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Posts posted by Steven Gaal
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Mrs. Ambrose Martinez worked as an Intake Secretary in the Welfare Office of
the Salvation Army at 500 North Ervay Street in Dallas. She recalled that two or three months before the assassination Lee and Marina Oswald, accompanied by both of their children, (Marina gave birth in Oct) came to the Salvation Army seeking aid. Mrs. Martinez remembered the Oswalds because Marina spoke only Russian and recalled that she listed her father in Moscow as a reference (Marina's father died when she was young) while Lee Oswald listed a "Mrs. Paine" as a reference. Oswald said that he and his wife were living with Mrs. Paine in Irving, Texas (not true) and they had met Mrs. Paine in New Orleans (Harvey and Marina met Ruth Paine in Dallas).17 // JOESPH
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I get it Salvation Army full of KOOKS ..yeah that's it and drunk ...yeah and can be bought off yeah .....just want attention ...liars all yeah that's it !!!
>>>>>>THAT WHAT U THINK WHEN U THINK SALVATION ARMY !!! >>>GAAL TONGUE IN CHEEK]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
http://www.salvationarmy.org/ihq/ourwork
OUR WORK
From family tracing to disaster response, The Salvation Army offers a wide variety of services worldwide.
Below is an overview of what we do. If you would like to find out more about any of the services we offer, please get in contact with the Salvation Army in your country.
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Addiction Dependency
For those in need, the Salvation Army runs a number of addiction rehabilitation programs. We believe in taking the holistic approach, not just helping the client to overcome their addiction, but attacking the roots of that addiction.Emergency Response
From sites of natural and man-made disasters to places of human conflict, the Salvation Army is there to provide compassion and practical support to those in real and sudden need. The Army strives to provide first for the immediate physical needs but beyond that, ministry for the aching heart and the weary soul.=
Family Tracing
The Family Tracing Service was officially established in 1885, when it was designated as 'Mrs Booth's Enquiry Bureau'. It has developed to become one of The Salvation Army's most distinctive international services in many territories where it continues to be in operation 120 years on. The mission of the Family Tracing Service is to restore or sustain family relationships by tracing relatives with whom contact has been lost, either recently or in the distant past.
To find out more about the Family Tracing Service or to apply to have a relative traced, please contact the Salvation Army in the country where you reside.
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Health Services
International Projects
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Social Work
The Salvation Army is one of the largest social care providers in the World. There are social programs running in almost every country we operate in.=
Sports Ministry
International Headquarters’ Sports Ministry Desk exists to encourage, support and resource Salvation Army Sports Ministry leaders around the world to find connections, to build relationships and to help people and communities to enjoy healthy lives in bodies, minds and souls. It does this as part of The Salvation Army’s mission to ‘save souls, grow saints and serve suffering humanity’.
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An Autopsy under military control or Parkland Doctors ??? GOLLY of the two ,who would lie ?? GAAL
lots of good stuff link below
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/er-doctor-talks-about-jfks-wounds/
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http://joanmellen.com/wordpress/literary-matters/who-was-lee-harvey-oswald/
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Sometimes Soviet Russia Counter Intelligence was called in at the briefings. So the mystery of Oswald in the Soviet Union unravels. The above trajectory offers further evidence that Oswald was a creature of the CIA, worked for the CIA, and, quite understandably, was debriefed by them upon his return. Additional evidence that CIA debriefed Oswald after his return from the Soviet Union resides in the unredacted version CIA document 435-173A, dated 25 November 1963, by the same Thomas B. Casasin. This document is familiar because we have long had a redacted version of Casasin’s 25 November 1963 memo to Walter P. Haltigan, whom Casasin subsequently revealed to be one “Jim Flint.” Flint was part of SR9, the operations part of the Soviet Division and was Casasin’s “normal contact” in Paris where Casasin arrived in September 1962. In this memo, Casasin writes that “Oswald’s unusual behavior in the USSR” made him look “odd,” leading Casasin not to use him in operations in the REDWOOD target area. REDWOOD was an action indicator for the SE Division. (SED was a CIA geographic designator for the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe). It seems now a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing, a not infrequent CIA situation.In that unredacted version of Thomas B. Casasin’s memo to Walter P. Haltigan, Casasin writes: “as chief of the 6 Branch I had discussed – sometime in Summer 1960 (he later corrected that date to “1962”) with the then Chief and Deputy Chief of the 6 Research Section the laying on of interview(s) [with Oswald] through KUJUMP [the operations division] or other suitable channels.” KUJUMP had a contacts division for debriefing persons. KUJUMP was synonymous with 00 (Contacts Division).
Casasin closes his addendum to the memo with this line, indicating that was not aware of Angleton’s program: “It was partly out of curiosity to learn if Oswald’s wife would actually accompany him to our country, partly out of interest in Oswald’s own experiences in the USSR, that we showed operational intelligence interest in the Harvey story.” Casasin was looking for links between Soviet women marrying foreigners and the KGB. Casasin also refers in his 25 November 1963 memo to a program called AEOCEAN 3, then run out of SR10, and referring to Oswald in particular: this was the legal travelers program, i. e. the intelligence use of legal travelers to the Soviet Union. It seems apparent that Casasin, a pseudonym, was not in the loop, and is struggling to make sense of Oswald and his defection.
In his HSCA interview, while speculating, without any real evidence, that Oswald might have been a “lay-low Soviet operative,” Casasin fills in some gaps in our knowledge about what Oswald was doing in the Soviet Union. He reveals that “there were some type of special design plants in Minsk which were of interest to the CIA.” Casasin adds that CIA “had some type of encyclopedic information at the agency on the radio factory in Minsk where Oswald worked.” He is talking about a component of CIA called the “Industrial Registry.” Casasin was instructed by CIA not to reveal to HSCA information about a tourist guide he ran in the Soviet Union under a program called REDSKIN, and who, like Oswald, married a Soviet woman. In passing, let us note that the Warren Commission never contacted Casasin about his Oswald memo. Casasin’s HSCA interview, released in 2000, reminds us of how heavily compartmentalized, how much on a need to know basis, counterintelligence operated: Casasin told the HSCA that “he does not recall any discussions concerning the possible use of American defectors to penetrate the Soviets.” Casasin does admit: “Counterintelligence did have their own closely held operations…and “it was possible or even probable that Counterintelligence ran operations in his own geographical target.”
Back to Donald Deneselya, who worked at a far lower rung of the Soviet Russia Division than Casasin, not to mention Crowley and Ashcraft. When Deneselya asked his Agency confreres about the document, he was told that the subject was Robert Webster, although Webster was located not in Minsk, but at a plant in Leningrad, and there was a parallel document mentioning Webster by name. Mr. Deneselya was convincing. Among the details he added was that some time after he witnessed the Oswald debriefing document, he asked James Angleton where he might find a copy so that he could peruse it again.
“You’ll never find that document,” Angleton said. The bad faith of the House Select Committee is reflected in the “Outside Contact Report,” dated September 26, 1978, in which the Oswald revelation is barely mentioned, and Deneselya’s information is almost completely confined to his work with a KGB defector named Golitsin. Ken Klein should have been excited by the appearance of proof that Oswald had been debriefed by the CIA. Instead, in his report he affects disinterest. You can see him yawning ostentatiously over what should have been an astonishing revelation. Klein behaves no differently than the specious “Frontline” program which allows Deneselya a few words, then rapidly brings on Richard Helms and Robert Oswald, the brother whose bona fides I have already called into question, to discount the information that Oswald had been debriefed by CIA. I’ve always believed that many documents have been destroyed and been wary of the notion that somehow once ALL the files were opened, we would gain the truth. I know of mounds of materials that were removed from libraries by “men in suits,” never to be seen again, despite FOIA requests. (In one case the men lied outright and said that they had been sent by the University where the papers had been willed: they hadn’t been). -
See more at: http://joanmellen.com/wordpress/literary-matters/who-was-lee-harvey-oswald/#sthash.zip5wh0q.dpuf
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this post dedicated to Trejo and DVP
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ALL your speech is important = AND will be monitored public / private . (GAAL)
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Five reasons the MI6 story is a lie
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Craig Murray | June 15, 2015
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https://grahamcluley.com/2015/06/reasons-mi6-story-lie/
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Human rights activist and former ambassador Craig Murray doesn't believe the story published this weekend in the UK's Sunday Times. After his own website suffered a denial-of-service attack, he has granted permission for other sites to carry his article in full.
Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie.
1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by officers. Their informants are agents. In real life, James Bond would not be a secret agent. He would be an MI6 officer. Those whose knowledge comes from fiction frequently confuse the two. Nobody really working with the intelligence services would do so, as the Sunday Times source does. The story is a lie.
2) The argument that MI6 officers are at danger of being killed by the Russians or Chinese is a nonsense. No MI6 officer has been killed by the Russians or Chinese for 50 years. The worst that could happen is they would be sent home. Agents’ – generally local people, as opposed to MI6 officers – identities would not be revealed in the Snowden documents. Rule No.1 in both the CIA and MI6 is that agents’ identities are never, ever written down, neither their names nor a description that would allow them to be identified. I once got very, very severely carpeted for adding an agents’ name to my copy of an intelligence report in handwriting, suggesting he was a useless gossip and MI6 should not be wasting their money on bribing him. And that was in post communist Poland, not a high risk situation.
3) MI6 officers work under diplomatic cover 99% of the time. Their alias is as members of the British Embassy, or other diplomatic status mission. A portion are declared to the host country. The truth is that Embassies of different powers very quickly identify who are the spies in other missions. MI6 have huge dossiers on the members of the Russian security services – I have seen and handled them. The Russians have the same. In past mass expulsions, the British government has expelled 20 or 30 spies from the Russian Embassy in London. The Russians retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats from Moscow, all of whom were not spies! As a third of our “diplomats” in Russia are spies, this was not coincidence. This was deliberate to send the message that they knew precisely who the spies were, and they did not fear them.
4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. Remember that GCHQ already has an archive of 800,000 perfectly innocent British people engaged in sex chats online.
5) The paper publishing the story is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It is sourced to the people who brought you the dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, every single “fact” in which proved to be a fabrication. Why would you believe the liars now?
There you have five reasons the story is a lie.
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THE DISINFORMATION and CORRUPTION GOES MULTIGENERATIONAL (GAAL)
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The powerful Rupert Murdoch crowns his sons as the new kings of his self-built empire
By Benzamin H on June 14, 2015=
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Rupert Murdoch, king of one of the most dominant empires in the history of media is now ready to pass the crown to his empire. The crown stays within the family, as the reports this week indicates the powerful and decipherable 84 years old Rupert Murdoch is ready to appoint James and Lachlan his sons as the new heirs of his empire.
James will serve the company as the Chief Executive Office while Lachlan will hold the position of Executive Co-Chairman of the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.The 42 year old James Murdoch is currently in charge as the Fox’s co-chief operating office, where Lachlan 43 years old the elder brother of James is the non-executive co-chairman. Many people find it interesting that James who was a Harvard dropout and also owned a record label company is now taking over one of the biggest entertainment company in the world.
James and Lachlan will be in charge of the company, while Rupert himself will continue his affiliation with the company as a co-chair on the board of the company. Other siblings of James and Lachlan are very small to be brought into the family business.Analyst of the Twenty-First Century Fox Douglas Creutz told NBC that James has jumped his elder brother only because he has a fine operational experience. Another reason for this seems to be the support of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the investor and family support of Fox Inc.
According to the king James understands the business and its integrity really well and proves himself to be an effective member of the company. He believes that James can control the digital technology as he starts to handle the company with his hands.
Fox’s own analysts find James to be forceful when it comes to dealing with investors. He makes sure not to venture his emotions into his business, unlike his father Rupert Murdoch.
According to the news, Fox’s operations will now be more interesting to watch as for the first time the two brothers will be seen to work as partners. Also with Chase Carey the Chief operating officer leaving, it will be attention seeking to watch them work without a stronger pillar of the Fox empire.
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The war on the middle class:"Today,99% of all new income is going to the top 1%,while the top one-tenth of 1% own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%...It is time to say loudly and clearly that corporate greed and the war against the American middle
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By: suman
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HERE IS THE reality of the American economy. Despite an explosion in technology and a huge increase in worker productivity, the middle class continues its 40-year decline. Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999.see http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2015/06/the-war-on-middle-class-today-99-of-all.html
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Hi Vitali,
I agree. The aircraft certainly brought down by a SAM, most likely a BUK.
From there on, it is very hard to determine any facts. We have no hard evidence who fired the missile.
I still believe that it was the rebels, though. I believe it was a mistake, and that they thought they were firing at a Ukrainian military transport. If this is the case and if it was supplied by the Russians, I don't believe the Russians hold any culpability in the affair.
I believe , I believe ...Burton a man of great faith ......Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
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see
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So far, it was impossible for nsnbc international to acquire certified audio copies of conversations between Ukrainian Air Traffic Controllers and the flight crew on board the Boeing 777-200 from Ukrainian authorities or from the Dutch Safety Board.
In its preliminary report the DSB released a “transcript” of the communication, claiming it to be correct and truthful. The “transcript” however, does not allow independent media to analyze the data, to make inquiries into whether the data have been tempered with, or even if the voices match with those of the flight crew.
The international flying public is presumably expected to “believe” the DSB and other authorities rather than independent media and verifiable, testable data.
WHY EVAN ?? WHY EVAN CANT WE GET REAL CONVERSATION INFO ?? (GAAL)
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GAAL a man of great faith AND facts... Washington Was Behind Ukraine Coup: Obama admits that ...
Feb 3, 2015 - US President Barack Obama revealed the United States' involvement in the Ukrainian crisis from its outset and admitted that the United States ...
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also see
>>>>>>>>http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/05/chronology-of-the-ukrainian-coup/<<<<<<<<#######################################################################################################################
Meet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev
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By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
25 March 14
f the US State Department's Victoria Nuland had not said "xxxx the EU," few outsiders at the time would have heard of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the man on the other end of her famously bugged telephone call. But now Washington's man in Kiev is gaining fame as the face of the CIA-style "destabilization campaign" that brought down Ukraine's monumentally corrupt but legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
"Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he’s told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator," laughs Ray McGovern, who worked for 27 years as an intelligence analyst for the agency. "It used to be the CIA doing these things," he tells Democracy Now. "I know that for a fact." Now it's the State Department, with its coat-and-tie diplomats, twitter and facebook accounts, and a trick bag of goodies to build support for American policy.
A retired apparatchik, the now repentant McGovern was debating Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a self-described left-winger and the author of two recent essays in The New York Review of Books – "The Haze of Propaganda" and "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." Both men speak Russian, but they come from different planets.
On Planet McGovern – or my personal take on it – realpolitik rules. The State Department controls the prime funding sources for non-military intervention, including the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Washington created to fund covert and clandestine action after Ramparts magazine and others exposed how the CIA channeled money through private foundations, including the Ford Foundation. State also controls the far-better-funded Agency for International Development (USAID), along with a growing network of front groups, cut-outs, and private contractors. State coordinates with like-minded governments and their parallel institutions, mostly in Canada and Western Europe. State's "democracy bureaucracy" oversees nominally private but largely government funded groups like Freedom House. And through Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, State had Geoff Pyatt coordinate the coup in Kiev.
The CIA, NSA, and Pentagon likely provided their specialized services, while some of the private contractors exhibited shadowy skill sets. But if McGovern knows the score, as he should, diplomats ran the campaign to destabilize Ukraine and did the hands-on dirty work.
Harder for some people to grasp, Ambassador Pyatt and his team did not create the foreign policy, which was – and is – only minimally about overthrowing Ukraine's duly elected government to "promote democracy." Ever since Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office, Washington and its European allies have worked openly and covertly to extend NATO to the Russian border and Black Sea Fleet, provoking a badly wounded Russian bear. They have also worked to bring Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors into the neoliberal economy of the West, isolating the Russians rather than trying to bring them into the fold. Except for sporadic resets, anti-Russian has become the new anti-Soviet, and "strategic containment" has been the wonky word for encircling Russia with our military and economic power.
Nor did neoconservatives create the policy, no matter how many progressive pundits blame them for it. NED provides cushy jobs for old social democrats born again as neocons. Pyatt's boss, Victoria Nuland, is the wife and fellow-traveler of historian Robert Kagan, one of the movement's leading lights. And neocons are currently beating the war drums against Russia, as much to scupper any agreements on Syria and Iran as to encourage more Pentagon contracts for their friends and financial backers. But, encircling Russia has never been just a neocon thing. The policy has bi-partisan and trans-Atlantic support, including the backing of America's old-school nationalists, Cold War liberals, Hillary hawks, and much of Obama's national security team.
No matter that the policy doesn’t pass the giggle test. Extending NATO and Western economic institutions into all of a very divided Ukraine had less chance of working than did hopes in 2008 of bringing Georgia into NATO, which could have given the gung-ho Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvilli the treaty right to drag us all into World War III. To me, that seemed like giving a ten-year-old the keys to the family Humvee.
Western provocations in Ukraine proved more immediately counterproductive. They gave Vladimir Putin the perfect opportunity for a pro-Russian putsch in Crimea, which he had certainly thought of before, but never as a priority. The provocations encouraged him to stand up as a true Russian nationalist, which will only make him more difficult to deal with. And they gave him cover to get away with that age-old tool of tyrants, a quickie plebiscite with an unnecessary return to Joseph Stalin's old dictum once popular in my homestate of Florida: "It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes."
Small "d" democrats should shun such pretense. Still, most journalists and pollsters on the scene report that – with the exception of the historic Tatar community – the majority of Crimeans want to join the Russian Federation, where they seem likely to stay.
Tensions will also grow as the US-picked interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk – our man "Yats" – joins with the IMF to impose a Greek, Spanish, or Italian style austerity. Hard-pressed Ukranians will undoubtedly fight back, especially in the predominantly Russian-speaking east. According to Der Spiegel, a whopping three quarters of the people there do not support the coup or government. What a tar patch! A domestic conflict that could split Ukraine in two will inevitably become even further embroiled in the geo-strategic struggle between Russia and the West.
On Planet Snyder, as in most Western media, these realistic considerations make absolutely no difference. Ideology rules, masked as idealism. Fine sounding abstractions fill the air. Ukrainians are making their own history. They are acting with great courage. They are seeking the rule of law and their rightful place in "European Civilization." They are defending "sovereignty" and "territorial integrity." Russians remain vicious. Big bad Vlad is the new Hitler. He is seeking his own Eurasian empire (as opposed to NATO's), which could soon include parts of Moldova, Belarus, and Kazakhstan that the West needs like a "lok in kop," a hole in the head. And those watching in the West must abandon what Snyder calls "our slightly self-obsessed notions of how we control or don't control everything."
"It was a classic popular revolution," proclaims the professor. An undeniably popular uprising against "an unmistakably reactionary regime."
Writing in The Nation, Professor Stephen Cohen shreds Snyder's argument. My concern is more pointed. Popular uprisings deserve our support or opposition depending on who comes to control them and to what ends. As McGovern puts it, "The question is: Who took them over? Who spurred them? Who provoked them for their own particular strategic interests?"
Detailed evidence provides the answers. For all the courage of the Ukrainian minority who took to the barricades, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and his team spurred the protests in Kiev and exercised extensive – though never complete – control over them. Tactically, Pyatt and his fellow diplomats showed unexpected skill. Strategically, they should have stayed home.
Revolution on Demand
Arriving in the Ukrainian capital on August 3, Pyatt almost immediately authorized a grant for an online television outlet called Hromadske.TV, which would prove essential to building the Euromaidan street demonstrations against Yanukovych. The grant was only $43,737, with an additional $4,796 by November 13. Just enough to buy the modest equipment the project needed.
Many of Hromadske's journalists had worked in the past with American benefactors. Editor-in-chief Roman Skrypin was a frequent contributor to Washington's Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the US-funded Ukrayinska Pravda. In 2004, he had helped create Channel 5 television, which played a major role in the Orange Revolution that the US and its European allies masterminded in 2004.
Skrypin had already gotten $10,560 from George Soros's International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), which came as a recommendation to Pyatt. Sometime between December and the following April, IRF would give Hromadske another $19,183.
Hromadske's biggest funding in that period came from the Embassy of the Netherlands, which gave a generous $95,168. As a departing US envoy to the Hague said in a secret cable that Wikileaks later made public, "Dutch pragmatism and our similar world-views make the Netherlands fertile ground for initiatives others in Europe might be reluctant, at least initially, to embrace."
For Pyatt, the payoff came on November 21, when President Yanukovych pulled back from an Association Agreement with the European Union. Within hours Hromadske.TV went online and one of its journalists set the spark that brought Yanukovych down.
"Enter a lonely, courageous Ukrainian rebel, a leading investigative journalist," writes Snyder. "A dark-skinned journalist who gets racially profiled by the regime. And a Muslim. And an Afghan. This is Mustafa Nayem, the man who started the revolution. Using social media, he called students and other young people to rally on the main square of Kiev in support of a European choice for Ukraine."
All credit to Nayem for his undeniable courage. But bad, bad history. Snyder fails to mention that Pyatt, Soros, and the Dutch had put Web TV at the uprising's disposal. Without their joint funding of Hromadske and its streaming video from the Euromaidan, the revolution might never have been televised and Yanukovych might have crushed the entire effort before it gained traction.
For better or for worse, popular uprisings have changed history long before radio, television, or the Internet. The new technologies only speed up the game. Pyatt and his team understood that and masterfully turned soft power and the exercise of free speech, press, and assembly into a televised revolution on demand, complete with an instant overdub in English. Soros then funded a Ukrainian Crisis Media Center "to inform the international community about events in Ukraine," and I'm still trying to track down who paid for Euromaidan PR, the website of the Official Public Relations Secretariat for the Headquarters of the National Resistance.
Orange Revolution II
Preparing the uprising started long before Pyatt arrived in country, and much of it revolved around a talented and multi-lingual Ukrainian named Oleh Rybachuk, who had played several key roles in the Orange Revolution of 2004. Strangely enough, he recently drew attention when Pando, Silicon Valley's online news site, attacked journalist Glenn Greenwald and the investor behind his new First Look Media, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Trading brickbats over journalistic integrity, both Pando and Greenwald missed the gist of the bigger story.
In 2004, Rybachuk headed the staff and political campaign of the US-backed presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko. As the generally pro-American Kyiv Post tells it, the shadowy Rybachuk was Yushchenko's "alter ego" and “the conduit” to the State Security Service, which "was supplying the Yushchenko team with useful information about Yanukovych's actions." Rybachuk went on to serve under Yushchenko and Tymoshenko as deputy prime minister in charge of integrating Ukraine into NATO and the European Union. In line with US policy, he also pushed for privatization of Ukraine's remaining state-owned industries.
Despite US and Western European backing, the government proved disastrous, enabling its old rival Yanukovych to win the presidency in the 2010 election. Western monitors generally found the election "free and fair," but no matter. The Americans had already sowed the seeds either to win Yanukovych over or to throw him over, whichever way Washington and its allies decided to go. As early as October 2008, USAID funded one of its many private contractors – a non-profit called Pact Inc. – to run the "Ukraine National Initiatives to Enhance Reforms" (UNITER). Active in Africa and Central Asia, Pact had worked in Ukraine since 2005 in campaigns against HIV/AIDS. Its new five-year project traded in bureaucratic buzzwords like civil society, democracy, and good governance, which on the public record State and USAID were spending many millions of dollars a year to promote in Ukraine.
Pact would build the base for either reform or regime change. Only this time the spin-masters would frame their efforts as independent of Ukraine's politicians and political parties, whom most Ukrainians correctly saw as hopelessly corrupt. The new hope was "to partner with civil society, young people, and international organizations" – as Canada's prestigious Financial Post later paraphrased no less an authority than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
By 2009, Pact had rebranded the pliable Rybachuk as "a civil society activist," complete with his own NGO, Center UA (variously spelled Centre UA, Tsenter UA, or United Actions Center UA). Pact then helped Rybachuk use his new base to bring together as many as 60 local and national NGOs with activists and leaders of public opinion. This was New Citizen, a non-political "civic platform" that became a major political player. At the time, Pact and Soros's IRF were working in a joint effort to provide small grants to some 80 local NGOs. This continued the following year with additional money from the East Europe Foundation.
"Ukraine has been united by common disillusionment," Rybachuk explained to the Kyiv Post. "The country needs a more responsible citizenry to make the political elite more responsible."
Who could argue? Certainly not Rybachuk's Western backers. New Citizen consistently framed its democracy agenda as part of a greater integration within NATO, Europe, and the trans-Atlantic world. Rybachuk himself would head the "Civil Expert Council" associated with the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Committee.
Continuing to advise on "strategic planning," in May 2010 Pact encouraged New Citizen "to take Access to Public Information as the focus of their work for the next year." The coalition campaigned for a new Freedom of Information law, which passed. Pact then showed New Citizen how to use the law to boost itself as a major player, organize and train new activists, and work more closely with compliant journalists, all of which would seriously weaken the just-elected Yanukovych government. Part of their destabilization included otherwise praiseworthy efforts, none more so than the movement to "Stop Censorship."
"Censorship is re-emerging, and the opposition is not getting covered as much,” Rybachuk told the Kyiv Post in May 2010. He was now "a media expert" as well as civic activist. “There are some similarities to what Vladimir Putin did in Russia when he started his seizure of power by first muzzling criticism in the media.”
One of Rybachuk's main allies in "Stop Censorship" was the journalist Sergii Leshchenko, who had long worked with Mustafa Nayem at Ukrayinska Pravda, the online newsletter that NED publicly took credit for supporting. NED gave Leshchenko its Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellowship, while New Citizen spread his brilliant exposés of Yanukovych's shameless corruption, focusing primarily on his luxurious mansion at Mezhyhirya. Rybachuk's Center UA also produced a documentary film featuring Mustafa Nayem daring to ask Yanukovych about Mezhyhirya at a press conference. Nothing turned Ukrainians – or the world – more against Yanukovych than the concerted exposure of his massive corruption. This was realpolitik at its most sophisticated, since the US and its allies funded few, if any, similar campaigns against the many Ukrainian kleptocrats who favored Western policy.
Under the watchful eye of Pact, Rybachuk's New Citizen developed a project to identify the promises of Ukrainian politicians and monitor their implementation. They called it a "Powermeter" (Vladometer), an idea they took from the American website "Obamameter." Funding came from the US Embassy, through its Media Development Fund, which falls under the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Other money came from the Internews Network, which receives its funding from the State Department, USAID, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and a wide variety of other government agencies, international organizations, and private donors. Still other money came from Soros's IRF.
New Citizen and its constituent organizations then brought together 150 NGOs from over 35 cities, along with activists and journalists like Sergii Leschchenko, to create yet another campaign in 2011. They called it the Chesno Movement, from the Ukrainian word for "honestly. " Its logo was a garlic bulb, a traditional disinfectant widely believed to ward off evil. The movement's purpose was "to monitor the political integrity of the parliamentary candidates running in the 2012 elections."
This was a mammoth project with the most sophisticated sociology. As expected, the Chesno monitoring found few honest politicians. But it succeeded in raising the issue of public integrity to new heights in a country of traditionally low standards and in building political interest in new areas of the country and among the young. The legislative elections themselves proved grim, with President Yanukovych's Party of the Regions taking control of parliament.
What then of all New Citizen's activism, monitoring, campaigning, movement-building, and support for selective investigative journalism? Where was all this heading? Rybachuk answered the question in May 2012, several months before the election.
"The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked," he told Canada's Financial Post. "We want to do that again and we think we will.”
He Who Pays the Piper
Rybachuk had good reason for his revolutionary optimism. His Western donors were upping the ante. Pact Inc. commissioned a financial audit for the Chesno campaign, covering from October 2011 to December 2012. It showed that donors gave Rybachuk's Center UA and six associated groups some $800,000 for Chesno. PACT, which regularly got its money from USAID, contributed the lion's share, $632,813, though part of that came from the Omidyar Network, a foundation set up by Pierre and his wife.
In a March 12th press release, the network tried to explain its contributions to Rybachuk's Center UA, New Citizen, and the Chesno Movement. These included a two-year grant of $335,000, announced in September 2011, and another $769,000, committed in July 2013. Some of the money went to expand Rybachuk's technology platforms, as New Citizen explained.
"New Citizen provides Ukrainians with an online platform to cooperatively advocate for social change. On the site, users can collectively lobby state officials to release of public information, participate in video-advocacy campaigns, and contribute to a diverse set of community initiatives," they wrote. "As a hub of social justice advocates in Kiev, the organization hopes to define the nation’s 'New Citizen' through digital media."
Omidyar's recent press release listed several other donors, including the USAID-funded Pact, the Swiss and British embassies, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Soros's International Renaissance Foundation. The Chesno Movement also received money from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Figures for fiscal year 2013 are more difficult to track. Washington's foreignassistance.gov shows USAID paying PACT in Ukraine over $7 million under the general category of "Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance." The data does not indicate what part of this went to Center UA, New Citizen, or any of their projects.
What should we make of all this funding? Some of it looks like private philanthropy, as back in the days when the CIA channeled its money through foundations. Was the Soros and Omidyar money truly private or government money camouflaged to look private? That has to remain an open question. But, with Rybachuk's campaigns, it makes little difference. USAID and other government funding dominated. The US Embassy, through Pact, coordinated most of what Rybachuk did. And, to my knowledge, neither Soros nor Omidyar ever broke from the State Department's central direction.
Strategic Containment, OK?
When Ambassador Pyatt arrived in Kiev, he inherited Pact and its Rybachuk network well on its way to a second Orange Revolution, but only if they thought they needed it to win integration into Europe. That was always the big issue for the State Department and the Ukrainian movement they built, far more telling than censorship, corruption, democracy, or good governance. As late as November 14, Rybachuk saw no reason to take to the streets, fully expecting Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union at a November 28-29 summit in Vilnius. On November 21, Yanukovych pulled back, which Rybachuk saw as a betrayal of government promises. That is what "brought people to the streets," he told Kyiv Post. "It needed to come to this."
Euromaidan would become a "massive watchdog," putting pressure on the government to sign the association and free trade deal with the EU, he said. "We'll be watching what the Ukrainian government does, and making sure it does what it has to do."
That is where the State Department’s second Orange Revolution started. In my next article, I'll show where it went from there and why.
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Detroit Gentrification Means "Forced Relocation" of Black Seniors
=============================
Saturday, 13 June 2015=
By Paul Kleyman, New America Media | Report=
Many Detroit residents are celebrating a new era of revitalization, as the city’s thriving Midtown is now dotted with upscale shops, restaurants and new construction. But Motor City, blighted with 83,000 abandoned homes, is also seeing the forced relocation of low-income seniors, most of them African American.
“There’s a national trope about Detroit, the idea that it’s empty in a lot of ways,” said Tam E. Perry, a researcher at the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research and assistant professor at Wayne State University, where she heads The Relocation Lab.
Phrases like, “Detroit is on the move” have taken hold, she said, promoting the notion that anything can happen there, that you can start a new business, be an artist--see the city as a “blank slate” just waiting for you to make your mark on it.
“But when you think a community is a blank slate,” she said, “you’re also overlooking very vulnerable populations that have been part of the fabric of Detroit and want to remain part of that fabric. As development is occurring in various parts of the city, senior relocation—or I would say forced relocation--is an unintended consequence.”
Senior Advocates Form Coalition
Detroit, Perry noted, is a city of about 700,000 people, 82.7 percent of them black. More than one in 10 residents (11.5 percent) are 65 or older. As one recent Associated Press story declared, “Whites Moving to Detroit, City That Epitomized White Flight: Residents are taking advantage of cheaper housing.”
Perry said she became so engaged in her research that she joined the Senior Housing Displacement-Preservation Coalition, a community advocacy group that is working to preserve senior housing, and to ease the transition for those who become displaced.
This transition can have additional health consequences for seniors. For instance, a displaced senior with kidney failure not only lost her apartment, but access to her dialysis clinic around the corner.
The coalition has identified at least a dozen federally subsidized buildings in Detroit's now-thriving Midtown and downtown areas that might be converted to market-rate apartments in the coming decade, displacing another 2,000 elders in Midtown, Perry said.
Perry presented her findings at April’s national meeting of the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research, held at the University of California, Davis. The Michigan Center at Wayne State and the University of Michigan is one of seven research programs around the country funded by the National Institute on Aging.
Burnt-Out Houses, Packs of Dogs
Holding a doctorate in anthropology and social work, Perry focused her initial study on interviews with 17 elders forced out of their homes by eviction or harsh circumstances.
“I visited seniors who, after they moved, had no furniture in their homes. They would say, ‘A church has agreed to provide me with a bedroom set,’” said Perry, who would arrange to return to see how things worked out.
One women Perry identified as “Wendy” described her old neighborhood as “very depressing” with “a lot of burnt-out houses” and “packs of dogs.” Only eight houses on her block of 38 remained occupied, and Wendy would have to watch for the packs of feral rottweilers and pit bulls as she left her home each morning.
For Wendy, moving to a smaller place in a safer area brought relief.
But others experienced relocation as a deep loss. “Eve” was among the growing number of seniors nationwide being evicted because their subsidized affordable housing developments are being converted to market-rate units.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has long provided subsidies to owners of apartment buildings who set “fair-market rent” for low-income seniors through its Section 8 program. Seniors who qualify for Section 8 rental vouchers usually pay only 30 percent of their income directly, and the government covers the remaining amount on the discounted rentals.
After meeting their federal obligations for the subsidies, though, owners have the option of opting out of the program and raising the rent to whatever the market will bear. Perry said some of the downtown buildings are now being upgraded to luxury units.
Tenants receive a one-year notice before the cost escalates, and most must find other housing--if they can. Around the nation, waiting lists for Section 8 rental vouchers for people who qualify are years long.
The loss of affordable senior housing among Detroit’s elders means, Perry said, “the risk of homelessness is real.” (
)
Seniors who might qualify for a Section 8 voucher often discover that providing housing authorities their birth certificate--not easily available for many elderly people--or school records proves difficult.
“Getting your school records is very hard when some schools in Detroit have been bulldozed to eliminate schools. Many school records have been lost, too,” Perry said.
Emotional Toll of Uncertainty
Other challenges raise daunting questions for those compelled to move, Perry stressed: “How do they even know where to go?” she asked. “You’re talking about an 85-year-old person who receives a letter saying they need to leave. Who would help them pack their belongings?”
“Eve” told Perry that moving out of her home was “very stressful. I cried many a night, you know. I watched my friends die, you know, because they didn’t want to move (
) , and I watched this one lady just--she sat day by day, I watched her deteriorate, and we couldn’t get her out of that depression--you know what I’m saying. It’s like she just gave up. She said, ‘I’m gonna die here. I don’t wanna move.’”
When Eve found a new place, it was so small she had to place her folding kitchen table under her bed.
Because affordable housing units were often built near one another, Perry found that some of those evicted had moved into a building next door--and still were able to use their old grocery or pharmacy, remain close to their doctors and community services, and stay in touch with old friends.
“But what they tell me is that they think the building they just moved into is going to go market-rate in a year, and they’re going to have to move again,” Perry said.
This stress takes its toll on people who are enduring “that kind of uncertainty for multiple years on end.” (
)
Research With Community Partners
Perry is following up with a second study that will track the fates of 115 displaced elders. For those forced to move, Perry said, her aim is to determine how best “to address their emotion, physical, mental health, logistical and spiritual needs along the way.”
“The thing that’s most incredible about this work is that my partners are community members, specifically St. Aloysius Church and Neighborhood Services in downtown Detroit,” she said.
She emphasized that she hopes her research will help the senior housing coalition preserve existing buildings and ensure that low-income remains in the Detroit.
Perry added, “We are trying to ask: How can Detroit remain a city for all ages? And what do we need to do to ensure that whole cohorts are not leaving the city because of these issues?”
-------------------------------
posted in fair use
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Friday, Jun 12, 2015 12:45 PM PDT
The Koch brothers just took a huge step toward a GOP civil war
The libertarian billionaires have exerted influence on the GOP for years. But now they're actively taking the reins
Heather Digby Parton
==================================
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/12/the_koch_brothers_just_took_a_huge_step_toward_a_gop_civil_war/
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Japan Scientists: High radiation levels near West Coast after Fukushima disaster — Almost 30 Bq/m3 of cesium offshore — Secret documents reveal US gov’t previously ordered radiation test results in Pacific be hidden to avoid contamination fears
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The strange thing is that Brehm, who would be facing directly toward a shooter on the SE corner of the 6th floor, does not hear the first shot until JFK is very close to him, and no evidence can be found showing him to have hearing problems. Mary Woodward, seen across Elm St. with two friends, immediately to the left of the man in the hard hat, claims the first shot occurred AFTER JFK had passed her, and was about 100 feet further down Elm St.
Yet, if we are to believe the WC, this photo, taken at the same time as Z255, shows JFK reacting to a bullet wound from a shot that occurred further up Elm St. than even Woodward's position. What gives?
P.S.
The man who took this photo, James Altgens, claims the first shot he heard occurred at the very moment he snapped this picture.
FIRST SHOTS suppressed sound rifle
then regular sounding rifle fire from TSBD
then additional suppressed sound rifle mixed with TSBD regular rifle sounds.
magician trick divert attention GAAL
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
nature.com
Magic is one of the oldest and most widespread forms of performance art. It is also a discipline with a long legacy of informal experimentation. This informal research by magicians aims to determine what conditions allow for the maximum manipulation of human attention and perception. Much as early filmmakers experimented with editing techniques to determine which technique would communicate their intent most effectively, magicians have explored the techniques that most effectively divert attention or exploit the shortcomings of human vision and awareness
SEE
The Harper Fragment Revisited - and JFK's Head Wounds:
A Final Synthesis - Appendices
By David W. Mantik
Appendix K. The Three Headshot Scenario
=====================================
-
The strange thing is that Brehm, who would be facing directly toward a shooter on the SE corner of the 6th floor, does not hear the first shot until JFK is very close to him, and no evidence can be found showing him to have hearing problems. Mary Woodward, seen across Elm St. with two friends, immediately to the left of the man in the hard hat, claims the first shot occurred AFTER JFK had passed her, and was about 100 feet further down Elm St.
Yet, if we are to believe the WC, this photo, taken at the same time as Z255, shows JFK reacting to a bullet wound from a shot that occurred further up Elm St. than even Woodward's position. What gives?
P.S.
The man who took this photo, James Altgens, claims the first shot he heard occurred at the very moment he snapped this picture.
FIRST SHOTS suppressed sound rifle
then regular sounding rifle fire from TSBD
then additional suppressed sound rifle mixed with TSBD regular rifle sounds.
magician trick divert attention GAAL
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
nature.com
Magic is one of the oldest and most widespread forms of performance art. It is also a discipline with a long legacy of informal experimentation. This informal research by magicians aims to determine what conditions allow for the maximum manipulation of human attention and perception. Much as early filmmakers experimented with editing techniques to determine which technique would communicate their intent most effectively, magicians have explored the techniques that most effectively divert attention or exploit the shortcomings of human vision and awareness
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REDBLOCK / REDCOAT / REDLEG / REDTOP
CIA Soviet Russia Division===========================
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/ussr.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throughout the Cold War, the potential enemies were mainly the USSR and other Soviet Bloc countries. As various wars of national liberation blossomed under communist support to indigenous, native guerrilla movements, there were still other factions of guerrillas on the scene. At the close of World War II, certain groups of guerrilla fighters who had been opposing the Germans, the Soviets, or both, still existed. As Eastern Europe was quickly occupied by Soviet forces these organizations, primarily in Albania, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, and some even within the Soviet Union, shifted from guerrilla warfare to espionage, subversion, and sabotage.
The United States looked upon these groups as possible allies against the Soviets and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spent considerable time, effort, and money in keeping contact with these eastern European groups. Both the United States and the Soviet Union secretly started to mobilize forces against each other and build intricate networks of spies.
A secret American plan known as Rollback was "an audacious strategy of espionage, subversion, and sabotage to foment insurrection in the Soviet satellite countries." The book Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain highlighted these secret efforts. This possible theater for a future WorldWar III started at a time when the OSS of World War II fame was dissolving into the CIA on the civilian side and into Army Special Forces on the military side.
◾REDBIRD - Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents.
◾REDCAP - was the planned collection of information on Soviet personnel stationed abroad for the purpose of operational exploitation, including defection inducement.
◾REDSKIN - Operations involving legal methods of placing, recruiting, and communicating with agents within the USSR.
◾REDSOX - Operations involving the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents.
◾REDWOOD - Action indicator for information for CIA Soviet Division.◾AERODYNAMIC (formerly CARTEL, ANDROGEN, AECARTHAGE) (1949-70) refers to CIA support for ZP/UHVR (Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council), which began in 1949. CIA helped to establish in New York City the Prolog Research and Publishing Company in 1953 as ZP/UHVR's publishing and research arm. Prolog, through an affiliate in Munich, published periodicals and selected books and pamphlets which sought to exploit and increase nationalist and other dissident tendencies in the Soviet Ukraine. ZP/UHVR operational activity concentrated on propaganda and contact operations. In 1970, AERODYNAMIC was redesignated QRPLUMB.
◾AEBEEHIVE [later QRDYNAMIC/QRPLUMB] (1970-91) superceded Project AERODYNAMIC and supported the Ukrainian émigré organization ZP / UHVR (Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council) with a New York publishing arm called Prolog Research Corporation (QRTENURE, AETENURE) and a Munich Office, Ukrainian Society for Foreign Studies (QRTERRACE, AETERRACE), publisher of the monthly journal Suchasnist. CIA terminated QRPLUMB after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 and provided funds to enable Prolog to transition to a privately-funded company. In 1992, Prolog's monthly Ukrainian journal Suchasnist (Contemporary Times) was successfully transitioned to a publishing company in Kiev, Ukraine and thereafter was published as a collaborative effort between Prolog and a Ukrainian group in Kiev.
◾AECAMBISTA-1, CAMBISTA-1 (cryptonyms for BNR). Byelorussian emigration was split into two organizations -- the BZR/BCR (Beloruska Zentralna Rada or Byelorussian Central Council) and the BNR (Beloruska Nationalna Rada or Byelorussian National Council or Council of the Byelorussian Peoples Republic). The BZR/BCR, which was created during the German occupation of Byelorussia and supported by the Germans, was headed by Radislaw Ostrowsky. The BNR, which included a Cadre School and a Study Group, was headed by Mikola Abramtchik in Paris and Major Boris Ragula was its Operations Chief. Francis Kushel was BNR's military representative in New York.
◾AEMANNER (1955-58) was an operation to collect intelligence on the Lithuanian SSR by spotting, recruiting, and training Lithuanians who planned to return to Lithuania; spotting, recruiting, and training Lithuanian merchant seamen who would be on vessels calling at Lithuanian SSR ports; exploiting existing postal channels between Lithuanian SSR and the West; and interrogating persons coming out of the Lithuanian SSR.
◾AEMARSH (1953-59) involved collecting foreign intelligence on the Soviet regime in Latvia through sources residing in the Latvian SSR, legal travelers, and all possible legal means. The Institute for Latvian Culture (AEMINX) was established as a cover facility engaged in the preservation and development of Latvian national culture, collection of information on Latvian national life, and the safeguarding and preserving of physical, spiritual, and moral conditions of Latvians who were separated from their homeland.
◾AEDEPOT (formerly AEREADY) (1957-65) was designed to provide a trained "Hot War" cadre of agents who could be used during a period of heightened tensions/increased alert or during actual hostilities against the Soviet Union.=====================================================________________________________________________________
Soviet Russia - REDBIRD / REDSOX
The REDBIRD / REDSOX operations involved the illegal return of defectors and emigres to USSR as agents. The REDSOX program against the Soviet Union adopted agent infiltration by parachute as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had practiced it in Europe during World War II. CIA then modified - one might say diluted - it, in deference to the impossibility of arranging the ground reception parties used by the OSS, in order to apply it against the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. In this way, the covert infiltration of intelligence and covert action teams, mostly by air although occasionally overland or by sea, became an endurinq facet of the Clandestine Service's approach to the problem of penetrating closed societies.
As applied by the OSS, the practice later known as "black entry" enjoyed its most notable success with the Jedburgh operation, which after D-Day inserted teams of American and indigenous nationality to mobilize local resistance movements against the Nazis. They armed French resistance fighters, including over 20,000 combatants in Brittany alone, and these cut rail lines, derailed trains, ambushed German road convoys, and cut telephone and electric power lines.
The respectable showing of the Jedburgh teams, coupled with the absence of promising alternatives, made it natural to apply the blind drop technique against the Soviet Union as cooperation against Hitler gave way to Cold War hostility. Both Nazi-occupied Europe and the Soviet Union suffered the abuses of a brutal dictatorship, and it seemed reasonable to expect the rise of a resistance movement against Stalin similar to those that Jedburgh had supported against the Germans. In any case, as Cold War tensions hardened, the Agency had to do something, and no better alternatives were at hand. Accordingly, between 1949 and 1959, CIA dispatched agents, mostly by air, into the Soviet Union under the aegis of the REDSOX program.
◾AEACRE (1952-64) established a mechanism for the planning and conduct of REDSOX operations via a Domestic Operations Base (DOB) used for the interrogation, assessment, training, briefing, and preparation for dispatch of agents for infiltration into the USSR.
◾AEASTER was a program in near east areas to spot, recruit, and train Circassians and other Russian emigres and send them back into the USSR.
◾AEBALCONY (1960-62) was designed to use U.S. citizens with Baltic language fluency in "mounted" and "piggy-back" legal traveler operations into Soviet-occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
◾AEFREEMAN (1953-64), which included AEBASIN/AEROOT (1953-60), AEFLAG (1955-62), and AEPOLE (formerly AECHAMP (1949-59)), was designed to strengthen resistance to communism and harrass the Soviet regime in the Baltic countries. AEBASIN/AEROOT supported Estonian emigres and émigré activities aganist the Estonian SSR. AEFLAG was aimed at people of the Latvian SSR. AEPOLE (formerly AECHAMP (formerly BGLAPIN)) targeted the Lithuanian SSR. These projects provided intelligence and operational data from Baltic countries through radio broadcasts, mailing operations, liaison with emigre organizations, political and psychological (PP) briefings for legal travelers and exploitation of other media such as demonstrations.
◾AECOB, approved in 1950, was a vehicle for foreign intelligence (FI) operations into and within Soviet Latvia and involved infiltration and exfiltration of black agents and the recruitment of legally resident agents in the USSR, especially Latvia. ZRLYNCH was approved in 1950 for use of the Latvian Resistance Movement, which had been formed in 1944, as a vehicle for clandestine activities within the USSR. ZRLYNCH was renewed in 1952 as a part of AECOB, which then provided both FI and political and psychological (PP) activities. AECOB / ZRLYNCH PP project was terminated in 1955. AECOB FI project was terminated in 1959.
◾AESAURUS / AENOBLE (initially AEROSOL, renamed AEGIDEON / AENOBLE in 1958) operation (1950-61) maintained communications with agents of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Narodno Trudovoi Soyuz or NTS (CABOCHE-1, PDGIDEON, SHUBA-100)). NTS was founded in 1930s by Russian emigres with extreme rightest and anti-Semitic views and collaborated closely with the Nazis in Russia, providing local administrators, propagandists, and informants. NTS rebuilt itself in 1945 as an anti-Soviet émigré organization inside the USSR and with its own newspaper "Possev." This project sought the development and exploitation of NTS agents as long-term hot war assets and as sources of operational positive and psychological intelligence. The Project included Operation CARCASS, training/dispatch into USSR of agents to organize resistance groups and collect FI; Operation SPAIN to establish NTS groups in US zone/Germany and Austria against Soviet occupation forces through propaganda, defection, resistance, and collecting FI; Operation RADIO to establish a mobile covert radio operated by NTS for propaganda into East Zone.
◾AEPRIMER's (1957-59) objective was to establish long-term, durable assets illegally infiltrated into the Byelorussian SSR. Candidates for these assets were to be recommended by the Byelorussian National Council (BNR). However, AEQUOR/FI had similar objectives and was terminated in 1956 when information about AEQUOR Team 2 in Byelorussia surfaced in Pravda. In addition, AEQUOR's relationship with the BNR was terminated for security reasons. AEPRIMER's association with the BNR was limited to its President (Mikola Abramtchik) and his representative (Francis Kushel) in New York. AEPRIMER was terminated in 1959.
The effort enjoyed almost no success. Indeed, the chief of the Soviet Russia Division in the Directorate of Plans wrote in 1957 that it had been "strewn with disaster." More agents survived who were sent overland than those inserted by blind drop; of the latter, apparently only three ever managed to exfiltrate, and one of these was suspected of having been doubled. Meanwhile, the intelligence product of the program as a whole was "pitifully small, and the anticipated intelligence support apparatus, grafted on ... underground resistance organizations, died aborning." Not even the overland operations produced anything substantial, involving as they did shallow, short-term penetrations of "largely uninhabited ... border areas." The result was that "no REDSOX agent ever succeeded in passing himself off successfully as a Soviet citizen and penetrating, even briefly, into the Soviet heartland."In 1971, Operations Directorate (DO) historians attributed the failure of REDSOX to two factors. One was the "implacable and ubiquitous KGB." The other was the absence of the prospect of liberation that might have fueled resistance movements like those in Western Europe during World War II.
Beginning in 1956, CIA pilots began flying high-altitude U-2 spy planes over the Soviet Union to photograph a variety of missile and defense related installations. On May 1, 1960, Francis Gary Powers, a CIA pilot, had his U-2 plane shot down over Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, prompting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to cancel his scheduled conference at Paris with President Dwight Eisenhower.
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))General News 11/22/2011 at 13:48:00
THE JFK CASE: The Twelve Who Built The Oswald Legend (Part 6: White Russians Keep An Eye On Oswald In Dallas)----
By Bill Simpich (about the author) Permalink (Page 1 of 7 pages)http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-JFK-CASE--OSWALD-AND-by-Bill-Simpich-110814-415.html
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ALSO SEE
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17471&p=238836
=================================================================
I dedicate this post to lone nutter DVP. STEVEN GAAL
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Depopulation link (I suggest u add it as favorite list)
https://www.intellihub.com/category/depopulation-globalism/
________________________________________________________________________________________________
United Nations Climate Czar reveals depopulation plan for humanity
https://www.intellihub.com/united-nations-climate-czar-reveals-depopulation-plan-for-humanity/
________________________________________________________________________________________________
(INTELLIHUB) — At a recent Climate One conference, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, made clear that a leading solution to global warming includes extreme depopulation.
Speaking to the organization’s founder Greg Dalton, Figueres had a carefully worded yet startling answer to his question on world population.
Dalton: A related issue is fertility rates and population, a lot of people in energy and environmental circles don’t want to go near that because its politically charged, it’s not their issue, but isn’t it true that stopping the rise in population could be one of the biggest levers in driving down the rising green houses gases.
Figueres: We all know, we expect 9 billion by 2050, so yes obviously less people would exert less pressure on the natural resources
Dalton: So is 9 billion the forgone conclusion.. no way to change that?
Figueres: Again there is pressure in the system to go towards that, we can get them to change though, we can definitely change those numbers and really should make every effort to change the numbers because we are already today, exceeding the planetary carrying capacity.
How the United Nations plans to unilaterally “change the numbers” isn’t revealed but statements by other leading globalists, including Bill Gates famous depopulation remarks at a TED Talks event, point to some sort of program that includes vaccines, infertility, and the killing of a portion of the world’s population.
First we’ve got population, the world today has 6.8 billion people, that’s headed to 9 billion.
Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health services we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15%.
Christiana Figueres’s recent comments simply provide more evidence and context to the United Nations depopulation agenda that has been in planning for decades.
Video courtesy of NextNewsNetwork
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Colorful Dinosaur Eggs Challenge Deep Time
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
==
http://www.icr.org/article/8805/
===
Evidence for Creation › Evidence from Science › Evidence from the Life Sciences › Biological Clocks Indicate Recent Creation---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
German scientists revealed that some Chinese dinosaur eggs probably looked similar to the dark blue-green hue of modern emu eggs. If the dinosaur’s original pigment molecules revealed the egg’s color, then a significant question emerges. Can pigments really stay colorful for 66 million years?
The eggs came from three different upper Cretaceous sites, and their dark color contrasted with the sediment that encased them. Curious about the color, the German team from the University of Bonn conducted chemical separation techniques to isolate original dinosaur egg pigments—the first discovery of its kind.1 Though the eggs have likely lost some of their pattern detail, the presence of specific pigments named protoporphyrin and biliverdin within the ancient shells confirmed they were probably a dark blue-green color.
These pigment molecules are somewhat complicated, though not as intricately organized as proteins or DNA. The dinosaur eggshell pigments contain five-sided chemical ring structures all bonded together. The pigments do not easily dissolve in water, which certainly helps account for them persisting for at least thousands of years, but their carbon and nitrogen-containing chemical rings include plenty of double-bonds. These bonds certainly can’t last forever. They hold stored chemical energy, fertile ground for the relentless chemical reactions that always break down these kinds of molecules.
By their nature, complicated chemical rings and double bonds tend to break apart into smaller, simpler molecules. So how could they stay intact for hundreds of thousands of years, let alone a million or more?
Back in 2013, ICR presented similar evidence from the journal Geology where an article showcased pigments from marine organisms supposedly 340 million years old.2 An expert critiqued our article, counter-asserting that pigments like these should last millions of years because fossilization somehow “locked” the pigments behind mineralized walls, preserving them indefinitely. This assertion ignored the most significant factor involved.3
How could these tiny mineral walls stay intact through millions of years of earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, climate changes, erosion, and asteroid impacts—catastrophes that evolutionists regularly describe occurring everywhere in the past? And if the pigments were locked behind mineral walls, why do they still appear visible? Even if the encasing minerals had the miraculous strength to resist cracking and exposing the pigments to outside chemicals—as unscientific an assertion as is possible—they still would not prevent complex biological molecules like pigments, with double bonds and complicated ring structures, from falling apart on their own.
In other words, even if we imagine the impossible scenario of biomolecules remaining hermetically sealed from all possible influences like microbes, oxygen and water for millions of years, the molecule itself—without the help of some science-defying miracles—would have to obey the most universally applied law in all the universe: the second law of thermodynamics. Also known as the Law of Entropy, the second law describes how all highly organized systems spontaneously disorganize over time. Entropy is incessant, and it works even when things are buried or frozen. No known process violates this law, especially the process of chemical reactions that relieve tension from double-bonds, reducing complicated chemicals to simple ones.
Scientists have not measured pigment decay rates, but they have measured how fast other biochemicals spontaneously degrade. Experimental results limit their age expectation to less than one million years. Until an experiment reveals that pigment decay rates magically buck this trend, the most scientific conclusion about dinosaur eggshell pigments must hold to the Law of Entropy, consistent with the burial of dinosaurs—and their eggs—in Noah’s Flood only thousands of years ago.
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References
1. Hecht, J. First evidence that dinosaurs laid colourful blue-green eggs. New Scientist. Posted on newscientist.com May 21, 2015, accessed June 1, 2015. Citing: Wiemann, J. et al. 2013. The blue-green eggs of dinosaurs: How fossil metabolites provide insights into the evolution of bird reproduction. Posted on academia.edu before print, accessed June 1, 2015.
2. Thomas, B. Evidence Doesn’t Fade from Colorful Fossils. Creation Science Update. Posted on icr.org March 11, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015.
3. Rana, F. Believe It or Not! Ancient Biomolecules Evidence for Old Earth. Reasons to Believe. Posted on reasons.org June 1, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015.Image credit: Steve Starer. Adapted for use in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holders.
*Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on June 11, 2015.
##################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################Frozen Penguin DNA Casts Doubt on DNA-Based Dates
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
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http://www.icr.org/article/5110/
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Evidence for Creation › Evidence from Science › Evidence from the Life Sciences › Biological Clocks Indicate Recent Creation---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For decades, scientists have assumed that mutation rates were consistent enough to be used as a natural clock to date biological specimens. By comparing the number of single changes in the genetic code between two different species, a researcher could supposedly estimate the amount of time that had elapsed since those species diverged from one another.
In order for these “molecular clocks” to provide accurate times when studying the “evolution” of different basic body forms, researchers must assume that macroevolution is true and that all the observed genetic differences came about through mutation—not some other process like the insertion of mobile genetic elements or through other genetic adaptations programmed into the creature.
New research published in the journal Trends in Genetics, however, shows “that traditional DNA dating techniques are fundamentally flawed” because they have been based on the wrong mutation rates.1
Scientists examined mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient Adelie penguin bones that were found frozen in Antarctica. After comparing them to their modern penguin counterparts, several conclusions became apparent, one of which is that different regions of DNA change at different rates.
The most ancient penguin DNA at the site was “known” (according to standard interpretations) to have come from 44,000-year-old remains. But the comparison “produced results that were far different than conventional analysis would have suggested.”1
Different in what way, exactly? An Oregon State University press release indicated that the traditional molecular clock rates used to calculate age have resulted in ages that are between two and six times too young.1 In other words, the old rates used in DNA dating calculations were way too fast.
The Adelie penguin DNA must not have changed much at all during the supposed elapsed time. And using a new slower rate―one which depends entirely on an assumed age of 44,000 years to be accurate2―“may force a widespread re-examination of determinations about when one species split off from another, if that determination was based largely on genetic evidence [instead of basing it on dates assigned to fossils].”1
This is by no means the only data that have led researchers to conclude that mutation rates are not reliable enough to use as molecular clocks, and that assigned ages must therefore rely on other sources. One study covered by ICR News last year examined a gross contradiction between molecular versus standard dates for Cambrian fossils.3 Though these fossils are interpreted as being about 500 million years old, calculations using the standard mutation rate show that they must have emerged an astounding 1,200 million years ago.
And if this new penguin data is to be applied to that, then 1,200 million years is at least two times too young!
If penguins, like many other animals, were designed to undergo specific kinds of DNA changes that would affect certain traits relevant to survival, then it would be inaccurate to assume that all DNA differences were the result of random mutations. This alone renders molecular clocks unreliable and provides yet another testable hypothesis for the creation model.
Just like the carousel of changing evolutionary date assignments for rocks, minerals, and fossils, there is no solid scientific reason to trust dates based on faulty molecular clocks.4 However, reliable biblical history—which is based on eyewitness testimony and not on the set of assumptions required when using natural processes for dating—can be used as a viable framework to interpret these genetic differences. It leads to the conclusion that some of them were created by God, and others have occurred since creation, either due to random mutations or non-random DNA altering mechanisms. Which differences came from which cause remains to be determined.
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References
1.Ancient Penguin DNA Raises Doubts about Accuracy of Genetic Dating. Oregon State University press release. November 10, 2009, reporting research published in Subramanian, S. et al. 2009. High mitogenomic evolutionary rates and time dependency. Trends in Genetics. 25 (11): 482-486.
2.An alternative explanation for why ancient Adelai penguin mitochondrial DNA is so faithful to its modern counterparts is not that the mutation rate used to calculate age was wrong, but that the oldest Adelai remains are only a couple of thousand years old—not 44,000 years old, as is currently claimed.
3.Thomas, B. Cambrian Clash: Fossils and Molecular Clocks Disagree. ICR News. Posted on icr.org October 20, 2008, accessed November 18, 2009.
4.For example, some of these changing dates were compiled in Woodmorappe, J. 1978. Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised. Creation Research Society Quarterly. 16 (2): 102.* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
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Gulf oil spill: Still poisoning dolphins to crickets
Dead bottlenose dolphins had damage to lungs and other tissues, types previously linked to oil exposuresBy Beth Mole 6:45am, June 9, 2015
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https://student.societyforscience.org/article/gulf-oil-spill-still-poisoning-dolphins-crickets
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Don’t Believe Mainstream US Media Coverage of Venezuela
by
Sonali Kolhatkar
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/06/dont-believe-mainstream-us-media-coverage-Venezuela
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Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have just taken a big hit, with the government of Nicolas Maduro demanding that the American Embassy in Caracas reduce its staff by 80% and that U.S. visitors apply for visas.
Most symbolically, Venezuela has now barred a number of U.S. officials from visiting, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.
The latest crisis began when authorities acting on Maduro’s orders arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma in mid-February. A well-known right-wing opposition figure, Ledezma will face trial for conspiracy against the government in what is now being called the “blue coup.” Among the pieces of evidence the government says it has collected are phone calls made by the mayor to a U.S. phone number, as well as a cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails, grenade-like explosives and gas masks, found in the office headquarters of the opposition political party.
Ledezma is being held in the same facility as another right-wing politician, Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested last year for overseeing a plan called La Salida, or “the exit,” to overturn the government. Lopez has had dealings with U.S. government figures including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. According to Wikileaks, the two apparently “discussed possible media strategies with Lopez, and methods for getting his positive message to audiences in the U.S.” Just before Ledezma’s arrest, he, Lopez and other right-wing opposition leaders, including Maria Corina Machado, had signed a document calling for a “National Transition”—a move the government says was a precursor to a U.S.-backed coup.
The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.
U.S. officials have also made no secret about their hostility to Venezuela. Last year the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a number of Venezuelan officials it claims are implicated in human rights abuses and corruption, although it is keeping the list of names secret. In President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, he announced that the U.S. would “stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela.”
Despite this documentation of American animosity toward Venezuela, media outlets continue to harbor an inexplicable blind spot on the U.S. role. The New York Times opined last week in what we can consider Exhibit A in the case against media coverage of Venezuela:
Listening to embattled President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela ramble for hours about an international right-wing conspiracy to oust him, it’s clear that he would use any fabricated pretext to jail opposition leaders and crack down on dissent. In recent days, the government’s claims have become outlandish and its repression of critics even more vicious.
Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, one of the few U.S.-based experts on Venezuela, has written a book that will be released May 4 titled “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.” In an interview on “Uprising,” he responded to the editorial, saying, “We know that there was a historical amnesia on the part of the New York Times that celebrated the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez.”
Salas was referring to the paper’s mea culpa at initially celebrating that coup and then retracting its words days later when it was overturned. In its new editorial, the paper failed to raise the historical context of U.S. backing for the 2002 coup or its own contradictory stances dismissing Maduro’s concerns.
Exhibit B is The Economist, which went as far as headlining the current crisis in Venezuela “A slow-motion coup.” If by “coup” the magazine means “coup d’état”—which is generally defined as the illegal takeover of a government—then it is unclear what the writers mean, for the article claims the “regime is lurching from authoritarianism to dictatorship.” (Is Maduro’s government organizing a coup against itself?) The magazine also goes on to assert that “Crackpot economic policies have brought food shortages, soaring inflation and rising poverty.”
Salas explained that the writers are irked by the fact that “ixty percent of the government’s budget actually goes to social programs and [the opposition] would rather it go to infrastructure and oil companies so that they can produce more oil and have a larger supply of oil on the world market, and have it be privately owned.”
Thanks to this type of media coverage, the Venezuelan right-wing opposition has been extremely successful at generating sympathy, especially among the U.S. public, and even among American celebrities. Last year’s right-wing protests inspired a shout-out by actor Jared Leto during his Oscar acceptance speech, a supportive blog post by Kevin Spacey and even a social media post by singer Madonna.
What neither the Times nor The Economist nor the supportive celebrities notice are the troubling double standards of criticizing Venezuela when a close U.S. ally such as Mexico suffers from far worse problems of anti-democratic corruption and violence. Salas pointed out the hypocrisy, saying that 43 people were killed in Venezuela last year on both sides of the divide, and still, “The New York Times blames the government for these deaths, and yet they remain silent about the 43 students that were killed in Mexico.” Additionally, Salas pointed out, although Mexico has “100,000 dead and a real humanitarian crisis,” the Times says “almost nothing, while on Venezuela they ... mock the government.”
A November 2014 editorial by the Times on Mexico’s 43 missing students expressed not nearly as much vitriol for that country’s clearly corrupt and discredited government as the paper reserves for Venezuela’s Maduro, whom it called “authoritarian,” “erratic” and “maniacal.”
Additionally, The Economist’s mocking of Venezuela’s economic crisis is also hypocritical because, according to Salas, in Mexico, “fifty percent of the population lives in poverty” and yet the country “is portrayed as a model for Western development and neo-liberal economics.” And while media outlets make fun of Venezuela’s toilet paper shortage, Salas counters that in Mexico, which is a U.S. ally, huge numbers of “people don’t even have access to basic services and foods.”
Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days. Salas attributed the bias to the savvy organizing of right-wing Venezuelan groups, who he says have “learned the lesson very well from Cuban Americans in Miami and South Florida, so they know how to target the media, they know how to create public opinion and they have done that very well.”
But Salas thinks there is another explanation, and that is “the lack of knowledge that existed about Venezuela in the U.S. before Hugo Chavez came to power.” Most of what Americans knew about the country other than that it had abundant oil reserves was the fact that it once won a Miss Universe contest and was home to a few good baseball players. That ignorance has been a perfect blank slate on which the U.S. government, mainstream media and right-wing opposition parties have been able to carve their warped perspectives about Venezuela’s left-wing government.
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Washington Post Plays Ukraine’s Lapdog
By Robert Parry
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-post-plays-ukraines-lapdog/5455141
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There once was a time when the U.S. news media investigated U.S. imperial adventures overseas, such as Washington-sponsored coups. Journalists also asked tough questions to officials implicated in corruption even if those queries were inconvenient to the desired propaganda themes. But those days are long gone, as the Washington Post demonstrated again this week.
On Wednesday, the Post’s editorial board had a chance to press Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk about the U.S. government’s role in the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that elevated him to his current post – after he was handpicked by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who declared “Yats is the guy” in a pre-coup intercepted phone call.
Wouldn’t it have been interesting to ask Yatsenyuk about his pre-coup contacts with Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and what their role was in fomenting the “regime change” that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych and hurtled Ukraine into a civil war? Sure, Yatsenyuk might have ducked the questions, but isn’t that the role that journalists are supposed to play, at least ask? [see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]
Or why not question Yatsenyuk about the presence of neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists who spearheaded the violent coup and then were deployed as the shock troops in Ukraine’s “anti-terrorism operation” that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine? Wouldn’t that question have spiced up the interview? [see Consortiumnews.com’s “Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine.”]
And, since Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko was at the editorial board meeting as well, wouldn’t it have made sense to ask her about the propriety of her enriching herself while managing a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine over the past decade? What kind of message does her prior work send to the people of Ukraine as they’re asked to tighten their belts even more, with cuts to pensions, reduction of worker protections, and elimination of heating subsidies?
How would Jaresko justify her various schemes to increase her compensation beyond the $150,000 limit set by the U.S. Agency for International Development and her decision to take court action to gag her ex-husband when he tried to blow the whistle on some improprieties? Wouldn’t such an exchange enlighten the Post’s readers about the complexities of the crisis? [see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]
Yet, based on what the Post decided to report to its readers, the editorial board simply performed the stenographic task of taking down whatever Yatsenyuk and Jaresko wanted to say. There was no indication of any probing question or even the slightest skepticism toward their assertions.
On Thursday, the Post combined a news article on the visit with an editorial that repeated pretty much as flat fact what Yatsenyuk and Jaresko had said. So, after Yatsenyuk alleged that Russia had 10,000 troops on the ground inside Ukraine, the Post’s editorial writers simply asserted the same number as a fact in its lead editorial, which stated: “Russia … has deployed an estimated 10,000 troops to eastern Ukraine and, with its local proxies, attacks Ukrainian forces on a near-daily basis.”
Though both assertions are in dispute – with many of the cease-fire violations resulting from Ukrainian government assaults around the rebel-controlled Donetsk Airport – the Post had no interest in showing any skepticism, arguably one of the consequences from the failure to impose any accountability for the Post’s similarly biased writing prior to the Iraq War.
In 2002-03, editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt repeatedly declared as flat fact that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMDs, thus supposedly justifying the U.S.-led invasion. After the invasion failed to locate these WMD stockpiles, Hiatt was asked about his editorials and responded:
“If you look at the editorials we write running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction,” Hiatt said. “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.” [CJR, March/April 2004]
Yes, journalists generally aren’t supposed to say something is a fact when it isn’t – and when a news executive oversees such a catastrophic error, which contributed to the deaths of nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, you might expect him to be fired.
Yet, Hiatt remains the Post’s editorial-page editor today, continuing to push neoconservative propaganda themes, now including equally one-sided accounts of dangerous crises in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. [see Consortiumnews.com’s “Why WPost’s Hiatt Should Be Fired.”]
On Ukraine – although the risks of neocon “tough-guy-ism” against nuclear-armed Russia could mean extermination of life on the planet – the Post refuses to present any kind of balanced reporting. Nor apparently will the Post even direct newsworthy questions to Ukrainian officials.
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COLBY WRONG AGAIN
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Tuesday, 17 February 2015
BALKANIZATION OF PAKISTANDr. Agha Inamullah khan
17th February 2015
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http://drkhaninamagha.blogspot.com/2015/02/balkanization-of-pakistan_17.html
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BBC: Media Disinformation and the “Substitution” of Video Images
Response from Complaints Director, BBC Editorial Complaints Unit. “No Formal Policy Which Obliges BBC News to Inform Viewers That Footage Has Been Changed or to Confirm When Asked the Source of Material Used”
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By Robert Stuart
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-media-disinformation-and-the-substitution-of-video-images/5454973
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‘You’re Fired – Now Train Your Much Cheaper Foreign Replacement’
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http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/youre-fired-now-train-much-cheaper-foreign-replacement/
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Michael Snyder
(RINF) – If you were laid off from your job, would you be willing to train your replacement if your company threatened to take away your severance pay if you didn’t do it? And how would you feel if your replacement came from India, and the only reason your company was replacing you was because the foreign worker was a lot less expensive? Sadly, this is happening all over America – especially in the information technology field. Huge corporations such as Disney and Southern California Edison are coldly firing existing tech workers and filling those jobs with much cheaper foreign replacements. They are doing this by blatantly abusing the H-1B temporary worker visa program. Workers that had been doing a solid job for decades are being replaced without any hesitation just because it will save those firms a little bit of money. There is very, very little loyalty left in corporate America today. Even if you have poured your heart and your soul into your company for years, that ultimately means very little. The moment that your usefulness is over, most firms will replace you in a heartbeat these days.
When I learned that Disney was doing this, I was absolutely outraged. Talk about a company that is going down the toilet. The following comes from the New York Times…
“
While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”
”
Honestly, I don’t think that I could do it.I don’t think that I could train my much cheaper foreign replacement.
But if you are the average American that is just barely scraping by from paycheck to paycheck, I guess complete and total humiliation is better than losing your home to foreclosure.
Out on the west coast, Southern California Edison did the exact same thing that Disney did. The following is an excerpt from a Fox News report…
“
Anonymous workers who were displaced by the visa holders also submitted written testimonials to lawmakers detailing their firings. Several claimed they were forced to train their replacements, and threatened with losing their severance if they did not.“We had no choice in this,” one anonymous worker who claimed to have been one of those let go from Southern California Edison, said in a letter. The worker described how when the two vendors were picked – Infosys and TCS, both major Indian companies – SCE employees were told to “sit with, video chat or do whatever was needed to teach them our systems.”
If they did not cooperate, according to the testimonial, “we would be fired and not receive a severance package.”
”
That is wrong on so many levels. But this is what corporate America has become today – a cold, heartless place that has absolutely no empathy for the average worker.These workers at Southern California Edison were even told that the firm “could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel” and still save money on the deal…
“
“They told us they could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel and still save money,” one laid-off Edison worker told me, recounting a group meeting with supervisors last year. “They said, ‘We can get four Indian guys for cheaper than the price of you.’ You could hear a pin drop in the room.”
”
The original intent of the H-1B temporary worker visa program was to allow U.S. companies to import foreign workers to do jobs that they were unable to fill with American workers.But that is not what is happening.
Instead, the H-1B temporary worker visa program is being used to replace thousands upon thousands of well paid American workers.
It is a disgusting practice and it needs to stop. There has been so much outrage over this that it has even gotten the attention of the U.S. Senate. The following is from a letter that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators sent to the Attorney General…
“
A number of U.S. employers, including some large, well-known, publicly-traded corporations, have reportedly laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. To add insult to injury, many of the replaced American employees report that they have been forced to train the foreign workers who are taking their jobs. This troubling practice seems to be particularly concentrated in the information technology (IT) sector, which is not surprising given that sixty five percent of H-1B petitions approved in FY 2014 were for workers in computer-related occupations. Though such reports of H-1B-driven layoffs have been circulating for years, their frequency seems to have increased dramatically in the past year alone.
”
So has anything been done about this?Of course not.
Instead, Barack Obama is working on an extremely secretive global economic treaty which will reportedly allow far more foreign workers to come into this country and which will result in millions more good paying jobs being shipped overseas. It is called “The Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and it is basically NAFTA on steroids.
Why is it that Barack Obama has to be on the wrong side of every single issue?
The U.S. middle class is being systematically ripped to shreds, and most Americans are showing very little alarm about this.
How much damage has to be done before people will finally start waking up?
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Mocking the DIA Report on the Creation of ISIS
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by Brad Hoff, June 13, 2015
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http://original.antiwar.com/brad_hoff/2015/06/12/mocking-the-dia-report-on-the-creation-of-isis/
Jacob Siegal, writing for The Daily Beast, misses an opportunity to shine light on the 2012 declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document foretelling the rise of “an Islamic State”, instead, opting to mock those reporting and attempting to interpret its contents.
In his June 6 article, The ISIS Conspiracy that ate the Web, Siegal devotes the majority of his words not to careful analysis of the document, but instead to consigning all those, like Seamus Milne of The Guardian, who dare take the document as a serious and newsworthy revelation worthy of public scrutiny, with the label of partisan conspiracy theorist (the Daily Beast article itself is categorized under the heading “Conspiracy Theory”):
If you’re looking for a single, simple explanation for the rise of the Islamic State that flatters your pre-existing politics, you’ve hit pay dirt.
He begins by holding up the admittedly nutty Pamela Geller as somehow representative of the DIA document’s early reporting, though she had nothing to do with either reporting or analyzing the document, instead merely copying the entirety of my own original article to her website many days after its release and adding her own brief commentary (while never seeking my permission), such as the simplistic: “Look at what Obama and his party of treason have unleashed on the world.”
The Pamela Gellers of the world will always have ultra-partisan, self-serving interpretations of what is fundamentally real, newsworthy information, but presenting her and others like her as actually representing the reporting that “ate the Web” is a sloppy attempt to obfuscate the valid conclusions being drawn and circulated as a result of this truly significant document. Siegal would like us to conclude, like Juan Cole, that there is really “nothing to see here folks, move it along, etc…” by first presenting and debunking “low hanging fruit” that is irrelevant to how the story originally spread.
I appreciate that at the very least my own reporting is held up as serious and credible with the lines in the end paragraphs, “The DIA could do itself and the public a favor by addressing the 3 year-old declassified report instead of responding to inquiries with variations on no comment as it did when approached by journalist Brad Hoff.”
I wholeheartedly agree, but it strikes me as odd and inconsistent that Siegal should first write off Seumas Milne’s excellent piece in The Guardian (which now has over 85,000 Facebook shares alone), taking issue even with the title, Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq.
The title of my own May 19 article, West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime” – which was the first to report and examine the DIA document’s contents in terms of “the West backed ISIS” angle, would no doubt also attract the ire of Mr. Siegal should he have bothered to find out the origin of the viral “conspiracy” that ate the web. And yet, he holds me up as a credible journalist cited just after the following: “The report raises some important questions but it’s a mistake to think it answers them.”
What bothers me is that, as a paid editor and journalist at the The Daily Beast, Jacob Siegal refuses to make use of the significant resources at his disposal to seek answers to the many questions he says the document raises, opting instead to attach a stigma to any reporting or analysis that might actually see the document as evidence of U.S. government wrongdoing or negligence (especially as he informs us he formerly worked as an army intelligence officer, which makes it likely that he’d have helpful contacts that might be useful in actually investigating the document).
But I suppose it’s much easier to do a hit piece on straw man conspiracy theories, as opposed to a careful reading and response to the actual original reporting through which the DIA document went viral.
My own reporting began going viral within days after being published. Investigative journalist and best-selling author Nafeez Ahmed, whose counter-terrorism work gained official recognition by the 9/11 Commission, followed on May 22 with an in-depth investigative piece on the DIA report at INSURGE intelligence, which greatly expanded on my report, putting it into full geopolitical context.
Most significantly, Ahmed was able to get official statement from the British Foreign Office, and his coverage of the DIA document later headlined across leading German daily papers and political magazines. It was this story, copied to Zero Hedge, that Juan Cole dismissed as “just a clickbait story”.
But neither my reporting, nor Nafeez Ahmed’s ever claimed that the DIA document exists as stand-alone “smoking gun” proof of the claims that the West knowingly fueled the rise of Islamic State. As I said soon after writing my report on the Scott Horton show, the DIA document merely “completes the picture” – a picture that many, including Ahmed, have been piecing together for years.
But that the West and the USdid fuel the rise of ISIS through political support, weapons, logistical coordination, and supplies given to militants in Syria is hardly the theory of a few independent journalists when you have the likes of former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford going around confessing that he himself knowingly backed rebels fighting alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria (Nusra) in 2013. Remember that Ford was the State Department’s top man in Syria and thus had a key role in the rebel “vetting” process. (As for other former government officials, current politicians, and even FSA commanders that have also said that the West gave political and material support to the then nascent Islamic State…well the list is too long for this column.)
While government officials like to claim that “we didn’t know” or that “we had good intentions,” this DIA document is just additional proof that at the very least, at some official level, they did know. The dynamics of the conflict and potential consequences of the West’s course of action were spelled out in quite precise (and prescient) terms, and put into writing in the form of an information report and circulated widely (the early reporting never claimed the document was itself produced as an active or official policy document).
Considering the fact that the world has been told incessantly that ISIS and their associate jihadi allies represent the single greatest and most brutal terror threat mankind has ever seen (and add to that the CIA and White House claim that they just didn’t see ISIS coming!), you would think that for The Daily Beast this might constitute a major newsworthy scandal worth digging into. But again, Siegal instead chooses to make the story ultimately about the power of “conspiracy theories” that take over the web.
Ironically, he cites the discredited and disgraced former NSA officer John Schindler to say that the DIA document is largely irrelevant and unimportant based on its redactions as well as our inability to know the level of importance assigned to it within the intelligence community (as its classification is not high level).
While Siegal acknowledges that this “sort of report of regional scope and strategic implications was outside my purview” his guiding assumption is that it couldn’t have been very important: “by itself, it’s only evidence of one analysis among thousands churned out yearly by the various intelligence agencies.”
But Siegal could have and should have consulted former high ranking MI6 spy and Middle East expert Alastair Crooke, who does have the experience and background to know. Crooke’s analysis appeared in his regular Huffington Post column a full five days prior Siegal’s Daily Beast article. As to the DIA document’s level of importance within the intelligence community, Crooke confidently asserts following his main thesis:
Intelligence assessments purpose is to provide “a view” – not to describe or prescribe policy. But it is clear that the DIA reports’ “warnings” were widely circulated and would have been meshed into the policy consideration.
The main indicator affirming that this DIA report was not merely “one analysis among thousands” (and by implication barely visible), is described in a Salon.com article which appeared nine days prior to Siegal’s cries of conspiracy theory:
Few of the reports on these documents have discussed on what terms Judicial Watch received them. The organization received the documents by requesting – among other things – “[a]ny and all records produced by any official of the [Departments of Defense and State] in preparation for, use during, and/or pursuant to any” briefing of Congressional leaders and Intelligence Committee leaders, “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the US government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi, Libya.” These reports were important, then, to DOD’s own understanding of events surrounding the Benghazi attack.
As to the content of the DIA document itself, Siegal’s main point (after citing Cole) is that the DIA is actually pointing the finger exclusively at America’s allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and that “the West” (and US) is somehow wholly separate from its own coalition. Joe Biden’s revealing comments at Harvard University are referenced, but his prior statements regarding support for the Syrian opposition are ignored: “We are working hand and glove with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with the Saudis, and with all the people in the region attempting to identify the people who deserve the help…” (and this is consistent with statements of other US officials).
The idea that US intelligence and military officials were far removed from the situation as allies armed the likes of Nusra, ISIS, and Ahrar Al-Sham, even while those officials all occupied the same “operations command center” (in Jordan and in Turkey), is absurd on its face. American government officials themselves told the New York Times of a joint Saudi/CIA program to arm the rebels beginning in 2012.
The truth is often much more banal than a good conspiracy theory: it often requires knowledge of the alignment of those interests, institutions, historical forces, and guiding ideologies that give birth to a particular horrid consequence. It is the media’s job to investigate and map out those alignments. Such is the case with the swift rise of the monster that is Islamic State. While it would give me great personal comfort to be able to dismiss inconvenient truths as mere conspiracy theory, I would prefer a national media that tells me the hard truth, and never ceases digging until unearthing that truth.
As he admits that the DIA document raises valid questions, my hope is that Jacob Siegal is even now digging, asking tough questions of DIA and other officials, seeking behind the scenes comment, submitting further FOIA requests, etc… This is my sincere hope, but I suppose I shouldn’t hold my breath.
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
― Mark TwainLeo Tolstoy
“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A ConfessionCriss Jami
“When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric PersonalityHenrik Ibsen
“I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.”
― Henrik IbsenBertrand Russell
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
― Bertrand Russell, Marriage and MoralsJarod Kintz
“Don’t be jealous if I spend 50% of my time with you, and 50% of my time with others, because you get 100% of 50%, while all the others have to share that other 50%.” This is the speech I’ve prepared to tell my wife in the future, when I’m spending a majority minus one percent of my time with my clones.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No TitleMahatma Gandhi
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas -
Wayne Allyn Root – Latest Employment Numbers Show Murder Of Middle Class Continues
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Submitted by IWB, on June 9th, 2015
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Super important conspiracy
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
How can the BLS show hundreds of thousands of new jobs being created by new small businesses every month if more businesses have been closing than starting since 2008 ??
http://investmentwatchblog.com/how-can-the-bls-show-hundreds-of-thousands-of-new-jobs-being-created-by-new-small-businesses-every-month-if-more-businesses-have-been-closing-than-starting-since-2008/
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/how-can-the-bls-show-hundreds-of-thousands-of-new-jobs-being-created-by-new-small-businesses-every-month-if-more-businesses-have-been-closing-than-starting-since-2008/#FluPIkJihTkArdrV.99