On 22 October 2024, the BBC headlined “The ex-British army chief on why peace with Russia is not possible,” and at 5:00 in the podcast he said “We’ve been there [in Ukraine] since 2014, we’ve had a presence in Ukraine, we’ve been working with them, and trying to build up their capability,” and then he immediately skipped forward to 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. He didn’t say from what precise date in 2014 was — was it before, or instead only after, the 20 February 2014 coup — that the UK’s Army was “working with them, and trying to build up their capability,” to use those weapons so as to bring down the democratically elected President of Ukraine, but he went on to say that The West unfortunately “frittered away” “that wonderful unipolar moment” [the UK/U.S Governments’ control over the entire world] into “serious competition with the great powers — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — this Axis [he was saying that this is the modern equivalent of WW2’s “Axis” or fascist-imperialist powers], and I think the world is as dangerous as I’ve known it, in some respects more dangerous than the Cold War, because The System, you know, The International Order, which kind-of kept us safe, that is a period of extraordinary peace and prosperity, has ended … and we’ve now got these great powers, this Axis of powers, trying to overturn The World Order, and I don’t think that peace with Russia is possible.” He is saying that unless and until The West will conquer Russia, there wil be war between The West and Russia. “Russia sees itself in existential conflict with The West. Putin’s aims are … take over Ukraine, dominate its near east, including parts of Eastern Europe, and dismantle the Euro-Atlantic security order that we enjoy. And so, this isn’t a crisis, this is a campaign … and it will go on for decades. … And this is why Ukraine is so important, because if you allow Russia to prevail in Ukraine, if you follow the path we’re on at the moment, which is leading inexorably to a Russian victory … then The International Order is unfrayed, so things like sovereignty, territorial integrity, don’t matter, war wins, you begin to see the dismantling of The European Order — these are institutions that have been tested by this conflict, and on a practical level, you end up with a bitter and angry Ukraine, a quarter of the world’s grain supplies being held by Russia, all of its [Ukraine’s] extraordinary military capability and technology — Ukraine is the most heavily armed country in Europe now — falling to Russia, … we should be really clear that the cost of failure is far greater than the price it would take in order to make sure that Ukraine prevails. … This is about OUR security, but by keeping Ukraine in the fight, you can get to a point where you achieve a mutually [blurred syllable] stalemate. … And we need to give Ukraine the ability to strike deep into Russia [bomb The Kremlin].” He wants World War Three, which the UK’s Prime Minister and Denmark’s Prime Minister likewise want.
Tag: regime change
Did the Abraham Accords Pave the Way for Total War?
The Abraham Accords, the U.S.-sponsored alliance between Israel and several Arab states, were supposed to get the United States out of the Middle East. At least, that’s what many conservative proponents argued.
In 2020, neoconservative writer Michael Doran argued in Tablet magazine that the accords were an agreement to “step up and bear more of the burden so that America can step back.” Two years later, the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Affairs claimed that the accords were allowing Washington “to gradually withdraw from the Middle East to focus its efforts and resources on the Pacific Ocean, the rise of China, and the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) has even made this strategy a large part of his foreign policy pitch. A few months before being nominated as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance told the antiwar Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft that “combining the Abraham Accords approach with the enduring defeat of Hamas” will ensure that “Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”
That’s not how former Trump administration official Jared Kushner, a key architect of the accords, sees it. Over the weekend, he posted an essay to social media arguing that the United States should build on the “Abraham Accords breakthrough” by backing an Israeli war in Lebanon, and hinted that the time is ripe for a wider U.S. war. “Iran is now fully exposed,” he wrote, adding that “it’s not only Israel’s fight.”
Of course, the Trump administration has never pretended that the Abraham Accords were meant to allow U.S. disengagement; then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged about unlocking more “defense cooperation.” The Biden administration itself promised a permanent U.S. military commitment to Abraham Accords member Bahrain in order to entice Saudi Arabia to join the alliance.
But Kushner’s essay moves the goalposts from a defensive commitment to an offensive one. It’s now hard to pretend that the vision is anything less than a regime change campaign on the scale that old-fashioned neoconservatives could only dream of.
Kushner wrote his essay in response to the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah commander Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, had been engaged in a low-grade border war with Israel for the past year. Israel decided to assassinate Nasrallah after he kept demanding an end to the Israeli war in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire in Lebanon, an Israeli official told NBC.
The Israeli army is now beginning a ground incursion into Lebanon, after the Biden administration reportedly talked Israel out of a full-on ground invasion. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at even larger plans, calling Nasrallah’s assassination “Operation New Order” and stating that the fall of the Iranian government “will come a lot sooner than people think.”
Nasrallah’s assassination “is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel,” Kushner wrote. “The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight,” he added.
Kushner added that Iran is the “main issue between Lebanon and Israel” and brought up Hezbollah’s role in killing U.S. Marines in 1983, during the last U.S. military intervention in Lebanon.
Leaked files expose covert US government plot to ‘destabilize Bangladesh’s politics’
Leaked docs reveal that prior to the toppling of Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina, the US govt-funded International Republican Institute trained an army of activists including rappers and “LGBTQI people,” even hosting “transgender dance performances,” to achieve a national “power shift.” Institute staff said the activists “would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.”
On August 5, months of violent street protests finally toppled Bangladesh’s elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. When the military seized power and announced the imposition of a so-called “interim administration,” video footage showed Hasina fleeing to India aboard a helicopter. As vast swarms of student protesters overran the presidential palace, Western media outlets and many of their progressive-leaning consumers cheered the rebellion, framing it as a decisive defeat of fascism and the restoration of democratic rule.
Hasina’s replacement, Muhammad Yunus, is a longtime Clinton Global Initiative fellow granted a Nobel Prize for pioneering the dubious practice of micro-lending. While Yunus has hailed the “meticulously-designed” protest movement that thrust him into power, Hasina personally accused Washington of working to remove her from power over her alleged refusal to allow a US military base on Bangladeshi territory. The State Department has dismissed allegations of US meddling as “laughable,” with spokesman Vedant Patel telling reporters that “any implication that the United States was involved in Sheikh Hasina’s resignation is absolutely false.”
But now, leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone confirm the State Department was informed of efforts by the International Republican Institute (IRI) to advance an explicitly stated mission to “destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.” The documents are marked as “confidential and/or privileged.”
IRI is a Republican Party-run subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, which has fueled an array of regime change operations across the globe since it was conceived in the office of CIA Director William Casey over forty years ago.
The newly-uncovered files reveal how IRI spent millions in the lead-up to Hasina’s overthrow covertly coaching opposition parties and establishing a regime change network concentrated among the country’s urban youth. Among the GOP-run Institute’s front line foot soldiers were rappers, ethnic minority leaders, LGBT activists hosting “transgender dance performances” in the presence of US embassy officials – all groomed to facilitate what the US intelligence cutout called a “power shift” in Bangladesh.
Leaked documents reveal US intel cutout’s Iranian counter-revolution plans
Leaks expose a secret effort by retired National Endowment for Democracy leader Carl Gershman to consolidate war-hungry neoconservative control over Iran’s opposition, while channeling US government funds into his own pet regime change initiatives.
Leaked documents and emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal a seemingly covert effort by American regime change operatives to impose radical leadership on the remnants of Iran’s protest movement against the mandatory hijab, in order to topple the government of Iran.
The initiative was spearheaded by Carl Gershman, the longtime director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government-funded non-profit which advances regime change operations across the globe. Originally conceived by the Reagan administration’s CIA, the NED has meddled in elections and sponsored coup leaders from Nicaragua to Venezuela to Hong Kong, and beyond.
The leaks reveal how Gershman privately plotted to channel US State Department resources into the construction of an “Iran Freedom Coalition” composed of pro-Western Iranian activists and US neoconservative operatives who clamor for an American military assault on Iran.
While aiming to “mobilize international support” for the Women, Life, Freedom Movement, “and to do what is possible to aid [their] struggle,” the Freedom Coalition represents a clear attempt to impose an exiled leadership over the grassroots Iranian opposition which is directed and sponsored by the most belligerent elements in Washington.
Attempts by The Grayzone to reach several members of the Coalition for comment were unsuccessful. We were therefore unable to determine if those listed by Gershman had explicitly committed to participating, or had been named by the NED veteran as prospective leaders.
Regardless of the listed members’ level of participation, the composition of Gershman’s proposed Iran Freedom Coalition demonstrates how Iran’s self-proclaimed pro-democracy movement has become a plaything for the Bomb Iran lobby. Among those handpicked by Gershman to lead the initiative was William Kristol, the neocon impresario who has led a decades-long lobbying campaign for a US military invasion of Iran. Also selected was Joshua Muravchik, a flamboyant supporter of Israel’s Likud Party who insists that “war with Iran is probably our best option”
The Freedom Coalition’s Iranian members consist heavily of US government-sponsored cultural figures and staffers at interventionist Western think tanks like the Tony Blair Institute. While these figures are quoted in Western media as the leaders of Iran’s “freedom” struggle, their involvement in US government-backed campaigns like the one conceived by Gershman reveals them as little more than Persian front people for Washington warmongers.
Protests erupted in Iranian cities in September 2022 after the death of a young Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini, who was briefly taken into police custody in Tehran after violating moral codes mandating that women wear a hijab. The movement attracted the zealous support of Western governments, celebrities and feminist NGOs, which cheered it on even after it fizzled out in the streets.
As Gershman’s leaked proposal illustrates, these elements quickly hijacked the protests, inserting US government-sponsored exiles as the movement’s international face and voice, thus ensuring that their ultimate effect would be a deepening of US sanctions on average Iranians.
In an investigation published this August, The Grayzone revealed that after retiring from his longtime post as leader of the NED in 2021, Gershman became locked in a vicious power struggle with his younger, more socially progressive successors. The Iran leaks we have obtained show how even in retirement, Gershman has attempted a bureaucratic end-around, marshaling his connections in US foreign policy networks to channel government resources into his own pet regime change projects.
Secret chats expose decade of US meddling in Ecuador
Exclusive interviews and leaked messages reveal how a key ally of the US weaponized the fight against corruption and criminal organizations to selectively prosecute Ecuador’s heads of state, viciously persecuting Rafael Correa and his Revolución Ciudadana movement on flimsy evidence, while delaying investigations into much graver crimes allegedly committed by his successors.
Recently-leaked secret chats obtained by The Grayzone expose how Ecuadorian prosecutor Diana Salazar leaked information to a subject of an ongoing investigation, undermining the prosecution of associates of Ecuador’s current and previous US-aligned presidents, and acted hand-in-glove with the United States government, which essentially selected and controlled prosecutions from Washington.
The shocking revelations of corruption and US meddling in the geopolitically-crucial South American nation have been largely ignored by the US government and corporate media outlets.
The US Is Being Accused of Three Coups
The U.S. has a long legacy of coups. During the Cold War, the U.S. participated in no less than sixty-four covert coups. They did not end when the Cold War ended. Since then, the U.S. has carried out or facilitated several coups, including in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia, Egypt and Ukraine.
Recently, the U.S. has been accused of participation in three more coups. The degree of evidence and clarity varies, and, unlike in the above cases, these cases are not yet closed.
Haiti has a horrible history of American interference and coups. The latest confusing chapter reads like a convoluted novel. The United States, who at first seemed to be backing the enormously unpopular and increasingly authoritarian President of Haiti, Jovenal Moïse, has now been accused of involvement in his assassination.
Moïse was assassinated in 2021 in a confusing plot by men armed with high-caliber weapons who claimed to be with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a claim the U.S. State Department says is “absolutely false.”
But two of the plotters of the assassination now seem to have been revealed as DEA informants and a third as an informant for the FBI.
Protests/Color Revolution in Bangladesh Brings to Power Tax Evading Banker Who Plunged Poor People Into Debt Through Micro-finance Loan Scheme
On August 8, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and a pioneer in the issuance of micro-finance credit loans, was sworn in as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister after protests forced the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled the country for 20 of the last 30 years.
Yunus was the choice of student protest leaders who coordinated demonstrations that forced Hasina from power.
The demonstrations started over an unfair job allotment system and escalated after Hasina disparaged the protesters and deployed repressive police against them.
Many in Bangladesh had been weary over rising inflation and unemployment and tired of Hasina’s growing autocratic methods.
The violent side of the protests was evident in the throwing of Molotov cocktails at police, an attack on the only metro rail system in the capital Dhaka, and torching of the home of Shekikh Majibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader and Ms. Hasina’s father.[1]
The Pakistani-backed Jamaat-e-Islami Party, which was allied with the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP), played a significant role in the protests and now has a presence in the new interim government.[2]
Accusations of US Regime-Change Operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh Warrant UN Attention
Two former leaders of major South Asian countries have reportedly accused the United States of covert regime change operations to topple their governments. One of the leaders, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, languishes in prison, on a perverse conviction that proves Khan’s assertion. The other leader, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, fled to India following a violent coup in her country. Their grave accusations against the U.S., as reported in the world media, should be investigated by the UN, since if true, the U.S. actions would constitute a fundamental threat to world peace and to regional stability in South Asia.
The two cases seem to be very similar. The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
In the case of Pakistan, Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia, met with Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., on March 7, 2022. Ambassador Khan immediately wrote back to his capital, conveying Lu’s warning that PM Khan threatened U.S.-Pakistan relations because of Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” regarding Russia and Ukraine.
The Ambassador’s March 7 note (technically a diplomatic cypher) quoted Assistant Secretary Lu as follows: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” The very next day, members of the parliament took procedural steps to oust PM Khan.
On March 27, PM Khan brandished the cypher, and told his followers and the public that the U.S. was out to bring him down. On April 10, PM Khan was thrown out of office as the parliament acceded to the U.S. threat.
We know this in detail because of Ambassador Khan’s cypher, exposed by PM Khan and brilliantly documented by Ryan Grim of The Intercept, including the text of the cypher. Absurdly and tragically, PM Khan languishes in prison in part over espionage charges, linked to his revealing the cypher.
Unrest In Venezuela: It Was A US-Led Coup All Along
“No Venezuelan party that alleges to have 40 percent more votes than President Maduro (as the opposition claims) would hesitate to present the evidence to the National Electoral Council (CNE)…Whoever cries election fraud, must irrefutably prove it, the onus is on them not on the CNE to prove there wasn’t.” – Dr Olga Alvarez, Venezuelan constitutionalist expert.
Despite a monstrous internationally-coordinated, and grotesquely false media campaign of fake news that repeatedly quoted CIA-linked “pollsters” giving extreme right-wing candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, percentages of up to 80 percent of the vote and all supplemented by a propaganda campaign threatening violence, voiced principally by media-lionised, far-right politician, Maria Corina Machado, on July 28, 2024, the people of Venezuela calmly but solidly voted to continue the Bolivarian process by re-electing Nicolas Maduro for the 2025-2031 period.
President Maduro’s victory as in the first CNE bulletin with 80% of the ‘voting records’ (tally sheets) in was 51.2 percent, against Gonzalez 44.2 percent, then confirmed by the CNE second Bulletin with 97 percent of the voting records, Maduro with 52 percent (6,408,844 votes) and Gonzalez with 43 percent (5,326,104 votes.).
The unprecedented level of fake messaging coordination by the world corporate media, even when the target is Venezuela, was surprising. It was exceedingly well-coordinated with an astounding degree of content homogeneity that for months bombarded Venezuelans 24/7 with disinformation. Bombardment which grew in intensity in the few days before the election.
There is only one centre of power in the world with the muscle to command the world corporate media to carry out such an insidious campaign. This involved thousands of newspapers and TV channels going from the most reputable to the most loathsome. The media lies were incessantly repeated with a twist of hatred by tens of thousands of web networks spewing millions of messages daily by bot farms. Opposition leaders, as they have done many times in the past, unashamedly legitimised the campaign of hatred.
Firstly, there was the false media charge that elections in Venezuela are neither free nor fair, allegations with no evidence to back it up. The media just echo the opposition’s claims of ‘fraud’ when they lose, but accept the results when they win. Venezuela’s electoral system has been electronic since 2004, and has been substantially improved over the years with biometric authentication since 2012, yet the opposition has cried fraud in 2004, 2017, 2018, 2023 and now in 2024, but not in 2015 when the opposition got nearly two thirds majority in the National Assembly (which President Maduro recognised immediately).
To top it all up, every election has at least 16 audits at which all political contenders participate and, unless one audit is approved, the next one cannot be undertaken. Venezuela’s election system is fully auditable, verifiable, reliable and fraud-proof, the vote is secret. To this day, the opposition has totally failed to produce irrefutable evidence of their patently false allegations. The only time they promised evidence of ‘fraud’ was for the August 2004 recall referendum (at which Maria Corina Machado-led, US-funded ‘NGO’, Súmate, played a central role) was when opposition politician, Henry Ramos Allup, immediately after the referendum result was announced (won by President Chávez by 59 percent), promised to produce the evidence ‘within 24 hours.’ We are still waiting.
This is Why They Hate Us: Biden Color Revolution in Bangladesh Becomes Bloody Riot – Brought to You by Nuland, Blinken and Donald Lu
Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Hindus continued in Bangladesh after what many observers are calling a US-sponsored “color revolution”, apparently instigated by Former US Ambassador Peter Haas and Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu. India is evacuating its citizens from Bangladesh as Muslim death squads target Hindus and even their former Communist allies.
India began evacuating non-essential diplomatic personnel from Dhaka, flying 400 people from Dhaka to New Delhi on Wednesday August 7, 2024 on special flights.
Hindu houses and businesses were attacked and looted by mobs in at least 27 districts yesterday, The Daily Star reported. Close to 25 people have been killed and over 150 hospitalized in the fire at the Zabeer International Hotel, which was set on fire by protestors on Monday.
In a video, Islamists can be seen encircling a dead victim lying on the ground, checking the victim’s private parts for circumcision. “Shouting ‘Hindu, Hindu’ over the corpse, the crowd hovering over the dead body laughs, realizing that the man is a Hindu because he is not circumcised,“ OP India reported.
The home of Hindu music star Rahul Ananda, a 140-year-old house in Dhaka, was looted and set on fire by an Islamic mob Monday, destroying his collection of 3,000 handmade musical instruments.
“They’re Hindus, kill them all”, Muslim youths said as they attacked a family of 4 Hindus in in Rajkot district.
Muslim radicals Jamaat-e-Islami turned on their former allies of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, killing and mutilating their leaders.
Hellbound and Down 
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