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Paul Merrell

Trump's 'Wag the Dog' Moment - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...trumps-wag-the-dog-moment

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria missile-attack WMD Trump

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.
  • Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8. There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid. One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
  • The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus. White House Infighting In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed. Though Bannon and Kushner are often presented as rivals, the source said, they shared the belief that Trump should tell the truth about Syria, revealing the Obama administration’s CIA analysis that a fatal sarin gas attack in 2013 was a “false-flag” operation intended to sucker President Obama into fully joining the Syrian war on the side of the rebels — and the intelligence analysts’ similar beliefs about Tuesday’s incident. Instead, Trump went along with the idea of embracing the initial rush to judgment blaming Assad for the Idlib poison-gas event. The source added that Trump saw Thursday night’s missile assault as a way to change the conversation in Washington, where his administration has been under fierce attack from Democrats claiming that his election resulted from a Russian covert operation. If changing the narrative was Trump’s goal, it achieved some initial success with several of Trump’s fiercest neocon critics, such as neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, praising the missile strike, as did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The neocons and Israel have long sought “regime change” in Damascus even if the ouster of Assad might lead to a victory by Islamic extremists associated with Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State.
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  • Trump employing a “wag the dog” strategy, in which he highlights his leadership on an international crisis to divert attention from domestic political problems, is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton’s threats to attack Serbia in early 1999 as his impeachment trial was underway over his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. (Clinton also was accused of a “wag-the-dog” strategy when he fired missiles at supposed Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.)
  • Trump’s advisers, in briefing the press on Thursday night, went to great lengths to highlight Trump’s compassion toward the victims of the poison gas and his decisiveness in bombing Assad’s military in contrast to Obama’s willingness to allow the intelligence community to conduct a serious review of the evidence surrounding the 2013 sarin-gas case. Ultimately, Obama listened to his intelligence advisers who told him there was no “slam-dunk” evidence implicating Assad’s regime and he pulled back from a military strike at the last minute – while publicly maintaining the fiction that the U.S. government was certain of Assad’s guilt. In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility. In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case. Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help. The counter-argument to this logic – made by The New York Times and other neocon-oriented news outlets – essentially maintains that Assad is a crazed barbarian who was testing out his newfound position of strength by baiting President Trump. Of course, if that were the case, it would have made sense that Assad would have boasted of his act, rather than deny it.
  • Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.
  • Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike. “The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.” Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
  • Regarding this week’s events, Trump’s desperation to reverse his negative media coverage and the dubious evidence blaming Assad for the Idlib incident could fit with the “Wag the Dog” movie from 1997 in which an embattled president creates a phony foreign crisis in Albania.
  • In the movie, the White House operation is a cynical psychological operation to convince the American people that innocent Albanian children, including an attractive girl carrying a cat, are in danger when, In reality, the girl was an actor posing before a green screen that allowed scenes of fiery ruins to be inserted as background. Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop.
Paul Merrell

Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide - 0 views

sites.google.com/...afghanholocaustafghangenocide

war & peace Afghanistan csualties stats genocide holocaust Iraq Palestine

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • This site is dedicated to informing people about the ongoing, US Alliance-imposed Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide that as of 2012 is associated with post-2001 violent and non-violent avoidable deaths totalling 7.2  million and Afghan and Pashtun refugees totalling 5-6 million – an Afghan Holocaust ( a huge number of deaths) and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) which states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”Also utterly ignored by Neocon American and Zionist  Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media are the 1.2 million people who have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007, the breakdown (as of 2015)  including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians and 500 French.
  • As of January 2014  deaths from the Afghanistan War include approximately 7 million violent and non-violent excess deaths of Indigenous Afghans since 2001 and 3,417 US Alliance deaths (see: http://icasualties.org/oif/ ).As of January  2014 it is estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 5.5 million.  Assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War where the ratio of violent deaths to non-violent avoidable deaths was 1.5 million/1.2million = 1.25, then post-invasion violent deaths in Afghanistan can be estimated at 1.25 x 5.5 million/4 = 1.7 million. Post-invasion violent and non-violent avoidable deaths total 5.5 million plus 1.7 million = 7.2 million; and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 3.0 million (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violence of the Geneva Convention – Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War demand that an Occupier must supply life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” (see: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm ) but according to the WHO (see: http://www.who.int/countries/en/ ) the “total annual expenditure on health per capita” permitted in Occupied Afghanistan is $50 as compared to $8,608 in Occupier US, $3,322 in Occupier UK, $4.086 in Occupier France, $4,371 in Occupier Germany  and $3,692  in Occupier racist, white Apartheid Australia).  
  • There are 3-4 million Afghan refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated in NW Pakistan by the obscene war policies of war criminal Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Obama – this carnage involving 4.5 million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess Afghan deaths constitutes an Afghan Holocaust and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ).
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  • As of January 2014  2009 it was estimated from the latest UN Population Division data that in Occupied Afghanistan post-invasion non-violent excess deaths totalled 5.5 million and post-invasion violent deaths totalled 1.7 million (this based on assuming expert US-Australian advice that the level of violence has been 4 times lower in the Afghan War than in the Iraq War).
  • The US Alliance restored the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 6% of world market share in 2001 to 93% in 2007 (see UNODC World Drug Report 2007: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2007.html and World Drug Report 2009: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2009.html   and World Drug Report , Opium/heroin market, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2009/WDR2009_Opium_Heroin_Market.pdf ).
  • About 0.1 million people die from opiate drug-related causes each year (see Australian National Drug Research Centre: http://db.ndri.curtin.edu.au/media.asp?mediarelid=40 ; UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Addiction, crime and insurgency. The transnational threat of Afghan opium”, 2009: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Afghanistan/Afghan_Opium_Trade_2009_web.pdf ) and hence about 0.8 million have died since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, of whom about 90%, i.e. 0.9 x 0.8 million = 0.7 million people, have died as a result of the huge expansion of the Afghan opium industry under US Alliance occupation. In 2005 in the US, of 18,347 deaths due to narcotics and psychodysleptics, 12, 262 were due to heroin (2,011), other opioids (5,789) or methadone (4,462) (see Health E-stat, “Increases in poisoning and methadone-related deaths: United States,1999-2005 “: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/poisoning/poisoning.pdf  ) . Given the over 90% contribution of the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed opium industry to world illicit heroin production, and the interconnectedness and effective indistinguishability of "Afghan-derived heroin" from the "pool" of other abusively-used opiates, one can accordingly crudely estimate 0.9 x 12,262 persons/year x 8 years = 88,286 US opiate drug-related deaths (0.9 x 2,011 deaths/year x 8 years = 14,479 heroin-related deaths) connected with the aftermath of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
  • Global deaths from violent priorities and ignoring Developing World poverty. Professor John Holdren (Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Director of the Woods Hole Research Center;  recent Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) identified nuclear weapons, poverty and global warming as the three biggest threats facing Humanity (see: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0216am_holdren_address.shtml ). The US military budget is now about $1 trillion per annum (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States ) and 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate and former World Bank Chief Economist, Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) has estimated that the accrual cost (long-term committed cost as opposed to the shirt-term budgeted cost) of the Iraq War is about $3 trillion (see: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm and “The Three Trillion Dollar War” by Joseph Stiglitz). In 2009, funds for war had been equally distributed between Iraq and Afghanistan, which each received $700 million. But in 2010, the bulk of the funds - $1.2 billion dollars will go to Afghanistan (see: http://www.defencetalk.com/afghan-war-costs-to-overtake-iraq-in-2010-pentagon-18679/ ). The budgeted cost from Congress of the Afghan War is estimated to have been $38 billion (see: http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=16570
  • Poverty results in the deaths of 16 million people annually (including 9.5 million under-5 year old infants) from deprivation and deprivation exacerbated disease (2003 data; see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). yet high female literacy, good governance, good primary health care and a modest increase in economic security could abolish this global avoidable mortality holocaust. It is estimated that the simple expedient of increasing the per capita of all countries to about $1000 would cost only $1.4 trillion, roughly the annual global “defence” budget and about 2.65 of global GNP (2003) ( p169,  Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”). Global deaths from worsening climate genocide. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming – noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims, 2 billion Indians, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see “Climate Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
  • US Alliance war policies in a swathe of countries from Occupied Haiti to Occupied Afghanistan and NW Pakistan, coupled with similarly greedy and  racist US Alliance global warming policies, oppose and prevent global equity and will ultimately kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 16
     
    Nauseating statistics. Site also has stats for Palestine and Iraq.
Paul Merrell

U.S. military confirms rebels had sarin - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...tary-confirms-rebels-had-sarin

war & peace WMD Syria Iraq Russia al-Qaeda al-Nusra NGIC

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - Cached
Gary Edwards liked it
  • As part of the Obama administration’s repeated insistence – though without offering proof – that the recent sarin gas attack near Damascus was the work of the Assad regime, the administration has downplayed or denied the possibility that al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels could produce deadly chemical weapons. However, in a classified document just obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria. The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo.
  • The document, classified Secret/Noforn – “Not for foreign distribution” – came from the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC, and was made available to WND Tuesday. It revealed that AQI had produced a “bench-scale” form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey. A U.S. military source said there were a number of interrogations as well as some clan reports as part of what the document said were “50 general indicators to monitor progress and characterize the state of the ANF/AQI-associated Sarin chemical warfare agent developing effort.” “This (document) depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey,” the document said. “Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests,” the NGIC document said.
  • This seizure followed a chemical weapons attack in March on the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo, Syria. In that attack, some 26 people and Syrian government forces were killed by what was determined to be sarin gas, delivered by a rocket attack. The Syrian government called for an investigation by the United Nations. Damascus claimed al-Qaida fighters were behind the attack, also alleging that Turkey was involved. “The rocket came from a place controlled by the terrorists and which is located close to the Turkish territory,” according to a statement from Damascus. “One can assume that the weapon came from Turkey.” The report of the U.S. intelligence community’s NGIC reinforces a preliminary U.N. investigation of the attack in Aleppo which said the evidence pointed to Syrian rebels. It also appears to bolster allegations in a 100-page report on an investigation turned over to the U.N. by Russia. The report concluded the Syrian rebels – not the Syrian government – had used the nerve agent sarin in the March chemical weapons attack in Aleppo.
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  • The May 2013 seizure occurred when Turkish security forces discovered a two-kilogram cylinder with sarin gas while searching homes of Syrian militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra Front following their initial detention. The sarin gas was found in the homes of suspected Syrian Islamic radicals detained in the southern provinces of Adana and Mersia. Some 12 suspected members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested. At the time, they were described by Turkish special anti-terror forces as the “most aggressive and successful arm” of the Syrian rebels. In the seizure, Turkish anti-terror police also found a cache of weapons, documents and digital data. At the time of the arrest, the Russians called for a thorough investigation of the detained Syrian militants found in possession of sarin gas.
  • While the contents of the report have yet to be released, sources tell WND the documentation indicates that deadly sarin poison gas was manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups. The documentation that the U.N. received from the Russians indicated specifically that the sarin gas was supplied to Sunni foreign fighters by a Saddam-era general working under the outlawed Iraqi Baath party leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Al-Douri was a top aide to Saddam Hussein before he was deposed as Iraqi president. The sarin nerve gas used in the Allepo attack, sources say, had been prepared by former Iraqi Military Industries Brig. Gen. Adnan al-Dulaimi. It then was supplied to Baath-affiliated foreign fighters of the Sunni and Saudi Arabian-backed al-Nusra Front in Aleppo, with Turkey’s cooperation, through the Turkish town of Antakya in Hatay Province. The source who brought out the documentation now in the hands of the U.N. is said to have been an aide to al-Douri. Al-Dulaimi was a major player in Saddam’s chemical weapons production projects, the former aide said. Moreover, Al-Dulaimi has been working in the Sunni-controlled region of northwestern Iraq where the outlawed Baath party now is located and produces the sarin.
  • The NGIC depiction of the variety of sarin as “bench-scale” reinforces an analysis by terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, who said the recent findings on the chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21 on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, was “indeed a self-inflicted attack” by the Syrian opposition to provoke U.S. and military intervention in Syria.
  • The terrorism expert said that the jihadist movement has technologies which have been confirmed in captured jihadist labs in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as from the wealth of data recovered from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He added that the projectiles shown by the opposition, which were tested by U.N. inspectors, are not standard weapons of the Syrian army.
  • Now, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, Ray McGovern, similarly backs the claim that the Syrian rebels perpetrated the poison gas attack on Aug. 21 McGovern was one of a number of veteran intelligence professionals who recently signed a letter to Obama saying that Damascus wasn’t behind the Aug. 21 chemical attack. As WND recently reported, former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack, saying there was a “growing body of evidence” that reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition.
  • “Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army and their foreign sponsors,” the analysts said.
  • The VIPS memo to Obama reinforces separate videos, which show foreign fighters associated with the Syrian opposition firing artillery canisters of poison gas. One video shows Nadee Baloosh, a member of an al-Qaida-affiliated group Rioyadh al-Abdeen, admitting to the use of chemical weapons. In the video clip, al-Abdeen, who is in the Latakia area of Syria, said his forces used “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess.”
Paul Merrell

The Lancet: Arafat Poisoned With Polonium 210 - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36508.htm

Yasser-Arafat war & peace Mossad poisoning

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A report by a respected British medical journal the Lancet, has supported the possibility that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210. The journal published a peer review of last year’s research by Swiss scientists. It backed their work, which found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains on Arafat’s clothes and toothbrush. The Palestinian leader died in 2004 in a French hospital near Paris, after being effectively confined to his West Bank compound for two years. In November 2012, experts from Switzerland, France and Russia exhumed his remains and took samples to examine for possible poisoning. It was prompted by a documentary aired on Al- Jazeera, that claimed there were traces of polonium in Arafat’s personal belongings.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Oct 13
     
    Almost without doubt, Israel's Mossad is responsible if this report is accurate. The original article is on CCTV, but I couldn't get Diigo to highlight the article there. See http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20131013/103230.shtml
Paul Merrell

Iraq Smashes Al Qaeda 'Poison Gas Cell' - Yahoo! News UK - 0 views

uk.news.yahoo.com/poison-gas-cell-165516815.html

war & peace false flag chemical-warfare Iraq al qaeda

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Authorities in Iraq say they have uncovered an al Qaeda cell working to produce poison gas at two locations in Baghdad for future attacks both home and abroad. Mohamed al Askari, spokesman for Iraq's defence ministry, said five suspects had been detained over the construction of two facilities in the capital to produce sarin and mustard gas, using instructions from another al Qaeda group.
  • The members of the cell were prepared to launch attacks domestically, and also had a network to smuggle the toxins to neighbouring countries, and also to Europe and North America, said Mr Al Askari. He said the group had managed to acquire some raw materials and formulas, but they had not produced any active chemical weapons. It was unclear how far along they were in their efforts. The arrests follow a joint operation between Iraqi and foreign intelligence services.
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Swiss study says polonium found in Arafat's bones | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...oniumfoundinarafatasbones.html

war & peace Palestine Arafat polonium poison asassinations

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • PARIS — Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, a conclusion that they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death. A 108-page report (PDF) by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.
  • The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after Arafat's body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Dave Barclay, a U.K. forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered. “Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time. “The level of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s rib … is about 900 millibecquerels,” Barclay said. “That is either 18 or 36 times the average, depending on the literature.”
Gary Edwards

Do You Want To Be RFID Chipped? Another Hidden Secret in Obama-Care | Pakalert Press - 0 views

www.pakalertpress.com/...er-hidden-secret-in-obama-care

Health-Risks Nano-Technology Nano-Biotechnology EMF RFID ChemTrails

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Jun 13
     
    "Modern technology is growing by leaps and bounds. The corporate-controlled media extolls its virtues, but does not cover the known harm of its dark side. Most of this technology goes unchecked for human safety. The following is a short synopsis of the hazards of several invisible technologies that are already an unreported and grave danger to all of us." Article covers these emerging technology threats: ... Nano-Technology This technology is also in the highly toxic Chemtrails aerosols, as nano-coated fiber Aluminum, that, for the past 15 years, are poisoning us daily.  The coating includes nano particalized BARIUM and Fluoride.  The Air Force has admitted to using them. Documents have been published on the Internet, over many years, listing various patents for these covert and criminal programs. And most recently, a former Air Force Industrial Hygienist has confirmed this stealth geo-engineering program from first-hand knowledge. ... RFID Chips RFID [Radio Frequency Identification] chips. They are made of a two-way radio antenna, and some encasement or support, such as small glass vial implanted under the skin. The origins of this technology go back to 1948 when the idea was first conceived. They are now found in ATM and credit cards, and some "enhanced" driver's licenses, highway toll systems, and inventory tracking systems. The latest direction in chipping the human population comes from the hidden part of the Obama "health care" reform. Who reads more than 1,000 pages of mostly incomprehensible "doublethink" drivel? The Senate Healthcare bill HR3200 was passed in 2010, and requires the implant of an RFID chip in every American. This chip will be inserted into our skin and linked to all our banking, medical, and other personal documents. Here is a short quote: "The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the 'registry') to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes d
Paul Merrell

New email shows DNC boss giving Clinton camp debate question in advance | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...ebate-question-in-advance.html

Auction 2016 Hillary Brazile parimary debate tips

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Another leaked email has emerged showing Democratic National Committee boss and former CNN contributor Donna Brazile sharing a debate question in advance with the Hillary Clinton campaign -- despite Brazile's persistent claims to the contrary. CNN announced in a statement soon after the email became public Monday that Brazile had tendered her resignation and the network accepted it on Oct. 14, days after the controversy over Brazile tipping off the Clinton campaign initially broke. According to documents released Monday by WikiLeaks, Brazile sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email titled, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the night before the March 6 CNN primary debate in Flint, Mich.  “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.
  • The following night, Lee-Anne Walters, a mom whose twin boys stopped growing and whose daughter lost her hair during the Flint water contamination crisis, posed a question to both Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and her primary opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. 
  • After my family, the city of Flint and the children in D.C. were poisoned by lead, will you make a personal promise to me right now that, as president, in your first 100 days in office, you will make it a requirement that all public water systems must remove all lead service lines throughout the entire United States, and notification made to the — the citizens that have said service lines?” Walters asked. Clinton responded with a lengthy answer that moderator Anderson Cooper had to twice interrupt in an attempt to keep to the agreed-upon time limit. Clinton’s remarks drew applause from the crowd, though she wound up ultimately losing the state’s primary to Sanders two days later.  The apparent email tip-off was included in the latest trove of messages hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks. Brazile had been under fire over an earlier email chain appearing to show her tipping off the campaign before a town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of a question about the death penalty in an email with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” After Palmieri responded, Brazile wrote back: “I’ll send a few more.” Roland Martin asked the death penalty question verbatim the next night during a CNN town hall.  Brazile's role as a CNN contributor was suspended when she took over as interim DNC head in July, but on Oct. 14, in light of the email revelations, CNN said it accepted her full resignation.
Gary Edwards

Suit: Roberts' ruling a poison pill for Obamacare - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...ng-a-poison-pill-for-obamacare

ObamaCare-TAX

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 12
     
    "The penalties Americans will be required to pay under Obamacare for going without health insurance were declared constitutional in a US. Supreme Court decision that hinged on Chief Justice John Roberts' assertion that the assessments are taxes. But a legal challenge to the federal government takeover of health-care decision-making says that's a problem, because Harry Reid created the Obamacare legislation, with all of its new "taxes," in the U.S. Senate. The Constitution requires any tax bills to begin in the House. The demand for an explanation is being raised in an amended complaint filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing a man who believes the new bureaucracy isn't legal."
Paul Merrell

Syrian Rebels Most Likely Culprits in Gas Deaths -- what's left - 0 views

gowans.wordpress.com

war & peace Syria WMD pro-war propaganda propaganda debunking

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • British foreign secretary William Hague says there’s no doubt that the Syrian military is responsible for last week’s alleged gas attack which killed scores of people in Syria. So too do the editors of major newspapers in the United States and Britain. US officials have also said the Syrian government is responsible, though at the same time they admit they are still trying to ascertain the facts. The Wall Street Journal could report, as a consequence, that there’s an “emerging consensus” that the Assad government was behind the attack. The consensus, however—and it’s one limited to Syria’s political enemies—is backed up by not a scintilla of evidence. You might wonder why journalists haven’t challenged Hague’s assertion that the only possible culprit is the Syrian government. After all, there is another possible culprit: the opposition.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 13
     
    Nice referenced article on why the Syrian "rebels" are more likely to be responsible for poison gas use than the Syrian government. 
Gary Edwards

1913: The Blow That Killed America 100 Years Ago - 0 views

www.freemansperspective.com/1913-america

1913 Woodrow-Wilson Nelson-Aldrich Rockefeller Bilderbergs ruling-class-elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Aug 13
     
    "There is a lot of ruin in a nation," wrote Adam Smith. His point was that it takes a long time for nations to fall, even when they're dead on their feet. And he was certainly right. America took its fatal blow in 1913, one hundred years ago; it just hasn't hit the ground yet. This is a slow process, but it's actually fast compared to the Romans. It took them several centuries to collapse . The confusing thing about our current situation is that America - and by that I mean the noble America that so many of us grew up believing was real - has long been poisoned. Its liver, kidneys, and spleen have all stopped functioning. Its heart beats slowly and irregularly. But it still stands on its feet and presents itself as alive to all those who would let their eyes fool them. And I'm not without sympathy for those who want to believe. They find themselves in a world where politics is almighty, and where their comfort, prosperity, and perhaps their survival all hang in a delicate balance. They don't want to upset anything, and questioning the bosses is a good way to get yelled at. But just because someone wants to believe doesn't make it so. We are not children and we are not powerless. We Producers should never be intimidated by those who live at our expense. So let's start looking at the facts. 1913: The Horrible Year For all the problems America had prior to 1913 (including the unnecessary and horrifying Civil War), nothing spelled the death of the nation like the horrors of 1913. Here are the key dates: February 3rd : The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose income taxes on individuals. An amendment to a tariff act in 1894 had attempted to do this, but since it was clearly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court struck it down. As a result - and mostly under the banner of bleeding the rich - the 16th amendment was promoted and passed. As a result, the Revenue Act of 1
Paul Merrell

BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - Bugger - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...BUGGER

surveillance state MI5 MI6 GCHQ

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart.That the spies know what they are doing.It is a belief that has been central to much of the journalism about spying and spies over the past fifty years. That the anonymous figures in the intelligence world have a dark omniscience. That they know what's going on in ways that we don't.It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do.
  • But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.I want to tell some stories about MI5 - and the very strange people who worked there. They are often funny, sometimes rather sad - but always very odd.The stories also show how elites in Britain have used the aura of secret knowledge as a way of maintaining their power. But as their power waned the "secrets" became weirder and weirder.They were helped in this by another group who also felt their power was waning - journalists. And together the journalists and spies concocted a strange, dark world of treachery and deceit which bore very little relationship to what was really going on. And still doesn't.
  • Here is Chapman Pincher being interviewed on the Wogan programme about what then happened. Up to this point Pincher had been the Defence correspondent on the Daily Express. He was successful for getting "scoops" from "inside sources" - although the historian EP Thompson said that really Chapman Pincher was:"A kind of official urinal in which ministers and intelligence and defence chiefs could stand patiently leaking."What the dissident MI5 agents now told Pincher was like super high-grade piss. Or, as he puts it in the Wogan interview, "it was like walking into an Aladdin's Cave". But what Pincher wrote was going to open the floodgates to a new kind of conspiracy journalism that still holds sway over large parts of the media imagination.Have a look at him and decide yourself - high grade toilet or investigative journalist? Or maybe often they are the same thing?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But something else happened to all the intelligence agencies during the war - MI6 as well as MI5. As they grew massively in size they became riddled with factions and infighting. And because all this happened behind a wall of secrecy, there was little to stop things becoming vicious and poisonous.The journalist Phillip Knightley has written a really good history of spies - called The Second Oldest Profession. In it he quotes an agent describing what happened during the war years:"The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."
  • The case that really shocked Mrs Thatcher was the traitor Geoffrey Prime. In the 1970s he had worked at the top secret listening centre GCHQ and had been selling all it's secrets to the Russians.
  • And yet again it wasn't MI5 who uncovered his treachery - it was the local police in Cheltenham.In 1982 a policeman came to his house enquiring about his car - a rather distinct two-tone brown and white Mk IV Cortina - a which had been seen in the vicinity of an assault on a young girl.Prime told the policeman that he had been at home all day. But that evening he and his wife Rhona went for a drive to the top of Cleeve Hill. As they sat in the twilight Prime told Rhona that he was the man the police were looking for. And not only that, he was also a Russian spy.
  • Prime was a paedophile - and had used spying techniques to monitor the activities of thousands of young girls around Cheltenham. He had created a vast set of index cards which showed when the girls were most likely to be alone at home. He then went round to their houses in his two tone Cortina and sexually assaulted them.Despite this Prime had been positively vetted six times. Even the Russians got worried about his paedophile activities and seemed to want to dump him. In 1980 Prime had gone to Vienna to meet the KGB. Instead of meeting him secretly as they normally did, the Russians took him openly to the best restaurants where they knew Western intelligence agents would recognise them as KGB agents.But even then noone noticed them - or Prime.Prime's wife Rhona wrestled with her conscience - and in the end went to the police and told them everything about Prime. He was sent to jail for 35 years for spying and 3 years for the assaults on young girls - which says a lot about the priorities of the British establishment at that time.
  • The cases of Bettaney and Prime revealed not only just how incompetent MI5 was - but also how sad and seedy the secret world of spies really was.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 13
     
    Fascinating in-depth article on the history of British spy agencies' incompetence. From the great MI5 media hoax during World War I that the agency's reputation was built upon through the failures to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union and the false report of WMDs in Iraq, the author builds a compelling case that the excessive secrecy and incompetence of the British Security Service staff has resulted in a marvelous collection of wackos mired in fantasies of conspiracies within conspiracies who feed gullible journalists lie after lie. Very well-written, Interspersed with spot-on historical videos. Well worth the read and watch. I've highlighted only small tidbits to avoid playing the part of a spoiler.      
Gary Edwards

"War is a Racket" by General Smedly Butler - 1 views

www.lexrex.com/...warisaracket.htm

Smedly-Butler

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Sep 13 - Cached
  • by MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC - Retired TWO-TIME Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient FULL TEXT ON LINE FREE
  • GET THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION including two bonus titles.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13
     
    An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker.  This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures  I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles. 
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 13
     
    "WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g
Gary Edwards

Is Obama the Head of a Secret Cult? A 15-Point Test. | Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...-a-secret-cult-a-15-point-test

Obammunism Obama-Cult

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • But what really amazes me are those ideas that even a little reflection and study reveal as ridiculous, but that nonetheless gain a large and devoted following. For instance, that big government—in truth, little more than a motley collection of meddlesome bureaucrats advised by rent-seeking, ivory-tower academics—are in possession of the solutions to all of society's ills.
  • All of which got me to thinking about this odd trait of humans to form associations around bad ideas, and that, in turn, led me to think about the nature of cults. After all, can there be a more ridiculous idea than becoming a trained lapdog to some modern-day messiah? Yet, how does one go from being a go-along-to-get-along kind of person one day to lining up for a fatal dose of poison, thoughtfully flavored with grape Kool-Aid, the next? Or signing up to become a gunman willing to kill or be killed in a foreign adventure in support of a half-baked idea that's cast as somehow being in the "national interest," when even a cursory examination would tell you it's not?
  • Both of those examples are in diametric opposition to self-preservation, the most fundamental of all human instincts.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Less dramatically but yet still with serious consequences, how is it that otherwise rational people come to accept the idea that widespread economic success can flow from the loins of a bureaucracy that produces nothing but regulatory chains on the aspirations of individuals looking to better their lives and those of their families? And when that success fails to materialize, readily accept the idea that the Fed can pump money out by the trillions with no negative effect? In any event, I started poking around the literature of various organizations specializing in the study of mind control and found what I think are some interesting lessons for us all in the studies of cults. After all, if psychological buttons can be pushed in a combination that leads to drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, you can sure as hell bet they can be pushed to get you to vote for a string of sociopathic poseurs… or to dedicate a large chunk of your life and charitable giving to causes that have little connection to reality. Or to decide to create a Facebook page titled, "I love it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President." In fact, based on the guidelines provided by the International Cult Studies Association (ICSA), you or someone you know may already be in a cult and not even be aware of it. Worse, the president himself might be the head of a cult! There are 15 separate traits the ICSA identifies as common among cults. Ticking through them should prove informative.
  • The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as "the Truth."
  • Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
  • Mind-altering practices are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
  • The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel
  • The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members.
  • Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
  • The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
  • The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary.
  • The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
  • Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
  • The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
  • The group is preoccupied with making money.
  • Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
  • The leader is not accountable to any authorities.
  • The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
  • How to Spot a Pathological Liar
  • In researching the nature of cults, I took a side street to investigate the mental condition called "pseudologia fantastica," or in lay terms, a mental condition where individuals become pathological liars. I did so because I wondered how politicians can spew forth their untruths with straight faces.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Nov 13
     
    "So is Obama really the leader of a cult? Based on the above checklist, I'd have to say he is-and it's a pretty big cult, at that. If you agree, it behooves us to define the overarching beliefs of the cult over which he presides. In my view, those beliefs were accurately summed up by Thomas Sowell in his classic, A Conflict of Visions, as revolving around the idea that we humans can and should be made ever-more perfect by government policy. With that idea at the core of the cult's belief, almost no action, no matter how extreme, is off the table when it comes to government action. Deception, artifice, bullying, war-making, spying, money-printing, regulation, forcing Ritz crackers on children, taking over large swaths of the economy, or propping up companies in favored industries are all justifiable parts and parcels of the whole. Unfortunately, because the cult offers financial handouts to join, the ranks of this particular cult have swelled in recent decades. So much so that it has reached the point where, like an uninfected human in a world full of zombies, those who don't belong increasingly have to maintain a low profile or risk having their faces eaten (or, perhaps less dramatically, being subjected to a forensic audit by the IRS). This is equally true, and maybe more so, with private corporations, which keep their mouths shut as the healthcare burden of non-workers is transferred to their balance sheets, or which trumpet the fact that they're "green" in order to avoid being targeted by cult members."
Gary Edwards

Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom: And... - 0 views

www.amazon.com/...ref=as_li_ss_til

Judge-Andrew-Napolitano NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel Globalist-Elites New-World-Order Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Oct 13
     
    Judge Andrew Napolitano at his best: summary: "Either the Constitution means what it says, or it doesn't." America's founding fathers saw freedom as a part of our nature to be protected-not to be usurped by the federal government-and so enshrined separation of powers and guarantees of freedom  in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But a little over a hundred years after America's founding, those God-given rights were laid siege by two presidents caring more about the advancement of progressive, redistributionist ideology than the principles on which America was founded. Theodore and Woodrow is Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's shocking historical account of how a Republican and a Democratic president oversaw the greatest shift in power in American history, from a land built on the belief that authority should be left to the individuals and the states to a bloated, far-reaching federal bureaucracy, continuing to grow and consume power each day. With lessons rooted in history, Judge Napolitano shows the intellectually arrogant, anti-personal freedom, even racist progressive philosophy driving these men to poison the American system of government.  And Americans still pay for their legacy-in the federal income, in state-prescribed compulsory education, in the Federal Reserve, in perpetual wars, and in the constant encroachment of a government that coddles special interests and discourages true competition in the marketplace. With his attention to detail, deep constitutional knowledge, and unwavering adherence to truth telling, Judge Napolitano moves through the history of these men and their times in office to show how American values and the Constitution were sadly set aside, leaving personal freedom as a shadow of its former self,  in the grip of an insidious, Nanny state, progressive ideology.
Paul Merrell

Cover Story: How NSA Spied on Merkel Cell Phone from Berlin Embassy - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...m-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html

surveillance state NSA Obama Merkel U.S. Germany U.S. foreign policy NSA-blowback must-read lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • According to SPIEGEL research, United States intelligence agencies have not only targeted Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone, but they have also used the American Embassy in Berlin as a listening station. The revelations now pose a serious threat to German-American relations.
  • Research by SPIEGEL reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter. And there is evidence that agents based at Pariser Platz recently targeted the cellphone that Merkel uses the most. The NSA spying scandal has thus reached a new level, becoming a serious threat to the trans-Atlantic partnership. The mere suspicion that one of Merkel's cellphones was being monitored by the NSA has led in the past week to serious tensions between Berlin and Washington.
  • A "top secret" classified NSA document from the year 2010 shows that a unit known as the "Special Collection Service" (SCS) is operational in Berlin, among other locations. It is an elite corps run in concert by the US intelligence agencies NSA and CIA. The secret list reveals that its agents are active worldwide in around 80 locations, 19 of which are in Europe -- cities such as Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague and Geneva. The SCS maintains two bases in Germany, one in Berlin and another in Frankfurt. That alone is unusual. But in addition, both German bases are equipped at the highest level and staffed with active personnel. The SCS teams predominantly work undercover in shielded areas of the American Embassy and Consulate, where they are officially accredited as diplomats and as such enjoy special privileges. Under diplomatic protection, they are able to look and listen unhindered. They just can't get caught.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • This would correspond to internal NSA documents seen by SPIEGEL. They show, for example, an SCS office in another US embassy -- a small windowless room full of cables with a work station of "signal processing racks" containing dozens of plug-in units for "signal analysis." On Friday, author and NSA expert James Bamford also visited SPIEGEL's Berlin bureau, which is located on Pariser Platz diagonally opposite the US Embassy. "To me, it looks like NSA eavesdropping equipment is hidden behind there," he said. "The covering seems to be made of the same material that the agency uses to shield larger systems." The Berlin-based security expert Andy Müller Maguhn was also consulted. "The location is ideal for intercepting mobile communications in Berlin's government district," he says, "be it technical surveillance of communication between cellphones and wireless cell towers or radio links that connect radio towers to the network."
  • Wiretapping from an embassy is illegal in nearly every country. But that is precisely the task of the SCS, as is evidenced by another secret document. According to the document, the SCS operates its own sophisticated listening devices with which they can intercept virtually every popular method of communication: cellular signals, wireless networks and satellite communication. The necessary equipment is usually installed on the upper floors of the embassy buildings or on rooftops where the technology is covered with screens or Potemkin-like structures that protect it from prying eyes. That is apparently the case in Berlin, as well. SPIEGEL asked British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell to appraise the setup at the embassy. In 1976, Campbell uncovered the existence of the British intelligence service GCHQ. In his so-called "Echelon Report" in 1999, he described for the European Parliament the existence of the global surveillance network of the same name.
  • Campbell refers to window-like indentations on the roof of the US Embassy. They are not glazed but rather veneered with "dielectric" material and are painted to blend into the surrounding masonry. This material is permeable even by weak radio signals. The interception technology is located behind these radio-transparent screens, says Campbell. The offices of SCS agents would most likely be located in the same windowless attic.
  • Apparently, SCS agents use the same technology all over the world. They can intercept cellphone signals while simultaneously locating people of interest. One antenna system used by the SCS is known by the affable code name "Einstein." When contacted by SPIEGEL, the NSA declined to comment on the matter. The SCS are careful to hide their technology, especially the large antennas on the roofs of embassies and consulates. If the equipment is discovered, explains a "top secret" set of classified internal guidelines, it "would cause serious harm to relations between the United States and a foreign government." According to the documents, SCS units can also intercept microwave and millimeter-wave signals. Some programs, such as one entitled "Birdwatcher," deal primarily with encrypted communications in foreign countries and the search for potential access points. Birdwatcher is controlled directly from SCS headquarters in Maryland.
  • With the growing importance of the Internet, the work of the SCS has changed. Some 80 branches offer "thousands of opportunities on the net" for web-based operations, according to an internal presentation. The organization is now able not only to intercept cellphone calls and satellite communication, but also to proceed against criminals or hackers. From some embassies, the Americans have planted sensors in communications equipment of the respective host countries that are triggered by selected terms.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 13
     
    A must-read article offering an in-depth, 3-page view of how badly the Snowden disclosures have poisoned trust between the U.S. and its NATO allies that are not favored members of the Five Eyes club. Details of NSA's surveillance operations in Germany and strong circumstantial evidence that Obama knew -- as recently as June 2013 -- of spy operations being conducted against hundreds of world leaders but denied it.  
Gary Edwards

BOMBSHELL! Jim Garrow Reveals Career As Covert CIA Operative, Says Breitbart ... - 1 views

www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog

Obammunism Banksters New-World-Order Globalist

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Oct 13
     
    Links to radio interview. Excerpts below: "As a long-time friend and guest on NTEB Radio, we know Dr. Garrow to be a previous Nobel Peace Prize nominee and executive director of the Bethune Institute's Pink Pagoda Girls school and rescue outreach in China. But on our show tonight, Dr. Garrow made the amazing revelation that he had, in fact, right up until this past Wednesday night at midnight, spent 45 years as a covert CIA operative. Garrow said that as a result of his "litmus test" statement in January, he was outed from the agency by Obama, and forced to accept early retirement. But the revelations didn't stop there. In addition to revealing that Andrew Breitbart had been killed under orders from Obama administration officials, he also said that spy thriller novelist Tom Clancy had also be killed in much the same way, and for the same reasons. Garrow said that Clancy had been spoon fed inside information for years from covert operatives for his novels, and he knew too much. Interestingly, when asked about where he got his ideas for his novels, Clancy had said this before he died: ""I hang my hat on getting as many things right as I can," Mr. Clancy once said in an interview. "I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real - that's the spooky part." NY Times A little too real, as it turns out. Dr. Garrow said the reason no autopsy was performed for the first 5 days is that it 'takes that long for the chemicals he was poisoned with to work their way out of his body'. Lastly, he revealed that Obama's administration was made up of Marxist Muslims who all take their orders from Senior Adviser to the President, Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett. Dr. Garrow said that it is well known to intelligence agencies all over the world that Obama is a foreign plant who was placed on the path to the presidency by ultra-rich Saudi nationals This is why, Garrow said, that all of Obama's education records have been permanently sealed. Garrow p
Paul Merrell

ISIS: Potentially 'Thousands' of Online Followers Inside US Homeland, FBI Chief Warns -... - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

war & peace politics of fear FBI ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 May 15 - No Cached
  • There may be as many as thousands of people inside the United States consuming online “poison” from ISIS alone, and, “I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there,” FBI director James Comey warned today, referring to one of the men who opened fire outside of an event in Texas earlier this week celebrating artists’ portrayals of the Prophet Mohammad. “We have a very hard task” in trying to identify and stop anyone inspired to launch an attack inside the U.S. homeland, Comey told ABC News’ Pierre Thomas and a small group of reporters. Such efforts have become particularly challenging because ISIS has reconfigured and redefined terrorist recruitment, according to Comey. In fact, while the FBI is trying to find that so-called needle in a haystack, “increasingly the needles are invisible to us,” he said.
  • As recently as two years ago, someone in the United States who wanted to consume “radical poisonous propaganda” would have to seek that out on the Internet, most likely on a jihadist web forum. So the FBI focused its investigative efforts on those jihadist web forums, Comey said. But “that has changed dramatically, especially with [ISIS] and their use of social media,” where on phones in people’s pockets they ask Americans and other foreigners “to travel to the so-called caliphate to fight” but simultaneously say, “If you can’t travel, kill where you are,” according to Comey.
  • “It’s almost as if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder saying, ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill’ all day long,” he said. “[They are] recruiting and tasking at the same time. … In a way, the old paradigm between ‘inspired’ and ‘directed’ breaks down here." And with that distinction “no longer relevant," is it all the more challenging for the FBI to determine whether someone seeking jihadist propaganda online or even promoting themselves is “a talker or a doer,” as Comey described it. There’s also the question, “Where are they on the pathway from ‘talker’ to ‘doer’? And that’s really hard,” Comey added. Those are the exact types of questions the FBI faced with Simpson. Comey acknowledged today that Simpson had been under FBI watch since 2006, when the agency opened an investigation on the Phoenix-area man based on information suggesting he wanted to join al-Shabab, the al Qaeda-linked group in Somalia. Simpson was ultimately indicted on terrorism charges and convicted, but due to questions over the government’s case he never went to prison and was sentenced to probation. The FBI officially closed its case into Simpson last year.
Gary Edwards

Why Are We So Afraid To Fix Banks The Right Way?* | Clusterstock Henry Blodgett - 0 views

clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/...aid-to-fix-banks-the-right-way

finacial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09 - Cached
  • a debt-equity swap
  • LIF said: Jan. 19, 3:17 PM MY PLAN 1. Mandate a 12-1 leverage cap for all financial institutions to take effect within 180 days. This 12-1 leverage cap has to be calculated using real market prices, not mark-to-model prices. 2. Temporary ban on capital raising by banks – water can’t dilute poison. You eliminate the poison first then add more water. 3. Force banks, etc to reach this 12-1 leverage cap by selling their toxic assets within 180 days via a US Govt Auction. The US Govt will be the Auctioneer but will NOT bid for assets 4. Any bank that is unable to sell sufficient assets to bring it under the 12-1 leverage cap will automatically nationalized by the US Govt at a price of $1. All shareholdrers and bond holders forfeit their assets. This will provide an incentive to the banks/financial institutions to sell these assets. 5. The US Govt will now hold all the toxic assets to maturity - this will prevent private market bidders from low-bidding in (3) above. Private market bidders in essence are being told, you buy the assets during the auction or you will not have another opportunity to buy the assets, as the US Govt will sieze them at an effective rate of ZERO and then hold them to maturity. 6. Any bank that falls under nationalization will also have its CEO, Board of Directors and members of the Management committee for the past 5-10 years disgorge all compensation earned during the past 5-10 years. 7. Create standardized CDS products that traded on an electronic exchange. All non-standard CDS products should be liquidated in the OTC market or swapped into standardized CDS products prior to the commencement of the new CDS exchange. The exchange will commence within180 days. 8. New Mortgage Financing Rules: 20-30% minimum govt mandated down payments. Strict Debt to Income limits, etc. These rules must be codified into federal law. 9. New Credit Card/Auto Finance rules: strict rules on the amount of credit card/Auto finance debt available to consumers.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jan 09
     
    You don't have to subsidize banks and their stakeholders at taxpayer expense to avoid another Lehman.  You just have to fix the banks the right way. What's the right way? * Temporarily seize the banks * Write their assets down to nuclear-winter levels (or, if desired, put them in a big bad bank, as Sheila Bair wants to do.) * Convert enough of their debt to equity to put them in a strong capital position. That's it.  No taxpayer money.  No citizen outrage.  No comical "Yes, we're lending" assurances when what the banks are really doing is, sensibly, hoarding everything. We could do this to Citigroup and Bank of America tomorrow afternoon, and on Wednesday morning, two of our biggest banks would be rock solid (they could also still be publicly traded, under the same ticker symbols, with different shareholders). 
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