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By Saman GUNADASA

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission to Sri Lanka has made absolutely clear that whoever wins the presidential election on September 21 will be compelled to implement its austerity agenda to the letter.

In doing so, the IMF has exposed all the lies being made by the establishment parties and their candidates. As soon as the election is over, the new president will tear up their promises to ease the social crisis facing working people, impose the IMF’s savage measures and resort to police state measures against any opposition.

In a statement on August 2, IMF mission head Peter Breuer bluntly warned: “With Sri Lanka’s knife-edged recovery at a critical juncture, sustaining the reform momentum and ensuring timely implementation of all program commitments are critical… [to] put the economy on a firm footing.”

IMF mission will return to Colombo after the election to discuss the next steps the government must take in return for the continued disbursement of the country’s $US3 billion bailout loan.

Breuer did not stop there. He specified that the 2025 budget of the next government would need to be “underpinned by appropriate revenue measures and continued spending restraint” to ensure a medium-term primary balance surplus of 2.3 percent of GDP.

In other words, higher taxes, the fire sale of state-owned enterprises and the slashing of public health, education and welfare programs will continue. What for? To restore Sri Lanka’s “debt sustainability”—that is, to enable repayments to the international loan sharks—working people must be made to pay.

Breuer was full of praise for the “reform program” of President Wickremesinghe, a pro-market stooge, saying it was “yielding commendable outcomes” with 5.3 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2024 and impressive revenue collections.

Wickremesinghe, who is also finance minister, boasted his government had exceeded revenue targets in first five months of this year—1,620 billion rupees ($5.4 billion) up from 1,122 billion rupees ($4 billion) for the corresponding period in 2023.

Where did these revenue collections come from? Value added tax (VAT) was hiked to 18 percent pushing up prices for all essentials, including electricity and water, and the further slashing of expenditure on public health and education.

The result is social devastation. The poverty rate has increased from 11 percent in 2019 to 26 percent in 2024. The real wage of all workers has plunged by around 40 percent in the two years of 2022 and 2023. The decline in income has led to rising levels of food insecurity, malnutrition and stunted growth. Some 42 percent of the population have been forced to adopt “food coping” methods. More than a million people have been cut off from electricity.

President Wickremesinghe is proudly standing for re-election on this anti-working class record and the continued implementation of the IMF’s demands. “It is not possible to break any agreements made with the IMF and… lending countries. These existing targets and benchmarks are non-negotiable,” he told the media on August 7.

The major opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and the National People’s Power (NPP) led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)—are both committed to the IMF agenda but declare it can be modified.

SJB candidate Sajith Premadasa told big business last week: “We will talk with the IMF and other international financial institutions to ensure that the voice of the Sri Lankan people is heard.”

He is lying through his teeth. When the former president Gotabhaya Rajapakse initially sought the IMF loan in March 2022 after the country defaulted, Premadasa was among first to back it. He told Bloomberg Television: “We all have to swallow a bitter pill, or even several pills… It’s going to be a time of extreme austerity. And people of Sri Lanka must comprehend this reality.”

NPP candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake, not to be outdone by Wickremesinghe and Premadasa, has repeated his pro-IMF policy. In an interview to the Daily Mirror on August 8, he said: “We will continue with the IMF agreement… the IMF approach is to help the country come out of the financial crisis.”

Like Premadasa, Dissanayake declares that he would renegotiate the loan with the IMF. However, as the IMF mission insisted, Sri Lanka is “at a critical juncture.” It has already set the benchmark for the next budget and there is no room for manoeuvre.

The subservience of all the pro-capitalist candidates to the IMF is not the result of flawed thinking but flows from their class position. As Leon Trotsky explained in his Theory of Permanent Revolution, the bourgeoisie in countries of a belated capitalist development such as Sri Lanka are bound hand and foot to international finance capital and are organically incapable of meeting the basic social and democratic rights of working people.

The working class is not responsible for the mountain of foreign debt accumulated by successive capitalist governments. We say use the money saved by ending debt repayments to restore subsidies and bring down prices as well as boost public health and education.

The bulk of the IMF’s plan is yet to be implemented. It will have a devastating impact on working people whose living conditions have already dramatically worsened. All state-owned enterprises are to be sold off or commercialised. Nearly two million public sector jobs are to be destroyed. More taxes are being planned. Essential services such as health and education are to be further privatised.

The SEP warns workers that they have to prepare for the struggles ahead. In doing so, they have to draw the necessary lessons from recent strikes and protests that have been limited, sabotaged and ultimately betrayed time and again by the trade unions.

The trade unions have promoted the illusion that industrial action will force the government to cave in to their demands. The IMF mission has made absolutely clear that no amount of pressure on the next government will force it to make the slightest concessions.

The working class can only defend its interests by organising independently of all capitalist parties and their trade unions. The SEP calls for the formation of independent action committees in all work places, the plantations, working class suburbs and rural areas to oppose the attacks on the social and democratic rights of working people.

The SEP is using the election campaign to popularise its call for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses comprised of elected delegates from the action committees. In opposition to parliament—the talking shop of bourgeois parties—we insist that the working class must have its own venue to formulate a political strategy and plan of action to defend its class interests.

The SEP is advancing a socialist program to meet the needs of working class. No to privatisation! Place SOEs under workers’ democratic control! Nationalise banks, big companies and plantations under democratic control of the working class! These are the demands that should be taken up by a Democratic and Socialist Congress in the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government to reorganise society along socialist lines.

Original article: wsws

By Saman GUNADASA

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Issued on April 2, the World Bank Update: Bridges to Recovery report briefly discusses how the unprecedented economic crisis that engulfed the country in 2022 has impacted the masses. It insists, however, that the savage austerity program dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and being implemented by the Wickremesinghe government is necessary to achieve “economic recovery.”

Sri Lanka’s long-standing economic weaknesses and high foreign debt were exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war in Ukraine against Russia.

The efforts of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse and his government to impose the burden of this crisis onto working people saw the eruption of protests, demonstrations and strikes involving millions of workers, and the rural and urban poor, during April–July 2022. Confronted with this mass movement, the government collapsed and Rajapakse fled the country and resigned.

The betrayal of this uprising by the trade unions and the fake-left Frontline Socialist Party, who called for an interim bourgeois government, paved the way for the elevation of Ranil Wickremesinghe into the presidency and an intensification of the IMF austerity measures.

The World Bank report notes: “Households have been impoverished by a fall in their purchasing power due to high inflation, losses in wages, income and employment, and a drop in remittances.”

Approximately 60 percent of Sri Lankan households, it states, have decreased incomes, with many facing increased food insecurity, malnutrition and stunted growth. The persistence of this wide-scale social devastation and misery, however, is a direct result of the IMF’s brutal social attacks.

The report indicates that labour market trends in Sri Lanka have been affected by widespread closures of micro-, small- and medium-enterprises. In the third quarter of 2023, the labour force participation rate in the urban sector dropped to 45.2 percent, down from 52.3 percent in 2019. Youth unemployment, especially young adults (aged from 25–29), rose to 17.7 percent between the second and third quarters of 2023.

According to the report: “The implementation of new revenue measures increased estimated revenue as a share of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] from 8.4 percent in 2022 to 11 percent in 2023.”

These “revenue measures,” which are being ruthlessly imposed by President Wickremesinghe and his government, include higher prices for essentials via an 18 percent value-added tax on almost all goods and services; new import taxes and special levies; and increased income taxes on workers. Cuts to state subsidies have triggered exorbitant rates for electricity, fuel and water, and higher prices for fertilisers.

The government is in the process of privatising, commercialising or closing state-owned enterprises and destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. Sri Lanka’s already dilapidated public health and education systems have been plunged into crisis by government funding cuts.

As the World Bank report states: “17.5 percent of households indicated that they limited their education expenses (including on stationery and uniforms) to deal with rising costs, and most households have changed their health treatment procedures since March 2022 due to a lack of funds.”

While Sri Lanka recorded a minus 7.3 percent GDP growth rate in 2022, the World Bank said this had been reduced to minus 2.3 percent in 2023 and claimed this was “expected to turn positive” in 2024. The “improvement,” however, still means that there will be no real growth this year.

On April 2, World Bank Country Director for the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka Faris Hadad-Zervos declared that the Sri Lankan economy “is on the road to recovery.” At the same time, however, he claimed that “sustained efforts to mitigate the impact of the economic crisis on the poor and vulnerable” required the government to maintain its social attacks on the working masses.

A two-pronged strategy to “maintain reforms that contribute to macroeconomic stability” and “accelerate reforms to stimulate private investment and capital inflows,” he said, must be continued. These so-called “economic reforms” mean an ever greater assault on the social position of working people.

On March 29, Sri Lanka’s Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) stated that the minimum monthly expenditure per person in Sri Lanka has increased by 144 percent since 2019. The amount is calculated on the basis of what is required to fulfil the basic monthly needs of an individual, which in 2019 was 6,966 rupees ($23). This near-starvation level amount has now catapulted to 17,014 rupees per month.

The current amount assumes that an individual can survive on 560 rupees for their daily needs, when, in fact, the cost of a single meal of lowest quality rice and curry purchased on the street is over 250 rupees. The DCS’s so-called poverty line does not include spending on other essential needs.

The World Food Program’s 2024 February Country Brief for Sri Lanka stated that “significant concerns remain as households (43 percent) adopt livelihood-based coping strategies, while 42 percent still adopt food coping strategies.” In other words, half of Sri Lanka’s population is struggling to secure their most basic food requirements.

While the minimum monthly expenditure for individuals has risen sharply, the government has refused to increase the basic wages of state sector employees. Instead it has provided a paltry allowance of 5,000 rupees in January and another 5,000-rupee payment this month. On March 27, Sri Lanka’s cabinet agreed to raise the National Minimum Wage, which mainly covers private sector workers, by just 5,000 rupees to 17,500 rupees per month.

The main thrust of the IMF program, which is supported by the World Bank, is to repay Sri Lanka’s international debt and interest and to boost the profits of big business and international investors by squeezing the maximum amount from the working class and the poverty-stricken masses.

While the Rajapakse government halted repayment of foreign debts, declaring default on April 12, 2022, the Wickremesinghe administration has repaid $1.3 billion to multilateral finance agencies, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the IMF, according to a presidential media division press release. Wickremesinghe has previously admitted that his government will have to allocate $6 billion in annual debt repayments.

Wickremesinghe’s ruling coalition and the opposition parties—the Samagi Jana Balawegaya and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-led National People’s Power—are now involved in sordid manoeuvres in the lead-up to scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections. All these parties and the trade unions are committed to imposing the IMF’s brutal social attacks.

The working class cannot defend their jobs, wages and social conditions if they remain tied to these organisations that above all defend the profit system. To fight the escalating government attacks, the working class must advance a socialist perspective.

This includes the repudiation of all foreign debt and the nationalisation of the banks, the big corporations and plantations, placing them under the democratic control of the working class. Such a program can only be implemented through the fight for a workers’ and peasants’ government, as part of the struggle for international socialism.

Original article: wsws.org

The news that Sri Lanka may export over 100,000 monkeys to China is another dagger to the Yankee dollar’s heart. Before moving on to other exotic exports from other exotic countries, let’s first put this monkey business to bed.

Sri Lanka’s economy, like her monkeys’ habitats, is in pieces. Sri Lanka needs every penny, every pound, every yen, every yuan she can scrape together. And, as macaque monkeys go for between $4,000 to $8,000 apiece, Sri Lanka is looking to gross between $400,000,000 and $800,000,000 for this exotic trade of a primate which is regarded as a pest throughout large swatches of Sri Lanka.

The trade in monkeys is big business, with the United States importing almost 500,000 of them for a variety of reasons (culinary, labs, zoos etc) in recent years. And whether the Chinese want to eat them, use them as lab rats or put them into zoos, the sheer scale of this order shows that China is now a major player in the monkey business.

If this was a once off trade or if Sri Lanka and China were not going to continue to be trading partners, it might make sense for China to pay in Yankee dollars, which Sri Lanka could then use to buy goods from one of its trading partners, China included. But, as China and Sri Lanka will forever remain major trading partners, the demand for yuan in Colombo and rupees in Shanghai will continue to grow.

Because the Sri Lankan rupee is an exotic currency for which there is only patchy overseas’ demand, the danger has been that China’s monkey importers would be loath to accept rupees as they are much harder to offload than the Yankee dollar. This problem can be seen more clearly with the 1997 passing of the late Princess Diana of Wales when the unprecedented demand for flowers to throw at her casket meant that Dutch traders (guilder/euro) were importing them wholesale from as far afield as Kenya (shilling) and Tanzania (shilling) to on-sell to the English (pound sterling). Far easier to take those currencies out of the frame and just count the resulting huge profits in one currency, the Yankee dollar, which would otherwise not be in the frame at all.

Complicating things further, the Sri Lankan rupee is a closed currency, which means it is not available to buy or sell outside of Sri Lanka. whose Central Bank is charged with stabilising it. As remittances from overseas Sri Lankans (down 20%) and tourist revenue (down 90%) both took massive hits from the Covid lockdown, the Central Bank’s job become much harder and desperate measures, such as curtailing the import of fertilisers, backfired badly on the ordinary Sri Lankan. Sri Lanka’s Central Bank really has its work cut out so much that if 100,000 macaque monkeys have to take it in the neck for Team Sri Lanka, so be it. As Sri Lanka’s annual debt service costs now run to over U.S.$10 billion, Sri Lanka cannot max out its national credit card any more but must think of new ways, like the mass export of monkeys, to tackle this crisis.

When Brazil’s President Lula recently rhetorically asked in Shanghai “why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar… why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies?”, Sri Lanka and many of his Latin American neighbours such as Argentina and Mexico supply much of the answer. The currencies of Mexico, Argentina, Sri Lanka and Brazil itself are known in the trade as exotic currencies, which are relatively minor in international commerce but whose resulting thinness and spread yields abnormally large profits for the British and American financial institutions who trade them.

When Brazil’s President Lula went on to rhetorically ask “Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?”, the answer is that the Americans decided that beginning at Bretton Woods, where the Brazilian and other delegations there were in no position to argue the converse. When Brazil’s President Lula then went on to rhetorically ask “Why can’t a bank like that of the Brics have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries?”, the reason has as much to do with Sri Lankan monkeys as it has with monkey economics.

Quite simply, the Americans reaped the benefits of the Second World War much more than anyone else. The dollar replaced the pound sterling as the global reserve currency of choice as part of America’s campaign to achieve hegemony even during the Second World War when British backs were very much up against the wall and when, as a consequence, the pound sterling was under intense strain.

Although the paper notes the Bank of England issues promises to give the bearer one pound of sterling (92.5%) silver for every single note held, that is no longer the case. However, as long as credibility in the Bank of England and related central banks holds and people accept those pieces of paper, that is not really an issue and trade in these IOUs can continue more or less as before.

It is that credibility rather than the paper itself which is the Coin of the Realm, not only in England but in America, China and Sri Lanka as well. Having that credibility brings immense benefits to the Yanks, the Brits, the Swiss, the Japanese and the Germans and Dutch who are at the heart of the euro. If the Chinese (not, please note the Brazilians) can elbow their way into that happy circle, they will be well pleased with themselves. If they can get the Sri Lankans to take Chinese yuan rather than Yankee dollars for their monkeys, well then that is good news for both China and Sri Lanka.

And, of course, bad news for the Yanks, who have traditionally benefited immensely from all this. There is currently over $2,000 billion Yankee dollars, IOUs in circulation, with between 25% and 60% of that amount held outside of the U.S. If the Sri Lankans can strike a deal in yuan for their monkeys, then they can use some of their precious Yankee reserves for other purposes, much as Japan did in its leanest post war years, when it started to export guitars, sewing machines and bicycles in exchange for much-needed Yankee dollars.

America’s financial power goes much further than that, as the trade in American debt instruments is enormous and trade in gold derivatives is, by and large, a proxy for American interest rates, which determine the value of those debt instruments, which were historically considered a safe haven by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Russia, which has been criminally and systematically robbed by the Yanks and their west European vassals over the last year.

The dollar’s status as a reserve currency allows the Yanks to print an almost unlimited amount of dollars without suffering hyperinflation, something that is biting at the heels of Sri Lanka’s Central Bank and which the Central Banks of Mexico, Argentina and, of course, Germany are no strangers to.

As long as the Yankee dollar is the reserve currency of choice, Uncle Sam can simply print more greenbacks, more IOUs and trade them for Arab oil or Japanese cars. The only other countries that can exchange their dubious currencies for tangible goods are those, like the West Europeans, who can get an American swap line, allowing them to trade their IOUs (euros or pounds) for Yankee dollars. Sri Lanka, to take the obvious example, can no longer do that. Without a swap line to the Yanks or its Bretton Woods frontmen, printing more money devalues the currency and, as Latin America, Sri Lanka and Germany know all too well, causes inflation and the societal problems ensuing from it.

Not only has Lula’s Bric currency no prospect of replacing the Yankee dollar in the short term but there is no prospect of that happening over the longer term either. What is happening is that the Chinese yuan, the Russian rouble and other second tier currencies are pushing the dollar and allied currencies out of areas, such as the trade in Russian oil and Sri Lankan monkeys, they are not needed in.

Although the yuan option makes sense for Sri Lanka, the Dutch and the Yanks won’t be too happy with that. The Dutch, remember, even tried to wrest Greece’s dairy industry from Greece after their euro swindle caused Greece’s economy to implode. As the Dutch and their trans-Atlantic partners in crime showed no mercy to the Greeks, we cannot expect them to look kindly on either the Chinese or Holland’s own former Ceylonese colony. Sadly, Sri Lanka, on its own, is, like Brazil, in no position to stand up to the bullyboy tactics of the usual NATO suspects.

China, as previously alluded to, may be another kettle of fish. If China can make such exotic trades and help break NATO’s banana blockade, then it will have the gratitude of tens of millions of Latin Americans, Africans, Sri Lankans and other Asians. For China to accomplish that, credibility and cold, common sense must be their Coin of the Realm.

China’s alliance with Mother Russia best illustrates this. For such alliances to work, there must be clear demarcation lines between what each party does and does not do. In the case of oil, that can be Russia delivering crude oil at a marked to market price in a place and manner of choosing to the parties involved. As that is an ongoing supply and demand business, China and Russia can mark themselves not only to the spot price but, going forward, to the futures and options prices as well.

Given that Uncle Sam objected in his usual violent manner when Libya, Tanzania and Kenya tried to form their own gold backed currency in times gone by, we can expect plenty of U.S. inspired bumps along the road as Russia, China and Sri Lanka look to the future with the economic cards at their disposal. That said, the key to the future of Russia, China, Sri Lanka and countless other nations is to fortify their sovereignty and trading monkeys for yuan and yuan for oil is a big step in that process. Although none of that will replace the global pre-eminence of the Yankee dollar, ditching the dollar, a yuan, a rupee and a rouble at a time, offers more hope to Russians, Asians and Latinos than does eternal vassalage to Uncle Sam and the global financial system he rigs in his favour.

NATO’s pending monkey business against China in the South China Sea will be an excellent weather vane in this respect. If NATO can upset China’s apple-cart there, then, for countries like Sri Lanka, it will be business and penury as usual. If, on the other hand, NATO can be sent packing, then there might be hope for all the peoples of the South China Sea, for Sri Lanka and for all the other peoples of South Asia as well.

While most of the world’s attention is focused on the Ukraine, there are events happening in Sri Lanka that should alarm everyone. Sri Lanka is a small independent island nation off the southern tip of India. Relatively insignificant in the global context it may prove to be the “canary in the coal mine” that portends a wider global and economic crisis. A long corrupted and badly run country, it has announced that it can no longer meet its international debt obligations. Like so many others, Sri Lanka was devastated by Covid, without tourism and trade its lacks the foreign currency essential to pay its debt. With some $56 billion in foreign debt it has been forced to return to the IMF to seek further loans to pay for imports of food, energy and medicines.

Chaos and riots are widespread throughout the country and on Monday Prime Minister Majinda Rajapaska stepped down. The resignation failed to quell the riots and protestors are also demanding the President, Gotabaya Rajapaska, the former P.M.’s brother also step down. On Tuesday 10^th, the Government ordered troops to shoot anyone looting public property. The Government also ordered thousands of Army, Navy and Air Force to patrol the streets of Colombo, the capital. Eight people are reported dead and more than two hundred wounded. Houses belonging to the Rajapaskas and other Ministers were torched. It is not the country’s first economic crisis, but is by far its worst and the long beleaguered people have reached breaking point. There are shortages of everything, inflation is rampant and the healthcare system has broken down. Enter the IMF.

The IMF as always has a plan for such situations. Structural reform, usually involving feeding money in so that the interest on the debt can continue to be serviced although never repaid. It will also involve cutting any Government spending on essential services and the privatising of any remaining public assets. As we may imagine none of these measures will be popular with the people who as always will suffer the most. Not that the concerns of the ordinary people will worry IMF or the investor class it represents. Debt must always be serviced before the people eat. These are the rules of the “rules-based order”.

If the economic and societal breakdown occurring in Sri Lanka was just an isolated problem then the West may just look on, as it has done many times in the past, and regard it as just more third world poverty porn. However an isolated incident it is not, it is just the first domino to fall in what will be a much wider global crisis. The World Bank has warned that there are more than sixty other countries in a similarly perilous situation as Sri Lanka. One of which incidentally is the Ukraine.

The poor debtor nations are spread mainly but not exclusively across Africa and Latin America. These countries have been kept deliberately poor and undeveloped by the IMF and its criminal sister the World Bank. Recently, many of these countries have been pushing back strongly against the international capital class and the institutions of its control. Argentina, in common with most of its Latin American neighbors is experiencing its own financial crisis. President Alberto Fernandez has consistently denounced the IMF as it struggles with more than $40 billion in foreign debt. Fernandez considers this debt “toxic as it was incurred during the administrations of corrupt Western-backed puppet leaders. Few countries in Latin America have escaped the same problem. He has recently courted China and has secured a $40 billion Chinese investment. Among other development projects it will include a new, next generation Chinese built nuclear power plant.

In Brazil, the immensely popular former President Lula da Silva who was deposed in a silent coup is running again and expected to win. He has spoken strongly of the need to break from dollar hegemony and establish a new Latin American regional currency. Most of Latin America is behind the initiative, and many are similarly courting China for development funds. The framework for the new currency is in place, it is called the SUR and be out of the reach of the IMF.

Similar initiatives are been actioned in Africa were the African Development Bank (modelled on the Asian Development Bank) are also working towards a pan-African currency that is designed to liberate the African nations from the tyranny of the IMF.

The Western financial cabal is worried, very worried. At the recent meeting of the IMF in Washington, the new chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas stated that he is “confident” that the endangered economies “will make the right choice and not jump to the other side” By which of course he means China and Russia, and the pro-growth, pro-development model they promote. For those looking for any reasoning behind the current tragedy in Ukraine, the aforementioned should provide a clue.

The Western bloc, including Japan, have debt levels similar to those of the developing nations. Japan in fact has the highest debt to GDP in the World. Yet we can expect no reform of the current financial order that dominates the West. The crisis in the Ukraine is amplifying the chronic food, energy shortages and inflation being faced in the West. Least we forget these problems were mounting long before Ukraine took centre stage. The West is facing a systematic crisis both economically and socially and it appears to have no solutions but more money printing and war. Neither of which will help.

Since 1945 and the implementation of the Bretton Woods agreement the world has been held hostage by a financial system that was designed to benefit a small minority in the capital class. Poor countries were to be kept poor and any real economic development was to be discouraged. It is a financial system that trades in human suffering and misery. It was the new face of empire, financial neo-colonialism. The vast resources of the American military were deployed around the world to ensure that no nation strayed from the plantation. Yet even the power of the military cannot be expected to quell the anti-Western momentum that is happening now. To quote Napoleon, “there is something more powerful than all the armies in the World, that is an idea whose time has come”. That time has come. Which country will be the first to completely repudiate its foreign debt and start again with an honest financial system, we don’t know. What we do know that it will base its new system on one demonstrated so capably by the Chinese, based on growth and development. Any one country alone making such a move can expect to incur the full wrath of the Empire, yet a number of like-minded countries working in concert will have strength in numbers. All indicators suggest this is now happening.

Once just regarded as third world problems, chronic food and energy shortages together with unmanageable inflation are coming to the west. Scenes recently witnessed in Sri Lanka may soon be repeated on the streets of Europe and America. Hard times are coming for all in the short term, yet a world freed from the clutches of the Empire promises a brighter future for all mankind.

Good luck with the Great Reset, Klaus.

It all started in that same year of 1985, but not in Libya. She was also covering in that year the separatist war by the Tamil Tigers, to break off, from Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the far-northern and far-eastern sections of that country, so as to create an independent nation, which would be controlled by Tamils, and no longer be merely a region within the nation of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is not Tamil-majority, but is instead overwhelmingly Sinhalese population. Marie Colvin was embedded there, along with the anti-Government fighting forces, Tamil separatists, anti-Sinhalese fighters who were at war against Sri Lanka’s Government. This was a Tamil-versus-Sinhal war, and she was reporting it, from the standpoint of the separatist-Tamil rebels.

Her much-celebrated career ended 27 year later, with her own death, on 22 February 2012, in Homs Syria, while she was embedded with anti-Government forces there, who were trying to overthrow Syria’s Government, instead of to overthrow Sri Lanka’s or Libya’s Government.

In all three of those instances — from the very start, to the very the end, of her illustrious career — she was embedded along with, and her articles were in support of, anti-Government forces that the UK-US aristocracy supported, in order to break up countries that this aristocracy were hoping to ‘free’, so as to take control over them, away from the existing independent Governments there. This was her constantly recurring pattern, from her start, to her widely lionized end, as being a promoter of US-UK international empire: journalism that embraces and unquestioningly accepts and endorses imperialism, while never indicating to its audience that it has any connection whatsoever to imperialism.

In between her Sri Lankan start and her Syrian end, she prominently reported several times from Libya, likewise from the standpoint of opponents of that independent nation’s Government. Libya had previously been a vassal state of Turkey (Ottoman Empire), then of Italy (Italian Empire), then was an ‘independent’ nation within the UK-US Empire. And, then, finally — as a result of Libya’s Revolution, which was led by Gaddafi in 1969 — Libya actually did win its independence. Gaddafi became killed in 2011, from forces that had been unleashed by the US-UK Empire and France. That successful assassination happened on 20 October 2011, and America’s Secretary of State promptly and publicly exulted about it, by bragging “We came, we saw, he died — ha ha ha!.”(The Democratic National Committee and its duped voters rewarded her with their Presidential nomination five years later in 2016 because she was ‘the most experienced candidate’, having had lots of such disastrous ‘experiences’, which the duped voters were misled to think to have been an asset, instead of a liability.) Thus, ‘democracy’ was finally being brought to Libyans, by that country’s former foreign imperial masters, plus their agents, Al Qaeda and other local proxy-forces against Gaddafi.

What all of Colvin’s reporting exemplified was ‘journalism’ by a ‘reporter’ who is embedded along with the fighting forces that were being propagandized for by her own nation’s aristocracy — and, though she was American, she was in the employ of American vassals, UK aristocrats. This US-UK aristocracy wanted those countries to become either broken up, or else taken over by themselves entirely; and she was a ‘journalistic’ agent for that, though she was unaware of the fact, and was actually proud of her work, because of her obliviousness to the broader and deeper reality around her.

Here are some crucial details of her career-highlights, in this regard:

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The Tamil Tigers constituted the fighting force of Sri Lanka’s 18% minority of the Sri Lankan population who were 74%-majority Sinhals. Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka’s) Sinhal population had been ruled by the British Empire through that 18% minority of Tamils as UK’s local agents, until Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was finally released from British bondage, and won independence in 1946, when the British Empire was breaking up.

A key Sri Lankan law that passed in 1956, the Sinhala Only Act, made Sinhalese language replace the British-imposed English language as Sri Lanka’s official language. Though the Tamil language had never been Sri Lanka’s official language, many Tamils, who had been accustomed to ruling the land for their British masters, were infuriated that the ‘inferior’ Sinhal people now ruled the land. One of those Sinhals was their own leading aristocrat, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the progressive who became elected Prime Minister in 1956 and won passage of the Sinhala Only Act and of other laws to actually end British control, but he was assassinated in 1959 by a Buddhist monk because Bandaranaike had just then signed an agreement with the leader of the main Tamil party to bring some degree of local autonomy to the Tamil minority, who were concentrated in the far north and far east. Bandaranaike’s wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was then elected as Prime Minister in 1960, and she not only tried to increase political participation by Buddhists, but she firmly established democratic socialism (or progressivism) as the Government’s policy. But then, the Marxist (dictatorial socialist) Lanka Sama Samaja Party eroded popular support for her government, which became resoundingly defeated in the general election of 1965. Sirimovo became re-elected back into power in 1970. However, her Government’s support of Buddhism and of the Sinhalese language alienated the country’s large Tamil minority, 80% of whom are Hindu (the others: 13% Muslim, 2% Christian, 2% Sikh, and only .8% Buddhist). By contrast, 93% of Sinhals are Buddhist. According to the US Library of Congress in 1988, “93 percent of the Sinhala speakers were Buddhists, and 99.5 percent of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka spoke Sinhala.” (By contrast, the entirety of Sri Lanka is 70% Buddhist, 13% Hindu, 10% Muslim, and 7% Christian — very different from the Tamils.) So: Sri Lanka’s political split was along religious lines — mainly Tamil Hindus versus Sinhal Buddhists — in addition to being along tribal lines; and the Tamils represented, in both respects, supporters of the Hindu caste-system, and of the former British aristocracy, which are America’s vassals, against the Sri Lankan public.

In 1976, the militant separatist Tamil Tigers were born, basically as a reaction against the 1946 freeing of that country from its former colonial British masters.

Starting in 1985, the Tamil Tigers “forcibly occupied more than 35,000 acres of Muslim residential, agricultural and cattle farming land. The government did nothing to help Muslims regain their properties based on title deeds, government permits or the paddy cultivation register. During the ethnic conflict in 1983, 1985, and 1990, more than 12,700 Muslim families were chased out by” the Tiger forces. Wikipedia’s article “Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern province by LTTE” calls the October 1990 portion of that sequence an “ethnic cleansing,” of Muslims, from the north Sri Lankan, Tiger-controlled, city of Chavakachcheri.

Colvin’s ‘news’-‘reports’ were strongly pro-Tamil, anti-Sinhal, but she seems to have known nothing about the country from which she was reporting (at war), and to have cared even less about it. (She even said [12:00-] “The history, and the ability to put into context anything in a war … It didn’t mean anything,” because “it never happens the way you think it’s going to.” She exhibited no interest whatsoever in understanding the background of a war. To her, for example, the war in Chechnya was simply bombings by Russia, “an indiscriminate bombing of Chechen villages,” and she had no curiosity as to why whatever was occurring was actually happening.) Instead, she was obsessed by, and focused only on, the immense suffering that civilians on the US-UK-backed side experienced. Of course, the owner of her newspaper, Rupert Murdoch, probably knew the historical background in this former British colony of Sri Lanka, but her employers never told her about that, and she apparently never asked them about it. They simply couldn’t find any other journalist who was stupid enough to do their bidding in their bosses’ former Empire and who was willing, indeed eager, to accept the pay that they offered to do it. This well-intentioned, but willingly ignorant, employee lost an eye — and was nearly killed — because of her being embedded there, with what were actually (though she never knew it) UK proxy-forces. She thought that she was helping ‘the good guys’ (Tamils) in a war against ‘the bad guys’ (the Government). She was the archetypal star-‘journalist’, having faith in ‘our’ side. She is beloved, by her ‘journalistic’ colleagues, as if she hadn’t been merely the empire’s most effective war-propagandist.

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In 2011, in Libya, she was accepted again into Gaddafi’s tent for an interview, even though she despised him as one of the ‘bad’ guys. (This doesn’t mean “bad” as Hillary Clinton was bad, but instead ‘bad’ as one of the Clinton-Biden-Obama regime’s many victims who all were ‘bad’, in her view. And, of course, the US-UK aristocracy are all ‘good’, in that view: the imperialists’ view.)

In 2012, in Syria, at the conflict in Homs, she was telecasting to CNN, and other TV networks, regarding how evil Bashar al-Assad was for bombing the enclaves there that, in fact, were cooperating with Al Qaeda (though Colvin didn’t report that they were such). It was on 22 February 2012, and Britain’s Telegraph  bannered “Marie Colvin: Britain summons Syria ambassador over killing.” This newspaper reported: “In her broadcasts on Tuesday night, Colvin had accused the Syrian Army of perpetrating the ‘complete and utter lie that they are only targeting terrorists.’ Describing what was happening as ‘absolutely sickening’, Colvin said: ‘The Syrian army is simply shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.’” When the US and UK had done more-widespread, entire-city, bombings in World War II, it was fine, in this view; but, now, when Syria’s Government were doing more-targeted versions of that, in order to prevent a takeover of Syria by the US, and a subsequent hand-over of Syria to the Sauds, it wasn’t okay. And, of course, the Western ‘press’-corps, of US-UK invasion-propagandists, place Colvin upon a pedestal, as having constituted the ‘ideal’ ‘ war journalist’.

That’s one way of interpreting wars and international relations — the way that Colvin memorialized.

An excellent docudrama movie about Marie Colvin’s reporting from Sri Lanka in 1985, and Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2012, is the November 2018 “A Private War”. It provides an honest portrayal of her. (Some incompetent critics downgraded the movie because of what actually were deficiencies — basically Colvin’s stupidity and shallowness — in the real person herself. Other incompetent critics, such as at the neoconservative Washington Post, praised it largely because they shared Colvin’s neoconservatism. It’s just an honest, and very skillfully done, biopic.) On the basis of its strictly cinematic values, I consider it a superb film.

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The opposite way — the anti-imperialist viewpoint — of reporting about war and international relations, has been embodied, to cite two prime authentic journalists — NOT propagandists (such as Colvin was) — by Vanessa Beeley, and also by Eva Bartlett. Both of these authentically great reporters have also covered the war in Syria. Here, from them, is this opposite way of interpreting war and international relations:

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“Western media lies about Syria exposed (Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett)”

VIDEO, 19 mins., Eva Bartlett, 10 December 2016, U.N.

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https://www.rt.com

“‘They know that we know they are liars, they keep lying’: West’s war propaganda on Ghouta crescendos”

Eva Bartlett, on 21 March 2018

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“Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett & Patrick Henningsen Exposes the White Helmets”

VIDEO, 27 mins., 7 October 2016, rt.com

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21stcenturywire.com

“Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception – Part I”

Vanessa Beeley, 23 October 2015

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21stcenturywire.com

“Part II – Syria’s White Helmets: War By Way of Deception ~ ‘Moderate Executioners’”

Vanessa Beeley, 28 October 2015

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21stcenturywire.com

“WHO ARE SYRIA’S WHITE HELMETS (terrorist linked)?”

Vanessa Beeley, 21 June 2016

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21stcenturywire.com

“EXCLUSIVE: The REAL Syria Civil Defence Exposes Fake ‘White Helmets’ as Terrorist-Linked Imposters”

Vanessa Beeley, 23 September 2016

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mintpressnews.com

“Faux Humanitarian Irwin Cotler, the White Helmets, and the Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda”

Vanessa Beeley, 1 August 2019

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Those journalists DON’T win awards from the Foreign Press Association, etc., and AREN’T hired by mainstream ‘news’ media, but they are vastly superior to the ones who do.

Blackwater mercenary company founder Erik Prince and the self-appointed leader of Fascist International, Steve Bannon, have joined forces and dusted off the old discredited neo-conservative theory of “Clash of Civilizations,” to threaten global stability with religious and ethnic nationalism.

One of the more important revelations in former Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election is the close working relationship Bannon established with Prince. Sensing fertile political ground for their far-right beliefs, Bannon and Prince have established, under the aegis of their professed Catholicism, a movement that threatens both the current pope and the European Union.

The Clash of Civilizations was the main tenet of Harvard University’s Samuel P. Huntington. Huntington also defended the pro-fascist Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico and the military dictatorship of Brazil. Huntington was also a champion of South Africa’s apartheid state and advocated its “reform” rather than its abolishment. Huntington’s approaches to Latin American immigration into the United States serves a basis for the draconian anti-immigration policies of Donald Trump and his “immigration czar,” Stephen Miller. Huntington saw Europe and Western Europe, including Croatia and Slovenia, along with Australia and New Zealand as a “core civilization” against the rest of the world. Huntington made it a point to exclude from the core civilization the Christian Orthodox nations of the Balkans, including Greece, as well as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Armenia.

To advance political domination by far-right political parties and politicians, Bannon has been busy establishing a training academy for far-right wing Christian zealots at the Trisulti Charterhouse in Collepardo in central Italy. Bannon has admitted that he is following George Soros’s global playbook. Instead of a neo-liberal global network, like that of Soros, Bannon is creating a far-right political movement in Europe that will extend its tentacles around the world, primarily in Huntington’s “core civilization” countries plus Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. With his political group, called “The Movement” in operation in Brussels and targeting upcoming European Parliament elections, Bannon has taken advantage of a schism within the Roman Catholic Church to convincing those opposed to Pope Francis I to permit him to set up shop in the 13^th century monastery in Collepardo.

Bannon is clearly setting the stage for a revised “clash of civilizations” between Judeo-Christianity and the rest of the world. Fascism is seen as the preferred political system for the Western “core.”

Bannon’s colleague in the 2016 Trump campaign, Michael Ledeen, the notorious neo-conservative, wrote a book in 1972 that promotes the fascist political philosophy. Titled “Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936,” Ledeen describes in glowing terms Mussolini’s efforts to create an international Fascist movement in the late 1920s and early 1930s. According to an interview Ledeen gave to the neo-con “National Review” in 2002, the Ledeen Doctrine boils down to the following credo: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Mussolini’s template has largely been adopted by Bannon, who, still has, along with arch neo-con national security adviser John Bolton, still have Trump’s ear on foreign policy.

Bannon is attempting to purge the nexus of his Judeo-Christian core civilization of perceived enemies, who include Vatican loyalists of Pope Francis. Bannon – in cooperation with the extremely conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke and former Pope Benedict XVI – has been waging a political jihad against Pope Francis. Bannon believes the current pontiff to be a dangerous liberal and a “Cultural Marxist,” who supported many of President Barack Obama’s policies. Bannon and a right-wing Catholic group close to Burke, the Institute of Human Dignity, or Dignitatis Humana Institute, which runs Bannon’s new headquarters at the Trisulti Abbey, opposes Francis’s goal of avoiding a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam.

Bannon, in cooperation with Cardinal Raymond Burke and former Pope Benedict XVI, has been waging a war against Pope Francis I. Bannon sees Francis as a dangerous liberal and a “Cultural Marxist,” who supported President Barack Obama’s policies. Bannon and a right-wing Catholic group close to Burke, the Institute of Human Dignity, or “Dignitatis Humana Institute,’ which owns Bannon’s new headquarters at the Trisulti Abbey, opposes Francis’s goal of avoiding a “clash of civilizations,” particularly one between Christianity and Islam.

Bannon’s financial firm, Bannon & Company, is investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, believed by many financial experts to be a giant scam. Cryptocurrencies are favored by neo-Nazis and fascists to fund their activities without the worry of financial surveillance from bank regulators and financial intelligence agencies. Bannon, as a former Goldman Sachs executive, understands how to avoid financial network roadblocks.

One of the mandatory studies at Bannon’s academy for neo-Nazis will most certainly be on the works and thoughts of Julius Evola (1898-1974), a far-right Italian philosopher, who provided the inspiration for several fascist terrorist attacks in Italy during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including the deadly Bologna central rail station bombing in 1980. Bannon is a promoter of Evola’s doctrine, which is known as Traditionalism. The followers of Evola are called the “Children of the Sun” and they include adherents of two leading neo-Nazi parties in Europe: Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary. Other Traditionalist philosophers, all of whom dabbled in Indo-European Aryan occultism and, to varying degrees, embraced fascism in the interwar years, include Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), French/Egyptian René Guénon (1886-1951), and Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) Ananda Coomaraswamy (1887-1947).

US neo-Nazi leader and “alt-right” term creator, Richard Spencer, a college friend of Trump’s anti-immigration czar, Stephen Miller, is also a follower of Evola. Evola’s writings were an inspiration to Benito Mussolini Fascist movement and Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). Evola even visited SS headquarters in Germany to proselytize his philosophy of fascism to the SS rank and file.

Bannon’s and Prince’s intertwined political finances were exposed during the 2016 presidential campaign. Prince donated some $150,000 to the pro-Trump PAC “Make America Number 1 in 2016.” In turn, the PAC funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cambridge Analytica and Glittering Steel, a video production company. Bannon co-founded both companies. Bannon was also buoyed by generous funding from hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. Currently, with a seemingly endless supply of funds, Bannon is waging a far-right insurgency in Europe involving neo-Nazi, fascist, and right-wing Catholic organizations close to Opus Dei.

Erik Prince abandoned the conservative Calvinism of his auto parts-manufacturing wealthy father to embrace Catholicism, Opus Dei, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta – based in Rome and a rival-laden headache for Pope Francis – and the Legionnaires of Christ. Opus Dei was founded by Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928 as a pro-fascist and pro-Francisco Franco answer to the more liberal-minded Jesuits. It is noteworthy that Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff, is currently experiencing a virtual civil war within the catholic Church and Vatican hierarchy, spurred on by the likes of Bannon, Prince, former Pope Benedict, and other right-wing members of the College of Cardinals.

Bannon, Prince, and other far-rightists are now attempting to impose on their followers and fellow-travelers the same sort of “groupthink” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels applied to Germany. In his seminal work, Yale University professor Irving Janis summed up “groupthink,” particularly how groups can, conversely to bringing out the best in people, also bring out the worst. Janis’s 1982 book, “Groupthink,” describes the phenomenon by quoting 19^th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.” Europe’s current fascination and widespread support for political parties that were largely banned and shunned after the Nazi defeat in 1945 have created an environment where Bannon, Prince, and their collaborators find ready audiences for their extremism. In such climates, a strategy of tension permits a clash of civilizations, which is nirvana for the neo-cons and extreme right.

The recent deadly Christchurch mosque attacks appear to have been the first act in a strategy of tensions conflict being waged by the far-right. The Easter Sunday bombings of churches in Negombo, Batticaloa, and Colombo, Sri Lanka, as well as three five-star hotels in Colombo – killing well over 300 people, were reportedly claimed by a hitherto unknown group called the National Thowheed Jamath or National Monotheism Organization. Sri Lanka’s government alleged the attacks were in retaliation for the Christchurch mosque bombings. Some things are known about the group claiming it carried out the attacks in Sri Lanka. It is not connected operationally to either the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, although the Islamic State made unverifiable claims of responsibility. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that New Zealand’s intelligence has no indication that the Sri Lanka attacks were in retaliation for the Sri Lanka attacks. It should be noted that New Zealand, as a member of the FIVE EYES signals intelligence alliance, has access to countless communications intercepts.

While flames leaped from Paris’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral on April 15, a fire broke out at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. In the weeks preceding the Notre Dame fire, vandals broke into Notre-Dame-des-enfants in Nîmes, France and smeared excrement on the crucifix and walls of the church. In March, a fire broke out at another famous Paris church, Saint-Sulpice. In February, a fire broke out in Lavaur Cathedral in Lavaur, France. That fire was preceded by vandalism of Saint Nicolas in Houilles and Saint Nicolas in Maisons-Laffitte in Yvelines.

Arson also destroyed three African-American churches in Opelousas, Louisiana. The son of a sheriff’s deputy was arrested for arson. Louisiana has recently been the scene of renewed activities by Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.

All of the incidents – in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, France, and Louisiana – those confirmed as terrorism and those for which the jury is still out, should be viewed through the lens of the strategy of tensions and a final showdown between Christianity and Islam advanced by Bannon, Prince, and their supporters in Brussels and the Trisulti monastery.

The world has seen this particular play before. From the late 1960s to the 1980s, over two thousand people died in terrorist attacks blamed mainly on left-wing terrorists, including the Italian Red Brigades and West German Red Army Faction. The victims included the former Christian Democratic Prime Minister of Italy, Aldo Moro. The deadliest attack was the bombing of the Bologna rail station in 1980. Originally, there was an attempt to blame all the attacks, mostly bombings, on the left-wing groups. In fact, most of the attacks were carried out by neo-fascist groups hoping to have the Communists blamed. Inquiry commissions later determined that the neo-fascists and far-left groups all had links to the Central Intelligence Agency – which once employed Erik Prince’s Blackwater as a contractor – and the intelligence services of NATO members. It was the late Turkish Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, who revealed the name of the sinister association of NATO spies and false flag terrorists: Gladio.

The Left in this country has a serious problem: they don’t want to talk about religion and are particularly allergic to the phrase “Islamic terrorism.”

On Easter Sunday, Catholic churches and international hotels across Sri Lanka were targeted by radical Islamist suicide bombers. In a stunning display of how far the Left’s allergy has spread, former president Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and former HUD secretary Julián Castro all tweeted condolences to “Easter worshippers.”

“Holy weekend for many faiths”? The only religions celebrating holidays were Jews (Passover) and Christians (Easter).

“The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka,” Barack Obama tweeted.

“We’re actually called Christians not ‘Easter worshippers’ wouldn’t hurt to maybe just say that,” National Review writer Alexandra DeSantis tweeted, as conservatives throughout the Twitter became incensed over the phrase. Breitbart called the tweets a “ sympathy snub” that showed Obama and friends “could not bring themselves to identify the victims of the attacks as ‘Christians.’” A Washington Times op-ed called the phrase anti-Christian.

The backlash was so intense that Slate felt the need to run an article defending the phrase:

“Easter worshippers” describes Christians in church on Easter Sunday. The term is more descriptive than “Christians,” because it conveys the additional fact that the victims were actively celebrating Easter when they were killed. They are worshippers, and it is Easter. If it helps, try putting the emphasis on worshippers in the phrase: It’s Easter worshippers, not Easter-worshippers.

Well, actually no, that’s not how this works. Christians don’t gather in church on the Easter holiday to worship Easter. They gather to worship God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ in particular; hence why the gathered worshippers are called “Christian.”

It’s also possible that this phrase was repeated by so many Democratic politicians because it was created by a public relations firm that works for the Democratic National Committee, like MWWPR. These agencies draft guidance, talking points, speeches, and social media posts. Politicians, with the obvious exception of Donald Trump, rarely post their own original thoughts online. Given that these tweets were posted during the Easter holiday, it seems likely that this was drafted by a PR company with ties to the Democratic Party.

Brennan and his clique have upped the ante by claiming, without a shred of evidence, that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the hacking of computer systems linked to the U.S. election. NBC News, which has a long history of cooperation with the CIA going back to the days of RCA/NBC chairman David Sarnoff and his close friend CIA director Allen Dulles, dutifully reported Brennan’s outrageous claims as «news».

It is clear those former CIA officials who have lent credence to Brennan’s report would not have done so unless they received clearance from Brennan and his CIA to go public with their unfounded charges against Russia. Those who have echoed Brennan’s unfounded findings of election interference by Russia include former acting CIA director Michael Morell; former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden; former CIA director Leon Panetta; former CIA clandestine service agents Robert Baer; Evan McMullin – a failed 2016 independent presidential candidate – and Glenn Carle. However, for every ex-spook Brennan pulls out of his hat to accuse President-elect Donald Trump of being a «Russian agent», there are many more who have claimed that the CIA’s «proof» of Russian interference in the 2016 election is pure malarkey.

Brennan and his cabal of dark players know fully well that it is the CIA that has pioneered in the art and science of election manipulation. In 1996, it was Russia that bore the brunt of CIA election manipulation with its agents-of-influence in Moscow and other large cities, namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and George Soros’s Open Society Institute and Foundation, engaged in political dirty tricks aimed at undermining the electoral chances of the Russian Communist Party presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov.

The CIA, Soros’s operatives, and the NED printed and distributed fake campaign flyers claiming to have originated with the Zyuganov's campaign. The flyers advocated returning Russia to Stalinism and re-launching the Cold War against the West. The CIA and Soros dirty tricks operatives also announced to the press phony Zyuganov news conferences where no one showed up. The dirty tricks team also canceled reservations made by the Zyuganov campaign at hotels and public meeting halls. The CIA and their allies also helped to manipulate election returns and shaved votes from Zyuganov's total, particularly in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. This helped the favored U.S. candidate, Boris Yeltsin, achieve a second-round victory of 54-to-40 percent over Zyuganov. In 2012, then-President Dmitry Medvedev said, «There is hardly any doubt who won [the '96 election]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin».

The CIA has been at the election manipulation game since its inception in 1947. In February 1948, a formerly Top Secret CIA document spelled out the efforts to be taken by the United States and its ambassador in Rome, James Dunn, in preparation for the April 1948 Italian election. Wheat shipments were to be increased from the United States to Italy to prevent a reduction in bread rations just prior to the election. U.S. military equipment was to be sent to Italy in the event martial law had to be declared if the Italian Communist Party, which had been in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats since 1944, was successful at the polls. Assisting this military effort was the political indoctrination of many Italian military officers and non-commissioned officers at military schools in the United States.

The CIA also directed a sharp stick at the Italian electorate, warning that Italians could not «combine the advantages of aid from the West with that of political safety and benefits from the Soviet Union». The CIA was worried that if the Soviet Union returned control of the city of Trieste to Italy and renounced Italy’s war reparations to the Soviet Union prior to the April election, the Italian Communist Party would reap the electoral benefits and be victorious.

The CIA’s political dirty tricks in Italy began in earnest when it covertly directed $1 million, contained mostly in «bags of money», to Christian Democratic politicians led by Prime Minister Alcide de Gaspari. The CIA used its front newspapers in Italy to publish forged letters, allegedly written by Italian Communist Party leaders, in an attempt to embarrass them publicly. Similarly, the CIA attempted to blackmail Italian Socialist Party leaders who were part of a Popular Front coalition with the Communists. The blackmail eventually led to a split within the Socialist Party ranks between party leader Pietro Nenni and anti-Communist leader Giuseppe Saragat. The CIA’s manipulation paid off when the Christian Democrats won 48.5 percent of the vote and formed a new government without Communist participation.

When, in 1978, it appeared that the Christian Democrats, led by former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, were prepared to enact a «historic compromise» to share political power with the Italian Communist Party, the CIA instructed its agents-of-influence within Italy and the Vatican, the so-called «Gladio» network, to arrange for Moro’s kidnapping and assassination and blame it on the leftist Italian Red Brigades. The CIA’s psychological operation designed to blame radical Communists for Moro’s death was successful when the Italian electorate voted overwhelmingly for a CIA-linked Christian Democratic faction opposed to any accommodation with the Communists. The CIA showed that it was not averse to political assassinations to achieve its electoral aims in other countries.

The CIA’s involvement by hook and by crook in the 1948 Italian election was repeated in numerous nations around the world. In 1964, the CIA ensured that the Chilean Popular Action Front (FRAP) Socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende was defeated by the Christian Democratic leader Eduardo Frei. The CIA pumped $3 million into Frei’s campaign, mainly to generate anti-Allende propaganda. Allende lost the race with 38.6 percent of the vote to Frei’s 55.6 percent. In 1970, Allende won the presidential election with a slim 36.4 percent of the vote against the CIA-backed former president Jorge Alessandri. The CIA set about immediately to undermine Allende and on September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed military coup resulted in Allende’s assassination. The one thing that separates the CIA from other intelligence agencies that seek to influence elections, is that the CIA’s hands are always dripping with blood.

The 1956 election in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka) saw an unpopular United National Party led by pro-Western Prime Minister John Kotelawala lose to the leftist Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Solomon Bandaranaike. Although the Kotelawala government had received the largesse of CIA aid funneled through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it was not enough to save it from defeat by Bandaranaike’s socialists. The CIA merely set about the undermine Bandaranaike’s government with the icing on the cake being the prime minister’s assassination in 1959, allegedly by a Buddhist monk who hid a revolver underneath his robes prior to a meeting with the prime minister at his private residence. The assassin’s two conspirators received life sentences, while the trigger puller, Somarama Thero, was baptized as a Christian two days before his hanging. The CIA’s MK-Ultra psychological operations program had already mastered in the science of creating programmed assassins.

Time and time again, the CIA has successfully engaged in election manipulation in parliamentary elections, presidential elections, popular referenda, and local and regional elections. The CIA is now directing its wealth of election chicanery toward the American electorate to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. For the sake of democracy everywhere, the CIA must be abolished.