america needs regime change in order to oust shadow government

Where do we even start with this mess? How did America get to this point – where we are in danger of being over-run by the allies of a rogue intelligence agency that we are powerless against? How did the USA go from being the champion of the free world to being the greatest threat to the peace and security of its own citizens, and instant death from remote-control-in-the-skies for everyone else on earth?

It’s tempting to start out with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but the story starts with the creation of the CIA and the National Security State, founded in 1947 by President Harry Truman to address the fact that, with the war against fascism over, it was time for the US government to rid itself of communists and other socialists who had poured into President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. The fear being that communists loyal to Russia’s revolutionary leader and communist party chairman Joseph Stalin would help him gradually transform the US into a communist state.

Government and business leaders wanted to ensure that there were “trusted people” in charge of things here, behind the scenes. These unaccountable, largely unknown people would be free to pursue their own agenda, without interference from government oversight and regulation. They set up fake businesses and NGOs. They hired CIA operatives to help facilitate business overseas and converted media mouthpieces to their cause.

They justified this by making sure the world knew of the dangers of “creeping socialism.” For years, the world was able to watch the Congress of the United States, along with their partners in business, destroy people’s lives by accusing them of being communists. Sometimes the accusations were merely petty acts of malice against people who had rejected the committee chairman’s homosexual advances  – this happening in an era much more judgemental and less accepting of ANY expression of sexuality, much less one which many people could not comprehend.

Despite the fact that several courageous individuals succeeded in exposing the gross abuse of power of the anti-communists (even today, one of the more vocal anti-communists’  name is used to describe persecution for political gain – “McCarthyism.”), several of them retained power, and even increased this power in the decades afterwards – both Richard Nixon (HUAC) and Ronald Reagan (anti-communist president of the Screen Actors Guild) eventually took over the White House (in possession of the CIA since the intelligence/industry coup that had JFK assassinated), largely on the political clout earned in the 1940′s and 50′s anti-communist witch-hunts.

The longterm consequences of the 1963 coup has been a nation in a state of perpetual warfare. At first, the war was against the Communist Menace, anywhere on the globe (Greece, Iran, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the list goes on…). After the Soviet Union collapsed – as it was always intended to – the old Cold Warriors needed a new boogeyman to seek out and destroy anywhere an oil field or other valuable natural resources were in danger of being stolen from American corporations by foreigners.

However, in the 1970s a glitch in the system developed. The American people had become unwilling to finance and die for wars abroad, being fought for very unclear purposes. Two strategies were developed to compensate for this. First, blue-blood businessmen helped the CIA set up their own drug-running operations. This would give them international contacts, with people who would do just about anything for money. It would also give the CIA a ways of building a “black budget” of money from drug-running operations, with the good people of the United States and their elected representatives none the wiser.

Also, this allowed industries to develop their own private military and intelligence businesses. Both to set up their own smuggling networks, and to deal with those pesky foreigners who kept trying to utilize their nation’s natural resources for the benefit of the local population. How dare they!

This privatization and outsourcing of warfare for the benefit of multinational corporations picked up steam under the guidance of President James Earl Carter, who came up with the brilliant idea of recruiting and arming the most intolerant and violent people to be found on Earth and sending them to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, rather than risk an outright war if the US were involved in some kind of official capacity. These mujahadeen eventually became the current crop of Afghan warlords and Opium barons. We are allegedly at war with this group, forever. We are currently arming this group. Not the exact same people, of course – but the ideology (or “theology” if you want to legitimize their insane version of Islam) remains the same. They exist to cause violence and chaos in countries not under the direct control of one of “their” Imans. There are no nations that fit this description, and the Holy Terror Army (a name i just made up and will now use to refer to any fundamentalist religion that resorts to extreme violence to impose it’s version of “god’s” law on nonbelievers) is spreading nightmarish violence around the world.

Prior to this current age of holy terror, acting President Ronald Reagan expanded the proxy wars to Angola, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Cambodia, and Grenada. His successor invaded Panama and Kuwait. And dirty old man Bill Clinton gave al Qaeda it’s biggest test, installing the CIA’s Holy Terror Army into the former Yugoslavia.

After that, the CIA/al Qaeda alliance was ready for the big time, and despite having trained, funded, and armed the Holy Terror Army, President Slick Willy justified military actions abroad by claiming they were targeting the workings of Holy Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. This was the reason given for striking a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan being built to provide cheap prescription drugs to a continent being decimated by AIDS. Millions of Africans have died over the years due to this, and not just of AIDS - they’ve died of numerous maladies that could have been treated with pharmaceuticals, but the patent-holders demand prices that few people in Africa can afford.

Which brings us to 9/11/2001, the invasion of a country for fun and profit, and the start of a second perpetual war, the first one being the war on drugs, which the U.S. intentionally escalates by selling arms to drug cartels.

So, the CIA has assassinated an American President, set up an international drug-running operation which employs the most insanely violent people imaginable, and conducts wars with proxy armies which it cannot control, only finance. And the Government continues to use the war on drugs as a pretext to wage war on its own citizens, despite a proven will by the American public to legalize Ganja. But, this isn’t enough.

The war on terror has to be continually justified, despite a proven inability to militarily defeat a state of mind. Otherwise, it could lose its precious funding. Money is hard to come by, with the Government printing it as fast as it can in order to give it to European Banking cartels. There’s nothing left for the rest of us. I guess we are supposed to take solace in the roles left to us – fodder for their highly profitable, never-ending wars – and learn to love Big Brother.

Here in the spring of 2013, it looks as if the cycle has run its course, and the extreme violence of the late 20th century is finally coming back to its spawning grounds in North America. In the past two years, there have been numerous instances of mass shootings that were so obviously orchestrated by someone other than the “fall guy,” who usually ends up dead, that the Government is losing credibility. Washington has lost the Hearts and Minds campaign in the homeland, to the bloggers.

In addition to being nothing more than future collateral damage to our government, Americans are also guinea pigs in Monsanto’s GMO playground. They have been given immunity from prosecution for the damage their poisons are causing.

Our government is unaccountable to us. It is out of control, and the people in the positions of political power can only find solutions to the problems the banks, corporations, Holy War Terrorists, and drug cartel violence create by spreading more of the same.

If the US government continues to escalate the war of attrition it is waging against Americans, there may come a day when we welcome intervention by some foreign power. In the meanwhile, some countries may not wait for an invitation to intervene here. Just as they are saying about Syria, and like they said about Bosnia, the world cannot sit idly by and watch a violent regime continue to slaughter its own people.

It seems like our nation is doomed, and if we don’t want to go down with it, we had damn well better starting envisioning our lives in the ruins of the former United States, and living our lives to accommodate the changing world around us – one that an out-of-control CIA completely fucked over. I doubt the people of Yugoslavia had much of an idea how things would go after Tito died. Their society imploded. NATO intervened. Everything fell apart. Fortunes were lost in the destruction. New fortunes were made in the reconstruction – mostly for foreign corporations. And I don’t see things turning out much differently for us.

rob los ricos

The National Security State

The apparatus of the National Security State, largely established in the National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundations for the extension of American hegemony around the globe. In short, the Act laid the foundations for the apparatus of the American Empire. The National Security Act created the National Security Council (NSC) and position of National Security Adviser, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) as the Pentagon high command of military leaders, and of course, the CIA.

The first major foreign operation carried out by the National Security State, or rather, the “secret government,” was the overthrowing of a democratically elected government in Iran. In 1952, the British were concerned at the efforts of Iran’s new Prime Minister Mohommad Mossadeq, in nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, taking the monopoly away from British Petroleum. So the British intelligence, the SIS, proposed to the Americans a joint operation, and the CIA obliged.

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation in which he warned America and indeed the world about the growing influence of the National Security State in what he referred to as the “military-industrial complex”:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Eisenhower was speaking from the point of view of having first-hand knowledge of this “influence” in the corridors of power, himself as President being unable to challenge it, and unable to do so simply in the first decade of the American Empire. He was warning against the influence of the interconnected relationship and organized power of the military, government, and industry, in that the growing influence of this “complex” was so vast that it threatened to take over the government and subvert democracy itself. It was the functions of this complex that saw profit created through war and empire, and thus, there was a constant drive and impetus towards pursuing empire and resorting to war. If you build a massive military structure, you are going to use it; if it is profitable to go to war, you will go to war.

Prescott Bush, the father of GHW Bush, later wrote Clover Dulles, the widow of Allen Dulles, in 1969, about his meeting with Allen Dulles after JFK had canned him in fall, 1961. “He [Allen] tried to make a pleasant evening of it, but I was rather sick of heart, and angry too, for it was the Kennedys that brought about the fiasco [Bay of Pigs]. And here they were making Allen to be the goat, which he wasn’t and did not deserve. I have never forgiven them.”

Note the last sentence of Prescott Bush. His son George Herbert Walker Bush says he can’t remember where he was on the day of the JFK assassination, despite his being a US Senate candidate staying in the Dallas, TX Sheraton the night of 11/21/63 and being in Dallas on 11/22/63. GHW Bush helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion and I think he was involved in the JFK assassination. – from The LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it wasn’t the Joint Chiefs alone who were trying to push for war, the “CIA also played a dangerous game during the crisis,” as Kennedy had ordered the CIA to halt all raids against Cuba during the crisis, “to make sure that no flying sparks from the agency’s secret operations set off a nuclear conflagration.” However, Bill Harvey, the CIA agent in charge of “Operation Mongoose,” the CIA plan which employed the Mafia to attempt to kill Castro, in brazen defiance of Kennedy’s orders, mobilized “every single team and asset that we could scrape together” and then dropped them into Cuba, “in anticipation of the U.S. invasion that the CIA hoped was soon to follow.”`

Robert Kennedy became the conduit through which the back-channel negotiations took place with the Soviets that ultimately ended the crisis without catastrophe. Nikita Khrushchev recounted the situation in his memoirs, in which he explained that Robert Kennedy “stressed how fragile his brother’s rule was becoming as the crisis dragged on,” which struck Khrushchev as “especially urgent.” Robert Kennedy warned the Soviets that, “If the situation continues much longer, the president is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.” Khrushchev even later wrote that, “for some time we had felt there was a danger that the president would lose control of his military,” and that, “now he was admitting this to us himself.” Thus:

“Moscow’s fear that Kennedy might be toppled in a coup, Khrushchev suggested in his memoirs, led the Soviets to reach a settlement of the missile crisis with the president. “We could sense from the tone of the message that tension in the United States was indeed reaching a critical point.”

Thirteen days after the crisis began, the Soviets announced that they would remove the missiles from Cuba, with the US agreeing to remove missiles from US bases in Turkey and “pledging not to invade Cuba,” which Kennedy and future presidents would honour. At the announcement of the end to the crisis, General LeMay roared at Kennedy, “It’s the greatest defeat in our history,” and that, “We should invade today!” A defense analyst at the Pentagon, Daniel Ellsberg, who was consulting with Air Force generals and colonels on nuclear strategy at the end of the crisis, remarked that after the settlement was reached, “there was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles,” explaining, “not that I had the fear there was about to be a coup – I just thought it was a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous.” - from lew rockwell, The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” Portions of the books can be read at: <http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm>

Mujahideen trained and funded by the US are among its deadliest foes

American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.

Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist.- from the gaurdian, Frankenstein the CIA created

CONTROLLING THE ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE

The more one studies the dark history of the US national security state, the more transparent the CIA – Wall Street connections become. The links to the international drug trade are less obvious, but have existed from the beginning, that is, from the days of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Time and again, the same pattern has played out: US military interventions in Southeast Asia, Central America and, since 2001, Afghanistan and Iraq, have been accompanied by a sharp increase in narco-trafficking, with all of the attendant evils. These include the plague of drug addiction, drug-related crime, the devastation of the family and as I hope to show, the corrupting of democratic institutions at home and abroad.

The morally bankrupt policies that are responsible for all of the above have had another deleterious effect: They have crippled our nation’s capacity to play a positive role on the world stage. It is no wonder that foreigners no longer view the United States with admiration and respect, but increasingly with fear and loathing. But US elites are oblivious to such concerns. They do not care, and are quite candid about what they view as the CIA’s pragmatic “need” to associate with unsavory individuals and criminals in the interest of furthering US foreign policy goals. Their realpolitik can be read between the lines of the policy papers. Take, for instance, the 1996 intelligence report, already noted, prepared by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and for which Greenberg was nominated to replace John Deutch as director of the CIA. In the paper Greenberg affirms that “the capability to undertake [covert operations]….constitutes an important national security tool.” Later, in the section titled “Intelligence and Law Enforcement” he insists that foreign policy ought to take precedence over law enforcement when it comes to overseas operations. The bulk of U.S. intelligence efforts overseas is devoted to traditional national security concerns; as a result, law enforcement must ordinarily be a secondary concern. FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents operating abroad should not be allowed to act independently of either the ambassador or the CIA lest pursuit of evidence or individuals for prosecution cause major foreign policy problems or complicate ongoing intelligence and diplomatic activities.

This means, over and above diplomacy, that when criminals are judged to be intelligence assets, they are granted protection from prosecution (emphasis added) for narco-trafficking, money laundering, extortion, rape, even terrorism and murder. In 1982, the CIA and the US Department of Justice actually worked out a secret agreement to this effect. The deal exempted the CIA from having to report drug trafficking by CIA assets, which, notice, made a mockery of then presidential wife Nancy Reagan’s much ballyhooed “just say no” anti-drug campaign. At the time, most Americans trusted Ronald Reagan and believed that his administration was serious about the so-called war on drugs. But hindsight shows that the Reagan White House badly abused the public’s good faith.

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, with which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high — more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and associated groups included ‘‘extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.’’ As part of President Reagan’s policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of  Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses. The United States lost more than 700 soldiers in the war.

The foreign policy advocated by Maurice Greenberg, above, is in large part responsible for the drug-related violence on the streets of our cities, and for the epidemic of narcotic addiction among our children, who have been sacrificed to the false god of national security. But the social carnage is not limited to the United States. Drug addiction in Muslim Iraq was almost unknown prior to the US invasion in 2003; but has since become a major problem. A similar recent explosion of heroin use has occurred in Iran, which, notice, is right next door to Afghanistan, where the poppies are grown with the blessing of the CIA. Such foreign policies are evil, a scourge upon the planet, yet, are intimately associated with US empire building. Quite simply, the US power elite has followed in the footsteps of the British and French who, in their day, also exploited the immensely profitable opium and heroin trade. The writer Chalmers Johnson has termed this descent into darkness the sorrow of empire.

The CIA’s secret collusion with the Department of Justice gave the CIA veto over law enforcement, effectively blunting the capacity of US drug enforcement agencies to interdict the flow of illegal drugs into the US. The timing was no accident. The deal coincided with the start of the CIA’s Contra war in Central America. This explains why, the next year, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), under pressure from the Pentagon, closed its office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The flow of drugs through Honduras had not diminished; in fact, just the opposite. For years, the country had been a transfer point for illegal drug smuggling into the US, a reality that Contra leaders readily exploited to finance their war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; and they did so with the full knowledge and approval of the CIA. For many years after, Langley’s veto blocked legitimate efforts by US law enforcement to curb the drug trade.

I must emphasize that, meanwhile, the American people were kept in the dark about the policy and its effects, at every point in the chain: from the formulation of the policy to its implementation to the phony packaging of the policy for mass consumption. In fact, we only know about it, today, thanks to a courageous journalist named Gary Webb, who published a groundbreaking series of articles in 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News, exposing Contra links and CIA complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged the black communities of Los Angeles in the 1980s. The series, appropriately titled “Dark Alliance”, was one of the first big stories to be carried on the Internet; and later, Webb expanded it into an important book by the same name, in which he lays out the voluminous evidence in stark detail. But it was Webb’s series of articles in 1996 that initially focused media attention on the drug issue; and which compelled CIA director John Deutch to announce an internal investigation. Meanwhile, the agency simultaneously launched a disinformation campaign to discredit Webb, whom it viewed as a serious threat.

The campaign against Gary Webb has been called “one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist’s competence in living memory.” The fawning mainstream press, always eager to do the CIA’s bidding, appeared to take pleasure in savaging the messenger, even while tacitly conceding that his facts were basically correct. One of the low points occurred on live TV, on November 15, 1996, when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, wife of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, referred to Webb’s exhaustively documented expose as “a conspiracy theory,” the kiss of death for any serious journalist.  At this same time, as we know, Greenspan was busily engineering the deregulation of Wall Street, setting the stage for the 2008 financial meltdown of the global economy. – from foreign policy journal, Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side Part 3: AIG and the Linkage to the Drug Trade 

when assets go bad

Phillip (alternately, “Philip”) Marshall, 54, a career airline pilot who claimed to have once served as a contract pilot for the CIA and DEA during the Iran-Contra affair, shot and killed his two teenage children, and the family dog, then killed himself.

The apparent murder-suicide was discovered at the family home in an upscale gated golfing community in Murphys, California.

Phillip Marshall has been identified as a former pilot for Eastern and United airlines. He self-published a number of books, including at least two about his 9/11 conspiracy theories: “The Big Bamboozle” (February 9, 2012) and “False Flag 911: How Bush, Cheney and the Saudis Created the Post-911 World” (July 29, 2008).

A previous novel published in 2003, “Lakefront Airport, New Orleans,” detailed his claimed experience as a pilot for the US during Iran/Contra. – from boing boing, Former pilot and 9/11 conspiracy theorist shoots and kills 2 teen children, then himself

L.A. Cop Busts CIA Cocaine Ring

Michael Ruppert. Mike is a former LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) narcotics officer who in the late 1970′s, trained in narcotics by the U.S. Justice Department. The CIA tried to recruit Mike to traffic drugs with them. When Mike tried to expose the corruption that he saw (the moral thing to do), he was fired without cause. As Governor Jesse Ventura says, “Don’t just go along to get along.”

Mike Ruppert has spent the last 25 years fighting the system, trying to expose the lies and tyranny of the CIA (and many other offices of our government). This is no conspiracy theory, Mike Ruppert has presented over 6,000 documents indicting the U.S. government’s involvement in decades of heroin and cocaine drug-trafficking into the cities and towns of the United States. You can subscribe to Mike’s newsletter at www.copvcia.com or go to www.fromthewilderness.com

• Drugs and The Economy

• CIA, Drugs and Wall Street

• The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire

• Bush and Barry Seal

• Drugs and Dollars

• Drug Trade in Asia (Golden Triangle)

• Banks, the Mafia, and Drugs

Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11

Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a Mujahideen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)

The CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan … found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.

To this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said.

“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.

The Washington Post reported in 2002:

The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings ….

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books ….

- from global research

Cheney’s Shadow Government

John Adams once called the vice presidency, “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” FDR’s VP, John Nance Garner, said the job wasn’t “worth a pitcher of warm piss.”

It’s quotes like these that make Dick Cheney—who pretty much ran his own separate government from the VP’s office—all the more impressive, not to mention terrifying. For not only was Cheney out of control, he was out of control in a job that had no controls attached to it. No one had ever thought them necessary before.

Give the man credit for creativity. Cheney found even more ways to overturn the Constitution, undermine the separation of powers, and possibly make the U.S. government an accessory to murder many times over.

The New York Times broke half the story in Sunday’s paper as Scott Shane explained that “the Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.” Congress finally found out eight years after Cheney gave the order, when CIA Director Leon E. Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees upon learning of the program himself.

According to current law, when a U.S. intelligence agency is involved in a covert action, at least eight members of Congress—the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees—must be informed in order for the program to be legal.

CIA defenders insist compliance with the law is actually a gray area because “this program never went fully operational” as one official put it. And Panetta terminated the program as soon as he learned of it. But given the history of both Cheney and many in the CIA’s contempt for both Congress and the Constitution, it’s entirely possible that we still don’t know the full story. - from the daily beast

9/11 Conspiracy Solved: Names, Connections, & Details Exposed!

there are some flaws to this video, but it’s a treasury of good information.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of contractors reached a level unprecedented in U.S. military operations. As of March 31, 2010, the United States deployed 175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in the war zones. Contractors represented 50 percent of the Department of Defense (DOD) workforce in Iraq and 59 percent in Afghanistan.

This increase is the logical outcome of a series of decisions going back decades. Force structure reductions ranging from the post-Vietnam decisions that moved most Army logistics support elements to the Army Reserve and Guard⁴ to the post–Cold War reduction that cut the Army from 18 to 10 divisions with corresponding cuts in support forces greatly reduced the Services’ ability to support long-term operations. Next, a series of decisions in the 1990s led to the employment of contractors in the Balkans for tasks from traditional camp-building to the new concept of “force development” that saw MPRI training the Croatian army. Finally, the decision to invade Iraq with minimum forces left the United States with too few troops in-theater to deal with the disorder that resulted from the removal of Saddam. Thus, it is understandable that the immediate, unanticipated need for large numbers of logistics and security personnel, the shortage of such troops on Active duty, and the precedent for using contractors in the Balkans caused the Pentagon to turn to contractors to fill the immediate operational needs. However, the subsequent failure to conduct a careful analysis of the wisdom of using contractors is less understandable. The executive branch has conducted numerous investigations into fraud, waste, and corruption in the contracting process. Congress has held hearings and established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the U.S. Government has not systematically explored the essential question: Does using contractors in a conflict zone make strategic sense?

By the end of 2009, contractors reported almost 1,800 dead and 40,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the fighting in Afghanistan gets worse, contractors are now suffering more deaths than U.S. forces: “In the first two quarters of 2010 alone, contractor deaths represented more than half—53 percent—of all fatalities. This point bears emphasis: since January 2010, more contractors have died in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military soldiers.” For practical purposes, these casualties were “off the books” in that they had no real impact on the political discussions about the war. As Peter Singer noted:

there was no outcry whenever contractors were called up and deployed, or even killed. If the gradual death toll among American troops threatened to slowly wear down public support, contractor casualties were not counted in official death tolls and had no impact on these ratings. . . . These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced.

Contractor casualties are not reported via the Pentagon, but only through the U.S. Department of Labor. Labor’s Web site notes that these are not comprehensive statistics but only represent those injuries and deaths that resulted in insurance claims. Thus, it is difficult if not impossible to determine how many additional casualties were suffered by other nations’ contractors in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

In reality, it is virtually impossible to determine the actual effectiveness of any contractors—armed or unarmed—until they begin to operate in theater (and only then if a member of the U.S. Government can observe the contractors as they operate).

Compounding the problems created by lack of quality control, the government does not control the contractor’s daily contact with abuse, intimidation, and even killing of local civilians such as the DynCorp employee who ran a child sex ring in the Balkans or the September 2007 Blackwater shootings in Nisour Square, Baghdad.

This lack of quality and tactical control greatly increases the impact of the third major problem: the United States is held responsible for everything the contractors do or fail to do. Despite the fact the United States has no effective quality or operational control over the contractors, the local population rightly holds it responsible for all contractor failures.

In addition to undercutting government legitimacy, the use of contractors may actually undercut local government power. In Afghanistan, security and reconstruction contracts have resulted in significant shifts in relative power between competing Afghan qawmsas well as allegations of corruption. Dexter Filkins, writing in the New York Times, notes that the power structure in Orugzan Province, Afghanistan, has changed completely due to the U.S. Government’s selecting Matiullah Khan to provide security for convoys from Kandahar to Tirin Kot:

With his NATO millions, and the American backing, Mr. Matiullah has grown into the strongest political and economic force in the region. He estimates that his salaries support 15,000 people in this impoverished prov ince. . . . This has irritated some local leaders, who say that the line between Mr. Matiullah’s business interest and the government has disappeared. . . . Both General [Nick] Carter [commander of ISAF South] and Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister, said they hoped to disband Mr. Matiullah’s militia soon—or at least to bring it under formal government control. . . . General Carter said that while he had no direct proof in Mr. Matiullah’s case, he harbored more general worries that the legions of unregulated Afghan security companies had a financial interest in prolonging chaos.

Thus, an unacknowledged but serious strategic impact of using contractors is to directly undercut both the legitimacy and the authority of the host nation government. - this article was originally published as Institute for National Strategic Studies Strategic Forum 260 (NDU Press, November 2010)

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that QinetiQ, a high tech defense contractor specializing in secret satellites drones and software used by U.S. special forces, was the victim of a sustained cybersecurity breach for several years starting in 2007.

According to Bloomberg, documents released in the Anonymous Stratfor hack reveal QinetiQ was compromised as part of a cyber-espionage attack originating in China — and notes the breach was part of a much broader campaign targetting U.S. contractors:

“QinetiQ’s espionage expertise didn’t keep Chinese cyber- spies from outwitting the company. In a three-year operation, hackers linked to China’s military infiltrated QinetiQ’s computers and compromised most if not all of the company’s research. At one point, they logged into the company’s network by taking advantage of a security flaw identified months earlier and never fixed [...]

QinetiQ was only one target in a broader cyberpillage. Beginning at least as early as 2007, Chinese computer spies raided the databanks of almost every major U.S. defense contractor and made off with some of the country’s most closely guarded technological secrets, according to two former Pentagon officials who asked not to be named because damage assessments of the incidents remain classified.“

U.S. intelligence reports ranked cyber threats as the top danger facing the country for the first time in April, but tensions have been running high about the government’s ability to protect digital assets and intelligence for years. A 2011 Department of Justice report noted that only 64 percent of FBI agents assigned to national security-related cyber investigations had the appropriate skills and expertise to handle those types of cases.

Government cybersecurity contracting exploded during the Bush Administration, with many roles traditionally filled by government employees or resources outsourced to external companies over whom the government has less oversight. The Obama Administration has made efforts to curb that trend, but that expansion, combined with a lack of cybersecurity expertise in the military and federal agencies, resulted in many cybersecurity defense operations being outsourced or completed under the heavy supervision of outside contractors. – from think progress, The U.S. Outsources Cybersecurity & Defense To Contractors That Keep Getting Hacked

The Syrian government has called on the United Nations to classify a leading rebel group as a terrorist organisation after its leader pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani heads the radical Nusra Front rebel group.

In a message posted online on Wednesday he pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and supported calls for an Islamic state to be created in Syria.

The Syrian regime is demanding the UN “fulfil its role and preserve global security” by classing Nursa Front as an Al Qaeda linked entity. – from ABC Australia, Syrian rebel pledges allegiance to Al Qaeda

Shadow Government in Control:

It is now beyond reasonable doubt that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own National Security State in what was a violent coup d’état that is, an overthrowing of the legitimate elected government of the United States by force through the use of the clandestine black-ops services of the CIA, elements of the Secret Service, the US military, the FBI and organized crime.

Unless and until the United States publicly discloses to the citizenry that its duly elected government was overthrown in 1963 and that since then the replacement/imposter government has been at least technically/legally speaking illegitimate[12] it will likely be impossible to reverse the increasingly rapid disintegration of America. The reality is that since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, there has been an extra-constitutional imposter “government” in place which prior to that time existed only in the shadows. It has been given many different names including the “war party” the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military, industrial complex) the secret government, the shadow government etc. That entity or “Regime” as a result of the JFK assassination appears to have profoundly altered the trajectory of the United States by placing the country on a constant war footing and building and sustaining an enormous foreign military base presence throughout the world which serves to project American power and enlarge the “empire.” – from jericho rendezvous, After the JFK Assassination–a True Coup d’état: Is the Current US Government Legitimate?

A handful of polls conducted in the days after the Boston Marathon bombings show that US citizens are responding much differently than in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Not only are Americans more opposed now to giving up personal freedoms for the sake of security than they were after 9/11, but other statistics show that distrust against the federal government continues to climb.

Just one day after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, pollsters with Fox News asked a sample of Americans, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?” Forty-three percent of the respondents said they would, while 45 percent said no. Comparatively, 71 percent of Americans asked a similar question in October 2001 said they’d be willing to give up personal freedoms, while only 20 percent opposed at the time.

A separate poll conducted by the Washington Post just three days after the Boston Marathon bombing reveals that nearly half of those surveyed say that the government will go too far in trying to prevent future acts of terrorism. The Post asked a random national sample of 588 adults, “Which worries you more: that the government (will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights), or that it (will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism)?” Days after the Boston bombing, 41 percent of respondents said the government will not go far enough, compared to 48 percent saying they’ll go too far. When similar questions were asked in 2006 and 2010, 44 percent and 27 percent said the government will go too far, respectively, signaling that for the first time in years Americans are overly concerned about a misuse of power on the part of Washington.

That isn’t to say that the Boston attack is necessarily inspiring Americans to question authority, though. Two months before Tsarnaev brothers allegedly detonated a pair of explosives near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, 53 percent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said the federal government is threatening their personal rights and freedoms. In November 2011, that statistic was only 30 percent. - from russia today,  Americans troubled more by governmental abuse than terrorism

Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)Police and private security personel monitor security cameras at the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative on April 23, 2013 in New York City. (AFP Photo / John Moore)

The Syrian government has called on the United Nations to classify a leading rebel group as a terrorist organisation after its leader pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda.

The call came as the opposition accused forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad of “savage” killings in the country’s south.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani heads the radical Nusra Front rebel group.

In a message posted online on Wednesday he pledged allegiance to the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and supported calls for an Islamic state to be created in Syria.

The Syrian regime is demanding the UN “fulfil its role and preserve global security” by classing Nursa Front as an Al Qaeda linked entity.

Syria’s Army Doesn’t Need Chemical Weapons to Win

Death stalks the Syrian regime just as it does the rebels. But on the front line of the war, the regime’s army is in no mood to surrender – and claims it doesn’t need chemical weapons – by Robert Frisk

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers. These are the “bad guys” of the regime, according to the rest of the world – although in truth the country’s secret police deserve that title – and I’m well aware that these men have been told that a Western journalist is coming to their dug-outs and basement headquarters. They ask me to use only their first names for fear that their families may be killed; they allow me to take any photographs I wish, but not to picture their faces – a rule that the rebels sometimes ask of journalists for the same reason – but every soldier and officer to whom I spoke, including a Brigadier General, gave their full names and IDs to me.

Such access to the Syrian army was almost unimaginable just a few months ago and there are good reasons why. The army believe they are at last winning back ground from the Free Syrian Army and the al-Nusra Islamist fighters and the various al-Qa’ida satellites that now rule much of the Syrian countryside. From Point 45 they are scarcely a mile and a half from the Turkish frontier and intend to take the ground in between. Outside Damascus they have battled their way bloodily into two rebel-held suburbs. While I was prowling through the mountaintop positions, the rebels were in danger of losing the town of Qusayr outside Homs amid opposition accusations of the widespread killing of civilians. The main road from Damascus to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast has been reopened by the army. And the line troops I met at Point 45 were a different breed of men from those soldiers who became corrupted after 29 years of semi-occupation in Lebanon, who fell back to Syria without a war to fight in 2005, the discipline of the soldiers around Damascus a joke rather than a threat to anyone. Bashar’s Special Forces now appear confident, ruthless, politically motivated, a danger to their enemies, their uniforms smart, their weapons clean. Syrians have long grown used to the claims by Israel – inevitably followed by the Washington echo machine – that chemical weapons have been used by Bashar’s forces; as an intelligence officer remarked caustically in Damascus: “Why should we use chemical weapons when our Mig aircraft and their bombs cause infinitely more destruction?” The soldiers up at Point 45 admitted the defections to the Free Syrian Army, the huge losses of their own men – inevitably referred to as “martyrs” – and made no secret of their own body counts for battles lost and won.

Their last “martyr” at Point 45 was shot by a rebel sniper two weeks ago, 22 year-old Special Forces Private Kamal Aboud from Homs. He at least died as a soldier. Colonel Mohamed spoke ruefully of the troopers on family leave who, he said, were executed with knives when they entered enemy territory. I remind myself that the UN is bringing war crimes charges against this army and I remind Colonel Mohamed – who has four bullet wounds in his arms to show that he leads his soldiers from the front, not from a bunker – that his soldiers were surely meant to be liberating the Golan Heights from Israel. Israel is to the south, I say, and here he is fighting his way north towards Turkey. Why?

“I know, but we are fighting Israel. I joined the army to fight Israel. And now I am fighting Israel’s tools. And the tools of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, so in this way we are fighting for Golan. This is a conspiracy and the West is helping the foreign terrorists who arrived in Syria, the same terrorists you are trying to kill in Mali.” I have heard this before, of course. The “moamarer”, the conspiracy, sits beside me at all interviews in Syria. But the colonel admits that the two Syrian T-55s which fire shells at Point 45 every morning – the very same vintage war-carts as his own tanks – are sets of twins, that his enemies have taken their artillery from the government army and that his opponents include men from Bashar al-Assad’s original army.

On the road to Qastel Maaf, a general tells me that on the highway to the Turkish border, the army have just killed 10 Saudis, two Egyptians and a Tunisian – I am shown no papers to prove this – but the soldiers at Point 45 produce for me three handset radios they have captured from their enemies. One is marked “HXT Commercial Terminal”, the other two are made by Hongda and the instructions are in Turkish. I ask them if they listen to the rebel communications. “Yes, but we don’t understand them,” a major says. “They are speaking in Turkish and we don’t understand Turkish.” So are they Turks or Turkmen Syrians from the villages to the east? The soldiers shrug. They say they have also heard Arabic voices speaking with Libyan and Yemeni accents. And given that the great and the good of Nato are now obsessed with “foreign jihadis” in Syria, I suspect these Syrian soldiers may well be telling the truth.

The laneways of this beautiful northern countryside conceal the viciousness of the fighting. Clusters of red and white roses smother the walls of abandoned homes. A few men tend the mass of orange orchards that glow around us, a woman combs her long hair on a roof. The lake of Balloran glistens in the spring sunshine between mountains still topped with a powder of snow. It reminds me, chillingly, of Bosnia. For several miles the villages are still occupied, a Christian Greek Orthodox township of 10 families with a church dedicated to the appearance of the Virgin to a woman called Salma; a Muslim Alawite village, then a Muslim Sunni village close to the front lines but still co-existing; a ghost of the old secular, non-sectarian Syria which both sides promise – with ever decreasing credibility – will return once the war is over.

Then I am in a smashed village called Beit Fares where hundreds of Syrian soldiers can be seen patrolling the surrounding forests, and another general fishes into his pocket and produces an army mobile phone video of dead fighters. “All are foreign,” he says. I watch closely as the camera lingers over bearded faces, some contorted in fear, others in the dreamless sleep of death. They have been heaped together. And, most sinister of all, I observe a military boot which descends twice on the heads of the dead men. On the wall of the dugout, someone has written: “We are soldiers of Assad – to hell with you dogs of the armed groups of Jabel al-Aswad and Beit Shrouk.”

These are the names of a string of tiny villages still in rebel hands – you can see the roofs of their houses from Point 45 – and Col Mohamed, a 45-year-old veteran of the Lebanese war between 1993 and 1995, lists the others: Khadra, Jebel Saouda, Zahiyeh, al-Kabir, Rabia… Their fate awaits them. When I ask the soldiers how many prisoners they took in their battles, they say “None” with a loud voice. What, I ask, even when they claim to have killed 700 “terrorists” in one engagement? “None,” they reply again.

Opposite a bullet-riddled school building is a pulverised house. “A local terrorist leader died there with all his men,” the colonel states. “They did not surrender.”

- from the Independent, They may be fighting for Syria, not Assad. They may also be winning: Robert Fisk reports from inside Syria

see also; West’s WMD Lies Fray as Syrian Army Overruns Terrorist Proxies

Absurd “chemical weapons” claims begin to fall apart amidst NATO’s desperate bid to save its collapsing terror front in Syria.

The Terrorists Have Been Identified

The specter of terror is once again being raised to haunt the collective consciousness of the American psyche. But as the terror meme rears its ugly head, we see an understanding of false flag terrorism creeping into the mainstream discourse. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we explore the real terror paradigm and examine who really hates you for your freedoms.

HERE’S ANOTHER CURIOUS GROUP:

Over the weekend, the pro-Assad hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into numerous Twitter accounts run by the Guardian. The collective aim to “punish” Western media outlets for writing negatively about Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while also spreading their own version of the truth—that the Free Syrian Army isn’t a popular uprising at all, and that the war against the incumbent regime is a coup attempt orchestrated by al Qaeda.

Last week, the Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked by the SEA. They published a spurious tweet claiming that President Obama had been injured in a bomb blast at the White House. This sent the stock market into a panic, and, as the markets reacted to the news, the DOW Jones was sent plummeting by a staggering $136 billion. Once everyone realized the tweet was bogus, the markets quickly recovered, but the potential damage cyberattacks can cause was there for the whole world to see.

I spoke to Mikko Hypponen, a security expert at F-Secure, to find out why the tweet affected the stock market so severely. “High-frequency trading bots are monitoring real-time news sources like press feeds and stock-exchange notices,” he explained. “They try to analyze whether the news is positive or negative. Then they will automatically buy and sell stock accordingly. While this is awfully unscientific, on average they make more profits than losses.

“When SEA hacked AP and posted the single fake tweet, trading bots saw crucial keywords from a highly authoritative source: ‘Explosion’, ‘White House’, ‘Obama’ and ‘Injured’, which was a strong sell. It took some minutes until human operators interceded and stopped the madness.”

- from west coast native news, Crashing the Dow Jones with one Tweet

when you play the game of drones, they win and you die

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms.”

did the canadian government invent “al qaeda in iran?” are the ruling elites just playing games with us? and the mayor of new york thinks the fact that the boston marathon bombing was pulled off by two kids – who the FBI had been tracking for years – with thousands of security personnel from local, state, national and international law enforcement agencies present, this means we must SURRENDER MORE OF OUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS AND DIGNITY if we don’t want to see more of this in the future. that sounds like a threat to me. one of those “we can do this the easy way, or…” type scenarios.

our government already believes it has the right to kill u.s. citizens without disclosing any rationalization for doing so. how much more do we have to give up?

and no wonder obomber doesn’t want to talk about why he kills americans abroad in drone strikes. two out of three americans killed by drone strikes in yemen (so far) were not individuals who were targeted. so, let’s not discuss this…it’s…embarrassing…

this is a card from Illuminati, a card game that i have played and own. more about spooky games below, or in every post on this blog, or both – take your pick.

Police in Canada said Monday that two men suspected of plotting to derail a passenger train were guided by Al Qaeda elements in Iran, but the statement surprised many experts who study terrorism in the Middle East and Iran.

“It frankly doesn’t compute for me,” said Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “If there is any link, I would think it was extremely tangential.”

Iran and Al Qaeda have frequently had chilly relations, according to Slavin and other experts. Iran is majority Shiite, while Al Qaeda is firmly Sunni. In Syria, Al Qaeda has jumped into the fray alongside opposition fighters while Iran has backed President Bashar Assad. Iran has also held Al Qaeda members in the country under house arrest, monitoring their activities. Documents confiscated from Osama bin Laden’s hide-out in Pakistan and released last year suggested discord between the two. – from the l.a. times, Analysts surprised by alleged Al Qaeda in Iran tie in Canada plot

be sure to see previous post: u.s., fance admit they are arming al qaeda in syria, demand more weapons, drones

Al-Qaeda releases video accusing Iran of siding with the US over Afghanistan. (Last Modified: 08 Sep 2008)

Al-Qaeda has released a new video accusing Iran of giving way to the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The new footage, released three days before the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, also attacked Lebanese, Pakistani and Afghan leaders.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, and other senior al-Qaeda commanders, focussed on what they called the “Iranian-Crusade alliance” saying the Muslim Umma [nation] was being targetted.

In the one-hand-half-hour video, al-Zawahiri said that the Muslim Umma was facing a military, ideological and media crusade by the Iranian “coalition”, which had given way to the US, by letting them invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Al-Qaeda’s deputy also said Hezbollah and its leaders  did not gain victory in the war against Israel in 2006, saying that outcome had been beneficial to Israel. – from al jazeera, Al-Qaeda video rounds on Iran

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms.”

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.’s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks. - from politiker, Bloomberg Says Interpretation of Constitution Will ‘Have to Change’ After Boston Bombing

The War on Terror Boardgame

Sitting on the couch watching TV, you hear the news that your country is about to invade another. Horror and amazement mixes with frustration as you realize how absolutely powerless you are to stop it. ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Andy Sheerin to Andy Tomkins as they watched the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. ‘Let’s make a game of it.’ And so War on Terror – The Boardgame was born.

Holding a mirror to the Middle East, the game is all about empire. You start with an empire, build it up through development, fight other empires; and liberate countries from the clutches of empire. Just as in the boardroom, the more oil you have on the board-game, the more money you make. The more money you make, the more countries you can develop and control. And if you don’t like the rate your empire is expanding, then you can always buy terrorists, or turn terrorists yourself. – from the new internationalist, The War on Terror Boardgame

also see the official website of the game, WAR ON TERROR, THE BOARDGAME, as well as the official website of the illuminati: the game of conspiracy card game

this game is chilling…ruthlessness is always the winning strategy.

MORE GAMES:

Al-Qaeda gaining experience in Syria, eyes ‘Islamic state to fight Israel and Iran’

An Iraqi Al-Qaeda operative has admitted that his organization is taking part in the Syrian uprising against President Assad. The revelation comes amidst increasing evidence that Al-Qaeda is gaining a foothold in Syria.

Abu Thuha, a 56-year-old Al-Qaeda operative living near Kirkuk in northern Iraq, described the Islamist organization’s grand plans to an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times.

“We have experience now fighting the Americans, and more experience now with the Syrian revolution,” he noted. “Our big hope is to form a Syrian-Iraqi Islamic state for all Muslims, and then announce our war against Iran and Israel, and free Palestine.”

Similar revelations that “around 90 terror attacks that can be attributed to organizations that are close to Al-Qaeda or jihadist groups were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July” have been made by the German foreign intelligence service, the BND.

The information was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question. The German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, but noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified “by reason of national interest,” in light of Germany’s support for the rebellion and its political arm, the Syrian National Council (SNC).

At least three major German newspapers – Die Welt, the FAZ (Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and the tabloid Bild – have published reports attributing responsibility for the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla to anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most likely scenario.

Writing in Bild, longtime German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels of “deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of the government”. He described this “massacre-marketing strategy” as being “among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict.” - see more, including video, from russia today

FBI Arrests Teen Who Tried to Join U.S.-funded Free Syrian Army

A U.S. teenager has been arrested on terrorism-related charges and accused of seeking to join an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in war-torn Syria, the FBI said Saturday.

Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, 18, was arrested Friday night as he attempted to board a flight from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Turkey, which borders Syria, the FBI said. – from the times of israel, FBI: US teen tried to join Syrian al-Qaeda-linked group

DEMOCRACY NOW HITS ONE OUT OF THE PARK! GRAND SLAM!

Jeremy Scahill: The Secret Story Behind Obama’s Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen

Published on Apr 23, 2013 democracy now -

The Obama administration’s assassination of two U.S. citizens in 2011, Anwar Al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old Denver-born son Abdulrahman, is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield.” The book is based on years of reporting on U.S. secret operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why Abdulrahman was targeted in a separate drone strike two weeks later. Scahill reveals CIA director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “The idea that you can simply have one branch of government unilaterally and in secret declare that an American citizen should be executed or assassinated without having to present any evidence whatsoever — we should view that with great sobriety about the implications for our country,” says Scahill, national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. Today the U.S. Senate is preparing to hold its first-ever hearing on the Obama administration’s drone and targeted killing program. However the Obama administration is refusing to send a witness to answer questions about the program’s legality. “Dirty Wars” is also the name of a new award-winning documentary by Scahill and Rick Rowley, which will open in theaters in June. We air the film’s new trailer.

Watch the full 50-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now!, as well as dozens of other past reports from Scahill on the topic.

also see Dirty Wars, Documentary on U.S. Covert Warfare Abroad, Wins Sundance Cinematography Award

 

blogger risks her life to document mexico’s drug war

Vaya Con Dios, “Lucy!” y Blog del Narco!

For three years Blog de Narco has chronicled Mexico‘s drug war with graphic images and shocking stories that few others dare show, drawing millions of readers, acclaim, denunciations – and speculation about its author’s identity.

This story was produced in partnership with the Guardian, where a version of this story also appears.

Guardian version  Rory Carroll , Texas Observer  Melissa del Bosque

Blog del Narco, an internet sensation dubbed a “front-row seat” to Mexico’s agony over drugs, has become a must-read for authorities, drug gangs and ordinary people because it lays bare, day after day, the horrific violence censored by the mainstream media.

The anonymous author has been a source of mystery, with Mexico wondering who he is and his motivation for such risky reporting.

Now in their first major interview since launching the blog, the author has spoken to the Guardian and the Texas Observer – and has revealed that she is, in fact, a young woman.

“I don’t think people ever imagined it was a woman doing this,” said the blogger, who asked to use pseudonym Lucy to protect her real identity.

“Who am I? I’m in my mid-20s, I live in northern Mexico, I’m a journalist. I’m a woman, I’m single, I have no children. And I love Mexico.”

• Journalists on front line of Mexico drug war: ‘fear is terrible and well founded’ Special report: The words ‘organized crime’ and ‘cartel’ are disappearing from coverage as Peña Nieto’s new government adjusts its strategy.

• Why Blog del Narco has become the most important website in Mexico
• Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside the Mexican Drug War – excerpt

This is the first time Lucy has spoken directly about the motivations for running a blog which could cost her her life. In the early days, her male colleague who manages the technical side engaged in a few short, anonymous email exchanges with reporters, but neither has spoken out since.

The telephone interview was arranged through an anonymous intermediary. The Guardian then took steps to verify that Lucy was in control of the blog.

‘They stole our dreams’: blogger reveals cost of reporting Mexico’s drug wars

She said she wanted to show the truth of what was happening to help turn the page. “I’m in love with my culture, with my country, despite all that’s going on. Because we’re not all bad. We’re not all narcos. We’re not all corrupt. We’re not all murderers. We are well educated, even if many (foreign) people think otherwise.”

She and her colleague live in daily fear of retribution, either from the cartels or government forces. She revealed that a young man and woman tortured, disembowelled and hung from a bridge in September 2011 – murders which shocked even atrocity-hardened Mexicans – were collaborators on the blog. “They used to send us photographs. That was very hard, very painful.” The threats, she said, have recently become more serious.

Despite those fears, however, Lucy has written a book that gives an inside account of the blog and provides the most gruesome, explicit account yet of the mayhem that the cartel wars have brought to Mexico. Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside Mexico’s Violent Drug War, is now on sale in English and Spanish, and documents a full year of killings from 2010, a pivotal year.

there’s even more, from borderland beat -

Mexico’s Blog del Narco Author is Revealed as a Young Woman

obomber proclaimed the god of death by attorney general

the president of the united states can kill you with a drone attack. anywhere on earth. even americans, in the the united states.

you don’t have to be a criminal. you do not have to be suspected of a crime. you do not have to belong to any organization or group. he doesn’t even need to know your name. he just has to believe that you are a terrorist. or could be a terrorist, or may carry out an act of terror. someday.

and he does not need to explain to anyone why he has killed you.

hail obama – the lord of death from the sky. if you know what’s good for you, bow down before him and pray that he doesn’t kill you.

Holder: Obama Can Kill Citizens on US Soil Without Due Process

Joe Wright
Activist Post

Battlefield USA just ratcheted up one notch with comments made by Attorney General Eric Holder to Senator Rand Paul. As the indefinite detention provision for American citizens within the NDAA as stated in sections 1021 and 1022 is still being hard fought in many states, drone use within U.S. borders is still being contested and the FAA has yet to release a concrete guide as to how many licenses have been granted for US flights, AG Holder would not rule out a drone strike against an American citizen on U.S. soil if he were to “imagine an extraordinary circumstance.” Worse yet, the nation’s leading legal adviser said unequivocally that it would be constitutional.

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.”

Paul disagreed:

“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront to the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” he said in a statement. (Source)

Holder’s statements also come at a time when civil libertarians and government officials alike are not clear about the scope of the drone program and the government’s legal justification for such actions abroad or at home. The architect of the so-called “targeted killing playbook,” John Brennan, has called drone strikes, “ethical, and just” while claiming that there hadn’t been a single collateral death in Pakistan from drone strikes. This is just one example of who is in control of ensuring that our civil liberties and human rights are protected. Eric Holder is another.

from activist post

The US policy of using aerial drone strikes to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.

Owen Bowcott

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama’s attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.

US policy of using drone strikes to carry out targeted killings ‘may encourage other states to flout international law’

The USA is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or many other international legal forums where legal action might be started. It is, however, part of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where cases can be initiated by one state against another.

Ian Seiderman, director of the International Commission of Jurists, told the conference that “immense damage was being done to the fabric of international law”.
One of the latest UAV developments that concerns human rights groups is the way in which attacks, they allege, have moved towards targeting groups based on perceived patterns of behaviour that look suspicious from aerial surveillance, rather than relying on intelligence about specific al-Qaida activists.

more from the guardian;

Drone strikes threaten 50 years of international law, says UN rapporteur

Obama’s drone wars and the normalisation of extrajudicial murder

Michael Boyle: Executive privilege has seduced the president into a reckless ‘kill first, ask questions later’ policy that explodes the US constitution

Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official

U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners

Michael Kelley | Dec. 12, 2012 (PLEASE NOTE THE DATE)

NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime.

Known as the “double tap,” the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders.

A 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called double taps a “favorite tactic of Hamas” and the FBI considers it a tactic employed by terrorists.

UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Christof Heyns said that if there are “secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime.”

The U.S. refuses to discuss the merits of its overtly covert drone program, but the reports featured on @dronestream clearly document that U.S. hellfire missiles have intentionally targeted funerals and civilian rescuers.

Jun 18, 2009: 2 drone missiles killed 1 person. When rescuers rushed to the scene, 2 more struck, killing 8 (Pakistan) nytimes.com/2009/06/19/wor…

— Dronestream (@dronestream) December 11, 2012

Jun 23, 2009: Up to 80 more people were killed when several US drones targeted a funeral (Pakistan) aljazeera.com/news/asia/2009…

— Dronestream (@dronestream) December 11, 2012

Jan 6, 2010: Shortly after the first strike, as the rescue efforts were underway, the death toll rose to 15 (Pakistan) aljazeera.com/news/asia/2010…

— Dronestream (@dronestream) December 11, 2012

Apr 16, 2010: Missiles fired from US drones killed 4 in Tolkhel, hitting a car and people rushing in to help (Pakistan) google.com/hostednews/afp…

— Dronestream (@dronestream) December 12, 2012

And that’s only a 10-month window in Pakistan. It has happened in Afghanistan as well, and the first instance of “explicit intelligence posthumously proving” that an innocent civilian had been killed happened in Yemen.

from business insider; The NYU Student Tweeting Every Reported US Drone Strike Has Revealed A Disturbing Trend

see a map of all the TOP SECRET u.s. drone bases in africa by clicking this link to public intelligence:

U.S. Drone and Surveillance Flight Bases in Africa Map and Photos

DISCLAIMER: clicking on this website may target you for death by a drone strike.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE TARGETED FOR A DRONE STRIKE!

A new amply documented report demonstrates the use of American tactics that are almost certainly war crimes

By Glenn Greenwald

On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:

Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.

What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.

In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of  civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .

A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

from salon; U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners

MORE ON THIS:

Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor defends drone strikes

“Counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan says drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have saved American lives and that civilian casualties have been rare.”

Senate panel approves John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

I know in my bones that a robot is going to kill you – the new micro-drones

It’s no use hoping a chilling video of drones being developed by the US is a hoax, as made-up tech tends to come true anyway

Call me a pessimist, but every now and then I see something and think: “Yes, well, there’s something that’s inexorably destined to kill me and my family and everyone I’ve ever met or glimpsed or thought about, in wretched, shrieking, unimaginable and horrendously protracted agony.”

from the video:

Uploaded on Jul 16, 2009

US Air Force Research Laboratory video animation of a flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV). AFRL’s goal is to develop a bird-sized MAV by 2015 and an insect-sized MAV by 2030. The bird-sized MAV would be air-deployed from a larger UAV so search for weapons of mass destruction, operating semi-autonomously for up to a week.

An Air Force simulation says researchers are at work on killer robots so tiny that a group of them could blend into a cityscape.

Science writer John Horgan’s feature on the many ways drones will be used in coming years is interesting throughout, and terrifying in the passage where he describes an effort to build micro-drones that are, as the U.S. Air Force describes them, “Unobtrusive, pervasive, and lethal.”

“we’re continuing to fuel a drone arms race that guarantees widespread proliferation”

Air Force officials declined a request to observe flight tests at a “micro-aviary” they’ve built, he reported, but they did let him see a video dramatization “starring micro-UAVs that resemble winged, multi-legged bugs. The drones swarm through alleys, crawl across windowsills, and perch on power lines. One of them sneaks up on a scowling man holding a gun and shoots him in the head.”

from the Atlantic, Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

The November 22 cover of Newsweek Magazine depicts President Obama as a many-armed Hindu deity holding up items representing his administration’s many priorities or policy issues. The article, entitled “God of All Things, (G.O.A.T)” details the many and increasing responsibilities of the chief executive and was intended to show that the job of president is daunting and difficult for one man to handle alone. However, critics were puzzled on how that translates to “god of all things”.

The image of Obama on the cover of Nov. 22 issue of the Newsweek magazine was that of Shiva – the god who is the destroyer or transformer.

“Shiva meaning the auspicious one, also known as Rudra or the feared one is one of the Trimurthi (Hindu Trinity): Brahma being the Creator, Vishnu being the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer or Transformer. In the Shaiva tradition he is seen as the Supreme God and is usually worshipped in the form of Shiva Linga. In images, he is generally represented as immersed in deep meditation or dancing the Thandava upon Maya, the demon of ignorance in his manifestation of Nataraja, the lord of the dance, the same dance is also known as the dance of death.”

This depiction of Obama has upset some Hindus, as reported by several media. However, it appears that the image carries a far more subliminal message rather than just being a silly imagination of an artist/author or to incite some religious sentiments within certain sections of a community.

Newsweek Cover Depicts Obama as Shiva (G.O.A.T)

see also:

International Human Rights Groups Launch Campaign Against Robot Assassins

bradley manning takes full responibility for leaked documents

“No one associated with the WLO [WikiLeaks Organization] pressured me to give them more information,” Manning said. “The decision to give documents to WikiLeaks [was] mine alone.”

FORT MEADE, Md. — Wearing his Army dress uniform, a composed, intense and articulate Pfc. Bradley Manning took “full responsibility” Thursday for providing the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks with a trove of classified and sensitive military, diplomatic and intelligence cables, videos and documents.

In the lengthiest statement to a military tribunal Manning has provided since his nearly three-year long ordeal began, Manning, 25, said WikiLeaks did not encourage him to provide the organization with any information. But he also sketched out his emotionally fraught online interactions with his WikiLeaks handler, a man he knew as “Ox” or “Nathaniel” over Internet Relay Chat and Jabber, and whom the government maintains was Julian Assange.

Manning’s motivations in leaking, he said, was to “spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general,” he said, and “cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.” Manning said he was in sound mind when he leaked, and did so deliberately, regardless of the legal circumstances.

Pfc. Bradley E. Manning is escorted from a hearing on January 8, 2013. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Remarkably, Manning said he first tried to take his information to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico, before contacting WikiLeaks.

The statement came as Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of 22 charges the Army has levied against him. Manning admitted to improperly storing classified information; having unauthorized possession of such information; willfully communicating it to an unauthorized person; and other “lesser-included” offenses. Each of the 10 offenses to which Manning pleaded guilty carries a sentence of up to two years’ imprisonment, for a total of 20 years in prison.

But Manning pleaded not-guilty to 12 more charges, including the most serious: aiding the enemy, which carries a sentence of life imprisonment. He also denied disseminating any information that he believed could harm U.S. national security, a key aspect of prosecution’s espionage case.

That means the guilty pleas will not necessarily end Manning’s legal woes. The government has the option of pressing forward with the remaining charges, as well as to contest aspects of the lesser charges Manning pleaded guilty to committing. If they proceed, Manning’s trial is expected to formally start here in June.

Manning spoke for over an hour as he read from a 35-page document detailing and explaining his actions that drove him to disclose what he said he “believed, and still believe… are some of the most significant documents of our time.” He rarely grew emotional, with the exception of describing his alienation from his fellow soldiers in Iraq and his relationship with Julian Assange.

Manning described accessing, investigating and ultimately spiriting away and leaking military and diplomatic documents as consistent with his training as an intelligence analyst, attempting to put together a factual picture of complex events. He came to view much of what the Army told him — and the public — to be false, such as the suggestion the military had destroyed a graphic video of an aerial assault in Iraq that killed civilians, or that WikiLeaks was a nefarious entity.

The leaking came gradually, Manning explained — providing a window into the military’s poor data hygiene. While serving at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq in 2009, Manning accessed, compressed and copied databases containing voluminous accounts of military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, known as CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A.

“I never hid the fact that I downloaded copies of CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A” and burned them onto CDs, Manning said, even labeling and storing them “in the open” in his unit’s tactical operations center. Nor did he hide that he also downloaded compression software to facilitate the transfer, Manning said.

That practice apparently made it less conspicuous for Manning to take the burned discs into his military housing, insert them into his personal laptop and send them securely to WikiLeaks’ password-protected online dropbox, often using Tor and other anonymity protocols to mask his identity. Manning stated that he used the same process to spirit away information on detainees at Guantanamo Bay; unspecified documents from an “intelligence agency”; and the State Department’s “Net-Centric Diplomacy” database of diplomatic cables to which the military had access.

Often, Manning would download classified or sensitive information while he simultaneously compiled his intelligence analyses for his unit.

In each of these cases, Manning denied that he was compromising national security. The military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan were often “historic,” with its intelligence value perishable after “48 to 72 hours.” The Guantanamo Bay documents had “no useful intelligence” and did not disclose any results of detainee interrogations. The State Department cables were available to “thousands” of people throughout the government. A Washington Post reporter, David Finkel, had already written about a deadly Apache helicopter attack in 2007, in which civilians were killed, that Manning viewed on video.

Manning said he often found himself frustrated by attempts to get his chain of command to investigate apparent abuses detailed in the documents Manning accessed. “As an analyst, I always want to figure out the truth,” he said. He considered the military unresponsive to the helicopter attack video and other “war porn.” At Guantanamo, while Manning said he had sympathy for the government’s interest in detaining terrorists, “we found ourselves holding an increasing number of individuals indefinitely.”

But Manning conceded that he did not “even look at the proper channels” on how the military chain of command could release the sensitive information.

While in Iraq, Manning — alienated from his fellow soldiers – began visiting WikiLeaks IRC channels and conversing about topics ranging from Linux to gay rights. The chats “allowed me to feel connected to others, even when I was alone,” soothing the emotional stresses of deployment.

But when Manning took a brief mid-tour leave from Iraq in January 2010, he was grappling with disclosing his information trove — but not necessarily to WikiLeaks. While staying with his aunt in Potomac, Md., Manning said he tried to talk to an unnamed Washington Post reporter to interest her in the Iraq and Afghanistan documents, but “I did not believe she took me seriously.” He left voicemails with the public editor and the news-tips lines for the New York Times and heard nothing. A blizzard, he said, kept him from driving to Politico’s office to discuss the documents. According to Manning’s account, only after his attempts to give the documents to mainstream media organizations fail did he consider giving them to WikiLeaks.

from wired – Bradley Manning Takes ‘Full Responsibility’ for Giving WikiLeaks Huge Government Data Trove

The Elites’ Civil War

the powers that be are just that – powers; plural. to put world war three in its proper context, think of it as a war between cowboys, rustlers, bandits, bankers, gangsters, corporations and religions over us – the herd of humanity. the winner gets to do whatever they want with us. expect no mercy.

Elites: A Harsh Truth

Published on Mar 24, 2012 by Suspicious0bservers

The time has come when hate in your heart makes you the enemy of all.

see also:

A Failed Formula for Worldwide War

some really useful info in regards to megastorm sandy and weather wars

the guy who does YOUR MIND IS YOUR WEAPON speaks my language!

All Images and Information found at the Links Below, with gratitude.

Collapsing Atmosphere/Magnetic Shield:
STARWATER:

TODAY’S LINKS BELOW THIS VIDEO

Alert – Hurricane Sandy brings flood Alert to Nuclear zone in Ohio – 10-31 12

HAMP:
Video on Elite War:

REPEAT LINKS
Spaceweather:

HAARP: [Click online data, and have a little fun]

CERES JPL:

SDO:[Place to find Solar Images and Videos - as seen from earth]

Helioviewer:

SOHO: [SOHO; Lasco and EIT - as seen from earth]

Stereo:[Stereo; Cor, EUVI, HI - as seen from the side]

SunAEON: [Just click it... trust me]

SOLARIMG:  [All purpose data viewing site]

iSWA:[Free Application; for advanced sun watchers]

NASA ENLIL SPIRAL:
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL:

US Wind Map:

NOAA Bouys:

RADIATION Network:

NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory:

“Hey, Stupid – it’s just a piece of paper! It’s only worth what WE say it’s worth! Ooooo – look at the money! You know you want it!”"

RSOE:  [That cool alert map I use]

GOES Xray:

JAPAN Radiation Map:

LISS:

Gamma Ray Bursts: [Really? You can't figure out what this one is for?]

BARTOL Cosmic Rays:  [Top left box, look for BIG blue circles]

TORCON: [Tornado Forecast for the day]

GOES Weather: [Clouds over America]

RAIN RECORDS:

EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP:

PRESSURE MAP:

HURRICANE TRACKER:

INTELLICAST:  [Weather site used by many youtubers]

NASA News:

PHYSORG: [GREAT News Site!]

QUAKES LIST .

The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia

 welcome to hell-on-earth – liberia

VICE travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation’s eventual intervention, most of Liberia’s young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust.
Hosted by Shane Smith | Originally released in 2009 at http://vice.com

the u.s. military/industrial complex hates americans

Army scientists secretly sprayed St Louis with ‘radioactive’ particles for YEARS to test chemical warfare technology

stories like this make me sick and hurt me to the core of my soul. as does the fact that there are tens of millions of flag-waving zombified, asshole shit-for-brains in this country who really, truly believe in the dictum “my country, wrong or right!”

By Emily Anne Epstein, for the daily mail

The United States Military conducted top secret experiments on the citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, for years, exposing them to radioactive compounds, a researcher has claimed.

While it was known that the government sprayed ‘harmless’ zinc cadmium silfide particles over the general population in St Louis, Professor Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist at St. Louis Community College, claims that a radioactive additive was also mixed with the compound.

She has accrued detailed descriptions as well as photographs of the spraying which exposed the unwitting public, predominantly in low-income and minority communities, to radioactive particles.’The study was secretive for reason. They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles,’ said Professor Martino-Taylor to KSDK.

Through her research, she found photographs of how the particles were distributed from 1953-1954 and 1963-1965.

In Corpus Christi, the chemical was dropped from airplanes over large swathes of the city. In St Louis, the Army put chemical sprayers on buildings, like schools and public housing projects, and mounted them in station wagons for mobile use.

Despite the extent of the experiment, local politicians were not notified about the content of the testing. The people of St Louis were told that the Army was testing smoke screens to protect cities from a Russian attack.

‘It was pretty shocking. The level of duplicity and secrecy. Clearly they went to great lengths to deceive people,’ Professor Martino-Taylor said.

She accrued hundreds of pages of declassified information, which she has made available online.

In her research, she found that the greatest concentration of spraying in St Louis was at the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex, which was home to 10,000 low income residents.  She said that 70 per cent of those residents were children under the age of 12.

Professor Martino-Taylor became interested in the topic after hearing independent reports of cancers among city residents living in those areas at the time.

‘This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military’s own policy at that time,’ said Professor Martino-Taylor.

‘There is a lot of evidence that shows people in St. Louis and the city, in particular minority communities, were subjected to military testing that was connected to a larger radiological weapons testing project.’

Previous investigations of the compound were rebuffed by the military, which insisted it was safe.

However, Professor Martino-Taylor believes the documents she’s uncovered, prove the zinc cadmium silfide was also mixed with radioactive particles.

She has linked the St Louis testing to a now-defunct company called US Radium. The controversial company came under fire, and numerous lawsuits, after several of its workers were exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive materials in its fluorescent paint.

see more, from the daily mail

big thanks to the earthfirst! newswire for helping to bring this story to the u.s.

syrian rebels massacred government supporters in houla – not syrian government

BBC immediately changed the narrative back to the “correct” tract, after syrian businessman says rebel group massacred civilians in Al-Hula

BBC’s Newsnight last night interviewed a London based Syrian businessman who stated that the families murdered by terrorists in Houla were supporters of the Syrian government, not the opposition.

If correct this would make it highly unlikely that the narrative pushed by the mainstream media is true, and suggests the opposite is the case: the atrocity was committed not by the Assad regime but by the insurgents, supported by NATO, Al Qaeda and the gulf arab dictators, and reported to be covertly armed by Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood linked government.

The official story of the Houla massacre has changed substantially since it first broke, with unconfirmed reports from insurgents (routinely described on the BBC as activists).

• Version one, corroborated by at least one BBC corespondent, had it that the victims were killed by heavy weapons of the Syrian army.
• Version two was that villagers had been randomly killed by militias sponsored by the Assad government.
• Version three, the current version, concedes that most of the victims came from a few extended families.

It should not be difficult to establish who the families were loyal to: the insurgents or the Syrian government. The Syrian businessman on Newsnight stated they were related to an MP elected in recent elections which the insurgents have boycotted.

It was not clear whether the information from the Syrian businessman was expected in this live TV show. The potential bombshell was ignored by hawkish presenter Gavin Essler and high profile warmonger Paul Wolfovitz, who demanded a military attack on Syria. A UN spokesman refused Essler’s invitation to confirm that the Houla victims were killed by Syrian government forces.

If we now hear less and less about the massacre with no further details, many will conclude that the prima facie suspects for the atrocity are the insurgents, backed by NATO and the Gulf arab dictators, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, including the BBC.

via Houla Massacre Victims ‘Were Supporters of Syrian Government’ – Salem-News.Com.

ANNA News Journalist Marat Musin about Houla Massacre

In the weekend of May 25, 2012, at about 2 PM, big groups of fighters attacked and captured the town of Al – Hula of the Homs province. Al-Hula is made up of three regions: the village of Taldou, Kafr Laha and Taldahab, each of which had previously been home for 25-30 thousand people.

The town was attacked from the north-east by groups of bandits and mercenaries, numbering up to 700 people. The militants came from Ar-Rastan (the Brigade of al-Farouk from the Free Syrian Army led by the terrorist Abdul Razak Tlass and numbering 250), from the village of Akraba (led by the terrorist Yahya Al-Yousef), from the village Farlaha, joined by local gangsters, and from Al Hula.

The city of Ar-Rastan has long been abandoned by most civilians. Now Wahhabis from Lebanon dominate the scene, fueled with money and weapons by one of the main orchestrators of international terrorism, Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian political movement “Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal” (“Future Movement”). The road from Ar-Rastan to Al-Hula runs through Bedouin areas that remain mostly out of control of government troops, which made the militant attacks on Al Hula a complete surprise for the Syrian authorities.

When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the AbdulRazak. Many of those killed were “guilty” of the fact that they dared to chang from Sunnis to Shiites. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies.

The idea that the UN observers had heard artillery fire against Al-Houla in the Safir Hotel in Homs at night… I consider nothing short of a bad joke. 50 kilometers lie between Homs and Al-Houla. What kind of tanks or guns has this range? Yes, there was intensive gunfire in Homs until 3 am, including heavy weapons. But, to give an example, on the night of Monday to Tuesday shooting was due to an attempt by law enforcement to regain control for a security corridor along the road to Damascus, Tarik Al-Sham.

After a visual inspection of Al Hula it is impossible to find traces of any of fresh destruction, bombing and shelling. During the day, several attacks by gunmen are made on the last remaining soldiers at the Taldou checkpoint. Militants used heavy weapons and snipers are active from among professional mercenaries.

Note that once, the exactly same provocation failed at Shumar (Homs) and 49 militants and women and children were killed, when it was organized just before a visit of Kofi Annan. The last provocation was immediately exposed as soon as it became known that the bodies of the previously kidnapped belonged to Alawites. This provocation also contained serious inconsistencies – the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities, there were no traces of bombings, etc.

However, the provocation machine is running all the same. Today, the NATO countries directly threat to bomb Syria, and a simultaneous expulsion of Syrian diplomats has begun … As of today, there are no troops within the city of Al Hula, but there are regularly heard bursts of automatic fire, nonetheless. Moreover, it is unclear whether the militants are fighting with each other, or whether supporters Bashar al-Assad are being cleaned out. Militants opened fire on virtually everyone who tries to get closer to the border town. Before us a UN convoy was fired upon and two armored jeeps of the UN observers were damaged, when they tried to drive up to an army checkpoint in Tal Dow.

see more of this story, form the salem news.com

The Houla Hoaxsters

It was supposed to be another “Benghazi moment” – an incident so horrific that it would spark Western military intervention in Syria’s increasingly violent civil war. The massacre at Houla was reported to be just such a moment: Syria’s security forces stand accused of killing 32 children under ten years of age, and more than 60 adults, by bombing the rebel-held village of Houla. Photos of the massacre soon appeared on Twitter: and on YouTube, videos of the slaughter, uploaded by anonymous “activists,” appeared on cue. There was just one problem with this “evidence” of a massacre committed by the Syrian government – much of it was completely made up.

Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:

“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”

“Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti [S]yrian propaganda on the BBC web site front page,” Di Lauro says, “I almost fell off my chair when I saw it.” When confronted by Di Franco, BBC editors took it down, and, by way of explanation, pointed to the caption as somehow exonerating.

The BBC’s falling for – or enabling – “activist” fakery is hardly the only such incident: there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The cause of “Amina” was taken up by those ubiquitous Syrian “activists” and trumpeted by their online propaganda apparatus – which has sprung up with weed-like rapidity. That’s what a healthy infusion of money from Western governments will buy you.

Yet even all that money apparently can’t buy competent sock-puppets, with amateurs like MacMaster, “Syria Danny,” and whoever supplied the BBC with Di Lauro’s photo running wild.

Speaking of running wild with enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars, the rebels – already receiving cash, arms, and other emoluments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Gulf sheikdoms – have already handed a $12 billion bill for “post-Assad development” to the Western “Friends Group,” led by Germany. That, you can be sure, is just the beginning. With the Eurozone going down into the economic abyss, and the Germans berating their Greek (and now Spanish and Italian) partners as unproductive free riders, one has to wonder about German priorities. The British, too, are on the hook, having just upped the amount they’re sending – at a time when government subsidies to the very needy are on the chopping block. And of course there’s no telling how many American tax dollars have been funneled in “non-lethal” aid to the rebels-who-couldn’t-get-their-lies-straight, but one thing is clear: their American trainers and advisers have their work cut out for them.

from anti-war.com

Julian Assange loses appeal against extradition – also, rap news #13

Julian Assange has lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden at the supreme court.

By a majority of five to two, the justices decided that a public prosecutor was “judicial authority” and that therefore his arrest warrant had been lawfully issued.

But lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder submitted an urgent request to the supreme court asking for permission to challenge one of the points made in the judgment.

Assange, who is facing charges of sexual assault and rape, was not in court. There was no legal requirement for him to be present. According to his solicitor, Gareth Peirce, he was stuck in traffic.

The court granted Assange’s lawyers 14 days to present their arguments that crucial issues related to Article 31 of the Vienna convention, on which the majority of the justices based their decision, were not raised during the hearing.

The two judges who found in Assange’s favour were Lord Mance and Lady Hale.

for background, see previous post: UK Court to decide on Extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

Assange’s lawyers can also, at the same time, begin the process of appealing against the judgment to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

According to the supreme court, the Crown Prosecution Service cannot start extraditing Assange until 13 June at the earliest.

“The majority of the judges believe that parliament was seriously misled when it approved the European arrest warrant system,” said Peirce.

“Parliament thought a ‘judicial authority’ meant a judge or court but the majority of supreme court judges based their decision on what is the practice in Europe and decided it on the basis of the Vienna convention, which was never argued before the court.”

Even though Lord Brown has retired, at the age of 75, since the original hearing, he may still be called back to ensure there are an uneven number of justices on the panel when the court considers Assange’s emergency application.

This is the first time the supreme court has agreed to consider an emergency challenge to one of its rulings. It has happened in the past when the House of Lords was the highest appellate court.

via Julian Assange loses appeal against extradition | Media | guardian.co.uk.

RAP NEWS 13: A News Hope

It is a time of corporate war; deprived of a reliable media the people of Planet Earth are kept misinformed and in a state of perpetual conflict. Is an honest Fourth Estate the only Force than can restore peace and balance to the Galaxy? To find out, we consult two of journalism’s most influential and inflammatory figures: Rebel journalist enfant terrible, Julian Assange, who awaits a verdict in London which could see him ‘extradited’ to Sweden. And on the opposite end of the journalistic spectrum: Rupert Murdoch, head of the mighty NewsCorp media Empire, embroiled in legal scandals that go to the highest and lowest levels of celebrity in Britain.

UK Court to decide on Extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

Rallies on the 31st May: Details on Wikileaks Central

The judgment in WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange’s final appeal against extradition to Sweden will be published by the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday 30 May.

If Assange loses he will be sent to Sweden by force within 10 days. From Sweden, he could be sent immediately to the US where he faces prosecution for publishing information just like any other journalist. Even if he wins the appeal, the US will likely seek to extradite him from the UK or Australia.

Assange has been under house arrest in the UK for over 530 days, a situation which Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, has admitted is “extraordinary”. And Foreign Minister Carr has called aspects of the Swedish justice system “an outrage by Australian standards”. But they have done nothing to assist Assange.

Instead, our Prime Minister Julia Gillard labelled Assange a criminal and her government has been quietly passing legislation which will potentially make it easier for Assange to be extradited to the US, should he ever return to Australia. They have denied all knowledge of the sealed indictment against Assange and continue to block FOI requests for information relating to documents relating to potential US extradition, reportedly at the behest of the US government.

National Rallies occuring on the 31st May (Australia)

Cables reveal Australia, US focus on Assange

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange remains the target of a US government criminal investigation and the subject of US-Australian intelligence exchanges, Australian diplomatic cables obtained by the Herald reveal.

Australian diplomats have closely monitored the US Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks over the past 18 months. The embassy in Washington reported ”a broad range of possible charges are under consideration, including espionage and conspiracy”.

The diplomats dismiss Mr Assange’s claims that the US investigation is politically motivated retribution for WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked US military and diplomatic reports. They instead highlight US prosecutors’ claims that the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning, dealt directly with Mr Assange and ”data-mined” secret US databases ”guided by WikiLeaks’ list of ‘most wanted’ leaks”.

Mr Assange will learn on Wednesday the British Supreme Court’s decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden to be questioned about sexual assault allegations. Mr Assange, who has not been charged with any offence, fears extradition to Stockholm will facilitate his ultimate extradition to the US.

Despite extensive redactions, the Australian diplomatic cables released under freedom of information show the US and Australian governments continued high-level exchanges on WikiLeaks last year.

The Australian embassy in Washington provided Canberra with regular updates, including reporting on Justice Department efforts aimed at ”casting the net beyond Assange to see if any intermediaries had been involved in communications between Assange and Manning”.

An embassy representative attended all seven days of Private Manning’s pre-court martial hearing for last December. Much of the embassy’s reporting has been redacted on grounds that its release would damage Australia’s diplomatic relations.

There have been continuing US-Australian intelligence exchanges on WikiLeaks. Two embassy cables were withheld from release as ”intelligence agency documents” that are exempt from FOI legislation. The chairman of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, Labor MP Anthony Byrne, also held discussions with senior US intelligence in January last year, covering a range of topics that included ”cyber security, particularly in light of the recent breaches of diplomatic cables from the US (WikiLeaks) and dissemination of sensitive information by the international media”.

from the sydney morning herlad - Cables reveal Australia, US focus on Assange

Good.is and Column Five have put together a very detailed and creative infographic that reports the quest to plug WikiLeaks. Click the image to enlarge.

see previous posts:

Julian Assange’s lawyer needed “official approval” to return to australia

the Obama administration’s war against truth, julian assange

No Links Between Manning, Assange, US Admits

Is obama setting up “rendition” kidnapping of assange?

julian assange fears torture, death in American dentention facilities

related to wikileaks:

stratfor info dump revealed international spying, insider trading, and paranoia

WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO for banning WikiLeaks from conference about WikiLeaks

Australian group gives wikileaks founder Julian Assange peace prize

Julian Assange tells students that the web is the greatest spying machine ever

related to bradley manning

Manning challenges U.S. to prove he ‘aided the enemy’

Bradley Manning’s treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules

Bradley Manning formally charged with aiding the united state’s enemies – the american public

Icelandic Parliamentarians Nominate Bradley Manning for Nobel Peace Prize

excellent bio of Bradley Manning, from Wikipedia

Livestream back up for sunday actions: net journalist harrassed: nato protests: 4:20 pm central, solar eclipse

yesterday:

In the streets with crowd, Timcast broadcasting on Ustream, live says the place where he is staying, where his equipment is stored, is surrounded by police.

later:

Tim Poole & Luke Rudkowski, were raided at gunpoint & handcuffed, content from NATO protests confiscated!

police harrass them, then let them go…

view,via

CENSORED NEWS: Livestream: NATO protesters Chicago marching.

rare planetary alignment, accompanied by solar eclipse visible in cascadia. and possible dark rites at camp david and chicago.

and, here’s a video about the dark side of the summit:

g20 summit includes representative from EU, and possibly drug cartel

inviting heads of state to country being decimated by drugwar violence

the next g20 summit – officially billed as a conference of the world’s largest economies, plus the european union – will be held in the los cabos municipality, in the lower tip of baja california, mexico – one of the g20′s members.

how can this happen? this is almost like having the summit in somalia or syria.

“Who wants cocaine?”

mexico; where from coast-to-coast, in every major city, piles of dismembered bodies, sometimes even those of police and military personnel, are only shocking due to the number of corpses – the largest count so far has been 35, in veracruz. in near durango, mass graves with more than 450 human remains were discovered a year ago, and there is currently (may 12, 2012) an on-going battle between cartels – and sometimes the police and military – with losses at iraq-like numbers.

mexico: where the sinaloa cartel has more influence in the daily activity in the capital than the authorities, because they pay better.

however, in this one, little corner of mexico, the only place of its type, peace reigns. not because the authorities are in control of the mountainous area, the tip of the southern baja peninsula. nope: this area is home to the world’s most wanted man, the head el jefe of the sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who also is listed as a billionaire by forbes magazine, as well as somewhere between the 40th to 55th most powerful man in the world.

he’s eluded capture from his mansions in the punta ballena development (an exclusive, gated community outside of cabo san lucas, on the coast) on three separate occasions since escaping from a mexican maximum-security prison in 2001. the first time was a few months after his escape, then again two years later. his most recent narrow escape was earlier this year. the day after the g20′s mini-summit in february, when the finance ministers and other “sherpas” from the member nations convened there.

so, one has to wonder why the FUCK world leaders want to gather in an area under control of a narcotrafficker? my first guess would be because they need him to bail out a few economies in europe, and maybe pump some life into the american one as well. perhaps it’s also because there is some sort of safe-haven agreement between el chapo and the governments of mexico and the u.s. they keep the violence at a certain distance from one another’s leaders, the governments allow the drug trade to continue at a certain level, and the profits are shared through bribery. everyone wins, except for the minions dying on all sides, innocent people swept up in the violence, journalists and all the people imprisoned for illicit drug use. still, think of all the money being made by arms dealers, law enforcement agencies, prison systems, courts – not to mention the drug trafficking profits.

mexico is both very impoverished and awash in drug money. so much money – particularly in a country where very little of the money form the abundance of natural resources there makes its way into the hands of the population, and instead ends up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, attorneys, police, judges, military and narcotraffickers. former mayors of tijuana and ciudad juarez have been arrested on corruption charges, but released under vague circumstances.

when bribes don’t work, assassination is used to both eliminate troublesome enemies, and to intimidate those who replace them.

just across the sea of cortez, on the mexican mailand, a war is waging as this report is being prepared, which is a sidenote in a longer, several-part series about the drug war raging in mexico and the u.s. government’s role in worsening the crisis by aligning itself with the sinaloa cartel. this is the area where the current drug war era of psychotic violence began in earnest after the killing of el chapo guzman’s son, edgar. starting from his stronghold in culiacán, el chapo pacified the area through a wave of killing that has only intensified and spread since.

in that year alone – 2008 – cartel-related violence was responsible for over 5,300 deaths in mexico. by 2012, the government blamed the cartels for over 12,000 killings.

el chapo’s old rivals, it would seem, were not eliminated, and have recently begun to re-assert themselves in the mountains of durango and sinaloa.

fighting is so intense across the sea from los cabos that a military convoy sent to quell inter-cartel warfare was ambushed and had to withdraw, after allegedly suffering heavy casualties and the loss of a helicopter. they managed to inflict some damage to the cartel’s forces as well, and captured numerous weapons and vehicles in the process – many of them decorated to resemble police and military.

so, once again the question arises – why is this one place, in all of mexico, exempt from the crazy violence of the rest of the country. the only answer that makes any sense is because el chapo wants a safe haven, and has the authorities in los cabos firmly under his control. this place is littered with swank resorts and luxury hotels, and is a favorite party spot for hollywood celebrities, among other wealthy, well-connected people who love to party it up.

how can anyone possibly think that the heads of the g20 – the wealthiest nations on earth – can have a convention there, without inviting attacks from one of many cartels in the area fully capable of engaging the mexican military in battle, unless there was an arrangement of some sort?

the day after the secretary of state of the united states flew out of the newly-expanded cabo san lucas airport (the airport and a new hilton luxury resort and convention center are being created for the summit), el chapo – once again – narrowly escaped arrest there. american spokespeople have claimed to have alerted their mexican counterparts that el chapo was at one of his homes in the gated community of punta ballena. maybe they told el chapo first, so he could clear out.

maybe the clinton team is negotiating with el chapo. according to recent statements by  former mexican president vicente fox, the u.s. has been actively negotiating el chapo’s surrender, now that several of his lieutenants are being held for trial in the u.s.

that seems unlikely. what’s more likely is that el chapo is negotiating the release of his henchmen. after all, the u.s. has been arming the sinaloa cartel since at least 2006, and possibly since 2004. the result has been a bloody conflaguration that has spread from mexico southward into central america. the rivalry between the main coalitions in the illegal drug trade (the sinaloa federation and the zetas) may be the only thing preventing this bloody mess from spilling over the northern border and into every major city in the america.

if the sinaloas go down, what will stop the zetas from consolidating their power in the u.s., where all their wealth comes from?

18 Headless Bodies found in Guadalajara Mexico

Police found 18 mutilated, headless bodies near a lake popular with tourists and American retirees just outside Guadalajara, Mexico, a massacre that authorities blamed on the Zetas drug cartel.

A phone call alerted police to two vans on a dirt road near Lake Chapala early Wednesday morning. When police opened the van, they found 18 headless and dismembered bodies inside. Some were so badly mutilated that police have still not determined their gender. The bodies appear to have been refrigerated after death.

Handwritten messages were found in the van. “They are clearly messages between rival groups that are in conflict,” said Tomas Coronado, prosecutor for the state of Jalisco. Officials said the notes were signed by the Zetas.

Los Zetas have been battling the Jalisco New Generation gang, a minor cartel allied with the Sinaloa cartel, which is the Zetas chief rival for dominance of the Mexican drug trade. The Zetas cartel, which was founded by ex-members of the Mexican military, controls most of eastern Mexico and much of the north.

A woman detained yesterday in connection with the separate kidnapping of 12 people in the same area told police that the abductions were connected to events in Tamaulipas state. Two dozen men and women were found decapitated or hanging from bridges in Nuevo Laredo, on the border with Texas, on Friday, where the Zetas are battling the Gulf cartel, another Sinaloa cartel ally.

via 18 Headless Bodies in Mexico Tourist Area – 12 News KBMT and K-JAC. News, Weather and Sports for SE Texas.