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Gary Edwards

'Clinton death list': 33 spine-tingling cases - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-list-33-most-intriguing-cases

Clinton-Body-Count

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Feb 17
     
    "(Editor's note: This list was originally published in August 2016 and has gone viral on the web. WND is running it again as American voters cast their ballots for the nation's next president on Election Day.) How many people do you personally know who have died mysteriously? How about in plane crashes or car wrecks? Bizarre suicides? People beaten to death or murdered in a hail of bullets? And what about violent freak accidents - like separate mountain biking and skiing collisions in Aspen, Colorado? Or barbells crushing a person's throat? Bill and Hillary Clinton attend a funeral Apparently, if you're Bill or Hillary Clinton, the answer to that question is at least 33 - and possibly many more. Talk-radio star Rush Limbaugh addressed the issue of the "Clinton body count" during an August show. "I swear, I could swear I saw these stories back in 1992, back in 1993, 1994," Limbaugh said. He cited a report from Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com titled, "Clinton body count or left-wing conspiracy? Three with ties to DNC mysteriously die." Limbaugh said he recalled Ted Koppel, then-anchor of ABC News' "Nightline," routinely having discussions on the issue following the July 20, 1993, death of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster. In fact, Limbaugh said, he appeared on Koppel's show. "One of the things I said was, 'Who knows what happened here? But let me ask you a question.' I said, 'Ted, how many people do you know in your life who've been murdered? Ted, how many people do you know in your life that have died under suspicious circumstances?' "Of course, the answer is zilch, zero, nada, none, very few," Limbaugh chuckled. "Ask the Clintons that question. And it's a significant number. It's a lot of people that they know who have died, who've been murdered. "And the same question here from Rachel Alexander. It's amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons. [Citing Townhall]: 'What it
Paul Merrell

Nemtsov's Killers Also Planned to Kill Putin - 0 views

fortruss.blogspot.com/...er-was-hired-by-commander.html

war & peace Russia Ukraine Nemtsov-asassination false-flag SBU CIA U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • FSB source to "Komsomolskaya Pravda": "the customer of Nemtsov's murder was preparing an assassination of Vladimir Putin" The main suspect in the organization of the high-profile crime - is a commander of the Ukrainian battalion in the name of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Adam Osmayev. The correspondent of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" met with the FSB agent, who is part of the team investigating the murder of Boris Nemtsov. In an exclusive interview he spoke about the new details of the crime and named the most likely customer of the murder.
  • Today the investigators have irrefutable proof that all persons detained on suspicion of murder of the politician are the perpetrators, - said our source in the FSB. First of all, billing (data about calls and movements of the subscriber. - Ed.) from their mobile phones showed that they conducted surveillance of Nemtsov before the murder, following him closely. The suspects were tracked with their phones at the location where Nemtsov was present with his phone. During the murder all the detainees "were in the area": some under the bridge, some in a car, some nearby. Zaur Dadaev pulled the trigger. He first made a confession, and then, on the advice of his lawyers, took it back. But it changes nothing, the investigation has already collected compelling evidence of his guilt. I will not give details of how this was done. The pistol was thrown into the river after the crime, it was later recovered by divers. That Zaur Dadaev immediately said to the TV cameras: "I love prophet Muhammad" - is just a cover. There was no religious motive for the killings. They cynically carried out an order. They are far from devout Muslims. In fact, just real gangsters. And the most important thing. The executor of the murder was in close contact with Adam Osmaev, who recently became the commander of the Ukrainian battalion in the name of Dzhokhar Dudayev. They met, talked a lot on the phone. Zaur Dadaev and his cronies worked with Osmaev on Ukrainian affairs. And also with Chechens, who fought on the territory of Ukraine for the new regime. Zaur Dadaev was listed in the battalion "North" ("Sever") of the Chechen Interior Ministry, but while serving in it, in fact, was engaged in activities against Russia. He was associated with Osmaev by a certain relationship and mutual obligations.
  • The evidence is still being gathered. But I can say that today the main suspected customer of Nemtsov's murder is Adam Osmayev.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • - The perpetrators were told to execute the order in the place where it was committed, - continues our source. - Another words not just to kill him in the alley, but do it in the heart of Moscow across from the Kremlin - deliberately to cause outrage around the world. Before the crime they received the advance payment, it was agreed that the remainder of the money for the "job" will be transferred to their bank account. - Why did they have to kill Nemtsov, who spoke out against Putin's policies? It turns out, they had killed their ideological ally! - [Ultra-] Nationalists and criminals will not stop at anything. To kill their ally for them is not a question of morality. Nemtsov became a bargaining chip. The goal was - to slander Russia, to show it in a bad light, to prevent peace in Donbass (especially after talks with Merkel and Hollande). To show the President of Russia in the eyes of the world community as the "ultimate evil" - to show: look, how he strangled the opposition. The world just began to warm up to Putin's politics, which he is following in relation to Ukraine. And this cynical murder of Nemtsov has caused a wave of discontent, fueled by the world media. The American and European press immediately began to show this murder in their own light, placing the responsibility on the President of Russia.
  • Adam Osmayev was previously suspected in the attempt to organize the 2012 assassination of Vladimir Putin, at that time a Prime Minister and presidential candidate. Osmayev  planned to blow up Putin's motorcade, which was confirmed by a video, found in his laptop, of Prime Minister's motorcade travelling through Moscow. Then Osmaev cooperated with the investigation - admitted he came to Odessa from the United Arab Emirates with instructions from field commander Doku Umarov. But in court Osmayev refused to testify, claiming he gave his testimony after a beating. His lawyers wrote a complaint to the Prosecutor's office and the European Court of Human Rights. - Osmaev failed to get to Putin himself, but it seems that he did not calm down, - says our source in the FSB. - And later the most accessible target to attack the President was selected - Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov lately was not seen as an active member of the opposition, was no competition to Putin, but his name was known. The choice of a sacrificial lamb was quite successful. The gangsters do not stop at anything. And gangsters involved in politics is a devilish blend.
  • - Will Osmaev be charged? - Now everything is in the stage of investigation and evidence collection. Some of the evidence we already gathered, but I don't want to tell everything in order not to hinder the investigation.
  • What was Adam Osmayev "famous" for... In 2007 in Moscow on the eve of Victory Day a terrorist attack was averted - explosives were found in a parked car. A native of Grozny, Adam Osmayev, a suspect in the case, was arrested in absentia by the Lefortovsky district court of Moscow and declared for international search. The investigation found that Osmayev with a group of Chechens and Ingush was also preparing an assassination on May 9 of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. According to the press, after that Osmayev was hiding in the UK, where he was contacted by associates of Doku Umarov and was offered to organize a new terrorist attack. Adam agreed and went to Ukraine with a fake passport. In 2012, he was arrested after an explosion in a rented apartment - the terrorist was preparing homemade bombs. Osman and his "right hand", a Kazakh citizen, Ilya Pyanzin, admitted: they were preparing an assassination of the head of the government of Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The suspects also reported that they recruited fighters for future terrorist attacks in Russia. But later they took back their testimony.
  • Russia demanded to extradite Adam Osmayev, however, the European Court of Human Rights had blocked it, declaring: "In Russia the detainee may be subjected to torture". Pyanzin eventually was extradited to Russia, and in September 2013 he was sentenced to ten years in a colony with a strict regime. On November 18, 2014, the court of Odessa declared a sentence for Osmaev: 2 years and 9 months imprisonment. He was released in the courtroom "for lack of evidence of preparation of assassination" - he was credited the time he already spent in jail. The court room reacted to the sentence of Osmaev with applause, and he, in turn, encouraged them to "protect Ukraine". In February of this year Osmayev headed the Ukrainian battalion  in the name of Dzhokhar Dudayev, succeeding the general, deceased under Debaltsevo, Isa Munaev. 
  • OFFICIAL COMMENT Dmitry Peskov: In the coming days, the prosecutors will announce the motives for the murder "We hope that in the coming days all legal formalities will be completed and prosecutors will announce their versions of the murder, will name those who are behind this," said the President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov to the journalists of "AP", answering the question about the prospects of completing the investigation of the murder of Boris Nemtsov.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    According to this translated-from-Russian Pravda report, the investigation of the Boris Nemtsov assassination in Russia is closing in on the commander of a Ukrainian battalion, Adam Osmayev, as the person who set in motion the assassination by a professional hit team that had also been tasked to assassinate Vladimir Putin. In other words, a false flag attack on Nemtsov to make Russia look bad, to be followed up by killing the Russian Prime Minister.  The pseudonym reportedly used by Osmayev in Ukraine is Dzhokar Dudayev. That is the name of the first President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, a breakaway state in the North Caucasus. Wikpedia says, "Dudayev was killed on 21 April 1996, by two laser-guided missiles when he was using a satellite phone, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call." http://goo.gl/67qPVR  In comments by the translator that I did not highlight, she speculates that the trail may lead further to the CIA and SBU, which is roughly the Ukrainian equivalent of the CIA. See also this 2014 article, http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=488090 (.) That article reports, inter alia, that the CIA had personnel working within the SBU between 2006-10 and that CIA had been provided with the personnel files of Ukraine "special services" officers. If true, that would mean that CIA had penetrated SBU long before the coup and may in fact have been in control of SBU. Approximately the first paragraph of this article was reported by the Kyev Post, without mention of the CIA officials working within SBU. http://goo.gl/9HX1n
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Correction: I misunderstood the translation. The plot to kill Putin happened in 2012 and Adam Osmayev was allegedly tied to it. I have no information that the other defendants in the present incident were involved with that. Also, Dzhokar Dudayev is not a pseudonym used by Osmayev but instead the name of his militia battalion in Ukraine. It's composed of "international" volunteers, one might suspect largely of Chechnyans. I'll be bookmarking another article soon that makes more sense of all this. Osmayev is himself Chechnyan.
Joseph Skues

Yes, Islam condones wife beatings - 0 views

www.calgaryherald.com/...story.html

islam condones yes

shared by Joseph Skues on 23 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Joseph Skues on 23 Jan 11
     
    "Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor. The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue. Soharwardy's statement that "Beating one's wife is not only wrong, it is criminal and completely un-Islamic" is incorrect. The Qur'an says that "men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them (men) to excel the other (women), thus man's superiority over women . . . good women are the obedient ones . . . admonish the rebellious women and banish them, and scourge them (whip them severely to inflict pain) (4:34) . . . smote them (hit or strike with the hand or with a weapon causing pain, beat them . . . (4:62)". Islam does not recognize gender equality. For example, polygamy is accepted in Islam, but polyandry is not. A woman's testimony is considered half as worthy as a man's in court; a son inherits twice as much as a daughter does. Muslim men may marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women can marry only Muslim men. In short, sharia law leads to the inhuman treatment of Muslim women by their husbands and others, especially in South Asia and the Middle East. Higher education is emphasized more for sons than for daughters; in cultural honour killings, almost always women are the target for murder. Under sharia, divorced Muslim women get custody of their sons under eight years of age and daughters until puberty, and then the fathers take the children away. Sharia enabled one of the worst fundamentalists, the vile and ruthless military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, to put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the absurd Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were char
Paul Merrell

Judicial Watch Played Into The Government's Hands -- Americans Are Blinded By Agendas -... - 0 views

www.paulcraigroberts.org/...ands-americans-blinded-agendas

Roberts 9-11 bin-Laden-assassination

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Disinformation succeeds because so many people and interest groups across the political spectrum find that it serves their agendas as well as the agenda of the government. Consider for example the explanation of 9/11 that blamed Muslim terrorists for the attack. This served the interests of the neoconservatives, the private armaments companies, the US military, the private security companies, government security agencies such as the CIA, the left-wing, the right-wing, the Israel Lobby, and the print and TV media. The official explanation gave the neoconservatives the “new Pearl Harbor” that they needed for their program of invasions of Middle Eastern countries. The private armaments companies could look forward to decades of high profits. Wars always bring the military rapid promotions and higher retirement benefits. Private manufacturers of security equipment and spyware enjoy a rising demand for their products and have grown fat from the products sold to the TSA and NSA. Homeland Security has vastly expanded the federal workforce and administrative positions. The left-wing has proof of “blowback” caused by US interference in the internal affairs of other countries. The right-wing has proof that America has enemies against whom defense at all costs is necessary. The Israel Lobby has the US to overthrow the regimes in the way of Israel’s territorial expansion. The media has the story of the century with which to boost ratings and curry the favor of government.
  • In other words, the government’s story cannot stand the light cast by the facts and independent experts, and the government’s false story must be protected by shutting down the truth-telling experts. The government, Sunstein argued, needs to either gain control over these experts or to shut them down. Just as many different collections of interest groups and people have stakes in the Obama regime’s story of the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALS in Abbottabad, Pakistan. This story and its selling by an enthusiastic media guaranteed Obama’s reelection. It served the emotions of super patriots desperate for revenge who wear their gullibility on their sleeves. It served the myth of CIA and NSA prowess. It served the reputation of the killing power of US Special Forces teams. It proved that America won even though it lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the trillions of dollars spent were worth it. We got revenge on the guy who did 9/11. No one remembered that the US government, unable to find bin Laden for 10 years, had settled on a different “9/11 mastermind,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and had him water-boarded 183 times until he confessed to being responsible for 9/11. If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” why were SEALS sent, illegally, into Pakistan to murder bin Laden? As the FBI says, there is no evidence that bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. That is why bin Laden was not wanted on that charge by the FBI, as the FBI publicly stated.
  • Judicial Watch has been trying to pry the (nonexistent) photos of a dead bin Laden from the government’s hands. For “national security reasons” the US government does not want anyone to see evidence that supports its far-fetched tale of bin Laden’s murder. The photographic evidence of a successful raid are off limits. They are like the alleged videos of the airliner hitting the Pentagon that we are not permitted to see for “national security reasons.” In other words, the photos and videos do not exist and never did. No government, not even the American one, would be so totally stupid as to withhold the evidence for its claims. The government, seeing its unbelievable stories lose believability at home and abroad used Judicial Watch’s lawsuit to boost the credibility of its story. Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the photos that the Obama regime alleged to have of the murdered bin Laden but refused to release. Obviously, the government has no such photos and never had any such photos. But the government does not need evidence when it can rely on the gullibility of the American people.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • How was bin Laden, who was known in 2001 to be suffering from terminal illnesses, including renal failure, and whose death was widely reported in 2001 still alive ten years later to be murdered by SEALs? What sense does it make that the greatest terrorist leader of our time only had two unarmed women to protect him. What sense does it make that the US would murder the terrorist mastermind with all the plots in his head instead of capturing and questioning him? How can anyone be so gullible as to believe such a nonsense tale as told to them by Obama and the presstitute media? Is America really a nation of utter fools? Like the 9/11 story, the story of bin Laden’s murder is losing credibility with the US population. Pakistani National TV shot Obama’s story down with an eyewitness interview that reported that not one single person, dead body, or any piece of evidence left Abbottadad, because the only helicopter that landed blew up when it attempted to leave and there were no survivors. No other helicopters landed. So there was no dead bin Laden to be buried at sea (there are no known witnesses to the alleged burial) and no photographs of a dead bin Laden.
  • As the government had no photos to release, the US government decided to use the opportunity presented by Judicial Watch to bolster its story that photos of bin Laden murdered and dead were once in its possession. The government released to Judicial Watch a document under the Freedom of Information Act that is an order from Special Operations Commander Admiral William McRaven to “destroy immediately” the photos of the dead bin Laden. Judicial Watch took the bait. Instead of realizing that there was no reason whatsoever for the government to destroy the only evidence that might support its claim to have murdered bin Laden, Judicial Watch focused on the illegality of destroying the evidence. Judicial Watch says that “Federal law contains broad prohibitions against the ‘concealment, removal, or mutilation generally’ of government records.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/top-pentagon-leader-ordered-destruction-of-bin-laden-death-photos/5368389 Judicial Watch played into the government’s hands. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton was maneuvered by the government into defining the scandal as the destruction of evidence, “revealing both contempt for the rule of law and the American people’s right to know.” To the contrary, the real scandal is the massive lie that bin Laden was killed by a SEAL raid and the acceptance of this lie by the American people and Judicial Watch.
  • By damning the government for destroying evidence, Judicial Watch has given credibility to the government’s claim that SEALs murdered Osama bin Laden. The SEAL team credited with bin Laden’s murder was quickly eliminated when the team was loaded onto a 1960s vintage helicopter in Afghanistan. Apparently the team members were asking one another, “Were you on that mission that killed bin Laden?” Of course, no one was, and this information was too dangerous for the Obama regime.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14
     
    Paul Craig Roberts goes on record as a 9-11 Truther and as a deep sceptic of Obama's claim that Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. 
Gary Edwards

CHILDREN KILLED OF KEVIN KRIM, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CNBC DIGITAL, AFTER RELEASING INFORMA... - 0 views

www.fourwinds10.net/...news.php

Banksters Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel assasination murder

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Nov 12
     
    Incredible article about the behind-the-scenes story of the nanny murder of two small children in NYC.   First, it's a staged murder meant to send a clear message to ALL media.  The children were the offspring of Kevin Krim, CEO of CNBC digital.  His website had published a story about the Spire Law Group suing an entire class of bigshot BANKSTERS for the theft of $43 TRILLION dollars of tax payer money.  Second, this involves the US Government.  The Spire allegation is that the Feds actively helped and assisted the Bankster theft. Third, the story describes the historical background of these Bankster hits, assassination and threats.  Although not covered in the article, Presidential assassinations in particular have an unmistakable link to Executive Orders that the Treasury print Silver Certificates that would compete against Bankster notes.  In one way or another, it's all about control of the money system.  This list of Presidents includes Jackson, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy and Reagan. Original Press Release from the Spire Law Group:  ... http://goo.gl/ynV6O .... Wow! ................................... excerpt:: "On 10/25/2012 two corporate financial media bastions,  MarketWatch  (an affiliate of the Wall Street Journal) and CNBC, presented their readers with a bombshell.  In a too-good-to-be-true lawsuit, the top echelons of the USA's banking and civilian government had been sued for "racketeering and money laundering."  The suit requested "the return of $43 trillion to the United States Treasury."  Yes, you've read that right: 43 trillion-roughly 3 years worth of America's GDP or 3 times America's underestimate of its own national debt. The suit characterizes itself, according to these two corporate media tabloids, as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History.  [It identifies] $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the 'Banksters' and their U.S. r
Paul Merrell

And The Benghazi Media Circus Plays On… | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5380682

war & peace Benghazi Obama Hillary lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • A recent article written by this writer for Global Research posted last Saturday – “The Benghazi Scandal Is Obama’s Watergate But Worse” – was written in an effort to seek and uncover the truth. Accurate reporting on major world events is a challenge in today’s world where propaganda and disinformation are mainstream media norms and where virtually all major players in American politics simply lie through their teeth every time they open their mouths in constant effort to look good and cover up the truth. The American public knows this pathetic and sobering fact that deception has come to rule in the world of both politics and the media. People today neither believe their newscasters nor their political leaders. That is why examining the content of the tidal wave of assertions and opinions spewing forth from politicians and pundits in the aftermath of the latest Benghazi revelations must be taken with a grain of salt. Again, truth in today’s world is hard to come by. But as an investigative reporter, presenting a brief overview of recent comments and statements for any informed citizen to process and digest seems a worthwhile and important enterprise.
  • A timeline of recently unfolding events: On 10/12/12 exactly one month after the Benghazi incident, the legal conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the Benghazi attack on September 11th, 2012 that killed the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Obama, who had campaigned on a promise of transparency in the criminal wake of the Bush regime, has proven to be anything but open and transparent. Having to sue the US government for access to the records, on April 18th, 2014, a full year and a half later, the Obama administration’s stonewalling ultimately failed and Judicial Watch successfully got hold of 41 State Department Benghazi related documents. Emails between high level White House officials discussing damage control strategies in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi assault were released last week. Jubilant Republicans are now calling one of those emails their “smoking gun,” believing it is so incriminating that it will do in their would-be opponent Hillary Clinton from potentially competing in the 2016 presidential election.
  • The newly declassified email written by Obama’s then Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes specifically directed then UN Ambassador Susan Rice in preparation for her Sunday morning talk show appearances on September 16th, 2012 to explain the administration’s take on what it knew of the Benghazi murders. Rhodes advised Rice to attribute the Benghazi uprising as “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy,” pushing talking points designed to bolster Obama’s presidential image as a cool-as-a-cucumber-under-fire kind of wise and benevolent leader and statesman. The major emphasis of the email instructed Rice to blame the bogus anti-Moslem video as inciting a spontaneous protest like in other countries in the region that apparently grew violently out of control, of course all the while knowing that that was a boldface lie. This crucial piece of evidence proves that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both knew that the video did not cause the attack but that they chose to willfully deceive the American public in order to protect their own political careers and hence was born the infamously never ending Benghazi cover-up. Obama and Hillary withheld this damning email evidence even from the House Oversight Committee led by Congressman Darrel Issa (R-CA) requesting all documents pertaining to Benghazi more than a year ago. With the presidential election less than two months away at the time of the attack, Obama and Hillary were determined at all cost to keep hidden from Americans the real truth of criminal Benghazi activity they were guilty of engaging in during the months leading up to the attack. Last Thursday an angry Issa subpoenaed current Secretary of State John Kerry to appear before the committee on May 21st to further explain why those critical State Department records recently given to Judicial Watch were not among the 3200 documents originally handed over to his committee well over a year ago.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Investigative reporter Kenneth R. Timmerman as author of a new forthcoming book entitled ‘Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi’ states: We know that orders were issued, then recalled, to deploy a 50-man Special Forces unit from Croatia that could have reached Benghazi within hours.Timmerman concludes that to date no documents revealing the person who ordered that unit to stand down have yet to surface.
  • Within hours of the general’s testimony came rebukes from both the senior Republican and Democrat on the powerful House Armed Services Committee making claims backing the administration’s that the military was incapable of responding in time to assist the ill-fated Americans in Benghazi. Because they represent the military in Congress that had already drawn the conclusion that nothing tactically could have been done to save the four Americans, they were quick to rebut the general’s testimony. Yet the day before 9/11 every year since 9/11/01 including on 9/10/11, the president meets with top military and security personnel to ensure that US embassies around the globe are bolstered with much needed extra security for 9/11 readiness. Yet the Benghazi compound was so insecure despite repeated requests, both Obama and the military apparently failed to have any military units on standby that could reach Benghazi to be of service on the night of 9/11/12. And this comes after intelligence sources have been reporting insufficient security at the Benghazi embassy compound.
  • Another disclosure at last Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing further damaging the credibility and actions of the Obama administration came from retired Air Force General Robert Lovell who at the time of Benghazi was in Germany serving as the senior African Command deputy director for intelligence. Lovell testified, “We should have sent help,” adding that the White House decision not to attempt military assistance due to the time factor was unacceptable. Lovell also stated unequivocally that the military knew that the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with the video falsely used by the administration to explain away the tragedy. The ex-general felt his military should have intervened and was waiting all night long for the call that never came from his bosses in Washington. Clearly he feels a sense of remorse and regret over the passivity imposed on him by his commander-in-chief Obama and State Department head Clinton.
  • Meanwhile, last week in a heated exchange with ABC correspondent Jon Karl a visibly agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that Rhodes’ email was not related to Benghazi at all but referred to the Moslem protests generally taking place in the region in response to the video. The next day Fox reporter Ed Henry engaged Carney on the same issue, eliciting the same haranguing reaction. All this appears to be yet more desperate lies in a feeble attempt to cover his bosses’ Obama and Hillary’s asses called criminal guilt, and by so doing committing his own. Carney had been among the original recipients of Rhodes’ email. Carney further explained that the same Rhodes talking points echoed those delivered earlier to Congress and the White House by deputy CIA director Mike Morell who a month ago claimed he received no pressure or influence from anyone in the Obama administration in coming up with his version of what most likely transpired on 9/11/12 based on all CIA intelligence sources available at the time. Yet on his own Morell admitted to toning down the intelligence reports leading up to the Benghazi attack purposely so as to not appear to be an “I told you so” gesture that would offend Hillary and her State Department. That said, Hillary’s underling and rising star Victoria Nuland (the later promoted to profanity-speaking Assistant Secretary of State who played such a key role in the recent US backed fascist Ukrainan coup) objected to Morell’s talking points that in her mind leaned too heavily toward blaming her boss and their State Department for insufficient security at the Benghazi compound. Her words:
  • Why do we want Hill to start fingering Ansar Al Sharia [the known al Qaeda affiliated attackers that murdered the four Americans], when we aren’t doing that ourselves until we have the investigation results…and the penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that?… Concerned.Observe how the exclusive focus of all post-Benghazi interdepartmental correspondence from Rhodes’ to Morell’s to Nuland’s all center on appearance and potential perception to avoid CYA blame. Furthest down on their priority list is honest and truthful disclosure and self-accountability. Again, the name of the game in the world of politics is passing the buck whenever possible to minimize potential heat that comes with looking bad and maximizing looking good by any means or lies necessary. Benghazi perfectly illustrates all of this.
  • Based on the information finally coming to light all last week, last Friday House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called for a special select committee not unlike the one for Watergate to further investigate Benghazi. Representative Trey Gowdy (SC-R) has already been selected as its lead investigator. This grandstanding ploy seems a bit superfluous and redundant since the House Oversight Committee has ostensibly been trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi for nearly a year and a half, albeit thus far ineffective in its results, no help from the State Department’s prior email omissions. Not only is Benghazi the hot topic buzzing here in America, on that same day last Friday, more bullets was buzzing in Benghazi as well. Nine police security soldiers were gunned down by, you guessed it, the same murderers still remaining at large that were behind the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack – the militant group the US has for years labeled an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia. After massacring 31 peaceful demonstrators protesting outside the militants’ headquarters last June, last week’s massacre is a powerful statement showing that the terrorists are still in charge in Benghazi and immune from any accountability from the US installed puppet government either in Tripoli or Washington. They remain free men at large despite Obama’s promise to hunt them down and bring them to justice.
  • The senior Democratic House Intel Committee Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) typifies the partisan Obama-Hillary politics games of each side racing to the media to point fingers at each other in their same old, same old blame game. On Sunday Schiff stated he does not want any Democrats to participate in the newly forming select committee that the Republican House Speaker Boehner has just recently called for, already naming its GOP chair. That is simply a game the Dems will refuse to play. Why? Because Republicans cannot make them. Sound familiar? Perhaps your 7-year old child might employ this same game strategy. Insider Dems like former White House advisor turned ABC analyst (and another original recipient of Rhodes’ infamous email) David Plouffe conveniently took to ABC’s Sunday morning On This Week with George Stephanopoulos crying foul even louder with their familiar “conspiracy” chant they customarily use to discredit any criticism leveled at the Obama administration. His cries reaching desperation this week accuse a “very loud, delusional minority” of Republicans of an obsessive politics game over Benghazi. Another all too familiar grade school tactic, whatever misbehavior you are accused of, simply accuse your enemy of the same offense, an old early childhood trick that you never need outgrow in the world of politics.
  • Still another indignant reaction hardcore defenders of Hillary and Obama are now quick to cite are the thirteen embassy attacks that occurred as so called “Benghazi’s on Bush’s watch” when not a peep was ever heard from the press. This straw house strategy is designed to show how Republicans and Fox News are hypocritical in their obsession to find dirt on Benghazi where they deny any exists. Yet this accusation seems to omit one very significant fact. Not one of those embassy attacks during the Bush regime resulted in any murdered Americans, much less four of them and one being a US Ambassador, something that has not happened in the last 32 years before Benghazi. The media circus demonizing partisan politics players on both sides epitomizes why the US government is so utterly broken, horribly dysfunctional, morally bankrupt and totally ineffective in addressing any and all of the most pressing problems facing America and the world today. The blame game is all they know. Yet in all their exaggeration, lies, name calling and finger pointing, not one of them is even addressing the pink elephant in the room.
  • Obama, Hillary and then CIA Director retired General Betrayus Petraeus were/are international gun running criminal outlaws of the worst kind, working with the very same al Qaeda terrorist bunch that murdered those four nearly forgotten Americans. US tax dollars were/are going into the pockets of Ansar al-Sharia and al Qaeda mercenaries that looted Muammar Kaddafi’s gold cache and enormous weapon arsenal that included chemical weapons as well as surface to air missiles. And Obama, Petraeus and 2016 presidential heir apparent Hillary were in deep over their heads under Hillary and Stevens’ State Department cover, shipping them from Benghazi through Turkey to Syria to covertly fight a war by proxy against Assad’s government forces. After more than three bloody years, to this day the US is still bent on destroying another sovereign nation posing absolutely no security threat to America. These are the war crimes constantly being committed by Obama, Petraeus and Hillary and their lies upon lies are unraveling at an accelerated clip with each passing month. Thus, expect to see more desperate acts of aggression from desperate despots who know that their jig is up. Yet desperate despots do not care how many humans they will take down with them. But justice for these longtime perpetrators of multiple crimes against humanity will be served in the end.
Paul Merrell

Pakistan Charges CIA Officials Over Drone Deaths | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...-lawyer-over-drone-deaths.html

war & peace drone attacks Pakistan murder-charges CIA U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • A Pakistani judge on Tuesday ordered criminal charges to be filed against a former CIA lawyer who oversaw the agency’s drone program and a former station chief in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people. Former acting general counsel John A. Rizzo and former station chief Jonathan Bank must face charges of murder, conspiracy, waging war against Pakistan and terrorism, ruled Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court. A court clerk and a lawyer involved in the case, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, confirmed details of the ruling. Rizzo and Bank could not be immediately reached for comment. The CIA declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera America. Bank’s cover was blown in late 2010 when a Pakistani man, Kareem Khan, threatened to sue the CIA and others for $500 million over the deaths of his sons Zaenullah Khan and Asif Iqbal in a Dec. 31, 2009, strike in the North Waziristan tribal region.
  • As the outrage over the deaths grew, protesters in Islamabad began carrying placards bearing Bank's name, as listed in the lawsuit, and urging him to leave the country. The CIA pulled Bank from the country on Dec. 16, 2010, when he began receiving death threats. His outing spurred questions at the time of whether Pakistan's spy service might have leaked the information, something Islamabad denied. The disclosure didn't prevent Bank from landing another sensitive job. He became chief of the Iran operations division at CIA headquarters in Virginia. He was removed from that post after CIA officials concluded that he created a hostile work environment in the division. He has since been detailed to the Pentagon's intelligence arm.   Rizzo was the CIA's acting general counsel overseeing its drone program. He later left the agency and wrote a book about his experiences at the CIA.  
  • It is estimated that since 2004, the U.S. has carried out over 400 drone strikes in the country, killing anywhere from 421 to 960 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks the U.S. campaign. The foundation says the last U.S. drone strike in Pakistan was on Jan. 29 and killed at least six suspected fighters. It is not clear how the judge's ruling will affect relations between Pakistan and the U.S., especially over the drone program. While Pakistan's government often decries the strikes, many believe it allows them to target the insurgents who threaten it. Massive protests against the drone program previously blocked a land route used by NATO forces to resupply troops in neighboring Afghanistan.   Any legal action stands no chance of success unless U.S. officials cooperate with the court, something highly unlikely, given the secretive nature of the drone program, which the CIA rarely publicly discusses.
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  • Under the judge's order, Pakistan's federal police force must file the charges against Rizzo and Bank, though the police have so far refused, reportedly out of a reluctance to upset the country's diplomatic relations with the U.S.
Gary Edwards

About the Reuters article | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ters-article-dead-man-s-switch

Glenn-Greenwald Edward-Snowden NSA-Whistleblower

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • (just incidentally, the notion that a government that has spent the last decade invading, bombing, torturing, rendering, kidnapping, imprisoning without charges, droning, partnering with the worst dictators and murderers, and targeting its own citizens for assassination would be above such conduct is charmingly quaint
  • three points in this La Nacion interview, all of which are true and none of which has anything remotely to do with threats:
  • 1) The oft-repeated claim that Snowden's intent is to harm the US is completely negated by the reality that he has all sorts of documents that could quickly and seriously harm the US if disclosed, yet he has published none of those.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The overwhelming majority of his disclosures were to blow the whistle on US government deceit and radical, hidden domestic surveillance.
  • If his intent were to harm the US, he could have sold all the documents he had for a great deal of money, or indiscriminately published them, or passed them to a foreign adversary. He did none of that.
  • 2) The US government has acted with wild irrationality. The current criticism of Snowden is that he's in Russia. But the reason he's in Russia isn't that he chose to be there. It's because the US blocked him from leaving: first by revoking his passport (with no due process or trial), then by pressuring its allies to deny airspace rights to any plane they thought might be carrying him to asylum (even one carrying the democratically elected president of a sovereign state), then by bullying small countries out of letting him land for re-fueling.
  • Given the extraordinary amount of documents he has and their sensitivity, I pointed out in the interview that it is incredibly foolish for the US government to force him to remain in Russia.
  • As a result of the documents he has, I said in the interview, the US government should be praying for his safety, not threatening or harming it.
  • 3) I was asked whether I thought the US government would take physical action against him if he tried to go to Latin America or even force his plane down. That's when I said that doing so would be completely counter-productive given that - as has been reported before - such an attack could easily result in far more disclosures than allowing us as journalists to vet and responsibly report them, as we've doing.
  • Compare the attention paid to Snowden's asylum drama and alleged personality traits to the attention paid to the disclosures about mass, indiscriminate NSA spying. Or compare the media calls that Snowden (and others who worked to expose mass NSA surveillance) be treated like a criminal to the virtually non-existent calls that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper be treated like a criminal for lying to Congress.
  • This "threat" fiction is just today's concoction to focus on anything but the revelations about US government lying to Congress and constitutionally and legally dubious NSA spying.
  • this only happens in the US: everywhere else, the media attention and political focus is on NSA surveillance, while US media figures are singularly obsessed with focusing on everything but that.
  • Yesterday, it was something else, and tomorrow it will be something else again.
  • There are all sorts of ways that Snowden could have chosen to make these documents be public. He chose the most responsible way possible: coming to media outlets and journalists he trusted and asking that they be reported on responsibly.
  • The effort to depict him as some sort of malicious traitor is completely negated by the facts. That was the point of the interview.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jul 13
     
    Excellent explanation by Glenn Greenwald. intro: Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. It's particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and, secondarily, me, for supposedly "blackmailing" and "threatening" the US government. That is just absurd. That Snowden has created some sort of "dead man's switch" - whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government - was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing. That doesn't mean he thinks the US government is attempting to kill him - he doesn't - just that he's taken precautions against all eventualities, including that one (just incidentally, the notion that a government that has spent the last decade invading, bombing, torturing, rendering, kidnapping, imprisoning without charges, droning, partnering with the worst dictators and murderers, and targeting its own citizens for assassination would be above such conduct is charmingly quaint).
Paul Merrell

Confession of Former Russian Officer in Nemtsov Slaying could prompt Mole-Hunt | nsnbc ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...slaying-could-prompt-mole-hunt

war & peace Russia Nemtsov-asassination U.S.-foreign-policy NED Soros

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Moscow Basmanny Court, on Sunday, sanctioned the detention of three additional suspects in the case of the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. Meanwhile, Daur Dadayev , a former Chechen officer pleaded guilty for his involvement. The developments prompt the President of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to launch a probe into the republics security services and a probe to identify what may have motivated Dadayev, whom he knew as a loyal officer, to get involved in the crime. The three additional suspects whose arrest was sanctioned by Moscow’s Basmanny Court are Khamzad Bakhayev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Shagid Gubashev, reported the Russian Tass news agency.
  • The Court stated that it reached the conclusion to support the investigators’ request after having reviewed the materials presented to the court. Gubachev was arrested on March 7 while Eskerkhanov and Bakhayev were arrested on March 8. The three were charged under Articles 105 and 222 of the Russian Federation’s Criminal Code, involving the murder committed by a group of persons, in collusion, and for reasons of money, as well as with robbery, extortion and banditry and the illegal possession or transfer of weapons. The Court justifies their detention on the grounds that the suspects could flee and possibly attempt to destroy evidence.
  • Judge Natalya Mushnikova was quoted by Tass as saying that “Zaur Dadayev’s involvement has been confirmed by his confession”. The Court would not provide details about Dadayev’s alleged or confessed role in the murder of RPR-Psarnas party Co-Chair Boris Nemtsov during the night from February 27 to 28. Dadayev’s arrest and confession prompted the President of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to order an investigation into the Dadayev’s past. President Kadyrov stressed that he remembered Dadayev as a true Russian patriot. The Tass news agency quoted the Chechen Republic’s President as stating: “I have known Zaur as a true patriot of Russia. … Zaur was one of the bravest men in the regiment. … He displayed particular courage in an operation against a large group of terrorists near Benoi. He was awarded the Order of Courage, and medals For Bravery and For Services to the Chechen Republic. I am certain that he was sincerely dedicated to Russia and prepared to give his life for the Motherland. The real reasons and motives behind Dadayev’s dismissal from the Russian Interior Ministry troops are unclear to me.
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  • … I have instructed Chechnya’s Security Council Secretary Vakhit Usmayev to conduct a thorough investigation of Zaur Dadayev’s resignation and to scrutinize his behavior and morale on the eve of leaving the service. … In any case, if Dadayev’s guilt is established in court, it will have to be admitted that by taking a human life he committed a grave crime. But I must say once again that he would have never taken a single step against Russia, for the sake of which he had risked his own life for many years. Beslan Shavanov, the man killed during an attempt to detain him, was a brave soldier, too. We hope that a thorough investigation will follow to show if Dadayev is really guilty, and if yes, what was the real reason behind his actions.”.
  • Western and Arab Support of Terrorists could justify a Mole-Hunt in the Russian Federation’s Security Services. Chechen and Ingushetian Islamist terrorist organizations are known for their close ties to foreign intelligence services. In 2013 the then Chief of Saudi Arabia’s Intelligence, Prince Bandar admitted that Saudi Arabia uses and controls Chechen and other Caucasian terrorists promising President Putin “a safe Winter Olympic Games in Sochi” in exchange for Russian willingness to have a Saudi-friendly regime installed in Syria. The released minutes of the meeting between Putin and Bandar quote Bandar as saying: “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups don´t scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria´s political future”.
  • Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, for his part, has previously accused U.S. intelligence officials, including David Petraeus, for involvement in “flipping” detainees at Camp Bucca and at black CIA sites, including Caliph Ibrahim of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL) Al-Baghdadi, a.k.a. Al-Badri or Caliph Ibrahim. In Helsinki, the capital of Finland the Kavkaz Center is maintaining a “pro-Caucasus Emirate” website. The Center provided PR support to the now deceased terrorist leader Doku Umarov and his terrorist network. Umarov would threaten to disrupt the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games before he was killed in an explosion. U.S. Civil Society organizations as well as CIA and JSOC fronts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are known for their support of “Caucasian Rebels or Freedom Fighters”.
  • A shortlist of the civil society organizations which have been implicated in supporting Russian terrorist organizations includes the Jamestown Foundation, the United States-Chechen Republic Alliance Inc., the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (ACPC), Freedom House, the Open Society Foundation, funded by George Soros, among many others.
  • he former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski is generally known as one of the main enablers and sponsors of the “Chechen Representation in the United States” led by Alisher Usmanov. Brzezinsky, for his part, is strongly supported by Rockefeller Foundation money. Brzezinski is according to several analysts pathologically obsessed with dividing Russia into at least six separate States” to reign in Moscow under the umbrella of a U.S. hegemony. It is noteworthy that Boris Nemtsov and the RPR-Psarnas party had close ties to the National Endowment of Democracy (NED). In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin would state that “he knows as a meter of fact” that especially foreign-backed organizations, over the last ten years, have used the strategy to sacrifice one of their own to create a martyr”. (see video)
  • The alleged involvement of Chechen and Ingushetian nationals in the murder of Boris Nemtsov and the confession of the former Interior Ministry officer Dadayev is not unlikely to prompt in-depth “mole-hunt” operations in the federal and national Russian, Chechen, Ingushetian and other security forces as well as mole-hunts in foreign-backed NGO’s.
Paul Merrell

SANTIAGO, Chile: Chilean accused of murder, torture taught 13 years for Pentagon | Nati... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...accused-of-murder-torture.html

war & peace National-Defense-Univ human rights Chile Colombia Operation-Condor

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A member of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal secret police who’s been accused of murder taught for more than a decade at the Pentagon’s premier university, despite repeated complaints by his colleagues about his past. Jaime Garcia Covarrubias is charged in criminal court in Santiago with being the mastermind in the execution-style slayings of seven people in 1973, according to court documents. McClatchy also interviewed an accuser who identified Garcia Covarrubias as the person who sexually tortured him.Despite knowing of the allegations, State and Defense department officials allowed Garcia Covarrubias to retain his visa and continue working at a school affiliated with the National Defense University until last year .Human rights groups also question the school’s selection of a second professor, Colombia’s former top military commander.
  • Some Latin America experts said the hirings by the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies reflected a continuing inclination by the U.S government to overlook human rights violations in Latin America, especially in countries where it funded efforts to quash leftists. But those experts were especially troubled by Garcia Covarrubias’ long tenure at one of the nation’s most renowned defense institutions. “His hiring undermines our moral authority on both human rights and in the war on terror,” said Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency and Army intelligence officer from 1982 to 2010 who specializes in Latin America. “If he is in fact guilty of what he is accused of, he is a terrorist. Then who are we to tell other countries how they should be fighting terrorism?” To his supporters, Garcia Covarrubias is a brilliant thinker with a Ph.D. and purveyor of leadership skills. To his alleged victims, he’s a sadistic torturer with a penchant for horsewhips and perversity.
  • A 2008 Chilean military document reviewed by McClatchy identified Garcia Covarrubias as a member of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, the feared spy agency known by its acronym DINA.“DINA was simply the most sinister agency in Latin America,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive, which secured the release of U.S. government classified documents underscoring the complicit relationship between the U.S. and Pinochet. “Anyone associated with that agency should never have been allowed into this country, let alone given this job.”Officials with the Pentagon, the State Department and the school refused to comment. Garcia Covarrubias is now back in Chile, ordered by an investigative judge in January 2014 to remain in the country while an inquiry continues into his alleged role in the deaths of seven people in Temuco weeks after the U.S.-backed Pinochet coup on Sept. 11, 1973. His case is one of 108 involving tortured, disappeared or murdered supporters of the deposed elected president, Salvador Allende. More than 3,000 people died at the hands of the regime, and in 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell offered regrets for U.S. involvement in the coup, calling it “not a part of American history that we're proud of.”
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  • The center’s officials who hired and renewed Garcia Covarrubias’ contracts say he was a highly qualified professor and minimize the allegations against him. “We made inquiries with people in the region, in Chile and so forth, and were never given anything negative about Jaime,” said Margaret Daly Hayes, the center’s first director. “He was vetted by the U.S. government, by the (U.S.) Embassy. They obviously didn’t have anything either or he wouldn’t have been hired.”McClatchy, however, located one of his alleged victims, who described being brutalized by him. “They submitted us to torture, twice a day. We were submerged in feces,” Herman Carrasco, who’s now a real estate agent, told McClatchy in Chile. “They stuck rifle barrels in our anuses.”According to Carrasco, the torture unfolded in October and November 1973 – lorded over by the horsewhip-wielding Garcia Covarrubias – and included electric shock administered to eyelids, genitals and other sensitive areas of the body.“He was the person who tortured us, with his face shown,” said Carrasco, who added that he’d known Garcia Covarrubias from social events before the coup. “He forced us into sexual acts, which shows that besides ferocious cruelty there was a level of psychopathic behavior.”
  • Despite very graphic torture accusations against Garcia Covarrubias, U.S. officials are rallying behind him.
  • As the center supported Garcia Covarrubias, it pushed out Andersen in retaliation, the former communications chief said.Last September, Andersen filed a complaint with the Pentagon’s inspector general, with the support of then-Sen. Carl Levin. D-Mich. An inspector general spokeswoman declined to comment. “It’s shameful that at a time the U.S. prestige as a democracy is under attack, that the National Defense University could be playing footsie with a former state terrorism agent,” Andersen said. The details uncovered about Garcia Covarrubias have prompted demands from several members of Congress for a Pentagon accounting of how he was hired and retained his job.“The American people deserve to know that adequate vetting of such individuals would be routine,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., author of the “ Leahy Law,” which restricts U.S. assistance to foreign security forces that violate human rights.
  • While most of the concerns focused on Garcia Covarrubias, the center also took heat in 2006 for hiring Colombian Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle. As army commander, he turned the tables in a decades-old guerrilla war while simultaneously crushing drug cartels. Ospina Ovalle left the center last year and took a post at another National Defense University school.He was hired at the request of the Colombian government and was popular with U.S. military leaders, recalls Downie, the center’s director at the time. “The Colombians wanted, for his own safety, to get him out of Colombia,” said Downie. “This is a guy we certainly wanted to have as a professor.”Human rights groups, however, criticized the general’s hiring and continued employment at the National Defense University. They point to his earlier command in Antioquia province, where right-wing paramilitaries ran roughshod and were linked to the military.“Antioquia in the late 1990s . . . is less than one degree of separation from working with the paramilitaries,” said Adam Isacson, a senior associate specializing in military matters for the Washington Office on Latin America. “If he has not, it’s some miracle that he managed to be the one clean officer.”“Having officers like that, the implicit message is that human rights takes a backseat,” said Isacson.
Paul Merrell

U.S. Contractors Convicted in 2007 Blackwater Baghdad Traffic Massacre | Inter Press Se... - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...water-baghdad-traffic-massacre

war & peace Iraq Blackwater prosecution murder manslaughter

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • A federal jury here Wednesday convicted one former Blackwater contractor of murder and three of his colleagues of voluntary manslaughter in the deadly shootings of 14 unarmed civilians killed in Baghdad’s Nisour Square seven years ago.The judge in the case ordered the men detained pending sentencing.
  • the unit’s sniper, Nicholas Slatten, opened fire on a car which, according to the defence, had approached the Blackwater vehicle in a suspicious manner. Slatten’s shots, which killed the car’s driver, a medical student, triggered chaos throughout the circle.In addition to Slatten, who was convicted of first-degree murder, a total of six members of the Blackwater team fired their weapons as they moved through the circle, according to the prosecution.One team member, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter in 2008 and served as a prosecution witness in the case. Charges against another defendant were dropped shortly afterwards. Several other team members also testified against the defendants.Aside from Slatten’s conviction, three other guards Wednesday were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, as well as various weapons offences.
  • If sustained, Slatten’s murder conviction requires a sentence of life imprisonment. Each count of voluntary manslaughter – and each of the other three defendants were convicted of multiple counts – can carry a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

news.google.com/?ar=1375391426

Libertarians freedom-liberty freedom-tyranny authoritarianism-individual-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13
     
    WOW!!! Incredible presentation concerning the history of Freedom vs. Tyranny. WOW!! If ever there's a MUST Watch, this is it. Very impressive and sweeping comparison of how authoritarian collectivist seize power in a free society and establish their tyrannies. My notes are listed below: How to recognize potential tyrants and keep them from seizing power. The urge to save humanity is always used to justify those who want to rule humanity. - ML Menken Daniel Webster on the Constitution Obstacles to Tyranny : Limited powers of government .... Due Process .... Presumption of Innocence .... Freedom to Dissent .... Armed Populace: The right to be Armed! Due Process .... 5th Amendment .... Emergency powers. there is no authorization in the US Constitution to suspend Due Process or any aspect of the Bill of Rights .... Asset Seizure Laws for criminal activities (alleged - without warrant or court order) .... Eminent Domain: seizure of private property for government uses: 2005 Kelo vs New London seizure based on jobs (economy) and tax revenue possibilities. .... 6th Amendment - right to trial by jury : plea bargaining admonition based on facing the awesome power of the government to prosecute no matter what - intimidation and threat of personal destruction. .... Forced confessions through plea bargaining. .... Indefinite detention without trial or charges: President has power to kill or issue orders without warrant, charges or trial .... Presumption of Innocence: Probable Cause .... Random stops at Border check points. 5th Amendment protections violated .... Sobriety Check Points: 4th and 5th Amendments violated - no presumption of innocence .... Random detention and questioning: airport security pat downs, housing projects, bus transportation .... The Right to Privacy: financial transactions and the IRS audit (without warrant or accusation) .... Warrant-less Spying .... Agents writing their own search warrants .... Snatch and Peek Freedom to Disse
Paul Merrell

Deported by US to Turkey, Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian speaks out | The Elect... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...st-dr-sami-al-arian-speaks-out

war & peace Israel-lobby Al-Arian litigation deportation tyranny

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • More than six months after the US government finally dropped all charges against Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the stateless Palestinian academic and activist was deported yesterday to Turkey. During his appearance on Democracy Now! today, Dr. Al-Arian expressed relief that his twelve-year-long persecution in the US, where he lived for forty years, had finally come to an end. “It feels like I’m free, finally really feeling freedom for the first time in twelve years,” Dr. Al-Arian said.
  • During the half-hour segment, Dr. Al-Arian revealed how he campaigned for George W. Bush, helping him win crucial votes from the Muslim community that would clinch his 2000 presidential election victory in the decisive state of Florida. Dr. Al-Arian was very active politically, and had visited the White House several times during both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Regarding his role in Bush’s election, Dr. Al-Arian said that he received a call “from someone who was very close to [Bush advisor] Karl Rove” asking how the campaign could win the endorsement of the Muslim American community. Dr. Al-Arian told this contact that Bush needed to declare his support for proposed legislation against secret evidence being used against Arab and Muslim Americans. During the second presidential candidate debate, Dr. Al-Arian told Democracy Now!, Bush did just that, securing the support of Muslim and Arab American leaders.
  • His administration had invited these leaders to the White House after Bush took office for a big announcement of good news regarding the legislation. “Unfortunately, it was on 9/11,” Dr. Al-Arian said, referring to the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. “So that meeting never happened.” Instead, the country went in a very different direction. “At the time, we were protesting secret evidence,” Dr. Al-Arian added. “What happened after 9/11 is that they were arresting people with no evidence.”
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  • Despite this plea deal, Dr. Al-Arian was subpoenaed for a separate prosecution and then hit with contempt charges in March 2008 and issued two more subpoenas in the following year. Now under house arrest, Dr. Al-Arian’s case languished in the courts for years until the government finally moved to dismiss in June of last year. Regarding the saga endured by Dr. Al-Arian, Qamar and Azhar write: Reading the case files is an exercise in bewildering consternation. How did a man who was never convicted by a jury of his peers end up serving five years in prison and four and a half years under house arrest? Several lawyers we consulted point to the unique nature of the case, perhaps unprecedented even in the annals of bizarre government judicial practices since 11 September 2001.
  • “In the hopes of escaping an indefinite legal battle that would keep him in jail, Al-Arian opted to plead guilty for one of the less serious charges, which accused him of sending money to a Palestinian charity before the US government made it illegal to do so,” Khadijah Qamar and Hamdan Azhar recounted for The Electronic Intifada last year. “The judge gave him a 57-month sentence, most of which he had already served, with the promise of deportation by April 2007,” Qamar and Azhar added.
  • After he was fired from the University of South Florida following two years of administrative leave and a lengthy smear campaign that began with “vicious” attacks on him by right-wing Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly, Dr. Al-Arian found himself a target of the newly passed Patriot Act. In February 2003, as Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman explained today, “The Justice Department handed down a sweeping fifty count indictment against him and seven other men, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, giving material support to terrorists, extortion, perjury and other offenses. He was held in solitary confinement leading up to the trial.” That trial ended in 2005 with the jury failing to return a single guilty verdict, acquitting Dr. Al-Arian of eight of the seventeen counts he was tried on. But the government’s efforts did not end there, as the prosecution threatened a retrial of the nine charges on which the jury had deadlocked. Dr. Al-Arian chose to spare himself a second trial.
  • The underhanded and unprecedented tactics used by government prosecutors against Al-Arian were wielded against other Palestinian activists. Humanitarians were sentenced to decades in prison in the Holy Land Five case as material support for terror convictions became the domestic front of the endless US wars and occupations abroad. The era of political repression is not over, as shown by the recent moves to criminalize Palestine solidarity work, including at US campuses, and the recent conviction of Palestinian American community leader Rasmea Odeh. “I’ve heard a lot from Obama, but it’s all rhetoric … after six years, I haven’t really seen much change,” Dr. Al-Arian said from Turkey today. But he expressed happiness towards protests and whistleblowing regarding “the excesses of the surveillance and police state.”
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Feb 15
     
    A very sad chapter in American legal history. 
Paul Merrell

Obama Gave Up on Ukraine, Press Simply Ignored It Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...e-press-simply-ignored-it.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Ukraine Russia Minsk-Agreement U.S.-loss Kerry Nuland

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 May 15 - No Cached
  • On Tuesday, May 12th, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was asked at a press conference in Sochi Russia, to respond to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s recent statements promising renewed war against Donbass, which were made first on April 30th, “The war will end when Ukraine regains Donbass and Crimea,” and which were repeated on May 11th, by his saying, “I have no doubt, we will free the [Donetsk] Airport, because it is our land.” In other words, Poroshenko had repeatedly made clear that he plans a third invasion of Donbass, and, ultimately, also to invade and retake Crimea. (The Western press, however, had not reported any of these threats that were being made by Poroshenko.) Kerry responded: “ I have not had a chance – I have not read the speech. I haven’t seen any context. I have simply heard about it in the course of today [which would be shocking if true]. But if indeed President Poroshenko is advocating an engagement in a forceful effort at this time, we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.”
  • None of this was reported by Western ‘news’ media. Even Russia’s own Sputnik News, which was Russia’s main English-language medium reporting on Kerry’s comment, ignored this shocking assertion by the U.S. Secretary of State contradicting the nominal leader of the Ukrainian Government that the U.S. itself had installed in February 2014.  The Obama Administration now had slammed Poroshenko down on the key issue of whether to resume the war against Ukraine’s former Donbass region, and also slammed him on whether Ukraine should invade Crimea, which is Russian territory and would therefore mean a war against the Russian armed forces. America’s stooge-regime in Kiev was here being publicly taken to the woodshed about the advisability of yet another Ukrainian invasion of Ukraine’s former southeastern breakaway regions, Donbass and, even Crimea. 
  • Western ‘news’ media were far worse than a botch; they were outright dishonest. Typical was BBC, which headlined on May 12th, “Ukraine Crisis: Kerry Has ‘Frank’ Meeting with Putin,” and their article said nothing whatsoever about Kerry’s shocking slam-down of his Ukrainian stooge. To that ‘news’ report was also appended an “Analysis: Bridget Kendall, BBC News, Sochi,” which simply blathered, and concluded, “There was no breakthrough on anything.” That statement was the exact opposite of the truth. The one good, and, really, brilliant, news-analysis on this important matter, was from the legendary specialist on “the Empire’s [Washington’s] War on Russia,” the anonymous blogger who goes by the name, “The Saker.” His was not really a news-report, because he, too, failed to quote Kerry’s pathbreaking and shocking statement. He didn’t even quote the insignificant squib that Sputnik itself had quoted from Kerry’s remarks. Instead, he merely paraphrased Kerry, which is far less reliable than a quotation, and also far less informative than the packed shocker that Kerry actually delivered. Saker’s paraphrase was far briefer than was Kerry’s statement which is quoted here; it was merely: “Kerry made a few rather interesting remarks, saying that the Minsk-2  Agreement (M2A) was the only way forward and that he would strongly caution Poroshenko against the idea of renewing military operations.” That’s all there was to it. So, The Saker failed to provide a news-report on Kerry’s shocker. But his news-analysis  of its significance was superb, and it’s extremely worth reading (it’s worth clicking onto the link which will now be provided on the article’s title). That analysis was dated May 13th, and it was bannered, “Yet Another Huge Diplomatic Victory for Russia.”  
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  • But also there was just a slice of real news in The Saker’s article, when he said, only in passing (as if it were insignificant, which it was not), “Then, there was the rather interesting behavior of [Victoria] Nuland, who was with Kerry’s delegation, she refused to speak to the press and left looking rather unhappy.” Nothing more than that, but that’s plenty. In other words: Nuland, the agent whom President Obama had placed in charge of arranging the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, and of selecting the leader of the junta that would be imposed upon Ukraine (“Yats” Yatsenyuk), and who told the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine what to do and how to do it, was now exceedingly disturbed to find herself overridden at this late date in her Ukrainian escapade, publicly overridden by her own immediate boss, Secretary of State Kerry.  In other words: she is now sidelined. That’s important news, but The Saker there merely hinted at it, and only in passing. So, as a news-report, The Saker’s article was poor but perhaps the best around; but as a news-analysis, it was excellent, and by far the best.
  • Nuland now knows that she has lost, and that Obama has thrown in the towel on the original plan for Ukraine, which had been for an all-out military conquest of the region, Donbass, where the people had voted over 90% for the man whom Nuland’s team had overthrown on 22 February 2014, Viktor Yanukovych, and so Obama had wanted those people to be either killed or else expelled from Ukraine (so that they’d never again be able to vote in a Ukrainian national election and thus possibly restore a neutralist leadership of Ukraine, such as had existed under the man Obama deposed, Yanukovych). Consequently, clearly, now, Obama is on-board with the “Plan B” for Ukraine, which Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel had put into place, the Minsk II Agreement, which brought about the present ceasefire, which now has become clearly the utter (even accepted by Kerry) capitulation of Obama’s Plan A on Ukraine, which plan Nuland had been carrying out. Kerry’s public statement there was a public slap in the face to his own #2 official on Ukraine; and it could not have been asserted by him if he were not under Obama’s instruction that the previous plan, to exterminate or drive out all the residents of Donbass, was no longer worth trying, and that the Hollande-Merkel plan would be America’s fall-back position.
  • Obama’s message in this, through Kerry, to Ukraine’s President Poroshenko, and indirectly also to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk (the leader whom Nuland herself had selected), is: we’ll back you only as long as you accept that you have failed our military expectations and that we will be stricter with you in the future regarding how you spend our military money. We’re getting in line now behind the Hollande-Merkel peace plan for Ukraine. Dmitriy Yarosh, and the other outright nazis who had been threatening to overthrow Poroshenko if he doesn’t renew the war against Donbass and seize Crimea; Dmitriy Yarosh, who was the man who had led the Ukrainian coup for the U.S., and whose thugs had dressed as Yanukovych’s security forces when gunning down both police and demonstrators in the February 2014 coup, in order for Yanukovych to become blamed for the bloodshed on that occasion; is now, in effect, being told: if you will try another coup, this time to overthrow our own stooges in Ukraine, then you’re finished, Mr. Yarosh. Don’t do it.
  • Merkel and Hollande thus won. Putin had decidedly won. Obama and the nazis he had empowered in Ukraine have now, clearly, been defeated. But the mess that Obama’s people have created in Ukraine by their coup and subsequent ethnic-cleansing to eliminate the residents of Donbass, will take decades, if ever, to repair. Western ‘news’ media can cover it all up, but they can’t change this reality, which, increasingly as time goes by, will expose the press’s failure to have even reported on this historically important U.S. coup in Ukraine and its ultimate failure. As a story about  the press, it is about yet another system-wide press-deceit upon the public, comparable to their ‘news coverage’ of ‘Saddam’s WMD,’ and other lies, in 2002 and 2003. 
Paul Merrell

Blackwater Guards Found Guilty in 2007 Iraq Killings - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...blackwater-verdict.html

war & peace Iraq Blackwater criminal-prosecution convictions

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that marked a bloody nadir in America’s war in Iraq.A jury in Federal District Court found that the deaths of 17 Iraqis in the shooting, which began when a convoy of the guards suddenly began firing in a crowded intersection, was not a battlefield tragedy, but the result of a criminal act.The convictions on murder, manslaughter and weapons charges represented a legal and diplomatic victory for the United States government, which had urged Iraqis to put their faith in the American court system. That faith was tested repeatedly over seven years as the investigation had repeated setbacks, leaving Iraqis deeply suspicious that anyone would be held responsible for the deaths.
  • One defendant, Nicholas A. Slatten, a sniper who the government said fired the first shots, was convicted of murder. The others — Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough — were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to carry out a violent crime. A fifth contractor, Jeremy Ridgeway, previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter and cooperated with prosecutors.Jurors could not reach verdicts on several of the counts against Mr. Heard, but that will have little bearing on the sentencing. The machine-gun charges carry mandatory 30-year minimum prison sentences, more than the manslaughter charges. Mr. Slatten faces possible life in prison. No sentencing date has been set.
  • The trial was an epilogue to the story of Blackwater, which began as a police- and military-training facility in North Carolina and came to symbolize the country’s outsourcing of its wartime responsibilities.About 1,000 of Blackwater’s contractors guarded diplomats in Iraq. Others loaded bombs onto Predator drones. The company’s founder, Erik Prince, tapped retired Central Intelligence Agency officials for executive positions, and at one point, the C.I.A. hired Blackwater contractors to covertly track and kill Qaeda operatives worldwide, a program that was shelved before any killings were conducted. While the company’s security guards were involved in scores of shootings in Iraq, it was the 2007 incident in Nisour Square that helped cement Blackwater’s image as a company that operated with impunity because of its lucrative contracts with the American government. The company became the subject of several Justice Department investigations, all of which the company and its executives survived. But ultimately, public outrage over the shooting contributed to Blackwater’s demise. It lost its contracts and was renamed, sold and renamed again.
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  • The criminal trial raised novel legal issues, and the case is expected to wind through the appellate courts for a year or more. One issue — whether the Justice Department had jurisdiction to bring the case at all — could undo the entire case.Under federal law, the government has jurisdiction for overseas crimes committed by defense contractors or those supporting the Pentagon’s mission. Blackwater was working for the State Department, a distinction that jurors concluded did not matter but which has not been tested.
Paul Merrell

Wikileaks' Assange Hints Murdered DNC Staffer Was Email-Leaker, Offers $20k Reward For ... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...-leaker-offers-20k-reward-info

Auction 2016 Hillary DNC homicides

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of 27-year-old Democratic-staffer Seth Rich (shot multiple times, and not robbed, at 420am near his home in Washington D.C., where no homicides have been reported within 1500 feet) have stirred Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to offer a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. But it is Assange's comments during a Dutch TV interview that are most disturbing as he hinted that Rich - who was in charge of DNC voter expansion data - was the email-leaker and his death was a politically-motivated assassination.
  • As we detailed previously, the Clinton related body count so far this election cycle:  Five in just under six weeks - four convenient deaths plus one suicide... 1) Shawn Lucas, Sanders supporter who served papers to DNC on the Fraud Case (DOD August 2, 2016)   2) Victor Thorn, Clinton author (and Holocaust denier, probably the least credible on this list) shot himself in an apparent suicide. Conspiracy theorists at Mystery Writers of America said some guys will do anything to sell books. (DOD August, 2016)   3) Seth Conrad Rich, Democratic staffer, aged 27, apparently on his way to speak to the FBI about a case possibly involving the Clintons. The D.C. murder was not a robbery. (DOD July 8, 2016)   4) John Ashe, UN official who allegedly crushed his own throat while lifting weights, because he watched too many James Bond films and wanted to try the move where the bad guy tries to…oh, never mind. “He was scheduled to testify against the Clintons and the Democrat Party.” (DOD June 22, 2016)   5) Mike Flynn, the Big Government Editor for Breitbart News. Mike Flynn’s final article was published the day he died, “Clinton Cash: Bill, Hillary Created Their Own Chinese Foundation in 2014.” (DOD June 23, 2016) It must be coincidence, right?
Paul Merrell

Turkish court seeks military arrests of Israelis over ship killings | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...y-israel-idUSBREA4P0AO20140526

war & peace Israel Palestine Turkey Mavi-Marmara piracy

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 14 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - A Turkish court has issued arrest warrants on Monday for four former Israeli military commanders who are on trial in absentia over the 2010 killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship, Turkish media reports said. The move came after months of negotiations between Turkey and Israel to end a diplomatic crisis over the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship challenging Israel's naval blockade of Palestinian-run Gaza Strip in 2010.Eight Turks and a Turkish-American died during the operation and a Turkish man, Suleyman Ugur Soylemez, died in hospital on Friday night after four years in a coma since the raid.
  • The court ordered the arrest of former Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, ex-Navy Commander Eliezer Marom, ex-Air Force Commander Amos Yadlin and ex-head of Air Force intelligence head Avishay Levi, the newspaper Hurriyet said on its website.Turkish prosecutors have already sought multiple life sentences for the now-retired Israeli officers over their involvement in the killings. Among the charges listed in the 144-page indictment are "inciting murder through cruelty or torture" and "inciting injury with firearms".Although the indictment was handed up in 2012, no arrest warrants were issued then. The court said on Monday it would seek the issue of Interpol 'red notices' for the arrest of the four former generals.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 May 14
     
    A Turkish court proceeds with criminal prosecution of high Israeli military commanders responsible for the Mavi-Marmara piracy in which nine humanitarian aid workers were murdered in international waters. One of the nine had dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship but the U.S. government has taken no legal action,     
Paul Merrell

The United Nations' Response to ISIS Beheadings in Syria. "Resolutions" Calling for "Re... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5423221

war & peace Syria ISIL Foley-family blackmail ransom

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Following the gruesome beheading of James Foley, by a terrorist group called “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” and the group’s threats to behead other captives in August 2014, The New York Times headline on page A19 reads, with Kafkaesque “logic”:  “U.S. Invokes Defense of Iraq in Legal Justification of Syria Strikes.”  US/NATO had failed, for three years, to get UN Security Council authorization for military action against Syria, and unilateral military action against Syria would be a violation of international law. However, the very visible emergence of ISIS, now defined as the most dangerous terrorist organization in the Middle East, or, perhaps, globally, and their widely publicized video beheadings of James Foley, Steve Sotloff and others, appeared to give some form of de facto justification for broader military action, including against Syria.  On August 22, 2014, The New York Times reported, page A6: “When the United States began airstrikes in Iraq this month, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to underscore the limited nature of their action.  ‘This was not an authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign,’ a senior Obama administration official told reporters at the time.  But the beheading of an American journalist and the possibility that more American citizens being held by the group might be slain has prompted outrage at the highest levels of the American government.”
  • In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Diane Foley stated that a military official forbade the family from going to the media and threatened to prosecute them for supporting terrorism if they attempted to raise the $1.32 million dollar ransom demanded by ISIS. “Three times he intimidated us with that message.  We were horrified he would say that.  He just told us we would be prosecuted.  We knew we had to save our son, we had to try,” Mrs. Foley told Anderson Cooper. Foley’s brother, Michael noted in an interview that he was ‘directly threatened with possible prosecution for violating anti-terrorism laws by a State Department official.”  Reporter Michael Isikoff states, in a September 12 article: “The parents of murdered journalist Steven Sotloff were told by a White House counterterrorism official at a meeting last May that they could face criminal prosecution if they paid ransom to try to free their son.”
  • Indeed, it can be asserted that these same administration officials who claimed “outrage” after the beheadings, inflicted the most extreme psychological torture upon the families of James Foley and Stephen Sotloff, who were desperately trying to save the lives of their sons and brother. On September 12, 2014, ABC news reported:  “Obama administration officials repeatedly threatened the family of murdered journalist James Foley that they might face criminal charges for supporting terrorism if they paid ransom to the ISIS killers who ultimately beheaded their son, his mother and brother said this week.  ‘We were told that several times and we took it as a threat and it was appalling,’ Foley’s mother Diane told ABC news in an interview.  She said the warnings over the summer came primarily from a highly decorated military officer serving on the White House National Security Council staff, which five outraged current and former officials with direct knowledge of the Foley case also recounted to ABC news in recent weeks.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Mrs. Foley diplomatically implies that her son’s death was in the “strategic interest” and she stops just short of accusing the administration of using her son’s beheading as the fig-leaf they needed to justify the administration’s unilateral attack on Syria, which was in violation of international law. If saving Foley was not in the “strategic interest,” a very frightening possibility exists. The murders of Foley and Sotloff, both of whom were beheaded by ISIS, were called ‘acts of barbarism’ by Obama in his speech announcing a military campaign to destroy the terrorist organization. Frenzied hysteria over human rights abuses in Syria continues to be incited by mainstream media, as the middle east is fragmented and decomposed by US/NATO bombings and internecine warfare so complex that the UN’s call for the “diplomatic resolution” of multiple devastating conflicts becomes an increasingly remote possibility.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue arming the terrorist opposition.
  • “Sotloff’s father, Art, was ‘shaking’ after the meeting with the official, who works for the National Security Council.  Sources close to the family say that at the time of the White House meeting the Sotloffs and Foleys were exploring lining up donors who would help pay multimillion dollar ransoms to free their sons.  But after the meeting those efforts collapsed, one source said, because of concerns that ‘donors could expose themselves to prosecution.’” James Nye for Mailonline reported:  “Mrs. Foley poured scorn on the Pentagon’s claim they tried to rescue Foley on July 4, only to raid the wrong base…Throughout the 20 month ordeal, Mrs. Foley said she came to regard her and her family’s efforts to rescue James as an ‘annoyance’ to the administration and began to feel that their desperation to bring James Foley home did not ‘seem to be in the strategic interest, if you will.’”
  • The front page headline states:  “U.S. General Says Raiding Syria is Key to Halting Isis.  The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria cannot be defeated unless the United States or its partners take on the Sunni militants in Syria,’ General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on August 21, 2014. ‘This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated.  Can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria?  The answer is no.” Public horror at the beheading of James Foley and Steven Sotloff transformed public reluctance to engage in yet another seemingly endless and futile distant war, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, into public outrage and support for retaliation against the terrorists who beheaded Foley and Sotloff.  US/NATO now had a de facto form of support and legitimacy for attacking Syria.  Given little publicity, however, then and now, was the fact that ISIS offered to exchange the lives of James Foley and Stephen Sotloff for $100 million dollars in ransom.  Although top U.S. officials used their “outrage” at the beheading of Foley and Sotloff to “justify” a unilateral attack on Syria, they were not sufficiently outraged to do what was necessary to prevent these beheadings, which, once executed, provided a convenient fig-leaf for the attack on Syria for which  they had sought and failed to attain legal justification during the preceding three years.
  • At the same time that the military-industrial complex thrives on huge profits derived from these geo-politically engineered conflicts, it is worth recalling the September 10, 2014 report by Mazzetti, Schmitt and Landler in The New York Times: “Washington – “The violent ambitions of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have been condemned across the world:  in Europe and the Middle East, by Sunni nations and Shiite ones, and by sworn enemies like Israel and Iran.  Pope Francis joined the call for ISIS to be stopped. “As President Obama prepares to send the United States on what could be yearslong military campaign against the militant group (ISIS), American intelligence agencies have concluded that it poses no immediate threat to the United States.  Some officials and terrorism experts believe that the actual danger posed by ISIS has been distorted in hours of television punditry and alarmist statements by politicians, and that there has been little substantive public debate about the unintended consequences of expanding American military action in the Middle East. “Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Obama’s first term, said the public discussion about the ISIS threat has been a ‘farce,’ with ‘members of the cabinet and top military officers all over the place describing the threat in lurid terms that are not justified.’  “It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic, with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus on mass transit systems – all on the basis of no corroborated information,’ said Mr. Benjamin, who is now a scholar at Dartmouth College.”
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15
     
    The Feds' "no ransom" policy might better be changed to "pay the ransom then extract retribution." It would still serve as a deterrent. Nonetheless, that policy is now part of a U.N. Security Council Resolution. 
Paul Merrell

Drone memo should reverse Gitmo convictions, attorneys claim - RT USA - 0 views

rt.com/...170260-drone-memo-omar-khadr

war & peace Gitmo-detainees drone-memo DoJ

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Attorneys for a Canadian man who spent a decade detained by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay say details in the Obama administration’s recently released “drone memo” exonerates their client of war crimes.
  • But in a recent court filing [PDF], lawyers for Khadr, now 27, say a just-published US Department of Justice memorandum contains information that directly challenges the American government’s case against their client. Khadr’s attorneys wrote this week that the secret “drone memo” released by the White House last month — the DOJ document that the government relied on to justify the 2010 drone strike in Yemen that killed American citizen and suspected AL-Qaeda member Anwar Al-Awlaki — suggests prosecutors had no place to charge the Canadian teenager with murder in violation of the laws of war after he allegedly killed an American soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan. The DOJ memo itself was a penned by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel in response to the question of whether Central Intelligence Agency officers — who are not members of the US military — can be blamed for war crimes by launching drone strikes. The memo was written in July 2010, and justified the strike that later that year killed Al-Awlaki.
  • "The whole purpose...was to evaluate whether the CIA agents were violating the law," Morison said. "The only reasonable interpretation of that analysis is that there is no such thing (as the common law of war)." On Monday this week, Morrison and the rest of Khadr’s legal counsel, filed a motion in Guantanamo’s appeals court asking that the conviction against their client be vacated.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • According to a footnote within the memo, released June 24 of this year due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, “lethal activities conducted in accordance with the laws of war, and undertaken in the course of lawfully authorized hostilities, do not violate the laws of war by virtue of the fact that they are carried out in part by government actors who are not entitled to the combatant’s privilege.” "That completely blows away one of the major prongs of the government's theory in all these Guantanamo cases," Sam Morison, Khadr's Pentagon-based lawyer, told The Canadian Press during an interview on Wednesday this week. Although Khadr was charged with violating the “US common law of war” that dates back centuries, his attorneys say the memo concerning CIA drone strikes suggest such legislation simply doesn’t exist.
  • Should Khadr’s attorneys succeed, then a number of cases pertaining to current or former Guantanamo detainees accused of war crimes could be called into question. According to Human Rights Watch, however, only six of the 149 detainees at Gitmo face any formal charges — fewer than the number of prisoners who have died while held there in military custody.
Gary Edwards

Saul Alinsky Leaves the White House | The American Spectator - 0 views

spectator.org/alinsky-leaves-the-white-house

Obama

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jan 17
     
    "When Barack Obama leaves the White House tomorrow, he leaves with his worst dreams unrealized. Still, what he leaves behind is awful. Thank goodness he'll be gone. The very day after Obama was elected in 2008, I predicted in this space that his team would steal the Senate by hook and crook (see: Al Franken); nuke the filibuster at least for judicial nominees; liberalize voting laws (or enforcement thereof) to make fraud easier while charging opponents with "vote suppression"; drum up spurious allegations of civil rights violations; punish anti-abortion protesters; enact "copious new regulations, especially environmental, to be used selectively to ensnare other conservative malcontents"; invasively use the IRS to harass conservative organizations; and tacitly encourage civil unrest in furtherance of Obamite goals. All those predictions of course came true. Obama and company also waged bureaucratic war against independent inspectors general; tried their hardest (even illegally) to hobble fossil fuels industries; evaded Congress's intent by sending cash and uranium to a near-nuclear-ready Iran; fumbled and stumbled while veterans suffered virtually criminal neglect; wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on projects that were not "shovel-ready" and did not create many jobs; oversaw an economy in which the workforce participation rate dropped to historically low levels while real median household income also fell and personal debt rose, and in which food stamp rolls grew to a number larger than the population of Spain; horrendously politicized the Justice Department; and saw race relations worsen for the first time in decades. In what should have been treated by the media as major scandals (or more major than the media represented them), the Obama administration encouraged illegal gun-running to Mexican cartels, with untold numbers of resultant deaths; failed to provide adequate security before or rescue during the Benghazi tragedy; provide
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