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Media Advisory: Could U.S. and Russia Clash Over Syria?
News conference speakers will include: * CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou * Former State Department official Matthew Hoh * Christie Edwards, Chair of the ASIL Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict and an advisor to the Center for Civilians in Conflict on international humanitarian, human rights, and gender issues. * David Swanson, World Beyond War * Norman Solomon, RootsAction.org
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Sessions “Wrongly Targets National Security Whistleblowers”
“The Justice Department’s crackdown on leaks wrongly targets and punishes national security whistleblowers, who have no meaningful internal channels for dissent or meaningful protection from retaliation. The crackdown is a backdoor way of attacking journalists on whom the public relies to be informed about government misconduct.”
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Russia Sanctions: A Dangerous Political Football
“By voting in new sanctions against Russia, Congress torpedoed the White House’s dream of rapprochement with the Kremlin. Yet its real target was not a foreign foe but an unpopular Republican president threatened by impeachment over alleged electoral manipulation. With the commander in chief dogged by perceived softness on Moscow and crippled by plummeting approval ratings, Congress chose foreign policy as the weapon with which to deliver its coup de grâce.”
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Enough About Russia? U.S. Openly Interfering in Venezuela, Violating OAS Charter
“Under U.S. law, the president’s executive order has to state an obvious falsehood, that there is ‘a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security’ of the United States caused by Venezuela.”
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Venezuela: Demonization of Government, Glamorization of Opposition
“The critical thing to understand is that Venezuela is a democracy — has as much right to be called that as any other country on earth, certainly as much as the U.S. and its allies in the region like Colombia and Mexico. Saying otherwise is part of a strategy deployed for the last 15 years to whitewash violent and undemocratic opposition leaders.”
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Pakistan’s Sharif Out: A New Independence?
“Geopolitically, the establishment in Pakistan has been distancing itself from Washington and moving toward China. Hence, this would seem to be a setback for the U.S.-India-Saudi block, which was increasingly seeing Nawaz Sharif as a pliant lackey with whom they could do business.”
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U.S. Good, Russia Bad?
“One of the reasons why the United States has so little credibility in making the case against Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election is the sordid record of the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency in conducting regime change and even political assassination to influence political conditions around the world.”
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The Plot to Scapegoat Russia
“The pretext for these sanctions is somewhere between dubious and laughable. First and foremost, the American public has yet to be presented with any reliable evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Moreover, the claims of Russian meddling are patently hypocritical given the U.S. government’s own meddling in many other countries in recent decades, including in the 1996 Russian presidential elections.”
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Trump Backing Away from CIA in Syria?
“President Trump has wisely ended aid to the anti-Assad groups, but whether they will now turn on the United States is unclear. Unfortunately, he has doubled down on support for the Kurdish-Arab coalition fighting ISIS. Where these arms will eventually end up is anyone’s guess. Even if ISIS is defeated, what is next? Will Trump allow Iranian-backed militias and Assad’s forces to take over territory that ISIS has abandoned or increase supplies for the Kurds/Arabs to fight them?”
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How Trump Helps Netanyahu Push Palestinians into a Corner
“Israel and the U.S. moved to punish Palestinians for UNESCO’s decisions. It began when the Israeli Knesset began pushing laws that make life even more difficult for Palestinian Jerusalemites, including a law that limits the Muslim call for prayer.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn