So here it is, the announcement we've been waiting for ... all aboard for another cruise on the new and improved U.S.S. Magic Socialist with your captain Bernie Sanders at the helm! If you're not familiar with this extraordinary vessel, it's like the luxury liner in The Magic Christian, except catering to credulous American socialists instead of the British filthy rich. Tickets start at just $27 dollars ... so hurry, because they're going fast!

That's right, folks, Bernie is back, and this time it's not just a sadistic prank where he gets you all fired up about his fake "revolution" for fifteen months, gets cheated out of the nomination, then backs whichever corporate-bought candidate the Democratic Party orders you to vote for.

No, this time the Bernster really means it! This time, when the DNC rigs the primaries to hand the nomination to Harris, or Biden, or some billionaire android like Michael Bloomberg, Bernie is not going to break your heart by refusing to run as an independent candidate, unbeholden to the corporations and oligarchs that own both political parties, or otherwise make you feel like a sucker for buying his "revolution" schtick. He's not going to fold like a fifty dollar suit and start parroting whatever propaganda the corporate media will be prodigiously spewing to convince you the Russians and Nazis are coming unless you vote for the empire's pre-anointed puppet!

Bernie would never dream of doing that ... or at least he'd never dream of doing that twice.

This is the concluding part of our series exploring billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's broad sweep of influence over global media and surveillance enterprises. Part 1 examined Omidyar's use of investment to build a vast and tangled web of influence in NGOs and media outlets around the world; Part 2 illuminated his involvement with regime-change networks and the surveillance state.

Flinging accusations of cultism while funding the Dalai Lama

Since pumping $100 million into a network of news outlets, fact-checking sites, film projects and press-advocacy groups, Pierre Omidyar has emerged as one of the most quietly influential media funders in the country. All along, he has kept out of the spotlight, avoiding the scrutiny and attack campaigns that have followed other politically influential oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and George Soros.

Omidyar lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, far from the American mainland. From there, he courts famous gurus and wields his media empire against a Hawaiian lawmaker who has emerged as the most outspoken opponent of the national security state and its militaristic agenda.

"To [Omidyar] it's about... integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God's-eye view of the world - to manage and control society more efficiently."

¬ Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley: The Military History of the Internet

As we have seen in part one of this investigation, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change. However, Omidyar has also sought state-of-the-art design solutions from a shady U.S. government national security consulting firm with a myriad of ties to the hawkish D.C. foreign policy establishment.

In February of last year, USAID's Global Development Lab published a series of reports furnished for it by a small, Arlington, Virginia-based company focused on design solutions for national security problems, with a mere 10 employees listed on its website and eight on its LinkedIn page. Those reports caught the attention of journalist Michael Igoe at Devex on Tuesday.

The company, Frontier Design Group, analyzed the feasibility of essentially militarizing USAID. The report proposals like "Rapid Expeditionary Development" (RED) teams. Those teams would be embedded with U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration outside of typical USAID areas of operation.

The Venezuela 'regime change' bandwagon rolls on, with the Western media doing its best to create the 'reality' where millions of Venezuelans are starving or fleeing the country, no one supports the Maduro government because he is a 'brutal dictator', and everyone loves the new US-appointed leader Juan Guaido. This is 'Iraqi WMDs' redux, it's Qaddafi 'bombing his own people' rehashed, Assad 'using chemical weapons against his own people', all revisited and retooled for Venezuela.

The first physical salvos in this latest chapter of the globalists' war on normal human beings were fired yesterday when US stooges set fire to 3 trucks carrying 'humanitarian aid' at the Colombia-Venezuela border crossing. For good measure, a handful of 'defectors' from the Venezuelan Gendarmerie rammed border barriers with armored vehicles, seriously injuring several people. Western media outlets tried to claim that the trucks were set on fire by Venezuelan security forces firing tear gas canisters, but the culprits were undoubtedly US/Guaido agents tasked with creating the right 'optics' to support the bogus narrative that the Western media has been pushing for months. In the southeast of the country, near the border with Brazil, clashes broke out between opposing factions and 4 people were killed as 'unknown gunmen' fired on the crowds. In short, for anyone familiar with the details of the previous 68 coups carried out by US governments around the world, the situation in Venezuela is following the worn-out playbook, line for line.

Meanwhile in France, the 15th consecutive weekend of Yellow Vest protests took place with no sign of diminishing numbers. The much-hated Macron government has repeatedly tried and failed to tarnish the image of the protestors. First they were labeled 'far-right extremists', then they were denounced as 'Russian agents', but now the 'big guns' have been brought out and, according to much of the Western media, the Yellow Vest protestors are, to a man and woman, 'dirty anti-semites'. Someone should tell Macron that when you have to resort to such discredited canards, you really should cut your losses and admit defeat. There's little chance of the 'Princes of Paris' doing that, however; they (and most of the Western elite) have spent many years increasing and consolidating their power, and the very last thing they will do at this stage is relinquish even a small part of it.

On this week's NewsReal podcast, Joe & Niall discuss the 'revolutions' in Venezuela (1st hour) and France (last 20 minutes).


Running Time: 01:19:17

Download: MP3

Sen. Marco Rubio and coup leaders claim the Venezuelan National Guard burned US aid trucks on the bridge in Colombia. But all available evidence points in the opposite direction.

The Trump administration's coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID "humanitarian aid" across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge (also know as the Puente Binacional Tienditas) connecting Colombia to Venezuela.

The trucks failed to reach the other side - but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border, explained to journalist Dan Cohen, the humanitarian "aid" was a purely symbolic provocation aimed at discrediting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in international eyes and generating waves of destabilizing violence.

By the end of the day, the trucks lined up on the Francisca de Paula Santander bridge were flanked by gangs of guarimberos.

What is the only way to demonstrate one's faith in the God's complete power over the fate and destiny of humans? Under what conditions is it permitted to let a non-Jew die, or to kill unarmed civilians in warfare? These are the kinds of questions asked and answered by the theologians and ideologues of the more radical forms of Islam and Judaism. But the reasoning by which the answers are found, and the assumptions about human nature that determine the answers, say more about the individuals doing the reasoning than they do about the ideologies themselves.

Today on the Truth Perspective we continue our look at the work of Shiraz Maher on Salafi-Jihadism, the ideology behind groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, and introduce the work of Israel Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion, on how the modern state of Israel has been shaped by the ideology of classical Judaism. While diametrically opposed in some ways, the two religious ideologies share much in common, specifically a peculiar view of human nature and a doctrinaire, legalistic mode of reasoning and enforcement of religious rules.

Running Time: 01:35:25

Download: MP3

In this analysis, John Pilger looks back over the Chavez years in Venezuela, including his own travels with Hugo Chavez, and the current US and European campaign to overthrow Nicolas Maduro in a 'coup by media' and to return Latin America to the 19th and 20th centuries.

Travelling with Hugo Chavez, I soon understood the threat of Venezuela. At a farming co-operative in Lara state, people waited patiently and with good humour in the heat. Jugs of water and melon juice were passed around. A guitar was played; a woman, Katarina, stood and sang with a husky contralto.

"What did her words say?" I asked.

"That we are proud," was the reply.

The applause for her merged with the arrival of Chavez. Under one arm he carried a satchel bursting with books. He wore his big red shirt and greeted people by name, stopping to listen. What struck me was his capacity to listen.

At a time when its legitimacy is being questioned by most Europeans, the EU Commission is certainly not making any friends with its latest version of a 'Copyright Directive' which displays remarkable contempt for the public and the public interest groups whose objections it supposedly took into account when redrafting the copyright reform legislation.

Last week a 'final draft' was agreed by both the German and French governments. The main matter of contention was whether to allow an exemption for small businesses under Article 13. France said no; Germany yes. In the end Germany caved and agreed to amendments which would crush small platforms in favor of US Big Tech. Gee, thanks Merkel.

Incredibly, that was the only point France and Germany had any disagreement over - considering that the rest of Article 13, as well as Article 11, are draconian and entirely miss the ostensible reason of achieving fair protections and compensation for content-creators of copyrighted works. Although supporters claim that the Directive helps content-creators, it doesn't actually use or define that term. The 'rights holder' tends to be large conglomerates (such as the film or music industries) and content-creators who aren't beholden to these entities will suddenly find themselves unable to make a living.

In any case, while the EU Commission states that "applying the principles of better regulation will ensure that measures are evidence-based, well designed and deliver tangible and sustainable benefits for citizens, business and society as a whole" (p.3), they've obviously decided that this doesn't apply to Articles 11 and 13. Eurocrats did conduct research on those measures but cherry-picked only the findings which supported their agenda and ignored others.

There has been considerable speculation in recent months concerning reasons why the S-300 air defense systems supplied to the Syrian Arab Army by the Russian Federation have yet to fire a shot in anger at Israeli aircraft encroaching on its airspace and launching ordnance against a variety of targets on Syria's territory. This video attempts to explore a reasonably complete range of explanations. On the one hand, the S-300 batteries in Syria operate under a handicap of operational and political restrictions. However, it would be a mistake to believe that just because missiles are not being launched, that the weapons in question are ineffective.

If you've been following the Jussie Smollett story, you'll know most of the details but for those of you who missed it let me give a brief overview. On Jan. 29, Smollett claimed to have been attacked, at 2am in very liberal Chicago, by two men wearing MAGA hats who wrapped a rope around his neck, beat him and yelled racial and anti-gay slurs and "this is MAGA country". To anyone with two firing neurons, this sounded more like something out of a Hollywood script than real life. The Chicago police department took the claim very seriously however, probably because of the national attention the story garnered, and conducted a very detailed investigation.

The result was that Smollett's claims were exposed as entirely false, as was the testimony of the two "attackers", who were revealed to be acquaintances of Smollett's and whom he paid to perpetrate the hoax. Smollett allegedly concocted the plan after previously sending himself a racist and homophobic letter using letters cut from a magazine. The letter failed to get much attention, presumably leading Smollett to decide that a more theatrical act was required.

The Chicago PD gave the evidence to a grand jury which indicted Smollett yesterday. He turned himself in to authorities today, where he was arrested for felony disorderly conduct for filing a false report of a crime.

The Smollett story is a perfect example of the apparently powerful drive by those on the 'Left' to portray America during Trump's presidency as inherently racist, sexist and xenophobic. While Smollett was the architect of his own hoax, many on the Left have tolerated being the target of this kind of hoax because it's "worth it" in order to highlight the bigger societal issues. This is wrong on many levels, not least because the increasing number of these kinds of hoaxes serves to cast preemptive doubt on the legitimate claims of real victims of real hate crimes.