Frontline Poland: A Tale of the “Eastern Flank” : The West's Great War Against Russia, By Jafe Arnold

August 26, 2016 

THE WEST’S GREAT WAR AGAINST RUSSIA

The object is the defeat and destruction of Russia as an independent world power.

By Jafe Arnold

Unless change prevails, Poland is slated to disappear from the map once again. 

When Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz recently boasted that the NATO Summit in Warsaw would ensure that “The forces of our allies will finally be in place permanently on the eastern flank”, his formal ministerial title once again helped to show its true colors. That any defense minister would refer to his country as a mere “flank”, especially in an operative military context concerning armed forces other than its own, is a sad relinquishment of sovereignty even in the realm of semantics. Even in the Polish People’s Republic, which today’s Polish elites ceaselessly slander as part of their raison d’être, the country’s leaders never approached their country as an object, but as a conscious subject in international relations which could and ought to strive for the most optimal scenarios possible even within the rigid framework of Cold War confrontation and geopolitical deadlock.

Then, socialist Poland earned itself both ire and praise for its relatively aggressive bartering over its security guarantees unlike now, as Poland resembles little more than a willing toy or, at best, attack dog for the Western elites and corporations which have looted and manipulated it since 1989. Then again, Macierewicz’s statements should come as no surprise. What else could be expected from the man who called the brutal genocide against Poles by Ukrainian Nazis in Volyn in 1943 a mere “Russian manipulation” and claimed that Russia is “today’s greatest threat to global security” which has “undermined international order to the extent of  “no country in recent history”?But the problem neither begins nor ends with Macierewicz, who is merely another, albeit comparatively more preposterous, representative of the Polish elite. Macierewicz is a symptom, while the disease itself plaguing today’s Poland is the country’s subjugation by the US, NATO, and related Atlanticist structures in the EU who are striving to turn Poland into a frontline conflict-zone in a war with Russia.

ABW officers raiding Zmiana’s party office in Warsaw

Warsaw’s ruling clique is allowing NATO to turn Poland into a “suicide bomber”. 

Amidst the heightening crisis of “European integration”  (read: Atlanticist disintegration) and the re-tabling of the question of national sovereignty, Poland stands out as a unique case. As a point of contrast, the big EU countries like Germany, Italy, or France indeed do suffer from being accomplices to the Atlanticist project and anti-Russian crusade. They are restricted to tailing the declining US Empire in foreign policy, are subjected to the violent consequences of the “War on Terror” and the burdens of mass migration provoked by US wars, and both their working people and what’s left of their national bourgeoisie unduly suffer from the anti-Russian sanctions. Not to mention the endless austerity measures desperately imposed to keep the EU welded together in its present, dysfunctional form for the benefit of US imperialism and finance capital. As we have written elsewhere, Poland by all means pays (or, more precisely, is forced to pay) these costs for being a subject of the Atlanticist project. But Poland has an even deeper hole being dug for it by both its native elites and foreign “patrons”: Poland is being turned into the site of a war zone itself, one of the hot battlefields of geopolitical Endkampf. 

This daunting reality manifests itself in two particularly noteworthy spheres. 

Poland as a suicide bomber 

NATO’s embrace of Poland is a malignant Faustian pact liable to make it the first nuclear battlefield in European history.

From a military standpoint, Poland is being positioned as the sacrificial victim for a pre-emptive or subsequent Russian response to NATO aggression. The dangerous implications of NATO’s ever-increasing deployment of troops to Eastern Europe, principally Poland and the Baltic states, are widely known and often cited. But the “cannon fodder” is, in the end, just that. What about the cannon itself?

An increasing number of Poles from across the political spectrum have begun to rally against the potentially horrific fate ..ordained by NATO for their country. But, just like in any occupied zone being prepared for war, they have become the victims of political repression and democratic “cutbacks” to “keep the ranks in line.”

The most critical example of this is the deployment of the infamous “US missile defense systems” on Polish soil. Washington’s official justification of such a project is well known: these missile complexes are allegedly, supposedly intended to defend from an Iranian attack! In reality, most experts besides NATO propagandists and their lackeys acknowledge that this system is aimed at none other than the Russian Federation. But even more intriguing is the nature of these “defense” systems: according to top Russian military analysts Igor Korotchenko and Viktor Baranets, the technicalities of these systems and their utilization doctrine are such that they are not even designed to deflect an attack of any sort, a nuance of enormous gravity behind which lurks a frightening truth. In reality, these systems are coordinated to prevent a responsive counter-attack. In other words, they are meant to attract a responsive strike towards themselves and resist such only after a strike has been launched by the US-NATO side against a target expected to defend itself, ostensibly – let’s call things by their names – Russia. As nuclear power engineer and strategic analyst Albert Naryshkin puts it, “We are talking about a simple, understandable, and quite characteristically American scenario” up to the point of “involving the provocation of “nuclear aggression.” The only thing that Poland stands to win with the installation of US-NATO “defense” missiles on its territory is the certainty that Poland will become a key target in armed exchanges the magnitude of which are likely to resemble a Third World War. It’s enough to heed Vladimir Putin’s pragmatic yet ominous warning: 

As if the presence of such systems – which the Russian Federation has repeatedly iterated it interprets as a liable threat and is preparing a potential military response to – was not enough, then the Atlantic Council’s program for, literally, “arming Poland against Russia,” is the nail in the coffin. Not only does the document call for Poland to violate international conventions by attacking civilian structures “which could include the Moscow metro, the St. Petersburg power network, and Russian state-run media outlets such as RT,” but also openly promotes and elaborates on the notion that Poland is none other than NATO’s frontline. According to the program, “even if Moscow has no immediate intent to challenge NATO directly,” Poland must dramatically expand its armed forces, increase the frequency of provocative exercises to “demonstrate readiness,” deploy offensive cyber operations, “declare” the “right” to “make counterattacks deep into Russian territory” and “dispatch Special Operations Forces (SOF) into Russian territory”, “move forces into the Baltics and possibly Romania,” and “move forward expeditiously” with its $34 billion military modernization procurements to which “might be added US $26 billion.”

In effect, NATO’s proposals for Poland mean further, more ambitious provocations and bellicosity that can only end in turning Poland into the victim of an inconceivably disastrous war in which it has no justifiable

interest.  NATO’s assurance that it will defend and support Poland in any case of conflict can only be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as how the North Atlantic Treaty allows for member-states to fulfill their obligations of assistance by a mere diplomatic note wishing “good luck.” Whether one agrees with the political content of the example or not, it must be admitted that Poland has a long history of being abandoned at the crucial moment by Western powers promising it military support, including in the past century’s two world wars.  That Poland could stand alone in any potential conflict, especially with Russia, is such a dubious point that it is sufficient to quote the rhetorical question posed by Marek Glinka: “If Britain recently acknowledged that its military is inferior to the Russian one, then what about Poland?”

To put it bluntly, Poland is being positioned as a sort of suicide bomber, armed to the teeth but slated to explode thanks either to its own pushing of the button or to the defensive shot of another. Thus, it cannot be excluded that Poland’s “arming for deterrence” is nothing other than an “arming for (self-)destruction.” Just like Wahhabi clerics blessing their suicide bomber fodder and promising them eternal rewards, so are the US and NATO promising Poland that it can only be saved by sacrificing itself. 

Polish democracy under attack by…NATO

An increasing number of Poles from across the political spectrum have begun to rally against this potentially horrific fate for their country. But, just like in any occupied zone being prepared for war, they have become the victims of political repression and democratic “cutbacks” to “keep the ranks in line.” Just like in the famous lines of Pastor Martin Niemoller, “First they came for the communists,” the first anti-NATO forces to come under attack were activists from the Communist Party of Poland and the Grunwald Patriotic Workers Union. It is worth noting that cases to criminalize and punish left activists have been brought for consideration to Poland’s prosecutor for years, but only in the context surrounding the recent war build-up and NATO Summit in Warsaw did the gavel finally fall. On March 31st, four activists were sentenced without due trial to nine months of restricted freedom, hefty fines, and unpaid labor for the “public promotion of totalitarianism.” 

On May 16th, the leader of the political party Zmiana (“Change”), Mateusz Piskorski, issued a prescient warning on his blog that NATO’s newly deployed Very High Readiness Joint Task Force was going to “pacify” protests and opposition groups according to the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 4 under the pretext of fighting “Russian hybrid war.” Piskorski warned that NATO’s repressive plans, admitted by Multinational Corps Northeast’s General Krol himself, would ultimately render any forms of protest in the country, whether on the streets or on the internet, subject to suppression on the orders of US-NATO advisors. 

Two days later, on May 18th, armed agents of the Internal Security Agency raided Zmiana’s office and its activists’ homes and arrested and imprisoned Piskorski while a media campaign hurled the ridiculous charges that he was a “Russian, Chinese, and/or Iraqi spy.” In a most telling and foreboding instance, officers even confiscated ordinary Polish flags from Zmiana’s activists, a move which in Polish history usually accompanies war on Polish soil. Without any official chargesbrought against him, Poland’s leading anti-NATO figure who confidently declared in 2015 that “a Poland without NATO is a Poland without wars”, to this day remains in isolation in prison, from where he has stressed in two urgent letters (1 , 2) that Poland is being converted into a launch pad and target for WWIII. Piskorski’s arrest marked the intense upswing inrepression with clear geopolitical consequences. It is no accident that Zmiana, Poland’s leading anti-Atlanticist opposition which stands for Poland leaving NATO and seeking voluntary, mutually beneficial relations with all countries, has come under the bombardment of Poland’s Western corporate media and security services. 

So far, Mateusz Piskorski is the biggest example of what is to come for Poland under NATO’s thumb, under the pretext of “fighting hybrid war,” and under the beating drums of mobilization for a war whose instigators have no need for brave advocates of sovereignty and peace. Will the ordinary middle-aged woman, neither an activist nor associated with Zmiana, who wrote a letter of sympathy to Piskorski also be arrested? So far, the police have called her in for interrogation, just as they’ve urged members of Zmiana’s independent trade union to resign, or else…Apparently, any kind of oppositional sentiment is now considered worthy of swinging the state’s coercive forces into action. On August 11th, metropolitan police travelled 350 km into the countryside just to wake up and arrest 20-year-old Zmiana activist Bartosz Tomassi for “publicly promoting totalitarianism” by posting a profile picture on Facebook featuring a hammer and sickle. 

The wave of political repression that has hit Poland over the past several months is here to stay. Just like the show trials and repression that engulfed Europe in the 1930’s, their contemporary enactment in Poland is linked to the possibility of impending conflict. And the more that Poland’s “elite” and its colonial masters accelerate the drive towards war, the more “temporary security measures” and arrests will become part of the daily political landscape, whose “politics” could soon enough turn into those “politics by another means.” 

As has been the case throughout history, the Polish question today is faced with being decided amidst acute international stakes and tremendous paradigm change. As the unipolar world is violently sliding into the abyss while a nascent multipolar world is slowly but surely emerging, Poland’s current trajectory sets it on the course to tragedy.  This is the unavoidable, pivotal context which must be factored into any analysis of the struggle in and over Poland. If progressive forces like Change (Zmiana) don’t cope with this reality, then Poland’s existence on the map itself is threatened. 

 - - -

Distinguished Collaborator Jafe Arnold (J. Arnoldski) is an American expat studying European history and culture at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Formerly an activist on the American left, he is currently a research fellow and Polish liaison for the Center for Syncretic Studies, a translator and editor at Fort Russ, and the founding editor-in-chief of Eurasianist Internet Archive. Besides translating unique analyses from Russian and Polish for English-language audiences, Arnold’s interests and expertise include geopolitical processes and ideological developments in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. 

CP of Poland, Members of the Communist Party of Poland condemned for propagating communism 25 April 2016

CP of Poland, Members of the Communist Party of Poland condemned for propagating communism - APPEAL OF THE CP OF POLAND FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY 

Monday, 25 April 2016  Communist Party of Poland

Members of the Communist Party of Poland condemned for propagating communism

APPEAL OF THE CP OF POLAND FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY 

Four activists of the CPP were condemned on 31^st of March 2016 by the Regional Court in Dąbrowa Górnicza for propagating communist ideology in the „Brzask” newspaper and on the party's website. They have been sentenced to 9 months of limited freedom with compulsory gratuitous social work and fines.

This provocative verdict was taken during the summary procedure without presence of all the sides, that is usually used in offences, when guilt of the accused is certain. The court did not even undertake standard judgement procedure and based its verdict only on a charge. The accused even had no possibility to defend themselves. The condemned had already made objections to a judgement demanding normal court proceedings.

Activists of the CPP were accused of breaching article 256§1 of the penal code: „Whoever publicly promotes a fascist or other totalitarian system of state or incites hatred based on national, ethnic, race or religious differences or for reason of lack of any religious denomination shall be subject to a fine, the penalty of restriction of liberty or the penalty of deprivation of liberty for up to 2 years”.

An earlier attempt to amend this article by adding a ban on communist symbols was met with protests both in Poland and abroad. On 19^th of July 2011 it was lifted by the Constitutional Court that proclaimed it contradictory with the principle of freedom of speech.

Accusations against activists of the CPP for promoting a totalitarian system are the next example of equating communism with fascism and banning communist activity.

The case was started by a denunciation made by Bartosz Kownacki - MP of the Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2013. The prosecutor refused to proceed. However in 2015 proceedings were resumed and gathered pace after the elections won by PiS. On 31^st of December 2015 Regional Prosecutor's office in Katowice issued the case to the Regional Court in Dąbrowa Górnicza. The act of accusation stated that activists were publicly promoting a totalitarian system, by publishing in “Brzask” newspaper articles “directly related with the communist system and Marxism-Leninism, which in the context of historical experience is contradictory with democratic values” - that means for the activities of a legal political party.

The case is also important in the context of the politicisation of the prosecutor's office by subordinating it to the Minister of Justice – Zbigniew Ziobro from PiS, who was nominated as the Prosecutor General. The justice system is openly treating right wing extremism differently. At the same time when members of the “Brzask” editorial staff are being sentenced, neofascists from ONR (National Radical Camp) freely demonstrated on the streets of Białystok commemorating the 82^nd anniversary of their organisation. During the demonstration under the phalanx symbol they carried torches and promised to “do away” with political enemies, so directly referring to fascism. Despite this, the Ministry of Defence plans to arm neofascists as part of the territorial defence. Earlier, the court in Częstochowa acquitted charges against a man selling racist t-shirts, not seeing any violation of the art. 256 of the  penal code. Recently the Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General has suspended a sentence of a nationalist sentenced for assaulting a policeman.

The verdict condemning Polish communists was taken at the same time when on the 1^st of April the Parliament voted through a law “on banning the promotion of communism” that forces local authorities to change the names of streets and other objects that are associated with communism, which is an attack against the tradition of the workers' movement. The Institute of National Remembrance creates a registry and demands from the local authorities liquidation of the monuments of Soviet soldiers and others related to communism. The Devastation and liquidation of monuments and falsifying of history are common features of fascist practices.

The government and bourgeois class are fooling themselves if they believe that the CP of Poland, the communists of Poland will be intimidated by this anti-communist persecution or that the anti-communist campaign will make them yield. The measures against the communists go hand in hand with the escalation of the barbaric anti-people political line of the government and EU. It is very important that solidarity with the CP of Poland, which operates in difficult conditions and the support for the persecuted communists, is expressed in a mass and resolute way at this time. With protests at the embassies of Poland in every country, with solidarity motions etc.

Hands off the CP of Poland. The anti-communist persecution must be rescinded, the unacceptable anti-communist laws must be abolished. Anticommunism and the rewriting of history will not succeed.

FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe: Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server, WSJ Oct. 30, 2016

Investigators believe it's likely the newly recovered aggregation of emails will include ones that were deleted from the Clinton server before the FBI took possession of it as part of their earlier investigation.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton greets a crowd in Pompano Beach, Fla., on Sunday. PHOTO: JEWEL 

SAMAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By DEVLIN BARRETT for The Wall Street Journal

Updated Oct. 30, 2016 

The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.

It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the FBI; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.

Officials had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails—which they received over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter—because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.

The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.

The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a teenage minor, they had recovered a laptop. Many of the 650,000 emails on the computer, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.

Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.

The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the minor.

In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.

At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.

Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.

Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned the FBI that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.

The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.

New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity.

New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, attended a news conference in New York in 2013. Mr. Weiner had attempted to revive his career with a bid for New York City mayor, but that effort was doomed after a website published lewd photos that he had evidently sent to another woman. PHOTO: ERIC THAYER/REUTERS

Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.

It isn’t unusual for field agents to favor a more aggressive approach than supervisors and prosecutors think is merited. But the internal debates about the Clinton Foundationshow the high stakes when such disagreements occur surrounding someone who is running for president.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received $467,500 in campaign funds in late 2015 from the political-action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons and, until he was elected governor in November 2013, a Clinton Foundation board member.

Mr. McAuliffe had supported Dr. McCabe in the hopes she and a handful of other Democrats might help win a majority in the state Senate. Dr. McCabe lost her race last November, and Democrats failed to win their majority.

A spokesman for the governor has said that “any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous.”

Dr. McCabe told the Journal, “Once I decided to run, my husband had no formal role in my campaign other than to be” supportive.

In February of this year, Mr. McCabe ascended from the No. 3 position at the FBI to the deputy director post. When he assumed that role, officials say, he started overseeing the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work when she was secretary of state.

FBI officials have said Mr. McCabe had no role in the Clinton email probe until he became deputy director, and by then his wife’s campaign was over.

But other Clinton-related investigations were under way within the FBI, and they have been the subject of internal debate for months, according to people familiar with the matter.

Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.

Los Angeles agents had picked up information about the Clinton Foundation from an unrelated public-corruption case and had issued some subpoenas for bank records related to the foundation, these people said.

The Washington field office was probing financial relationships involving Mr. McAuliffe before he became a Clinton Foundation board member, these people said. Mr. McAuliffe has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyer has said the probe is focused on whether he failed to register as an agent of a foreign entity.

Clinton Foundation officials have long denied any wrongdoing, saying it is a well-run charity that has done immense good.

The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said.

In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.

Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.

“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.

Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.

About a week after Mr. Comey’s July announcement that he was recommending against any prosecution in the Clinton email case, the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe, with Mr. McCabe deciding the FBI’s New York office would take the lead, with assistance from Little Rock.

Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee in September on a variety of subjects including the investigation into former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server. PHOTO: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

The Washington field office, FBI officials decided, would focus on a separate matter involving Mr. McAuliffe. Mr. McCabe had decided earlier in the spring that he would continue to recuse himself from that probe, given the governor’s contributions to his wife’s former political campaign.

Within the FBI, the decision was viewed with skepticism by some, who felt the probe would be stronger if the foundation and McAuliffe matters were combined. Others, particularly Justice Department anticorruption prosecutors, felt that both probes were weak, based largely on publicly available information, and had found little that would merit expanded investigative authority.

According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.

The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.

For Mr. McCabe’s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an FBI office eager to pour more resources into a case and Justice Department prosecutors who didn’t think much of the case, one person said. Those people said that following the call, Mr. McCabe reiterated past instructions to FBI agents that they were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had.

Mr. McCabe’s defenders in the agency said that following the call, he repeated the instruction that he had given earlier in the Clinton Foundation investigation: Agents were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had.

Others further down the FBI chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.

Others familiar with the matter deny Mr. McCabe or any other senior FBI official gave such a stand-down instruction.

For agents who already felt uneasy about FBI leadership’s handling of the Clinton Foundation case, the moment only deepened their concerns, these people said. For those who felt the probe hadn’t yet found significant evidence of criminal conduct, the leadership’s approach was the right response.

In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information.

Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. McCabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn’t “go prosecutor-shopping.”

Not long after that discussion, FBI agents informed the bureau’s leaders about the Weiner laptop, prompting Mr. Comey’s disclosure to Congress and setting off the furor that promises to consume the final days of a tumultuous campaign.

Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com

Justin Trudeau continuing proud Liberal tradition of betraying Indigenous peoples BY RUSSELL DIABO | OCTOBER 28, 2016 Rabble.ca

Justin Trudeau continuing proud Liberal tradition of betraying Indigenous peoples

BY RUSSELL DIABO | OCTOBER 28, 2016  Rabble.ca  http://bit.ly/2eKGXsv

In the late 1980s, because of my Indigenous policy background, I was convinced by a close friend to get involved in efforts to create an Aboriginal Peoples' Commission within the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party already had a Women's and Youth Commission so the model to change the Liberal Party's constitution was already there.

I agreed to get involved because the Mulroney era was a disaster. In 1986, a secret federal Cabinet document was leaked called the "Buffalo Jump of the 1980s," which recommended -- like the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy -- the termination of Indigenous rights through various policy measures including off-loading federal responsibilities for "status Indians" onto the provinces.

In June 1990, during the Liberal Leadership Convention that elected Jean Chretien as leader, the Aboriginal Peoples' Commission (APC) was created via amendments to the Liberal Party's constitution. I was also elected at that convention to the founding executive of the APC as Vice-President for Policy.

Weeks later, on July 11, 1990, the SQ riot squad stormed the pines at Kanehsatake.

The APC was involved in advising the new Liberal leader and the Liberal Party through this difficult time; although Chretien had his own misguided ideas on Indigenous policy, as many of us know.

In the lead-up to the 1993 federal election, the APC was active in advising the Liberal Party on what should be included in the party platform on Indigenous issues. There was resistance from the party establishment, people running interference for Jean Chretien, like Chaviva Hosek, Liberal Party Research Director and Eddie Goldenberg, Chretien's senior political advisor, but the APC held public policy forums soliciting input. We largely controlled the pen that developed what became the 1993 Liberal Aboriginal Platform in the Red Book and a longer version released in Saskatoon by Chretien during the campaign. 

Unfortunately, once the Liberals won a majority government in 1993, Chretien set out to break or ignore the Liberal promises on Indigenous policy. Chretien named one of his cronies, Ron Irwin, as Minister of Indian Affairs, who started his term by trying to amend the Indian Act to give Ottawa bureaucrats greater control over Indigenous communities. The proposed changes were worse than the status quo.

The Chretien-Irwin Indian Act amendment package failed as another federal election was called and Ron Irwin left politics, but Chretien didn't give up. He named Robert Nault as Minister of Indian Affairs, who tried to force passage of the previous Indian Act amendments through Parliament as the "First Nations Governance Act." Again, this proposed law was defeated with the help of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs who stalled the Bill in Parliament.

Chretien and Irwin also unilaterally imposed the 1995 federal so-called Inherent Right to Self-Government policy, which essentially converts Indian Act bands into municipal type local governments while replacing tax exemptions with the ability to raise "own-source revenue" for local programs.

In short, I and the other founding executive members of the Liberal Party's APC were betrayed by Jean Chretien, who killed our efforts to improve federal Indigenous policy. The 1993 Liberal Aboriginal platform was buried by Chretien and subsequent Liberal leaders and the long-standing federal objective of terminating Indigenous rights continued.

Trudeau's Betrayal 

One year into this federal government's mandate, I see history repeating itself. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is using his majority government to break or manipulate his 2015 Indigenous platform promises, aided and abetted by his Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and his Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett.

To me, Trudeau's biggest betrayal so far is his backsliding on his promise to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

In May 2016, both Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and INAC Minister Carolyn Bennett were dispatched to the United Nation in New York to announce Canada was removing it's "objector status" from UNDRIP and were adopting it "without qualification" -- a bald-faced lie, because they did qualify it: they stated Canada was adopting UNDRIP "in accordance with Canada's constitution."

The Trudeau government is attempting to take the international minimum standards of Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples' contained in the Articles of UNDRIP and interpret them through a Canadian constitutional framework, which continues to be used to dispossess, impoverish and oppress Indigenous peoples. Canada's founding constitution, the British North America Act of 1867, helped the fathers of colonialism immorally and illegally take the lands, territories and resources of Indigenous peoples, largely without compensation.

Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, repatriated Canada's constitution in 1982 as Prime Minister. After the failure of political talks with representatives of four national Aboriginal organizations in the 1980s, the federal government interpreted Section 35 as being an "empty box" to be filled up by agreements negotiated through unfair, one-sided, land claims and self-government policies. All of these policies have been worded to terminate Indigenous rights and assimilate Indigenous People's into becoming, as Justin Trudeau calls it, "Indigenous Canadians."

The Supreme Court of Canada has added to the federal government's injustice by setting out a constitutional analytical framework of legal tests that continue to rely on the racist, discredited Doctrine of Christian Discovery while placing the burden of proof on Indigenous groups to prove they have "existing" Aboriginal or treaty rights. 

These legal tests cost millions of dollars to meet and the collection of evidence in order to sustain a constitutional challenge in the courts is immense. They are unaffordable for most Indigenous Peoples, which is why most Chiefs and Councils across Canada are at what I call "federal Termination Tables," negotiating away their peoples' rights.

In July 2016, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told the Chiefs at a National Assembly of First Nations Assembly in Niagara Falls that:

"adopting the UNDRIP as being Canadian law are unworkable and, respectfully, a            political distraction to undertaking the hard work required to actually implement it....Ultimately, the UNDRIP will be articulated through the constitutional framework of      section 35."

Minister Wilson-Raybould's statement to the Chief's across Canada should be viewed in comparison with NDP MP Romeo Saganash's private members Bill 262, "An Act to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." Saganash's bill has been endorsed by many Indigenous and supporting groups, including The Coalition for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Replacing 'Consent' with 'Consult'

By interpreting UNDRIP in accordance with Canadian constitutional law (as interpreted by the federal government and the Supreme Court of Canada), the Trudeau government is replacing the high international standard in UNDRIP of Free, Prior, Informed Consent with the lower domestic legal standard of the Crown's duty to consult with Indigenous groups. All the government has to do is justify infringement of Indigenous rights for the public good and, voilà, you can approve the Site C dam project in the Peace Valley the Liquified Natural Gas project on Lelu Island, and probably the Kinder-Morgan pipeline.

Justin Trudeau is continuing the proud Liberal tradition of betraying Indigenous peoples -- and this is only year one of his mandate.

Russell Diabo is Editor and Publisher of an online newsletter that covers First Nations political and legal issues, the First Nations Strategic Bulletin. He is a member of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake, Quebec, and has been an activist on First Nation issues since the age of 16 and is part of the Defenders of the Land Network. He works closely with Idle No More under a joint agreement between these two networks to work together.

This article was originally published in Iori:wase, Volume 4, Issue 28 on October 27. 2016.

Robert Parry: The De Facto US/Al Qaeda Alliance October 29, 2016

The De Facto US/Al Qaeda Alliance

Robert Parry, Consortium News, October 29, 2016

Exclusive: Buried deep inside Saturday’s New York Times was a grudging acknowledgement that the U.S.-armed “moderate” rebels in Syria are using their U.S. firepower to back an Al Qaeda offensive, reports Robert Parry.

The World Trade Center’s Twin Towers burning on 9/11. (Photo credit: National Park Service)

A curious aspect of the Syrian conflict – a rebellion sponsored largely by the United States and its Gulf state allies – is the disappearance in much of the American mainstream news media of references to the prominent role played by Al Qaeda in seeking to overthrow the secular Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

There’s much said in the U.S. press about ISIS, the former “Al Qaeda in Iraq” which splintered off several years ago, but Al Qaeda’s central role in commanding Syria’s “moderate” rebels in Aleppo and elsewhere is the almost unspoken reality of the Syrian war. Even in the U.S. presidential debates, the arguing between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton has been almost exclusively about ISIS, not Al Qaeda.

Though Al Qaeda got the ball rolling on America’s revenge wars in the Middle East 15 years ago by killing several thousand Americans and others in the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist group has faded into the background of U.S. attention, most likely because it messes up the preferred “good guy/bad guy” narrative regarding the Syrian war.

For instance, the conflict in Aleppo between Syrian government forces and rebels operating primarily under Al Qaeda’s command is treated in the Western media as simply a case of the barbaric Assad and his evil Russian ally Vladimir Putin mercilessly bombing what is portrayed as the east Aleppo equivalent of Disney World, a place where innocent children and their families peacefully congregate until they are targeted for death by the Assad-Putin war-crime family.

The photos sent out to the world by skillful rebel propagandists are almost always of wounded children being cared for by the “White Helmet” rebel civil defense corps, which has come under growing criticism for serving as a public-relations arm of Al Qaeda and other insurgents. (There also are allegations that some of the most notable images have been staged, like a fake war scene from the 1997 dark comedy, “Wag the Dog.”)

Rare Glimpse of Truth

Yet, occasionally, the reality of Al Qaeda’s importance in the rebellion breaks through, even in the mainstream U.S. media, although usually downplayed and deep inside the news pages, such as the A9 article in Saturday’s New York Times by Hwaida Saad and Anne Barnard describing a rebel offensive in Aleppo. It acknowledges:

A fake war scene in the dark 1997 comedy “Wag the Dog,” which showed a girl and her cat fleeing a bombardment in Albania.

“The new offensive was a strong sign that rebel groups vetted by the United States were continuing their tactical alliances with groups linked to Al Qaeda, rather than distancing themselves as Russia has demanded and the Americans have urged. … The rebels argue that they cannot afford to shun any potential allies while they are under fire, including well-armed and motivated jihadists, without more robust aid from their international backers.” (You might note how the article subtly blames the rebel dependence on Al Qaeda on the lack of “robust aid” from the Obama administration and other outside countries – even though such arms shipments violate international law.)

What the article also makes clear in a hazy kind of way is that Al Qaeda’s affiliate, the recently renamed Nusra Front, and its jihadist allies, such as Ahrar al-Sham, are waging the brunt of the fighting while the CIA-vetted “moderates” are serving in mostly support roles. The Times reported:

“The insurgents have a diverse range of objectives and backers, but they issued statements of unity on Friday. Those taking part in the offensive include the Levant Conquest Front, a militant group formerly known as the Nusra Front that grew out of Al Qaeda; another hard-line Islamist faction, Ahrar al-Sham; and other rebel factions fighting Mr. Assad that have been vetted by the United States and its allies.”

The article cites Charles Lister, a senior fellow and Syria specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington, and other analysts noting that “the vast majority of the American-vetted rebel factions in Aleppo were fighting inside the city itself and conducting significant bombardments against Syrian government troops in support of the Qaeda-affiliated fighters carrying out the brunt of front-line fighting.”

Lister noted that 11 of the 20 or so rebel groups conducting the Aleppo “offensive have been vetted by the C.I.A. and have received arms from the agency, including anti-tank missiles. …

“In addition to arms provided by the United States, much of the rebels’ weaponry comes from regional states, like Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Lister said, including truck-borne multiple-rocket launcher systems and Czech-made Grad rockets with extended ranges.”

The U.S./Al Qaeda Alliance

In other words, the U.S. government and its allies have smuggled sophisticated weapons into Syria to arm rebels who are operating in support of Al Qaeda’s new military offensive against Syrian government forces in Aleppo. By any logical analysis, that makes the United States an ally of Al Qaeda.

A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.

The Times article also includes a quote from Genevieve Casagrande, a Syria research analyst from the Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative “think tank” that has supported more aggressive U.S. military involvement in Syria and the Middle East.

“The unfortunate truth, however, is that these U.S.-backed groups remain somewhat dependent upon the Al Qaeda linked groups for organization and firepower in these operations,” Casagrande said.

The other unfortunate truth is that the U.S.-supplied rebels have served, either directly or indirectly, as conduits to funnel U.S. military equipment and ordnance to Al Qaeda.

One might think that the editors of The New York Times – if they were operating with old-fashioned news judgment rather than with propagandistic blinders on – would have recast the article to highlight the tacit U.S. alliance with Al Qaeda and put that at the top of the front page.

Still, the admissions are significant, confirming what we have reported at Consortiumnews.com for many months, including Gareth Porter’s article last February saying: “Information from a wide range of sources, including some of those the United States has been explicitly supporting, makes it clear that every armed anti-Assad organization unit in those provinces [of Idlib and Aleppo] is engaged in a military structure controlled by [Al Qaeda’s] Nusra militants. All of these rebel groups fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their military activities with it. …

“At least since 2014 the Obama administration has armed a number of Syrian rebel groups even though it knew the groups were coordinating closely with the Nusra Front, which was simultaneously getting arms from Turkey and Qatar.”

Double Standards

The Times article on page A9 also deviated from the normal propaganda themes by allowing a statement by Syrian officials and the Russians regarding their suspension of airstrikes over the past week to permit the evacuation of civilians from east Aleppo and the rebels’ refusal to let people leave, even to the point of firing on the humanitarian corridors:

An Israeli strike caused a huge explosion in a residential area in Gaza during the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008-2009. (Photo credit: Al Jazeera)

“The [Syrian] government and its [Russian] allies accused the rebels of forcing Aleppo residents to stay, and of using them as human shields.”

The “human shields” argument is one that is common when the United States or its allies are pummeling some city controlled by “enemy” forces whether Israel’s bombardment of Gaza or the U.S. Marines’ leveling of Fallujah in Iraq or the current campaign against ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul. In those cases, the horrific civilian bloodshed, including the killing of children by U.S. or allied forces, is blamed on Hamas or Sunni insurgents or ISIS but never on the people dropping the bombs.

An entirely opposite narrative is applied when U.S. adversaries, such as Syria or Russia, are trying to drive terrorists and insurgents out of an urban area. Then, there is usually no reference to “human shields” and all the carnage is blamed on “war crimes” by the U.S. adversaries. That propaganda imperative helps explain why Al Qaeda and its jihadist comrades have been largely whited out of the conflict in Aleppo.

Over the past few years, U.S. regional allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, also have shifted their public attitudes toward Al Qaeda, seeing it as a blunt instrument to smash the so-called “Shiite crescent” reaching from Iran through Syria to Lebanon. For instance, in September 2013, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored Syria’s Sunni extremists over President Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were with Al Qaeda.

And, in June 2014, speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

Warming to Al Qaeda

As Israeli officials shifted toward viewing Al Qaeda and even ISIS as the lesser evils and built a behind-the-scenes alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states, American neoconservatives also began softening their tone regarding the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Across the U.S. foreign policy establishment, pressure built for “regime change” in Damascus even if that risked handing Syria to Sunni jihadists. That strategy hit a road bump in 2014 when ISIS began chopping off the heads of Western hostages in Syria and capturing swathes of territory in Iraq, including Mosul.

That bloody development forced President Barack Obama to begin targeting ISIS militants in both Iraq and Syria, but the neocon-dominated Washington establishment still favored the Israeli-Saudi objective of “regime change” in Syria regardless of how that might help Al Qaeda.

Thus, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its jihadist ally, Ahrar al-Sham, faded into the background under the fiction that the anti-Assad forces were primarily noble “moderates” trying to save the children from the bloodthirsty fiends, Assad and Putin.

Grudgingly, The New York Times, deep inside Saturday’s newspaper, acknowledged at least part of the troubling reality, that the U.S. government has, in effect, allied itself with Al Qaeda terrorists.

[For more background on this issue, see Consortiumnews.com’s “New Group Think for War with Syria/Russia.”]

DOJ's Loretta Lynch Tried To Squash Comey's Letter To Congress

by Tyler Durden

Oct 29, 2016 

http://bit.ly/2e8qlua

Last night a leaked memo was revealed, indicating FBI director James Comey's stated reasons for reopening the Clinton email probe upon discovering what now appear to be tens of thousands of Huma Abedin emails located on Anthony Weiner's notebook. Comey revealed two core reasons for the action: a sense of obligation to lawmakers and a concern that word of the new email discovery would leak to the media and raise questions of a coverup. What he did not reveal, and as has emerged overnight from a report by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, is that Comey also acted in contravention to DOJ practices, and more importantly, acted contrary to the "preference" of DOJ head Loretta Lynch, whose infamous meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac at the end of June will likely be reassessed in light of these latest revelations.

According to the New Yorker, "Comey’s decision to make public new evidence that may raise additional legal questions about Clinton was contrary to the views of the Attorney General, according to a well-informed Administration official. Lynch expressed her preference that Comey follow the department’s longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election, but he said that he felt compelled to do otherwise."

Traditionally, the Justice Department has advised prosecutors and law enforcement to avoid any appearance of meddling in the outcome of elections, even if it means holding off on pressing cases. One former senior official recalled that Janet Reno, the Attorney General under Bill Clinton, “completely shut down” the prosecution of a politically sensitive criminal target prior to an election. “She was adamant—anything that could influence the election had to go dark,” the former official said.

And the punchline:

"according to the Administration official, Lynch asked Comey to follow Justice Department policies, but he said that he was obliged to break with them because he had promised to inform members of Congress if there were further developments in the case. He also felt that the impending election created a compelling need to inform the public, despite the tradition of acting with added discretion around elections. The Administration official said that Lynch and Justice Department officials are studying the situation, which he called unprecedented."

The Hill confirms as much, reporting today that Comey went against the wishes of Attorney General Loretta Lynch when he sent a letter to Congress Friday notifying them that the agency was reviewing new emails “pertinent” to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

A government official who requested anonymity to discuss the matter told The Hill that the Justice Department’s stance was to abstain from taking any actions that could impact the presidential race.

“The AG’s position is consistent with the department’s position not to take investigative steps that would influence an election so close to an election and to not comment on ongoing investigations. Director Comey decided to operate independently of that guidance by sending that letter to the Hill.”

So does the NYT:

The day before the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, sent a letter to Congress announcing that new evidence had been discovered that may be related to the completed Hillary Clinton email investigation, the Justice Department strongly discouraged the step and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy, three law enforcement officials said.

Senior Justice Department officials did not move to stop him from sending the letter, officials said, but they did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections.

That Mr. Comey moved ahead despite those protestations underscores the highly unusual nature of Friday’s revelations, which added a dramatic twist to the final days of a presidential campaign and reignited a firestorm that Mrs. Clinton believed she had put behind her when the F.B.I. decided in July not to charge anyone in the investigation.

While Loretta Lynch's reputation may now be tarnished, alongside that of James Comey, who is almost certainly a dead public servant walking, and will be promptly fired by either republicans or democrats after the election, one wonders how events would have played out under Lynch's predecessor Eric Holder:

Matthew Miller, a Democrat who served as the public-affairs director at the Justice Department under Holder, recalled that in one case, the department waited until after an election to send out subpoenas. “They didn’t want to influence the election—even though the subpoenas weren’t public,” he said. “People may think that the public needs to have this information before voting, but the thing is the public doesn’t really get the information. What it gets is an impression that may be false, because they have no way to evaluate it. The public always assumes when it hears that the F.B.I. is investigating that there must be something amiss. But there may be nothing here at all. That’s why you don’t do this.”

Miller added that “Comey is an outstanding law-enforcement officer but he mistakenly thinks that the rules don’t apply to him. But there are a host of reasons for these rules.” Or perhaps the DOJ's rules pandering to politicians were flawed from the beginning?

One thing appears obvious: by killing the probe into Clinton this summer, Comey burned one half of the bridge; reopening the probe on Friday was the other half.

“I don’t really blame Comey,” another former Justice Department official said. “But it’s troubling.” This official thought that Comey “didn’t want to look tainted. This new information comes to him, and he’s afraid if he doesn’t make it public until after the election he’ll be impeached. People will say he lied to Congress. But in the end he did the self-protective thing. Was it the right thing? Put it this way: it isn’t what previous Administrations have done.”

Of course it isn't, and that's what the Clinton campaign had been betting on.

Meanwhile, having been the Democrats' best friend, Comey is now - according to prominent Democrat Howard Dean - on the same side as Putin.

At least when things don't go your way, you can still just blame the Russians...

Riot police attack North Dakota pipeline protesters 28 October 2016

Riot police Attack North Dakota pipeline protesters

28 October 2016

                Police clear Native American protest camp 

Armed police in the US state of North Dakota have arrested 141 Native American protesters and environmental activists during a tense confrontation.

They were among several hundred people who occupied private land in the path of a controversial new oil pipeline.

Police fired non-lethal rounds and used pepper spray and sound cannon to push protesters back to their main encampment on public land.

Skirmishes lasted overnight and continued until early Friday morning.

By then, spent bean bag rounds and pepper spray canisters littered the ground as police towed away vehicles that the protesters had burned to create barricades in the road, including several military-grade Humvees.

"They used a sonic device and then also they used rubber bullets and we have shots of people who had rubber bullets right to the face. They maced elders right in the face. They dragged people out of sweat lodges. They shot one 15-year-old boy's horse and killed it under him," Jacqueline Keeler from the Sioux tribe told the BBC.

She said members of the tribe were protesting because the pipeline threatened the region's water supply went across land never ceded by the tribe.

Police said they had fired non-lethal bean bag rounds in response to stone throwing and one woman who fired a pistol three times at police officers without hitting any.

Dozens of officers in riot gear, some armed, moved in assisted by trucks and military Humvees.

Militarised Police attack Standing Rock Standing Rock Treaty Camp- Rubber bullets, tear gas, arrests of elders

Authorities said protesters were now using "aggressive" tactics

Morton County Sheriff's office said the operation began at 11:15am local time (18:15 GMT) and that protesters had refused to leave voluntarily on Wednesday.

Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said the protesters were a "public safety issue" and their actions had "forced law enforcement to respond".

"We cannot have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways or trespassing on private property," he said in a statement.

But Robert Eder, a 64-year-old Vietnam War veteran from the Standing Rock Reservation, said protesters were not scared.

"If they take everybody to jail, there will be twice as many tomorrow, and every day that passes more will come," he said. "If they raze these teepees, tomorrow we will be back."

Hundreds of protesters have camped on the federally owned land for months, with more than 260 people arrested before Thursday's police operation.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project, has said it will boost the local economy and is safer than transporting oil by rail or road.

Members of the Sioux tribe say the Dakota Access pipeline will desecrate sacred land and harm water resources.

The pipeline will run almost 1,900km (1,170 miles), carrying oil to Gulf Coast refineries.

Native American protesters claim the land as their own, citing a 19th Century treaty with the federal government.

The protest has drawn the attention of activists and celebrities, including actress-activist Shailene Woodley and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

Mastermind of Brazilian impeachment saga arrested October 26, 2016

Mastermind of Brazilian impeachment saga arrested

October 26, 2016 12:43 PM CDT  BY EMILE SCHEPERS

Cunha at the center of a July 7 press conference. Photo by: Marcelo Camargo/ Agência Brasil - Creative Commons

Eduardo Cunha, the formidable political power broker and former congressman who is considered to be the mastermind of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, has been arrested on multiple corruption charges.  The question now is will he make a plea bargain in exchange for naming names?  If he does, it could lead to a political earthquake in this country of 200 million people, the fifth most populous nation in the world.

All year long, the Brazilian public and millions beyond Brazil’s borders have watched the saga of the impeachment of President Rousseff.  The role of Cunha in this drama has been commented on for months, and many accounts of the events mentioned Cunha’s role in lining up support for the impeachment and also a possible motive of blocking investigation of his own allegedly corrupt practices.  In the Spring, Cunha and his allies moved in for the kill, and Rousseff was ousted August 31.  But now the trap that Cunha set seems to have caught him also.

Eduardo Cunha, from Rio de Janeiro, is an evangelical Christian who has taken hard line conservative positions on issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights, labor rights and other matters in which the outgoing Workers’ Party governments of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff had introduced progressive reforms. He belongs to the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB.  This is a non-ideological “big tent” party used for the purposes of advancing the careers of various politicians, but it is also the biggest partyin the Chamber of Deputies. For a while, it was in a tactical alliance with the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) of left wing presidents Lula da Silva and Rousseff, but broke that alliance earlier this year as the impeachment of Rousseff moved forward.  (The president who was installed upon the ouster of Rousseff,Michel Temer, is also from the PMDB and is a former close Cunha ally.)

Lava Jato scandal

Cunha is accused as part of the Lava Jato (Jiffy Car Wash) scandal, in which numerous politicians and officials of several different political parties, as well some powerful business executives, have been investigated, and some jailed.   They have been under investigation in kickback schemes involving construction companies bidding for contracts with Brazil’s vast parastatal oil company, Petrobras. Cunha is alleged to have pocketed up to $40 million in bribes.  His name has also figured prominently in reports about the “Panama Papers” as a client of the Mossack-Fonseca company which many sleazy politicians have used for years to hide ill-gotten money.  Some of the earlier arrestees have been “singing like canaries” in exchange for the possibility of reduced sentences, and this has the country’s political establishment very much on edge.  And Cunha could turn out to be the most tuneful canary of them all.

Because of the corruption accusations, Cunha was ousted from his position as speaker of the Chamber of Deputies on May 5 of this year, and then on September 12   he was expelled from Congress and banned from political activities for eight years, which meant he lost the generous immunity from prosecution that federal legislators enjoy in Brazil.  It was only a matter of time before the cuffs would be put on him, but he made it pretty clear at that time that he would not go quietly.  Angry because he saw coup president Michel Temer and other right wing figures in Congress as having thrown him under a bus, Cunha announced that he was going to be writing a tell-all book in which all his conversations with his political contacts would be discussed.  “Today it was me” he said at the time, “Tomorrow it could be you”.  “I am going to tell about everything that happened, [my] dialogue with all the persons who participated in conversations with me. They will be made public, in their entirety.  Everybody who conversed with me, everybody, everybody.”

Who will he take down with him?

At that point, a whole lot of political figures must have broken out into a sweat.  But now comes the expected culmination.  And the big fear is not just about the book, but about what and whom Cunha might hand over to prosecutors in the context of plea bargaining.  More than one can play the game of throwing former allies under the bus.

On October 19, at the behest of Judge Sergio Moro, an ambitious jurist who has had a high profile in the Lava Jato investigation, Cunha was arrested in the capital, Brasilia, and taken to Curitiba in the south of the country and locked up.  Judge Moro gave as justification for Cunha’s incarceration the fact that he has dual Brazilian-Italian citizenship, and that makes him a flight risk.

Cunha is accused of amassing a huge fortune by illicit and corrupt means. Particularly telling was the discovery that Cunha had lied about massive amounts of money he had salted away in secret Swiss bank accounts.  His assets, amounting to 200 million reis , or 63 million U.S. dollars, have been frozen by order of the court.

While Cunha sits in a cell, isolated from other prisoners in the Lava Jato case, Temer’s government is moving ahead to undo all the social progress accomplished by the Brazilian people during the Lula and Rousseff administrations.  But Temer himself is widely believed to be as dirty as Cunha: Specifically, he is accused of receiving kickbacks as “campaign contributions” from the Odebrecht Company, which was anxious to get contracts to do work for Petrobras. Also, so far three members of Temer’s cabinet have been forced to resign over a period of just a few months, also because of corruption scandals.  So the question becomes: How long will it take for the scandal to catch up with Temer, and how will this affect his and his colleagues’ reactionary plans for the country?

Millions of Brazilians are not sitting around waiting for Temer to fall by himself, but are hitting the streets to defend their hard won economic and social gains.