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Paul Merrell

400 Blackwater Mercs Deployed In Ukraine Against Separatists, German Press Reports | Ze... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...paratists-german-press-reports

war & peace Ukraine mercenaries Academi Germany U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 14 - No Cached
  • In what is becoming a weekly ritual, the German press continues to demolish the US case of "idealistic humaniatrian" Ukraine intervention. Recall, that it was a week ago that German tabloid Bild am Sonntag, hardly the most reputable source but certainly one which reaches the broadest audience, reported that dozens of CIA and FBI agents were "advising the Ukraine government." This conclusion is hardly a stretch and certainly based on facts considering the recent semi-secret jaunt by CIA head Brennan to Kiev. Fast forward one week when overnight the same Bild reported that about 400 elite mercenary commandos of the private US security firm, Academi, f/k/a Xe Services, f/k/a Blackwater "are involved in a punitive operation mounted by Ukraine's new government" against east Ukraine separatists.
  • Bild cites sources who report that on April 29, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) informed the Angela Merkel government about Academi commandos' involvement in Kiev's military operations in eastern Ukraine. Spiegel adds that "the information originates from U.S. intelligence services and was presented during a meeting chaired by the Chancellor's Office chief Peter Altmaier (CDU). At the meeting were present the president of the intelligence agencies and the Federal Criminal Office, as well as the intelligence coordinator of the Chancellor's Office and senior Ministry officials." Bild am Sontag did not have information about who was paying the Blackwater commandos: it is well-known they do not come cheap.
  • Of course, since no western entity, and certainly not the company itself, would ever admit its involvement in the Ukraine as it would promptly crash the official US foreign policy track claiming US non-involvement in Ukraine, none of this is surprising.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Finally, in this proxy war between west and east, to believe that the US won't throw everything it can at Putin is naive, and as such the involvement of trained US mercenaries in Ukraine is beyond debate. However what is certainly surprising and far more interesting, is the persistent attempts by the German press to discredit none other than their biggest "Developed world" ally, the US. It is almost as if someone (a quite wealthy and powerful someone) has material interests that diverge with those of the Obama administration, and hence converge with those of Putin. Alongside the emerging China-Russia axis, keeping tabs on just how close to Russia Germany is willing to get, is easily the most notable story in the entire Ukraine conflict.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 14
     
    Don't miss the last paragraph. Tyler has a whiff of big money driving Germany toward maintenance of the Russo-Germanic energy alliance. The U.S. has no natural gas to deliver to Europe in the next few years and even when it does, it will be very spendy to liquify and transport it by ship. It's the U.S. government that wants to block emergence of a unified Eurasian market, not the E.U. And the U.S. is a declining market, as China's economy eclipses that of the U.S. I'm not predicting that Germany will defect from NATO in the foreseeable future, but Obama is definitely riding roughshod over the E.U. in his Ukraine strategy during the Great Recession with no resurrection of the dollar's value in sight. The ties that bind NATO together are mightily stretched at this point.   
Paul Merrell

Ukrainian Nazis Pay Private Military Company Academi (formerly Blackwater) for Training... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5422667

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy Blackwater neo-Nazis

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian Government’s Tass ‘news’ agency is alleging that “The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) … has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” according to an unnamed source, which source is probably one of the few remaining anti-nazi bureaucrats still remaining in the Ukrainian Government. The reported price of this Blackwater (a.k.a. “Xe,” a.k.a. “Academi”) training contract is $3.5 million. Furthermore, “‘Ukraine has said it is ready to pay the money on the condition of assistance from the Ukrainian association Patriot, providing technical and financial support for the project,’ the source said.” That organization is Patriot of Ukraine. If this report in Tass is true, then the Ukrainian Government, which now is being funded almost entirely by U.S. taxpayers (inasmuch as it no longer meets the financial requirements of the IMF and EU, both of which receive funding from both U.S. and European taxpayers), and for which the U.S. Congress just passed and the U.S. President just signed into law in December authorization of a $450 million donation, is now co-funding this military training, along with — as wikipedia describes “Patriot of Ukraine” (but with wikipedia’s footnotes removed) —
  • a Ukrainian nationalist organization with racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs. It constitutes a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and groups founded in 2008 that share the social-national ideology and agree upon building a social-national state in Ukraine. Both the “Patriot of Ukraine” and the S.N.A. engage in political violence against minorities and their political opponents. The leader of the “Patriot of Ukraine” and of the Social-National Assembly is Andriy Biletsky. The S.N.A. derived from “the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine,” whose name was derived from the National Socialist Party of Germany — the original Nazis. America’s CIA hides its longstanding support of nazis after World War II (see this and this), but the Bushes and Obama have continued it even decades after the Soviet Union and its communism ended. Consequently, in 2004, the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine was advised by the CIA to, and it did, change its name to the “Freedom Party,” or “Svoboda,” because that sounds better to Americans.
Gary Edwards

Oliver Stone : 'US has become an Orwellian state' - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...oliver-stone-us-orwellian-022

Oliver-Stone Globalists Banksters TV-Series

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Interview with Oliver Stone and author Peter Kuznick.  They answer questions related to Oliver Stone's "Show Time" television series, "The Untold History of the United States".  Good stuff - essential information for anyone seeking to understand why the US Constitution and the principles of individual liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence are being disregarded and discarded by the ruling elites.  The final stages of the New World Feudalism, er "Order", are now unfolding.  Right before our eyes.  And we seem helpless bystanders as the Globalist cabal of banksters, corporatists and ruling elites make their final assault on the world's last best hope for individual liberty. "Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration's disregard for the rule of law. Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep's clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the "nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him." "He has taken all the Bush changes he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them," Stone told RT. "It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere." According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. "That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication." RT's Abby Martin in the program Breaking the Set discusses the Showtime film series and book titled The Untold History of the United States co-authored by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. "Obama was a great hope for change""
Gary Edwards

Transnationalism vs. American Sovereignty « Tammy Bruce - 0 views

tammybruce.com/...m-vs-american-sovereignty.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13
     
    excerpt: "….Transnationalists want to rewrite the laws of war, do away with the death penalty, restrict gun rights and much more-all without having to win popular majorities or heed American constitutional limits. And these advocates are making major strides under an Obama administration that is itself a hotbed of transnational legal thinking…. To be clear, transnationalism isn't a conspiratorial enterprise. In the legal academy, its advocates have openly stated their aims and means. "International law now seeks to influence political outcomes within sovereign States," Anne-Marie Slaughter, then dean of Princeton's public-affairs school, wrote in an influential 2007 essay. International law, she went on, must expand to include "domestic choices previously left to the determination of national political processes" and be able to "alter domestic politics." The preferred entry point for importing foreign norms into American law is the U.S. court system. The Yale Law School scholar Howard Koh, a transnationalist advocate, has written that "domestic courts must play a key role in coordinating U.S. domestic constitutional rules with rules of foreign and international law." Over the past two decades, activist judges have increasingly cited "evolving" international standards to overturn state laws, and Mr. Koh has suggested that foreign norms can be "downloaded" into American law in this manner…. Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Koh held top posts at the State Department during Mr. Obama's first term, and their tenures coincided with an aggressive push to ratify or recognize as customary law… a host of … progressive causes. For proof that the transnationalist threat isn't merely theoretical, look no further than the European Union…. Today over half of the regulations that affect Europeans' lives are made by administrators in Brussels, not by national legislatures. These regulations include the EU's ban, announced in May, on restau
Paul Merrell

NSA head: We need bulk collection | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...a-head-we-need-bulk-collection

surveillance state NSA Rogers Congress bulk-collection

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The head of the National Security Agency on Thursday told Senate lawmakers that preventing his agency from collecting Americans’ information in bulk would make it harder to do its job.Under questioning before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Adm. Michael Rogers agreed that ending bulk collection would “significantly reduce [his] operational capabilities.”ADVERTISEMENT“Right now, bulk collection gives us the ability ... to generate insights as to what’s going on,” Rogers told the committee.The NSA head also referenced a January report from the National Academy of Sciences that concluded there is “no software technique that will fully substitute for bulk collection” because of the ability to search through the storehouse of old information. “That independent, impartial, scientifically-founded body came back and said no, under the current structure there is no real replacement,” Rogers said.Rogers was questioned on Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee who has become its most vocal privacy hawk.
  • In response to the NSA head’s comments, Wyden pointed to a 2013 White House review group, which found that one controversial NSA bulk collection program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that the information obtained by the NSA “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using” other means.The debate follows on a congressional clash earlier this year over the NSA’s bulk collection of records about the phone calls of millions of Americans. The records contained information about whom people called and when but not what they talked about.
  • After a brief lapsing of some portions of the Patriot Act, Congress eventually reined in the NSA by forcing it to go through the courts to search private phone companies’ records for a narrower set of records. Many privacy advocates treated the new law, called the USA Freedom Act, as a significant victory, through national security hawks worried that it would make it harder for the NSA to track terrorists.Under the new system — which has not gone into effect yet — the amount of time it takes to obtain those records “is probably going to be longer I suspect,” Rogers said.Though the phone records database has been the NSA’s most prominent bulk collection program, it is not the only one. The agency’s collection of vast amounts of Internet data has alarmed many privacy advocates and is the target of a current lawsuit from Wikipedia and the American Civil Liberties Union. 
Paul Merrell

Dr Alan Sabrosky- Mossad Did 9-11 | Centurean2\'s Weblog - 0 views

centurean2.wordpress.com/...-alan-sabrosky-mossad-did-9-11

war & peace 9-11 Mossad Israel

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • “What we need to stand up and say is not only did they attack the USS Liberty, they did 9/11. They did it. I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at it’s headquarters, Marine Corps and I made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period.” - Dr. Alan Sabrosky, March 14, 2010 – listen to podcast
  • Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is a writer and consultant specializing in national and international security affairs. In December 1988, he received the Superior Civilian Service Award after more than five years of service at the U.S. Army War College as Director of Studies, Strategic Studies Institute, and holder of the General of the Army Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research. He is listed in WHO’S WHO IN THE EAST (23rd ed.). A Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and a 1986 graduate of the U.S. Army War College, Dr. Sabrosky’s teaching and research appointments have included the United States Military Academy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Middlebury College and Catholic University; while in government service, he held concurrent adjunct professorships at Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Paul Merrell

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : The Real Meaning of President Obama's... - 0 views

ronpaulinstitute.org/...ational-security-speeches.aspx

war & peace Obama empire ron paul

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 13 - No Cached
  • This past Thursday and Friday, President Obama delivered two speeches designed to outline his new thinking on national security and counter-terrorism. While much was made in the media of the president’s statements at the National Defense University and the US Naval Academy suggesting that the most active phase of US military action overseas was coming to an end, this “new” approach is but the same old policy wrapped in new packaging. In these addresses, the president panders to the progressives, while continually expanding and solidifying the "enabling act” principle.
  • President Obama’s speech is not at all what it seems. It is a call for more empire and more power to the executive branch. The president promises that “this war, like all wars, must end.” Unfortunately the war on the American taxpayer never seems to end. But end it will, as we are running out of money.
Muslim Academy

Friday Prayer in the U.S. Capitol building - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/er-in-the-u-s-capitol-building

Friday Prayer in the U.S. Capitol building

shared by Muslim Academy on 28 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 28 Dec 12
     
    The U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. is a prominent place for Friday Prayer (Salat al-Juma'). At first, it may be surprising that a country like the United States, which is sometimes said to be at war with Islam, has arranged for Friday Prayer to be held in its national capitol building. But America is home to people of all faiths, and Islam is respected here the same as in the Muslim world. Islam mandates that noon-time prayer on Friday should be performed by a congregation of worshippers in a mosque or another suitable facility. This practice is reported by the Muslim source al-Tabari to have begun in Medina, rather than Mecca, and made obligatory by the Prophet Muhammad. In countries with predominantly Muslim populations, communal business can be temporarily suspended during Friday Prayer. Although this is not often the case in America, the importance of Friday Prayer for practicing Muslims is the same.
Muslim Academy

Impact of Facebook on Youth of Pakistan - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/ebook-on-the-youth-of-pakistan

Impact of Facebook on Youth of Pakistan Impact of Facebook on Youth

shared by Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 30 Dec 12
     
    Facebook is a top social networking site that is used all over the world. This website allows people to get in touch with friends and family members near or far, and people are addicted to using it. It not only allows a person to contact people, but it helps an individual stay informed about the world around them. However, parents in Pakistan believe that this website has a negative impact on the youth. The negative impact of Facebook is that it is distracting students from their school work. It is something that kids can spend hours and hours on. Facebook allows kids to play games, chat with their friends, and like their favorite pages. This addiction is the problem that is the concern of many Pakistani people. Pakistan has a very competitive environment. Students here compete to get into top colleges, universities, and to get the top jobs. In order to get these things you must have good results from your exams, and you must have some extracurricular activities. Facebooking does not count as an extracurricular activity. Kids have to strive and they work their bottoms off day and night, so that they can get to where they need to go. There are not equal opportunities for every student, so the children in this country have to push their studies to the limit. The more knowledge they have, the higher they will be able to score on their exams.
Paul Merrell

More Bang for the Buck - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...more-bang-for-the-buck

war & peace weapons U.S. Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • More bang for the buck is the most apt description when we compare spending of the United States Government with that of the Government of the Russian Federation on its defense sector and military technology development. A closer look at the two budgets reveals the huge fault line that cuts across the entire US economy today. It also mirrors the true collapse of the American hegemon as a world power. It need not have been.
  • In the official Fiscal Year 2017 the US Department of Defense officially requested $523.9 billion in what they call “discretionary funding,” as in, “we use it as we please, no independent audit allowed.” Another $58.8 billion was requested for so-called Overseas Contingency Operations, typical Pentagon-speak for wars everywhere from Afghanistan to Syria to military operations around the South China sea. That made an official total of $583 billion requested and granted by a docile Congress. On October 13, the Russian wire-service Tass.ru reported that the Russian government is set to spend 948.59 billion rubles on national defense in 2017, according to the draft federal budget posted. It sounds like a lot, almost one trillion rubles. If we convert at the current dollar exchange rate, this translates into a mere $15 billion. Of that 793.79 billion rubles or $12.7 billion is planned to be spent on the Russian Armed Forces. In 2015 the Russian Federation spent $26 billion on the state military-industrial complex development program will reach 1.67 trillion rubles. That total for military industry investment and maintaining Russia’s armed forces, some $49 billion, equals 8.4 % of the dollar amount the United States Defense Department plays with annually. To that must be added the separate amount of $400 billion for modernization of Russian armed forces military capabilities by 2020. That’s roughly another $80 billion a year.
  • Now the relevant question at a time when Washington-led NATO forces are aggressively moving to the borders of the Russian Federation, when US Pentagon Special Forces and mercenaries like Blackwater aka Academi are mucking around Ukraine causing mischief, destruction and murder, is which country is getting better defense or military capacities for every dollar spent.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The answer came following the September 30, 2015 Russian announcement that it had agreed to respond with military support to the call of the legitimate government of Syria. What Russian military efforts have accomplished with meager resources, has astonished most western military experts. Far from being the dilapidated, technologically obsolescent Soviet-era military that many US planners reckon, Russia’s armed forces have undergone a quiet and impressive modernization ever since it became clear around 2007 that Washington was intent on pushing NATO to Moscow’s front door in Ukraine and Georgia as well as threatening with US missile “defense” in Poland, Czech Republic and now also in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shiogu is a remarkable organizer who is known for reorganizing large Russian government departments. Before becoming Defense Minister he was head of the large Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, responsible for emergency situations, such as floods, earthquakes and acts of terrorism. The result of Russia’s military modernization, partly demonstrated in the military intervention in Syria, has been a strategic shift in the global military balance of power that Washington’s neo-conservatives, none of whom have served in active duty military theatres, did not reckon with. Russian science and engineering have accomplished astonishing results with minimum investment. Just a select glance at what is being developed is instructive.
Paul Merrell

Disengage or Die: Russia - Syria Give Aleppo "Rebels" a Last 10-Hour Ultimatum - nsnbc ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ebels-a-last-10-hour-ultimatum

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Aleppo cease-fire Russia Al-Nusrah

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • The Russian General Staff announced on Wednesday that a new humanitarian pause in combat activities will be implemented in Aleppo on Friday from 9am to 7pm local time. The pause will give non-combatants a new chance to leave the “rebel-held” pocket in eastern Aleppo and “rebels” to leave the pocket with their weapons and to move to other “rebel-held areas.
  • It hasn’t been part of the official announcement about the humanitarian pause and the offer that militants could evacuate. However, military logic dictates that this is a last “do or die” ultimatum before the use of decisive military force will be used against those militants who don’t leave the pocket in Aleppo. The offer about the 10-hour-long pause comes as insurgents are engaged in a massive assault against Syrian and Syrian-allied forces west of Aleppo in a desperate attempt to lift the siege. Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia Valery Gerasimov asserted that the decision was approved by Syrian authorities and was meant to “prevent senseless casualties” by allowing civilians and gunmen to leave the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo. Gerasimov said: “All of the militants’ attempts to break through in the city of Aleppo have been unsuccessful. The terrorists suffered heavy losses of manpower, weaponry and military equipment. They have no chance to escape from the city” . He also called upon all terrorist groups’ leaders to get out from Aleppo city in light of Washington’s failure to separate the so-called “moderate opposition” from the terrorists. The latter statement underpins that Syria and Russia have to, and will count on a decisive military confrontation to clear the eastern part of the city from insurgents and to reestablish Syrian sovereignty as well as law and order in the entire city.
  • One of the corridors for the gunmen leads to the Turkish-Syrian border and another one to Idleb countryside, the General said, adding “During Friday’s pause, six additional corridors will be opened for civilians wishing to leave the city.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • On October 20 – 22 a similar humanitarian pause was implemented. However, the evacuation of civilians was obstructed by Jabhat al-Nusrah (a.ka. Jabhat Ahrar al-Sham) and other insurgents. nsnbc consulted with a military expert from “a leading European military academy” who spoke on condition of anonymity. The expert stressed that the military as well as the humanitarian situation, in the absence of a political solution, dictates that eastern Aleppo be seized in a decisive battle unless insurgents use the “do or die” offer given to them. This need for a decisive military campaign, including the use of overwhelming air power, is in part dictated by the fact that Turkey hasn’t closed its border to insurgents, including Al-Qaeda affiliates, the entry of Turkish (NATO) troops into Syria, and the need to seize control over eastern Aleppo before winter sets in to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, he said. Surgical air strikes against remaining insurgents inside eastern Aleppo could typically be preceded by the dissemination of information to non-combatants, encouraging them to leave certain areas while seeking refuge in others, he added. It is noteworthy that the offer to evacuate coincides with the arrival of Russian naval forces including the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in the Mediterranean.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 16
     
    It isn't just winter approaching. Russia and Syria undoubtedly want to finish taking Aleppo before the new U.S. president is sworn in.
Paul Merrell

Baltimore Police Have Been Secretly Spying On Entire City From The Air - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219806

surveillance state eye-in-the-sky Baltimore

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Baltimore Police didn’t bother to inform the public (or anyone, for that matter) when they implemented a privately-funded mass surveillance program in January using a wide-angle camera-equipped plane flying above the city — which instantly uploaded and stored everything it recorded, just in case they needed it later. As Bloomberg’s Monte Reel reports, a small Cessna plane equipped with “a sophisticated array of cameras” capable of capturing “an area of roughly 30 square miles,” funded by an a private donor and provided by Dayton, Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems, sometimes circled above the city for up to 10 hours per day recording and storing everything without anyone being privy to its presence. Since January, Reel noted, the Baltimore Police Department has been using this covert Big Brother’s eye-in-the-sky “to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings.” Gone, apparently, are the days when the government’s surveillance state drew ire for attempting to ferret out potential terrorists — residents of Baltimore have been guinea pigs for an altogether more insidious spy dragnet. Persistent Surveillance Systems’ technology automatically stores all the footage on massive hard drives, making it available to law enforcement long afterward — but the idea police could access this information to solve a simple property crime is no less than alarming.
  • Particularly considering the company’s founder has an intense military background. Ross McNutt, Bloomberg reports, “is an Air Force Academy graduate, physicist, and MIT-trained astronautical engineer who in 2004 founded the Air Force’s Center for Rapid Product Development. The Pentagon asked him if he could develop something to figure out who was planting the roadside bombs that were killing and maiming American soldiers in Iraq. In 2006 he gave the military Angel Fire, a wide-area, live-feed surveillance system that could cast an unblinking eye on an entire city.” Though the technology had imperfections — even determining the gender of a person on the ground was impossible — its TiVo-like capabilities more than made up for any shortcomings. A person of interest could be followed by rewinding footage after, say, an IED exploded roadside, to track their movements — even if the cameras weren’t focused directly on the explosion at the moment it occurred. If the cameras were in the air at the time, anything that happened was fully trackable both back and forward in time. McNutt’s pitch for his technology concisely summarized, “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.” Angel Fire truly evolved at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico after 2007, when upgrades allowed for “all-weather and nighttime capabilities and then was used as the basis for another system, called Blue Devil, which coupled wide-area cameras with narrow-focus zoom lenses in the same package.”
  • Over time, after McNutt retired from the military, he worked to further improve the camera array and attended security conferences in hopes of garnering clients. After a brief but effective test run over the skies of Ciudad Juárez, Los Angeles became the first U.S. city to employ Persistent Surveillance’ system — and just as covertly as what has been taking place in Baltimore for the last eight months.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • McNutt believes in the legitimacy of the services Persistent Surveillance can provide, and insists the technology isn’t as invasive as it might sound since individual identifying details, among other aspects, aren’t discernible, and because the every keystroke and action taken by analysts — like video footage — are logged and archived.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16
     
    Just imagine what it will be like when the bugs in the focal system are gone, which undoubtedly is a goal. Couple it with facial recognition and what do we have?
Paul Merrell

US groups want presidential candidates to answer 20 science questions | us-presidential... - 0 views

www.hindustantimes.com/...ry-eskri9PInifTQNDrw3G7aJ.html

Auction 2016 20-quetions science

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • A coalition of US groups representing more than 10 million scientists and engineers published 20 questions on Wednesday they want every US presidential candidate to answer ahead of November’s vote. The questions range from how to support vaccine science, to defining the scope of America’s goals in space, to the candidates’ views on climate change and what would they would do about it. Stances on nuclear power, protecting the world’s oceans, reducing the human and economic costs of mental illness, and the controversy over visa programs that allow highly skilled immigrants into the United States also feature in the list, made public by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
  • The full list is available at ScienceDebate.org/20qs. The 56 groups that helped create the list by crowd sourcing the questions has asked for the candidates to answer the questions by September 6. All are described by AAAS as non-partisan groups, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Paul Merrell

What would happen if Washington gave up on the jihad?, by Thierry Meyssan - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article195697.html

war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy Trump-administration allies

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • President Trump’s desire to fight Daesh and to put an end to international terrorism is going to be extremely difficult to implement. Indeed, it will cause damage to the states who organised it, and implies a reorientation of international politics. The new President of the United States does not seem ready to give his troops the order to attack until he has found and sealed new alliances.
  • he opposition against President Donald Trump is so strong that the plan to fight Daesh, which is scheduled to be presented on 22 March during a Coalition summit in Washington, is still not ready. Its political direction is still vague. Only the objective of eradicating jihadism has been agreed upon, but none of the implications of the plan have been resolved. General Joseph Votel, the head of CentCom, still has not presented the options on the ground. He should do so only at the beginning of April. On the ground, the plan is restricted to the exchange of information from the United States on one hand, and Russia and Iran on the other. In order to maintain the status quo, the three powers have agreed to prevent any confrontation between the Turks and the Kurds. And intensive bombing campaigns are being carried out against al-Qaïda in Yemen and against Daesh in Iraq. But nothing decisive. Orders are to hold. The weapon of international terrorism has been managed on behalf of London and Washington by the Muslim World League since 1962. It includes both the Muslim Brotherhood (composed of Arabs) and the Order of the Naqshbandis (mostly composed of Turko-Mongols and Caucasians).
  • Until the war in Yemen, the military budget of the League was greater than that of the Saudi army, which meant that the League was the biggest private army in the world, a long way ahead of Academi/Blackwater. Even if it was only a land army, it was all the more efficient in that its logistics came directly from the Pentagon, and because it also had many suicide combatants. It was the League – that is to say the Sauds – who furnished London and Washington with the personnel to organise the second «Great Arab Revolt», in 2011, on the model of the Revolt of 1916, but called this time the «Arab Spring». In both cases, the aim was to apply pressure on the Wahhabis in order to redefine the regional frontiers to the benefit of the Anglo-Saxons. The point is not simply to abandon the weapon of terrorism, but also: to shatter the alliance between London and Washington for the control of the Greater Middle East; to deprive Saudi Arabia and Turkey of the weapon they have been developing on behalf of London and Washington for half a century; to determine the future of Sudan, Tunisia and Libya.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Besides which, it is also necessasry to come to an agreement with Germany and France, who have been sheltering the leaders of the Brotherhood since 1978, and who have financed the jihad. As of now, we may note that the United Kingdom doesn’t see things in the same way. It turns out that it was the GCHQ (British Signal Intelligence) which wire-tapped Trump Tower during the electoral campaign and the period of transition. And according to Petra, the Jordanian news agency, Saudi Arabia secretly financed a third of Hillary Clinton’s electoral campaign against Donald Trump. This is why President Trump seems to be looking for new allies who will enable him to impose the changes he wants. He is currently organising a meeting with President Xi Jinping during which he would be able to plan the membership of his country in the Chinese Investment Bank. He would therefore be placing his allies before the fait accompli – if the United States participate in the construction of the Silk Roads, it would become impossible for the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Germany and France to continue the jihad in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.
Paul Merrell

Chaos - not Victory - is the Empire's "Name of the Game" | Global Research - Centre for... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5447540

war & peace banksters U.S.-foreign-policy military chaos instability

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 15 - No Cached
  • “Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research.  This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission. This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.
  • That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 May 15
     
    More and more writers are beginning to recognize that victory is no longer the goal of U.S. military and foreign policy, that ongoing instability and chaos is. A tip of the hat is due Pepe Escobar, who years ago dubbed the U.S. the "Empire of Chaos." 
Paul Merrell

Is the "military option" on Iran off the table? - Baltimore Sun - 0 views

www.baltimoresun.com/...ary-option-20150720-story.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran war-option McGovern

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • f, as seems likely, President Barack Obama retains enough support to complete the nuclear deal with Iran, it will be largely because enough members of the House and Senate are persuaded by his argument that the only other real option is war.This was the rhetorical gauntlet the president threw down at his press conference last week. Equally significant, Mr. Obama omitted the until-now obligatory warning that "all options, including the military one, remain on the table."
  • Since then, Israeli media have been pressing hard to restore the military option to its accustomed place "on the table." Flying to Israel Sunday night for a handholding mission with top Israeli officials, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter tried to make his reception in Tel Aviv less frosty, telling accompanying journalists that the nuclear deal with Iran "does nothing to prevent the military option." The context, however, seemed to be one in which Iran was caught cheating on the nuclear deal.That this kind of rhetoric, even when it is not from the president, is still poison to Tehran was clear in the immediate reaction by Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who insisted Monday: "Applying force ... is not an option but an unwise and dangerous temptation."
  • Looking for changes in official public statements was my bread and butter during a long tenure as a Kremlinologist. So on Wednesday, as I watched Mr. Obama defend the deal with Iran, I leaned way forward at each juncture — and there were several — where the timeworn warning about all options being "on the table" would have been de rigueur. He avoided saying it. "All options on the table?" The open-ended nature of this Bush/Cheney-esque bully-type warning is at odds with Western international understandings spanning more than three and half centuries — from the treaties of Westphalia (1648), to the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) to the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal to the UN Charter (1945). Try raising that with Establishment Washington, though, and be prepared to be dismissed as "picky-picky," or as quaint and as obsolete as the Geneva Conventions. Undergirding all this is the chauvinism reflected in President Obama's repeated reminders that the U.S. "is the sole indispensable country in the world."But in the wake of last week's accord with Iran in Vienna, it is possible now to hope that the "military option" is finally off the table — in reality, if not in occasional rhetorical palliatives for Israel.
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  • Most Americans have no idea of how close we came to making war on Iran in 2008, the last year of the Bush/Cheney administration. Nor do they know of the essential role played by courageous managers of intelligence who, for the first time on the Iran nuclear issue, supervised a strictly evidence-based, from-the-bottom-up National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concluded in November 2007 that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed that work. That key judgment issued unanimously and "with high confidence" by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies played a huge role in strengthening the hand of Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other reasonable national security leaders in dissuading President Bush from following Vice President Cheney's prompting to launch a war that would have made the war in Iraq look like a volleyball match between the Quaker School and Ursuline Academy.The juggernaut toward war with Iran was already rolling downhill. Recall that then-CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon was abruptly cashiered after saying "we're not going to do Iran on my watch." And Mr. Cheney later admitted churlishly that Mr. Bush had been a big disappointment in giving in to intelligence and military officials on Iran.In Mr. Bush's memoir "Decision Points," he complains bitterly that the NIE "tied my hands on the military side. ... After the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?"
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Jul 15
     
    By former CIA senior analyst Ray McGovern. 
Paul Merrell

Time for the Nuclear Option: Raining Money on Main Street | WEB OF DEBT BLOG - 0 views

ellenbrown.com/...n-raining-money-on-main-street

economy financial-stimulus printing-press

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.” Money reformers will say it’s about time. Virtually all money today is created as bank debt, but people can no longer take on more debt. The money supply has shrunk along with people’s ability to borrow new money into existence. Quantitative easing (QE) attempts to re-inflate the money supply by giving money to banks to create more debt, but that policy has failed. It’s time to try dropping some debt-free money on Main Street. The Zerohedge prediction is based on a release from Macqurie, Australia’s largest investment bank. It notes that GDP is contracting, deflationary pressures are accelerating, public and private sectors are not driving the velocity of money higher, and central bank injections of liquidity are losing their effectiveness. Current policies are not working. As a result:
  • There are several policies that could be and probably would be considered over the next 12-18 months. If private sector lacks confidence and visibility to raise velocity of money, then (arguably) public sector could. In other words, instead of acting via bond markets and banking sector, why shouldn’t public sector bypass markets altogether and inject stimulus directly into the ‘blood stream’? Whilst it might or might not be called QE, it would have a much stronger impact and unlike the last seven years, the recovery could actually mimic a conventional business cycle and investors would soon start discussing multiplier effects and positioning in areas of greatest investment.  Willem Buiter, chief global economist at Citigroup, is also recommending “helicopter money drops” to avoid an imminent global recession, stating: A global recession starting in 2016 led by China is now our Global Economics team’s main scenario. Uncertainty remains, but the likelihood of a timely and effective policy response seems to be diminishing. . . . Helicopter money drops in China, the euro area, the UK, and the U.S. and debt restructuring . . . can mitigate and, if implemented immediately, prevent a recession during the next two years without raising the risk of a deeper and longer recession later.
  • In the UK, something akin to a helicopter money drop was just put on the table by Jeremy Corbyn, the newly-elected Labor leader. He proposes to give the Bank of England a new mandate to upgrade the economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects. He calls it “quantitative easing for people instead of banks” (PQE). The investments would be made through a National Investment Bank set up to invest in new infrastructure and in the hi-tech innovative industries of the future. Australian blogger Prof. Bill Mitchell agrees that PQE is economically sound. But he says it should not be called “quantitative easing.” QE is just an asset swap – cash for federal securities or mortgage-backed securities on bank balance sheets. What Corbyn is proposing is actually Overt Money Financing (OMF) – injecting money directly into the economy. Mitchell acknowledges that OMF is a taboo concept in mainstream economics. Allegedly, this is because it would lead to hyperinflation. But the real reasons, he says, are that: It cuts out the private sector bond traders from their dose of corporate welfare which unlike other forms of welfare like sickness and unemployment benefits etc. has made the recipients rich in the extreme. . . . It takes away the ‘debt monkey’ that is used to clobber governments that seek to run larger fiscal deficits.
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  • Tim Worstall, writing in the UK Register, objects to Corbyn’s PQE (or OMF) on the ground that it cannot be “sterilized” the way QE can. When inflation hits, the process cannot be reversed. If the money is spent on infrastructure, it will be out there circulating in the economy and will not be retrievable. Worstall writes: QE is designed to be temporary, . . . because once people’s spending rates recover we need a way of taking all that extra money out of the economy. So we do it by using printed money to buy bonds, which injects the money into the economy, and then sell those bonds back once we need to withdraw the money from the economy, and simply destroy the money we’ve raised. . . . If we don’t have any bonds to sell, it’s not clear how we can reduce [the money supply] if large-scale inflation hits.
  • The problem today, however, is not inflation but deflation of the money supply. Some consumer prices may be up, but this can happen although the money supply is shrinking. Food prices, for example, are up; but it’s because of increased costs, including drought in California, climate change, and mergers and acquisitions by big corporations that eliminate competition. Adding money to the economy will not drive up prices until demand is saturated and production has hit full capacity; and we’re a long way from full capacity now. Before that, increasing “demand” will increase “supply.” Producers will create more goods and services. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. In the US, the output gap – the difference between actual output and potential output – is estimated at about $1 trillion annually. That means the money supply could be increased by at least $1 trillion annually without driving up prices.
  • If PQE does go beyond full productive capacity, the government does not need to rely on the central bank to pull the money back. It can do this with taxes. Just as loans increase the money supply and repaying them shrinks it again, so taxes and other payments to the government will shrink a money supply augmented with money issued by the government. Using 2012 figures (drawing from an earlier article by this author), the velocity of M1 (the coins, dollar bills and demand deposits spent by ordinary consumers) was then 7. That means M1 changed hands seven times during 2012 – from housewife to grocer to farmer, etc. Since each recipient owed taxes on this money, increasing M1 by one dollar increased the tax base by seven dollars. Total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP in 2012 was 24.3%. Extrapolating from those figures, $1.00 changing hands seven times could increase tax revenue by $7.00 x 24.3% = $1.70. That means the government could, in theory, get more back in taxes than it paid out. Even with some leakage in those figures and deductions for costs, all or most of the new money spent into the economy might be taxed back to the government. New money could be pumped out every year and the money supply would increase little if at all.
  • Besides taxes, other ways to get money back into the Treasury include closing tax loopholes, taxing the $21 trillion or more hidden in offshore tax havens, and setting up a system of public banks that would return the interest on loans to the government. Net interest collected by U.S. banks in 2014 was $423 billion. At its high in 2007, it was $725 billion. Thus there are many ways to recycle an issue of new money back to the government. The same money could be spent and collected back year after year, without creating price inflation or hyperinflating the money supply. This not only could be done; it needs to be done. Conventional monetary policy has failed. Central banks have exhausted their existing toolboxes and need to explore some innovative alternatives.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Sep 15
     
    Debt having failed as a method of money creation leads us back to the printing press method. But on whom are those helicopters to drop their new money? And how to we ensure that the banksters are not among them?
Paul Merrell

Russia to expand Syria Air Strikes: Mission Creep or Strategy? | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace Syria Russia Kyrgyzstan international law NATO

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russian Air Force jets have flown over 60 sorties since the onset of the Russian campaign against ISIL in Syria on Wednesday. The campaign has dislodged ISIL and al-Qaeda associated terrorist brigades. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev expressed his support for Russia. French President Francois Hollande accused Russia of having become a conflicting party due to its support of Syrian President Al-Assad. The Russian initiative is consistent with countering long-term NATO plans aimed at destabilizing the Russian Federation’s underbelly. 
  • On Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Russia began launching air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. As of Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that there had been flown over 60 sorties, bombing 50 facilities of the Islamic State. Col Gen Andrey Kartapolov of the General Staff told reporters on Saturday that: “The aircraft have been taking off from the Hmeimim air base, targeting the whole Syria. … In the past three days we have managed to disrupt the terrorists’ infrastructure and to substantially degrade their combat capabilities. … Intelligence reports say that militants are leaving the areas under their control. … There is panic and desertion among their ranks. … Nearly 600 mercenaries have abandoned their positions and are making attempts to get out to Europe.” The President of fellow CSTO member Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, told the press on Sunday, that members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) should primarily think about protecting their own borders. President Almazbek Atambayev did, however, express his support for Moscow’s air strikes, stressing that the so-called Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIL, ISIS or Daesh had declared its ambition to control large territories. He added that:
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, would note that when someone behaves, moves and acts like a terrorist it is probably a terrorist. A diplomatic way of telling the press that Moscow does not see a great difference between ISIL and e.g. the Al-Qaeda associated Jabhat Al-Nusrah. Iraq, Iran, Syria and Russia have established a joint intelligence center in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Moscow has previously hinted that Russia was prepared to look positively at a request for help from the Iraqi government. Alexander Mezyaev is the Head of the Chair of the Academy on International Law and Governance in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia explained the Russian and international legal background for Russia’s military operations in an article entitled “Russian Operation in Syria: International Law”.
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  • Hollande would later accuse Moscow of having become a party to the conflict in Syria due to what he described as Moscow’s support to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The remark fell within the context of allegations that Russian jets had targeted positions of other than ISIL fighters.
  • In a January 2013 interview with nsnbc, retired Pakistani Major Agha H. Amin noted that one of NATO’s long-term objectives with the destabilization of Syria was to spread a string of low intensity conflicts from the Mediterranean along Russia’s and other CSTO members soft and resource-rich underbelly to Pakistan. It is within this context that the statement of the President of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, and his country’s support for the Russian air strikes can be understood. Expanding Russian air strikes to also include e.g. Jabhat al-Nusrah and other mercenary brigades operating in Syria and Iraq would not be mission creep but rather part of a long-term strategy to counter well-documented, predominantly US and UK forged plans to destabilize and eventually to “Balkanize” the Russian Federation by drawing Russia and other CSTO member States into protracted low-intensity conflicts.
Paul Merrell

The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Towards the Creation of... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5386998

war & peace Iraq ISIL Mosul U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The Capture of Mosul:  US-NATO Covert Support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Something unusual occurred in Mosul which cannot be explained in strictly military terms. On June 10, the insurgent forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a population of close to 1.5 million people.  While these developments were “unexpected” according to the Obama administration, they were known to the Pentagon and US intelligence, which were not only providing weapons, logistics and financial support to the ISIS rebels, they were also coordinating, behind the scenes, the ISIS attack on the city of Mosul. While ISIS is a well equipped and disciplined rebel army when compared to other Al Qaeda affiliated formations, the capture of Mosul, did not hinge upon ISIS’s military capabilities. Quite the opposite: Iraqi forces which outnumbered the rebels by far, equipped with advanced weapons systems could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. There were 30,000 government forces in Mosul as opposed to 1000 ISIS rebels, according to reports. The Iraqi army chose not to intervene. The media reports explained without evidence that the decision of the Iraqi armed forces not to intervene was spontaneous characterized by mass defections.
  • Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting. (Guardian, June 12, 2014, emphasis added) The reports point to the fact that Iraqi military commanders were sympathetic with the Sunni led ISIS insurgency: Speaking from the Kurdish city of Erbil, the defectors accused their officers of cowardice and betrayal, saying generals in Mosul “handed over” the city over to Sunni insurgents, with whom they shared sectarian and historical ties. (Daily Telegraph,  13 June 2014) What is important to understand, is that both sides, namely the regular Iraqi forces and the ISIS rebel army are supported by US-NATO. There were US military advisers and special forces including operatives from private military companies on location in Mosul working with Iraq’s regular armed forces. In turn, there are Western special forces or mercenaries within ISIS (acting on contract to the CIA or the Pentagon) who are in liaison with US-NATO (e.g. through satellite phones).
  • Under these circumstances, with US intelligence amply involved, there would have been routine communication, coordination, logistics and exchange of intelligence between a US-NATO military and intelligence command center, US-NATO military advisers forces or private military contractors on the ground assigned to the Iraqi Army and Western special forces attached to the ISIS brigades. These Western special forces operating covertly within the ISIS could have been dispatched by a private security company on contract to US-NATO.
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  • In this regard, the capture of Mosul appears to have been a carefully engineered operation, planned well in advance. With the exception of a few skirmishes, no fighting took place. Entire divisions of the Iraqi National Army –trained by the US military with advanced weapons systems at their disposal– could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. Reports suggest that they were ordered by their commanders not to intervene. According to witnesses, “Not a single shot was fired”. The forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city. Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/10/mosul-falls-to-al-qaeda-as-us-trained-security-forces-flee/
  • A contingent of one thousand ISIS rebels take over a city of more than one million? Without prior knowledge that the US controlled Iraqi Army (30,000 strong) would not intervene, the Mosul operation would have fallen flat, the rebels would have been decimated. Who was behind the decision to let the ISIS terrorists take control of Mosul? Had the senior Iraqi commanders been instructed by their Western military advisers to hand over the city to the ISIS terrorists? Were they co-opted?
  • The formation of the caliphate may be the first step towards a broader conflict in the Middle East, bearing in mind that Iran is supportive of the Al Maliki government and the US ploy may indeed be to encourage the intervention of Iran. The proposed redivision of Iraq is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven “independent states” (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo). According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.
  • US forces could have intervened. They had been instructed to let it happen. It was part of a carefully planned agenda to facilitate the advance of the ISIS rebel forces and the installation of the ISIS caliphate. The whole operation appears to have been carefully staged.
  • In Mosul, government buildings, police stations, schools, hospitals, etc are formally now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In turn, ISIS has taken control of military hardware including helicopters and tanks which were abandoned by the Iraqi armed forces. What is unfolding is the installation of a US sponsored Islamist ISIS caliphate alongside the rapid demise of the Baghdad government. Meanwhile, the Northern Kurdistan region has de facto declared its independence from Baghdad. Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces (which are supported by Israel) have taken control of the cities of Arbil and Kirkuk. (See map above) Concluding Remarks There were no Al Qaeda rebels in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Moreover, Al Qaeda was non-existent in Syria until the outset of the US-NATO-Israeli supported insurgency in March 2011. The ISIS is not an independent entity. It is a creation of US intelligence. It is a US intelligence asset, an instrument of non-conventional warfare.
  • The ultimate objective of this ongoing US-NATO engineered conflict opposing Maliki government forces to the ISIS insurgency is to destroy and destabilize Iraq as a Nation State. It is part of an intelligence operation, an engineered process of  transforming countries into territories. The break up of Iraq along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the US and its allies. The ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which historically has been committed to a secular system of government. The caliphate project is a US design. The advances of ISIS forces is intended to garnish broad support within the Sunni population directed against the Al Maliki government The division of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 10 years.
  • Was the handing over of Mosul to ISIS part of a US intelligence agenda? Were the Iraqi military commanders manipulated or paid off into allowing the city to fall into the hands of the ISIS rebels without “a single shot being fired”. Shiite General Mehdi Sabih al-Gharawi who was in charge of the Mosul Army divisions “had left the city”. Al Gharawi had worked hand in glove with the US military. He took over the command of Mosul in September 2011, from US Col Scott McKean. Had he been co-opted, instructed by his US counterparts to abandon his command?
  • The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers”. (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East” By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)
  • The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)) The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”.  What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda. Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.
  • The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades. The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support (covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan.
  • Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO. The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.
  • The Islamic caliphate is supported covertly by the CIA in liaison with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkish intelligence. Israel is also involved in channeling support to both Al Qaeda rebels in Syria (out of the Golan Heights) as well to the Kurdish separatist movement in Syria and Iraq.
  • First published by GR on June 14, 2014.  President Barack Obama has initiated a series of US bombing raids in Iraq allegedly directed towards the rebel army of the Islamic State (IS). The Islamic State terrorists are portrayed as an enemy of America and the Western world. Amply documented, the Islamic State is a creation of Western intelligence, supported by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad and financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We are dealing with a diabolical military agenda whereby the United States is targeting a rebel army which is directly funded by the US and its allies. The incursion into Iraq of the Islamic State rebels in late June was part of a carefully planned intelligence operation. The rebels of the Islamic state, formerly known as the ISIS, were covertly supported by US-NATO-Israel  to wage a terrorist insurgency against the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad.  The atrocities committed in Iraq are similar to those committed in Syria. The sponsors of IS including Barack Obama have blood on their hands.
  • The killings of innocent civilians by the Islamic state terrorists create a pretext and the justification for US military intervention on humanitarian grounds. Lest we forget, the rebels who committed these atrocities and who are a target of US military action are supported by the United States. The bombing raids ordered by Obama are not intended to eliminate the terrorists. Quite the opposite, the US is targeting the civilian population as well as the Iraqi resistance movement. The endgame is to destabilize Iraq as a nation state and trigger its partition into three separate entities.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14
     
    The destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's neighboring nations has indeed been on the Zionist/Neocon drawing board for a very long time. http://goo.gl/Z1gdoA In the Mideast, it's important to remember that there are no significant Islamist forces that are not under the control of the U.S. or its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Iraqi Army's withdrawal of the two divisions from the defense of Mosul is indeed curious. In that regard, Col. Peters' map of a future Mideast is almost certainly more than a coincidence. 
Joseph Skues

For many, a nurse practitioner is The doctor - 0 views

www.azcentral.com/...221nursepractitioners0220.html

health practicioner delicious a for nurse the many is socialism obama financial-crisis financial-oligarchs Banksters banksters

shared by Joseph Skues on 21 Jan 11 - Cached
  • During the past five years, the number of nurse practitioners in the United States has increased by nearly 40 percent, to 125,000, according to estimates by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Arizona's rate of growth has been slower in recent years, but since 2000, the number has jumped by 46 percent, to 3,000 practitioners, which is faster than population growth. The trend is being driven in large part by a shortage of primary-care doctors or general-practice physicians, medical experts say. Although most nurse practitioners work in settings supervised by physicians, more are striking out on their own, opening and staffing their own clinics apart from doctors. That has generated some controversy in the medical community, as physicians worry about the risk of misdiagnosis if NPs don't work collaboratively with licensed physicians.
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