Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY [LINK | Article]
Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
Britain violates human rights, disregards international law, denies lawful political asylum granted to Assange by Ecuador;
its Crown Prosecution Service advises Sweden that this matter is not being handled by the British authorities as just 'another extradition request' & the CPS advises Sweden NOT to interview Assange in Britain;
so Britain and Sweden can deny journalist Julian Assange legal defence;
as the aim of both Britain and Sweden is to enforce extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden, in order to facilitate 'storage' & extradition of Assange to the US (which has had a sealed US secret Grand Jury indictment against Assange from at January 2011, when this was confirmed), once the US has built its 'case'.
Britain subverts both democracy and justice,
but you wouldn't think so from this shameless political propaganda from Hugo Swire,
who is accusing Ecuador of exactly what Britain has prevented:
justice for journalist Julian Assange, target of US-Anglo-Allied POLITICAL PERSECUTION:
After well over 5 years of detention and political persecution in Britain
UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGA) concludes that Julian Assange has been held arbitrarily, in violation of his rights
...
Predictably Britain 'disputes' the UNWGA decision:
Brits are intent on maintaining a hold on Assange so he can be transferred to the Americans,
who have spent all these years mounting a 'case' against Assange and WikiLeaks.
like the man says, it's international law that Britain signed up for & took part in for 16 months:
Hey, UN puppets ...
this is Hugo, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office Minister of State guy ...
making light of Britain violating democracy, justice & international law to politically persecute a brave, award-winning Aussie journalist-publisher who exposed US-British and allied war crimes
...
that involved at least
one ILLEGAL WAR (Iraq):
While the US-Anglo Evil Empire Twins and their battery of human rights mouthpieces make all the right media noises about the 'oppressive' Maldives government ...
... that's permitted convicted terrorist Mohamed Nasheed to travel to London for medical treatment ...
... the Evil Empire conspirator hypocrites
deny journalist Julian Assange medical treatment,
deny Assange liberty, deny Assange rights
and subject Assange to over 5 years arbitrary detention,
at a cost of millions of pounds to the British taxpayer:
Maldives lambastes Amal Clooney for 'compelling tale'
Ali Naafiz, Haveeru Online Jan 19, 2016 - 08:55
Government lashed out Monday at international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney after she claimed that democracy was "dead" in the Indian Ocean island.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News Friday evening, Clooney took aim at political repression, human rights abuse and rising jihadism in the Maldives, where a USD2 billion tourist economy is fuelled by pristine beaches, blue lagoons and coral reefs.
"Democracy is dead in the Maldives," said Clooney, in her first interview in the US.
"Literally, if there were an election now there would be no one to run against the president. Every opposition leader is either behind bars or being pursued by the government through the courts."
Defending the administration of her half-brother Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, foreign minister Dhunya Maumoon told Reuters that Clooney had "spun a compelling tale" but it was not true.
"My appeal to the rest of the world is to have a good understanding and not be persuaded purely by charm-filled Amal Clooney when she goes and gives some of these stories," she said.
In her interview, Clooney, who is part of the international legal team defending former president Mohamed Nasheed, warned that "democracy is dead" in Maldives, insisting that visitors need to be told of the human rights violations in the popular tourist destination as they seek targeted sanctions against government officials.
Nasheed was jailed for 13 years in March on terror charges related to the arrest of Chief Criminal Judge Abdulla Mohamed when he was still president in 2012.
In addition to the former president’s local attorneys, he is represented by a high profile international legal team which includes legal heavyweights such as London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, her fellow British attorney Ben Emmerson and her Washington based co-counsel Jared Genser.
Nasheed had sought permission to go abroad for a surgery on his back, but Correctional Service had repeatedly denied the request insisting that the microdiscectomy surgery could be done in the Maldives.
However, in an apparent U-turn, foreign ministry announced on twitter Saturday the government had granted permission to Nasheed to travel to the UK to undergo surgery, at his request. He departed to the UK on Monday for medical treatment.
Government’s U-turn on Nasheed came in the wake of visits by the Indian foreign secretary and two senior Sri Lankan ministers which also coincides with a visit by the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of UK Hugo Swire who arrived earlier Sunday.
Indian foreign secretary Jaishankar arrived in Maldives Monday afternoon on a one-day official visit as a special envoy of the Indian prime minister. President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom briefed Jaishankar on the political developments in the Maldives and secured the regional superpower's backing in domestic and international affairs.
Sri Lankan foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera and finance minister Ravi Karunanayake arrived in Maldives Wednesday evening on an official visit.
The jailing of former president Nasheed and other politically motivated trials have made the Maldives the subject of mounting international criticism.
International pressure was further fuelled after a UN panel ruled Nasheed's incarceration illegal.
The former president’s lawyers have stepped up their efforts to impose targeted sanctions against the Maldives and its leadership, following the ruling by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention late September declaring his imprisonment as arbitrary.
In the latest development, the European parliament passed a resolution last month condemning the human rights abuses of President Yameen's government, and calling for targeted sanctions to be imposed on his officials and supporters in the business community. http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/65715
Moral mercenary Amal Clooney works both sides of the human rights contest Date February 1, 2016 | Comments 143
Paul Sheehan
Amal Clooney is a moral mercenary. She's a lawyer. As the fiancée and then wife of George Clooney, she was thrust into a global spotlight, where she has been cast as a moral paragon, a human rights crusader for the downtrodden.
Clooney is also Amal Alamuddin, Oxford-educated, fee-charging lawyer who works both sides of the human rights contest.
None of these selections from Clooney's resume should be read as an affront to her character. All accused are entitled to a robust legal defence.
Acting for the defence of her latest client, Clooney has engaged in some questionableadvocacy. It is one thing to proclaim your client's innocence, it is quite another to misrepresent the facts.
In an opinion piece published in The Guardian on April 30 last year, Clooney wrote that one of her clients, a former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, had been removed from power by an armed coup: "His presidency was cut short in February 2012 when he was forced to resign at gunpoint."
This is a central plank in the case that Nasheed is a martyr for democracy.
But the Commission of National Inquiry that examined Nasheed's departure from office found no evidence that he was deposed in a coup. The commission was advised by a former judge of the New Zealand Court of Appeal, a former judge of the Singapore Supreme Court, and a professor of human rights law at the University of Ottawa.
The commission found Nasheed had voluntarily tendered his resignation at 1.43pm on February 7, 2012, and that his resignation was not coerced. His replacement was sworn in later that day by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in accordance with the constitution.
The next day, Nasheed, a former journalist, told the media: "I was forced from office at gunpoint."
The commission found this inflammatory claim to be a fabrication: "Rather, it is evident that President Nasheed [had] lost the support of the coalition … which had brought him to power … There was no illegal coercion or intimidation nor any coup d'état. The commission received no evidence supporting or to substantiate these allegations."
Also damning is a taped phone conversation in which Nasheed, on the night of his resignation, calls for violence from his supporters:
"If we are able to find people willing to fight, we should let them loose. Find some young people in Male who are ready to fight the police. I am not sure we can get them. But I want to let them loose on the police tonight."
In other words, there is no substance to the foundation of the martyrdom narrative that Clooney has been propagating.
Among critics of her conduct isDr Michael Kennedy of Western Sydney University. Kennedy, a former police detective, has spent the past three years delivering a degree program in the Maldives for police, customs and immigration officers.
He believes Clooney has used her celebrity to engage in media manipulation:
"An inquiry by the Commonwealth secretariat supported none of Nasheed's claims that he was forced to resign after a military coup. It's seldom reported that in his pursuit of an old enemy, a Supreme Court Justice, he ignored the constitution and bypassed the Police Service. He and his legal team are now calling for sanctions against the Maldives. This could cause widespread human rights abuses by way of hardship and unemployment."
Nasheed, who last March was convicted of contentious and dubious charges of terrorism, is now in London to receive medical treatment.
He has been given a 30-day release from prison. He has said he will not return. Instead, he has used his time in London to traduce the Maldives as a country rife with Islamic fundamentalism, a claim calculated to inflict damage on a tourist-based economy.
Clooney has chimed in: "It may be famous for the pristine holiday beaches … but the Maldives has taken a dark authoritarian turn."
Kennedy, among others, disputes this as legal hyperbole. Nasheed's very freedom in London undermines his argument of sinister repression.
Clooney herself has taken work from the dark, authoritarian side.Her most notorious client wasAbdullah Senussi, responsible for the murder or imprisonment of thousands of people as head of internal security for the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
He was convicted, in absentia, of having a key role in the bombing of a passenger jet in 1989 in which 170 people died. He is implicated in the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 259 people were killed.
Another client of Clooney was King Hasan bin Isa al Khalifa of Bahrain. She acted as a legal adviser to the king during the Bassiouni Commission of Inquiry into the government's suppression of an uprising by Shiite Muslims in Bahrain in 2011.
The commission was set up by the king. It found that 46 people, including five members of the security forces, had been killed, that police had used excessive force, and 559 people had claimed they were tortured while in custody.
None of this should be read as an affront to her character. All accused are entitled to a robust legal defence. Barristers are ethically bound to mount a robust defence.
Last year, Nasheed's legal team filed a case with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an advisory body to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Working Group issued an opinion stating that Nasheed's incarceration was a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The government of the Maldives rejected this legal opinion. It also contends it is not bound by this opinion.Nasheed, by abrogating the terms of his release, has in effect freed himself.But he has done so with the help of a government he claims is oppressive.
There are no heroes in this story. The Maldives imbroglio serves as a reminder not to be blinded by stardust.
That same UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled that Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained ... and the silence is deafening.
Well, save for the British bullsh*t that first came out.
No media bleating about 'injustice', 'oppression', 'death of democracy' ... or even the oppressive British DENIAL OF MEDICAL TREATMENT to journalist, Assange.
And no sanctions, of course.
No European Union demands for sanctions against the British. No UN finger-wagging.
But the bastards are hardly going to sanction themselves.
A U.S. “alphabet soup” agency-sponsored themed revolution in the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean comprising twenty-six atolls, stands to plunge the nation, heretofore considered a tropical paradise for tourists, into the same kind of chaos and civil unrest now seen on the streets of Libya, Egypt, and Syria. Maldives is smaller in comparison to the nations of the Middle East where the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), and George Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI) have sponsored themed revolutions that have all resulted in civil unrest and a entrance of extremist Wahhabi Salafists into political power. However, the small size of Maldives provides a much clearer picture of how the aforementioned Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored “soft power” aggressors managed to turn paradise into another center of unrest in the Muslim world.
In the case of the Maldives, the road to civil strife began in 2005 when USAID- and OSI-sponsored democracy” manipulation groups took root in the countryupon the legalization of opposition political parties by the government of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Serving as president for thirty years, Gayoom was seen by the international human rights network of non-governmental organizations as a dictator ripe for removal. The Western-sponsored NGOs settled on Mohamed Nasheed, a Maldivian opposition leader who had lived in exile in Britain – with the support of the British government — and Sri Lanka and who returned to Maldives in 2005, as their favorite candidate for president.
In preparation for the first direct presidential election for president in 2008, outside “democracy manipulators” descended on Maldives, a country that had become popular with the Soros network because of global climate change. Maldives, which is threatened by rising sea levels, became a cause célèbre for the carbon tax and carbon cap-and-trade advocates.
Nasheed was the 2008 presidential candidate of the Maldivian Democratic Party against President Gayoom’s Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party. In the first round of voting, Gayoom received a little over 40 percent of the vote in the first round to the 24 percent of Nasheed’s and his vice presidential running mate, Mohammed Waheed Hassan. To defeat Gayoom in the second round, Nasheed, obviously with the encouragement of his foreign “democracy” advisers, sought and received the endorsement of four other opposition parties, including the Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-financed Salafist Adhaalath (Justice) Party. Adhaalath is an ideological partner of the Muslim Brotherhoods of Egypt and Syria. In the second round of the election, Nasheed, with the support of the other four opposition presidential candidates, defeated Gayoom 54 percent to 46 percent.
Nasheed was immediately embraced by the world’s glitterati community of NGOs and celebrities, including carbon tax-and-trade advocate Bill McKibben of 350.org and the crowd who gathered at the Sundance Film Festival to view a sycophantic film about Nasheed called The Island President. Nasheed was called the “Mandela of the Maldives” by those celebrities whose knowledge of Maldives did not extend beyond the nation’s Wikipedia entry. In October 2009, Nasheed and his Cabinet pulled off a pre-Copenhagen climate change conference publicity stunt by holding the world’s first underwater Cabinet meeting. Nasheed and eleven of his ministers, wearing scuba gear, convened the meeting twenty feet under the surface of the Indian Ocean. Nasheed was a huge hit among the celebrity contingent at the December 2009 Copenhagen summit.
Nasheed was selected by Time magazine at the top of their “Leaders & Visionaries” list of “Heroes of the Environment.” The United Nations awarded Nasheed its “Champions of the Earth” award. Foreign Policy magazine, co-founded by the late Samuel Huntington, a chief ideologist for the neo-conservative pabulum of a “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and Islam, named Nasheed as one of its top global thinkers.
Nasheed took on as his close adviser and communications assistant Paul Roberts, a British national. In what alienated his Salafist supporters, Nasheed also opened diplomatic relations with Israel, invited Israeli surgeons to Maldives amid fears they would begin harvesting human organs for Israeli clients, met with Israeli government officials, agreed to allow direct air links between Israel and Maldives, invited Israeli trainers into Maldives to advise Maldivian security forces, and failed to ensure that Maldives voted for Palestine’s full admission to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the organization’s general assembly meeting in Paris on October 31, 2011. Maldives was absent from the vote.
Maldivian opposition parties, particularly the Salafist Adhaalath Party which left Nasheed’s coalition, did not buy Nasheed’s government’s weak explanation about the Palestine vote.By the end of 2010, the four other political parties in Nasheed’s Cabinet had left and Nasheed’s government was accused by the opposition of lacking transparency. The trademark yellow neckties and shirts worn by Nasheed and his supporters and the yellow Maldivian Democratic Party flags waved by Nasheed’s supporters were yet another indication that Nasheed’s “revolution” was another “themed revolution” concocted by the Soros/NED network of NGOs and think tanks in Washington, London, and New York.
Just as other Soros / NED-installed regimes began to violate the constitutions of their respective nations, including Georgia and Ukraine, Nasheed was no different. On December 10, 2010, the Maldivian Supreme Court ruled that Nasheed’s cabinet ministers could not serve without the approval of parliament. Nasheed responded by declaring the Maldivian courts were controlled by supporters of ex-president Gayoom and on January 16, 2012, Nasheed ordered the military to arrest Abdulla Mohammed, the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court.
Counter-protests were organized by Maldives opposition parties and were backed by the police. After the military clashed with the opposition protesters and police, several military members defected and joined the protesters.
Faced with the opposition and police/military uprising, Nasheed resigned the presidency on February 7. Later, Nasheed and his British adviser Roberts claimed that Nasheed was ousted in a coup d’etat. The U.S. State Department demanded that Vice President Mohammed Waheed Hassan, who assumed the presidency and opposed the arrest order of the Chief Justice, form a government of national unity with Nasheed’s supporters. Hassan refused and India, which, in the past, has intervened militarily in Maldives to put down attempted coups, remained silent. The Soros/NED global glitterati, including the Soros-funded “Democracy Now” program hosted by Amy Goodman and partly-funded by Soros, featured Roberts on an interview in which Gayoom was described as a thug and who was trying to re-assume power. Of course, the Soros propaganda program made no mention of Nasheed’s repeated violations of the Maldivian constitution.
As with the destabilization of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya, the first target for alleged Islamist radicals after the ouster of Nasheed was the destruction of priceless museum artifacts. Unknown men broke into the Chinese-built Maldives National Museum in Male, the capital, and smashed the delicate coral and limestone pre–Islamic Maldivian Buddhist statues on display.
The yellow flag of Nasheed’s political party.
The rise of Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood adherents in the new Maldivian governmentparallels what occurred in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia after their themed revolutions.
The Maldives were destabilized by the West at the same time that the Egyptian government charged 43 CIA-linked NGO personnel, including Americans, Britons, Serbs, and others working for IRI, NDI, and NED, with possessing a secret plan, including maps, to divide Egypt into an Israeli-dominated Sinai state, a Coptic state extending from Alexandria in the north to Asyut in the South, a Berber-dominated Islamic state based in Cairo, and a black African Nubian state in the south. [Comment: what? Is this guy serious, or is he nuts? It was all good, until he got to this insane portion. ... lol
Wow, I just looked it up ... author's not nuts. It's a real story: here.]
There now may be an attempt by the West to split up Maldives. In 1957, the British established the Gan airbase on the southernmost atoll of Addu and insisted on 100-year base rights on Seenu Atoll. After Maldives Prime Minister and President Ibrahim Nasir adopted a nationalist foreign policy, the British backed a secessionist movement in the southern atolls where the British bases were located that declared the short-lived United Suvadive Republic in 1959. After the collapse of the secessionist republic in 1965, the British bought the southernmost atoll in the Chagos-Laccadive chain of atolls from Mauritius and established the British Indian Ocean Territory. The inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia were forcibly removed to Mauritius and other Chagos islands and the United States established its strategic military base on the island of Diego Garcia. Maldives never recognized Mauritian claims over the Chagos atolls or the British Indian Ocean Territory. With neo-con interference in Maldives now coming to fruition, secessionist movements in the southern atolls may, once again, gain ground to ensure unfettered U.S. and British control over Diego Garcia and expansion of U.S. and British military facilities to the Addu atoll and, perhaps, further north in the Maldives chain.
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal www.strategic-culture.org.
Why the Oscars are a con
11 February 2010 - John Pilger
Why are so many films so bad? This year's Oscar nominations are a parade of propaganda, stereotypes and downright dishonesty. The dominant theme is as old as Hollywood:America's divine right to invade other societies, steal their history and occupy our memory. When will directors and writers behave like artists and not pimps for a world-view devoted to control and destruction?
I grew up on the movie myth of the Wild West, which was harmless enough unless you happened to be a Native American. The formula is unchanged. Self-regarding distortionspresent the nobility of the American colonial aggressor as a cover for massacre, from the Philippines to Iraq. I only fully understood the power of the con when I was sent to Vietnam as a war reporter. The Vietnamese were "gooks" and "Indians", whose industrial murder was preordained in John Wayne movies and left to Hollywood to glamourise or redeem.
I use the word murder advisedly, because what Hollywood does brilliantly is suppress the truth about America's assaults. These are not wars, but the export of a gun-addicted, homicidal "culture". And when the notion of psychopaths as heroes wears thin, the bloodbath becomes an "American tragedy" with a soundtrack of pure angst.
Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is in this tradition. A favourite for multiple Oscars, her film is "better than any documentary I've seen on the Iraq war. It's so real it's scary" (Paul Chambers, CNN). Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian reckons it has "unpretentious clarity" and is "about the long and painful endgame in Iraq", and that it "says more about the agony and wrong and tragedy of war than all those earnest well-meaning movies".
What nonsense. This film offers a vicarious thrill through yet another standard-issue psychopath, high on violence in somebody else's country where the deaths of a million people are consigned to cinematic oblivion. The hype around Bigelow is that she may be the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director. How insulting that a woman is celebrated for a typically violent all-male war movie.
The accolades echo those for The Deer Hunter (1978), which critics acclaimed as "the film that could purge a nation's guilt"! The Deer Hunterlauded those who had caused the deaths of more than three million Vietnamese, while reducing those who resisted to barbaric commie stick figures. In 2001, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down provided a similar, if less subtle, catharsis for another "noble failure" by the US, this time in Somalia, airbrushing the heroes' massacre of up to 10,000 Somalis.
By contrast, the fate of an admirable American war film, Redacted, is instructive. Made in 2007 by Brian De Palma, the film is based on the true story of the gang rape of an Iraqi teenager and the murder of her family by US soldiers. There is no heroism, no purgative. The murderers are murderers, and De Palma ingeniously describes the complicity of Hollywood and the media in the epic crime of Iraq. The film ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians who were killed. When it was ordered that their faces be blacked out "for legal reasons", De Palma said: "I think that's terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this suffering people. The great irony about Redacted is that it was redacted." After a limited release in the US, the film all but vanished.
Non-American (or non-western) humanity is not deemed to have box-office appeal, dead or alive. They are the "other" who are allowed, at best, to be saved by "us". In Avatar, James Cameron's vast and violent money-printer, 3-D noble savages known as the Na'vi need a good-guy American soldier, Sergeant Jake Sully, to save them. This confirms they are "good". Natch.
My Oscar for the worst of this year's nominees goes to Invictus, Clint Eastwood's unctuous insult to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Based on a hagiography of Mandela by a British journalist, John Carlin, the film might have been a product of apartheid propaganda. In promoting the racist, thuggish rugby culture as a panacea of the "rainbow nation", Eastwood gives barely a hint that many black South Africans were deeply embarrassed and hurt by Mandela's embrace of the hated springbok symbol of their suffering. He airbrushes white violence - but not black violence, which is ever present as a threat. As for the Boer racists, they have hearts of gold, because they "didn't really know". The subliminal theme is all too familiar: colonialism deserves forgiveness and accommodation, never justice.
At first I thought Invictus could not be taken seriously, but then I looked around the cinema at young people and others for whom the horrors of apartheid have no reference, and I understood the damage such a slick travesty does to our memory and its moral lessons. Imagine Eastwood making a happy-Sambo equivalent in America's Deep South. He would not dare.
The film most nominated for an Oscar and promoted by the critics is Up in the Air, which stars George Clooney as a man who travels the US sacking people and collecting frequent-flyer points. Before the triteness dissolves into sentimentality, every stereotype is summoned, especially of women. There is a bitch, a saint and a cheat. However, this is "a movie for our times", says the director, Jason Reitman, who boasts about having cast real sacked people.
“We interviewed them about what it was like to lose their job in this economy," said he, "then we'd fire them on camera and ask them to respond the way they did when they lost their job . . . It was an incredible experience to watch these non-actors with 100 per cent realism." Wow, what a winner.
Noticed this article while grabbing a link to another article, from the author's site.
Interesting to see author's take on Hollywood big screen propaganda.
I stopped watching movies years ago, so I haven't seen any of these films ... and I probably wouldn't have been attracted to war films, or American hero films, regardless.
Figured it was all propaganda years ago, but I'd never have been able to articulate why it's propaganda, as the author does.
Close ties between Sony & US State Dept exposed. WikiLeaks Sony archive belongs in public domain because: archive shows inner workings of an influential multinational corporation; it is newsworthy & at centre of geopolitical conflict. That %$#$ Harf US State Dept spokesperson referring to 'a very high level of Russian propaganda' to 'hide' what Russia is doing in Ukraine ... errr, ... never mind the CIA coup in Ukraine and what the imperialist US is doing in Ukraine (and all over the WORLD) - including decades long dissemination of poison: US propaganda - makes me want to puke all over the keyboard.
US State Dept attitude, as conveyed by Harf, summed up by reporter:
US government in talks with entertainment giants to promote US foreign policy can be summarised in two words: so what.
Richard Stengel is not the first US official to put Russia and ISIL in one list of 'challenges'.
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That's Obama in Brisbane, Australia, vilifying Russia (by linking Russia to the 'fight' against ISIL, America's terrorist proxy in the Middle East) and calling on the 'international community' (but, really, his corporate serving allies), sounding off aboutthe 'fight to destroy the terrorist group ISIL and opposing Russia's aggression against Ukraine," in the same breath. Thus Obama smears and vilifies Russia, while writing off the ethnic-Russian people of what is now eastern Ukraine (historically a territory of the Russian Empire), dismissing their legitimate struggle for their very lives and for independence from US installed and backed Ukraine fascists that have attacked these civilians with US and European Union backing and blessing. Support for Obama's aggression against the people of eastern Europe is a stain on every government and people that has supported this US aggression, and the insatiable American political-corporate-military drive for domination and exploitation of Europe. Yet this imperialist aggressor paints the Russians as a 'threat'; which is the standard tactic for this lying, despicable, imperialist invader. Check this out:
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The US imperialist is aiming to invest millions in 'countering' what it calls Russia's drive to reclaim lost territories. Never mind the US drive to claim territories on Russia's doorstep, eh? And this from the hypocrite US government that declared the Monroe Doctrine, basically claiming control of North America and South America (entire continents, Hello????), functioning as a declaration of US hegemony (see Chomsky).
Note that this is a priority over countering ISIL propaganda. Of course it is; ISIL serves their purpose in the Middle East.
What is of utmost priority to the US, is US propaganda funding to sell US incursions into eastern Europe.
Note also, that propaganda funding amount referred to above is trifling, compared to the US Broadcasting Board of Governors' annual US taxpayer funded propaganda budget:
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The 2014 Broadcasting Board of Governors budget was: $733 million
Loosely quoting Richard Becker, Answer Coalition:
This is a revival of the cold war, particularly in the field of culture (see book: The Culture of Cold War). USA - for decades - used reporters, film companies, radio broadcasting - all different forms of communication & culture to promote the cold war against the Soviet Union, and now they are doing the same. It has never stopped, really. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has funded anti Cuba propaganda by paying journalists & creating radio & TV stations (spending 100s of millions of dollars over the years), so the notion that has been presented by the US State Dept. spokesperson (ie Harf above) that this isn't something that the US government engages in or that it's up to the entertainment company is COMPLETELY FALSE. This is a COLLABORATIVE effort and IT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR DECADES, and now it has been revived in a big way against Russia as well as against others. US propaganda can be produced for the State Dept by Hollywood as follows: TV shows, movies, music video ... list goes on and on; Sony (and they're not the only ones approached) is an extremely large corporation and have many means by which to propagate a narrative that shows them as a bastion of democracy, while whoever they're targeting is portrayed in the worst possible way.
Presenter: [If we look at the WikiLeaks Sony
archive revelation] ...it shows us a case of private companies becoming an
arm of US interests ...
Richard Becker:
These entertainment corporations are huge capitalist corporations and they have a government that is very much on their side along with other big corporations, so there's nothing really new about this. But after the end of WWII (70 years ago), this collaboration was exponentially intensified to turn the big media - newspapers, movies, TV, radio etc - into ARMS OF THE GOVERNMENT and, in effect, they serve that purpose as arms of the government.
[Cooperation between movie companies, the US government and the US military] has been going on for a very long time ... most people are hearing about that for the first time, but in reality the Pentagon and the military - again, going back to the time of WWII - have collaborated with the film studios and TV production and other forms of media, when they were doing programming that the military / the Pentagon felt was helpful to the US wars around the world. That's been going on a long time and it's good that at least some of the population here is finding out about this.
[Segment concludes]
LOOK-UPS RICHARD STENGEL
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"Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs" must mean under secretary for propaganda.
Politico reported:
At the State Department, Stengel will find himself in the company of other veteran journalists. Last week, as first reported by The Huffington Post, the White House announced that Douglas Frantz, late of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, has been named the State Department’s assistant secretary for public affairs. Glen Johnson, formerly The Boston’s Globe’s political editor, took a position as a senior state department advisor earlier this year.
So judging by the US State Dept. appointments from the commercial sector, there's also a cross-over between corporate journalism and the US State Dept.
RICHARD BECKER Richard Becker West Coast Coordinator at ANSWER Coalition San Francisco Bay Area Political Organization [linkedin]
Monroe Doctrine The Monroe Doctrine was a U.S. foreign policy regarding European countries in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.
Criticism Critics of the Monroe Doctrine, such as Noam Chomsky, argue that in practice the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the Americas ...
House Measure to Change Voice of America’s Mission Is Drawing Intense Debate
EXTRACTS
WASHINGTON — A bill to overhaul Voice of America has prompted an intense debate among supporters of the legislation who say it will better enable the broadcast news service to counter Russian disinformation and opponents who say it will turn the service into an American propaganda tool.
The legislation, which recently passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee with bipartisan support, would make changes to the mission of the government-financed Voice of America that its sponsors say would more clearly define its role in support of the United States. Specifically, the bill revises the language of Voice of America’s mission to explicitly state that the outlet has a role in supporting American “public diplomacy” and the policies of the government.
Walter Isaacson, a former chairman of the Board of Governors as well as a
former chairman and chief executive of CNN, said that the legislation
was a response to changing times and that Voice of America should have a
dual mission to clearly present American policy as well as provide
objective news. LMAO!!!
Inside
Voice of America, the legislation has created widespread fearamong
staff members who have long considered themselves professional
journalists rather than spokesmen for government policy. During a recent
staff meeting, journalists angrily voiced their concerns to managers.
One journalist said the broadcast network could see a mass exodus if the
legislation passed.
Dan
Robinson, who worked at the service for more than two decades before
retiring this year, said the legislation would create additional
problems if passed into law: It could endanger the lives of journalists
and broadcasters who work abroad.
“So
do foreign governments now start seeing journalists from V.O.A. as
agents of U.S. policy rather than as journalists?” he said. “That’s a
real concern.”
But Helle C. Dale, a senior fellow for public diplomacy at the Heritage Foundation, who supports changes to overhaul Voice of America and other international broadcasting, said such claims were absurd.
“It’s not like people don’t already know,” she said. “It’s completely funded by the U.S. government, and it’s called the Voice of America. How does this legislation change this reality?”
In addition to Voice of America, the federal government runs Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Under the legislation, those broadcast outlets would be reorganized into a single organization called the Freedom News Network.
Director of Voice of America Is Planning to Step Down
WASHINGTON — David Ensor, who as director of the Voice of America has
presided over significant growth in the news agency’s audience despite
budget cuts, announced Tuesday that he was stepping down.
According to survey data prepared for the board, the Voice of America’s
international radio, television and online audience has reached 172
million people a week, an increase of 49 million during Mr. Ensor’s
tenure.
Mr. Ensor, 64, a former reporter for NPR, ABC News and CNN, was the
director of communications and public diplomacy at the United States
Embassy in Afghanistan before joining the Voice of America.
The House passed a bill
last year saying that the Voice of America should support American
“public diplomacy” and policies. The move set off a revolt among staff
members, who said the change would affect their editorial independence.
The Senate did not take up the measure. It is expected to be introduced again in the House.
EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 
