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Gary Edwards

Podcasts | John Batchelor Show - 0 views

johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts

Podcast John-Batchelor Constitutional-Capitalism

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 13
     
    Commercial free podcast of John Bathelor's daily radio broadcast.  Great interviews with interesting guests.  Kind of a Charlie Rose for conservative/libertarian Constitutionalists.  Lots of business, technology and world events coverage.  
Gary Edwards

iTunes - Podcasts - Stansberry Radio by Stansberry and Associates - 0 views

itunes.apple.com/...id481026239

Porter-Stansberry Podcast Alex-Jones

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Dec 11
     
    Download the Alex Jones podcast interview with Porter.
Paul Merrell

US Tax Dollars up in Smoke Over Afghanistan - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...s-up-in-smoke-over-afghanistan

war & peace American-Foreign-Policy DoD waste Afghanistan

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Want to meet a government official who tells the truth — in spades? Then you will definitely want to set aside time to hear of the stunning findings of the top US investigator for spending in Afghanistan.The biggest problem is not theft, but waste, he says. For example, the $500 million spent on airplanes that no one could fly, and that ultimately had to be scrapped, a process that cost yet more thousands of dollars. Or the gift of soybeans, which the Afghans will not eat and will not grow. Or how about the creation of a navy for Afghanistan — a country that is landlocked?The biggest source of the problem is the lack of accountability, he says. But that is changing.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 15
     
    Interesting podcast interview with the special inspector general for waste in Aftghanistan. Did you know that we paid for a navy for landlocked Afghanistan? Or that $500 billion worth of aircraft sent for use by  fghanistan were never flown because they were not airworthy? This short podcast is definitely worth listening to, even if you are a supporter of government waste.
Gary Edwards

News Talk Radio 77 WABC New York - Aaron Klein Podcasts - 0 views

www.wabcradio.com/page.php

Podcast Aaron-Klein

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jan 13
     
    I miss the reports of Aaron Klein that used to be an integral part of the John Batchelor show.  In the Bay Area, the Batchelor show has been replaced by the Savage Nation - which i really don't care for.  Aasron Klein qualifies as an alternative news source, and his discoveries usually are good indications of problems brewing and things to come
Gary Edwards

As Natural News predicted: NSA has been blackmailing Supreme Court judges, members of C... - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/g_blackmail_Supreme_Court.html

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Blackmail

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 13
     
    Blackmail! excerpt: "Ten days ago, I publicly stated my belief that the NSA had used its spy apparatus to gather dirt on Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, then used that leverage to force him to change his vote on Obamacare. See the original article here. Five days later, I also predicted the NSA was using its spy powers to surveil members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. In an article published on June 16, 2013, I wrote, "There could already be countless cases of the NSA using its god-like powers to blackmail people in key positions in the U.S. Senate (which is full of pedophiles and perverts), the House of Representatives, the State Department or even the US Supreme Court. There are virtually no limits to the abuses of this power." Suddenly, new revelations prove this to be true. Russ Tice, a Bush-era NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower has sounded the alarm on the true depth of the NSA's surveillance abuses. In an interview on the Boiling Frogs Podcast, Tice stated: They went after -- and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things -- they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the -- and judicial... They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of -- heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House -- their own people.
Paul Merrell

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...16program.html

surveillance state NSA Bush-II spying-history must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications. The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Feb 14
     
    This is the 2005 article that alerted the nation to the fact that the Bush II Administration had, shortly after 9-11-2001, authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Americans. It would later emerge that veteran NSA intelligence analyst Russell Tice, the first NSA whistleblower, was a key source for the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Tice Post-Snowden disclosures, Tice went public with even more detail, disclosing that the NSA has also wiretapped top officials in all three branches of government, as well as non-government targets in the U.S. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-on-and-blackmailing-high-level-government-officials-and-military-officers.html (for the quoted portions, begin listening at about 44 minutes into the podcast). The third from last paragraph in the article discusses a 2002 Justice Department brief in which DoJ argued that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority." That brief is archived at the FAS web site. https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/092502sup.html (it's an amazingly arrogant document). 
Paul Merrell

Here's What a Man Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS' Motive... - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...world-says-about-isiss-motives

war & peace suicide-attacks causation stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • espite the existence of a good deal of research about terrorism, there’s a gap between the common understanding of what leads terrorists to kill and what many experts believe to be true. Ad Policy Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all. He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been “many hundreds of secular suicide attackers,” which suggests that radical theology alone doesn’t explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the “world leader” in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.
  • espite the existence of a good deal of research about terrorism, there’s a gap between the common understanding of what leads terrorists to kill and what many experts believe to be true. Ad Policy Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all. He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been “many hundreds of secular suicide attackers,” which suggests that radical theology alone doesn’t explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the “world leader” in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.
  • According to Pape’s research, underlying the outward expressions of religious fervor, ISIS’s goals, like those of most terrorist groups, are distinctly earthly: What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon and the West Bank in the 80s and 90s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and up through the Paris suicide attacks we’ve just experienced in the last days, military intervention—and specifically when the military intervention is occupying territory—that’s what prompts suicide terrorism more than anything else.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Pape’s analysis is consistent with what Lydia Wilson found when she interviewed captured ISIS fighters in Iraq. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate,” she recently wrote in The Nation. “But a detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of Islam isn’t necessarily relevant to the ideal of fighting for an Islamic State, as we have seen from the Amazon order of Islam for Dummies by one British fighter bound for ISIS.”
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jan 16
     
    Note that this article's unquoted portions in large part stem from the unproved and dubious hypothesis -- claimed as undisputed fact -- that the motives of "terrorist groups" like ISIL stem from within those organizations rather than from the governments that maintain and control them.
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

Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004 - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html

surveillance state NSA surveillance-targets Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • #news_entries #ad_sharebox_260x60 img {padding:0px;margin:0px} Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004. Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats. "Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now."
  • Host Sibel Edmonds and Tice both raised concerns that such alleged monitoring of subjects, unbeknownst to them, could provide the intelligence agencies with huge power to blackmail their targets. "I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on," Tice said.
  • After going public with his allegations in 2005, Tice later admitted that he had been a key source in a bombshell New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretapping of international communications in the U.S. The article forced Bush to admit that the practice was indeed used on a small number of Americans, but Tice maintained that the NSA practice was likely being used the gather records for millions of Americans. The NSA denied Tice's allegations. In the wake of recent reports detailing the extent of the NSA's data surveillance programs, Tice has again come out as a skeptic of the administration's response. While defenders of the program have insisted that there is nothing to suggest the government has the authority -- or desire -- to listen in on people's phone calls without a warrant, Tice told The Guardian that he believes the NSA has developed the capability "to collect all digital communications word for word."
Paul Merrell

Crimean leaders blame Kiev for selling Ukraine off for IMF loans - News - World - The V... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...Ukraine-off-for-IMF-loans-1082

war & peace Ukraine IMF banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Crimea's deputy prime minister, Olga Kovitidi, described as predatory the terms of an agreement Kiev is ready to accept from the International Monetary Fund. The tentative agreement with the IMF which the Ukrainian authorities signed with the IMF on March 2, says that the country's entire gas pipeline system will be handed over for free in the American company Chevron's ownership the moment the basic agreement is signed, while the owners of the Mariupol, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk steel mills will be obliged to surrender their 50% stakes to Germany's Ruhr.
  • The Donbass coal industry will be handed over to Ruhr's subsidiary in Finland, she told Interfax on Sunday, citing media reports. It emerged recently that Kyiv has pledged to make territory available near Kharkiv to host US missile defense systems and a wing of American fighter jets to provide cover for the missile defense installations, she also said. Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has assured the West that Kiev will fulfill all of the IMF's terms in order to secure a loan, Kovitidi said. The Crimean leaders have also learned that Kyiv promised the West to take a package of unpopular measures in order to fill gaps in the Ukrainian budget, she said. Gas prices for municipal companies will have to be increased by 50% and for private will double.
  • Electricity tariffs will be raised by 40%, housing utility tariffs will be raised, too, gasoline excises will go up 60% and transportation tariffs 50%, while state support for childbirth will be cancelled, the free distribution of textbooks will be annulled at schools and the VAT relief will be scrapped in rural regions, she said. Concurrently, VAT will be introduced on medications, which will push up prices and bring citizens' living standards down," Kovitidi said. "The planned annulment of the moratorium on the sale of farmland looks appalling. The selloff of Ukraine's black soil zone, including to foreign countries, may have disastrous economic and social consequences," she said. Kovitidi said that the Crimean legislature's decision to hold a referendum on March 16 was correct. "The recent developments in Ukraine and the decisions being made have a direct bearing on the people of Crimea, who must know the truth and decide their own and their children's future in a referendum," she said.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    Cute. The Ukrainian government needs $17 billion to service its debt to the banksters. The IMF agrees to hand over another $3 billion loan, while Obama promises another $1 billion, not nearly what is needed (Russia had offered $15 billion, an offer withdrawn in light of the coup instigated by the U.S. Now the austerity measures and privatization that always accompanies IMF loans begin. One of the first announced was to cut pensioners' monthly checks in half. Meanwhile, Iceland's economy continues to rebound after having refused to bail out its banksters and putting them in prison instead.
Paul Merrell

Extraditing Snowden impossible even if US submits official request - News - Politics - ... - 0 views

english.ruvr.ru/...-submits-official-request-8220

surveillance state Snowden asylum extradition Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and is allowed to enter the country’s territory.
  • With his newly-awarded legal status in Russia, Snowden cannot be handed over to the US authorities, even if Washington files an official request. He can now be transported to the United States only if he agrees to go voluntarily. The temporary refugee status allows Mr. Snowden to move freely within the country and is valid for one year, Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer assisting Mr. Snowden with the asylum request, said in a telephone interview.Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_08_01/Extraditing-Snowden-impossible-even-if-US-submits-official-request-8220/
Paul Merrell

The FBI could have stopped the Stratfor leak at any point - Sue Crabtree - News - World... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...d-with-espionage-Crabtree-3397

war & peace whistle-blowers Jeremy-Hammond Stratfor FBI entrapment

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The persecution of Jeremy Hammond is largely being ignored by the US mass media but the case of the young man  accused of being involved in the passing of the Stratfor E-Mails to WikiLeaks is full of contradictions and serious reasons to question the motives of the judge and the entire prosecution, including the FBI which, it has been revealed, not only orchestrated the hack through an FBI informant known by the code name "Sabu", but could have stopped the leak of the files anytime had they wanted. The FBI were in fact storing the "Stratfor Files" on their own servers for two weeks before they were released to WikiLeaks. According to Sue Crabtree, a close friend of Jeremy and the mother of the family who took Jeremy in and whose children considered him a brother, the FBI may have been interested in the activities of Stratfor which may explain why they held the material on their servers for so long. Mrs. Crabtree also believes that the FBI was interested in selling the material to WikiLeaks so that charges of espionage could be brought.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 13
     
    Way interesting! Seems that Jeremy Hammond was the unwitting sock puppet of the FBI and that the Stratfor files he filched at the FBI's request were even stored on FBI-controlled servers before being turned over to Wikileaks, with the FBI's knowledge. I wish that I could automatically reject such allegations as preposterous, but given the way our government has been behaving lately ... 
Paul Merrell

Pro-Russian activists in Kharkov awaiting reinforcements from Donetsk, Lugansk - News -... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...ents-from-Donetsk-Lugansk-8201

war & peace southeastern-Ukraine Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Pro-Russian activists who have occupied the building of the Kharkov regional administration are awaiting reinforcements from Donetsk and Lugansk. Pro-Russian protesters entered the building of the Kharkov regional administration on Sunday. It took them ten minutes to get inside. People on the street greeted with cheers and whistle the appearance of a man carrying the Russian flag in a second-floor window. They shouted, "Bravo" and "Police and People Together". Earlier reports said the storm of the Kharkov regional administration began on Sunday night.Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_04_07/Pro-Russian-activists-in-Kharkov-awaiting-reinforcements-from-Donetsk-Lugansk-8201/
Paul Merrell

Hollywood producer claims Boston bombing was a "false flag attack" - News - VoR Intervi... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...-flag-attack-Nathan-Folks-7658

boston-bombings false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 May 14 - No Cached
  • Crisis actors, smoke bombs, fake blood and literal "smoke and mirrors" were all part of what was the false flag terrorist attack called the Boston Marathon Bombing. To anyone who saw the pictures and footage of fake blood, make- up artists and smiling “victims”. It was obvious that something was not right. For those involved in filmmaking and in the know the discrepancies were obvious. We spoke to famous Hollywood filmmaker, producer and director Nathan Folks about why he is certain the Boston Marathon Bombing was a false flag terrorist attackRead more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_04_25/The-Boston-bombing-was-a-false-flag-attack-Nathan-Folks-7658/
Paul Merrell

Facebook spying on private messages, selling them to advertisers - lawsuit - News - Wor... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...em-to-advertisers-lawsuit-0381

surveillance state Facebook litigation data-privacy

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A federal lawsuit has been filed earlier this week accusing the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, of examining its users’ private messages contents "for purposes unrelated to the facilitation of message transmission". 0Two plaintiffs are seeking a class action suit on behalf of all Facebook users who have sent or received a private message in the past two years that contained links.
Paul Merrell

Gazprom still remains best option for Europe - journalist - News - VoR Interviews - The... - 0 views

voiceofrussia.com/...ion-for-Europe-journalist-4430

U.S.-foreign-policy Europe Russia Gazprom Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14
     
    "According to the Oxfam charity organization, strained relations between Russia and the West because of the situation in Ukraine highlighted the need for Europe to reassess its energy priorities, and speaking at the G7 summit in Brussels yesterday, US President Barack Obama announced that the G7 is going to strenghthen energy security in Central and Eastern Europe. Pepe Escobar, Asia Times roving correspondent, shared his opinion about this development with Radio VR. Speaking at the G7 summit in Brussels yesterday, US President Barack Obama announced that the G7 is going to strengthen energy security in Central and Eastern Europe because of the situation in Ukraine. What kind of security measures can be taken here? Seriously, he doesn't even know what he is talking about and he has absolutely no clue about new energy policy, because the Europeans themselves still don't have a unified energy policy. Their energy policy is to complain about Gazprom, because they consider themselves hostages of Gazprom. They tried to diversify, for instance with the Nabucco pipeline project, which was a soap opera that lasted for years and in the end totally collapsed, because they couldn't agree on anything. So, the myth that the Americans are trying to sell to the American and the European public opinion is that there is a shale gas and they can start exporting it virtually tomorrow. This is completely absurd. Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_06_06/Gazprom-still-remains-best-option-for-Europe-journalist-4430/" Pepe Escobar riffs on the reasons that Europe is utterly dependent on Russian fossil fuels and why Obama's proposal to supply Europe with shale gas is the product of sheer ignorance. Escobar is being over-polite. Obama knows that many winters will pass before American shale gas can be shipped to Europe in amounts that even approach Europe's requirements. With what are Europeans to cook their meals and heat their homes in the meantime? Short story: Obama is fl
Paul Merrell

Turkish court issues "historic" arrest warrants for Israeli army commanders | The Elect... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...rrants-israeli-army-commanders

war & peace human rights Israel Turkey arrest-warrants Mavi-Marmara

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A court in Istanbul has issued arrest warrants against four Israeli military officials for their role in authorizing and carrying out the attacks on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish humanitarian aid boat bound for Gaza on 31 May 2010. Israeli forces attacked and raided the boat, which was part of a flotilla in international waters and was attempting to break the siege on Gaza. Israeli commandos killed nine civilians and wounded dozens of others. Speaking to The Electronic Intifada, Rabia Yurt, a Turkish attorney for the families of the victims, says the ruling is unprecedented. Yurt says it is “the first [time] in history” that arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials, who have never been held responsible in an international court for the army’s “uncountable crimes.”
  • The judges presiding at the Istanbul Çağlayan Courthouse on 26 May ordered arrest warrants against former Israeli army Chief General Gabi Ashkenazi, Naval Forces commander Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom, Israeli military intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin and Air Forces Intelligence head Brigadier General Avishai Levi. It is now up to Interpol, the international police agency, to follow the Turkish court’s directives and arrest the four commanders, who were tried in absentia. This was the sixth trial so far in the case against the Israeli leaders for their role in the deadly attacks on the flotilla.
  • After the deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces kidnapped the crew and hundreds of the flotilla’s passengers, bringing the boats and all aboard to an Israeli port, where the human rights activists were arrested, detained and deported. One of the civilians killed was Furkan Doğan, a 19-year-old dual citizen of Turkey and the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights stated that “Israeli commandos shot Furkan five times, including one shot to the head at point-blank range. At the time of the attack, it is believed Furkan was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara.” A tenth activist, 51-year-old Turkish citizen Uğur Süleyman Söylemez, died on 23 May — days before the court’s decision, and nearly four years after Israeli forces shot him in the head. Söylemez was in a coma ever since his injury.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “The court argued that an arrest warrant had become necessary for the legal procedure as the defendants had neither attended the trial nor responded to an invitation sent to them through the related department of the Turkish justice ministry,” reported Turkish daily Hurriyet on 30 May. The Turkish humanitarian group IHH (Humanitarian Relief Foundation), which sponsored and helped organize the aid flotilla in 2010 and has been helping to represent the families of those killed, stated in a press release last week that the ruling was a “positive outcome” for the relatives and loved ones of the ten Turkish citizens who were killed by Israeli attacks. Last year, as The Electronic Intifada reported, the prosecutor of Spain’s national court formally requested a judge to begin steps to refer a case against Israeli leaders for the attack to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Three Spanish citizens, Manuel Tapial, Laura Arau and David Segarra, were aboard the Mavi Marmara when it was attacked and commandeered. Tapial, Arau and Segarra filed the case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, six ministers and Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom of the Israeli navy who led the attack.
  • However, we are optimistic, because Turkey is a democratic country. It is part of and is a signatory to the European extradition convention and signed to Interpol, and therefore all other countries who are also signatories to these conventions and institution have an obligation to indeed arrest these Israeli officials for whom the arrest warrants were issued. So we have to trust [this] and we have to keep our faith in this. And we also know that — remember that this trial started way back in 2012 — the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t travel around too much, especially not go to Turkey. We know that Israeli soldiers were complaining about this. For instance, there was a case of an Israeli soldier who filed a claim against the State of Israel because he wanted to study in the United States, but because he took part in this operation he could not set foot out of Israel. So because we know this, we are quite optimistic about the arrest warrants, that they will be in fact implemented by other countries.
  • NBF: Finally, what’s next in this case on behalf of now ten victims of Israel’s raid, how are you pushing forward in this case? RY: In December, there is going to be another hearing, and we’re just going to make sure that the entire world will know about this arrest warrant, that we will follow whether any of these four defendants steps foot outside of Israel. We have lawyers in different countries also working together, and in South Africa, in the UK, many, many countries more — they will also closely follow whether these four defendants will travel in these countries. And then if this is the case, we will immediately take action and make sure that if the country in which one of the four defendants steps foot refuses, or neglects to fulfill its obligation to arrest [the defendant], then we will make sure that that country will not get away with it. And we will push for it, and publicize this as much as we can.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
     
    A historic day indeed. Turkey is a member of both NATO and INTERPOL. Four high-ranking Israeli military officers will be on the INTERPOL arrest list soon, with a network of human rights lawyers around the world on the watch and ready to enforce INTERPOL arrest obligations. In other words, these officers' travel outside Israel will be very unlikely to include INTERPOL treaty nations and European extradition convention nations as either destinations or waypoints. The deterrent effect on Israeli government officials is considerable, particularly with another criminal prosecution pending in Spain. Fittingly, the Turkish court has aimed its message at high military officials who directed the assassinations rather than at the low-ranking soldiers who committed them. Message to high Israeli officials: be nice to Turkish citizens if you want to ever travel outside Israel.  One can only wish that the same message had been delivered about American citizens. The victim shot five times including a point blank shot to the head was an American citizen. Many of the kidnaped human rights people on the Navi Marmara and accompanying boats were Americans. One of the boats was American-flagged. Under international law, these actions were casus belli, a sufficient cause for military retaliation against the government of Israel. But the cowardly Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not so much as lodge a diplomatic protest, so fearful they are of the powerful Israel Lobby. 
Paul Merrell

Lt. Gen. Bogdan Hedges on Operational Testing - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...edges-operational-testing.html

war & peace Defense-spending F-35-boondoggle A-10

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Several weeks ago, the Project On Government Oversight announced its cautious optimism upon learning the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) planned to conduct a close air support (CAS) fly-off between the proven A-10 and the yet-to-be proved F-35. The cautious aspect of that optimism has been proven to be warranted. Under questioning by Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ), a former A-10 pilot, F-35 program executive officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan (USAF) dismissed the idea of a comparative test as irrelevant. The exchange occurred during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on updates to the Joint Strike Fighter program. General Bogdan’s remarks echo earlier comments by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, who described the proposed test as a “silly exercise.” Dr. Michael Gilmore, Director of Operational Test & Evaluation, said in late August, “The comparison tests on the close-air support mission will reveal how well the F-35 performs and whether there are gaps, or improvements in capability, compared to the A-10.”
  • When asked by Rep. McSally to comment about the comparative tests, Lt. Gen. Bogdan acknowledged the F-35 would not do as well as the A-10 in such a test. He smugly compared the test to a decathlete competing against a champion sprinter in a 100 meter race. “I don’t have to run that race to know who is going to win it,” he said. “What I prefer to do is test the F-35 in its close air support role as the Air Force sees the requirements for that mission for the F-35,” the General said. The test envisioned by the Air Force would be conducted in the manner it wants to conduct close air support missions in the future, not in the way decades of experience has proven it must be conducted in order to be effective on the battlefield. The Air Force wants these missions to be conducted from high altitudes using digital communications and precision munitions. In other words, it wants to accomplish the mission only through high-tech means from a distance, rather than getting low to the ground where pilots and ground controllers are able to coordinate in a way which has been used to great effect for decades.
  • In a recent documentary, an A-10 pilot talked about the sensors available to help them correlate targets on the ground to ensure a precision strike. But in nearly the same breath, he described their shortcomings as well. “That will never replace just looking right, outside of my cockpit and looking at the battlespace. What am I seeing out there, big-picture?” That level of situational awareness only develops when a pilot is able to fly low and slow over the battlefield.  That will be lost by F-35 pilots who will be restricted to much higher altitudes and speed. They will be forced there because, as Michael Gilmore said while testifying at an earlier hearing, “The (F-35) has some vulnerabilities that you would expect a high performance aircraft to have. The A-10 is going to be able to, can take, hits an F-35 couldn’t take.” The United States has already been through this process before and learned painful and expensive lessons by ignoring proven methods of designing effective weapons systems. Pierre Sprey, a veteran of many bureaucratic battles while designing effective aircraft, says the correct approach to this process is to first understand the mission the system is to perform: you’ve “got to start with what really happens in combat,” Sprey said in a recent interview.
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  • Sprey, one of the principle designers of the A-10, said an effective close air support aircraft is one that can “be able to get in close enough to see [friendly troops on the ground] and what they’re opposing and what their dangers are, how they’re about to be ambushed, what tanks they’re facing, what machine gun nests they’re facing.” “You come flashing by there at 500 miles an hour, you’re hopeless and useless,” Sprey said, referring to traditional fighters designed for air-to-air combat. He and the rest of the A-10 design team began that process by interviewing many veteran pilots with experience flying CAS missions. They then matched technology with the way the aircraft would actually be used. This was a radical approach then, and now. What Lt. Gen. Bogdan admitted in his testimony was the F-35 has been engineered to incorporate favored technology. The technology is dictating how troops will be able to fight rather than battlefield experience shaping the technology incorporated in the aircraft. Rep. McSally sees dangers ahead with such an approach. “I think us envisioning that we’re never going to have close air support where guys are on the run, they’re out of ammo, they’re doing a mirror flash into your eye, they don’t have time to do stand-off CAS because of the conflict circumstances, if we think that’s never going to happen again, I think we’re lying to ourselves.”
  • The debate about the proposed tests will continue for some time. The F-35 is still years away from having the ability to go through these tests because the software needed to employ the necessary weapons will not be complete until 2017 at the earliest. In the intervening years, it is essential for Congress to continue reaffirming annually its commitment to the troops on the ground by mandating a completely intact A-10 force until another platform is proven to perform this vital mission at least as well as the Warthog.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 15
     
    The A-10 has one major vulnerability; it's bought and paid for. Defense contractors don't get paid as much to manufacture spare parts for it as they are getting from the F-35 program, the most expensive weapons platform in U.S. history. But the F-35 can't do close air support, something the A-10 excels at. But Air Force generals are willing to have troops on the ground be killed to keep the F-35 boondoggle going. They've tried to retire the A-10 repeatedly, only to be blocked by members of Congress who understand the importance of the ground support mission. "By 2014, the program was "$163 billion over budget [and] seven years behind schedule."[19] Critics further contend that the program's high sunk costs and political momentum make it "too big to kill." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II
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