till this date, unaware that the Iraq War had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE US GOING AFTER OIL. It was a war started by neocons. Wolfowitz, Perle, Frum, Feith, Wurmser, Luti, the same guys who wrote out this strategy in a 1996 policy paper for Benjamin Netanyahu (these are Jewish Zionists, they care about Israel and not oil for the US) basically occupied the Pentagon while you had their neocon compadres Scooter Libby in the White House (former lawyer for MOSSAD agent and Jewish billionaire Marc Rich) and John Bolton in the State Department too, among others.\nThe Office of Special Plans producing the BS about Iraqi WMDs, the usage of Judith Miller and other media partners to leak the identity of the CIA officer whose husband was scouting around in Niger to investigate Bush’s SOTU claim that Saddam ‘purchased yellowcake uranium from Africa’, literally all of the stuff that was pulled to bring about the Iraq war came from an Israeli Fifth Column. No special oil interests. Saying ‘Cheney! Cheney!’ is just the kosher way of trying to hide the Likud-specific nature of the push to remove Saddam.\nWhich by the way had its roots far prior to 2001. Tom Lantos, dude who arranged the ‘Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti infants’ hoax in 1990 to bring about the attack on Iraq. Ring a bell? Dude was a Zionist and revealed in the early 2000s Sibel Edmonds testimony to also be a spy for Israel. Something Perle and Feith were involved in too.\nThere WAS an oil aspect to Iraq, but an Israeli one specifically. Please read this, on Alison Weir’s brilliant website: https://israelpalestinenews.org/oil-for-israel-the-truth-about-the-iraq-war-15-years-later/\nThey wanted oil from the Kurds (strategic allies to the Zionists since the 1960s) as well as autonomy for them. They’d go on to stay Israel’s major oil supplier until the fall of Kirkuk to the Iraqi government in late 2017 as well.\n• Agree: Miro23\nHow that in 20 years the Chavistas have not build a single refinery ?\nBecause US companies control all the patents on refining Venezuela’s heavy sour crude, and the US has refused to license any of this? (I don’t know if this is what actually happened, but it’s a possibility. Not everything is Chavez’s fault.)\n@Patricus\n“…a sordid socialistic regime…”\nAre you talking about the communism of Wall Street/City money changers?\nVenezuelan people have elected Maduro, not the ridiculous and treasonous Guaido.\nIf your chosen boy is so good, why did the Venezuelans show no support for him during the legitimate election process? No wonder that the chosen boy Guaido has promptly gone to pledge his allegiance to the zionized international banking cabal.\n” . . . except for those who are so in love with death and destruction that they can’t see that there’s a better way.!!!”\nExcuse the expression – nonsense.\nThe gradual retraction of Rome’s Empire which had over hauled most of the known world did not need to stop the world to register an impact. The geopolitcal landscape shifted dramatically in response to the power vacuum.\nTh mess that is Africa is largely the result of the collapse of the British Empire. The mere loss of the colonies gave rise to the US which despite not having an empire did in 200 years what no nation has ever accomplished — global dominance minus having US colonies. The debate we are having today about what some claim is global dominance and or damage is the direct result of European global empire collapse or withdrawal.\nIraq’s global influence was but a fraction of the US and yet toppling her government is having vast regional and global impacts. I did not make any contention that world will stop by the end of the US, but depending on the speed and magnitude of that collapse, millions would hope that the world stopped and they could get off.\nI make no boast of my mentality, but I am keenly aware that the US is a huge player on the global scene and her loss could shatter the world order.\nHow does it improve the living of the Venezuelan people when Chavistas use the looted money to buy foreign luxury goods or use looted real estate for their enjoyment?\nWhat if the “looted” wealth was stolen in the first place? Is it morally wrong to steal from a thief?\nAnd Chavez was certainly not enjoying the loot: he used it to greatly benefit poor Venezuelans. He was not a wealthy man when he died.\nFor me the conclusion is that the Chavistas have failed the Venezuelan people.\nFor me, the conclusion is that Chavez didn’t have time to overcome the entrenched oligarchs. It takes many years and generations to educate people and build infrastructure, and it takes longer, far far longer, when the country’s oligarchs are fighting your reforms. Even China needed generations, in spite of having defeated its corrupt elites in a civil war. Fortunately, a unified China was too strong for the West to break. Unfortunately, a divided Venezuela was and is too weak.\nYou do have a point, and from all I read they (other countries) are trying to let this empire crash with a whimper rather than a bang,due mostly to the nuts in Washington who think the military is the solution to everything….\nUnfortunately, a divided Venezuela was and is too weak.\nMaduro does have one advantage over Chavez: strong friends in Russia and China.\nGood article…I first saw it here\nHere are a few more:\nVenezuela “Propaganda Blitz” to Justify “Humanitarian Intervention”: “Tyrants Don’t Have Free Elections”\nVenezuela: US Pursuing Humanitarian Aid Path to War\nLOL, indeed Venezuela has one of the best, most secure elections in the Western world.\nHenri Falcón was the opposition politician who finished a very distant second in that election, over four million votes (47%) behind Maduro. Nobody has shown or even attempted to show that any votes, never mind millions of votes, were stolen from Falcón. In Venezuela’s electoral system, a very small amount of ballot stuffing is detectable in any contested election. That’s why, in 2012, Jimmy Carter said the electoral system was the best in the world.\nThat soundness of the electoral system helps to explain the vitriol Falcón received from other Maduro opponents over his decision to run in the election. US officials threatened Falcón with sanctions if he ran. During the campaign, one of Falcón’s top advisors became exasperated enough to publicly ask the opposition party Voluntad Popular (Guaidó’s party) to “stop spreading lies” that a secret pact existed between Maduro and Falcón.\nFirst, votes are secret in Venezuela, so offers of a chance at a prize or other inducements at these puntos rojos can, at best, increase turnout, but not the government’s share of the vote. Second, there were four different groups of observers who monitored the election, and they concluded it was clean. Their reports are here, here, here and here. Third, economic sanctions and threats by the US government were a massive attempt to sway the electorate – to send the message that voting for Maduro will bring intensified economic sanctions (which, in addition to being illegal, were already killing people).\nAnd how did Chavez ‘die’? Some would say with the aid of the CIA…\nThe Strange Death of Hugo Chavez. Was He Assassinated?\nCIA and FBI Had Planned to Assassinate Hugo Chávez\nThe CIA has Attempted to Assassinate 50 Foreign Leaders Including Hugo Chavez\nNo it doesn’t mention costs, but why should it? The cost are already established.\nAfter all, as stated, the US already gets 33% of its oil from that same Permian formation.\nAnd it certainly cannot be anymore expensive than the absurd cost of taxpayer subsidized solar arrays and windmills …. which still result in higher energy bills in spite of those subsidies.\nWho gets to decide the leadership of a sovereign country? The US Empire?!? How many times over the last twenty years has the CIA tried to assassinate Chavez and then Maduro (see the links I’ve provided up thread)? I see you explicitly included the countries Bolton deemed as the so-called ‘Troika-of-tyranny’. Face it, your puppet Guiado has NO leg to stand on:\nA few weeks before on January 5, Guaidó had been selected as president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, their unicameral legislature. He had been elected to the assembly from a coastal district with 26% of the vote. It was his party’s turn for the presidency of the body, and he was hand-picked for the position. Guaidó, even within his own party, was not in the top leadership.\nGuaidó’s party, Popular Will, is a far-right marginal group whose most enthusiastic boosters are John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Mike Pompeo. Popular Will had adopted a strategy of regime change by extra-parliamentary means rather than engage in the democratic electoral process and had not participated in recent Venezuelan elections.\nAlthough anointed by Trump and company, Guaidó’s Popular Will Party is not representative of the “Venezuelan opposition,” which is a fractious bunch whose hatred of Maduro is only matched by their abhorrence of each other. Leading opposition candidate Henri Falcón, who ran against Maduro in 2018 on a neoliberal austerity platform, had been vehemently opposed by Popular Will who demanded that he join their US-backed boycott of the election.\nThe Venezuelan news outlet, Ultimas Noticias, reported that prominent opposition politician Henrique Capriles, who had run against Maduro in 2013, “affirmed during an interview that the majority of opposition parties did not agree with the self-swearing in of Juan Guaidó as interim president of the country.” Claudio Fermin, president of the party Solutions for Venezuela, wrote “we believe in the vote, in dialogue, we believe in coming to an understanding, we believe Venezuelans need to part ways with the extremist sectors that only offer hatred, revenge, lynching.” Key opposition governor of the State of Táchira, Laidy Gómez, has rejected Guaidó’s support of intervention by the US, warning that it “would generate death of Venezuelans.”\nThe Guaidó/Trump cabal’s fig leaf for legitimacy is based on the bogus argument that Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National Assembly the power to declare a national president’s “abandonment” of the office. In which case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.\nIn fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.\nI suggest that you actually read the report, again;\nhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/12/21/americas-oil-and-gas-reserves-double-with-massive-new-permian-discovery/#c9f319a2c91e\nThat estimate doesn’t even factor in other massive locations like Alaskan & offshore regions which are confidently assumed to hold enormous quantities of oil & gas.\nIf oil was getting more rare & truly expensive then rules of economics which insist that the final cost of it reflect that rarity and expense.\nThe world is truly awash in oil. Peak Oil is an old, disproven canard.\nhttps://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/we-are-not-running-out-of-oil-earth-produces-crude/\nVenezuelan leaders probably screwed things up and/or were corrupt.\nHow come other countries with vast amounts of oil can be independent from the US but Venezuela could not?\nWhat, Venezuelan leaders are stupid?\nThey can’t build a single oil refinery?\nNo one would build one?\nNor China or Russia? No European firm?\nI think we have a long long way to go and certainly have the ability to prevent it.\nBut beyond that, I must bite my tongue.\nThen we ask the same question at a deeper level of abstraction:\nWhy don’t the Venezuelans develop their own refining capacity? Then they would not have to worry about Western exploitation.\n, @Ilyana_Rozumova\nYes, the Permian’s costs are established: producers are losing money. According to Forbes (link to “Permian Producers Are Struggling To Make Money”): overall, companies spent $1.13 for every $1 they took in.\nThe true situation could be even worse. According to the Wharton business school (link to “Could Fracking Debt Set off Big Financial Tremors?”): “Fracking is a business built on attracting ever-more gigantic amounts of capital investment, while promises of huge returns have yet to bear out,” says an introduction to McLean’s book. In fact, North American exploration and production companies saw their net debt balloon from $50 billion in 2005 to nearly $200 billion by 2015, according to a recent research paper by Amir Azar, fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.\nIn other words, fracking (in the Permian Basin and elsewhere) is a Ponzi scheme. When it collapses, as all Ponzi schemes eventually do, the US’s economy will tremble.\nThere may be a lot of oil in the Permian Basin, but if you’re going to go broke trying to recover the oil, why do it? The breathless articles you like to read never mention that, for some reason.\nThey probably will — using Chinese technology. I speculate that the U.S. has been refusing to license the patents needed for building a refinery for Venezuela’s heavy sour crude. But the Chinese will probably help.\nIt is difficult to explain. They do not have neither intellectual (technical) or manufacturing capacity to do it.\nBut there are Ton of countries that could have do it for them.\nSo, who is the empire? Hudson cannot name the Jew, but I can.\nSalon’s reforms in Greece were a function of silver debts. In effect, Greek farmers were put into debts in a money type they could not access to pay off their loans. To pay silver debts, they had to forfeit their lives, especially in silver mines of Lydia. This then caused bigger Greek city states to starve, which led ultimately to Salon’s reforms.\nA small brown semite would sit in an outdoor market, waiting for Greek citizens to take out a silver loan. Typically it would be a farmer, wanting silver to buy “international” goods, like perfume for their wives or girlfriends. Said farmer would impress upon a clay tablet, with a special stylus, to signify new debt formation. The Jew would then release silver, so Greek farmer could buy luxury goods from international entrepot cities ringed around the Mediterranean. Our Jewish friends were operating slave rings, and laundering pirated goods at the same time, so using shipping and a money type they controlled, probably originated around this time period.\nUsury and rents are closely related, they are schemes -sometimes elaborate, to then get something for nothing.\nIn the case of the farmers, silver was made plentiful at onset of loan, but when harvest time came, silver was made dear. Controlling of the silver mines also helped in this usury/rent scheme. When there was no silver to be had at harvest, the farmer would lower his prices desperately to keep from being impressed into slavery. His farm goods rotted, while silver did not.\nThese sort of usury schemes repeat throughout history, and if you have a tribal mechanism which promotes and sanctifies this behavior, then it becomes method. If we live in a multiverse, then Jewish usury method may be genetic, and those Jews who break away are special people.\nState sponsored usury using double entry ledgers popped into being in 1694 with the advent of bank of England. Rothschild soon came to control BOE, but the method became implanted into London, and the whole concept of private banks tied to corporations, then controlling a country came into being.\nThe cabals “empire” predates BOE event, and its threads go back through our ((freinds)) who on their caravan routes would take usury on exchange rates between silver and gold.\nThe better way to look at it is as a parasite host relation. The parasite has infested the body of the west, and in particular America. Like a tic, it jumped off the Jew and into London, and jumped from there to Wall Street, to then infest Washington. The parasite can multiply and infect weak minds of the host, and is now attempting to spread worldwide.\n• Replies: @Rev. Spooner\n…The Venezuelans were more than welcome to turn down any of the development if they felt the deal was not in their best interest. They chose not to do so and instead went ahead and took the hard bargain.\nHere’s your problem: there are Venezuelans and there are Venezuelans.\nOn the one hand were were the “tinhorn dictators”. They did feel the deal was in there best interest, as determined by bribery or coercion by US economic hit men. The dictators chose to take an offer they couldn’t refuse. The companies who engineered the deal actually were the party in a position to chose to risk freely and without coercion.\nThe other Venezuelans were neither free, nor welcome to turn down these arrangements, nor really consulted. Until Chavez let them become involved in the decision-making process. Then the companies found that they had overestimated the risk, and by the magic of the the marketplace and democratic choice, lost their shirts. (You wouldn’t want take the risk out of capitalism would you? Then the companies wouldn’t deserve the profits.)\nThe gold standard Hudson is referring to is the TRADING GOLD STANDARD, set into place post Breton Woods up until 71.\nIf there was a trade imbalance, then said imbalance would be made up with Gold flows. These flows then caused an adjustment in exchange rates.\nFor example, if the dollar was made “weaker” though exchange rate adjustment, then that would induce foreign economies to buy more dollar denominated goods, eventually balancing trade of goods.\nThis system worked pretty well up until Vietnam deficit spending, as Hudson points out in his book Super Imperialism.\nIn my opinion, a better way is Bancor system, which is not money but an accounting device that relates to goods transfer only.\nIt took man thousands of years to figure out money’s true nature is law, not metal.\nIt would be good to NOT REGRESS in thought, as if we are less intelligent than our forebears.\n• Replies: @Sean\n@/lasse\nIt probably needs a high amount of social capital. Add on western hostility that third world countries do this.\nYour point is correct about social capital. Look how much trouble Russia is having building an autarkial economy, with Western sanctions helping to that end.\nI might suggest that white Russians with an IQ of around 100 on average, far outstrip Indios and Mestizos of Venezuela.\nIf you were running Venezuela, and needed social and intellectual capital to then “make things for yourself” it would also require importing new DNA.\nIf you have a low IQ population, it is a killer problem to make a “mixed economy’ that can compete with the world, or even make goods and services for internal consumption.\nHudson won’t name the Jew nor will he talk about human bio -diversity, but he is still on point with many of his writings.\nIn an age of universal deception, the truth teller is seen as a crank. Hudson may think these things, but he doesn’t utter them. It is high time to stop dancing around the truth of things.\nAww, the poor misunderstood saints!!\nBullshit!! You say this because you would like to see yourself as the “good” “we.”\nWhat the “good” “we” really wants is for the “bad” “we” to do their job of plundering others in such a way that it is not so bloody obvious (e.g. through support of dictators wherever possible, and other tools of hegemony like the IMF, etc.), so that your racist lives can be better enriched, and so that you can more easily assuage your rotten consciences. Show me the money, and don’t tell me where it’s from.\nIt really is all about the whitey’s greed. You degenerates have built your entire “glorious” (but, spiritually cursed) civilisation on that model.\nYour racist kind’s constant lamenting of a lifestyle long lost, mostly white and prosperous, perhaps of the 60’s or so, is proof of that.\nThe life blood of both the “good” and the “bad” “we,” is White Supremacy. You really are no different.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Ian12345\"] says:\nOther countries?\nIf you take looted or stolen wealth you should give it back to the rightful owner.\nMany relatives of Hugo Chavez held or hold political positions. For example one of his brothers was or still is Assistant-Secretary, a son in law was or still is Secretary, his father was governor of Barinas another brother of him later had and may still have the same position. The governor brother is known for his modest yet tasteful lifestyle like wearing several expensive watches at the same time and driving a gold colored Hummer SUV. Higher position in the state of Barinas are said to be almost all held by members of the wider Chavez clan.\nBut as long as they wave a red banner and oppose the Yanks that seems to be perfectly fine for many here.\nBeep Boop Beep did you get your latest NPC download?\nrurick is entirely correct. The average electorate ALWAYS voted against the wars.\nNews flash: It is plutocrats who maneuver for war, and these people are often psychopaths. Even WW1 was maneuvered by just a few super rich people, mostly from England. American’s voted to stay out of war, yet were dragged into it anyway.\nCertain “industrialists” stood to loose money if England lost, and certain other industrialists stood to make money by buying up the world cheap.\nBeep Boop Beep, keep on blaming average laboring tax paying whitey, while not looking up at the real culprits. They got you thinking just the way you should. Oh and while you are at it, try to get some more gibs from whitey as he is part of an unprotected group and can be demonized.\nChrystia Freeland, a passionate neo-Nazi and the best friend of zionists or\nWhere holocaustianity meets banderism:\nhttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-07/how-chrystia-freeland-organized-donald-trumps-coup-venezuela “How Chrystia Freeland Organized Donald Trump’s Coup In Venezuela”\nIn mid-December [2019], Guaido quietly traveled to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to brief officials on the opposition’s strategy of mass demonstrations to coincide with Maduro’s expected swearing-in for a second term on January… Playing a key role behind the scenes was Lima Group member Canada, whose Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to Guaido [9 January 2019] the night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony [on 10 January 2019] to offer her government’s support…\nThe inevitable emergence of Jeffrey Feltman, Chrystia Freeland’s comrade in arms against ordinary Venezuelans and Ukrainians:\nFour days later … Freeland met privately at the UN, in New York, with the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. “The title of the meeting is ‘the situation in Venezuela and efforts by regional organizations to resolve the crisis per Chapter VIII of the UN Charter.” She was briefed by Jeffrey Feltman’s Assistant, Miroslav Jenca.\nJeffrey Feltman [a holocaustian] was the person who, in the secretly recorded 27 January 2014 phone-conversation in which US President Barack Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland [another holocaustian from a powerful clan of Kagans] — planning and overseeing the February 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President — instructed the US Ambassador to Ukraine, that, after Ukraine’s President is ousted, Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk was to be appointed as Ukraine’s ‘interim’ leader as the new Prime Minister, to replace the President. She also said: “I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning; he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry. … He’s now gotten both Serry and Ban ki-Moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. That would be great, I think, to help glue this thing, and to have the UN help glue it, and, you know, fuck the EU.”\nSo, the still Under Secretary General of the U.N, Mr. Feltman, is still America’s fixer there, who “glues” whatever the US President orders the UN to do, and his Assistant was filling in for him that day. Therefore, if Trump and Freeland turn out to be as successful as Obama was, then the UN will “glue” the outcome. Chrystia Freeland happens also to be a friend of Victoria Nuland, and a passionate supporter of her coup in Ukraine.”\nThere is no surprise that the progeny of a famous neo-Nazi collaborator has become the closest comrade of the progeny of holo-biz “survivors.” Banderites and Zionists have united in Ukraine & Venezuela against human decency. The ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center wholeheartedly support the unholy union.\nChrystia Freeland impeccable pedigree and Canadian rot:\nIt was this former Waffen SS soldier-turned University President who created the Ukrainian Studies department at the University of Alberta. …\nMichael Chomiak [granddaddy of Chrystia Freeland], another of these significant Nazis who were never caught, lived out his days after the war as a farmer in Alberta. His Nazi identification documents were uncovered by the Polish Government in the 1960’s. “Chomiak’s records show he was trained in Vienna for German espionage and propaganda operations, then promoted to run the German press machine for the Galician region of Ukraine and Poland during the 4-year occupation. So high-ranking and active in the Nazi cause was Chomiak that the Polish intelligence services were actively hunting for Chomiak until the 1980s\nChrystia Freeland is unshakably loyal to [her granddaddy Michael Chomiak] memory and to his far-right beliefs, which she proudly supports. She also is a close friend of George Soros…\nRegardless of whether or not the Trump-Freeland-Luna program for Venezuela succeeds, democracy and human rights won’t be advanced by it; but, if it succeeds, the fortunes of US-and-allied billionaires will be. It’s part of their global privatization program.\nhttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-07/how-chrystia-freeland-organized-donald-trumps-coup-venezuela\nWell the US could not give Germany its gold back in a timeframe that suggested the gold was still there, and many people think it not unlikely America had used the gold in the way Hudson suggests. Germany was not too bothered, probabally because they already knew and the repatriation of all Germany’s gold reserves held abroad was just cover to remove them from France, which Germany wants all the leverage it can get over to preserve the export promotion program for German industry that is known as the EU single market.\nFor example, if the dollar was made “weaker” though exchange rate adjustment, then that would induce foreign economies to buy more dollar denominated goods, eventually balancing trade of goods\nThat is a bug not a feature for Germany, because a single market with fixed exchange rates they can deindutrialize the other EU countries.\nThousands of years ago it was already figured out that “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.”\nAnyway, this is Saker’s most interesting post.\nRomanian says: • Website\nKeeping our gold in Russia did not turn out too well. What is to stop China and Russia from playing fast and loose with the gold as well?\nIf oil was so plentiful then why are they spending a billion or so with off-shore drilling, seeing profit is the driving force of any product,one need to be careful off all the artical’s that float around on the internet which also include Forbes for they to more off-times then not nothing but propaganda…\nIt would be interesting to tap into just how we can prevent it, when the government is controlled by the corporations and the 1%,the GDP is a corrupted tool as the unemployment figure’s put out by the BLS is a corrupted tool simply used to fool the people and the media, which parrots those numbers as if they were fact but mainly used to fuel the stock market as they keek adding another trillion or so to the debt on a yearly basis, while the Fed. parrots the same thing when the truth is the Fed. is the only thing keeping the house of cards going…….\nYou got that right! Good and Evil run down the middle of every man’s heart, and he has to choose.\nThe IMF loan to Greece blew through the Greek economy, and went on to pay German bond-holders, while sticking a debt hook into Greek citizen’s mouths. This is a form of usury mechanism well known to the tribe. Greeks ended up giving away some of their patrimony to Germany – things like airports. There was even talk of giving away islands.\nThe Hyperinflation that German’s suffered were due to a similar mechanism, where German debts couldn’t be paid (the triangular flow of war debts from Germany to France/England to U.S. Treasury).\nGermany was attacked starting in 33 when international Zion initiated a boycott on German goods. The attempt was to starve out German’s as they depended on export revenue to buy food.\nThe money powers that Germany fought against in the past, are now in control of Germany. Most of today’s Germans have had their history erased and they have been demonized into submission, and are now suffering mass immigration of an indigestible people group, leading to conflict long into the future.\nThe “International” always promotes “international” money. The Euro is a non-sovereign “international” project, and the Euro as money is fundamentally flawed, especially with Treaty injunctions that disallow Sovereign governments from deficit spending into infrastructure and to allow private savings.\nGreece would issue sovereign bonds, which were monetized in German private banks to make new Euros, and then those Euros would buy BMW’s in Greece, and then BOTH the bonds and Euro’s would end up in German banks, while Greece would not have any money for commerce.\nThen new bond issuance would incorporate interest from the old bonds as part of principle in the new bonds (IMF loan for example), making Greek payments go exponential in a money type they cannot issue. This sort of money magick is Jewish usurious trickery and now the traitorous German leadership is on board.\nGiven German history, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but then again the average German has been hypnotized with BS and don’t know which way is up or down.\nRubicon 727 says:\nWhat you’re describing about the two Americas has merit.\nThe media attack and paid-for protesters against the White Male is just that: propaganda. Ditto for these made-up women’s, minority, gender issues.\nThe sinister motive behind this propaganda is to Disunify average Americans. This fabricated cleavage is to KEEP average Americans from being a Unified power against both the 1% and the Deep State criminals who maintain the status quo of the 1%.\nBut probably the most pathetic mentality, writ-large in America is the vast population of Americans largely uninformed, and tragically illiterate in Who and HOW the 1% Elites have destroyed a society. Americans used to be practical, no-nonsense citizens who easily discerned Fraudulent behavior vs the Real Thing. Now, most Americans have allowed themselves to be enslaved by the banks via their Debt with credit cards, mortgage, auto, and college loans.\nIt’s estimated the average American, nationwide is in debt (auto/mortgage/college/credit cards) to the tune of 13 TRILLION $$$s. This IS the real tragedy of the American society.\nThis forum is about the ongoing attempts at regime-changing in Venezuela.\nA recent example of the American promotion of “democracy on the march” is Ukraine. https://www.rt.com/op-ed/443447-ukraine-thuggery-corruption-gangsterism/\nNo one tried to refute the corrupt character of the former Ukrainian president Mr. Yanukovitch. But he was democratically elected by Ukrainian people. In 2014, the ziocons had won (the same crowd that you seem have no problems with, judging from your posts). What has been going in Ukraine since the zionized/nazified “liberation:”\nZionists and banderites have (re)established a tight collaboration: https://www.partiantisioniste.com/en/news/the-neo-nazi-ukraine-allied-with-zionism-en.html\nA civil war has been initiated under a criminally competent watch of the former CIA Director Brennan. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/21/a-coming-russia-ukraine-war/\nThe level of corruption has increased, while Ukraine has been living off the international bank’s tranches and squandering her natural resources to Monsanto and such: https://slavyangrad.org/2015/06/25/black-earth-and-the-struggle-for-ukraines-future/\nThe young and educated have been fleeing Ukraine: https://www.stalkerzone.org/mass-emigration-where-ukrainians-go-to-flee-the-consequences-of-the-wests-maidan/\nOld people have been suffering: https://www.stalkerzone.org/ukrainian-pensioners-about-the-fruits-of-post-maidan-ukraine-bury-us-alive-we-have-no-life/\nThe Russian language has been banned: https://www.rt.com/news/438852-ukraine-russian-culture-banned/\nAgain, what is the source of your infatuation with the chosen boy Guaido?\nWhat if the wealth was stolen in the first place? Then Chavez did indeed return the wealth to the rightful owner: the Venezuelan 99%.\nMany relatives of Hugo Chavez held or hold political positions.\nThe nepotism is nothing compared to what the oligarchs routinely do for their relatives and friends. (Or compared to what Trump does.) Can you name a billionaire among the relatives that Chavez appointed to government positions?\nthe US’s economy will tremble\nThere is nothing to indicate that would be the case.\nAt the end of 2018 there were some estimates suggesting shale-0il accounted for as much as 8 million barrels per day (mbpd) of total US production of 12 or 13 mbpd.\nI’ve looked closely at the state-by-state monthly numbers provided by the EIA.\nIt appears that since 2011 roughly 7.5 to 9 billion barrels of shale oil have been produced.\nThat comes out to around 3mbpd on average for the last 8 years.\nIf each of those barrels sold for $50 a barrel that would be $375 Billion to $450 Billion.\nLet’s say that each of those barrels took a $60 per barrel investment to produce.\nSo a loss over 8 years of $75 Billion to $90 Billion.\nOr $11 Billion per year. Tops.\nA loss spread out over and eaten by a lot of investors. Hardly a shock to the economy.\nThe supply of that oil on the market would have put downward pressure on the price of gasoline for the last 8 years. Helping the economy.\nYour questions are on the mark.\nhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/05/07/how-venezuela-ruined-its-oil-industry/#58d5e0077399\nSo now ‘Big Oil’ is all about losing money for their stockholders. LOL\nOh how the left wants it both ways, “Big Oil” is either ‘greedy’ or ‘bleeding money that will ‘crash the economy’.\nBottom line, oil is everywhere and it’s not going anywhere for a long time.\nBTW, the cited Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy is just another neo-Marxist, fake global warming propaganda center. The Director, Jason Bordoff, is a former special assistant to Obama.\nDo better next time.\nasked: “Why a billion or so with off-shore drilling.”\nWhy off-shore drilling? Seriously?\n– There’s lots of oil there.\n– West of the Mississippi River, government ‘owns’ 50% of all land.\n– 1 billion dollars is not that big of an investment for a huge industry like oil.\nYou have not demonstrated your claimed “propaganda” in the Forbes article, please do so, IF you can.\nYou omitted some context from my words in your quotation; I’m restoring the entire paragraph. The bolded part is what you did quote.\nYou must be joking that a fracking crash would not seriously harm the US’s economy.\nRemember the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. According to the EIA (link), at that time the US was importing 1.2 million barrels per year, or about 3300 barrels per day. Even if we assume that the embargo caused the US to lose all 3300 bpd, that by itself was enough to make oil prices spike from $3 per barrel to $12 (link).\nAccording to you, fracking could account for as much as 8 million barrels of oil per day. If the loss of a mere 3300 barrels per day could cause the price of oil to quadruple and induce a serious economic crisis, imagine what the loss of 8,000,000 barrels per day would do.\nIn fact, the prospect of a fracking crash could be a major reason that Trump so obviously wants to steal Venezuela’s oil.\n• Agree: Ilyana_Rozumova\nAs I said, fracking (in the Permian Basin and elsewhere) is a Ponzi scheme. In such a scheme, most investors do indeed lose, and the few perpetrators of the scheme get rich from all the later suckers.\nApparently you didn’t read the article. Maduro had better election numbers than the people whose arses you want to lick.\nYou are stuck in the American mindset of dollar democracy: my dollar only buys the same as your dollar, it’s irrelevant that I have a million and you have ten. In other words, democracy is a commodity like everything else.\nWhy does any of this surprise you. The Canadian government, like the US government is (((occupied territory))). Trudeau v2.0 was thoroughly trained by ultra-Zionist Irwin Cotler. Not that any of the other parties are not occupied either.\nThe globalist banker elite is still pissed off that Venezuela had the audacity to nationalize a natural resource.\nFebruary 10, 2019 at 12:25 am GMT • 100 Words\nLol now that;s a stupid post now according to you we are awash with all that black gold(*that’s why we buy a few millions of barrels oil from other countries) and a billion is nothing to the oil companies drilling for it, but I;m sure they aren’t telling their stock holders that they are spending a billion on off-shore wells when they could drill one in any ole spot for a fraction of that…\nFebruary 10, 2019 at 1:36 am GMT\nAs Venezuelan oil minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo had presciently warned in 1976: “Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin… It is the devil’s excrement.”\nhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry\nRev. Spooner says:\nFebruary 10, 2019 at 5:20 pm GMT • 200 Words\nThis is the core of it\nAll those that keep crying ‘Capitalism’ or ‘Free market Economy’ need to get re-educated. There’s so much hidden from the common people and all the so called free press is such ass wipe rag that there is no hope.\nThe second sentence was supposed to be in italics as it’s a quote by Hudson. Anyway, you get the drift.\nYou have it right my friend. Keep posting here and I will always welcome your comments.\nGood finds re corruption, socialist meddling into core economy and the rest.\nIt’s sort of tragicomedy to see people, who disagree with the current “globo-homo” paradigm,so eagerly supporting Venezuelan leftist regimes.\n“The enemy of my enemy” doesn’t work in this case.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Judith Stapleton\"] says:\nFebruary 10, 2019 at 11:35 pm GMT • 100 Words\nBrilliant analysis that should resonate with all of us who are feeling as though we’ve been hit with a tsunami of suicidal corruption, and are trembling with the prospects of our grandkids circling the global drain.\nYeves Engler is the only Canadian exposing a long game of foreign policy that has helped this coups happen mow, when Venezuela is most vulnerable to the shock and awe strategy.\nMichael has rung the bell. Now we’ll see who shows up for the good fight.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Tom Garrett\"] says:\nDr Hudson’s replies to the Saker are very instructive. Our politicians would do well to peruse them.\nI was startled, however by his assertion that Venezuela has no oil refineries. There are, in fact, two refineries on the Peninsula Paraguana which juts north from the mainland (Falcon state)within 20 miles or less from Aruba in the Leeward Antilles. (If it were not connected to Falcon by a narrow umbilical cord of land it would be considered one of the Antilles\nThe refineries are situated on Punto Fijo at the southwest corner of the major terrestrial area. They are supplied with crude by a pipeline fom the major producing areas of thr Maracaibo Basin. Each has port facilities for loading tankers. Together the Punto Fijo refineries are considered Latin Americas largest oil refinery with a potential output of up to a million barrels per day.\nIn addition to these facilities there is the once famous (formerly Royal Dutch Shell) refinery on Curacao near Willemstad which began refining Venezuelan oil in 1908. In 1975 when Venezuela nationalized oil properties the Curacao refinery became independent but was leased by PDVSA and continued to refine Venezuelan oil. Last I heard the refinery, after being shut down for a year because of a fight between Conoco-Phillips and PDVSA started up again. The current capacity of the Curacoa facilities is put at 330,000 per day.\nIn real capitalism with competition, profits go to zero. Profits are only possible in capitalism with economic rent. That is, unearned income. Typically some sort of monopoly power. Classical economics.\nHyperinflation is a FX effect. A tank of gas in Venezuela costs less than a dollar. Inflation??? A MSM fairytale.\n• Replies: @Hypnotoad666\nIn real capitalism with competition, profits go to zero.\nNo. In theory, they go to the market price of capital (approx = interest%), plus whatever premium for risk the venture may require to attract capital. Sometimes economists may use the term “profit” as synonymous with an above-market return (economic rent). But that’s just semantics. Bottom line: capital must be expected to earn a reasonable return or no one will put said capital into a business venture.\nHyperinflation is a FX effect.\nNo. It is true that price inflation in Venezuela (i.e., deflation of the value of its local currency), will naturally cause its exchange value to fall against other currencies. But Venezuelan prices (in local currency) are rising in the local market as well, so its not just a FX effect. It’s a change in nominal local prices.\nIt’s true that “real” (inflation-adjusted) prices of everything (by definition) stay the same. But hyperinflation changes the prices so quickly that no one is ever sure what the real price should be. Prices therefore lose much of their ability to signal the relative value of items which causes mass inefficiency.\nA tank of gas in Venezuela costs less than a dollar.\nIf the price of gas is really below $1.00, that can only be because the government is subsidizing it, which is a big waste of money since they could sell the gasoline abroad for far more.\nPersonally, I think we should leave Venezuela alone. It’s no threat to the U.S. Its economy will eventually fully implode on its own. And in the meantime, its an excellent negative role model for how not to run a country.\nFebruary 11, 2019 at 5:21 am GMT • 200 Words\nThere are so many straw man arguments and ambiguities in that one sentence that I think I should just walk away here and accept that you really don’t understand much about the history of oil as the most important global commodity.\nFor God’s sake, you don’t even understand the units involved in the graph you linked to. THOUSANDS of barrels. Not 3300 barrels. 3,300,000 barrels.\nYou have not being paying attention to oil literally your entire life. Sorry.\n“Fracking crash”? What does that even mean? The shale-oil business according to virtually every source including the Wall Street Journal has never been profitable overall. Don’t you think it would have “crashed” by now after almost a decade? Might there be some other dynamics that everybody who knows anything about energy supply understands? Just maybe?\nIf you want to get up to speed fast, try this.\nEnergy and Civilization: A History\nWhitewolf says:\nFebruary 11, 2019 at 10:16 am GMT\nDespite the immense power still wielded by the US and UK neither are serious countries anymore. The US needs constant war just to maintain even minimal credibility.\nMaybe Chavez and Maduro are really Alien zoologists on a research trip to earth making an experiment on human (they actually classified us as naked apes) social behavior. (I don’t know if this is what actually happened, but it’s a possibility).\nBecause US companies control all the patents on refining Venezuela’s heavy sour crude, and the US has refused to license any of this?\nVenezuelan oil has been extracted for over 100 years. Patents last 20 – 30 years in most countries (in the USA it is 21 years).\nYou are right that the 3.3 thousand barrels per day should be 3.3 million, but you are bolstering my case.\nIt actually makes more sense that the loss of as much as 3.3 million barrels per day in the 1973 embargo would trigger the quadrupling of the price of oil and cause a severe economic crisis.\nAccording to you, fracking is contributing 8 million barrels per day of oil to the American economy. (That is roughly 40% of daily oil consumption, by the way.) Some of this production may survive a crash, but if most of it vanishes, that will be far more than the 3.3 million bpd that disappeared in 1973. The consequences will be horrendous.\nThe prospect of a fracking crash could be a major reason that Trump so obviously wants to steal Venezuela’s oil.\nIn other words, you have no response, only insults.\nFebruary 11, 2019 at 10:06 pm GMT\nThat says nothing about whether the critical patents were still active in Chavez’s time. If they were, it would have been easy for the US to prevent him from building the desulfurizing oil refineries.\n(Clearly, the previous Venezuelan oligarchs were too greedy and lazy to do it. Or perhaps the deal was for the US to let the oligarchs enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, as long as they made no attempt to break Venezuela free from being exploited by the US.)\nCertainly, but clearer thinkers know that some hypotheses are more probable than others.\nWould you please stop. I’m not trying to insult you. You are just out of your league. I’m sorry. You don’t have a case. Nothing you say is going to happen. This is the doom-mongering about oil that has been going on for a very long time on the internet.\nThe situation with shale-oil bears little resemblance to 1973.\n8 million barrels per day are not going to “disappear.” It is crucial that you understand this. There is so much oil in pipelines, refinery storage, and on tankers, and in strategic reserve – that the gradual decline of shale-production will not be noticed. It will happen over years. Possibly decades.\nHigh oil prices are their own cure. They dampen demand – driving down the price.\nYour repetitive chants of Trump wanting to “steal” Venezuela’s oil is lame trolling.\nHere’s another book for you.\nNot an insult. Just a book.\nYou know what. I’m going to step back here and take a breath. Perhaps I’m being a little defensive. I don’t like my tone. I apologize. I don’t mean to come off as insulting. But clearly I am.\nI can actually see your concerns, I just don’t personally feel they are justified given my point of view of the global oil industry.\nYou might enjoy this:\nhttp://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/mistaken-futures/\nIf you haven’t read Jim Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation blog before, he writes every Monday and Friday and I know that at least three times in the last two months he has talked about the end of the scam that is the shale business. Scroll through recent past entries. There is some good stuff there.\nWould you please stop. I’m not trying to insult you. You are just out of your league. I’m sorry. You don’t have a case. Nothing you say is going to happen.\nThen answer my arguments. Your efforts (see below) are too feeble to convince any but the true suckers.\nYou do realize, don’t you, that US oil consumption is something like 20 million barrels per day, every day? When the 8 million bpd from fracking stops, the stuff held in pipelines, storage, et cetera, will be gone almost before you can blink. The decline will NOT be gradual; it’ll be sudden and brutal.\nAs I wrote (and you ignored), “Some of [the 8 million bpd] may survive a crash, but if most of it vanishes, that will be far more than the 3.3 million bpd that disappeared in 1973 [and caused the price of oil to quadruple, triggering an economic crisis]. The consequences will be horrendous.”\nI understand why some people want to play to all the suckers. Fracking is a Ponzi scheme; like all the Ponzi schemes in history, it needs an exponentially growing population of new suckers to keep the scheme going.\nNot only is that an insult, it is also false. We know that Trump wants to steal Venezuela’s oil, because he has been saying so, very loudly — a year after letting slip that he wished the US had “kept” (i.e. stolen) Iraq’s oil. So it’s clear that the oil supply has been on The Donald’s mind for a long time — likely because a fracking crash is as probable to him as it is to me.\nI think I can do that. But we need to agree on some terms or definitions of things so we can be on the same page.\nWhat exactly do you mean by “crash”? When you use terms like “disappear” you imply that shale production in the US will drop from 6-8 mbpd to 1-2 mbpd or less virtually overnight. The magnitude and timeframe of this proposed/predicted decline is important. Because you are going to have to demonstrate its probability and, most importantly, why it would occur. With historical examples, of course.\nI’d be willing to define this as a drop of 4-5 mbpd in American production over a one-year period to make this a semi-believable possibility…the problem with that is the reality that that is not really a shock that the American economy can’t weather. And I can demonstrate that.\nI could be wrong, but I’m guessing you had more of an 8 mbpd drop in 60 days. That’s of course more apocalyptic, but then you’ve got to show how it is possible.\nSee, what is happening in Venezuela is completely related to shale oil, or all unconventional, hard to produce, expensive to produce forms of oil that are becoming more and more a part of daily life as conventional production has plateaued or even peaked.\nVenezuela was only able to classify 200 billion barrels of those “largest reserves in the world” as actual reserves when the price of oil was over $100 prior to 2013. At prices below $70 or some number that is anybody’s guess Venezuelan heavy oil is literally not producable. Because it is not profitable and nobody, including the Chinese, believes anything any Venezuelan says about oil or the oil industry because they have screwed their industry up so badly.\nNobody is willing to invest in the Venezuelan oil industry because Venezuela has burned everybody so many times.\nNobody that understands this history buys this line of thinking from The Saker and Michael Hudson that Venezuela’s problems are all a result of United States.\nIn the United States, at least for the time being, the so-far unprofitable shale industry continues to exist because of the expectation and hope that it will be profitable not too far off. Remember, shale-production started in earnest about 2011 when oil was about $100 on average. Had oil remained there. Shale would have been profitable by 2014. But in 2014 the price dropped.\nShale is not so much a Ponzi scheme as it is many speculative bets that are waiting and praying for the price of oil to rise. From my point of view, it doesn’t look good. The price of oil has been very stable between $50 and $65 for most of three years now, but oil moves quickly when it does and it is impossible to predict.\nWhich leads to the issue of prediction.\nYou are suggesting that a crash in shale production due to the dawning realization that it is a Ponzi scheme will cause an economic shock in the United States. This is in fact predicting three separate events and using a narrative device to relate them.\nBut for simplicity’s sake I’ll limit it to the two main ones: Oil crash and economic turmoil.\nRead the works of Nicholas Taleb to see the pitfalls with this.\nThe basics are this. Either event is improbable. Both together are even more improbable. That you think both are more probable is a trick your mind is playing on you. Humans like stories.\nReality: Negative economic events happen about once every tens years in the United States. The likelihood of one happening in any given year is like 1 in 10, so improbable.\nThe liklihood of a major supply disruption in the shale industry in particular happening in 2019 even more improbable. There is a whole class of energy-related apocalypse, peak-oil writers and journalists who have been predicting this implosion of the shale-scam almost every week since 2014. They have a perfect track record of predictive failure. Some of them even admit when they commit their predictions to paper (the blogosphere) that they are always wrong.\nBut a major supply disruption hurting the US economy in the near-future is not going to happen. The economy can certainly dip and badly and there are a whole host of isssues the US has that can conspire to make that happen.\nShale-oil may be involved, but it is unlikely to be the particular catalyst or cause.\nMy record predicting the non-occurence of this event as well as the non-occurence of an attack on Iran for the last 20 years is perfect. 🙂\n…hmmm, which reminds me, haven’t heard the Saker talk about Iran much lately, gonna have to wait until this Venezuela thing blows over, probably a week from now. I can’t believe it has lasted this long.\nYes. I understand all the numbers involved. American consumption of 20 mbpd out of a total global consumption of around 95 mbpd is roughly at the same level it was in 1997 when global consumption was probably only 80 mbpd.\nAmerican energy use is both extremely intense and efficient.\nOnly 10 mbpd of that 20 is transportation gasoline. In a crisis, we could probably knock 3 mbpd off of that easily at the expense of curtailing our happy-motoring lifestyles a tad.\nIt is China’s rapidly rising consumption that is of concern.\nThe decline will NOT be gradual; it’ll be sudden and brutal.\nI don’t take that on faith. You are going to have to demonstrate why both sudden and brutal would be the case.\nHi, Dave! There seem to be quite a few Welshes, and even Tom Welshes, around if you Google.\nI’m a retired computer technician living in England.\nGringo says:\nMichael Hudson: Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and other necessities that it could have produced at home. …Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela…..\nWhen Chávez was elected in 1998, petroleum and petroleum products accounted for 71.7% of Venezuela’s exports. by 2013, the year Chávez died, petroleum and petroleum products accounted for 97.8% of Venezuela’s exports. By 2013, Venezuela was more of an oil monoculture than before he was elected in 1998.Chávez talked a good game, but wasn’t very good at producing results.\nMichael Hudson: What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector.\nWhen Chávez campaigned in 1998 , he stressed clamping down on corruption. That stance against corruption help gain him votes. When he was in office, he had a rather different attitude towards corruption. From Rory Carroll’s Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.\nHis longtime comrade and fellow coup conspirator General Jesús Urdaneta was unhappy. Chávez had appointed his friend, typically blunt and outspoken like people from the western state of Zulia, to head DISIP, the intelligence service. Urdaneta received reports that two of the president’s most important civilian allies, Luis Miquilena, head of the National Assembly, and José Vicente Rangel, the foreign minister, were lining their pockets…..\nUrdaneta complained to Chávez that they were bringing the old, corrupt habits into the fledgling Fifth Republic. According to the general, the president acknowledged the duo’s corruption but said he needed their dark arts to consolidate power. The feud spilled into the Vargas aftermath when security forces were accused of executing looters. Of eight thousand men in the field, only sixty were from DISIP, but Urdaneta found his agency singled out and pilloried—allegedly due to Miquilena and Vicente Rangel pulling their invisible strings. (Years later Miquilena fell out with Chávez and was charged but acquitted of corruption. Vicente Rangel was never charged with any crime.) Chávez barred Urdaneta from speaking to the press. His old friend claimed he had been set up and resigned in protest, the revolution’s first major defection.\nWhen given an opportunity early in his term, in 2000, to crack down on corruption, Chávez chose to tolerate it. “Unable to crack down on corruption” is very inaccurate. Chávez was given a chance to crack down on corruption, and chose to tolerate it.\nOnce again, Chávez talked a good game, but didn’t produce results.\nhttps://data.worldbank.org/country/venezuela-rb?view=chart Fuel exports (% of merchandise exports)\nOver the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture, along much the same lines that the United States protected and developed its agriculture under the New Deal legislation of the 1930s –\nChávez was elected in 1998.\nFrom 1998 to 2016, Venezuela’s net per capita Crops (PIN) production has fallen 35.7%.\nFrom 1998 to 2016, Venezuela’s net per capita Cereals,Total production has fallen 46.9%.\nThat is what Chavismo has done to Venezuela.\nRather similarly, Cuba’s net per capita Crops (PIN) production has fallen 32.2% from 1961 to 2016. Oh, the glories of Socialism Latin style!\nhttp://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QI Net per capita Production Index Number (2004-2006 = 100)\nCereals,Total\nCrops (PIN)\nSol Silver says:\nWhy don’t Russia or China, or both in joint partnership, build a Venezuelan refinery to deal with that grade of crude? That would solve a lot of problems and would seem to be a profitable investment for all concerned.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Lawrence Boxall\"] says:\nSound like anti-Semitism. Rothschild is nothing without state support.\nWhy are you replying to me….that’s not my quote. Do you know how a blockquote works???\n@cassandra\nAnd you think this is 1920 or something?\nIsn’t it clear by now that oil is a strategic resource and that any deal with an American oil company comes with the very distinct possibility of military responses if that deal is changed for any reason?\nWas this not the lesson that was learned from at least the 1950’s in Iran?\nOil is a strategic resource. If you don’t want foreign involvement in your nation, then either learn to drill it yourself, defend it yourself, or leave it in the ground.\nAnonymous [AKA \"Job\"] says:\nDude, your literally telling us all you have two thousand dollars of gold. But you know some guy who has 40,000. Who cares? Do you know what new car prices are? I also know a guy with 40,000 — and he can drive it around! An economy is based on its productivity, it’s infrastructure, it’s capacity. If all the money went to hell, the banking system went to hell, the plumbing pipes would still be in the ground, the railroad tracks would still be there, the millions of Diesel engines would still be there. And the people with their culture and customs and manners and education would still be there. This is what counts.\nAnonymous [AKA \"WiseK\"] says:\n” U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.” since Venezuela had an oil surplus, they HAVE to invest a corresponding amount of money abroad. Therefore it is not necessarily against the interest of Venezuela to invest abroad, right? Although I can imagine that they force Venezuela to make crappy investments.\nSubscribe to This Comment Thread via RSS Subscribe to All The Saker Comments via RSS\nAuthor? The SakerRon UnzGustavo ArellanoGilad AtzmonKevin BarrettRobert BonomoPat BuchananPatrick CockburnStephen F. CohenJonathan CookJohn DerbyshireLinh DinhGuillaume DurocherTom EngelhardtPepe EscobarBonnie FaulknerEamonn FingletonNorman FinkelsteinPeter FrostPhilip GiraldiPaul GottfriedC.J. HopkinsMichael HudsonE. Michael JonesJay ManW. 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