Bringing Light Into Darkness - News & Analysis

Bringing Light Into Darkness guest Stan Smith - investigative journalist and publisher of the AFGJ Venezuela and ALBA Weekly News for the past seven years, whose primary focus has been on US intervention in Latin America joins us tonight (6/14/21).

The focus of the show is on an important but well-hidden dimension of US foreign policy influence on the countries of the world. It is the combination of the dominant role and influence of more than 75% of international trade being negotiated through either the US dollar or Euro, while barely 2% or less is in Chinese currency, and the use of US sanctions as a foreign policy tool to often coerce other countries’ internal policies.

As our guest explains, when you combine other US allied countries in NATO and Australia it adds up to more than 90% of all international trade taking place with these currencies. Secondly, what if the US has the power and exerts the power to unilaterally sanction and cutoff 1/3 of the world's population and their governments from the freedom to trade with countries of their choice unless they change their economic policies to suit the United States?

Essentially what if we live in a world in which international law is essentially whatever the US decides it is due to the monopoly like power the dominance of the US dollar in the world has?

Please join us as our guest Stanfield Smith leads us in an explication of this hidden power that the US has and uses to exert its foreign policy interests throughout the world.

We cannot reel in the damages of a foreign policy that we do not see or know. Please tune in weekly to Bringing Light into Darkness, as we seek to bring ‘honest light’ to what we all need to know and see.

Bringing Light Into Darkness guest Stan Smith - investigative journalist and publisher of the AFGJ Venezuela and ALBA Weekly News for the past seven years, whose primary focus has been on US intervention in Latin America joins us tonight (6/14/21).

The focus of the show is on an important but well-hidden dimension of US foreign policy influence on the countries of the world. It is the combination of the dominant role and influence of more than 75% of international trade being negotiated through either the US dollar or Euro, while barely 2% or less is in Chinese currency, and the use of US sanctions as a foreign policy tool to often coerce other countries’ internal policies.

As our guest explains, when you combine other US allied countries in NATO and Australia it adds up to more than 90% of all international trade taking place with these currencies. Secondly, what if the US has the power and exerts the power to unilaterally sanction and cutoff 1/3 of the world's population and their governments from the freedom to trade with countries of their choice unless they change their economic policies to suit the United States?

Essentially what if we live in a world in which international law is essentially whatever the US decides it is due to the monopoly like power the dominance of the US dollar in the world has?

Please join us as our guest Stanfield Smith leads us in an explication of this hidden power that the US has and uses to exert its foreign policy interests throughout the world.

We cannot reel in the damages of a foreign policy that we do not see or know. Please tune in weekly to Bringing Light into Darkness, as we seek to bring ‘honest light’ to what we all need to know and see.

Bringing Light Into Darkness guest Dan Kovalik - lawyer, author expert on international human right recently returned from a delegation visit to Syria from May 22- May 29, 2021. This period covered the May 26, 2021, reelection of Bashar Assad.

The focus of our show is on his 5/31/21 article: Syria's truly been a site for World War, their vote for peace and against foreign interference must be respected -. We decimate several commonly held myths that we have been inculcated to falsely believe by our one-sided mainstream media presentation of Syria and US foreign policy motivations. The following myths are deconstructed through historical fact-based data presented during the show.

Myth 1: The Syrian conflict was a Civil War led by “moderate rebels”.

Myth 2: Per President Obama, it was “Assad that started it” in 2011 with his brutal suppression of democratic protests that led to US involvement in trying to oust President Bashar Assad form his presidency.

Myth 3: Assad is a dictator with minimal public support amongst Syrians.

Myth 4: That with absolute Certainty Assad has been gassing his own people.

Myth 5: The US Foreign Policy interest in Occupying Syria is to repel ISIS & Al Qaeda

Other questions addressed. Is this a US War on Terrorists or a War of Terrorists? If it were not for the intervention by the US led West would there ever have been such a protracted 10 year war that has gone on in Syria and resulted in some 500 thousand deaths? Why and how were terrorists from around the world landing in opposition ranks to the Assad government who have confiscated passports from terrorists and foreign mercenaries from some 84 countries?

As MLK said our foreign policy is a reflection of the character of our nation. As US citizens we have a right to the truth, and we all are collectively responsible for the objective outcomes of our US government foreign policy.

We cannot reel in the damages of a foreign policy that we do not see or know. Please tune in weekly to Bringing Light into Darkness, and you will know and see.

Bringing Light Into Darkness guest Dan Kovalik - lawyer, author expert on international human right recently returned from a delegation visit to Syria from May 22- May 29, 2021. This period covered the May 26, 2021, reelection of Bashar Assad.

The focus of our show is on his 5/31/21 article: Syria's truly been a site for World War, their vote for peace and against foreign interference must be respected -. We decimate several commonly held myths that we have been inculcated to falsely believe by our one-sided mainstream media presentation of Syria and US foreign policy motivations. The following myths are deconstructed through historical fact-based data presented during the show.

Myth 1: The Syrian conflict was a Civil War led by “moderate rebels”.

Myth 2: Per President Obama, it was “Assad that started it” in 2011 with his brutal suppression of democratic protests that led to US involvement in trying to oust President Bashar Assad form his presidency.

Myth 3: Assad is a dictator with minimal public support amongst Syrians.

Myth 4: That with absolute Certainty Assad has been gassing his own people.

Myth 5: The US Foreign Policy interest in Occupying Syria is to repel ISIS & Al Qaeda

Other questions addressed. Is this a US War on Terrorists or a War of Terrorists? If it were not for the intervention by the US led West would there ever have been such a protracted 10 year war that has gone on in Syria and resulted in some 500 thousand deaths? Why and how were terrorists from around the world landing in opposition ranks to the Assad government who have confiscated passports from terrorists and foreign mercenaries from some 84 countries?

As MLK said our foreign policy is a reflection of the character of our nation. As US citizens we have a right to the truth, and we all are collectively responsible for the objective outcomes of our US government foreign policy.

We cannot reel in the damages of a foreign policy that we do not see or know. Please tune in weekly to Bringing Light into Darkness, and you will know and see.

UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan Report on Human Rights on the Impact on Unilateral Coercive Measures on Venezuela following her 2/1- 2/12/21 visit is reviewed. It called for an immediate end to the US and Allied sanctions on Venezuela. The report found that sanctions have resulted in economic and human calamities for the entire population especially the poor and most vulnerable. While billions in Venezuelan assets that could be used for medicine and vaccines remain frozen at foreign banks the report claimed some 2.5 million Venezuelans now face severe food security.

With the hardening of the sanctions over the years since 2005, state revenues to Caracas have been slashed by a staggering 99% leaving the country to live on just 1% of its presanction income. The UN rapporteur concluded by urging the US and UK and other allies, to “review and lift targeted sanctions in accordance with principle of international law, the rule of law, human rights and refugee law.”

Please join us Monday night 5/31 at 6pm as our guest and investigative journalist Roger Harris brings light into the darkness around the well-hidden history of Venezuela that reveals the predatory nature of US relations with Venezuela and the south. More compelling is the detailed nature of the Venezuelan democracy and electoral process compared to US and other nations of the world that our guest explicates. In addition, the false image making that our government and its obedient mainstream media conduits feed and shape US public opinion around the issue of who is the real president of Venezuela, the US led “alleged” Venezuelan president Juan Guiado or the elected President Nicholas Maduro, is discussed in detail and explained.

While surly the government of Venezuela led by its President Nicholas Maduro has made its share of mistakes that have led in part to the economic problems facing Venezuela today, this show brings light to the staggering influence US led foreign policy has had on the resulting consequences for Venezuelans. Our one-sided media coverage results in mistaken US public perceptions around who is most responsible for the Venezuelan economic meltdown. The dialogue between our guest, Board Member of the human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, Roger Harris and host Pedro Gatos provides documentable historical and contemporary insights, combining a macro and micro analysis of a host of Venezuelan related fact vs fiction precepts we may each have, for you to rejudge and reconsider for yourself as desired.

UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan Report on Human Rights on the Impact on Unilateral Coercive Measures on Venezuela following her 2/1- 2/12/21 visit is reviewed. It called for an immediate end to the US and Allied sanctions on Venezuela. The report found that sanctions have resulted in economic and human calamities for the entire population especially the poor and most vulnerable. While billions in Venezuelan assets that could be used for medicine and vaccines remain frozen at foreign banks the report claimed some 2.5 million Venezuelans now face severe food security.

With the hardening of the sanctions over the years since 2005, state revenues to Caracas have been slashed by a staggering 99% leaving the country to live on just 1% of its presanction income. The UN rapporteur concluded by urging the US and UK and other allies, to “review and lift targeted sanctions in accordance with principle of international law, the rule of law, human rights and refugee law.”

Please join us Monday night 5/31 at 6pm as our guest and investigative journalist Roger Harris brings light into the darkness around the well-hidden history of Venezuela that reveals the predatory nature of US relations with Venezuela and the south. More compelling is the detailed nature of the Venezuelan democracy and electoral process compared to US and other nations of the world that our guest explicates. In addition, the false image making that our government and its obedient mainstream media conduits feed and shape US public opinion around the issue of who is the real president of Venezuela, the US led “alleged” Venezuelan president Juan Guiado or the elected President Nicholas Maduro, is discussed in detail and explained.

While surly the government of Venezuela led by its President Nicholas Maduro has made its share of mistakes that have led in part to the economic problems facing Venezuela today, this show brings light to the staggering influence US led foreign policy has had on the resulting consequences for Venezuelans. Our one-sided media coverage results in mistaken US public perceptions around who is most responsible for the Venezuelan economic meltdown. The dialogue between our guest, Board Member of the human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, Roger Harris and host Pedro Gatos provides documentable historical and contemporary insights, combining a macro and micro analysis of a host of Venezuelan related fact vs fiction precepts we may each have, for you to rejudge and reconsider for yourself as desired.

On the 96th Birthday of Malcolm X guest Dr William Darity economist and clearly one of our country’s leading authorities on black studies and systemic racism returns to Bringing Light into Darkness to discuss Malcolm X and Nat Turner.

Today the average black family has $840k less wealth than the average white family. Systemic racism is a form of oppression within a system that Malcolm X was increasingly beginning to understand is a system not capable of resolving the race nor the gross wealth disparity in the US and throughout the world. Dr Darity shares important similarities and differences between Malcom and Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion that led to 50+ deaths. Dr Darity suggests they both were willing to embrace violence "for the purposes of challenging a violent social system'. However, Malcolm's image of him being violent is not supported by the facts, which include that he never took a life of another and spoke of violence as an option only as self-defense against the greater violence victimizing blacks. Meanwhile 'Nat Turner built an uprising that was “aimed at a forceful taking of racial justice" that Darity describes can be seen as 'engaging in an act of resistance' against a brutal slave system.

We pivot for most of the show about the impact transatlantic slave trade and how the wealth of the colonizing nations of the world are inextricably connected. Featuring St Dominique/Haiti, we document how, since 1492 Columbus discovering Hispaniola, which marked the beginning of enslaving indigenous peoples in the New World, the continued wealth of "advanced" nations was supplemented (from the Spanish and Portuguese to the UK, France & Dutch and ultimately the US domination of the western hemisphere).

Our discussion with Dr Darity explains how inequality has been crafted occurring within nations such as the US but also how it has disproportionately harmed predominantly black nations. All these wealth inequalities find their origin in and through the transatlantic slave trade and its ramifications. Dr Darity shares how the economic wealth and disparity in the US from 1776 through and into its industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century was generated largely on the labor of slaves that came to America against their will. The broken promises of land guarantees to blacks following the Civil War and the WWII GI benefits that went almost exclusively to whites with the almost total exclusion of blacks who served our country. All of this on top of slavery that began before the founding of our country have contributed to their wealth inequality today.

We appropriate and explain the revolutionary terms that Malcolm ('international powerstructure') and Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana ('neocolonialism") provided those who are interesting in understanding and deconstructing 'oppression'.

On the 96th Birthday of Malcolm X guest Dr William Darity economist and clearly one of our country’s leading authorities on black studies and systemic racism returns to Bringing Light into Darkness to discuss Malcolm X and Nat Turner.

Today the average black family has $840k less wealth than the average white family. Systemic racism is a form of oppression within a system that Malcolm X was increasingly beginning to understand is a system not capable of resolving the race nor the gross wealth disparity in the US and throughout the world. Dr Darity shares important similarities and differences between Malcom and Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion that led to 50+ deaths. Dr Darity suggests they both were willing to embrace violence "for the purposes of challenging a violent social system'. However, Malcolm's image of him being violent is not supported by the facts, which include that he never took a life of another and spoke of violence as an option only as self-defense against the greater violence victimizing blacks. Meanwhile 'Nat Turner built an uprising that was “aimed at a forceful taking of racial justice" that Darity describes can be seen as 'engaging in an act of resistance' against a brutal slave system.

We pivot for most of the show about the impact transatlantic slave trade and how the wealth of the colonizing nations of the world are inextricably connected. Featuring St Dominique/Haiti, we document how, since 1492 Columbus discovering Hispaniola, which marked the beginning of enslaving indigenous peoples in the New World, the continued wealth of "advanced" nations was supplemented (from the Spanish and Portuguese to the UK, France & Dutch and ultimately the US domination of the western hemisphere).

Our discussion with Dr Darity explains how inequality has been crafted occurring within nations such as the US but also how it has disproportionately harmed predominantly black nations. All these wealth inequalities find their origin in and through the transatlantic slave trade and its ramifications. Dr Darity shares how the economic wealth and disparity in the US from 1776 through and into its industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century was generated largely on the labor of slaves that came to America against their will. The broken promises of land guarantees to blacks following the Civil War and the WWII GI benefits that went almost exclusively to whites with the almost total exclusion of blacks who served our country. All of this on top of slavery that began before the founding of our country have contributed to their wealth inequality today.

We appropriate and explain the revolutionary terms that Malcolm ('international powerstructure') and Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana ('neocolonialism") provided those who are interesting in understanding and deconstructing 'oppression'.

Bringing Light Into Darkness (BLID) guest, investigative journalist Mike Whitney, has a proven record of a very high geopolitical acumen and shares his analysis of unfolding events in Syria and the Ukraine.

We start the show with an overview of a presentation by Richard H. Black former Virginia State Senator for 8 years until 2020 and retired colonel Vietnam veteran who served in uniform for thirty-two years. The presentation was given at the March 20-21 (2021) Schiller Institute conference. Why did the distinguished veteran declare “I’m appalled by the indecency of American aggression towards Syria”? He makes and validates the following claims that most of the American public are unaware of; “We’re told that we’re fighting a war on terror, but we’re not;” “We’re closely allied with terrorists like al-Qaida”. These and other claims he backs up from personal knowledge as we shatter the mainstream dominant narrative that US foreign policy was about supporting moderate rebels in Syria.

Please join us as Mike Whitney and Pedro Gatos have a wide ranging but focused discourse providing a practical and historically contexed geopolitical overview of the current state of US foreign policy initiatives in Ukraine and Syria, against the backdrop of Russia’s perceived national security interests. The dominant media narrative is that Russia is the ‘aggressor nation”, however examining facts on the ground both past and present suggest a different and important perspective.

Our BLID investigations are driven by well researched cross referenced factual claims regarding US foreign policy that for some may lead to uncomfortable discoveries. However, an informed US public cannot be achieved through any other means.

Tonight, we return to what should be front page news but has not even made it to MSM news in any credible manner. Namely the enabling of a return, in 2014, for the first since WWII, of a European government to power that is primarily and substantial Neo Nazi in its constitution. Joining us is author and historian Lev Golinkin who emigrated to the US in 1990 from eastern Ukraine whose writing history expertise includes on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, about how white supremacy affects us and, on the far right and immigrant and refugee identity. The show documents what MSM failed and continues to fail to cover, the US enabled coup and the response of that coup as the main impetus to the creation of the ‘separatists’.

We review the author’s latest May 11, 2021 article in the Nation magazine, Secretary Blinken Faces a Big Test in Ukraine where Nazis and their Sympathizers are Glorified and provide documentation of the February 2014 coup being enabled by the US meddling as well as its result of 8-9 cabinet positions being appointed to neo-Nazis.

We also document the horrific burning to death murder of 40 plus in Odessa Ukraine on May 2, 2014 and the repression that followed led by neo-Nazi battalions the US failed to defund under Obama despite John Conyers led legislation that passed the House unanimously some six months earlier. We also describe the resulting in US deaths in Florida and the training of US white supremacists in Ukraine by those connected to 2017 Charlottesville racist violence.

Additionally, our guest provides a detailed historical overview of the 1.5 million Jews that were slaughtered in western Ukraine along with another 70-100 thousand Poles. This very western part of Ukraine is where the super ultra nationalist organizations come from today; they allied with Hitler back in the day; they welcomed the Nazis with open arms; they started slaughtering Jews in some places before the Nazis got there…these were extraordinarily fascist, anti-Semitic, savage groups. And the main one was called the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). And Stefan Bandera was the leader of one of the factions of it, who is celebrated today in the Ukraine.

How could these truths be kept from the American public by our government leaders and the MSM for the past seven years without barely a mention? This is why we suggest tuning in to Bringing Light into Darkness (BLID) should be a primary source of news each week for the US public.