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Paul Merrell

6,000 Ukrainian Jews may be granted Israeli Citizenship while "West" supports Nazi Part... - 0 views

  • The Israeli government is holding closed-door meetings about receiving some 6,000 Jewish citizens who have been replaced due to the Ukrainian civil war, reports the Israeli Maariv newspaper. Meanwhile, western support for overtly National Socialist and Ultra Nationalist parties and militants in Ukraine continues. 
  • The cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly plans the construction of “refugee camps” to receive the “6,000 displaced” Ukrainian Jews, reports Maariv. The construction of refugee camps for the 6,000 Ukrainians is reportedly being planned under the supervision of Israel’s Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett. Maariv didn’t specify where these 6,000 Ukrainians should be settled. The news comes as the death toll of a recent attack on a Jewish Synagogue in Jerusalem has risen to five and the eruption of a row between the Netayahu government and the Palestinian government under President Mahmoud Abbas. While Netanyahu blames Fatah and Hamas for terrorism and for the attack, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded by blaming Israel’s occupation of Palestine for causing conflict and for driving people into acts of terrorism. The rapid spread of ultra nationalism, overtly Nazi Parties and militia, and their rapid rise to power during the Western-backed “Euro-Maidan” protests in Kiev has resulted in pogroms and threats against Jews and Jewish communities throughout Ukraine with the exception of those areas in the rebelling Donbass region which are firmly under the control of the rebelling regional governments, as well as with the exception of Crimea, which acceded into the Russian Federation after a referendum in  Crimea on March 16, 2014.
Paul Merrell

CIA Torture Architects Settle With Survivors Avoiding Publicity Of Trial - 0 views

  • Two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were contracted by the CIA to develop torture techniques, agreed to a confidential settlement with torture survivors. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Mitchell and Jessen on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman. The lawsuit alleged the CIA contractors committed crimes that included water torture, forcing prisoners into boxes, and chaining prisoners in painful stress positions to walls.
  • Mitchell, Jessen, and plaintiffs agreed to release the following joint statement: Drs. Mitchell and Jessen acknowledge that they worked with the CIA to develop a program for the CIA that contemplated the use of specific coercive methods to interrogate certain detainees.” Plaintiff Gul Rahman was subjected to abuses in the CIA program that resulted in his death and in pain and suffering for his family. Plaintiffs Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud were also subjected to coercive methods in the CIA program, which resulted in pain and suffering for them and their families. Plaintiffs assert that they were subjected to some of the methods proposed by Drs. Mitchell and Jessen to the CIA and stand by their allegations regarding the responsibility of Drs. Mitchell and Jessen. Drs. Mitchell and Jessen assert that the abuses of Mr. Salim and Mr. Ben Soud occurred without their knowledge or consent and that they were not responsible for those actions. Drs. Mitchell and Jessen also assert that they were unaware of the specific abuses that ultimately caused Mr. Rahman’s death and are also not responsible for those actions.” Drs. Mitchell and Jessen state that it is regrettable that Mr. Rahman, Mr. Salim, and Mr. Ben Soud suffered these abuses.
  • The settlement comes after Judge Justin Quackenbush denied a last-ditch effort by Mitchell and Jessen to get the lawsuit dismissed. They invoked the cases of accused Nazi war criminals to argue they should not be held responsible for the torture techniques they developed. Quackenbush was not persuaded by the contractors’ arguments and suggested a “finder of fact” might conclude that since they were at secret detention sites they “exercised significant control during individual interrogations.”
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  • The settlement is monumental in the sense that James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen are the first individuals to be held responsible, to some degree, for CIA torture in the “War on Terrorism.” “This is a historic victory for our clients and the rule of law,” declared ACLU attorney Dror Ladin. “This outcome shows that there are consequences for torture and that survivors can and will hold those responsible for torture accountable. It is a clear warning for anyone who thinks they can torture with impunity.” However, the CIA investigated the actions of its personnel and determined not a single person committed a crime that deserved prosecution. President Barack Obama’s administration conducted a review of detention and interrogation practices, but they shied away from prosecuting any government officials or interrogators, who were implicated in carrying out torture.
  • The high point of public “accountability” was a study conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A summary of the report clearly established much of the extent to which the CIA carried out brutality against detainees and then sought to conceal it from those who might provide any kind of oversight. It was the Obama administration that opposed individuals, such as Ethiopian native Binyam Mohamed and Canadian citizen Maher Arar, as they sought to hold officials in President George W. Bush’s administration accountable. They took steps to prevent survivors from having their day in court, and that’s partly why the fact that this civil lawsuit nearly made it to trial was significant. With a U.S. president in office now who has praised waterboarding and other forms of torture, this is unlikely to be much of a deterrent on government officials who engage in torture or abuse. It may impact whether private contractors participate in the detention or interrogation of captives. Or it might lead private contractors to ensure there are more clearly laid out terms in contracts to prevent them from being held liable in courts. Still, the survivors achieved some semblance of justice, and given how rare any sliver of justice is when it comes to cases against people implicated in government-sponsored torture, this settlement is inarguably a remarkable outcome.
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    I was hoping to see this case go to trial. Now I'm hoping for the ACLU to turn loose of all the documents they received in discovery.
Paul Merrell

Spy chief trashes leaks, assures Trump of loyalty - POLITICO - 0 views

  • The outgoing U.S. director of national intelligence has extended an olive branch of sorts to Donald Trump — denouncing media leaks, casting skepticism on a report that Russia has damaging material on the president-elect, and assuring Trump that America's spies stand ready to serve him. In an unusual statement, James Clapper said he had spoken Wednesday evening with Trump, five days after the spy chief and some of his counterparts met with the incoming president to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election, possibly to help him win.Story Continued Below The assessment has badly aggravated existing tensions between the intelligence community and Trump. On Tuesday, CNN, BuzzFeed and other media outlets reported that, during Friday’s briefing, the intelligence officials told Trump about an unsubstantiated private report that detailed how Russia's government allegedly had salacious information about him. In addition, BuzzFeed published the apparent dossier, which Trump has since denounced as “fake news.” "I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security," Clapper said of the information that has come out since last week's intelligence briefing.
  • Clapper’s statement represented a dramatic turn of events only 24 hours after initial leaks about the intelligence leaders having told Trump of the dossier. And while Clapper’s statement indirectly confirmed the media reports of the briefing, it also could be viewed as a concession of sorts from an intelligence community that has come under repeated, direct fire from the president-elect. Trump had compared the leak from his briefing to “Nazi Germany” on Twitter on Wednesday morning, writing, “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?” In a news conference, also held Wednesday, Trump defended the comparison and elaborated further, saying, “A thing like that should have never been written, it should never have been had, and it certainly should never have been released.” Clapper, however, said he did not believe the leaks to the press came from the intelligence community. At the same time, he indicated that the intelligence community decided to share the material with Trump because its mere existence was important for the incoming president to know about.
  • As far as the "private security company document," Clapper said, "I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions."
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  • "Part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security," Clapper added. Clapper's statement comes amid extraordinary strains between the spy world and Trump, who takes office next week. The president-elect has been resistant to U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia intervened in the election, although during a press conference Wednesday morning Trump admitted that Moscow likely did do some hacking. Steven Hall, a former head of Russian operations at the CIA, said Clapper’s statement didn’t appear to be an all-out apology, but that it was possible the spy chief wants to try to patch up the tensions between Trump and the intelligence world before he himself steps down in just a few days. “He just might very well be like, wow, this really has kind of gotten out of control,” said Hall, who described Clapper as an “old-school, principled” kind of guy. “This might be his parting attempt to say, look at the very least after more than a 50-year career in intelligence, I don’t want this to be what I’m remembered by.”
Gary Edwards

Can Americans Escape the Deception? - 0 views

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    I've been reading Paul Craig Roberts since high school, when i used to clip his backpage columns in NewsWeek magazine. These days, you have to go to his blog to get the truth. But what a truth it is! Incredible, forceful but presented only as PCR can do. His wake up call to America is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about our liberty and the all out assault our government, socialist and conservatives alike, has launched on the Constitution. Amerika! This is what it comes to. It's also why i'm a libertarian. Read it and weep. Excerpt is from the 9/11 section. excerpt: In a real investigation, the 9/11 evidence would not have been illegally destroyed, and the investigation would have been conducted by experts, not by government agencies assigned a cover-up and by political hacks. The NIST report is abject nonsense. It explains nothing. It is a fabricated computer simulation of a non-event. The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission later wrote books in which they stated that information was withheld from the commission, the military lied to the commission, and the commission "was set up to fail." Yet, these astounding admissions by the leaders of the 9/11 Commission had no impact on Congress, the presstitute media, or the public. All heads were in the sand. Please, whatever you do, don't make us emotional weaklings face the facts. More than one hundred firefighters, police, first responders, and building maintenance personnel report hearing and experiencing scores of explosions in the twin towers, including powerful explosions in the sub-basements prior to the collapse of the towers. Distinguished scientists, authors of many peer-reviewed scientific papers, report finding unreacted nano-thermite in the dust from the towers, tested it for its explosive and high-heat producing ability, and reported the unequivocal results. Seventeen hundred architects and engineers have testified in a petition to Congress that the th
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    For a detailed and fully referenced study of how 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow's conflict of interest and how he kept Commission members in the dark and sabotaged the Commission report, see http://tinyurl.com/6tdfc56
Gary Edwards

The Problem with Socialism is Socialism! | Devil At My Doorstep's Blog - 0 views

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    Big Government, totalitarianism, power, greed, central planning, redistribution of wealth, restrictions on personal freedom, no ownership of personal property, no self determination, government entitlements, no secret ballot elections, lack of incentive to succeed, government watchdogs, political elitism, government control and intervention, sameness, tyranny, violence, intimidation, coercion, pressure and social engineering are all characteristics of Socialism. History is replete with socialist regimes, like Nazi Germany and socialist Russia, which have imploded and failed. The simple problem is government or institutions created in or morphed into this likeness cannot create or invent and eventually fail. The free markets of Capitalism are the inverse of the above. It is the only system that has lifted all of mankind, at every level, to a higher standard of living. It is the only system that allows individuals the opportunity for self determination based on their abilities and effort. It promotes ingenuity, self-reliance, diversity, innovation, creation, prosperity and, yes, wealth. It continues to advance the prosperity of all individuals unless destroyed from within, like Greece and Rome when they moved towards totalitarianism and away from democracy!
Gary Edwards

History's Path To Tyranny - Google Docs - 0 views

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    Nice article written by Ron Kilmartin and published to the Bay Area Patriots Group listmail.  Republished here for the purposes of Diigo bookmarking. Ron compares the Obama tyranny methods to those used by Hitler to subjugate the German people and take over the German Republic.  His observations are based on the historical work of William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". excerpt: Over the past year I have been reading a few pages a day of William L. Shirer's history of Nazism, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - Nearly 1200 pages and I have finally finished. It is a masterpiece of journalism history based on Shirer's own observations beginning in the 1920s. It is centered of course on Adolf Hitler, his cronies, and his generals. As I read this I began mentally comparing it with our current leader and our current administration's edicts  from the EPA and other agencies. I found that there are many similarities between Hitler's rise to power and Obama's, as well as the tyranny of the Nazi administration. So I decided to write up my comparative observations, as given below. It is not that Obama is following a path to Nazism, but that he seems to be following a path to a tyranny that is all his own: racist, anti-rich,  pro-socialist, anti-industry, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, , anti-Israel,  pro-Islam, anti-Constitution, anti-First Amendment anti-Second Amendment, anti-Fourth Amendment, anti-Tenth Amendment and anti-America, to name a few of the tyrannical tenants of Obamunism. There are many other historical examples of tyrannical leaders besides Hitler, but for now he will do just fine as a model tyrant, and Shirir's tomb provides a ready means of comparison. ...........
Paul Merrell

US Regime-Change Operation in Ukraine Exposed in Leaked Diplomatic Phone Call | Global ... - 0 views

  • A leaked phone conversation between Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, has exposed the anti-democratic and colonialist character of the Obama administration’s intervention in the former Soviet republic. The discussion between the two officials includes a detailed review of which right-wing opposition figures Washington is working to install in office, and how it is using the United Nations to rubber-stamp the operation. While Germany and other European powers have worked closely with the Obama administration in promoting the violent protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, the leaked phone call reveals tensions between the imperialist powers. At one point Nuland tells Pyatt, “Fuck the EU.”
  • Nuland continues: “Yats [Yatsenyuk] is the guy that who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.” Pyatt later warns Nuland that “Klitschko has been the top dog” within the opposition, and that she will need to “move fast on all this stuff” and speak with the UDAR leader as part of their “personality management” of the opposition leadership. The utter criminality of Washington’s drive to install a pliant regime in Kiev sharply emerges in Nuland and Pyatt’s discussion of Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the neo-fascist All-Ukrainian Union (Svoboda) party. Nuland describes Tyahnybok as one of the “big three” within the opposition leadership. The State Department operative goes on to tell Pyatt that “what [Yatsenyuk] needs [after he is installed in office] is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside—he needs to be talking to them four times a week.” These remarks confirm that there is no confusion whatsoever within the Obama administration that it is working in partnership with fascist movements in Ukraine.
  • Tyahnybok is the leader of the Svoboda party, which was initially called the Social-National Party of Ukraine and featured a neo-Nazi logo. In 2004, Tyahnybok praised right-wing Ukrainian partisans in World War II, who, he declared, “did not fear, but took up their automatic rifles, going into the woods to fight Muscovites, Germans, Jewry and other filth.” He added that Ukraine still had to be liberated from a “Moscow-Jewish mafia.” In 2005, Tyahnybok signed an open letter to Ukrainian leaders demanding a halt to the “criminal activities” of “organised Jewry,” which, he declared, was attempting to commit “genocide” against the Ukrainian people. This is one of the “big three” figures with whom the Obama administration is working to install a client regime in Ukraine. Yesterday, Nuland met with several opposition figures, among them Oleh Tyahnybok. No details of the discussion have been made public, but Ambassador Pyatt released via Twitter a photo of a smiling Nuland posing next to the pro-Nazi leader and his colleagues.
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    There was far more in that telephone conversation than an F-bomb leveled at the E.U., not that you would learn this from mainstream media.
Paul Merrell

Putin's decision to send troops to Ukraine, recall ambassador from US depends on develo... - 0 views

  • Putin to decide whether to send troops to Ukraine, recall ambassador from US depending on developments, Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. Russia’s Federation Council has unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin’s request to use Russian military forces in Ukraine. The move is aimed to settle the turmoil in the split country. President Vladimir Putin has not yet decided whethe to deploy Russian troops in Ukraine, his spokesman was quoted as saying on Saturday after the Federation Council upper house of parliament empowered him to do so.
  • The upper house of the Russian parliament has voted in favor of sending troops to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which would ensure peace and order in the region "until the socio-political situation in the country is stabilized." The Russian president will make the final decision on the strength of Russian troops to be used in the Ukraine in accordance with the decision of the Federation Council.The Federation Council’s decision to grant the Russian president the right to use Russian troops in the Crimea does not mean that it will be done in the nearest future, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
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    I've been following the situation closely in the Ukraine but haven't been posting many bookmarks on the topic. Ukraine was hit by a U.S.-instigated "color" protest, leading to the outster of the Ukainian Prime Minister and capture of the Ukraine government by U.S.-backed neo-Nazi groups.  The U.S. has admittedly spent $5 billion on the effort thus far.  Crimea was originally part of Russia (in fact the portion where ethnic Russians originated) until 1954, when the Ukrainian Nikita Khruschev transferred Crimea to the Ukraine. Crimea is majority ethnic Russian and its economy is hugely dependent on trade with Russia. Crimea is also home to Russia's only naval port accessible from the Mediterranean Sea, Sevastopol, on the Black Sea. As Pepe Escobar observed, a Crimea under the control of NATO is a neocon-wet dream, cutting the naval supply line between Russia and its Navy base in Syria and surrounding Russia on another edge with missile batteries. Russia will not give ground in Crimea. Putin now has the legal authorization from the Russian Parliament to use military force to protect all of the Ukraine, including Crimea, from western encroachment.  He's also been authorized to recall Russia's ambassador from the U.S. Another mess that could lead to war cooked up by neocons in the U.S. State Department and CIA.   The presence of neocons in U.S. government needs to be a major issue in our next Presidential election. But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Paul Merrell

Propaganda Rules The News --Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org - 0 views

  • Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT’s Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times. My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative “mainstream media.” My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda. For example, Martin’s denunciation of Russia for “invading” Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.
  • So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It appears that the power of Washington’s propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence. What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged “invasion” that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?
  • Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington’s propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it. As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia’s border in order to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington’s hegemony. Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington. It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington’s propaganda. They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat’s column calling on readers to “resist the war party on Crimea” opens with Washington’s propagandistic claim: “With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37847.htm No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington’s coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.
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  • The entire story that the presstitutes have told about the Ukraine is a propaganda production. The presstitutes told us that the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, ordered snipers to shoot protesters. On the basis of these false reports, Washington’s stooges, who comprise the existing non-government in Kiev, have issued arrest orders for Yanukovych and intend for him to be tried in an international court. In an intercepted telephone call between EU foreign affairs minister Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet who had just returned from Kiev, Paet reports: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” Paet goes on to report that “all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides . . . and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.” Ashton, absorbed with EU plans to guide reforms in Ukraine and to prepare the way for the IMF to gain control over economic policy, was not particularly pleased to hear Paet’s report that the killings were an orchestrated provocation. You can listen to the conversation between Paet and Ashton here: http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/ What has happened in Ukraine is that Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine, provinces that formerly were part of Russia. These threatened Russians have appealed for Russia’s help, and just like the Russians in South Ossetia, they will receive Russia’s help. The Obama regime and its presstitutes will continue to lie about everything.
Paul Merrell

The Anti-Empire Report #126 - March 7th, 2014 - William Blum - 0 views

  • Since the end of the Cold War the United States has been surrounding Russia, building one base after another, ceaselessly looking for new ones, including in Ukraine; one missile site after another, with Moscow in range; NATO has grabbed one former Soviet Republic after another. The White House, and the unquestioning American mainstream media, have assured us that such operations have nothing to do with Russia. And Russia has been told the same, much to Moscow’s continuous skepticism. “Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO some years ago, “is this is a military organization? Yes, it’s military. … Is it moving towards our border? It’s moving towards our border. Why?” The Holy Triumvirate would love to rip Ukraine from the Moscow bosom, evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and establish a US military and/or NATO presence on Russia’s border. (In case you were wondering what prompted the Russian military action.) Kiev’s membership in the EU would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neo-conservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family; but no price is too great to pay to for being part of glorious Europe and the West!
  • The Ukrainian insurgents and their Western-power supporters didn’t care who their Ukrainian allies were in carrying out their coup against President Viktor Yanukovych last month … thugs who set policemen on fire head to toe … all manner of extreme right-wingers, including Chechnyan Islamic militants … a deputy of the ultra-right Svoboda Party, part of the new government, who threatens to rebuild Ukraine’s nukes in three to six months. … the snipers firing on the protestors who apparently were not what they appeared to be – A bugged phone conversation between Urmas Paet, the Estonian foreign minister, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, reveals Paet saying: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” … neo-Nazi protestors in Kiev who have openly denounced Jews, hoisting a banner honoring Stepan Bandera, the infamous Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on February 24 that Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman advised “Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country.” Edward Dolinsky, head of an umbrella organization of Ukrainian Jews, described the situation for Ukrainian Jews as “dire” and requested Israel’s help. All in all a questionable gang of allies for a dubious cause; reminiscent of the Kosovo Liberation Army thugs Washington put into power for an earlier regime change, and has kept in power since 1999.
  • The now-famous recorded phone conversation between top US State Department official Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to the Ukraine, wherein they discuss which Ukrainians would be to Washington’s liking in a new government, and which not, is an example of this regime-change mentality. Nuland’s choice, Arseniy Yatseniuk, emerged as interim prime minister. The National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against states not in love with US foreign policy, is Washington’s foremost non-military tool for effecting regime change. The NED website lists 65 projects that it has supported financially in recent years in Ukraine. The descriptions NED gives to the projects don’t reveal the fact that generally their programs impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy, and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform, and growth; and the merits of foreign investment in their economy are emphasized. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
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  • NED, receives virtually all its financing from the US government ($5 billion in total since 1991 ), but it likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO. Its long-time intervention in Ukraine is as supra-legal as the Russian military deployment there. Journalist Robert Parry has observed: For NED and American neocons, Yanukovych’s electoral legitimacy lasted only as long as he accepted European demands for new “trade agreements” and stern economic “reforms” required by the International Monetary Fund. When Yanukovych was negotiating those pacts, he won praise, but when he judged the price too high for Ukraine and opted for a more generous deal from Russia, he immediately became a target for “regime change.” Thus, we have to ask, as Mr. Putin asked – “Why?” Why has NED been funding 65 projects in one foreign country? Why were Washington officials grooming a replacement for President Yanukovych, legally and democratically elected in 2010, who, in the face of protests, moved elections up so he could have been voted out of office – not thrown out by a mob? Yanukovych made repeated important concessions, including amnesty for those arrested and offering, on January 25, to make two of his adversaries prime minister and deputy prime minister; all to no avail; key elements of the protestors, and those behind them, wanted their putsch.
  • Carl Gershman, president of NED, wrote last September that “Ukraine is the biggest prize”. The man knows whereof he speaks. He has presided over NED since its beginning, overseeing the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005), the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005), the Green Revolution in Iran (2009), and now Ukraine once again. It’s as if the Cold War never ended. The current unbridled animosity of the American media toward Putin also reflects an old practice. The United States is so accustomed to world leaders holding their tongue and not voicing criticism of Washington’s policies appropriate to the criminality of those policies, that when a Vladimir Putin comes along and expresses even a relatively mild condemnation he is labeled Public Enemy Number One and his words are accordingly ridiculed or ignored. On March 2 US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Russia’s “incredible act of aggression” in Ukraine (Crimea) and threatened economic sanctions. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.” Iraq was in the 21st century. Senator John Kerry voted for it. Hypocrisy of this magnitude has to be respected.
Paul Merrell

Kerry condemns Russia's 'incredible act of aggression' in Ukraine | Reuters - 0 views

  • "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text," Kerry told the CBS program "Face the Nation."
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    Unless you're the U.S., of course. Witness Uncle Sam's  "trumped up pretexts: in the 21st Century for invading Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya, not to mention the trumped-up pretexts  for unleashing Neo-Nazi "protesters" on the lawfully-elected government of Ukraine.  John Kerry is well on his way to becoming my favorite comedian!
Paul Merrell

A Distorted Lens Justifying An Illegitimate Ukrainian Government - 0 views

  • Support it or oppose it, a coup d’état took place in Kiev after an EU-brokered agreement was signed by the Ukrainian government and the mainstream opposition on Feb. 21. The agreement called for power sharing between both sides through the formation of a national unity government and for an end to the opposition-led street protests in Kiev. President Viktor Yanukovych ordered the Ukrainian police and security forces to withdraw from their positions, and even earlier, he had made multiple concessions to the opposition leadership. Instead of keeping its end of the bargain, the Ukrainian mainstream opposition executed a coup through the use of violence by organized ultra-nationalist gangs, which some analysts have compared to stay-behinds or secretive militias that were created by NATO during the Cold War. These armed ultra-nationalist groups took over administrative bodies in Ukraine and fought until they managed to oust the Ukrainian government and opened the path for opposition leaders to take power on Feb. 25. The Ukrainian mainstream opposition used the EU-brokered agreement, which the Brussels-based European Commission deliberately refused to enforce, as a means of justifying the formation of a coup-imposed government.
  • In the absence of almost half the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, or Ukrainian Parliament, the opposition parties began to arbitrarily pass unconstitutional laws. They also unconstitutionally selected Oleksandr/Aleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov as the acting president of Ukraine before President Viktor Yanukovych was even impeached. Intimidation and violence were additionally used to secure the cooperation of any disagreeing parliamentarians or state officials in Kiev. Saying that the ultra-nationalists and fascists are marginal elements, the mainstream media networks in North America and the European Union have simply dismissed the armed ultra-nationalist groups involved in the coup that are presently integrated into the putsch regime running Kiev. The militant ultra-nationalists, however, are very influential and amassing power under the illegal premiership of Arseniy Yatsenyuk.  Yatsenyuk, himself, is from Yulia Tymoshenko’s notoriously corrupt All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland Party (Batkivshchyna) and essentially a U.S. and EU appointee. There is even a pre-coup leaked telephone interception, likely either recorded by the intelligence services of Russia or Ukraine, in which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victory Nuland says that Yatsenyuk will be appointed as the prime minister of the Ukrainian government that the U.S. is putting together.
  • It is unlikely that Yatsenyuk and the loosely-knit alliance of the governing parties that ran Ukraine under the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko governments, foreign-based Ukrainians, and the forces behind the Orange Revolution that form the Orangist camp which he belongs to could have gotten back into power in Ukraine without pressure, the use of force and foreign backing. Yatsenyuk was even threatened and booed by the Ukrainians gathered at Independence Square when it was announced that he would be appointed as the prime minister of the post-coup government. A vast segment of the protesters made it clear that Tymoshenko, Yatsenyuk’s party leader, was no alternative to the ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in their eyes, either, when it was announced that she wanted to run for prime minister. The Orangists do not have the support of a majority of the population, nor did they form the parliamentary majority in the Verkhovna Rada. Their Orangist president, Viktor Yushchenko, only got 5 percent of the vote in January 2010, in a show of no-confidence, whereas Viktor Yanukovych won the first and second rounds of the presidential elections in 2010. According to Victoria Nuland, the U.S. has also poured $5 billion into “democracy promotion” inside Ukraine. This is U.S. State Department doublespeak for politicized funding that Washington has sent to Ukraine to organize the Orange Revolution and its Euromaidan sequel or what can frankly be described as regime change.
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  • To rule Ukraine once more, the Orangists and their foreign backers have used and manipulated the ultra-nationalist elements of the population — some of which are openly anti-European Union — as their foot soldiers in an application of force against their democratically-elected opponents. Despite their views, the ultra-nationalists are actually more honest than the Orangist liberal figures like Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Unlike the misleading and utterly corrupt Orangist leaders, the ultra-nationalists do not hide their agendas and platforms.
  • The ultra-nationalists have inconsolably anti-Russian attitudes. Many of them also dislike a vast spectrum of other groups, including Jews, Armenians, Roma, Poles, Tatars, supporters of the Party of Regions and communists. In this context, it should come as no surprise that one of the first decisions that the post-coup regime in Kiev made was to remove the legal status of the Russian language as the regional language of half of Ukraine. Right Sector is, itself, a coalition of militant ultra-nationalists. These militants were instrumental in fighting government forces and taking over both government buildings in Kiev and regional governments in the western portion of Ukraine. Despite the protests of First Deputy Defense Minister Oleynik, Deputy Defense Minister Mozharovskiy and Defense Minister Babenk, Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s post-coup government has even given the ultra-nationalist opposition militias official status within the Ukrainian military and security forces. Yatsenyuk and the Orangists also dismissed all the officials that protested that the move would fracture the country and make the political divide in Ukraine irreversible.
  • Several members of Svoboda have been given key cabinet and government posts. One of the two junior deputy prime ministers, or assistant deputy prime ministers, is Oleksandr Sych. The ministry of agriculture and food has been given for management to Ihor Shvaika. The environment and natural resources ministry has been assigned to Andry/Andriy Mokhnyk. The defense minister is Ihor Tenyukh, a former admiral in the Ukrainian Navy who obstructed Russian naval movements in Sevastopol during the Russo-Georgian War over South Ossetia and who was later dismissed by the Ukrainian government for insubordination. Oleh Makhnitsky, another member of Svoboda, has been assigned as the new prosecutor-general of Ukraine by the coup government. Andry Parubiy, one of the founders of Svoboda, is now the post-coup secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (RNBO). He was the man controlling the so-called “Euromaidan security forces” that fought government forces in Kiev. His job as secretary is to represent the president and act on his behalf in coordinating and implementing the RNBO’s decisions. As a figure, Parubiy clearly illustrates how the mainstream opposition in Ukraine is integrated with the ultra-nationalists. Parubiy is an Orangist and was a leader in the Orange Revolution. He has changed parties several times. After founding Svoboda, he joined Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine before joining Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party and being elected as one of the Fatherland Party’s deputies, or members of parliament.
  • While the mainstream media in North America and the EU look the other way about the ultra-nationalists in the coup government in Kiev, the facts speak for themselves. Both the EU and the U.S. governments have rubbed their elbows with the ultra-nationalists. Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of Svoboda (formerly the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine), was even part of the opposition triumvirate that all the U.S. and EU officials visiting Kiev met with while performing their political pilgrimages to Ukraine to encourage the protesters to continue with their demonstrations and riots demanding Euro-Atlantic integration. Svoboda has popularly been described as a neo-Nazi grouping. The World Jewish Congress has demanded that Svoboda be banned. The ultra-nationalist party was even condemned by the EU’s own European Parliament, which passed a motion on Dec. 13, 2012 categorically condemning Svoboda.
  • The ultra-nationalists are such an integral part of the mainstream opposition that the U.S.-supported Orangist president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously awarded the infamous Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera the title and decoration of the “Hero of Ukraine” in 2010. Foreign audiences, however, would not know that if they relied on reportage from the likes of the U.S. state-run Radio Free Europe, which tried to protect Yushchenko because he wanted to reorient Ukraine toward the U.S. and EU. Parubiy also lobbied the European Parliament not to oppose Yushchenko’s decision. Other smaller ultra-nationalists parties were also given government posts, and several of the independent cabinet members are also aligned to these parties. Dmytro Yarosh from Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) is the deputy secretary of the RNBO, and the Trizub Party was given the education ministry. Trizub had Sergey Kvit appointed to the post of education minister.
  • The role of the ultra-nationalists in executing the coup has been essentially ignored by the mainstream media in North America and the EU. The roots of the bloodshed in Kiev have been ignored, too. The shootings of protesters by snipers have simply been presented as the vile actions of the Ukrainian government, never taking into consideration the agitation of the armed ultra-nationalist gangs and the mainstream opposition leaders for a conflict. According to a leaked telephone conversation on Feb. 26 between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union Commissionaire Catherine Ashton, which was leaked by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) , the snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Ukrainian opposition leaders. Estonian Foreign Minister Paet made the statements on the basis of details he was given by one of the head doctors of the medical team of the anti-government protests, Olga Bogomolets, an opponent of Viktor Yanukovych’s government who wanted it removed from power. Paet tells Ashton the following first: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” This is also corroborated by the fact that Yanukovych actually had ordered the Ukrainian riot police and security forces not to use lethal force.
  • The Estonian official then mentions that it was verified to him that the same snipers were killing people on both sides. He tells Ashton the following: “And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” Another important point that Paet makes to Ashton is the following: “[Dr. Olga Bogomolets] then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.” Past reports that the mainstream media were hostile to the ousted Ukrainian government also raise serious questions that corroborate what has been said about the snipers intentionally killing protesters to instigate regime change.
  • The Telegraph reported on Feb. 20 that “[a]t least three of the bodies displayed single bullet wounds to the heads,” and “were shot in the head, the neck or the heart. None were shot anywhere else like in the legs.” This means that the snipers were making kill shots by design, which seems like the last thing that the Ukrainian government would want to do when it was trying to appease the protesters and bring calm to Kiev. The Ukrainian journalist Alexey Yaroshevsky’s account of the sniper shootings is also worth noting, and it is backed up by footage taken by his Russian crew in Kiev.  Their footage shows armed opposition members running away from the scene of the shooting of anti-government protesters. What comes across as unusual is that the armed members of the opposition were constantly agitating to start firefights at every opportunity that they could get.
  • The commandant of the SSU, Major-General Oleksandr Yakimenko, has testified that his counter-intelligence forces were monitoring the CIA in Ukraine during the protests. According to the SSU, the CIA was active on the ground in Kiev and collaborating with a small circle of opposition figures. Yakimenko has also said that it was not the police or government forces that fired on the protesters, but snipers from the Philharmonic Building that was controlled by the opposition leader Andriy Parubiy, which he asserts was interacting with the CIA. Speaking to the Russian media, Yakimenko said that 20 men wearing “special combat clothes” and carrying “sniper rifle cases, as well as AKMs with scopes” ran out of the opposition-controlled Philharmonic Building and split into two groups of 10 people, with one taking position at the Ukraine Hotel. The anti-government protesters even saw this and asked Ukrainian police to pursue them, and even figures from Right Sector and Svoboda asked Yakimenko’s SSU to investigate and apprehend them, but Parubiy prevented it. Major-General Yakimenko has categorically stated that opposition leaders were behind the shootings. Following the release of the conversation between Paet and Ashton, the Estonian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the leak was authentic, whereas the European Commission kept silent. The mainstream media in North America and the EU either ignored it or said very little. The Telegraph even claimed that Dr. Bogomolets told it that she had not treated any government forces even though she contradicts this directly in an interview with CNN where says she treated military personnel.
  • CNN, on the other hand, quickly glossed over the story, giving it only enough attention to create the impression that the network is fairly covering the news. Opting not to give the story the airtime that it deserved, CNN instead posted it on its webpage. The conversation is immediately discredited, undermined and dismissed in the first sentence of the article, which is attributed to Foreign Minister Paet: “Don’t read too much into the conversation.” The article was deliberately structured by CNN to undermine the important information that would challenge the narrative that the U.S. mainstream media have been painting. The title, sub-titles and opening sentences of most texts act as microcosms or summaries of the articles, and in many cases, readers evaluate or decide to read the articles on the basis of what these texts communicate. Moreover, the first sentence of the article sets the tempo for readers and and influences their opinion, too. Although anyone who listens to the conversation between Paet and Ashton and considers the evidence that is being discussed would realize just how important the news was, the message being set forth by CNN was a dismissive one.
Gary Edwards

Breakaway Civilizations/ Rethinking History - Shows - Coast to Coast AM - 0 views

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    "Date: 03-16-14 Host: George Knapp Guests: Joseph P. Farrell, Brad Olsen In the first half, George Knapp was joined by author Joseph Farrell, who detailed his research into the possibility that a secret, breakaway civilization was formed by American elites following World War II. He explained that, after the war, the United States was faced with three formidable challenges: escaped Nazis bent on recreating their empire elsewhere, the Cold War, and the UFO phenomenon. In turn, Farrell surmised, a secret system was put into place to develop defenses against these dangers facing the country. He theorized that, in order to surreptitiously fund such a massive undertaking, the United States used the vast wealth that had been plundered by Japan during WWII to bankroll various projects. Farrell suggested that, over time, similar secret infrastructures were created by other technologically advanced countries such as England, Russia, and China. In the ensuing years since its creation, Farrell said, the American organization likely developed amazing technological capabilities far beyond what is known to the general population, hence the concept of a 'breakaway civilization,' which shares our planet but exists within a world of knowledge far different from our own. Manmade UFOs, weather control, and zero point energy may be achievements that have secretly been accomplished, but remain classified for fear of revealing technologies which could be weaponized and used against the United States. Farrell pointed to the emergence of 3D printing and the push for mining in space as potential signs of previously accomplished breakthroughs which are now slowly being introduced to the public. --------------------------------- In the latter half, author Brad Olsen discussed flaws in modern history and how conspiracy theories, esoteric insights, and fringe subjects can be used to help change a dead-end course for humanity. He contended that nearly every facet of human life, from science,
Gary Edwards

Leftists Become Incandescent When Reminded of the Socialist Roots in Nazism | RealClear... - 0 views

  • As George Watson put it in The Lost Literature of Socialism:It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too. The clue is in the name. Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers' Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said. Hitler told Hermann Rauschning, a Prussian who briefly worked for the Nazis before rejecting them and fleeing the country, that he had admired much of the thinking of the revolutionaries he had known as a young man; but he felt that they had been talkers, not doers. "I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun," he boasted, adding that "the whole of National Socialism" was "based on Marx".
  • Marx's error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity - to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order.
  • His aim, he told his economic adviser, Otto Wagener, was to "convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists" - by which he meant the bankers and factory owners who could, he thought, serve socialism better by generating revenue for the state. "What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish," he told Wagener, "we shall be in a position to achieve."
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  • but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls "Right-wing": the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods;
  • the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class;
  • authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.
  • Authoritarianism - or, to give it a less loaded name, the belief that state compulsion is justified in pursuit of a higher goal, such as scientific progress or greater equality - was traditionally a characteristic of the social democrats as much as of the revolutionaries.
  • quoting that impeccable progressive H.G. Wells who, in 1932, told the Young Liberals that they must become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis".
  • George Bernard Shaw in 1933: Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly... If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.
  • Eugenics, of course, topples easily into racism. Engels himself wrote of the "racial trash" - the groups who would necessarily be supplanted as scientific socialism came into its own. Season this outlook with a sprinkling of anti-capitalism and you often got Leftist anti-Semitism - something else we have edited from our memory, but which once went without saying. "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?" Hitler had asked his party members in 1920.
Gary Edwards

Articles by Mark Dice - 0 views

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    Libertarian writer and researcher, Mark Dice, has provided a list of articles he has written.  Mark's literary works include: ... "The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction" ...... separates and analyzes the various claims and evidence about the Illuminati, their history, beliefs, members, organizations, and activities. This is a supplement for Mark's previous book - ..... "The Resistance Manifesto",  which focuses more on the New World Order, the 9/11 attacks, Big Brother, and how the political agendas of the elite are fulfilling Bible prophecy.   .... "The New World Order" ....   His website, markdice.com has high light summary of his work that's quite interesting: A detailed analysis of the September 11th attacks and evidence they were aided by elements within U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies to be used as a reason to jumpstart the "War on Terror" and the erosion of privacy and personal liberties outlined in the constitution. The Knights Templar, the real Holy Grail, and the role the Templars played in the formation of the Illuminati mafia. Quotes from the original writings of the Illuminati founders and how the organization drew up plans over 200 years ago to take over every major institution of power and influence in the world through deception and criminal activity. An expose on the Bohemian Grove resort including quotes from President Richard Nixon, senator John Decamp, and information from Chris Jones who worked at the club and became an informant on the activities within the compound. The secrets of Freemasonry and a history of the organization and their influence on society and quotes from the bible of Freemasonry on how the organization knowingly deceives lower level members and nonmembers as to the true secrets and goals of the fraternity. The history and meaning of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones monument and why the elite want to reduce world population to 500 million by killing billions of people through wars and plagues. A history of
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

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    "http://www.pjtv.com/s/GEZDSMRS" The only video anyone needs to watch concerning the George Zimmerman - Trayvon Martin Circus. Awesome presentation by Bill Whittle sets straight the facts, including photos and evidence from the scene of the fight. Incredibly, the Obama - Holder "race hustling poverty pimp" show is trying to blame white-on-black racial violence and the "Stand your ground" laws as the problem. Funny but George Zimmerman is about as "white" as Obama is. If Obama, whose mother was white, attacked a black man, would that be considered "white-on-black"? How is it any different with Zimmerman, whose father is white, and mother Latino? And the "Stand your ground" law was never a factor in this case. Zimmerman's defense was 100% based on basic self defense. Nor did the prosecution bring up "Stand your ground" or otherwise reference the law. So how is that an issue with race hustling poverty pimps? Well, the pimps out to destroy the Second Amendment rights of 310 million Americans. In spite of the fact that guns are the weapon of choice that millions of black families, living in the urban lawlessness of socialist American cities, use to defend themselves and their families. Wherever the gun control nazis succeed, the black-on-black crime rates soar. Bill Whittle continues to be my favorite commentator.
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

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    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

Nato's action plan in Ukraine is right out of Dr Strangelove | John Pilger | Comment is... - 0 views

  • In 1964, the year Dr Strangelove was made, "the missile gap" was the false flag. To build more and bigger nuclear weapons and pursue an undeclared policy of domination, President John F Kennedy approved the CIA's propaganda that the Soviet Union was well ahead of the US in the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This filled front pages as the "Russian threat". In fact, the Americans were so far ahead in production of the missiles, the Russians never approached them. The cold war was based largely on this lie.
  • Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement project. Reneging on the Reagan administration's promise to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand "one inch to the east", Nato has all but taken over eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato's military build-up is the most extensive since the second world war.In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists. For the first time since 1945, a pro-Nazi, openly antisemitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism on the border of Russia. Some 30 million Russians died in the invasion of their country by Hitler's Nazis, who were supported by the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA) which was responsible for numerous Jewish and Polish massacres. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, of which the UPA was the military wing, inspires today's Svoboda party.Since Washington's putsch in Kiev – and Moscow's inevitable response in Russian Crimea to protect its Black Sea fleet – the provocation and isolation of Russia have been inverted in the news to the "Russian threat". This is fossilised propaganda. The US air force general who runs Nato forces in Europe – General Philip Breedlove, no less – claimed more than two weeks ago to have pictures showing 40,000 Russian troops "massing" on the border with Ukraine. So did Colin Powell claim to have pictures proving there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What is certain is that Barack Obama's rapacious, reckless coup in Ukraine has ignited a civil war and Vladimir Putin is being lured into a trap.
  • Following a 13-year rampage that began in stricken Afghanistan well after Osama bin Laden had fled, then destroyed Iraq beneath a false flag, invented a "nuclear rogue" in Iran, dispatched Libya to a Hobbesian anarchy and backed jihadists in Syria, the US finally has a new cold war to supplement its worldwide campaign of murder and terror by drone.A Nato membership action plan – straight from the war room of Dr Strangelove – is General Breedlove's gift to the new dictatorship in Ukraine. "Rapid Trident" will put US troops on Ukraine's Russian border and "Sea Breeze" will put US warships within sight of Russian ports. At the same time, Nato war games in eastern Europe are designed to intimidate Russia. Imagine the response if this madness was reversed and happened on the US's borders. Cue General Turgidson.And there is China. On 23 April, Obama will begin a tour of Asia to promote his "pivot" to China. The aim is to convince his "allies" in the region, principally Japan, to rearm and prepare for the possibility of war with China. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will be transferred to the Asia-Pacific area. This is the greatest military concentration in that vast region since the second world war.
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  • In an arc extending from Australia to Japan, China will face US missiles and nuclear-armed bombers. A strategic naval base is being built on the Korean island of Jeju, less than 400 miles from Shanghai and the industrial heartland of the only country whose economic power is likely to surpass that of the US. Obama's "pivot" is designed to undermine China's influence in its region. It is as if a world war has begun by other means.This is not a Dr Strangelove fantasy. Obama's defence secretary, Charles "Chuck" Hagel, was in Beijing last week to deliver a warning that China, like Russia, could face isolation and war if it did not bow to US demands. He compared the annexation of Crimea to China's complex territorial dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. "You cannot go around the world," said Hagel with a straight face, "and violate the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation." As for America's massive movement of naval forces and nuclear weapons to Asia, that is "a sign of the humanitarian assistance the US military can provide".Obama is seeking a bigger budget for nuclear weapons than the historical peak during the cold war, the era of Dr Strangelove. The US is pursuing its longstanding ambition to dominate the Eurasian landmass, stretching from China to Europe: a "manifest destiny" made right by might.
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    Until the late 1940s, the U.S. had a "War Department." But in 1949, having just completed the largest foreign war in U.S. history, the War Department ironically was renamed as the "Defense Department." Ever since, the U.S. has waged nothing but foreign wars, none that could literally be characterized as necessary to defend the U.S. As John Pilger eloquently encapsulates in this article, perhaps it's past time to return the Department to the "Department of Wars of Aggression."  
Paul Merrell

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

  • 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. 
Gary Edwards

Feds confiscate investigative reporter's confidential files during raid | The Daily Caller - 3 views

  • A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
  • But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said. Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter. “They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”
  • After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.
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    If reality is as stated, the reporter has a pretty strong civil rights case against the government officials who knowingly participated in the theft and retention of the reporter's notes, two distinct conspiracies. Under the 4th Amendment, officers executing a search and seizure warrant may lawfully seize the items particularly described in the warrant and any other evidence of crime that is in plain view during the search. It's a big push of credibility to argue that reading documents stored in a bag in search for a gun falls within the "plain view" doctrine. The officer could instead just reach his hand into the bag and feel around for a gun. Quite a few extra steps involved in removing the documents and reading them simply to determine whether the bag contains a gun. Add in the facts that: [i] the supposed recognition of government documents argument does not explain why the officers seized personal handwritten notes too; and [ii] the evidence that the officer who discovered the docs had learned that the reporter was one who had called the conduct of his agency into question, and it comes out smelling a lot more like an attempt to discover the reporters' sources than a legitimate search for guns when the bag was searched.   Only one side heard from so far, of course. But this sounds more like low-level government officials who were ignorant of their legal obligations than a White House-driven scandal. But I wouldn't want to be the government lawyer who authorized the retention of the seized notes and other documents. They should have been returned without retaining copies the instant the lawyer learned of the circumstances of their seizure. There's not only a 4th Amendment liberty interest but also a 1st Amendment freecdom to communicate anonymously right protecting those documents and notes. 
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    I listened to an interview with Audrey Hudson last night. It seems to me the key fact is in this clip; "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said." Audrey had written a series of articles describing how the Homeland Security and Transportation agency had been lying about air marshalls and the post 911 program to secure passenger flights. The documents that were stolen listed her sources - the whistle blowers inside the Homeland Security administration who leaked information about the lies and the many problems with the program that the Obama administration was covering up. This sounds to me like another example of Obama hunting down and persecuting whistleblowers. A direct violation of the 1989 - 2007 Whistleblower Protection Act. Not surprisingly, Ms Hudson had not tried to contact any of her whistleblowing sources for fear that the NSA would be watching and that this persecution would happen. Interestingly, the warrant was to seize a "potato launcher". No kidding! It seems Ms. Hudson's husband had, at one time been a licensed arms dealer. He lost that license having sold a gun with faulty paperwork. This event had occurred years earlier, and Mr. Hudson had long since moved on and was currently working for the Coast Guard as an outside contractor/consultant. So they seized the toy "potato launcher", as described in the warrant. But they also ransacked the home looking for the key documents that listed Ms Hudson's inside Homeland Security sources behind her air marshal scandal articles. These documents were the only items seized - other than the "potato launcher" that was the only item listed in the warrant. Seems we've been here before. From wikipedia, the story of Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller: ........................... Arrested on 1 July 1937, N
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    "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said."
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    What troubles me the most about this event, assuming the truth of what's reported, is how well known the limitations on execution of a search warrant are within the law enforcement community. If it happened as described, it seems very unlikely that the officer who grabbed the documents did not know he was violating the 4th Amendment. Ditto for the lawyer or other official(s) who learned of what went down shortly thereafter, but kept the documents anyway. There's an arrogance that goes with government and corporate officials who don't have to personally pay damage awards. With no personal monetary liability (in reality, since the government or corporation picks up the tab), it becomes a matter of personal ethics and whether the misbehavior will anger or please the boss. If the ethics are weak, that becomes a pretty simple choice.
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