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Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Friday, April 12, 2019

Some of my tweets ... April 6 - 10




















































Posted by MariaS at 21:16 0 comments
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Monday, November 26, 2018

Did Israel Kill Yasser Arafat like it has done countless other presumed enemies


To read the transcript in full go to Did Israel Kill Yasser Arafat? Stunning Investigation Exposes Israel’s Secretive Assassination Program



 Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Ronen Bergman from writing “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” a stunning book exposing the details of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program. Israel even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent Bergman from gaining access to historical documents. Despite this, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, scouring thousands of documents and meeting with some 1,000 sources. The result is a stunning investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. We speak with Ronen Bergman about Israel’s many attempts to kill the former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and the possibility that they succeeded.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re continuing our discussion with Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, author of a stunning book on the long, secretive history of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. It’s a book that Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Bergman from writing. They even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent him from gaining access to historical documents. Despite their efforts, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, meeting with a thousand sources, from Israel political leaders and Mossad heads to the assassins themselves. He also obtained thousands of classified documents illuminating the shadowy corners of Israeli spy agencies.
AMY GOODMAN: The result is an exhaustive, illuminating investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. It looks at the way Israel’s assassination program has influenced America’s post-9/11 foreign policy under Bush as well as President Obama.
Ronen Bergman writes on the book’s prologue, “Nowadays, when the same kind of extrajudicial killing that Israel has used for decades is being used daily by America against its enemies, it is appropriate … to study the high moral price that has been paid, for the use of such power.”
Ronen Bergman, we thank you for staying with us. Again, we’re getting a number of hits on this Tel Aviv satellite, so we’re going to try to stick with you as long as we can hear you. But in the note on your sources at the beginning of your book, you talk about how difficult it was to get access. You say a petition to the Supreme Court for an order forcing compliance with the law, that was to get you information, was dragged out over years with the complicity of the court, ended with nothing but an amendment to the law itself. The secrecy provisions were extended from 50 to 70 years—longer than the history of the state. Many in Shin Bet and Mossad were warned not to speak to you. How did you get access to this information, and what did you find?...............
Posted by MariaS at 15:25 0 comments
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Thursday, January 11, 2018

The ungodly deeds of the supposedly "God's Chosen People"


Norman Finkelstein on what's happening to Palestinians at the hands of the descendants of WW2 holocaust Jews.

From  TheRealNews   where you will find the rest.
“Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom”: Norman Finkelstein on the Many Lies Perpetuated About Gaza


From Democracy Now which gave me an impression that
they didn't want to hear the bare naked facts from Finkelstein. Wonder why.

Posted by MariaS at 19:48 0 comments
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Saturday, July 1, 2017

Young American Jews not brainwashed by West's MSM and their MSM-owning parents, are coming awake ...



which would mean there would be less warmongers on our planet.  Yippeee !!

Jonathan Cook at GlobalResearch
Israels Efforts to Hide Palestinians from View no Longer Fools Young American Jews
Few books on Palestinian history become bestsellers. But one, titled A History of the Palestinian People: From Ancient Times to the Modern Era, managed to rocket to the top of Amazon’s charts this month.

Its author, Assaf Voll, an Israeli academic, claims to have reviewed “thousands of sources” to explain “the Palestinian people’s unique contribution to the world and to humanity”.

However, when Amazon realised all the book’s 130 pages were blank, it hurriedly excised the title from its site. But not before hundreds of customers paid nearly $10 to enjoy the puerile joke. Speaking on Israeli radio, Voll observed:

    “Someone needs to tell them [the Palestinians] the truth, even if it hurts.”

A History of the Palestinian People has famous antecedents. In 1969, Golda Meir, then Israel’s prime minister, declared to the world:

    “There were no such thing as Palestinians.”

Fifteen years later, a book called From Time Immemorial won acclaim from scholars and newspapers across the United States. It argued that the Palestinians were not the native people of Palestine, but recent economic migrants taking advantage of advances made by the Ottoman Empire.

A talented Jewish doctoral student, Norman Finkelstein, exposed the book as a fraud and it was gradually forgotten.

An Israeli official called Peters in 2015, shortly before her death, to thank her on behalf of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “for all she had done for Israel”. 

Both Voll and Peters were only echoing Israel’s popular historical narrative. In Israeli museums, the Palestinians’ presence is obscured with cryptic references to an “Ottoman” period. Like the Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks and British, the Ottomans are presented as temporary occupiers. Israeli politicians and media regularly speak of modern Palestinians as squatters and trespassers.

Israelis have been only too happy to make the Palestinians vanish. Who needs to feel guilty about the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of “Arabs” in 1948, or about Israel’s brutal domination of millions more for half a century in the occupied territories, if they had no right to be there in the first place?.....
Posted by MariaS at 17:47 0 comments
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Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Wanna know the real reason why the powers-that-be bombed Nagasaki?


This is a MUST READ
 
James Perloff at his blog
Book Review: David J. Dionisi, Atomic Bomb Secrets

......So why did Truman’s controllers order Japan’s nuclear bombing? As I have grown increasingly aware of the ruthless Talmudic psychopathology of the Powers that Be, I cynically confided to friends, “I think they enjoyed it.” But after discovering David Dionisi’s Atomic Bomb Secrets, we can be much more specific. This well-written, 217-page gem, documented with 496 end-notes, blows the lid off the sordid episode.

A ground-breaking detail I learned from Dionisi is the A-bomb’s role in Korea’s division into North and South. I’ve discussed the artificial justification for this division elsewhere, but Dionisi elaborates that Japanese scientists were developing their own atomic bomb. After initial research in Japan, the project was transferred to the Konan region of northern Korea (then a Japanese protectorate). This area was selected for multiple reasons: availability of uranium, the power the Chosin dams could generate, and (perhaps most importantly) keeping away from American bombers.

Giving the Soviet Union postwar control of North Korea (allegedly its reward for a mere five-days’ participation in the Pacific War) now makes far more sense. Not only was the cabal handing Stalin the plans and materials for the atomic bomb, they were giving him Japan’s installations for making one.

But Dionisi solves much more, especially the mystery of why Nagasaki was targeted.

After Christianity first reached Japan in the 16th century, it faced growing pains, including times of severe persecution, but gradually became established, centered in Nagasaki, which became nicknamed the “Japanese Vatican.” According to Dionisi’s research, in 1945 some 50,000 Nagasaki residents were Christians.

After the Enola Gay dropped the “Little Boy” bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, the plane named Bock’s Car (also written bockscar) carried the “Fat Man” bomb to Japan on August 9. Most of the 12-man crew believed their objective was Kokura, and a secondary target was only to be selected if weather interfered. Dionisi does much to debunk the “poor visibility” claim long used to justify the plane’s rerouting to Nagasaki.

The “Fat Man” bomb from Bock’s Car detonated directly over Urakami Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the entire Orient. At Nagasaki (250,000 residents), 73,844 were killed, 74,909 injured, and more than 120,000 suffered radiation effects...........
Posted by MariaS at 17:27 0 comments
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Sunday, July 10, 2016

News, Views and Opinions from the Alternative Media .... Week ending July 10


Peter Van Buren at Antiwar
Why it Matters the Dallas Police Used a Drone To Kill Someone in America

The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman who killed five officers with a tactic that is unprecedented: it blew him up using a robot.

This represents the first time in American history that a drone (wheels for now, maybe wings later) was used to kill an American citizen on American soil.

I get it, I get it.
The Dallas sniper had killed five cops. He was prepared to kill as many more as he could. He was in a standoff with police, and negotiations had broken down. The Supreme Court has made it clear that in cases such as this, the due process clause (i.e., a trial before execution in this instance) does not apply. If not for the robot bomb, the Dallas police would have eventually shot the sniper anyway. They were fully in their legal rights to kill him. None of those issues are in contention. I am not suggesting in any way the cops should have invited the sniper out for tea.

I am suggesting we stop and realize that in 2016 the police used a robot to send in an explosive to blow a person up. I am unaware that such a thing has happened in Russia, North Korea, China, Iran or other places where the rule of law is held by the few in power.

Weapons of War
The robot represents a significant escalation in the tools law enforcement use on the streets of America. Another weapon of war has come home from ....

Another milestone in our journey to find life other than our own


Catherine Austin Fitts at SolariReport
The Saker hears the drumbeats of war.
On this week’s Solari Report, Saker and I discuss his latest, A Russian Warning co-authored with Dmitri Orlov and Dr. Eugenia V Gurevich:

“We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak—all based on no evidence. But we—knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military, cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the US, to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this: If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.”

The Saker gives us an update on the Ukraine and the impact, along with events in the Middle East and US and European sanctions, on the Russian economy. We cover the ancient history of tensions between Russia and the Western nations and revisit why the Russian people are so supportive of Putin’s efforts to resist accommodation. Saker suggests some of the actions we can each take to reduce the chances of war.

Our discussion raises important questions about the shift to a multi-polar world. If the US offers countries two options – submit to multinational corporate control or be destroyed – it is only a matter of time before the world shifts into a deflationary spiral or war. Where are the incentives to cooperate and honor agreements that are the basis of global economic growth?...

Hopefully Dr Kelli Ward will replace the despicable warmonger McCain.


Christina Lin at AsiaTimes
Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s pipeline wars in Yemen and Syria 

Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of the war in Yemen, at considerable cost in blood and treasure, is a literal affirmation of the term “backdoor strategy.” However, both the “door” and the actual contours of that strategy remain submerged beneath the murky waters of Mideast politics.

In June 2015, a senior advisor on Yemen in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joke Buringa, wrote an article regarding Saudi Arabia’s interest in building an oil pipeline through Yemen. Her piece underscored the energy geopolitics behind Riyadh’s bombing campaign over the past year.

Saudi oil pipeline through Yemen’s Hadramaut

In her article entitled “Divide and Rule: Saudi Arabia, Oil and Yemen,” Buringa revealed that the Saudis fear an Iranian blockade of the Hormuz Strait, and were seeking pipelines through Yemen. This would provide Riyadh with direct access to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean to reach the Asian market(1)

Arabpipeline
Middle East Eye columnist Nafeez Ahmed, citing a 2008 State Department cable from Wikileaks, has confirmed the Saudi interest in building a pipeline that is “wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramawt to a port on the Gulf of Aden.”[2]

Hadramaut is Yemen’s wealthiest governorate that counts 4 of the 26 million population, 50% of Yemen’s landmass, 80% of its oil exports, a sufficient water supply, and gold reserve worth $4 billion.

When Iran and Oman signed an agreement for a gas pipeline in 2014, this increased Riyadh’s distrust of Oman and increased the attractiveness of the Hadramaut pipeline option in Yemen. In February 2015 when the Houthis took control of the government, Riyadh began its bombing campaign the following month....

On the Medina attacks aka Jihadis going home to roost


From SputnikNews
Eight Dead as Terror Attacks Strike Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Qatif City
Two time synchronized suicide attacks have been reported near the el-Omran Shia mosque in Qatif City and near the Prophet Muhammad's mosque in Medina. Residents report hearing multiple explosions at each location. Tasnim News Agency confirmed six innocent people died in the blasts including two security officers and four pilgrims. Separately, Saudi's Arabiya TV confirmed at least two terrorists died in suicide blasts. The mosque is Islam's second holiest site and one of the largest mosques in the world.

From NYBooks (this  is from about a few months ago)
The Indonesian Massacre: What Did the US Know? by Margaret Scott

.....The Indonesian massacre was a critical moment in the cold war. In the early morning of October 1,1965, six Indonesian generals were killed by a group of junior officers who claimed they were forestalling a takeover by a CIA-backed “Council of Generals.” The putsch was poorly planned and collapsed in twenty-four hours. At the time, Indonesia was led by the leftist, romantic revolutionary-turned-autocrat Sukarno, and also had the third largest Communist Party in the world, the PKI, with some 3 million members. The Indonesian Army and the US government quickly blamed the botched coup on the PKI. (There is still much we don’t know about these events, but the head of the PKI, D. N. Aidit, was at least aware of the coup attempt; he was killed shortly thereafter by the army.) Seizing on an opportunity to unseat Sukarno and roll back communism, the army unleashed a campaign of violence in which perhaps five hundred thousand or perhaps one million suspected Communists were killed—no one knows for sure.

The assassination of the six generals, and fabricated stories that they had been tortured by Communist women, were used to stir up anti-Communist sentiment. Within days, the army and army-affiliated militias spread out across the archipelago, arresting anyone who was associated with the PKI and its many labor and farmer organizations. Then, mostly at night, those arrested were taken out and shot, beheaded, or stabbed to death. The army’s militias did most of the killings, and their members ranged from gangsters to young men who belonged to the country’s two largest Muslim organizations. The victims were thrown in mass graves or into rivers, and there are harrowing stories of rivers in Java, Sumatra, and Bali so filled with bodies that the water turned red.

For the Lyndon Johnson administration, the bloodbath was a momentous victory, shifting the balance of power in Southeast Asia. But for many Indonesians it was a terrifying time. In addition to those murdered, hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned, and their families and the families of the victims were formally shunned. When the killings ended, Indonesians lived under the military rule of General Suharto, who promoted the founding myth that the army saved the nation from the atheist Communists. No one talked about what had happened.

In 1967, a six-year-old Obama moved with his mother, Ann Dunham, to Jakarta as Suharto consolidated his jackboot rule. “Innuendo, half-whispered asides; that’s how she found out that we had arrived in Djakarta less than a year after one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times,” Obama writes in his memoir, Dreams from My Father. “The idea frightened her, the notion that history could be swallowed up so completely.”.....

Gilad Atzmon at his blog
Chilcot, Israel and the Lobby

It took seven years for Sir Chilcot and his team to reach a set of conclusions that every Brit capable of thought understood back in November, 2003.

The inquiry produced a damning assessment of Blair’s conduct as well as the British military. But the Chilcot Inquiry failed to expose the crucial close ties between Blair’s criminal war, the Jewish Lobby and Israel.

At the time Britain entered the criminal war against Iraq, Blair’s chief funders were Lord ‘cashpoint’ Levy and the LFI (Labour Friends of Israel). The prime advocates for the immoral interventionist war within the British press were Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen. The attorney general that gave the green light for the war was Lord Goldsmith.

In 2008 The Guardian revealed that the “Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier.” Israel was conspicuously engaged in the vast production of WMDs. If Britain and America had any genuine concerns about WMDs, bombing Tel Aviv would have been the way to go.

In 2003 some intelligence experts insisted that the Iraq’s WMD dossier was initially produced in Tel Aviv and only ‘sexed up’ in London.

Since the Iraq war, the same Jewish Lobby has mounted enormous pressure on western governments, promoting more Zio-centic interventionist wars in Syria, Libya and Iran. So why did the Chilcot Inquiry fail to address this topic?

This crucial failure by Chilcot was to be expected. In 2010, highly respected ....

From CorbettReport
Interview 1185 – Peter Kirby Explains the New Manhattan Project

Peter Kirby is the author of the new book Chemtrails Exposed: A New Manhattan Project. Today we tackle the two questions most frequently asked by chemtrail skeptics: would the government do something like this and could they do something like this. We also talk about John Brennan’s recent call for stratospheric aerosol injection and a 2016 study on the health effects of stratospheric aerosols.


From RT
‘Sorry’ state of affairs: Adultery site Ashley Madison under FTC investigation
Executives of Ashley Madison, the website that offers extramarital affairs, say the parent company, Avid Life Media, is under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission. They hint that the site’s use of “fembots” may be the probe’s focus.

Following the August 2015 massive data breach of the personal information of some 39 million users of Ashley Madison, the notorious dating website for cheaters, parent company Avid Life Media appointed a new team to salvage the company's reputation and improve security.
But now, according to a Reuters interview on Tuesday with Ashley Madison chief executive Rob Segal and president James Millership, Avid Life is facing an inquiry from federal trade regulators.

While acknowledging the FTC probe, Segal failed to share the details of the investigation. He stressed that Avid began cooperating with the feds last August.

The leading theory behind the government probe is that the website used “fembots” to lure in male customers, by artificially beefing up the female ratio in chat rooms.......

Claire Bernish at FreeThoughtProject
Americans Have No “Independence” to Celebrate — What July 4th Has Become in a Police State
We have failed, as a nation, the experiment intended by the founders to limit the size of government and the scope of tyrannical rule — as if that could come as a shocker, given our exclusionary founding based in genocide and the systematic enslavement of an entire population would dictate.

Perhaps the romantic love affair America claimed to have with democracy — through the vehicle of a constitutional republic — amounted thus to so much farce, or at least misguided hope. When the people’s call to terminate British rule in favor of popular governance, ignited by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, ultimately led to a government whose very framework ensures elitist control, that failure, again, can hardly be surprising.

It’s Independence Day; though through carefully crafted semantics over the years, the significance of the day has been truncated to the uniquely strange celebration of a date — a telling bit of propaganda, itself.

How did we veer so severely off course? How did the summary call for revolution — based in shirking the twins of monarchical control and tyrannical over-governance — land all of us in a modern police state empire guilty of crimes against civilians domestically and worldwide?

Scholars argue the democracy-based constitutional republic that so defined America has since birthed an oligarchy; however, the incestuous marriage of the monied class consistently in power and profit-crazed corporate interests would best be described a corporatist plutocracy.

For the fetters of imperialism-driven, police-state corporatism to impart this stranglehold, the populace had to take one hell of a nap — akin, actually, to democratic dereliction of duty.

Consider the complacency necessary to abide....

F. William Engdahl at Journal-Neo
Russia’s Achilles Heel – Reflections from St. Petersburg

For three days this month, June 16-18, I had the opportunity to participate as a panelist in the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. I’ve been in Russia many times since the Ukraine US-backed coup d’état of February 2014, and the deliberate escalations of NATO military and economic tensions and sanctions against the Russian Federation. This year’s forum, my second as participant, gave me a rare opportunity to speak with leading representatives from every sector of the Russian economy- from CEOs of the energy sector to the Russian Railways to the national Russia Grid electricity provider to numerous small and mid-sized businessmen, to a wide range of economists. It sharpened my perception of just how precarious the situation of Russia today is.

What became clearer to me in the course of the three days of discussions in St Petersburg is precisely how vulnerable Russia is. Her Achilles Heel is the reigning ideology that controls every key economic post of the Government of the Russian Federation under Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Under the terms of the Russian Constitution adopted in the chaos of the Yeltsin years and enormously influenced, if not literally drafted, by Russia’s foreign IMF advisers, economic policy is the portfolio responsibility of the Prime Minister and his various ministers of Economics, Finance and so forth. The Russian President, today Vladimir Putin, is responsible for defense and foreign policy.

Making the job virtually impossible of reviving credit flows to fuel genuine real investment in urgently needed infrastructure across the vast land expanse of Russia is the Central Bank of Russia. The Central Bank of Russia was given....

Matt Agorist The Free Thought Project
....Random acts of violence will only serve to undo what little progress those of us in the peaceful movement have accomplished and, in fact, will reverse it and prevent any future progress.

Violently attacking the government creates victims out of the ones we are trying to expose as criminals.

Those who initiate and support such violence will be complicit in creating the hellish police state that will inevitably ensue as a consequence of their actions.

It will start a war in which the people are the enemy.

We can simply look back to 9-11 as an example of what is to come if this violence continues.

Prior to 9-11 the TSA did not exist, indefinite detention did not exist, the NSA did not spy on American citizens, the police weren't given armored assault vehicles, and Americans could not be assassinated without trial.

If these acts of aggressive violence against the state continue, we can expect to see what little civil liberties are left to be whisked away in the name of protection from the 'domestic terror threat.'

We can expect to see peaceful activists rounded up and detained indefinitely. We can expect to see homes raided of individuals who are speaking out against the state. We will see more and more checkpoints, and less and less unmolested travel.

If you think that the American people can somehow win in a war against the military industrial complex that the US has built up in the last decade and a half, you are seriously delusional.

Your AR-15 will do nothing against thermal imaging predator drones equipped with Raytheon's small tactical munitions designed for blowing up single homes. They will not stop the MRAP as it plows through your front door. No matter how you slice it, the most well-armed American citizen is no match for the hundreds of billions spent annually by the US on warfare. ...

From MintPress
Police Already Made 2016 Deadlier Than 2015 By The End Of June

Mental illness was a known factor in almost a quarter of cases in which people were fatally shot by police so far this year, according to The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fatal Force project.

As controversy continues to swirl around the issue of police violence in the United States, the media continues to be our main source of data about the scope of the problem.

The Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police as part of its Fatal Force project, reports that there have already been 20 more fatal shootings this year compared to the same period of 2015.

In April, the Post’s Fatal Force project won a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most prestigious award, in the national reporting category. The project originated when Post staff realized that no government agency tracks police violence, reported Paul Farhi:
“After covering several high-profile incidents involving the killings of civilians by police officers in 2014, Washington Post staff writer Wesley Lowery was surprised to discover that there were no official statistics about such fatalities. So Lowery pitched an idea to his editors: The newspaper, he suggested, should collect the information itself and analyze it for patterns in law enforcement.”

While the FBI does track police killings, reporting by departments remains strictly voluntary, even despite what the Guardian’s Jon Swaine described in 2015 as a long-running “debate about why the American government has failed so badly to monitor this issue of national importance.”....

....Police are increasingly showing up as the first responders in emergency calls involving the mentally ill, and those encounters all too frequently turn violent or even fatal. Last July, Denver erupted in protest when police fatally shot Paul Castaway, a mentally ill Native American man, as he held a knife to his own neck in a crowded trailer park.....

Rori Donaghy at MiddleEastEye
Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam 'released from prison in Libya

Saif al-Islam was reportedly released in April by his Libyan captors despite being sentenced to death by a court in 2015
The most prominent son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi appears to have been released from prison, according to reports on Wednesday.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was sentenced to death by firing squad last year, and he has been widely reported as imprisoned in the western Libyan town of Zintan.

However, on Wednesday, Gaddafi’s lawyer Karim Khan told France 24 that his client was in fact released on 12 April and is “well and safe in Libya”.

Khan, who was appointed as Gaddafi's lawyer on 27 June, said his client was released as part of an amnesty passed last year by the House of Representatives, which was Libya’s internationally recognised government until the UN-backed Government of National Accord took charge earlier this year.

Gaddafi’s current whereabouts are unknown and his lawyer did not say whether he has spoken to his client since the reported release....

....Mohamed Eljarh, Libyan analyst at the Atlantic Council, told MEE Gaddafi is still in Zintan, but it is not clear whether or not he has been freed from detention.

“I have spoken to people from Zintan and they said [Gaddafi] is still in Zintan and under their protection,” he said by phone from the capital Tripoli. “They did not say if he is still captive or free to go.”....

Matt Agorist at FreeThoughtProject
Fargo, ND — For a tiny bit of pot, cops sent a young college student to his death in their immoral pursuit of the war on drugs.

Andrew Sadek, a top college student in North Dakota, was caught selling $80 worth of marijuana. Because this pot was sold on a school campus, police sought to charge Sadek with serious felonies. They threatened him with 40 years in prison and a $40,000 fine — for a plant.

However, police had no intention of seeking those charges, as they knew they could force Sadek to become a snitch for them.

The interrogation room video shows Chief Jason Weber telling the dejected Andrew, who lost his older brother in a train wreck, that he faces up to 40 years in jail. Weber, experienced in deception, tells Andrew that he can “help himself” by becoming a confidential informant.

Andrew had to buy drugs from three other people to preserve his freedom, and keep everything an absolute secret. With no training or protection, Sadek was sent to his death by cops who couldn’t care less.

After Andrew went missing, family and friends pleaded on camera for his return and held prayer vigils, but he never returned. Andrew was found dead in a river with a bullet through his head and his backpack full of rocks.

Sadek’s parents filed a lawsuit last week, exactly two years after their son was found.

According to the AP, an autopsy concluded Sadek died of a gunshot wound...

Martin Berger at Journal-Neo
US Bases – the Dangerous Weapon of Western-style Democracy

As it has been noted by American analysts, war defines the United States. Even despite the fact that the United States has not officially declared war against any other state since 1942, and the fact that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in the last decade US troops have invaded the territories of numerous states and have been steadily increasing their presence abroad.

US military expenditures exceed the expenditures of the next nine countries following the US, with 598 billion dollars, 54 per cent of discretionary spending, in fiscal year 2015.

95% of all overseas military installations globally are American, many of them are designed to ensure “protection” from external threats. At the same time, garrisons of these bases themselves create new threats, becoming a primary cause of increased civil discontent, radicalism, wars and instability. The Nation would report:
While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet inaround 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.

It’s mind boggling that more than a quarter-million American troops are stationed at military bases around the world. In Europe the US has up to 75,000 battle-capable servicemen, not counting technical staff and supplies, which are usually represented by local civilian contractors (85%). In this region the US has the most significant military presence in Germany, with nearly 50,000 men stationed in this country.

The total cost of maintaining these bases, according to RAND Corporation estimates, approaches 156 billion dollars annually, and American taxpayers are paying an average of 40,000 dollars a year for the stationing of a single US soldier abroad.

However, those installations haven’t been transformed in the...

From AnswerCoalition
ANSWER Coalition joining protests at the DNC and RNC

The ANSWER Coalition will be present at a wide range of protest activities taking place during both the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18-21, and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Penn., July 25-28. Organizing is well underway in both cities, and this page will be updated once event specifics are finalized.

For the last seven and a half years, the Democratic Party has blatantly ignored its anti-war campaign promises and in fact expanded U.S. wars of aggression. In Honduras, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines and so many other countries, U.S. imperialism has inflicted tremendous suffering under a Democratic president. Racism and police brutality persist in all the big cities of the country, despite the fact that these are virtually all run by Democratic Party machines.....

David Galland and Stephen McBride at GarretGalland (This is a MUST READ in entirety)
How George Soros Singlehandedly Created the European Refugee Crisis - And Why

George Soros is trading again.

...Today, Soros’s net worth stands at $23 billion. Since taking a back seat in his company, Soros Fund Management, in 2000, Soros has been focusing on his philanthropic efforts, which he carries out through the Open Society Foundations he founded in 1993.

So who does he donate to, and what causes does he support?

During the 1980s and 1990s, Soros used his extraordinary wealth to bankroll and fund revolutions in dozens of European nations, including Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. He achieved this by funneling money to political opposition parties, publishing houses, and independent media in these nations.

If you wonder why Soros meddled in these nations’ affairs, part of the answer may lie in the fact that during and after the chaos, he invested heavily in assets in each of the respective countries....

...Why has Soros donated so much capital and effort to these organizations? For one simple reason: to buy political power.

Democratic politicians who go against the progressive narrative will see their funding cut and be attacked in media outlets such as Media Matters, which also directly contribute to mainstream sites such as NBC, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times.

Apart from the $5 billion Soros’s foundation has donated to groups like those cited above, he has also made huge contributions to the Democratic Party and its most prominent members, like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and of course Bill and Hillary Clinton....

...Soros began supporting Hillary Clinton’s current presidential run in 2013, taking a senior role in the “Ready for Hillary” group. Since then, Soros has donated over $15 million to pro-Clinton groups and Super PACs.

More recently, Soros has given more than $33 million to the Black Lives Matter group, which has been involved in outbreaks of social unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015. Both of these incidents contributed to a worsening of race relations across America....

...Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders. This has recently been shown very clearly with his funding of the European refugee crisis....

From description at YouTube vid:
Thousands of protesters gathered in central Athens on Thursday to condemn the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) summit currently taking place in Warsaw. The summit unites heads of state and heads of government of the NATO countries in Warsaw on July 8th and 9th.


From LarouchePac
US Conference of Mayors Denounces Obama's Nuclear War Provocations  

The US Conference of Mayors, in its annual meeting from June 24-27 in Indianapolis, issued a scathing attack on the Obama Administration, directly targeting the massive NATO exercises now taking place on Russia's border, Obama's $1 trillion modernization of nuclear weapons, his failure to take significant action to reduce nuclear weapons, his belligerent policy toward Russia and China, and his disregard for the drastic collapse within the US of basic infrastructure and the general welfare of the people. It is of note that not one major US newspaper even reported this action.

The Mayors Conference took place at the same time as an historic Schiller Institute Conference in Berlin, in which Helga Zepp-LaRouche began her keynote speech saying that
we are experiencing an absolutely unprecedented, systemic and existential crisis of civilization. We have the coincidence of a war danger, where NATO is confronting Russia in a very, very aggressive fashion — which could lead to a Third World War. We have a U.S. confrontation against China in the South China Sea. We have the danger of a new 2008 type of financial crisis, which could blow up the financial system.

The Mayors' Resolution, while offering feint praise for Obama's visit to Hiroshima and his conclusion of a deal with Iran, then states:
At the same time, the Obama Administration has reduced the U.S. nuclear stockpile less than any post-Cold War presidency and has laid the groundwork for the United States to spend one trillion dollars over the next three decades to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads, production facilities, delivery systems, and command and control, and the other nuclear-armed states are following suit.... The nuclear-armed countries are edging ever closer to direct military confrontation in conflict zones around the world, and the largest NATO war games in decades, involving 14,000 U.S. troops, and activation of U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe are fueling growing tensions between nuclear-armed giants, and according to former Defense Secretary William Perry: `The probability of a nuclear calamity is higher today, I believe, that it was during the cold war.'

It directly contrasts this danger and ....

Greg Hunter talks to Michael Krieger, founder of LibertyBlitzkrieg.com.


Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
MH-17 Probe’s Torture-Implicated Ally

A senior United Nations official has accused Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service of frustrating U.N. investigations into its alleged role in torture and other war crimes, even as the SBU has been allowed to guide the international investigation into the shooting down of Malaysia Airline Flight 17 for nearly two years.

On June 29, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic criticized various “armed groups” in Ukraine for engaging in torture and arbitrary detention, adding that “The Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) is also not always providing access to all places where detainees may be kept. … OHCHR (the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights) also continues to receive accounts about torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary and incommunicado detention by the SBU, especially in the conflict zone.

“Torture and threats to members of the families, including sexual threats, are never justifiable, and perpetrators will be held to account sooner or later. … War crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of human rights cannot be the subject of an amnesty.”

In late May, U.N. inspectors called off their Ukraine torture investigation because the SBU denied the team access to detention facilities where human rights groups had found evidence of torture.

“This denial of access is in breach of Ukraine’s obligations as a State party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture,” according to the U.N. statement at the time. Sir Malcolm Evans, head of the four-member U.N. delegation, said: “It has meant that we have not been able to visit some places where we have heard numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained and where torture or ill-treatment may have occurred.”

Yet, the SBU, which is also responsible for protecting state secrets, has strongly influenced the direction of the supposedly Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team trying to determine who was responsible for shooting down MH-17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing 298 people.

Conflict of Interest

Although Ukrainian military units are among the logical suspects in the case, Ukraine was made ....

....Immediately after the shoot-down, the U.S. government sought to pin the blame on ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and their Russian government backers, a charge that was crucial to getting the European Union to adopt economic sanctions against Russia. But – as more evidence emerged – the possible role of a Ukrainian military unit became more plausible.

According to the Dutch intelligence service in a report released last October, the only anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, capable of hitting a plane flying at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian military.....

Cynthia Kroet at Politico
German police clash with squatters in Berlin district
The incident was the most violent in the past five years, authorities said.
At least 123 police officers were injured on Sunday in clashes with left-wing youth over the redevelopment of the Friedrichshain district in Berlin, authorities said.
The incident — the most violent one in the past five years — occured after weeks of tensions around a building, occupied by a group of squatters....



From TelsurTV July 6
Rousseff Legal Team Argues Before Senate Impeachment Hearing 

Senators are hearing legal arguments from Dilma Rousseff’s defense team on Wednesday.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff presented her written defense to a Senate impeachment trial Wednesday, denouncing the proceedings as a farce and saying her alleged crimes were no more than "routine acts of budgetary management."

"Everybody knows that you are judging an honest woman, a public servant dedicated to just causes," the suspended leftist leader said in a document read aloud by her lawyer and former Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo. "I've honored those who voted for me."

Her defense made clear she is sticking to the strategy of refuting the impeachment process as a soft "coup" led by her one-time vice-president Michel Temer, a conservative who has taken over since mid-May when the Senate voted to try Rousseff.

"What most hurts right now is the injustice," Rousseff said. "What hurts most is to perceive that I am the victim of a judicial and political farce."

Rousseff said she believes she is being targeted because she "never gave in to blackmail. I never accepted ... the backroom deals so well known in the traditional politics of our country." ....

From AllGov
Jewish Groups Pay to Send U.S. Police to Train in Israel  

The militarization of American police forces hasn’t been paid for by just the federal government. Pro-Israel groups in the U.S. have also played a role by financing trips for hundreds of law enforcement officers to travel to the Middle East for counterterrorism training, according to Ali Winston, a contributor to the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

Monies provided by such groups as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have made it possible for “at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California” to attend privately funded seminars in Israel since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Winston discovered.

There, they have learned how Israeli security forces deal with demonstrators and armed threats by terrorists. The seminars include field trips to such sites as military installations, surveillance outposts, and checkpoints at the West Bank and the Israeli-Egyptian border. The training includes spending time observing operations conducted by Israel’s Border Patrol, Defense Forces, national police and intelligence services.

U.S. police officials who have undergone such training have come from the Los Angeles and New York police departments, the New York and New Jersey Port Authority Police Department, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. The fact that the former chief of Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department trained in Israel in 2011 recently came to light following the well-armed police response to protestors in St. Louis-based Ferguson.

Israeli training of U.S. police has also influenced the type of equipment being used. Security forces from both countries are now using some identical gear, including stun and tear gas grenades manufactured by the same U.S. companies—Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. A long-range “sound rifle” that emits ear-shattering noise to disperse crowds, which was used against 2005 West Bank protestors, was also used in the recent police action against protestors in Ferguson......

From SputnikNews
Daesh Terrorists Shoot Down Helicopter Near Palmyra: Russian Pilots Killed

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Daesh terrorists shot down a helicopter near Syria's Palmyra, killing two Russian military instructor pilots.

On July 8, Russian military instructor pilots conducted a test flight of a Syrian Mi-25 helicopter (export version of the Mi-24 helicopter), when it received a request from the Syrian authorities to carry out airstrikes against a large group of Daesh terrorists advancing to the east of Palmyra, the ministry said....

From RonPaulInstitute
Ron Paul on the Drug War, Federal Reserve, and Killing of Dallas Cops

To understand the conditions in America that can contribute to tensions with police and even potentially individuals being motivated to kill cops as occurred in Dallas, Texas on Thursday, it is important that people look at the United States government’s war on drugs and the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul Institute Chairman Ron Paul presented this argument in a recent Fox Business interview with host Deirdre Bolton.

When asked by Bolton to name “one measure” that Paul thinks could alleviate some the racial or class tensions in America, Paul responded with two. First, Paul suggested, end the war on drugs, and, second, end the Fed.

Regarding the drug war, Paul commented that “the judicial system is all messed up as a consequence of our drug laws.” Paul continued that “the judicial system is unfair to minorities because of the way we enforce our drug laws and mandatory minimums.”

Continuing on to the Federal Reserve, Paul explained that “the economy gets messed up because of the Federal Reserve System and monetary policy.”

Paul further suggests in the interview that, when the situation is “boiling over” in part due to the drug war and Federal Reserve actions, then instances of abuses of power by police can become the excuse for someone to seek to indiscriminately kill cops.....

Wayne Madsen at StrategicCulture
A Global Exit: Secessions and Breakups Occurring Everywhere

he globalist elites are clearly worried. The Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom was believed by the elites and their media to be heading for the UK remaining in the European Union. The political prognosticators and television chattering class were dead wrong. The UK is exiting the globalists’ top experiment for global governance, the increasingly-federalist European Union, and other members are poised to follow with their own exit referenda and withdrawal from a postwar monstrosity crafted in the 1940s and 1950s by industrialists, bankers, and outright fascists.

The globalists have reacted to Brexit by staging summit meetings intended to demonstrate that the goal of globalization continues unabated. The «Three Amigos Summit» held at the end of June in Ottawa was a lame attempt to continue with policies that advance open borders, «free trade», and eventual political union. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the occasion to announce that Canada was dropping visa requirements for Mexican nationals. That was music to the ears of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has been a bitter critic of US Republican presidential standard bearer Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the US-Mexican border. President Barack Obama used the summit to push for another globalization contrivance, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which also includes Mexico and Canada. All three leaders spoke of an increasing «union» between their countries. Obama, Trudeau, and Pena Nieto are pushing against a global popular push for decentralization,
not more political federalization among nations and borderless political unions.....

The vid below from  WeAreChange  


From RussiaInsider ... Source: Vladimir Komilov of Vzglyad,Russian online gazette
The Kiev Matrix Doesn’t Work in Dallas

During the protests in Dallas, a former soldier opened fire at the police, killing five.

The same thing happened two and a half years ago in Kiev, when a hundred people, including riot policemen, were killed by snipers.  The United States called them ‘democratic protests’.

But in the Kiev version, Victoria Nuland came to greet the organizers of the slaughter encouraging them to drive the police out of the city. 

Then they should have assigned this organizer to the position either of the Minister of Internal Affairs, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Somehow,  the ‘Ukrainian matrix’ doesn’t work in Dallas.....

From TelesurTV
Portugal Wins Euro Cup For 1st Time

"We represented Portugal, a beautiful country of immigrants and we represent every one of them. This goes out to them," Portugal defender Pepe said.

Substitute Eder's thunderous finish deep into extra time secured Portugal's first European Championship title after they overcame the early loss of Cristiano Ronaldo to snatch a 1-0 smash-and-grab victory over hosts France Sunday.
Eder picked the perfect moment to score his first competitive goal for his country, marauding forward before letting fly with a bullet shot from 25 meters in the 109th minute.

It was a cruel blow for France, who had dominated the match and squandered a number of chances in front of their devastated home support, that had arrived at the Stade de France hoping to celebrate a third European crown.

The trophy was lifted by Ronaldo, who broke down in tears at the final whistle but whose game had come to a frustrating end after 24 minutes when he was carried crying from the pitch on a stretcher with a knee injury. ....
Posted by MariaS at 23:04 0 comments
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Sunday, April 17, 2016

Articles from the Alternative Media ...


with the exception of the last link.

From AlMonitor
Turkey denies claims it fired on fleeing Syrians

Turkey on Sunday denied claims that its military opened fire on Syrian refugees fleeing clashes between Islamic State group jihadists and rebels in northern Syria.
Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Turkish border guards of shooting at the refugees as they approached the border in Syria's Aleppo province....

From TelSur
Rosario Dawson Arrested,
 Sanders Tax Returns Show Modest Income
Cops cuffed Dawson during the Democracy Spring protests, and a report shows that Clinton made more in hours than Sanders in an entire year.

Actress and pro-Bernie Sanders activist Rosario Dawson has been arrested on Friday night, pop culture website TMZ reports.

Dawson was among about a dozen people arrested at the Democracy Spring rally going on in Washington, D.C.....

From Al Monitor
Why Israel is staying silent on Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict

Azerbaijan and Israel are strategic allies. I had the privilege of laying the foundations for that alliance in 1993, shortly after Azerbaijan obtained independence for the second time. The first time was in 1918, when the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic became the first secular Muslim republic in history.

At the beginning of April, fierce fighting erupted between the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies in the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. A tenuous cease-fire has since been declared. As in any region entangled in a complex web of international interests, the international community is expected to play a major role in the short- and long-term future of this strip of land. Now, however, when Azerbaijan needs all the diplomatic help it can muster, Israel is not rushing to its aid.

The alliance between the two countries has a firm basis in geopolitical realpolitik. Azerbaijan takes special care to maintain its status as a secular state, while its two large neighbors, Turkey and Iran, are best characterized as Islamist regimes with imperial ambitions. Iran especially has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that a country on its border, particularly one with a majority Shiite population, maintains a modern Western, secular lifestyle. Azerbaijan also takes care to uphold a cautious policy of neutrality toward the two regional powerbrokers, Turkey and Russia, even while Ankara and Moscow are engaged in a heated diplomatic, near military, conflict....

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon

If there were any doubts that Hillary Clinton favors a neoconservative foreign policy, her performance at Thursday’s debate should have laid them to rest. In every meaningful sense, she is a neocon and – if she becomes President – Americans should expect more global tensions and conflicts in pursuit of the neocons’ signature goal of “regime change” in countries that get in their way.

Beyond sharing this neocon “regime change” obsession, former Secretary of State Clinton also talks like a neocon. One of their trademark skills is to use propaganda or “perception management” to demonize their targets and to romanticize their allies, what is called “gluing white hats” on their side and “gluing black hats” on the other....

Ari Berman at TheNation
Clinton and Sanders Sue Arizona
 Over 5-Hour Lines in the March Primary
Arizona’s election problems showed the disastrous consequences of gutting the Voting Rights Act.

Alejandra Ruiz went to vote on her lunch break in downtown Phoenix during Arizona’s March 22 primary. A registered Democrat of Mexican-American origin, Ruiz had recently moved to Maricopa County. Because downtown Phoenix had only one polling place for thousands of residents and the line was too long, she decided to vote at a different polling place after work. But things were even worse when she arrived at the West Thomas Baptist Church polling place at 6:30, located in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on the city’s west side.

Ruiz waited nearly six hours to vote, finally casting her ballot at 12:07 am, more than five hours after the polls closed. When she left there were still at least 100 people still waiting in line to vote. ...
Prof Tim Anderson at GlobalResearch
How America backed the ISIS Takeover and Destruction of Palmyra

As explosions from detonated mines continued in the background a Syrian general confirmed in some detail an ugly truth: Washington and its close allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel backed the ISIS takeover and destruction of Palmyra.

Most of the weapons ISIS used were from the US , with some ammunition from Israel . ISIS had US Hummers, spinning explosive projectiles and military rations from the US , Turkey and Saudi Arabia .

That should not have been a surprise. US officials admitted in 2014 that their allies Turkey , the Saudis and Qatar were backing every single armed group in Syria , in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government led by President Bashar al Assad.

Our group of 30 journalists visited liberated Palmyra on 14 April, 18 days after the Syrian Army freed the historic city from a ten month reign of terror. Syrian bulldozers were cleaning debris while Russian sappers continued exploding mines. Three thousand had been cleared and another 30 exploded in the two hours we were there.

Eric Draitser at StopImperialism
BRICS Under Attack: The Empire’s Destabilizing Hand Reaches Into South Africa

Major protests have gripped South Africa in recent months as political forces have emerged to give voice to a growing discontent with the government and ruling party. Beneath the surface of these demonstrations organized around legitimate grievances, however, there’s an undercurrent of political manipulation.

South Africa and its ruling African National Congress (ANC) party have been targeted for destabilization due to the country’s burgeoning relationship with China and other non-Western nations, most obviously typified by South Africa’s inclusion in BRICS, the association of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Last year, for example, China surpassed the United States and European Union as South Africa’s largest trade partner, and the ANC has been hard at work promoting further trade cooperation. Answering questions in the National Assembly, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa explained: “We trade more effectively with China because the relationship is based on win-win; mutual benefit that they can get out of the relationship and that we can get out the relationship.”....

Felicity Arbuthnot at Information ClearingHouse
....HRW obtained a list of
 one hundred and forty people, including young children, said to have died in the last few months “from lack of food and medicine.” The names have been withheld for fear that ISIS, which forbids the population making contact outside the city “would punish the relatives of the dead.”

Residents are reported to be eating bread made from flour from ground date stones and soup made from grass. Food still available is sold at staggering prices. “A 50-kilogram sack of flour goes for US$750, and a bag of sugar for $500.” In Baghdad, just seventy kilometres away: “ the same amount of flour costs $15 and of sugar $40 … each day starving children arrive at the local hospital … most foodstuffs are no longer available at any price … the hospital has run out of baby food.”....

Eric Fair at WashingtonPost in 2007  author of  Consequence A Memoir 
An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare

 A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.......
Posted by MariaS at 19:57 0 comments
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Sunday, June 14, 2015

In "democratic" United Kingdom, the powers-that-be cyber attack your website if you dare to contradict them with the truth


Craig Murray is one of the very few "tell the truth and damn the consequences" kind of guy.  He is a human rights activist, author, former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and a former Rector of University of Dundee. He happened to write an article showing how false was the claim that Edward Snowden's disclosures have put US and UK spies/agents in danger.  No sooner did the article show up at his website, the powers-that-be went into action trying to disable his blog. 
Searching from Canada with just the name of  his website will get you a message saying "new site coming soon"  ...  just how ridiculous can the naked Emperor(s) get?  **sigh**

Five Reasons the MI6 Story is a Lie
The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.

1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.

2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.

3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from......
Posted by MariaS at 19:18 0 comments
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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Revolution USA 2015



Below, David DeGraw, author of "Freedom in A Time of Mental Slavery"  points out to a few of the thousands of reasons why, IMO, we are most probably going to see the break-up of America.  Highlights by moi.

......Here’s what you won’t hear  on the news: we have an unprecedented abundance of wealth in this country. We have at least $100 trillion in wealth. That’s enough to make every family in this country millionaires.

However, more than half of that wealth is consolidated in the hands of the wealthiest families. Due to corruption, wealth has become consolidated to the point where the richest 400 Americans now have as much wealth as 200 million Americans. A society with inequality this severe is highly unstable and will eventually destroy itself, and the richest 0.01% knows that, which brings me to some very important points that I pray everyone can at least consider…

Just as I want my African American and activist friends to understand that most cops are good people working hard under difficult conditions, I also want my middle-class and wealthy white friends to know that institutional racism is still a very serious problem. In addition to blatant systemic racism, institutionalized classism is destroying our society.

The 0.01% mega-wealthy people who own and run this country know that inequality, economic insecurity and poverty are steadily breaking down society. Due to technological advancements, they have consolidated wealth and resources to the point where there are now only enough full-time jobs for half the working-age population, and half of those jobs pay under $35k per year. At the same time, the cost of living continues to skyrocket. Economic and political policy has now mathematically eliminated 75% of the population from living a life without severe debt and crippling poverty. As a direct result, poor people living in exploited poverty-stricken inner-cities throughout America are the first to experience the devastating effects of the death of representative government.

Instead of addressing an obvious and predictable issue through rational policy, guided by the compassion and fairness that made this country a global leader, both the Democratic and Republican parties have chosen a feudalistic path driven by shortsighted greed. That is one of the reasons why we are seeing the militarization of local police forces, especially in cities with high poverty rates. Laws that criminalize poverty are quickly spreading throughout the country. Billions of tax dollars have been diverted from public housing programs and have been redirected into building prisons.

The United States currently has the largest prison population in the world. On a per capita basis, the US is now much worse than the darkest days of the Soviet gulags. Over 70% of the prison population is “non-violent offenders with no history of violence.” In fact, physical slavery still exists. Prison “labor” is now a booming multi-billion dollar annual business. According to statistics from the US Bureau of Criminal Statistics, there are more “African-American men under state and federal criminal justice supervision” than there were slaves in 1850. In fact, there are twice as many now as there were in 1850.

The growth rate for private for-profit prisons has been shocking, “between 1990 and 2010 the number of privately operated prisons in the US increased 1600%.” The shortsightedness of this system and the vicious cycle of crime and punishment it creates within society have been clearly demonstrated. For instance, “All 17 states that cut their imprisonment rates over the past decade also experienced a decline in crime rates.”

After intense investigations into political and economic issues, one thing that I have learned very clearly: cops and inner city African Americans have much more in common with each other than they have in common with the people who created the conditions in which they both toil. To varying degrees of intensity, we are all suffering under the same corrupt system. So let’s show love, compassion and respect for each other. Let’s not let divide and conquer policies and propaganda destroy us........


Posted by MariaS at 22:12 0 comments
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