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Paul Merrell

Libya Coming Full Circle. When A Deemed "Conspiracy Theory" Becomes Reality | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5387468

U.S.-foreign-policy neocons War-Party Libya failed-state Benghazi

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom. Libya Today How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state.
  • “Confirmed: U.S. Armed Al Qaeda to Topple Libya’s Gaddaffi” with a very astonishing admission by “top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers” confirming the obvious truth that “conspiracy theorists” have been saying since 2011. The US backed Al Qaeda in Libya and that the Benghazi attack was a byproduct of this. Washington’s Blog notes that in 2012, it documented that: The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi: The Hindustan Times reported last year: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. What was once deemed conspiracy theory became confirmed reality when the Daily Mail reported as Washington’s Blog subsequently pointed out:
  • A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. ‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline. She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. ‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.. ‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • ‘The White House and senior Congressional members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.’ ‘Some look at it as treason,’ said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission’s research. While Wayne Simmons’ characterization of such actions by the globalist, imperialist establishment in the United States as “treason” is correct in the sense that it was a clear violation of not only the Constitution, but the public interest of America, there is a rather disingenuous factor involved when some people, especially on the Neo-Con right, attempt to play the “treason card.”
  • Clearly the Neo-Con agenda has been coming full circle since the first Gulf War in the 1990s. The US “gun-walking” to jihadis in Syria from Libya, noted by the Washington Times and New York Times (albeit with partisan spin and distortion), was actually planned under Bush in 2007 as noted by Seymour Hersh in “The Redirection.” It has continued under Obama, influenced by Council on Foreign Relations figures throughout both administrations from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton. Consider the following points from “The Redirection”: To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
  • To dispel critics’ notions that this is passive, uncontrollable, and indirect support, consider: [Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. Neo-Conservative writer Gary Gambill would ride on this wave of terrorist aggression and pen an article for the Neo-Con “Middle East Forum” titled “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” As noted in the analysis of the piece by Tony Cartalucci titled “Globalist Rag Gives ‘Two Cheers’ for Terrorism”, one can see how terrorism is a useful piece of capital of globalist imperialism that is easy to hide in the sight of inattentive masses with easy ploys of political spin and plausible deniability.
  • Libyan terrorists are invading Syria. They have been doing so since the influx of jihadis began, enabled by outside powers. These are not simply rogue networks operating independently but rather include state-sponsorship, especially of NATO-member Turkey and NATO’s criminal proxy government in Tripoli, Libya. We are told by the media that the regime in Tripoli under the auspice of the National Transitional Council, and populated with puppets like Mustapha Abdul Jalil, is a moderate regime distinct from the “marginal Islamist forces.” However, even in mainstream accounts, one can note that these “official, moderate” groups are involved with funding terrorism themselves as many geopolitical analysts have noted. Tony Cartalucci notes that, “In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report”: Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14
     
    Lots of documentation on the tawdry moves by the War Party in Libya and Benghazi, now blowing up in their faces. 
Paul Merrell

The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...or-group-justify-bombing-syria

war & peace Syrian-War Khorasan U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.
Paul Merrell

M of A - A Too Complicated Game: Obama's Deals With The Saudis And Al-Nusra - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...h-the-saudis-and-al-nusra.html

war & peace Khorasan false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • According to the Wall Street Journal Obama made a deal with the Saudis. They will lend legitimacy for his attacks against the Islamic State and AlQaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra) and he will later overthrow the Syrian government under president Assad. Like the Saudi prince Bandar, who nutured the Jihadists, was ousted over it, but is now back in the deal, the neocon editors of The Economist are doing victory jumps. They managed to get the U.S. back into their war. Hurray! But as I understand it Obama's part of the deal is supposed come only later. It will take a year to train the "moderate, vetted" insurgents in Saudi Arabia and only when those are ready, and Obama a lame duck, may such action start (or not). U.S. voters know very well that Obama always keeps his promises (not). A year can be a quite a long time and who knows what will happen in between. The urgency of the deal with the Saudis may have come because some folks felt a time-critical need to attack the al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) leadership in Syria. It may also have come from the low polls of Obama's leadership and his need to keep the Senate in the hands of Democrats after Novembers election. The second reason seems more likely.
  • To justify the hit on the leadership group it had to be differentiated from the ""the moderate Jihadis" al-Nusra organization with which there is cooperation on other issues. The "Khorasan" group was invented and a FUD campaign launched to justify the attack. The U.S. media predictably ate it all up and propagandized every fearmongering bit of what "officials said" about Khorasan. Only after the attack has taken place are doubts allowed to be aired: Several of Mr. Obama’s aides said Tuesday that the airstrikes against the Khorasan operatives were launched to thwart an “imminent” terrorist attack, possibly using concealed explosives to blow up airplanes. But other American officials said that the plot was far from mature, and that there was no indication that Khorasan had settled on a time or location for the attack — or even on the exact method of carrying out the plot.
  • Some speculation: Jabhat al-Nusra is a nominal part of the al-Qaeda organization. It was led by al-Qaeda veterans who had been fighting in AfPak but came to Syria when the insurgency started. The U.S. relabeled these veterans the "Khorasan" group to have some reason to separately eliminate them. Their replacement may well turn out to be local men currently leading the groups in southern Syria and willing to further cooperate with USrael. A new version of the moderate cuddly homegrown al-Qaeda ploy. The whole game played within the various proxy wars within the current Syriraq war is becoming increasingly complicate. I would not be astonished to see Obama throw the towel on this whole affair. After the November election he may well say "enough" and just leave the chaos behind him. P
Paul Merrell

Facts Needed on Malaysian Plane Shoot-Down | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...-on-malaysian-plane-shoot-down

war & peace Ukraine Malaysian-airliner U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • As usual, the mainstream U.S. media is rushing to judgment over the crash of a Malaysian airliner in war-torn eastern Ukraine, but the history of U.S. government’s deceptions might be reason to pause and let a careful investigation uncover the facts, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
Paul Merrell

ISIS Beheadings on Cue from Washington and London? > Strategic-Culture.org - Strategic Culture Foundation - 0 views

www.strategic-culture.org/...rom-washington-and-london.html

war & peace Syria ISIL false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The macabre video executions have also overturned anti-war public feeling in the US. When Obama was planning to launch air strikes in Syria last year following the chemical weapons incident, polls showed that a big majority – 70 per cent – of Americans were opposed to any intervention. That opposition, plus the British parliament’s rejection, was a major factor in why Obama backed down then on his proposed military strikes during September 2013. But after the latest videos showing two American journalists being brutally slain, US public opinion, according to recent polls, is now strongly in favour of Obama’s anti-ISIS bombing coalition; not just operating in Iraq, but more significantly, the American public wants the coalition to go after ISIS inside Syria too. Thus, where the chemical weapons horror last year failed to convince the American public to give its approval for US air strikes in Syria, the beheading of American hostages has succeeded.
  • For Washington and its close London ally, the British public is a crucial constituency to also win over. It seems more than a coincidence that ISIS has now carried out the same sickening execution of a British national as it did with the two Americans. President Obama said after the videoed slaying of Briton David Haines that the US “stands shoulder-to-shoulder” with the British people. The question is this: are these shocking executions, with their highly stylised graphic videos, being used to manipulate public consent for Western military intervention in Syria? In that case, ISIS is not acting in some apparent rogue fashion, turning on its Western intelligence masters, but rather it is obeying orders as usual as part of a macabre charade to facilitate Western military intervention.
  • Once again, what we are seeing is a variation of “humanitarian pretext” to pave the way for the covert, ulterior agenda of Western-orchestrated regime change in foreign countries. That ploy was used previously by NATO forces in former Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990s and more recently in Libya during 2011. It is well documented that ISIS, IS or ISIL, is a terror network created by US, British and Saudi military intelligence going back to the early years of the Iraq War beginning in 2003, when the group played a vital role in fomenting sectarian strife in Iraq to the advantage of the Western occupying armies.The network has antecedents in Western collusion with radical Islamist mercenaries in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the former Soviet Union, which led to the formation of Al Qaeda, and also in Chechnya in the mid-1990s.
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  • ISIS leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi is known to be a US intelligence asset, according to a former senior Al Qaeda operative, Nabil Naim, among other sources. Former CIA personnel have also disclosed that ISIS, like Al Qaeda, was set up to further geopolitical goals for Washington and its allies in the Middle East. These goals include regime change in target countries, such as Syria, and perpetuating the money-spinning American military-industrial complex by creating an endless security threat. Officially, the network may be a proscribed terror organization and “an enemy of the state”. But in the underworld of black operations, ISIS is a covert instrument of US government and corporate interests.
  • Given the strategic importance of the US-led regime-change objective in Syria – and in particular the importance of obtaining public support for military intervention in that country – it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the ISIS network is carrying out beheadings of Western citizens on the orders of its handlers in the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Perhaps even, the outward political leadership in Washington and London, Obama and Cameron, are unaware of their own dark forces at work, which gives their public reactions of indignation an air of authenticity and credibility.
  • Indeed, the evident political consequences from the latest execution of Briton David Haines and Americans Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff are strongly indicative of a Western psychological operation. That makes Washington and London culpable of murdering their own citizens for geopolitical expediency. These victims are sacrificial lambs in the foulest sense.
Paul Merrell

Increasing Attention to Allegations of 9/11 FBI Cover-Up | 28 Pages.org - 0 views

28pages.org/...llegations-of-911-fbi-cover-up

war & peace false-flag 9-11 FBI Bush Cheney Mueller 28-pages

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • While much of the speculation about the contents of the 28 classified pages from a 9/11 intelligence inquiry center on the secret activities of foreign governments, there is growing scrutiny on the secret activities of our own government—specifically, its investigation of the terrorists both before and after the attacks.
  • Television station WTSP, which serves Sarasota and Tampa Bay, aired a very insightful report last week in which investigative reporter Mike Deeson talked to former Senator Bob Graham and dug deep into the FBI’s concealment of its investigation of the Sarasota 9/11 terror cell. You can watch it here.
  • Meanwhile at Counterpunch, James Ridgeway traces the FBI’s stonewalling of the joint House/Senate intelligence inquiry all the way to the White House and makes the case that the failure to cooperate with the inquiry may well amount to obstruction of justice by George Bush, Dick Cheney and FBI Director Robert Mueller: Finally in his book, Graham describes a letter from a member of the FBI’s congressional staff explaining the Bureau had been uncooperative on orders of the administration.  “We were seeing in writing what we had suspected for some time. The White House was directing the coverup.
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  • “Later, when the 911 Commission conducted its own investigation, both Bush and Cheney met with them in a private, off-the-record conversation.” This story and the new piece by Wright strongly suggest the President, Vice President and head of the FBI were engaged in obstruction of justice. If so, that would call for the convening of a federal grand jury. Would the Justice Department, which runs the FBI, do that? Probably not.
Paul Merrell

Russia dumping dollars to use to protect currency and falling oil prices - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com - 0 views

www.examiner.com/...urrency-and-falling-oil-prices

financial-collapse BRICS de-dollarization oil U.S.-foreign-policy Saudis

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • As the United States expands its proxy war against Russia and the BRICS nations through a newly discovered secret deal with Saudi Arabia to force down global oil prices, Russia is firing back to this monetary attack against their currency and economy. On Oct. 10, a new report on Russian currency outflows shows that during the third quarter ending in September, the Eurasian state paid off a near record $53 billion in foreign debt, and sold off dollars to use as capital to stabilize their declining currency, and to protect their primary resource industry from the deflation America has caused through the dumping of excess oil into the market supply. Some of this money was used earlier this week to support the declining Rouble as President Putin authorized the transfer of over $2 billion to be used directly to support the Russian currency. Additionally, the Russian central bank has already authorized funds to be set aside to supplement Russian corporations and oil industries should the need arise for liquidity and capital.
  • Russia is not the only Eurasian nation de-dollarizing at a fast pace. Earlier this week as well, long time U.S. economic ally South Korea disseminated that their foreign reserve holdings had grown in the Yuan over the past year, almost doubling its prior total of 13.7% which was the amount they held at the end of 2013. These reserves replace former dollar holdings, and rise a huge red flag that the Far Eastern manufacturing center is quickly moving into the Eurasian Trade camp, and away from Western hegemony. America's gambit to force down the price of oil is a ploy the U.S. used in the late 1980's to destroy the Rouble, and tear down the old Soviet Union's economy. However, the Russian leadership is not stupid, and have realized for a long time that this was an Achilles Heel in their economic system, and this time, the tables are quickly turning against the U.S. as Russia simply dumps more and more dollars to use as capital to supplement their currency and industry during these short term attacks by the West in their attempt to cripple them monetarily.
Paul Merrell

Censorship Alert: the Alternative Media Harassed by the NSA | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5407718

censorship independent-media Google NSA

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • A concerted U.S.’ effort to censor, target independent media economically, withdraw their reader base, and falsify history. Let us sum up some of the main issues. The incestuous relationship between the NSA and major corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft is a well-documented fact. Many of the smaller companies, including web-hosting companies, Internet security providers, and advertising companies are either in part owned by one of these major corporations ore they are heavily dependent on cooperation and partnerships with them for their economic survival. nsnbc has already experienced being closed down and have its only source of income withdrawn from one day to the other. Others, including Voltairenet have regularly been flagged as containing malware. Media like New Eastern Outlook, IMEMC, and others risk being targeted in similar manner. Others whom Google and a U.S. Senate Hearing falsely accused of containing malware are The Drudge Report and Infowars. One can only guess how many of the smaller blogs, who are too small to raise alarm bells have been targeted. The conclusion is that the United States is engaged in an aggressive campaign that targets independent media and falsifies history. The question is, whether independent media have the political will to stand united in addressing the problem and in using the fact that they serve a growing part of , for example, the advertising market as leverage.
Gary Edwards

Mideast war in March? - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...mideast-war-in-march

Aaron-Lein Middle-EAst Soros

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • NATO war in Syria in March? Meanwhile, according to the Middle Eastern diplomatic and security officials speaking to WND, the international community is considering launching NATO airstrikes on Assad’s forces as soon as March if the opposition does not make major strides toward ending Assad’s regime. The NATO members, however, have been satisfied with the momentum of the opposition in the last few days, which saw a number of defectors from the Syrian military join the rebels, a move that also precipitated the downfall of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime before the NATO campaign in Libya. Similar to Gadhafi, Assad’s regime has been accused of major human rights violations, including crimes against humanity, in clamping down on a violent insurgency targeting his rule.
  • Mass demonstrations were held in recent weeks in Syrian insurgent strongholds calling for the international NATO coalition in Libya to deploy in Syria. Just yesterday, 50 foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations got together in Tunis to demand that Syria allow aid to be delivered to civilians in the absence of any international force to resolve the conflict. Damascus officials claimed to WND that NATO troops are currently training in Turkey for a Turkish-led NATO invasion of Syria.
  • Any deployment would most likely come under the banner of the same “Responsibility to Protect” global doctrine used to justify the U.S.-NATO airstrikes in Libya.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by President Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
  • George Soros-funded doctrine
  • In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited Responsibility to Protect doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. The Global Center for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine. As WND reported, billionaire activist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Center for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros.
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 14
     
    Marbux is right - this report is filled with stunning information! "TEL AVIV - NATO countries are strongly considering the possibility of an international deployment to Syria if the Syrian opposition does not make major advances in the next few weeks, according to informed Middle Eastern diplomatic and security officials. Egyptian security officials, meanwhile, outlined what they said was large scale international backing for the rebels attacking the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad - including arms and training from the U.S., Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Sep 14
     
    One key point is that this article was published on February 24, 2012, long before the false flag sarin gas attack in late August of 2013 that was falsely attributed to the Assad government of Syria. Planning for a Libya-like NATO invasion of Syria was underway long before that attack. And the report gives us the information that the shipment of arms to and training of the Syrian opposition was already underway at that early date, if the report is accurate. All such activities were later confirmed by mainstream media, although I have not found any such reports that provide a beginning date. Hence the value of this report. The report also goes into some detail on the emerging international law norm of Responsibility to Protect ("RTP"), but misses some key aspects. RTP doctrine was an innovation in international law in response to massive genocidal events such as the Rwandan and Srebrenica Massacres. As international law stood before RTP, what happened entirely within the borders of a nation was an aspect of national sovereignty that international law could not interfere with. RTP cracked that barrier, holding that some human rights were so important that they deserved protection by international law, therefore the United Nations Security Council would be empowered to authorize intervention in cases involving wholly domestic genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. But omitted from the article is the fact that it is a doctrine to be exercised only by the U.N. Security Council; individual nations gain no license under the doctrine to launch their own wars to protect the citizens of another nation, whether directly or through proxies such as jihadi mercenaries. Russia has, quite properly in my opinion, vetoed U.S. sponsored draft resolutions based on RTP for Security Council authorization to intervene in Syria, because the U.S. is already an unlawful belligerent in Syria and because the U.S. so severely abused the Security Council's RTP r
Paul Merrell

Who are ISIS' American recruits? - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

surveillance state Patriot-Act sunset ISIL propaganda

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 May 15 - No Cached
  • (CNN)Elton Simpson -- one of the gunmen who opened fire Sunday at an event in Garland, Texas, that was celebrating cartoonists who had drawn pictures of the Prophet Mohammed -- appears to have declared his allegiance to ISIS in a tweet before the attack. Simpson also apparently had online ties to a British ISIS recruit believed to be in Syria. Simpson, who was shot to death by police, is far from the only American who who has been drawn to the black flags of ISIS as well as to the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria known as the Nusra Front.There are 62 individuals in the United States that New America has identified in public records or news accounts who have tried to join militant groups in Syria such as ISIS or Nusra, or have succeeded in joining such groups, or have helped others to join such groups.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 May 15
     
    The tube has been full of this kind of stuff today, plus the U.S. military has raised its alert status in the U.S. A lot of politics of fear stuff. Undoubtedly, it's because a few sections of the Patriot Act are to sunset on June 1 and the NSA bootlickers are having trouble getting those sections renewed by Congress. So a big dose of fear to ease the legislative path. 
Paul Merrell

How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...nition-snowden-searchable-text

surveillance state NSA voice-to-text search

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 May 15 - No Cached
  • Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record. But even as they increasingly use apps that understand what they say, most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either. Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored. The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.
  • Most people realize that emails and other digital communications they once considered private can now become part of their permanent record. But even as they increasingly use apps that understand what they say, most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either. Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored. The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.
  • Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community’s “holy grail,” the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest. The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The Defense Department, through its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), started funding academic and commercial research into speech recognition in the early 1970s. What emerged were several systems to turn speech into text, all of which slowly but gradually improved as they were able to work with more data and at faster speeds. In a brief interview, Dan Kaufman, director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, indicated that the government’s ability to automate transcription is still limited. Kaufman says that automated transcription of phone conversation is “super hard,” because “there’s a lot of noise on the signal” and “it’s informal as hell.”
  • A 2008 document from the Snowden archive shows that  transcribing news broadcasts was already working well seven years ago, using a program called Enhanced Video Text and Audio Processing: (U//FOUO) EViTAP is a fully-automated news monitoring tool. The key feature of this Intelink-SBU-hosted tool is that it analyzes news in six languages, including Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish, English, and Farsi/Persian. “How does it work?” you may ask. It integrates Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) which provides transcripts of the spoken audio. Next, machine translation of the ASR transcript translates the native language transcript to English. Voila! Technology is amazing. A version of the system the NSA uses is now even available commercially.
  • But even then, a newer, more sophisticated product was already being rolled out by the NSA’s Human Language Technology (HLT) program office. The new system, called VoiceRT, was first introduced in Baghdad, and “designed to index and tag 1 million cuts per day.” The goal, according to another 2006 memo, was to use voice processing technology to be able “index, tag and graph,” all intercepted communications. “Using HLT services, a single analyst will be able to sort through millions of cuts per day and focus on only the small percentage that is relevant,” the memo states. A 2009 memo from the NSA’s British partner, GCHQ, describes how “NSA have had the BBN speech-to-text system Byblos running at Fort Meade for at least 10 years. (Initially they also had Dragon.) During this period they have invested heavily in producing their own corpora of transcribed Sigint in both American English and an increasing range of other languages.” (GCHQ also noted that it had its own small corpora of transcribed voice communications, most of which happened to be “Northern Irish accented speech.”)
  • According to a 2011 memo, “How is Human Language Technology (HLT) Progressing?“, NSA that year deployed “HLT Labs” to Afghanistan, NSA facilities in Texas and Georgia, and listening posts in Latin America run by the Special Collection Service, a joint NSA/CIA unit that operates out of embassies and other locations. “Spanish is the most mature of our speech-to-text analytics,” the memo says, noting that the NSA and its Special Collections Service sites in Latin America, have had “great success searching for Spanish keywords.”
  • The Snowden archive, as searched and analyzed by The Intercept, documents extensive use of speech-to-text by the NSA to search through international voice intercepts — particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Mexico and Latin America. For example, speech-to-text was a key but previously unheralded element of the sophisticated analytical program known as the Real Time Regional Gateway (RTRG), which started in 2005 when newly appointed NSA chief Keith B. Alexander, according to the Washington Post, “wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers.” The Real Time Regional Gateway was credited with playing a role in “breaking up Iraqi insurgent networks and significantly reducing the monthly death toll from improvised explosive devices.” The indexing and searching of “voice cuts” was deployed to Iraq in 2006. By 2008, RTRG was operational in Afghanistan as well.
  • VoiceRT, in turn, was surpassed a few years after its launch. According to the intelligence community’s “Black Budget” for fiscal year 2013, VoiceRT was decommissioned and replaced in 2011 and 2012, so that by 2013, NSA could operationalize a new system. This system, apparently called SPIRITFIRE, could handle more data, faster. SPIRITFIRE would be “a more robust voice processing capability based on speech-to-text keyword search and paired dialogue transcription.”
  • What’s less clear from the archive is how extensively this capability is used to transcribe or otherwise index and search voice conversations that primarily involve what the NSA terms “U.S. persons.” The NSA did not answer a series of detailed questions about automated speech recognition, even though an NSA “classification guide” that is part of the Snowden archive explicitly states that “The fact that NSA/CSS has created HLT models” for speech-to-text processing as well as gender, language and voice recognition, is “UNCLASSIFIED.”
  • Also unclassified: The fact that the processing can sort and prioritize audio files for human linguists, and that the statistical models are regularly being improved and updated based on actual intercepts. By contrast, because they’ve been tuned using actual intercepts, the specific parameters of the systems are highly classified.
  • The presidentially appointed but independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) didn’t mention speech-to-text technology in its public reports. “I’m not going to get into whether any program does or does not have that capability,” PCLOB chairman David Medine told The Intercept. His board’s reports, he said, contained only information that the intelligence community agreed could be declassified.
Gary Edwards

RealClearMarkets - Yes, IRS Harassment Blunted The Tea Party Ground Game - 0 views

www.realclearmarkets.com/..._party_ground_game_100412.html

IRS Tea-Party-Patriots Obama-reelection Political-Corruption

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races.
  • The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13
       
      Wow!  So the IRS re-elected Obama?  This is a bureaucratic coup.  We are living in a cleptocracy where the citizens treasury is being systematically looted by Federal bureacracies who are in position and powerfully corrupt enough to elect the representatives who enable them to loot at will. 
  • The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010,
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  • and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 - 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million.
  • Unfortunately for Republicans, the IRS slowed Tea Party growth before the 2012 election.
  • In March 2010, the IRS decided to single Tea Party groups out for special treatment when applying for tax-exempt status by flagging organizations with names containing "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12."
  • For the next two years, the IRS approved the applications of only four such groups, delaying all others while subjecting the applicants to highly intrusive, intimidating requests for information regarding their activities, membership, contacts, Facebook posts, and private thoughts.
  • As a consequence, the founders, members, and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle.
  • it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously.
  • The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign.
  • Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 13
     
    excerpt: .................... The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle. It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous "shellacking" in the 2010 mid-term election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered-and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been de-mobilized by the IRS. In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum. The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a hal
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jun 13
     
    One interesting facet of this scandal is that the IRS in its own regulations rewrote a law passed by Congress in the early 50s to permit non-profit corporations to devote part of their resources to political issues. As passed by Congress, it says that the non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable in nature. But when the IRS wrote its implementing regulations, it substituted "primarily" for "exclusively," thus allowing the non-profits to engage in political political campaigns to an undefined extent and getting the IRS into the business of looking at political credentials rather than a simpler review of whether the given non-profit's purpose is purely charitable. Thus, a question of what should be done about this. Roughly, the choices are: [i] amend the statute to read "primarily;" or [ii] leave the statute alone and have someone litigate to correct the IRS regulations. The latter path, if followed, should result in ending *all* non-profits' participation in political campaigns. The advantage of the latter path is that it gets the IRS out of the business of picking whose politics they like. The disadvantage is that it gores a huge number of non-profits' oxen across the political spectrum, so a major lobbying effort to rewrite the statute to maintain the status quo is predictable. But with a court decision holding that the IRS got it wrong, that non-profits must be "exclusively" charitable, presumably it would be illegal for non-profits to do that campaigning themselves.
Paul Merrell

Erdogan's Dirty Dangerous ISIS Games | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace ISIL Turkey Erdogan

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Turkey is a beautiful land, rich in resources, with many highly intelligent and warm people. It also happens to have a President who seems intent on destroying his once-proud nation. More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA. Turkey, as a result of Erdoğan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.
  • In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdoğan’s regime was backing ISIS / ISIL with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdogan’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdoğan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted. ISIS militants were trained by US, Israeli and now it emerges, by Turkish special forces at secret bases in Konya Province inside the Turkish border to Syria, over the past three years. Erdoğan’s involvement in ISIS goes much deeper. At a time when Washington, Saudi Arabia and even Qatar appear to have cut off their support for ISIS, they remaining amazingly durable. The reason appears to be the scale of the backing from Erdoğan and his fellow neo-Ottoman Sunni Islam Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Nice Family Business The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdoğan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible. Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.
  • In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdoğan seems hell-bent on toppling. Turkish citizen Ramazan Başol, captured this month by Kurdish People’s Defence Units,YPG, as he attempted to join ISIS from Konya province, told his captors that said he was sent to ISIS by the ‘İsmail Ağa Sect,’ a strict Turkish Islam sect reported to be tied to Recep Erdoğan. Başol said the sect recruits members and provides logistic support to the radical Islamist organization. He added that the Sect gives jihad training in neighborhoods of Konya and sends those trained here to join ISIS gangs in Syria. According to French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, Recep Erdoğan “organised the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools. Similarly, he organised the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch…with the help of General Benoît Puga, Chief of Staff for the Elysée, he organised a false-flag operation intended to provoke the launching of a war by the Atlantic Alliance – the chemical bombing of la Ghoutta in Damascus, in August 2013. “
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  • Meyssan claims that the Syria strategy of Erdoğan was initially secretly developed in coordination with former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Erdoğan’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, in 2011, after Juppe won a hesitant Erdoğan to the idea of supporting the attack on traditional Turkish ally Syria in return for a promise of French support for Turkish membership in the EU. France later backed out, leaving Erdoğan to continue the Syrian bloodbath largely on his own using ISIS. Gen. John R. Allen, an opponent of Obama’s Iran peace strategy, now US diplomatic envoy coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, exceeded his authorized role after meeting with Erdoğan and “promised to create a « no-fly zone » ninety miles wide, over Syrian territory, along the whole border with Turkey, supposedly intended to help Syrian refugees fleeing from their government, but in reality to apply the « Juppé-Wright plan ». The Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, revealed US support for the project on the TV channel A Haber by launching a bombing raid against the PKK.” Meyssan adds. There are never winners in war and Erdoğan’s war against Syria’s Assad demonstrates that in bold. Turkey and the world deserve better. Ahmet Davutoğlu’s famous “Zero Problems With Neighbors” foreign policy has been turned into massive problems with all neighbors due to the foolish ambitions of Erdoğan and his gang.
Paul Merrell

Is an Ukronazi attack imminent? Yes! So what else is new? | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

thesaker.is/minent-yes-so-what-else-is-new

war & peace Ukraine coup-government attack Novorussia

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Novorussian officials have called a press conference today to warn about the high risks of an Ukronazi assault on Novorussia in the very near future.  I have asked our translation team and friends to subtitle the video of this press conference and I hope to get it in the next 24 hours or less. The press conference was unique in that Edward Basurin, the Deputy Defense Minister and spokesman for the Novorussian armed forces showed a map with what he described as the Ukrainian attack plans:
  • While I don’t doubt for one second that the Novorussians have pretty much near perfect intelligence about the situation in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine and the plans of the junta (all that provided courtesy of the Russian GRU), I have to say that what this maps shows is extremely predictable too and not fundamentally different from what the Ukronazis tried last year: surrounding and cutting off Donetsk from Lugansk and taking control of key parts (or even all) of the Ukrainian-Russian border.  Basurin also quoted the figures for the junta forces and those are in line with what others, including Cassad, have reported.  The Ukronazi force is most definitely numerically large. Basurin also warned that the attack would be preceded by a false flag attack organized by the junta and blamed on the Novorussians.  Again, nothing new here. To be honest, we are all getting used to ‘cry wolf’ about an impending Ukronazi attack.  And this is hardly our fault.  Such an attack has, indeed, been impending for a long while already and the junta’s bellicose rhetoric has only reinforced this sense of imminent danger.  Furthermore, the recent visit of the British Defense Minister in Kiev only made things worse as the junta always does something ugly when western dignitaries visit Kiev.  Add to this that Poroshenko is scheduled to meet with his German and French counterparts next week and the sense of crisis will be total.  And logically so. So while the tensions are real and definitely based in reality, they are also nothing new here, really.  You could also legitimately that all this panic is nothing else but business as usual and that it will remain so until the regime of Nazi freaks in Kiev is finally replaced by something more or less civilized.  This will inevitably happen but, alas, not in the near future.
  • So we are left with this exhausting and frustrating situation where yet another Ukronazi attack might happen anytime but where it also might not.  That is the inevitable consequence of having evil, weak and insecure psychopaths in charge of an entire country. Yesterday a rumor was started indicating that the Novorussians were planning to organize a referendum to join Russia.  I still don’t know if that rumor is based in reality or not, but I will note that this kind of rumor could also serve as a perfect pretext for a Ukronazi attack. It is clear to me that something has to give, probably soon.  The Ukrainian economy is dead, the stocks of basic goods and energy for next winter are empty, the country is in ruins and social tensions are on the raise everywhere.  I personally cannot image that regime change could happen in Kiev before at least one more attack on Novorussia.  The junta really has nothing left to lose and by massing a large attack force, regardless of how ill prepared this force is, and at least the theoretical such an attack could possibility draw Russia in and, thereby, save the Ukronazi junta in Kiev.
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  • Nobody in Kiev is seriously thinking that they can occupy Donetsk or Lugansk or pacify the Donbass.  Everybody is pretending otherwise, but that ain’t happening.   Everybody in Kiev is fully aware of the fact that the Donbass is lost forever.  So I will repeat this again: the real purpose of an attack will not be to ‘reconquer’ Novorussia, it will be to draw Russia into the Donbass.  How? Well, in theory, if the junta can launch enough men and armor to overwhelm the Novorussian defenses and if these forces succeed in surrounding Donetsk and Lugansk, Russia will really have no other option than to intervene.  Of course, the Russians will easily defeat the Ukronazi forces, in 24 hours or less, but at that point the Nazi regime in Kiev will be saved: it will be able to declare full mobilization, blame every difficulty in Russia, crush any resistance with even more brutality than before and politically force all the US allies to provide aid to the regime in Kiev.  The regime itself, by the way, would be safe as, contrary to the hopes of many, the Russians will not push much beyond the current line of contact.  At most they will liberate Mariupol and or Slaviansk/Kramatrosk as a “penalty” for the Ukronazi attack.  The junta in Kiev will remain safe, at least from the Russians. The real danger for the junta does not come from the Russian military, but from the disillusioned and impoverished Ukrainian people with whom the regime will remain “one on one” unless the Russians intervene.  And as long as this situation will remain like this, a Ukronazi attack will possibly at any moment.  Starting right now.
Paul Merrell

Ten Years Ago: The London 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks? | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace UK 7-7-attack terrorists™ false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • uly 7, 2005, ten years ago, the London 7/7 bombings. Was there advanced knowledge of the attacks? Was it a conspiracy? The following text was first published by Global Research on August 8, 2005 A fictional “scenario” of multiple bomb attacks on London’s underground took place at exactly the same time as the bomb attack on July 7, 2005.
  • Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, described in a BBC interview how he had organized and conducted the anti-terror drill, on behalf of an unnamed business client. The fictional scenario was based on simultaneous bombs going off at exactly the same time at the underground stations where the real attacks were occurring:
Paul Merrell

Why Saudi Ties to 9/11 Mean U.S. Ties to 9/11 | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5478481

war & peace 9-11 false-flag Saudis

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples.
Paul Merrell

Blast Shakes Ankara Just in Time to Justify NATO Incursion into Syria | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace Turkey Ankara-explosion false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A massive blast has killed at least 30 and injured over 100 more in NATO-member Turkey’s capital of Ankara. The blast appears to have targeted the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who was holding a peace rally at the moment of the explosion.
  • CNN would report in their article, “30 killed in bombing near main train station in Turkey’s capital,” that: At least one powerful bomb hit near the main train station in the Turkish capital Saturday morning, killing 30 people,authorities said, making it the deadliest attack in Ankara in recent memory. It would also claim that: No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion immediately fell on the ISIS terrorist group or on Kurdish separatists in Turkey.  Turkey avoided, for quite some time, any conflict with ISIS, perhaps in exchange for the release earlier this year of dozens of Turkish hostages seized in the Iraqi city of Mosul. No details of those negotiations have been released.  However, Turkey recently changed its stance and allowed the U.S. to launch strikes on ISIS from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.
  • While CNN attempts to portray Turkey as holding a generally hostile stance toward the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), it finally admits toward the end of its report that: New reports have said that many Turks have joined ISIS’ ranks and that Turks, many of whom have been recruiting in Ankara, may make up a third of ISIS’ ranks. Indeed, with nearly a third of ISIS composed of Turkish terrorists, with Turkey being a regional, even global state-sponsor of terrorism targeting as far afield as China and Thailand, and with Turkey allowing its borders to remain open and feed what is clearly ISIS’ primary supply corridor just north of the Syrian city of Aleppo, it is clear that if “ISIS” was behind the blasts – it was Ankara itself who organized and executed them, and who will attempt to leverage them for maximum benefit.
Paul Merrell

Syria: US Success Would Only Be the End of the Beginning | nsnbc international - 0 views

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war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran Israel MEK

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.
  • Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.). All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran. In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated: It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.
  • Lieberman would also state (emphasis added): Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them.  This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran.  The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.
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  • MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard. Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate. To this day MEK terrorists have been carrying out attacks inside of Iran killing political opponents, attacking civilian targets, as well as carrying out the US-Israeli program of targeting and assassinating Iranian scientists. MEK terrorists are also suspected of handling patsies in recent false flag operations carried out in India, Georgia, and Thailand, which have been ham-handedly blamed on the Iranian government.
  • MEK is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh as a “cult-like organization” with “totalitarian tendencies.” While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by “cult-like” and “totalitarian,” an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape. Not once is any of this backstory mentioned in the testimony of any of the witnesses before the senate hearing, defiling the memories of those who have been murdered and otherwise victimized by this terrorist organization. The de-listing of MEK in 2012 as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department is another indictment of the utter lack of principles the US clearly hides behind rather than in any way upholds as a matter of executing foreign policy.
  • MEK has already afforded the US the ability to wage a low-intensity conflict with Iran. MEK’s role in doing so was eagerly discussed in 2009, several years before it was even de-listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in the Brooking Institution’s policy paper “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF). The report stated (emphasis added): Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.
  • In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.   Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread. Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.
  • Proof that Brookings’ policy paper was more than a mere theoretical exercise, in 2012 MEK would indeed be de-listed by the US State Department with support for the terrorist organization expanded. The fact that former senators and retired generals representing well-funded corporate think tanks even just this week are plotting to use MEK to overthrow the Iranian government should raise alarms that other criminality conspired within the pages of this policy paper may still well be in play. Lieberman himself suggests that proxy war and regime-change should proceed regardless of the so-called “nuclear deal” – with the 2009 Brookings report itself having stated that (emphasis added): …any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.  Clearly, both Brookings in 2009, and Lieberman this week have conspired to use the so-called “Iranian Nuclear Deal” as cover for betrayal and regime change.
  • For those wondering why Russia has intervened in Syria in the matter that it has, it should be plainly obvious. The US has no intention to stop in Syria. With Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya behind it, and Syria within its clutches, it is clear that Iran is next, and inevitably this global blitzkrieg will not stop until it reaches Moscow and Beijing. Even as the US adamantly denies the obvious – that is has intentionally created and is currently perpetuating Al Qaeda, the so-called “Islamic State,” and other terrorist groups in Syria, it is openly conspiring to use another army of terrorists against neighboring Iran, live before a US Senate hearing. Should the US succeed in Syria, it would not be the end of the conflict, but only the end of the beginning of a much wider world war.
Joseph Skues

Being sick in France ; French social security ; retirement in France - 0 views

www.understandfrance.org/...Sick.html

sick in france healthcare financial-oligarchs finacial-crisis OBAMA Banksters banksters

shared by Joseph Skues on 07 Aug 10 - Cached
  • the system is very efficient : the administrative cost of the health system is around 4,5% (for US private insurance companies : 10 to 13%) and 1,2% for the retirement system (vs. around 10% for most pension funds). The health system reimburses very quickly (after four days).
  • 22 Euros
  • "three best symbols of the French nation" are the flag, the health and the Marseillaise
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  • each regional organization (Caisse) is managed by a board composed 50/50 of representatives of labor unions on one side, employers associations on the other side, with the State playing the role of a referee
  • it is not accurate to call it a "socialized
  • when a family is expecting a child, it gets approximately 2,000 Euros in three installments (the first two of them corresponding to a mandatory medical visit, the third to the birth) ; then the family receives a monthly allowance till the child is 20 (for two children or more, around 100 Euros/month/child) ;
  • minimal pension (in the range of 750 Euros/month) to any person who has worked 40 years
  • For the French, it is just unthinkable that, if you lose your job, you also lose your health plan
  • This is a typical example of what the French call their "social model" and one of the few where, in my opinion, the USA could learn something from the French experience. Read my opinion about it "Socialized medicine : give me a break".
  • all companies, whatever their size, must provide their staff with an annual visit to a doctor ; in big companies it is a in-house doctor, in small companies an external doctor who comes for the annual controls
  • (otherwise, you'll be reimbursed a little less)
  • SOS Medecin tel. 01 47 07 77 77 : very reasonably priced (around 70 Euros) and efficient, a doctor in your house in less than an hour
  • Basic tips for tourists you can see any doctor (they also make house calls for a small supplement) for a cost of around 22 Euros ($ 30) but you will not be reimbursed by Social Security if you are not part of the French Social Security system you can be treated by any French hospital in case of emergency (they will talk about money AFTER treating you...) you can buy certain drugs over the counter in a pharmacy but a lot of them require a doctor's prescription ; don't be surprised if you do not find US drug brand names, you are in another country ! If your French isn't good, there are two hospitals with English-speaking staff : the American Hospital, 63 blvd Victor Hugo 92202 Neuilly, Tel. 33-(0)1 46 41 25 25 ; Email : patient@ahp-paris.com the British Hospital, 3 rue Barbès 92300 Levallois Tel. 33-(0)1 46 39 22 22 Public or private ? For a serious case, it is often wiser to go to a public hospital, especially a CHU (Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire). In case of a (real) emergency call SAMU (this is a day and night emergency service tel. 15) or les pompiers (fire-brigade) who provide 24 hour-emergency service (tel. 18). Useful numbers for emergencies (other than 15) :
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) has ranked the health system of its 191 member countries and France tops the list for providing the best overall health care (UK ranks 18 and USA ranks 37) (source : International Herald Tribune June 21,2000).
  • Health coverage by Social Security ("Sécurité Sociale") is mandatory and paid both by the employee (1/4) and the employer (3/4).
  • In the USA the Emergency staff is a driver whose job is to take you as fast as possible to the hospital, whatever your condition, in a fast ambulance. In France, the SAMU team includes a MD whose job is to do as much as he can before taking you to the hospital in a more heavily-equipped ambulance. Both ways have their pros and cons, but dont be horrified if you see an ambulance NOT moving....
  • DID YOU KNOW THAT....? In France, the maternity leave is 16 weeks minimum (of course paid 100% of the salary!), plus one month minimum if the baby is breast-fed ; "paternity" leave is two weeks ; new mothers spend 3 to 6 days in the hospital.
  • To related pages : a column of the Health system (#2), an American article on the French health system (#3), etc....
  • French doctors are not very different from American doctors, except they make much less money (three or four times?) and are probably much more accessible, less protected by a dragon-secretary.
  • All expenses are paid by the company and of course the employee does not pay a cent. The 20-minute visit includes whatever check-up seems appropriate (heart, eyes, stress, depression...). The doctor cannot prescribe medecine but can prescribe a visit to the doctor is something new that is wrong or needs a more thorough check is detected.
  • You have to pay ONE Euro more (not reimbursable) for every visit to the doctor
  • The system is threefold : Health, Family and Retirement, each of them has different structures and financing ; each of them is financially autonomous (no taxpayer's money -
  • The system is threefold : Health, Family and Retirement, each of them has different structures and financing ; each of them is financially autonomous ( no taxpayer's money
Gary Edwards

Obama's Socialism: A history of Marxist - Leftist Radicalism : Commentary Online - 0 views

www.commentarymagazine.com/...obama-s-leftism-12961

politics obama socialism

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08 - Cached
  • Even after declaring his candidacy, and despite a certain inevitable sidling rightward, Obama still reflected the presuppositions of a radical worldview. In one notable remark, he said of voters in economic distress that in their desperation they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” Chastised for his condescension, he responded: “I said something that everybody knows is true.” This was elitism of a very specific kind—the mentality of the community organizer, according to which people in the grip of “false consciousness” need to be enlightened as to the true nature of their class interests, and to the nature of their true class enemies.
  • Even the events of 9/11 could not shake Obama from the mindset that the enemy is always ourselves. The bombings, he wrote, reflected the underlying struggle—between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together; and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us. In this reading, the lessons to be learned from the actions of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta are that we must accept multiculturalism at home and share our wealth abroad.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 08
     
    Comprehensive history of Obama's socialism, and the associations that influenced him.
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