26.03.2015 edition of South Front's Ukrainian crisis news

1) OSCE monitors refute reports of their coming under fire in Shirokino... but are they covering for Kiev forces?

2) Porky reckons Kiev militias now constitute one of the top 5 'strongest armies in Europe'

3) Russia's convoy with humanitarian aid for Donbass arrives at state border

4) Oil prices shoot up after Saudi Arabia attacks Yemen... bizarrely, the Dollar weakens rather than climb with oil

A new Inspector General's report on sexual harassment reveals that DEA agents engaged in sex parties with prostitutes hired with money from drug cartels. The report is the conclusion of an investigation sparked by the 2012 revelations that Secret Service agents and at least two DEA agents had hired prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia. The Inspector General report reveals these practices were carried out over a period of several years and involved more DEA agents than previously thought.

According to the report, 7 of 10 DEA agents admitted to attending parties at U.S.-leased facilities in an unspecified country (a law enforcement official identified it as Colombia and the report refers to the Colombia incidents elsewhere). A foreign official "alleged providing protection for the DEA agents' weapons and property during the parties." The report also says other foreign officials claimed three DEA agents in particular "were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members."

"These settlements, and the occupation more broadly, are financially unsustainable on their own, and must be propped up by far right-wing Jewish and Christian Zionist funds from abroad," a member of a group campaigning against the practice told MintPress News.

As U.S. taxpayers prepare to send to Israel another $3.1 billion of their earnings, plus loan guarantees, discounted weaponry and other perks, two campaigns aim to shed light on organizations funding the Israeli occupation by their own initiative — and at taxpayer expense, no less.

The groups, opponents say, are deeply complicit in Israel's violations of international law and the human rights of Palestinians.

U.S. government assistance to Israel does not end with the $121 billion in direct aid it has provided since 1949. U.S. charities also send billions of dollars, funded, in part, by taxpayers as a whole through the organizations' tax-deductible status.

The scale of their support cannot be determined. A 2014 study of over 3,600 Jewish organizations by the Jewish Daily Forward found they sent $1.7 billion, or 11.9 percent of their budgets, to Israel each year.

But like U.S. Zionism in general, organizations voluntarily funding Israel are not exclusively Jewish, nor did the Forward claim to have fully reviewed even the Jewish sector.

Further, under normal circumstances, identifying the overseas recipients of these grants can prove impossible, as U.S. organizations have no obligations to release them. Only if most charities choose to publicize their foreign projects will the taxpaying public have the opportunity to know what projects they're subsidizing.

Eric Worrall writes: It looks like NOAA have found a new way to stifle FOIA inquiries from the public. According to Steve Goddard, NOAA have just demanded a $262,000 administrative fee for zipping up a few raw data files.

Steve Goddard has published a scan of the outrageous fee demand he and fellow FOIA requestor Kent Clizbe received from NOAA administrator Maria S Williams. The letter, sent on March 17th, demands $262,000 by March 24th, or further communication - otherwise Maria says they will consider the matter closed.

Fee Notification Letter

The NOAA staff directory lists Maria Williams as the Chief of Staff Support Services Branch.

For the full story read Steve's post - Freedom Isn't Free.

As an IT expert with over 20 years of experience, my expert opinion on the claim by NOAA that it would require $262,000 to gather up a few computer files and send them to Steve is that it sounds like a complete crock. Even if some of the files are in printed form, they can just be run through a scanner - my automatic page feed scanner can process a page every few seconds, even cheap scanners can process thousands of pages per day. If the files are too big to put in an email (likely), for trivial cost NOAA could publish them on a password protected web page - it would take at most a day to set up such a web page, and add the files to it.

If NOAA's data files really are so poorly catalogued that several man years of effort would be required to find them, this is something NOAA should be fixing on their own time. If this is the case, NOAA should not be attempting to charge FOIA petitioners outrageous fees to cover NOAA's own incompetence.

A lobbyist for Monsanto claimed that it was safe to drink "a quart" of the company's Roundup pesticide, but pointedly refused to try even a sip when offered a glass during an interview with French TV before storming off the set.

Patrick Moore told a Canal+ journalist that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world's most widely used weed killer, was not responsible for an increase in cancer rates in Argentina.

"You can drink a whole quart of it and it won't hurt you," he insisted.

When the journalist informed him that a cup of the herbicide was prepared for him, Moore bristled, saying: "I'm not stupid."

But when pressed by the interviewer if the substance was dangerous, Moore replied: "It's not dangerous to humans." He added that many try to commit suicide by drinking Roundup, but "fail regularly."

He then walked off set, calling the interviewer a "jerk."

The rich and reactionary in Venezuela and their allies in Washington celebrated when Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez died two years ago on March 5, 2013. US President Barack Obama did not even make the customary and common courtesy of sending his condolences for the passing of a head of state.

Instead the US empire stepped up its demonization campaign against Chávez's legacy in order to bury his Bolivarian Revolution. In contrast to his treatment of Chávez, Obama was effusive in his praise of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who died in January 2015 and was the leader of a country which Amnesty International rightly labels one of the most tyrannical and repressive regimes in the world.

¡Yo Soy Chávez!

So why did poor and progressive people in Venezuela, throughout Latin America, and indeed all over the world mourn Chávez's passing and proclaim ¡Yo soy Chávez! ('I am Chávez')?

Lisa Sullivan, a School of the America Watch activist who has lived in the barrios of Venezuela where she brought up her three children, had this to say at the time of Chávez's passing: "Let there be no doubt: the Venezuelan people have come of age. Chávez is gone, but what resonates on every street and every plaza today: Yo soy Chávez. I am Chávez. I am the leader, the dreamer, the visionary, the teacher, the defender of justice, the weaver of another world that is possible."

© Munch'Vampire' by Munch

Introduction

To the growing army of critics of US military intervention, who also reject the mendacious claims by American officials and their apologists of 'world leadership', Washington is engaged in 'empire-building".

But the notion that the US is building an empire, by engaging in wars to exploit and plunder countries' markets, resources and labor, defies the realities of the past two decades. US wars, including invasions, bombings, occupations, sanctions, coups and clandestine operations have not resulted in the expansion of markets, greater control and exploitation of resources or the ability to exploit cheap labor. Instead US wars have destroyed enterprises, reduced access to raw materials, killed, wounded or displaced productive workers around the world, and limited access to lucrative investment sites and markets via sanctions.

In other words, US global military interventions and wars have done the exact opposite of what all previous empires have pursued: Washington has exploited (and depleted) the domestic economy to expand militarily abroad instead of enriching it.

Why and how the US global wars differ from those of previous empires requires us to examine (1) the forces driving overseas expansion; (2) the political conceptions accompanying the conquest, the displacement of incumbent rulers and the seizure of power and; (3) the reorganization of the conquered states and the accompanying economic and social structures to sustain long-term neo-colonial relations.

Empire Building: The Past

Europe built durable, profitable and extensive empires, which enriched the 'mother country', stimulated local industry, reduced unemployment and 'trickled down' wealth in the form of better wages to privileged sectors of the working class. Imperial military expeditions were preceded by the entry of major trade enterprises (British East India Company) and followed by large-scale manufacturing, banking and commercial firms. Military invasions and political takeovers were driven by competition with economic rivals in Europe, and later, by the US and Japan.

The goal of military interventions was to monopolize control over the most lucrative economic resources and markets in the colonized regions. Imperial repression was directed at creating a docile low wage labor force and buttressing subordinate local collaborators or client-rulers who facilitated the flow of profits, debt payments, taxes and export revenues back to the empire.

Imperial wars were the beginning, not the end, of 'empire building'. What followed these wars of conquest was the incorporation of pre-existing elites into subordinate positions in the administration of the empire. The 'sharing of revenues', between the imperial economic enterprises and pre-existing elites, was a crucial part of 'empire building'. The imperial powers sought to 'instrumentalize' existing religious, political, and economic elites' and harness them to the new imperial-centered division of labor. Pre-existing economic activity, including local manufacturers and agricultural producers, which competed with imperial industrial exporters, were destroyed and replaced by malleable local traders and importers (compradors). In summary, the military dimensions of empire building were informed by economic interests in the mother country. The occupation was pre-eminently concerned with preserving local collaborative powers and, above all, restoring and expanding the intensive and extensive exploitation of local resources and labor, as well as the capture and saturation of local markets with goods from the imperial center.

Washington is questioning Beijing's latest restrictions limiting the sale of foreign technology to Chinese banks, claiming the measures would hurt global trade, according to a filing with the World Trade Organization.


The China Banking Regulatory Commission's (CBRC) guidelines for IT security equipment used in banks has raised new trade concerns with the United States, according to a document published by the World Trade Organization on Thursday. The concerns were made public during the first Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Committee meeting of 2015, when the US was supported by the European Union and Canada. They claim China's new rules announced in December go beyond the usual practice for the regulation of information and communication technology equipment in the commercial banking sector.

Nearly 40 civilians have lost their lives as neighboring Saudi Arabia pushes ahead with its airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in Yemen, health officials say.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP on Friday that twelve of the 39 victims were killed when Saudi warplanes struck residential areas close to al-Samaa military base, north of the capital city of Sana'a.

The military base is used by army units believed to be loyal to former Republican Guard Commander Brigadier General Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Three airstrikes also targeted the presidential compound in southern Sana'a in the wee hours of Friday, witnesses said.

The Saudi military aircraft also pounded an army brigade controlled by Ansarullah forces in Yemen's western province of Amran as well as arms depots in the Malaheez region in the northwestern city of Sa'ada, located 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Sana'a.

Saudi Arabia, in an unprecedented act of unprovoked unilateral military aggression against Yemen by the autocratic absolute monarchy, was allegedly triggered in a US-backed attempt to restore what Riyadh is calling the "legitimate government of Yemen."

What exactly constitutes a legitimate government is not clear for a despotic regime where elections are not held, women cannot drive, and enemies of the state are beheaded in medieval displays of public barbarism not entirely unlike their ideological ambassadors among the so-called "Islamic State" or ISIS.

The Yemeni Houthi militias are in fact the only viable force fighting Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Persian Gulf State located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. With their recent successes on the battlefield leaving US-backed proxies in shambles, including apparently Al Qaeda itself, the West has decided it must take whatever measures necessary to stop them and reassert US interests in the region.