Steven Gaal

I heard Glenn Beck say he duplicated the shot on a radio program of his. ======================= found this on the web today https://www.facebook.com/theblaze/posts/609532039084140

Germany, US Push Aggressive Policies at Munich Security Conference By Stefan Steinberg Global Research, February 03, 2014 World Socialist Web Site =========================================================================== This weekend, some 400 leading international political and military figures and representatives of defense contractors, banks and corporations gathered at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) to discuss the global military and security situation. Both John Kerry and Chuck Hagel participated, marking the first time the US secretaries of state and defense both attended the conference. The MSC featured a series of speeches by top German officials announcing an aggressive military policy, effectively repudiating the traditional restraints on German militarism that have existed since the collapse of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II. The belligerent tone of the conference was laid down by the former East German pastor and current president of Germany, Joachim Gauck. Declaring that Germany must stop using its past—i.e., its role in starting two world wars in the 20th century—as a “shield,” Gauck called for the country’s armed forces to be used more frequently and decisively. “Germany can’t carry on as before,” Gauck argued. It was necessary to overcome German indifference and European navel-gazing, he said, in the face of “rapid” and “dramatic” new threats to the “open world order.” This was a signal that German imperialism intends to intervene, militarily if need be, in the world’s major conflicts—the Middle East wars, most prominently the US-led proxy war in Syria; Berlin’s conflict with Moscow over Ukraine; and East Asia, where the US is carrying out a “pivot to Asia” against China. Gauck made clear that the interests of German imperialism spanned the globe and raised a number of questions: “Are we doing what we can to stabilise our neighbourhood, both in the East and in Africa? Are we doing what we have to in order to counter the threat of terrorism? And, in cases where we have found convincing reasons to join our allies in taking even military action, are we willing to bear our fair share of the risks?” “When the last resort—sending in the Bundeswehr [the military]—comes to be discussed, Germany should not say no on principle,” he concluded. Gauck’s global call to arms was reiterated at the conference in separate contributions by Germany’s new defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union), and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party). Von der Leyen said: “The audience does not need to look at the program of this conference to become aware of the current crises and conflicts we are facing today: the appalling war in Syria, the gloomy situation in Libya, the deteriorating situation in some parts of our neighboring continent, Africa… To sit and wait is not an option. If we have means, we have capabilities, we have the obligation and we have the responsibility to engage.” Steinmeier called on Germany to be “ready to engage in foreign and security policy issues earlier, more decisively, and more substantially.” He called for the elaboration of a joint European security policy in close collaboration with the United States, also calling for talks with Russia to secure Western interests in Ukraine and Iran. Steinmeier was one of the first to greet Kerry when he landed in Germany for the conference, both men stressing their close and friendly relationship. The main opponent addressed by all of the advocates of a renewed role for German militarism is the German population. A recent poll by the ARD “Morgenmagazin” concluded that 61 percent of the population are opposed to any increased intervention by the German army in Africa. Another survey published last Friday revealed that 45 percent believe the Bundeswehr is already doing “too much” overseas. Serious divisions emerged at the conference over Ukraine, where Germany and the United States have taken lead roles in backing anti-government protests by the pro-European Union opposition, which is politically led by far-right elements, including the fascistic Svoboda (Freedom) party. Russian and Ukrainian officials criticized the Western policy. While Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara complained that the opposition had not negotiated with the Ukrainian regime in good faith, Ukrainian opposition leader Vitali Klitschko accused the regime of using “terror and violence” against his supporters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also criticized US and EU claims that by supporting the opposition, they were promoting democracy. “What does incitement of violent street protests have to do with the promotion of democracy? Why do we not hear condemnation of those who seize government buildings and attack police and use racist, anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans?” he said. Western officials bluntly dismissed these comments. Kerry claimed the fight for a democratic European future was nowhere more apparent than in Ukraine. In his remarks on Ukraine, Kerry dismissed the prominent role played by neo-fascist thugs in the recent protests in Kiev as “unsavory elements” to be found “in the streets in any chaotic situation.” Kerry’s own speech to the conference was riddled with distortions and evasions. At one point, he boasted of the accumulation of wealth in America, claiming that, based on “marketplace” principles, “in the 1990s… every single quintile of our income earners [saw] their income go up… We created the greatest wealth the world has seen during the 1990s, greater even in America than the period of the Pierponts and the Morgans and the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mellons, much greater.” In another part of his speech, Kerry justified the spying activities of the National Security Agency, which have met with massive international criticism, particularly from broad layers of the German population. Declaring that democracy in America has “always been a work in progress,” Kerry defended the expansion of worldwide surveillance by the NSA under the Obama administration and applauded the government’s recent plan for a “review and revision of our signals intelligence practices…” Ignoring the enormous growth of social inequality in America and the attacks on democratic rights carried out by his own government, Kerry announced: “We have detected a disturbing trend. Through many parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the aspirations of citizens are being trampled beneath corrupt and oligarchic interests, interests that use money to stifle political opposition and dissent, to buy politicians and media outlets.” The hypocrisy of Kerry’s remarks is staggering. The principle role models of the oligarchs in Eastern Europe are the billionaire financiers and asset strippers on Wall Street. In the course of the past 25 years, oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere have made their fortunes on the basis of the same “marketplace” principles Kerry defended in his speech. In his remarks, Kerry essentially demanded that Russia agree to allow Ukraine to be brought into the sphere of influence of German imperialism, under the aegis of the US-backed European Union. At the conference, US Defense Secretary Hagel emphasized that the “pressing security challenges to Europe and the United States are global,” including “political instability and violent extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, dangerous non-state actors, rogue nations such as North Korea, cyber warfare, demographic changes, economic disparity, poverty, and hunger.” Hagel concluded by defending the Obama administration’s “Pacific turn,” identifying China and Russia as the main threats to the transatlantic alliance. He declared that “as we confront these threats, nations such as China and Russia are rapidly modernizing their militaries and global defense industries, challenging our technological edge in defense partnerships around the world.” In the round of discussion following their statements, both Kerry and Hagel rejected claims that America was retreating from the world arena and declared their intention to press ahead aggressively against Syria and Iran. Replying to a journalist’s question, Hagel said: “I have never seen a full inventory of exactly what we’re doing everywhere, but I would venture to say the United States is more present doing more things in more places today than maybe ever before.”

New Model Of Governance in Bailout Europe: Silence, Lies, and Evasion Source: Testosterone Pit By Don Quijones, a freelance writer and translator based in Barcelona, Spain. His blog, Raging Bull-xxxx, is a modest attempt to challenge some of the wishful thinking and scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by our political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media. ===================================================================== Recent events in Spain have left me in even more a fog of confusion than usual. Here’s why: a little over a month ago, just before Christmas, it was announced to the loudest possible fanfare that Spain had finally fulfilled all its bailout obligations. Its work done, the Troika was withdrawing its troops. After 18 long, arduous months of economic belt-tightening, Spain had finally regained its independence, its government and people liberated from the shackles of neo-colonial economic rule. Personally speaking, I had my reservations. But even I, a seasoned skeptic, never imagined that the Troika’s shock troops would be back quite so soon. On Thursday morning, while scrolling the home page of El Diario, the following headline caught my eye: “IMF Technocrats Do Not Deign To Explain Their Reforms in Spain“ The technocrats in question were two chief economists from the IMF’s European Department, Martin Schindler and Jasmin Rahmen, and two assistants from the same department, Helge Berger and Antonio Spilimbergo. They were in Madrid for the express purpose of present their latest study, “Employment and Growth: Supporting European Recovery” — a title that proves, if nothing else, that the “Fund of Funds” hasn’t lost its sense of humour. The study contained the standard, all-familiar IMF recommendations: greater labour mobility (i.e. make it easier for companies to fire and hire workers, the former of which is definitely no longer a problem in Spain), lower salaries (always nice coming from unelected officials earning fat, tax-free, all expenses-included salaries) and, of course, less union involvement in collective bargaining agreements. Things got interesting, however, at the end of the presentation when the small gathering of journalists began launching questions at the four IMF employees, to which Antonio Spilimbergo had one solitary response: "We will not be taking any questions on the specifics of the Spanish situation." And there you have it: the perfect summation of how our new technocratic system of governance functions in Europe today. A small clique of four empty suits rides into town, announces “recommendations” for economic reforms — reforms that will continue to suck the life-blood out of the Spanish economy – refuses to answer even the most innocent question on said reforms, and then rides back to wherever it came from. In this new model of governance, difficult questions must never be asked. If they are asked, they must never be answered — for the simple reason that the IMF, the ECB, and the European Commission do not have plausible answers to such questions. In this video Klaus Masuch, a European Central Bank official, mumbles, stumbles, and squirms his way through a steady onslaught of probing questions from a seasoned Irish journalist. At the end of his merciless interrogation, the Irish journalist says: This isn’t good enough. You people are intervening in this society causing huge damage while requiring us to make payments not for the benefit of anyone in Ireland but for the benefit of European financial institutions. Now could you explain why the Irish people are inflicted with its burden? A damn good question, and one that merits an answer, but instead was met with a wall of silence, followed by all manner of evasive tactics. Biting Austerity Like Spain, Ireland was recently proclaimed cured. It had exited from the bailout program and, as The Guardian put it, recently made a “storming return” to the international bond market. Yet while the country may be returning to a semblance (for that is all it is) of normality in macro financial terms, the cold, hard frost of austerity continues to bite on the ground. In October last year, Irish premier Enda Kenny announced another round of austerity cuts in the government’s (read: Troika’s) budget for 2014. Among many other things, health costs will soar, medical cards will be withdrawn from 35,000 people over 70, welfare rates will be cut for job seekers, and maternity benefits will be reduced. The results are plainly visible for all to see. In Ireland, as in Spain, the poverty rate keeps rising, opportunity becomes a thing of the past for more and more young workers, the brain drain continues its onward march, the suicide rate is going up and public services are gradually deteriorating to the point where they no longer serve the public — cue: privatisation. Ditto for Portugal, ditto for Italy, and the less said about the tragic fate of Greece, the better. Soon, even Europe’s core countries will be invited to join the eternal race to the bottom. To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, “They make an economic desert and call it progress.” The markets raucously cheer and applaud from the sidelines, rewarding the respective national governments’ noble efforts to impoverish their own citizens with slightly higher bond prices, healthier-looking risk premiums and more debt — always more debt! In October, the continent’s Banking Union will be consummated, granting exclusive supervision of the continent’s banking system to unelected, unaccountable apparatchiks of the European Central Bank. And with it, another hefty chunk of our national sovereignty will disappear. Yet if someone dares to ask any of the Troika’s three horsemen of Europe’s economic apocalypse just why such drastic steps and their brutal social, economic and political fallout are necessary — something that most representatives of the fourth estate seem strangely loath to do — you are greeted with silence, more lies, and evasion. By Don Quijones, Raging Bull-xxxx. ================o0o0o0o0o================= Governments are seeking to reduce cash transactions. The reasons are obvious: as most countries struggle to rein in public spending, governments are frantically surveying their surroundings for anything of value to steal or pawn. Read.... We Are Sleepwalking Towards A Cashless Society

LEFTY OBAMA ?? Who Most Benefits From MyRAs: Savers Or The US Treasury?Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement Jan 31, 2014 - 10:39 PM GMT By: Dan_Amerman http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article44212.html

Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity http://www.globalresearch.ca/imperial-conquest-americas-long-war-against-humanity/5364215 and so it goes ........... Slaughterhouse-Five The story continually employs the refrain "So it goes" when death, dying, and mortality occur, as a narrative transition to another subject, as a memento mori, as comic relief, and to explain the unexplained. It appears 106 times.

US readying sanctions against Ukraine, aides say ================ Latest update : 2014-01-30 france24 Washington is preparing financial sanctions that could be imposed on Ukrainian officials and protest leaders if violence escalates in the political crisis gripping the country, congressional aides told Reuters on http://www.france24.com/en/20140130-usa-sanctions-ukraine-yanukovich-protests/#./?&_suid=139108471410909109448311345978

best site for plus/minus birthgate http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-debunkers-guide-to-obama-conspiracy-theories/ ++++++++++++++++ FROM THE SITE Archive | Birth Certificate By Dr. Conspiracy on December 31, 2013 in Birth Certificate, Debunking Tenacious debunker Frank Arduini has sunk his teeth into Douglas Vogt’s Seattle Court filings and come up with a new report in his series of debunking major birther documents, “20 Shades of Vogt: Digital Document Forensics for Amateurs.” I started debunking Vogt’s 20 points of forgery, but tired of the effort, plus I never could properly use the word “prolix” in a sentence. Arduini had the endurance and the grammar to pull it off. I look forward to reading the rest of it. An open letter to Jack Kelly By Dr. Conspiracy on December 19, 2013 in Adoption, Birth Certificate, Hawaii Dept. of Health, Media, Social-security numbers Jack Kelly is a writer for the Pittsburgh Press, and not a very good one. Yesterday he published one of those misinformation-laden smear pieces against Barack Obama that we more often see on tabloid internet sites and blogs. This one appeared at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, titled “Barack Obama’s past as murky as his word.” I sent the author this letter and posted it as a reply to the article: I was referred to your article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled "Barack Obama’s past as murky as his word" in which you say: "Genuine documents confirm Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, said document expert Nick Chase. But the “long form” birth certificate the White House posted on the Internet April 27, 2011, is an obvious forgery, he said. Other document experts agree." As written, the last sentence is yours, and it is false. No document expert has ever said that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. Some birther cranks with no background in document analysis have made easily debunked objections to the certificate, but no one qualified. On the other hand, half a dozen real professional document and imaging experts have found nothing wrong with it, including Krawetz, de Queiroz, Pex, Zatkovich, Broyhill and Colburn. And if there were any further doubts, the Hawaii Department of Health says on it’s web site today: "On April 27, 2011 President Barack Obama posted a certified copy of his original Certificate of Live Birth" and links to what you’re calling a forgery. (http://health.hawaii.gov/vitalrecords/faq-obama/) The second nonsense in your article is the adoption thing. Beyond the fact that the Hawaii Department of Health backs the certificate, the US State Department in the case of Strunk v. Department of State specifically denied that Obama had been adopted by his stepfather, and Obama’s attorney also denied this in a more recent case. Finally, you make a total fabrication when you say "Unlike other recent presidential candidates, Mr. Obama has refused to permit release of his academic records from Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School." In fact I don’t know of ANY recent presidential candidate who released his college record. The records of George W. Bush were accidentally released without permission. So in answer to your innuendo-laden questions: Obama didn’t release his college record for the same reason most other candidates don’t. Obama’s birth certificate isn’t a forgery except in the minds of nut-case conspiracy theorists It is not unusual for people to have social-security numbers from the wrong state series. The Social Security web site says that the "area number" was never intended to be a reliable geographic indicator. When Obama’s number was issued, the numbers were assigned centrally in the US based on the return address on the application. Mistaking a "0" for a "9" turns a Hawaii zip code into one for Connecticut. Sincerely, Kevin Davidson Race tabulations in Hawaii–1961 By Dr. Conspiracy on December 12, 2013 in Birth Certificate Much discussion has taken place over the penciled notations found on birth certificates in Hawaii from 1961. Here’s an example from President Obama’s birth certificate showing a “9” representing “African.” The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Cold Case Posse devoted a significant part of their second news conference towards making an argument that the code “9” shown on the President’s certificate was inconsistent with the text entry of “African.” The posse made a number of false claims, one of which was that the penciled notation was part of a Hawaii state process of tabulating data for the federal government—actually the federal government did the tabulations themselves from microfilmed certificate copies provided by the states that year1. The second false claim was the the table shown following, captured from a Cold Case Posse video presentation, was the federal table used in 1961—actually it was from 1968 and different from the 1960-61 table. The Cold Case Posse’s misrepresentations are covered in more detail in my article: “Code ‘9’: the Cold Case Posse’s big lie.” Examination of a few Hawaiian birth certificates from 1961 proved that the penciled codes are not only inconsistent with the Cold Case Posse’s codes, but also with the real federal codes used in 1961 (where code “9” represents “Other nonwhite’)—Hawaii used their own codes. The question of interest for researchers of Hawaiian birth certificate lore is: what are the race codes? From various known certificates, I pieced together what we knew about the race coding and published that in my article: “1961 Hawaii Race codes: disclosed!” The result of that exercise was the following: Race Code Caucasian/White 1 Hawaiian 2 Part Hawaiian 3 What “African” was called 9Today I obtained from the Hawaii State Library pages from the Hawaii Department of Health Annual Report Statistical Supplement for 1961 that show the birth tabulations by race of father. Here’s the table (click image to enlarge): The racial values listed in the order presented in the table are: Caucasian Hawaiian Part Hawaiian Chinese Filipino Japanese Puerto Rican Korean Other race Not specified Note that race codes “1,” “2” and “3” found on actual certificates correspond exactly with the first, second and third entries in the tabulation, and that code “9” for “African” on the Obama certificate is consistent with the 9th entry (“Other race”). Based on the information available, I think it highly likely that the race codes used to classify birth certificates by the Hawaii Department of Health in 1961 are 1-9 in the order that their tabulations were published in the preceding table. (“African” and “Negro” would fall into the same category.) For convenience, I’ll put it together: Race Code Caucasian 1 Hawaiian 2 Part Hawaiian 3 Chinese 4 Filipino 5 Japanese 6 Puerto Rican 7 Korean 8 Other race 9This obscure bit of information is just one more indication of the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate. 1The federal tabulations only coded even-numbered certificates, and the final totals were multiplied by 2. President Obama’s certificate was odd-numbered, and so not actually coded by the federal government. (See Vital Statistics of the United States 1961 – Volume 1 – Natality pages 227 and 232.)

Conditions never seen before by scientists in Pacific seals and walrus — Thyroid cysts, lesions of reproductive system, retained placenta — Hunters concerned — Oceanographers to discuss radiation from Fukushima on Alaska radio tomorrowPublished: January 27th, 2014 at 10:04 pm ET By ENENews Alaska Marine Science Symposium (pdf), Jan. 20-24, 2014: Incidental Gross Necropsy Findings In Subsistence Harvested Ice Seals And Pacific Walrus [...] Ice seals (ringed, bearded, spotted seals) and Pacific walrus are very important subsistence species for Arctic coastal communities. As part of the North Slope Borough (NSB) ongoing Marine Mammal Health Research program, the department of wildlife management conducts necropsies and baseline tissue sampling on subsistence harvested marine mammals. We present some results from our 2011-2013 general ice seal [ringed, bearded, and spotted] and Pacific walrus subsistence harvest monitoring and sampling efforts due to hunter concern NOTE: Case reports (type 1 alopecia/delayed molt; type II ulcerative dermatitis, delayed molt etc.) from the ongoing 2011 Northern Pinniped unusual mortality event disease investigation were not included and will be reported elsewhere. Results: Incidental gross findings among the three species included: lesions of the reproductive system (adnexal cysts, uterine and penile melanosis, cliteromegaly, cryptorchism, retained placenta), endocrine system (thyroid cysts, adrenal nodules), musculoskeletal system (synovial cyst), integumentary system (panniculitis, epidermal molt (aka dreadlocks), skin sloughing) and digestive system (microdontia; chronic interstitial pancreatitis, hepatic cyst; cholestatic jaundice; geophagia). Helminths were commonly observed in the gastrointestinal system of ice seals [...] A variety of the observed pathological conditions (reproductive and endocrine lesions) are reported for the first time in Arctic Pinnipeds [...] LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 at 10:00 a.m. — Radiation from Fukushima, APRN (Alaska Public Radio Network): They’re having trouble sealing up the leaking nuclear power plants in Japan and they’re also having trouble disclosing what is going on there. Is this a reason to distrust Alaska seafood? [...] GUESTS: Professor Doug Dasher, Environmental Oceanographer, University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Science — Dr. John Kelley, Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska Fairbanks, former Director, Naval Arctic Research Laboratory — Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air). [...] See also: Scientists present links between unusual Alaska seal deaths and Fukushima fallout -- Skin lesions, hair loss, lethargy -- 'Pulsed release' when built-up radionuclides were set free as ice melted -- "Wildlife health implications" due to radiation exposure discussed (PHOTOS & MAP) And: Reports: White 'goo' everywhere in Alaska seal, crows won't touch it... yet they eat people's roofs -- Slime in ones mouth, kidney almost black -- Another appeared to change color -- Hairless one seen recently: "We all still have sick seals here!" (PHOTOS)

ONE ++ Dear Sir, The implication of this data (not wall of text) is that there was a deeper plotting than the accepted version. TWO ++ You may not know this American-Canadian phrase which explains your counter argument, "you have did·dly-squat." ================================================== did·dly-squat also did·dly·squat (dĭd′lē-skwŏt′) n. SlangA small or worthless amount. diddly-squat (ˌdɪdlɪˈskwɒt) pron 1. (usually used with a negative) US and Canadian anything: that doesn't mean diddly-squat.

Kurds create their own transition government in northern Syria http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT6A6o3GJsM&feature=player_embedded By Ken Hanly Jan 23, 2014 in Politics Ken Hanly. Damascus - Just a day before the Geneva 2 talks began, the Kurds in Syria declared a provincial government in the northeast area of Syria that they control. The Syrian Kurds wanted to attend Geneva 2 as a separate delegation from the Syrian National Coalition. They claimed that their demands differ from both those of the Assad government and the opposition that seeks regime change and an end to Assad's rule. The Democratic Union Party (PYD) that is the dominant Kurdish party in Syria said that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and United States obstructed their request and hence they were not invited. The People's Defence Unit (YPG) the main fighting force in Kurdish-controlled areas is linked to the PYD. A municipal council will govern an area that includes the cities of Hassaka and Qamishli and will have its own president, ministers of foreign affairs, defense, justice and education, as reported by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Elections are to be held in four months time. According to a report in Russia Today: " The announcement came following a meeting of the Legislative Assembly of the Democratic Autonomous Government of Western Kurdistan, “attended by all members of the Assembly which is made up of 52 parties, civil society organizations, youth and women’s movements and 15 independent individuals,” Firat news agency reported. " The Kurdish drive for more autonomy worries Turkey as Kurds in Turkey have long demanded autonomy as well. The Syrian Kurds are not on good terms with other rebel groups, particularly Islamist fighters who tried to take control of territory held by Kurds last year. The Kurds have been for the most part not been attacked by Assad forces while they concentrated on other rebel groups. As a result some accuse the Kurds of being allied with the Assad regime. There are splits within the Kurds with the PYD being aligned with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) that has a history of violent struggles with the Turkish government that has killed thousands over three decades. Some other Kurdish parties have agreed to attend the talks as part of the western-backed Syrian coalition. Neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan has strained relations with the YPG-ruled Syria: The YPG has stopped rival groups from entering the Kurdish enclave. Syrian Kurds suspect Barzani, the leader of the Iraqi Kurds, of wanting to extend his control into their territory. Publicly, Barzani has said only that he wants to keep the Kurds united. For its part the Turkish PKK has been quite critical of the opposition which opposed the presence of the YPG claiming that the opposition was no better than the Assad regime in that both would marginalize Syria's Kurdish minority. A statement from the group said: “At a time when all sides are being invited to the conference, the Kurds’ demand for participation has been overlooked, Their [the Syrian opposition’s] attitude is no different from that of the Baath regime. They don’t take seriously the demands of the Kurdish people, just like Turkey's attitude.” More details of Kurdish attempts to build an autonomous area in Syria can be found in this Reuters article. The city of Qamishli is jointly controlled by Kurds and Assad forces. The latter control a nearby military base, and the airport and even some of the city center. You can still fly to the city from Damascus. Most of the city is controlled by a Kurdish police force: For now, the two sides seem to co-exist. Fighters pass each other like ghosts. At a square in the heart of the city, Syrian soldiers on trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns drove through a crowd of school children crossing the street, just as a Kurdish patrol drove past on the other side of the square. In this part of Syria there is already a ceasefire between the two sides that has been agreed to some time before Geneva 2. The Syrian Kurds had declared an autonomous government earlier last November.

Breaking: New Climate Data Rigging Scandal Rocks US Government http://www.principia-scientific.org/breaking-new-climate-data-rigging-scandal-rocks-us-government.html Written by John O'Sullivan A newly-uncovered and monumental calculating error in official US government climate data shows beyond doubt that climate scientists unjustifiably added on a whopping one degree of phantom warming to the official "raw" temperature record. Skeptics believe the discovery may trigger the biggest of all “climate con” scandals in Congress and sound the death knell on American climate policy. Independent data analyst, Steven Goddard, today (January 19, 2014) released his telling study of the officially adjusted and “homogenized” US temperature records relied upon by NASA, NOAA, USHCN and scientists around the world to “prove” our climate has been warming dangerously. Goddard reports, “I spent the evening comparing graphs…and hit the NOAA motherlode.” His diligent research exposed the real reason why there is a startling disparity between the “raw” thermometer readings, as reported by measuring stations, and the “adjusted” temperatures, those that appear in official charts and government reports. In effect, the adjustments to the “raw” thermometer measurements made by the climate scientists “turns a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” says the astonished Goddard. Goddard’s plain-as-day evidence not only proves the officially-claimed one-degree increase in temperatures is entirely fictitious, it also discredits the reliability of any assertion by such agencies to possess a reliable and robust temperature record. Goddard continues: "I discovered a huge error in their adjustments between V1 and V2. This is their current US graph. Note that there is a discontinuity at 1998, which doesn’t look right. Globally, temperatures plummeted in 1999, but they didn’t in the US graph."

Secret Military Training Blurs Line Between Police and Soldiers January 24, 2014 Source: The New American As the military transitions into a tech-heavy force, increasingly reliant on robots and drones, local police forces are looking less like law enforcement and more like heavily armored combat units. Now, it seems they are starting to train like them, as well. A story published by The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, reported on recent secret joint training missions between U.S. Army special forces and the Richland County (South Carolina) Sheriff’s Department. The article describes training exercises being conducted by “unidentified units” from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Ft. Bragg is the home of the elite U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and the super-secret, super-deadly Delta Force. A spokesman for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department refused to identify who was participating in the exercise or why it was being carried out. The department did, however, issue a press release, warning that the war games could get loud. "Citizens may see military and departmental vehicles traveling in and around rural and metropolitan areas and may hear ordnance being set off or fired which will be simulated/blanks and controlled by trained personnel," it declared. As for why such combat simulations were necessary, the statement explained that they were a result of “Sheriff Leon Lott's longstanding commitment to making sure that deputies are trained and prepared for every event and potential threat and his desire to assist the military to ensure their preparations.” This synthesis of police and military is a threat to both civil liberty and a clear distinction between the purposes of the two organizations. The integration has progressed so far, though, that even the mainstream press is taking notice. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal last August, Radley Balko, author of the Rise of the Warrior Cop, presented chilling and convincing evidence of the blurring of the line between cop and soldier: Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment — from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers — American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties. Balko rightly connects the menace of the martial police with the decline in liberty and a disintegration of legal boundaries between sheriffs and generals: Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs. Given the critical role played by sheriffs in the protection of constitutionally guaranteed liberty, it is dismaying to read story after story describing the anxious acceptance — and occasionally the full-time petitioning — of military materiel by county lawmen. It’s not just the conversion from cop to “warfighter” that is changing the landscape of law enforcement in America, however. As The New American has chronicled, the Department of Homeland Security has their hooks in the precinct and sheriff’s department, as well. Even the Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s own website helps explain to citizens its “critical role” in preventing terrorist attacks: As we are often reminded by events across America and around the world, disaster can strike at any time. Terrorism in its many forms, weather and other natural disasters, and accidental emergencies are regularly highlighted in the news. Public safety and emergency response agencies on the local, state, and federal levels are working to prevent and prepare for all types of catastrophes, but there is more that can be done. Citizens have a critical role in partnering with public officials to help families, neighborhoods, and entire communities be better prepared. There is little debate that the “Knowledge is power” adage is true. Also, we know that panic is caused primarily by fear. If citizens remain informed and educated about the dangers we face in today’s world, this knowledge can translate into a powerful means of reducing panic in the face of tragedy. The tragedy, it seems, is not the threat of a terrorist attack, but the nearly constant assault by police on the fundamental rights of citizens, an attack made more deadly by the use of military-grade weapons, vehicles, and tactics. Maybe all the money and materiel flowing from the feds to local police is to prepare the latter to quell popular uprisings that result from the continued eradication by the former of freedom and individual liberty. One expert thinks that may be the case. Jim Fitzgerald worked for eight years as a vice and narcotics squad detective in Newark, New Jersey, before joining the staff of The John Birch Society. He is point man for the conservative organization’s “Support Your Local Police” initiative. In an interview with The New American, Fitzgerald said there is “virtually no use” for the military-grade equipment being bought by local law enforcement with DHS grant money. “The only reason to have this equipment is to use it,” he said, and it is likely it would be used against local citizens who have risen up and created some sort of civil disorder. DHS, Fitzgerald believes, may be anticipating these riots and looks to them as a justification for the militarization of the police. “They [DHS grants] are not good, not healthy, and not constitutional,” Fitzgerald added. Balko agrees. In his Wall Street Journal piece he reports: In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation. What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement. One organization is working to bring about that change and to help local law enforcement return to their traditional role as guardians of constitutional liberty. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) recognizes the invaluable role of sheriffs in preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution in the counties. Their mission statement establishes the group's noble goals: This is our plan, our goal and our quest. We are forming the Constitutional Peace Officers Association which will unite all public servants and sheriffs, to keep their word to uphold, defend, protect, preserve, and obey the Constitutions of the United States of America. We already have hundreds of police, sheriffs, and other officials who have expressed a desire to be a part of this Holy Cause of Liberty. We are going to train and vet them all, state by state, to understand and enforce the constitutionally protected Rights of the people they serve, with an emphasis on State Sovereignty and local autonomy. Then these local governments will issue our new Declaration to the Federal Government regarding the abuses that we will no longer tolerate or accept. Said declaration will be enforced by our Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers. In short, the CSPOA will be the army to set our nation free. This will guarantee this movement remains both peaceful and effective. If the military and law enforcement continue conducting secret (no media were allowed to participate in or observe the training in Richland County) combat simulations in towns and counties, if police and sheriffs continue devoting time and resources in requesting millions of dollars in grants from the DHS, then the separation between the roles of these organizations will disappear and so will constitutionally protected liberty. ========================== Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, the Second Amendment, and the surveillance state. He is the co-founder of Liberty Rising, an educational endeavor aimed at promoting and preserving the Constitution. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com.

COPA site Some fingerprints still untested in MLK killing. Jerry Mitchell The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger 12:34 p.m. EDT April 4, 2013 PHOTO In 2010, Justice Department said it was considering a request to run unidentified prints but didn’t FBI has larger database of fingerprints now, better technology… Read more »

Targeting the President: Evidence of U.S. Government Training Exercises on 9/11 ==== 911blogger //// Posted by Shoestring on Tue, 01/21/2014 - ===================================================== A significant number of apparent terrorist incidents occurred on September 11, 2001, in which President Bush or locations associated with him, like the White House and Camp David, seemed to be the target. And yet for all these incidents, the apparent threat was subsequently claimed to be unfounded, perhaps having come about due to a misunderstanding. A possibility that has remained unexamined, however, is that the incidents were in fact scenarios in training exercises taking place that day. It seems reasonable to assume that if the incidents were indeed exercise scenarios, the Secret Service, as the agency responsible for protecting the president and the White House, would have been participating in them. Alarmingly, though, the times at which some of the incidents occurred indicates that if they were scenarios in training exercises, these exercises were not canceled in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but instead continued until well after the real-world crisis ended. If the Secret Service was indeed involved in exercises at the time of the 9/11 attacks, then, we surely need to consider what effect these exercises had on the agency's ability to respond to the attacks. Below are descriptions of eight apparent terrorist incidents that occurred around the time of the 9/11 attacks, in which the president or a location associated with the president appeared to be the target. The first two incidents involved the president himself seeming to be the terrorists' target; the next three involved Air Force One, the president's plane, being the apparent target; and the final incidents involved the places where President Bush lived, such as the White House, being the apparent target. POLICE WERE ALERTED TO A MAN WHO COULD HAVE BEEN A DANGER TO THE PRESIDENT WHILE HE WAS IN FLORIDA One of the apparent threats which involved President Bush himself seeming to be a terrorist target came to light early on the morning of September 11, when a Sudanese man called Zainelabdeen Ibrahim Omer contacted the police in Sarasota, Florida--the city Bush was scheduled to visit later that day--and alerted them to the possible danger. When police officers visited him shortly after 4:00 a.m., Omer told them a friend of his, who he referred to as "Gandi," was in Sarasota with two companions, and he feared they might be a danger to Bush. Gandi, Omer said, had "made several remarks in the past that indicated extremely violent thoughts." Gandi, it was later reported, also had links to the Sudan People's Liberation Army, a guerrilla group. Omer told the police officers that considering the man's "past inclinations," the fact that Gandi was in Sarasota at the same time as Bush was visiting the area "might not be coincidental." The police contacted the Secret Service to pass on Omer's warning. Police officers and Secret Service agents then visited an address in Sarasota, where they found 11 Arab men. One of the men had a card for a club located near the resort in Longboat Key where Bush had been spending the night. The men were questioned and held until Bush left Sarasota, and then released. An unnamed law enforcement source later told authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan there was no evidence indicating the men were linked to the 9/11 plotters. [1] Despite occurring on September 11, the incident received almost no publicity and is still largely unknown. It certainly seems plausible that this series of events came about because of a training exercise run by the Secret Service. Omer's report to the police, which was passed on to the Secret Service, could have been intended to test the ability of police officers and Secret Service agents to respond to a potential threat to the president, and the 11 men found at the address in Sarasota could have been actors in the exercise, playing potential terrorists. INCIDENT AT THE PRESIDENT'S HOTEL RESEMBLED A RECENT ASSASSINATION Another suspicious incident reportedly occurred while President Bush was staying on Longboat Key, prior to his visit to Sarasota. Either during the evening of September 10 or early on the morning of September 11, a group of Middle Eastern men turned up at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, near Sarasota, while Bush was staying there and falsely claimed to have an interview with the president, but they were turned away from the resort. The men arrived in a van and said they were reporters who had an interview arranged with Bush. They also asked for a particular Secret Service agent by name. Security guards at the resort called reception to pass on their request, but the receptionist knew nothing about a planned interview with the president or the Secret Service agent the men had asked for. She passed the phone to a Secret Service agent, who also knew nothing about the interview and had not heard of the Secret Service agent the men asked for. The agent had the men turned away from the premises. [2] Some people have noted the resemblance of this incident to the way Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, was assassinated on September 9, 2001, and have wondered if the Middle Eastern men intended to kill Bush in a similar fashion. [3] Massoud was killed by a bomb hidden in the video camera of two Arab men who said they were journalists who wanted to interview him. [4] The incident at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort came to light because Carroll Mooneyhan, a local fire marshal, overheard a receptionist and a security guard discussing it at the front desk of the resort at around 6:00 a.m. on September 11, and a reporter later heard Mooneyhan describing what they'd said to another firefighter. [5] The alleged incident, however, was subsequently denied. Longboat Key Police Chief John Kintz said: "There wasn't a single person who could confirm that it happened. We never found anyone who worked at the gate who could tell us that that happened." [6] The day after the incident was first reported in a local newspaper, Mooneyhan reportedly "went silent" about it. [7] "How did [the newspaper] get that information from me if I didn't know it?" he later said. [8] Secret Service agents visited the newspaper and told it to "back off the story." [9] Might the incident have been denied, though, because it was part of a Secret Service training exercise and this fact had to be concealed? The exercise could have been intended to test how Secret Service agents would respond to a possible attempt to assassinate the president. MAN POSSIBLY CARRYING A GUN WAS SEEN AT THE AIRPORT AS THE PRESIDENT WAS ABOUT TO TAKE OFF Several apparent terrorist incidents occurred as President Bush was leaving Sarasota, after visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School there. The first of these took place shortly before 10:00 a.m., as Air Force One was taxiing out at the Sarasota airport with Bush on board. The Secret Service noticed a man standing by the fence at the end of the runway carrying some kind of device, which they thought might be a long gun. "Shooters" had the unidentified man in their sights and were reportedly ready to "take him down" if he moved. Colonel Mark Tillman, the pilot of Air Force One, was alerted to the man and instructed to take off in the opposite direction to what had been planned, so as to stay away from him. [10] Tillman climbed Air Force One steeply, so any potential shooter would not have a correct line of sight to fire at it. [11] The plane took off "like a rocket," White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who was on board, has recalled. [12] The incident, though, was a false alarm. According to Tillman, the person at the end of the runway, possibly with a gun, turned out to be a man who had come to the airport with his children to watch Air Force One leaving, and the device he was carrying was just a video camera. [13] However, might what happened instead have been a scenario in a training exercise intended to test the ability of Secret Service agents to spot and respond to a possible threat to the president and Air Force One? The suspicious man at the airport could in fact have been a participant in the exercise, playing the part of a potential terrorist. WHITE HOUSE RECEIVED A MESSAGE INDICATING THE PRESIDENT'S PLANE WOULD BE ATTACKED Air Force One was again the focus of an apparent threat at around 10:30 a.m., when an anonymous phone call was received at the White House in which the caller said the president's plane would be the next target of the terrorist attacks. They referred to Air Force One by its Secret Service code name, "Angel," which, according to a senior White House official, suggested they had "knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible." [14] As many as three locations at the White House received the threatening message. It was received by the White House switchboard, according to some accounts. [15] A pager message sent at 10:32 a.m. that morning stated that it was received by the Secret Service Joint Operations Center at the White House. [16] And other accounts indicate it was received by the White House Situation Room. For example, Major Robert Darling of the White House Military Office has described answering a call from someone in the Situation Room, who told him the Situation Room had "a credible source in the Sarasota, Florida, area that claims Angel is the next target." [17] News of the threat was promptly relayed on the Pentagon's air threat conference call. [18] And a military officer passed on details of the threatening message to officials in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)--a bunker below the White House--including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. [19] According to Robert Darling, who was in the PEOC at the time, "The talk among the principals in the room quickly determined that the use of a code word implied that the threat to Air Force One and the president could well be from someone with access to [the president's] inner circle--possibly someone who was near the president at that very moment." [20] Cheney quickly phoned Bush and told him about the threatening call. Bush passed on the news to his military aide, telling him, "A call came into the White House switchboard saying, 'Angel is next.'" [21] Mark Tillman was then told about the threat. Concerned about it, he asked for an armed guard at his cockpit door. Meanwhile, Secret Service agents double-checked the identities of everyone on Air Force One. [22] THREAT TO AIR FORCE ONE WAS LATER DISMISSED, BUT NEVER FULLY EXPLAINED The threat was subsequently determined to be "almost surely bogus," according to Newsweek. [23] Toward the end of September 2001, unnamed government officials reportedly said that "they now doubt whether there was actually a call made threatening Air Force One," and claimed the mistaken report of the threat came about because "White House staffers apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail." [24] The Secret Service's intelligence division said the mistaken report originated in a misunderstanding by a watch officer in the Situation Room. But Deborah Loewer, the director of the Situation Room on September 11, told the 9/11 Commission she disputed this claim. [25] White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said in 2004 that "there hadn't been any actual threat" against Air Force One, and the report of the threat was due to "confusion in the White House bunker, as multiple conversations went on simultaneously." Around the same time, two former Secret Service agents who had been on duty on September 11 said their agency played no role in receiving or passing on the alleged threatening message. [26] Their claim, however, was contradicted by the Secret Service pager message sent at 10:32 a.m. on September 11, which stated that the Secret Service Joint Operations Center received an "anonymous call" reporting that "Angel is [a] target." [27] Former Secret Service officials also said in 2004 that the code name for Air Force One--"Angel"--hadn't been an official secret, and was actually "a radio shorthand designation that had been made public well before 2001," according to the Wall Street Journal. [28] But Condoleezza Rice said the use of the code name in the threatening call was "why we still continue to suspect it wasn't a crank call." [29] And Mark Tillman said "Angel" was "a classified call sign of Air Force One." He added that on September 11, "the only people that knew that call sign was us, [the] Secret Service, and the staff," which was why he found the threat "incredible." [30] By the end of 2001, White House officials were still unsure where the threatening call had come from, according to Newsweek. [31] Details were still unclear by 2010. That year, Robert Darling wrote, "To this day, it has never been determined why either the 'credible source' or Situation Room personnel used that code word [i.e. 'Angel'] in their report to the PEOC." [32] A possibility that has never been suggested to explain this mysterious incident, however, is that the threatening phone call was in fact part of a training exercise intended to test the ability of the Secret Service, other government agencies, and the crew of Air Force One to respond to a threat against the president's plane. The fact that the Secret Service Joint Operations Center reportedly received the threatening call, and the threatening message included the Secret Service code name for Air Force One, suggests that the Secret Service would either have been running the exercise or have been a key participant in it. If the threatening call was indeed part of an exercise, this might help explain the contradictory accounts surrounding the incident, the denials that a threat was made, and the failure to identify the source of the call. The lack of clarity could have been the result of attempts to cover up the existence of the exercise and the fact that it was still taking place at around 10:30 a.m. on September 11, almost half an hour after the terrorist attacks that day ended. PILOT OF AIR FORCE ONE WAS ALERTED TO AN UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT FLYING TOWARD HIS PLANE Almost immediately after this threatening message was received, another apparent terrorist incident occurred in which Air Force One was the target. Just after he learned about the "Angel is next" message, Mark Tillman was informed that an unidentified aircraft that might be another hijacking was flying toward his plane and was only 10 miles away. Tillman has recalled that an air traffic controller at the FAA's Jacksonville Center told him that "there was an aircraft coming at us, descending ... and ... its transponder was not on, and they had no idea who it was. It could have been another hijacked airliner." The controller said the plane was "behind you 10 miles, descending at least, flight level 3-5-0, looks to be holding there." He added, "Apparently we've lost radio contact with them." [33] Tillman informed other individuals on Air Force One about the suspicious plane. In an interview, it was pointed out to Mark Rosenker, the director of the White House Military Office on September 11, who was on Air Force One with the president that day, that the unidentified aircraft had followed the modus operandi of the aircraft involved in the terrorist attacks, as it was out of radio contact with air traffic control and its transponder was off. (A transponder is a device that sends a plane's identifying information, speed, and altitude to controllers' radar screens.) Rosenker agreed that this fact had made people on Air Force One "a little nervous." [34] Air Force One changed course and headed out over the Gulf of Mexico in response to the report about the unidentified aircraft. "There's basically fighters all over the Gulf that have the capability to make sure that no one comes into the Gulf, penetrates the United States," Tillman has commented. "So I knew I'd be safe out into the Gulf of Mexico." [35] But the incident, like the previous apparent threats to Air Force One, was subsequently found to have been a false alarm. "In reality, just his transponder was off [and] he hadn't checked in with the controller right afterwards," Tillman said. [36] Again, though, it seems plausible that what happened was in fact a scenario in a training exercise taking place that morning, intended to test the response to a threat against the president's plane. OFFICIALS AT THE WHITE HOUSE WERE ALERTED TO SUSPICIOUS AIRCRAFT FLYING TOWARD WASHINGTON The targets of other apparent terrorist incidents on September 11 were the places where President Bush lived: the White House in Washington, DC; Camp David in Maryland; and Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. In the first of these incidents, beginning at 10:02 a.m., the Secret Service Joint Operations Center gave reports to military officers in the PEOC, in which it passed on information it had received from the FAA about a fast-moving unidentified aircraft that was approaching Washington. A military aide then told Dick Cheney and others in the PEOC about the aircraft. At around 10:10 a.m. or shortly after, the aide reported that the plane was 80 miles away from Washington. A few minutes later, they reported that it was 60 miles away. Then, at around 10:30 a.m., those in the PEOC were told that another suspicious aircraft was flying toward Washington and was only five to 10 miles away from there. [37] They were alerted to this aircraft by the White House Situation Room, which was relaying a message from the Secret Service, according to Robert Darling. It was "a high-speed, low-level aircraft," Darling wrote, that was "coming down the Potomac in the direction of the White House." An FAA representative reported over the phone to those in the PEOC that the aircraft was too low for controllers to pick up on radar. [38] The reports of these two suspicious aircraft approaching Washington turned out to be false alarms. The 9/11 Commission Report claimed the first aircraft was in fact United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11, even though this aircraft crashed in rural Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. The 9/11 Commission's explanation for the mistaken report was that the "FAA may have been tracking the progress of United 93 on a display that showed its projected path to Washington, not its actual radar return." Therefore, "the Secret Service was relying on projections and was not aware the plane was already down in Pennsylvania." The second aircraft was just a medevac helicopter, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. [39] The helicopter was heading to the Pentagon, Robert Darling described, and "it seemed the hapless pilot had been on the wrong frequency and was apparently not communicating with the control tower at Reagan National Airport." [40] However, Newsweek claimed the aircraft was actually "a phantom of the fog of war" that in reality "never existed." [41] Alternatively, though, might the reports about the two suspicious aircraft have been simulated scenarios in a training exercise, intended to test the ability of government agencies to respond to an attempted terrorist attack on Washington or the White House? Since the Secret Service is responsible for protecting the White House and other buildings in Washington, if these reports were indeed part of an exercise, it seems quite likely that the Secret Service would either have been running that exercise or have been a key participant in it. Supporting this possibility is the fact that the Secret Service was the agency that alerted the White House to both of the suspicious aircraft, and so it played a central role in these incidents. SECRET SERVICE REPORTED THAT A PLANE HAD CRASHED AT CAMP DAVID Immediately after these incorrect reports were received, another erroneous report went out, which suggested another of President Bush's homes had been the target of a terrorist attack. This time the location involved was Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland, about 70 miles northwest of Washington. The incident was apparently first reported by the Secret Service, which stated that Flight 93 had crashed into Camp David. At 10:36 a.m., Doug Davis, a member of staff at FAA headquarters, was talking over the phone to John White, a manager at the FAA's Command Center, and said: "Secret Service is saying they believe United 93 hit Camp David. That is what Secret Service is reporting." [42] White later told the 9/11 Commission, "They [the Secret Service] confirmed that; I heard it; it was in my ear." [43] The erroneous report was apparently circulated widely within the Secret Service. Officials at the Director's Crisis Center at the agency's headquarters were told about the crash, apparently by the Secret Service's intelligence division. [44] Laura Bush, the wife of President Bush, heard about the crash while she was in an underground conference room at the Secret Service headquarters. [45] And Edward Marinzel, the head of the president's Secret Service detail, learned about it while flying away from Sarasota on Air Force One. [46] The crash was also reported on television, with CBS News mentioning it shortly after 11:00 a.m. [47] The Secret Service contacted officials at the Catoctin Mountain Park, where Camp David is located, and asked for the park to be closed and for an expanded security presence there. This was an unusual request. J. Mel Poole, the Catoctin Mountain Park superintendent, has commented, "It was only when we had an additional head of state beyond the president that we would do something like that." [48] The park was reportedly closed around midday, "as a precaution." [49] And fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia arrived over the park at around 11:00 a.m., according to Poole. [50] The report that a plane had crashed at Camp David was soon found to have been incorrect. At 10:45 a.m., nine minutes after he passed on the Secret Service's claim that Flight 93 had hit Camp David, Doug Davis told John White that the Secret Service had retracted the claim. "They think the United did go in south of Johnstown and not at Camp David," he said. [51] The FAA called the military at some point for confirmation that a crash had occurred at Camp David and was assured that no such crash had taken place. [52] And after the Secret Service confirmed to him that it "had not heard of [any] plane crash" at Camp David, J. Mel Poole told reporters there had been "no crash at Camp David and no crash at Catoctin Mountain Park." [53] A possibility that needs to be investigated, though, is that this supposed plane crash was in fact a simulated scenario in a training exercise. Since Camp David is the president's country residence, the scenario could have been intended to test the response to an attempted terrorist attack on the president while he was staying there. The fact that the incorrect reports about the crash appear to have originated with the Secret Service suggests that if this incident was indeed part of an exercise, the Secret Service was either running the exercise or was a key participant in it. OTHER INCIDENTS NEAR CAMP DAVID MAY HAVE BEEN PART OF AN EXERCISE If an exercise was taking place, there were other incidents that have been described, as well as the reports of the crash at Camp David, that may have been part of it. For example, around mid-morning on September 11, Theresa Hahn, the catering manager for a restaurant near the presidential retreat, told reporters that "lots of fire trucks were on the road and no one can get up there" to Camp David. While firefighters may simply have been responding to the incorrect reports of a plane crash, it is also possible they were practicing their response to a terrorist attack as part of an exercise. [54] Additionally, around the time the attacks on the World Trade Center took place, an Emergency Medical Services meeting was being held in the Catoctin Mountain Park, which, according to J. Mel Poole, "all the coordinators from all the parks in the region" were attending. [55] Could this meeting have been connected to an exercise taking place that morning and have perhaps been intended to discuss some of the issues addressed in the exercise, such as how to respond to a terrorist attack? Furthermore, communication systems went down in the Camp David area around the time the crash was being reported. Theresa Hahn has recalled that she was unable to get through on the phone to an aunt who lived on the other side of the Catoctin Mountain Park. [56] And J. Mel Poole said that when he tried making a call, "the entire trunk system for this area went down." There was "a message display on the phone that tells you the status of the phone," he said, and this showed that "it was not just that the line was busy, that there was too much traffic," but in fact that "the trunk went down, which is like the main line that all the other lines feed into." [57] No explanation has been given for this loss of communication. But might it have been caused deliberately as part of an exercise, and was it perhaps intended to test how emergency response agencies would cope if their usual lines of communication were unavailable during a crisis? AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS REPORTED A FAST-MOVING AIRCRAFT FLYING TOWARD THE PRESIDENT'S RANCH The next incident in which one of President Bush's homes seemed to be the target of an attempted terrorist attack occurred early in the afternoon of September 11, when air traffic controllers at the FAA's Fort Worth Center reported that a suspicious aircraft was flying toward Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. The report appears to have circulated widely among government agencies. The aircraft was discussed on the Pentagon's air threat conference call. [58] Just before 1:00 p.m., Dick Cheney and others in the PEOC were told about "a low-flying, high-speed aircraft headed for the president's ranch." [59] The president and his entourage learned about it just after 1:00 p.m. and, in response, Bush instructed an underling to alert everyone at the ranch. [60] And Laura Bush has recalled hearing that a plane had crashed into the ranch while she was at Secret Service headquarters. [61] Officials in the White House Situation Room were also alerted to the aircraft and, in response, Bush's personal aide, Logan Walters, contacted the ranch's caretaker and told him to get away from the ranch right away. Franklin Miller, a senior national security official who was in the Situation Room that day, was told that a combat air patrol--an aircraft patrol set up for the purpose of intercepting and destroying hostile aircraft before they reach their targets--had been established over the ranch in response to the threat. However, when Miller then tried to call off the combat air patrol, he was told it had not been established to begin with. [62] Meanwhile, on the air threat conference call, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) representative told the deputy director for operations in the Pentagon's National Military Command Center that NORAD had two fighter jets on the ground and two en route from Ellington Field, Texas, to respond to the suspicious aircraft. But after the aircraft was reportedly found, the NORAD representative said: "We don't have confirmation of an actual scramble [of the fighter jets]. The only word we got was they were working on tactical action." [63] SUSPICIOUS AIRCRAFT WAS A CROP DUSTER Like the previous incidents in which it appeared that terrorists might be trying to attack one of the president's homes, this incident turned out to be a false alarm. Franklin Miller was told that "no rogue aircraft" had been heading toward Bush's ranch. [64] White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who was traveling with the president that day, has recalled that the unidentified aircraft "turned out to be a private plane of no consequence that should have been grounded, but wasn't grounded." [65] According to Dick Cheney, it "turned out to be a wayward crop duster, or something." [66] Again, we need to consider whether this incident was a scenario in a training exercise. It could have been intended to test how various agencies would respond to an attempted attack on the president while he was staying at his ranch in Crawford. A notable piece of evidence supports this possibility. A NORAD exercise called Amalgam Virgo 02 included a scenario much like this incident. The exercise, according to an official information sheet, included the simulation of a crop duster plane stolen in Mexico being "en route to the simulated ranch" in Turnersville, Texas, which is just a few miles from Crawford, "with the intent of spraying anthrax" there. This simulation of a terrorist attack was scheduled to be conducted on November 8, 2001. [67] Presumably it would have required a considerable amount of time to plan and would therefore have been in preparation before September 11. If this was the case, it would mean that, even before 9/11, an incident resembling that which took place over Crawford on September 11 was considered as a possible scenario to be used in training exercises. Might that therefore have been the case for an exercise taking place on the day of 9/11? It is notable that around the time the U.S. came under attack on September 11, all these incidents occurred in which the president or a location associated with the president seemed to be the target of terrorists, and that every one of them turned out to be a false alarm. All of the incidents were also subsequently treated as if they were insignificant and had an innocent explanation, such as being the result of a misunderstanding, and as if they had no connection to the terrorist attacks they had coincided with. It would be a remarkable coincidence if so many incidents that had the same theme--the president or a location associated with him being the apparent target of a terrorist attack--and that took place around the same time were unrelated. The timing and similarity of the incidents would make sense, however, if they were all scenarios in training exercises scheduled for September 11, which had been intended to test the ability of government agencies to protect the president from terrorists. SECRET SERVICE WAS LIKELY PARTICIPATING IN ANY TRAINING EXERCISES There is a significant amount of evidence suggesting that if these apparent terrorist incidents were indeed scenarios in training exercises, the exercises were either run by the Secret Service or were interagency exercises in which the Secret Service was a key participant. To begin with, as its mission statement noted, the Secret Service was "responsible for the protection of the president." [68] And as the descriptions above make clear, President Bush appeared to be the focus of these incidents. Indeed, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, commented that the nature of the events of September 11 suggested "a pretty widespread effort at decapitation" of the government, and added that this was "a pattern that you couldn't ignore." [69] Since the Secret Service was the agency responsible for protecting the president, it seems logical that it would have held training exercises based on the scenario of the president being targeted by terrorists. The apparent terrorist incidents on September 11 that seemed to be targeting Bush could presumably, therefore, have been instances of these exercises. And since the Secret Service was also responsible for protecting the White House, if the reports about the two suspicious aircraft heading toward the White House between around 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on September 11 were part of an exercise, it seems quite likely that the Secret Service would have been running or participating in that exercise. INCIDENTS ON SEPTEMBER 11 RESEMBLED EXERCISES HELD BEFORE THEN Furthermore, it has been reported that the Secret Service participated in exercises in the years before 9/11 based on scenarios resembling some of the apparent terrorist incidents on September 11. Specifically, in May 2001, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stated that the Secret Service "holds interagency tabletop exercises in preparation for terrorist attacks on the White House." [70] And since 1998, according to former Secret Service agent Paul Nenninger, the Secret Service's James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Maryland, had been running computer simulations of planes crashing into the White House, in order to test security there. [71] So if the Secret Service was participating in training exercises on September 11, some of those exercises, similar to the agency's previous exercises, could presumably have involved the scenario of terrorists attempting to crash planes into the White House. The reports of two unidentified aircraft approaching the White House between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on September 11 could plausibly have been part of such an exercise. SECRET SERVICE WAS PREPARING FOR 'SPECIAL SECURITY EVENTS' ON SEPTEMBER 11 Evidence also suggests the Secret Service could have been conducting training exercises on September 11 as part of its preparations for two forthcoming events that had been designated "National Special Security Events." These were a UN event in New York, presumably the General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders on September 24 to October 5, which President Bush was due to address on September 24, and the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were scheduled to take place in Washington, just a few blocks from the White House, on September 29-30. [72] Since the late 1990s, if an important upcoming public event was designated a National Special Security Event (NSSE), the Secret Service became the lead agency for designing and implementing security operations for it. The agency, according to its website, would then conduct a "tremendous amount of advance planning" for the NSSE. This would involve a "variety of training initiatives," which included "simulated attacks and medical emergencies, interagency tabletop exercises, and field exercises." [73] On September 11, it has been reported, government agencies were already busy with their preparations for the forthcoming UN event and International Monetary Fund /World Bank meetings. [74] Might the Secret Service, therefore, have been conducting "tabletop exercises," "field exercises," or "simulated attacks" that day, in preparation for the NSSEs in New York and Washington at the end of the month? Furthermore, the Secret Service would be involved in providing air defense for NSSEs. This would include using "air interdiction teams to detect, identify, and assess any aircraft that violates, or attempts to violate, an established temporary flight restricted area ... above an NSSE," according to Brian Stafford, the director of the Secret Service at the time of the 9/11 attacks. [75] Perhaps for this reason, the possibility that suicide pilots would commit terrorist attacks using planes as weapons was considered during the preparations for an NSSE. Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI from 1993 to June 2001, told the 9/11 Commission that in 2000 and 2001, the subject of "planes as weapons" was "always one of the considerations" in the planning of security for NSSEs. He said preparing for "the use of airplanes" by terrorists "in suicide missions" was "part of the planning" for an NSSE. [76] Since several of the apparent terrorist incidents described above--such as the supposed plane crash at Camp David and the report of an unidentified aircraft flying toward Air Force One--seemed to involve terrorists attempting to use planes as weapons, might these incidents have been scenarios in exercises, as "part of the planning" for the two forthcoming NSSEs? OTHER AGENCIES WERE RUNNING EXERCISES ON SEPTEMBER 11 Further supporting the possibility that the Secret Service was participating in training exercises on September 11 is the fact that other government and military agencies are known to have been conducting exercises that day. [77] For example, NORAD was holding its annual exercise, Vigilant Guardian, which has been described as "an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States." [78] And the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) was holding its annual exercise, Global Guardian, which tested nuclear command and control and execution procedures, and was based around a fictitious scenario that would exercise the ability of Stratcom to deter a military attack against the United States. [79] The Secret Service could have been participating in some of the exercises run by other agencies or could have scheduled its own exercises so they were concurrent with them. Don Arias, the director of public affairs for the 1st Air Force and the Continental United States NORAD Region at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has confirmed the collaboration that takes place between different agencies for training exercises. "It's common practice, when we have exercises, to get as much bang for the buck as we can," he said. "So sometimes we'll have different organizations participating in the same exercise for different reasons." [80] A NORAD exercise held in June 2002, for example, included participants from agencies such as the FAA, the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Transportation Security Administration. [81] POSSIBILITY OF TRAINING EXERCISES ON SEPTEMBER 11 AND THEIR EFFECTS REQUIRE INVESTIGATION The numerous apparent terrorist incidents on September 11 in which President Bush or locations associated with him seemed to be the target require further investigation. If it turns out that any or all of these incidents were scenarios in training exercises, this will raise serious questions. For example, when were the exercises terminated? Many of the incidents that could have been exercise scenarios occurred after the actual attacks ended. (Flight 93, the last plane to be hijacked on September 11, reportedly crashed at 10:03 a.m.) One incident--the suspicious aircraft flying toward the president's ranch--took place around three hours after the attacks ended. Evidence therefore indicates that exercises were allowed to continue even after it became obvious the U.S. was in the middle of a serious terrorist attack. At that time, agencies such as the Secret Service should surely have been devoting all their available resources to dealing with the real-world crisis. But if instead the exercises were allowed to carry on, why was this? And if the Secret Service was participating in exercises on the morning of September 11, did this activity contribute in any way to its alarmingly slow response to the terrorist attacks? For example, various accounts have described how slow the Secret Service was to evacuate its protectees, such as President Bush, Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, and Lynne Cheney, and take them to secure locations. [82] The Secret Service only implemented the standard "emergency call-up" of all its personnel after 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit. [83] And it only ordered that the White House be evacuated at 9:45 a.m., almost an hour after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. [84] In a book about the Secret Service, author Philip Melanson summarized what happened, referring to the Secret Service's "slow start to 9/11 protection," and noted that "the president's detail seemed late in responding to the news of the aerial terrorist assault, whose scope, targets, and nature had yet to be determined." [85] Investigators would need to examine if Secret Service personnel mistook real-world events for exercise scenarios. And did the exercises cause any additional confusion, or otherwise impair the ability of Secret Service agents to respond to the real-world crisis? Importantly, who was responsible for planning the exercises? Who decided what scenarios they would include? And who decided they would take place on the morning of September 11? Furthermore, since any exercise scenarios based on attempted terrorist attacks could have been confused with the real-world events they coincided with, investigators should surely examine whether the exercises were part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the responses of the Secret Service and other government agencies, so as to ensure the 9/11 attacks were successful. If this was the case, it would suggest that at least some of the people who planned the exercises were part of the group that planned and perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. As previously stated, evidence suggests that if the apparent terrorist incidents described above were indeed parts of training exercises, the Secret Service was either running the exercises or was a key participant in them. And yet little has been revealed about the actions of the Secret Service on September 11. Many more documents relating to this subject should therefore be made public. And the actions of the Secret Service, and the possibility of its involvement in training exercises, would need to be important areas of inquiry in any new investigation of 9/11. NOTES [1] Sarasota Police Department Incident Report #01-049053, Part 1. Sarasota Police Department, September 11, 2001; Sarasota Police Department Incident Report #01-049053, Part 2. Sarasota Police Department, September 11, 2001; Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011, p. 457. [2] Shay Sullivan, "Possible Longboat Terrorist Incident." Longboat Observer, September 26, 2001; "9/11: Timeline." Longboat Observer, September 7, 2011. [3] Susan Taylor Martin, "Of Fact, Fiction: Bush on 9/11." St. Petersburg Times, July 4, 2004. [4] Michael Elliott, "They Had a Plan." Time, August 12, 2002; Susan Taylor Martin, "The Man Who Would Have Led Afghanistan." St. Petersburg Times, September 9, 2002. [5] Shay Sullivan, "Possible Longboat Terrorist Incident"; Robin Hartill, "9/11 Looking Back: Q&A With Former City Editor Shay Sullivan." Longboat Observer, September 7, 2011. [6] Robin Hartill, "9/11 Looking Back: John Kintz." Longboat Observer, September 7, 2011. [7] Robin Hartill, "9/11 Looking Back: Q&A With Former City Editor Shay Sullivan." [8] Susan Taylor Martin, "Of Fact, Fiction." [9] Robin Hartill, "9/11 Looking Back: Q&A With Former City Editor Shay Sullivan." [10] Eric Shawn, "Command & Control: The Careful Job of Piloting the President on Sept. 11, 2001." Fox News, September 6, 2011; Mark W. Tillman, "Air Force One: Zero Failure." Speech presented at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Dayton, Ohio, February 29, 2012. [11] On Board Air Force One. National Geographic Channel, January 25, 2009. [12] White House transcript, interview of White House communications director Dan Bartlett by Scott Pelley, CBS. White House, August 12, 2002. [13] Mark W. Tillman, "Air Force One: Zero Failure"; Molly McMillin, "Air Force One Pilot Recalls 9/11 Attacks." Wichita Eagle, November 13, 2012. [14] William Safire, "Inside the Bunker." New York Times, September 13, 2001; Bob Woodward, Bush at War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 18. [15] Bill Sammon, Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism--From Inside the Bush White House. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002, p. 106; Ari Fleischer, Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House. New York: HarperCollins, 2005, pp. 141-142. [16] Declan McCullagh, "Egads! Confidential 9/11 Pager Messages Disclosed." CBS News, November 25, 2009. [17] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 554; Robert J. Darling, 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9/11/01 The White House. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2010, pp. 60-61. [18] Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 554. [19] White House transcript, interview of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by Evan Thomas of Newsweek magazine. White House, November 1, 2001. [20] Robert J. Darling, 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker, p. 61. [21] Bill Sammon, Fighting Back, pp. 106-107; Ari Fleischer, Taking Heat, pp. 141-142. [22] David Kohn, "The President's Story." CBS News, September 11, 2002. [23] Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." Newsweek, December 30, 2001. [24] Ron Fournier, "Support Builds for Coalition." Associated Press, September 26, 2001; "Whopper of the Week: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney." Slate, September 28, 2001. [25] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 554. [26] Scot J. Paltrow, "Government Accounts of 9/11 Reveal Gaps, Inconsistencies." Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2004. [27] Declan McCullagh, "Egads! Confidential 9/11 Pager Messages Disclosed." [28] Scot J. Paltrow, "Government Accounts of 9/11 Reveal Gaps, Inconsistencies." [29] White House transcript, interview of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by Evan Thomas of Newsweek magazine. [30] Mark W. Tillman, "Air Force One: Zero Failure." [31] Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." [32] Robert J. Darling, 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker, p. 62. [33] On Board Air Force One. [34] White House transcript, interview of General Mark V. Rosenker, director of the White House Military Office by CBS. White House, August 29, 2002. [35] On Board Air Force One. [36] Mark Knoller, "Air Force One Pilot Calls it Quits." CBS News, January 17, 2009. [37] White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by Newsweek magazine. White House, November 14, 2001; Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 41. [38] Robert J. Darling, 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker, pp. 57-58. [39] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 41-42. [40] Robert J. Darling, 24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker, p. 59. [41] Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." [42] Miles Kara, "Transcript of East NTMO, Line 4530, Admin Line." 9/11 Commission, November 4, 2003. [43] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John White, Former Assistant. Program Manager for Administration at the ATCSCC, 'Command Center,' Herndon, VA." 9/11 Commission, May 7, 2004. [44] "USSS Statements and Interview Reports." 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003. [45] Laura Bush, Spoken From the Heart. New York: Scribner, 2010, pp. 201-202. [46] USSS memo, interview of Edward Marinzel. United States Secret Service, October 3, 2001. [47] Mark K. Miller, "Three Hours That Shook America: A Chronology of Chaos." Broadcasting & Cable, August 25, 2002. [48] J. Mel Poole, interview by Mark Schoepfle. National Park Service, December 17, 2001. [49] Peter Geier, "Camp David Crash Rumor Proves False." Maryland Daily Record, September 12, 2001. [50] J. Mel Poole, interview by Mark Schoepfle. [51] Miles Kara, "Transcript of East NTMO, Line 4530, Admin Line." [52] Pamela Freni, Ground Stop: An Inside Look at the Federal Aviation Administration on September 11, 2001. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2003, p. 42. [53] Peter Geier, "Camp David Crash Rumor Proves False"; J. Mel Poole, interview by Mark Schoepfle. [54] Peter Geier, "Camp David Crash Rumor Proves False." [55] J. Mel Poole, interview by Mark Schoepfle. [56] Peter Geier, "Camp David Crash Rumor Proves False." [57] J. Mel Poole, interview by Mark Schoepfle. [58] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001. [59] White House notes: Lynne Cheney notes, September 11, 2001; White House transcript, telephone interview of Mrs. Cheney by Newsweek magazine. White House, November 9, 2001; White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by Newsweek. White House, November 19, 2001. [60] Nicholas Lemann, "The Options." New Yorker, October 1, 2001; Bill Sammon, Fighting Back, p. 117. [61] Laura Bush, Spoken From the Heart, p. 202. [62] Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. New York: Free Press, 2007, pp. 142-143. [63] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript. [64] Robert Draper, Dead Certain, p. 143. [65] White House transcript, interview of press secretary Ari Fleischer by Terry Moran of ABC. White House, August 8, 2002. [66] White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by Newsweek. [67] "Unclassified Change 1: Exercise Amalgam Virgo 02-6 Exord/Red Spins." North American Aerospace Defense Command, July 31, 2003. [68] "Mission Statement." United States Secret Service, 2002. [69] White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by Newsweek magazine. [70] "Testimony of Paul H. O'Neill, Secretary of the Treasury, Before the Senate Committee on Appropriations." U.S. Department of the Treasury, May 8, 2001. [71] Paul L. Nenninger, "Simulation at the Secret Service: As Real as it Gets." In Learning Rants, Raves, and Reflections: A Collection of Passionate and Professional Perspectives, edited by Elliott Masie, pp. 175-187. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2005, p. 175; Paul L. Nenninger, "One Secret Service Agent's Experience." Southeast Missourian, August 29, 2011. [72] "Washington is Seeking Support to Handle Protests at 2 Meetings." New York Times, August 18, 2001; "UN General Security Council Condemns Attacks." New York Times, September 12, 2001; Mark Tran, "IMF and World Bank Meetings in Jeopardy." The Guardian, September 14, 2001; "Bush to Attend UN General Assembly." Associated Press, October 29, 2001; "National Special Security Events Fact Sheet." U.S. Department of Homeland Security, July 9, 2003. [73] "National Special Security Events." United States Secret Service, 2002; "Statement of Brian L. Stafford, Director, United States Secret Service, Before the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security." U.S. House of Representatives, July 9, 2002. [74] "Members of Congress to Present Commendation to New York Field Office for Actions on September 11th." United States Secret Service news release, April 29, 2002; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 314; "Spotlight on: Barbara Riggs." PCCW Newsletter, Spring 2006. [75] "Statement of Brian L. Stafford, Director, United States Secret Service, Before the Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Treasury and General Government." United States Senate, March 30, 2000. [76] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Tenth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, April 13, 2004. [77] See "Training Exercises on 9/11." Complete 9/11 Timeline, n.d. [78] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 122; William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 545. [79] Nuclear Weapon Systems Sustainment Programs. Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, May 1997; Joe Wasiak, "Global Guardian '99." Collins Center Update, December 1999; Exercise Global Guardian 2001-2 Joint After-Action Report. United States Strategic Command, December 4, 2001, p. A2. [80] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004, p. 367. [81] Gerry J. Gilmore, "NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares for Worst-Case Scenarios." American Forces Press Service, June 4, 2002. [82] See, for example, Kevin Ryan, "Secret Service Failures on 9/11: A Call for Transparency." Washington's Blog, March 25, 2012; "Laura Bush on 9/11: Why Was the President's Wife Left Vulnerable and Unprotected?" Shoestring 9/11, June 18, 2012; "The Dangerously Delayed Reactions of the Secret Service on 9/11." Shoestring 9/11, October 2, 2013. [83] Chitra Ragavan, "Under Cloudy Skies." U.S. News & World Report, December 1, 2002; Philip H. Melanson, The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency. 2nd ed. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005, p. 331. [84] "September 11: Chronology of Terror." CNN, September 12, 2001; Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, "America's Chaotic Road to War." Washington Post, January 27, 2002. [85] Philip H. Melanson, The Secret Service, pp. 330-331.

Media Spin Machine in High Gear: Top Three Media Lies About the Syrian Peace Talks By Shamus Cooke Global Research, January 24, 2014 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The media spin machine is again kicking into high gear, perfectly timed to accompany the “Geneva II” Syria peace talks. The lies are necessary to give the Obama administration an upper hand in the peace negotiations, which are not being used to pursue peace, but instead, to accomplish the Obama administration’s longstanding goal of Syrian regime change. Here are the top three Western media lies about the Syrian peace talks. 1) The removal of Syrian Bashar al-Assad was an agreed upon “precondition” for the Geneva II peace talks. This lie has been repeated over and over by government and media alike. It has zero basis. The Obama administration claims that this precondition was expressed in the “Geneva communiqué,” which was a road map agreement meant to guide the Geneva II peace talks, agreed upon by some of the major parties of the negotiations, including Russia. The communiqué does indeed call for a negotiated political transition, but nowhere does it state that such a transition cannot include President Assad. Such a condition would have been outright rejected by Russia. In fact, the Geneva communiqué includes this crucial statement: “[a transition government] could include members of the present [syrian] government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.” Nowhere does it specifically mention or imply President Assad. The Los Angeles Times recently stepped out of line and exposed this lie: “[John] Kerry regularly cites the “Geneva communiqué,” a kind of peace road map hammered out in June 2012 during a United Nations-organized summit. But the document does not explicitly call for Assad’s ouster.” The Obama administration’s constant repeating of this lie only causes divisions in the peace process, undermining the chances that the peace process will succeed. The Obama administration is especially adamant about this “Assad must go” pre-condition because it knows that, if free and fair elections were held tomorrow in Syria — as part of a UN-backed “transitional process”— President Assad would likely win. This is the result of the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria that have rallied behind President Assad, since they’ve witnessed the consistent religious sectarian atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed rebels (which the U.S. media loves to ignore or minimize). Assad would probably win an election since there is also simply no one else on the government side or the opposition side with his name recognition or popularity. The U.S.-backed rebel war in Syria has vastly strengthened Assad’s political hand, but you wouldn’t know it from the Western, anti-Syrian media. Demanding Assad’s ouster also does not reflect the situation on the ground. The U.S.-backed rebels have never controlled more than one Syrian city, namely Raqaa, which is dominated by al-Qaeda and is governed under a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law, which includes a strict ban on music. Thus, the rebels don’t have the ground power that would even enable them to make the demand that “Assad must go”. 2) The U.S.-backed rebel militias are “moderate” Islamic groups. The fact that this lie can even be uttered publicly without encountering ridicule is a major success of Western media propaganda. The media narrative paints the U.S.-backed “good” rebels fighting both the Syrian government and the “bad” al-Qaeda linked rebels. But the “good” rebels in the U.S.-backed Islamic Front share the same vision for Syria’s future as the al-Qaeda rebels: a fundamentalist version of Sharia law, where women live in virtual house arrest and where religious minorities are second class citizens (non-Sunni Muslims would simply be butchered, as they are on a regular basis in Syria, which is again minimized or ignored in the Western media.) The “moderate rebel” lie was further exposed recently when a top leader in the most powerful militia, Ahrar al Sham, within the Islamic Front declared Ahrar al Sham to be the “real” representative of al-Qaeda in Syria, as opposed to the rival al-Qaeda faction that the Islamic Front had recently begun fighting. Ahrar al Sham has long been known to be an al-Qaeda type Islamist extremist group; the Western media simply chose to ignore it. But when it was recently made official, the U.S. media chose to continue its ignoring stance, since actually reporting on it would destroy their “moderate rebel” lie. The Western media also continues to ignore the fact that the “moderate” U.S.-backed Islamic Front issued a joint statement that aligned itself to the extremist views of Ahrar al Sham, the “real” al-Qaeda. 3) New Evidence of Syrian government “industrial scale” torture. The Western media recently blasted the “breaking news” of brand new evidence showing massive “NAZI-like” torture and murder by the Syrian government, released at the beginning of the Syrian peace talks. This may or may not be true, but the lie here is that the Western media promoted the “evidence” as being unquestionably true, when the story doesn’t reach first base when it comes to evidence-based journalism. All we really know is that there are hundreds of pictures of dead people that a “trusted source” says were killed by the Syrian government. The trusted source was designated as such by pro-Western intellectuals, who have earned professional “credibility” by helping convict war criminals in the International Criminal Court [iCC]. But as author Diane Johnstone pointed out in her excellent book “Fools Crusade,” about the war against Yugoslavia — as well as in other articles — the ICC has long been used by western powers as a tool to create a pretext for war, or a tool to justify a war after the fact. The evidence of the “NAZI-like” atrocities was written in a study paid for by the government of Qatar, which has long funneled cash, guns, and Jihadis to Syria in aid of the anti-government rebels. Again, we don’t know if the story is true or not. But such an important investigation should be conducted by the UN or another more objective institution. The same biased dynamic occurred in relation to the infamous chemical weapons attack, where no real evidence was provided, though an unending string of “experts” were quoted in the Western media, testifying to the guilt of the Syrian Government. But when Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the Obama administration lied about the rebels not having the capacity to perform such an attack, the Western media simply ignored the legend of journalism. The wrench in the propaganda machine was simply dislodged. How do these lies become such permanent fixtures in the Western media? An excellent article in the Guardian newspaper recently discussed in depth the principal sources the Western media has used to understand the Syrian conflict. The article exposed the incredible bias of some of the most important Western media sources on Syria, which is why they were handpicked in the first place to be “expert” sources: they had political agendas that were aligned with the U.S. government’s foreign policy decisions. The other side of the conflict was completely ignored, except when it was targeted for ridicule. Thus, Americans and Europeans have a completely one-sided, if not fantasy-based perspective of what is happening in Syria. This has been systematic since the beginning of the conflict, as happened with the Yugoslav, Afghan, Iraq, and Libya wars. The result of this media-led ignorance could result in yet more unnecessary deaths in a country that now has millions of refugees and over a 100,000 dead. Obama seems like he intends to exploit these peace talks with the intention of blaming the Syrian government for their failure. Having failed to defeat Assad on the battlefield in a proxy war, the Obama administration is trying to win the propaganda war. And once peace talks have failed, talk of war will resume, since “all other options have failed.” Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com Notes http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Syria/FinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syria-talks-20140123,0,992030.story http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/01/isis-raqq-ban-music-smoking-impose-veil.html http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/17/4620554/key-anti-assad-rebel-leader-acknowledges.html#.Uts02BAo7RY https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByBt2sGl4U4hU2lrZGFoeUtkV1k/edit http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/syria-torture-photos-amanpour/ http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delusions/dp/158367084X http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/06/do-we-really-need-an-international-criminal-court-2/ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

WHAT ARE THOSE PICTURES/DIAGRAMS ON HERE BRACELET ??

(AUSTERITY Hows that working UK ??,Gaal) http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/22/police-home-secretary-approve-use-water-cannon-austerity-protest ======================================== The Guardian, Wednesday 22 January 2014 14.14 EST Police to ask home secretary to approve use of water cannon across country Police chiefs say water cannon are needed because 'austerity measures are likely to lead to continued protest'

Mitt Romney Finally Admits: “They Had To Steal Republican Nomination” From Ron Paul In a new documentary called “Mitt” Mitt Romney all but states that they stole the Republican nomination from Ron Paul. This new documentary was released last friday at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=syD3_uQKES0 ================================= Examples of Rampant Election Fraud: -Significant Evidence of Algorithm Vote Flipping in GOP Primary Elections. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJAC-sfXwumdkE4d0Y2eWtURTZ2e… -2012 Election RIGGED – This is going Viral http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBx__69pkpY&feature;=related. -Ron Paul – Fraud Victim in 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh4DmZY5YYk -Nevada Election Fraud Proof In 5 minutes, Nevada GOP Caucus Fraud Voter Rights Violated. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxQ-iLM3VVA&feature;=related -What Happened to Ron Paul’s Vote in Nevada? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtZfKfaqczE&feature;=related -Ron Paul: Vote Rigged Against Him In Nevada? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yvdpqAjKaU&feature;=related -Voting fraud against Ron Paul Victory in North Dakota – Super Tuesday Night 03/06/12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myh5VdVpX9g -GOP voter fraud against Ron Paul 2012 – Clear Evidence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYDQJT9Ha0&feature;=relmfu -Alaska Election Fraud Confirmed Ron Paul Camp Cries Foul 2012 Election Caucus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMVJqPqqwCM&feature;=fvwrel -Ron Paul 100% proof of Maine Election fraud! Ben Swann Reality Check WXIX FOX 2/15/12http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxYXVaUWSiA&feature;=related. -Maddow: Proof Ron Paul Was Robbed In Maine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pngwcQQW5bA&feature;=related -Ron Paul Openly Calls GOP Election Fraud. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LWRc5dRM8&feature;=related -Ron Paul Talks About Election Fraud on Columbia, MO Radio 03/16/12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoOQ-zLOXs -Ron Paul: Their Shenanigans Won’t Stop Us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjR4Kp4M9_I -Rachel Maddow “I’m delegate shenanigans worried”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ZMWIckZE4 -”Rig a state convention if you have to, I mean that’s what insiders do” – Chris Todd, MSNBC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15j2iWLCbR8 -Admit It: The Elections Are Rigged. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KOlN0ooqnY&feature;=related -Iowa Caucuses RIGGED! Cover up Ron Paul Win! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLhh-qVq8w8&feature;=related -Ron Paul Won New Hampshire Rigged 88% Poll on CNN. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drqw6AX-6wQ&feature;=related -Ron Paul wins 90% of the vote in a poll in Birmingham, Alabama. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtrUFyyRsqI -This is what happened when I tried to cast my vote today… – Ron Paul 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xcJG6X2kt4 -Voter Fraud in Alabama? Memory Cards Switched! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwq1fIWhlI -Delegate Vote Anomaly In Alabama VERIFIED! http://www.dailypaul.com/224231/huge-delegate-vote-anomaly-in… -Ron Paul Ballots in Idaho Thousands Missing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ywgNIqhA4c -Ron Paul Supporters Observe the Vote at Kansas Caucuses – March 10 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTPVuvwsrIM&feature;=related -Vote Fraud at the Iowa Caucus – Eye Witness Call to Alex Jones. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I26LJJ4r960&feature;=related -Iowa vote was a fraud Ron Paul Won that one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB7_QLF9Py0&feature;=relatedd -Iowa Vote Count Observer Claims Fraud Helped Romney Win. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYUvl31epk&feature;=related -CONFIRMED: Voter Fraud Found in 8 Precincts’ in Iowa Caucuses! 1/19/12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVfMSULS6kE&feature;=related -What do you mean the numbers don’t match? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a4_xlq67ds&feature;=related -Iowa Caucus STOLEN from Ron Paul? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxkkItpNGRE&feature;=related -New Voter Fraud Dead People Voting South Carolina – Zombies Voting? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfYPMh45G-Y -Dead People Receive Ballots in NH Primary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uVhhIlPk0 -Ron Paul Wolfeboro NH reported voting fraud 1/10/12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRa_SlbUUEs&feature;=related -RON PAUL VOTE FRAUD NEW HAMPSHIRE DISTRICT SUTTON PT1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDqE-y3M1Qs&feature;=related -MORE Ron Paul Election Fraud 3-24-12 GOP Vote Rigging Hidden Cam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60TJ0VDmlFY&feature;=player_em… -Ron Paul Election Fraud ADMITTED Hidden Cam Bryan Spencer St Charles GOP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeMM9Tf3IA4&feature;=related -GOP Election Fraud Against Ron Paul at Missouri Clay County 3.17.12 • Must See •. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip8RSoctY6s&feature;=player_em… -Voter Fraud Declared at Christian County, Missouri GOP Caucus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ZUNaWrrzQ&feature;=player_em… –Breaking News: Athens-Clarke County, GA Republican Delegate Fraud. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJxoVfrciUo&feature;=player_em… -Ben Swann – Ron Paul Supports got evidence of Election fraud – Missouri and Georgia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJMiNg9lUqg -Ben Swann Explains Missouri Delegate Election Fraud Reality Check Ron Paul. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94XumhCBkTM -Missouri Caucus Rigged Fraud, NO Camera’s Allowed Ron Paul Mitt Romney Voters Election St Charles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXBc7f074Eg&feature;=relmfu -Reality Check North Dakota Caucus railroaded to give majority of delegates to Romney? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU3HnDovu9I -Fraud Charges Filed Over Puerto Rico Primary in San Juan Supreme Court. http://www.dailypaul.com/222327/fraud-charges-filed-over-puer… -Goldman Employees Donated $1 Million to Obama Campaign. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-20/goldman-employees-do… -Goldman Sachs’ $1 Million Man: Mitt Romney’s Ties To A ‘Toxic And Destructive’ Bank. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/14/444533/goldman-sa… -Illumination: the Secret Religion – Goldman Sachs. http://armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/Goldman-Sachs%281499343%29.htm -Just How Corrupt Will The United States Voting System Be In 2012? – VIRALIZE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVS5TIppad8&feature;=player_em… -Bain Capital Owns Clear Channel (Romney Supported by Talk Show sphere). http://www.infowars.com/bain-capital-owns-clear-channel-romne… Professor Murray Sabrin admits Ron Paul MEDIA BLACKOUT by the Federal Reserve. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7skW3eIM4 -Ballot Box Switcheroo? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS9hTCM7qn0&feature;=player_em… -Ron Paul delegates sabotaged by surprise slate full of Santorum delegates at Congressional Assembly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDR-olLVWYI&feature;=related -2012 Wyoming Republican State Convention – Erroneous ballots cast purposely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdDZ5L7mnfc&feature;=player_em… -Mitt Romney Caught Giving Free Sub Sandwiches For Votes! IT’S A FELONY! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBb5j_gu44 -Voter Fraud Revealed Against Ron Paul – Interview with an Arizona Congressional District Delegate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mxC_5PB6Q&fb;_source=message -Charlie Cheater: all relevant data found so far. | Peace. Gold. Liberty | Ron Paul 2012. http://www.dailypaul.com/232642/charlie-cheater-all-relevant-… -Romney Passing Out FAKE Ron Paul Slates At Nevada Republican Convention – 5/6/12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxre2UgB2YQ&fb;_source=message -Oklahoma GOP continues national trend of disenfranchising Paul supporters. http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/17/oklahoma-gop-continues-nati… ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ME THINKS ...........LOL

Marine Chemist: Latest numbers I have are Fukushima released 80 Quadrillion Bq of cesium-137 (Chernobyl estimated at 70 Quadrillion) — “The radioactive plume itself has actually arrived… it’s already here” on west coast (AUDIO) Jay Cullen, associate professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria: At this point, the most recent numbers I have in front of me — and perhaps Ken can provide some insight here too — there’s been on the order of 80 petabecquerels of cesium-137 that’s been released to the environment [from Fukushima Daiichi]*. 0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine chemistry & geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: It actually surprised us a bit this summer when they said [the Fukushima Daiichi site is] not leaking into the ocean, and they said it’s not getting out of the harbor. Anyone offshore can detect those isotopes. It is leaking, continuously at low levels of cesium, compared to the release — nothing like the 100 of, or 50 to 80 petabecquerels in 2011. Scientific American: Fukushima will have to be entombed in sarcophagus if melted fuel in ‘bad enough’ situation — Radiation Expert: I think they’re going to put a fence around reactors and just watch site forever (VIDEO) ================================================= Image published by embassy in Japan shows Fukushima melted fuel deep underground

JOHN,you keep bringing up facts.(re post #25 above). TO THE ELITES THERE ARE NO FACTS JUST POSTURINGS FOR GOALS.See this below. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/01/while-talking-with-al-qaeda-kerry-accuses-assad-of-supporting-extremists.html ======================================== January 18, 2014 While Talking With al-Qaeda Kerry Accuses Assad of Supporting Extremists The president of the Russian Federation Putin famously called Secretary of State Kerry a xxxx. Yesterday Kerry again proved Putin to be right in his assessment: What extremists is Kerry talking about? It is not Hizbullah, which has support from the Syrian government, that is killing civilians and cutting off heads but the "western" supported Takfiris. Those were certainly not created by Assad. They created themselves, through money from outside Syria, and did so even before the first protest in Syria started in March 2011:[Kerry] said Assad has “purposefully” facilitated the rise of extremism to present himself as a Western ally against radicals. “He’s been doing this for months — trying to make himself the protector of Syria against extremists, when he himself has even been funding some of those extremists,” Kerry said. He accused Assad of “purposefully ceding some territory to them in order to make them more of a problem so he can make the argument that he is somehow the protector.” The leader of Ahrar al Shams has now claimed himself to be part of Al-Qaeda:In another town in northern Idlib, another jihadist — belonging to a different group — shared Ibrahim’s goal of an Islamic state. “Abu Zayd” is a 25-year-old Shari’a graduate who heads one of the founding brigades of Ahrar al-Sham, a group that adheres to the conservative Salafi interpretation of Sunni Islam. ... The Ahrar started working on forming brigades “after the Egyptian revolution,” Abu Zayd said, well before March 15, 2011, when the Syrian revolution kicked off with protests in the southern agricultural city of Dara’a. A top official of a major Syrian rebel group acknowledged Friday that he considers himself a member of al Qaida, an admission that undercuts Western hopes that the new Islamic Front would prove to be an acceptable counter to the rising influence of other al Qaida affiliates in Syria. Abu Khaled al Suri, who is a top figure in the rebel group Ahrar al Sham, made the statement in an Internet posting [...] ... Ahrar al Sham is one of the most militarily effective groups fighting to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad and is one of the largest groups aligned with the Islamic Front, a coalition of rebel groups that announced its formation in September as a counter to the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Council. Ahrar al Sham’s leader, Hassan Aboud, is the political chief of the Islamic Front. These al-Qaeda affiliated groups, ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al Sham, all existed before the "revolution" in Syria started and they were all preparing to fight the Syrian government. Does Kerry believe that the Syrian president Assad created these even before the U.S. instigated campaign against him began? When the U.S. military withdrew from Vietnam and now from Afghanistan is it also "purposefully ceding some territory" so it can make the argument that it is "somehow the protector"? What utter nonsense. After talks with the U.S. the Islamic Front, led by self acknowledged al-Qaeda affiliate Ahrar al Sham, has together with other groups now reportedly agreed to talks with the Syrian government in Geneva. There Kerry is the one representing the anti-Assad side. Who then is really cooperating with al-Qaeda? (Kerry's dialog is hallucinatory vis a vie reality,Gaal) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Comments Speaking to his human rights council Wednesday, Putin said, "This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans), and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad." Putin has criticized Obama administration claims that Bashar Assad's government attacked the rebels with chemical weapons. Posted by: erichwwk | Jan 18, 2014 10:59:56 AM | 1 ======================================== could someone ask kerry about the false data on the chemical weapon attack that was going to be used for the basis for an open war on syria? it sums up his 'regime change' priorities very clearly. thanks for the article b. Posted by: james | Jan 18, 2014 11:42:28 AM | 2

David Bird, Wall Street Journal Reporter, Goes Missing After Reporting for Three Months on Oil Glut in U.S. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Bird is a liver-transplant recipient and is required to take medication twice a day. He did not take his medication with him when he left for the walk. NBC reported that sources close to the family said one of his credit cards was used in Mexico last Wednesday. Other media outlets have been unable to confirm that report. In the same news story, NBC reported that “the family believes that his coverage of OPEC may be related to his disappearance.” However, a careful review by Wall Street On Parade of the articles Bird has written for the Wall Street Journal since last October, shows that what he was regularly reporting on was a supply imbalance caused by overproduction of shale oil in the U.S. in the face of slacking demand. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Webmaster's Commentary: COMENTARY WRH That story would be a severe threat to the fracking industry, which doesn't need anyone saying they are already fracking too much with regard to actual market demand.

What Recovery? Sears And J.C. Penney Are DYING January 18, 2014 Source: Michael Snyder, Op-Ed Two of the largest retailers in America are steamrolling toward bankruptcy. Sears and J.C. Penney are both losing hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter, and both of them appear to be caught in the grip of a death spiral from which it will be impossible to escape. Once upon a time, Sears was actually the largest retailer in the United States, and even today Sears and J.C. Penney are “anchor stores” in malls all over the country. When I was growing up, my mother would take me to the mall when it was time to go clothes shopping, and there were usually just two options: Sears or J.C. Penney. When I got older, I actually worked for Sears for a little while. At the time, nobody would have ever imagined that Sears or J.C. Penney could go out of business someday. But that is precisely what is happening. They are both shutting down unprofitable stores and laying off employees in a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy, but everyone knows that they are just delaying the inevitable. These two great retail giants are dying, and they certainly won’t be the last to fall. This is just the beginning. The Death Of Sears Sales have declined at Sears for 27 quarters in a row, and the legendary retailer has been closing hundreds of stores and selling off property in a frantic attempt to turn things around. Unfortunately for Sears, it is not working. In fact, Sears has announced that it expects to lose “between $250 million to $360 million” for the quarter that will end on February 1st. Things have gotten so bad that Sears is even making commercials that openly acknowledge how badly it is struggling. For example, consider the following bit of dialogue from a recent Sears television commercial featuring two young women… “Wait, the movie theater is on the other side,” the passenger says. “But Sears always has parking!” the driver responds. Sears always has parking??? Of course the unspoken admission is that Sears always has parking because nobody shops there anymore. I have posted video of the commercial below… A couple of months ago I walked into a Sears store in the middle of the week and it was like a ghost town. A few associates were milling around here and there having private discussions among themselves, but other than that it was eerily quiet. You can find 18 incredibly depressing photographs which do a great job of illustrating why Sears is steadily dying right here. This was once one of America’s greatest companies, but soon it will be dead. The Death Of J.C. Penney J.C. Penny has been a dead man walking for a long time. In some ways, it is in even worse shape than Sears. If you can believe it, J.C. Penney actually lost 586 million dollars during the second quarter of 2013 alone. How in the world do you lose 586 million dollars in three months? Are they paying employees to flush giant piles of cash down the toilets? This week J.C. Penney announced that it is eliminating 2,000 jobs and closing 33 stores. The following is a list of the store closings that was released to the public… Selma, Ala. — Selma Mall Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. — Arrow Plaza Colorado Springs — Chapel Hills Mall Meriden, Conn. — Meriden Square Leesburg, Fla. — Lake Square Mall Port Richey, Fla. — Gulf View Square Muscatine, Iowa — Muscatine Mall Bloomingdale, Ill. — Stratford Square Mall Forsyth, Ill. — Hickory Point Mall Marion, Ind. — Five Points Mall Warsaw, Ind. — Marketplace Shopping Center Salisbury, Md. — The Centre at Salisbury Marquette, Mich. — Westwood Plaza Worthington, Minn. — Northland Mall Gautier, Miss. — Singing River Mall Natchez, Miss. — Natchez Mall Butte, Mont. — Butte Plaza Shopping Center Cut Bank, Mont. Kinston, N.C. — Vernon Park Mall Burlington, N.J. — Burlington Center Phillipsburg, N.J. — Phillipsburg Mall Wooster, Ohio — Wayne Towne Plaza Exton, Pa. — Exton Square Mall Hazleton, Pa. — LaurelMall Washington, Pa. — Washington Mall Chattanooga — Northgate Mall Bristol, Va. — Bristol Mall Norfolk, Va. — Military Circle Mall Fond du Lac, Wis., Forest Mall Janesville, Wis. — Janesville Mall Rhinelander, Wis. — Lincoln Plaza Center Rice Lake, Wis. — Cedar Mall Wausau, Wis. — Wausau Mall The CEO of J.C. Penney says that these closures were necessary for the future of the company… “As we continue to progress toward long-term profitable growth, it is necessary to reexamine the financial performance of our store portfolio and adjust our national footprint accordingly,” CEO Myron Ullman said in a news release. Actually, his statement would be a lot more accurate if he replaced “continue to progress toward long-term profitable growth” with ” prepare for bankruptcy”. It would be hard to overstate how much of a disaster 2013 was for J.C. Penney. The following is an excerpt from a recent CNN article… It’s been a brutal year for J.C. Penney, its stock falling over 60% in the past 12 months. The company has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter, and is in the midst of another turnaround effort after ousting former Apple executive Ron Johnson last year. Overall, shares of J.C. Penney have fallen by an astounding 84 percentsince February 2012. And keep in mind that this decline has happened during one of the greatest stock market rallies of all-time. For now, J.C. Penney will continue to try to desperately raise more cash from investors that are foolish enough to give it to them, but all that is really accomplishing is just delaying the inevitable. If you would like to see some photos that graphically illustrate why J.C. Penney is falling apart, you can find some right here. And of course Sears and J.C. Penney are not the only large retailers that have fallen on hard times. This week the CEO of Best Buy admitted that sales declined at his chain during the holiday season… Best Buy shares skid on Thursday after the retailer said total revenue and sales at its established U.S stores fell in the all-important holiday season due to intense discounting by rivals, supply constraints for key products and weak traffic in December. In the immediate aftermath of that announcement, Best Buy stock was down more than 30 percent in pre-market trading. And Macy’s just announced that it is laying off 2,500 employees in an attempt to move in a more profitable direction. So why is all of this happening? Aren’t we supposed to be in the midst of an “economic recovery”? That is what the Obama administration and the mainstream media keep telling us, but it is simply not true. In fact, a new Gallup survey has found that the number of Americans that are “financially worse off” than a year ago is significantly higher than the number of Americans that say that they are “financially better off” than a year ago… More Americans, 42%, say they are financially worse off now than they were a year ago, reversing the lower levels found over the past two years. Just more than a third of Americans say their financial situation has improved from a year ago. That is why these stores are dying. Things continue to get even worse for the middle class. But a lot of people out there will continue to deny what is happening right in front of their eyes. They are kind of like that woman over in California who was conned out of half a million dollars by a Nigerian online dating scam. They will never admit the truth until it is far too late to do anything about it. m

Obama’s War on Freedom By Stephen Lendman Global Research, January 17, 2014 ==================================== Perhaps no president in US history disappointed supporters more than Obama. He pledged “change you can believe it.” He promised hope. He did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough times to matter. He never cared about rule of law principles. He trashed them in office. He deplores democratic values. He’s beholden to monied interests. “Yes we can” conceals his dark side duplicity. He made America look increasingly like Guatemala. Nothing ahead suggests change. International, constitutional and US statute laws don’t matter. Bush declared them null and void. So did Obama. He presides over a ruthless police state apparatus. No one is free and safe. Big Brother watches everyone. Mass surveillance is official US policy. On Friday, Obama will announce so-called new guidelines. He’ll ask Congress for help. Expect business as usual to continue. Expect worse than ever ahead. Expect lies claiming otherwise. Ending the fake war on terror matters. So does halting mass surveillance entirely. Restoring rule of law freedoms matters most. Expect Obama’s war to destroy them to continue. When Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, Center for Constitutional Rights senior litigation attorney Nancy Chang asked: “What’s so patriotic about trampling on the Bill of Rights?” In March 2006, Congress renewed most Patriot Act powers. In May 2011, Congress and Obama extended key ones for another four years. They include mass surveillance. Domestic spying increased markedly under Obama. Anything goes more than ever became policy. It remains so. Expect the worst of what’s ongoing to continue. Expect another Obama pledge to be broken. Expect the worst of mass surveillance to remain official US policy. Expect fake national security threats given as reasons. Expect hyped fear to continue. Expect freedom to keep eroding en route to disappearing altogether. Spying in America is institutionalized. Big Brother is no longer fiction. State-of-the-art technology permits the worst of what’s ongoing. Decades earlier spying was crude compared to today’s. Modern capability is unprecedented. Virtually everyone can be monitored everywhere at all times. Nothing too secret or personal can escape scrutiny. NSA technology permits monitoring offline computers. It’s done through radio waves. At least 100,000 computers worldwide include software enabling it. Perhaps they all will eventually. NSA can penetrate computers covertly. It can alter data without Internet access. It can create a digital highway for cyberattacks. Its program is code-named “Quantum.” According to cybersecurity expert James Andrew Lewis: “What’s new here is the scale and sophistication of (NSA’s) ability to get into computers and networks to which no one had ever had access before.” “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the US a window it’s never had before.” Expect NSA to take full advantage. Perhaps everyone connected online will be monitored this way eventually. Perhaps targeted individuals will be attacked this way. Expect greater than ever harm committed. Expect Obama and Congress to do nothing to stop it. Manufactured threats permit the worst of what’s ongoing. Domestic spying more than ever is institutionalized. In August 2007, candidate Obama addressed the Woodrow Wilson Center. He lied like he always does. He does it shamelessly. It’s part of his DNA. He addressed many issues. He lied about every one. He promised real change if elected president. He exceeds the worst of George Bush. We lost our “basic values,” he said. We got “color-coded politics of fear” instead. He argued against waging one war after another. He promised to close Guantanamo straightaway in office. It’s “time to turn a page,” he said. We’ll “restore our values.” We’ll “secure a more resilient homeland.” We’ll end wars that shouldn’t be waged, he said. “The solution in Afghanistan is not just military. (It’s) political and economic.” “(T)he days of compromising our values are over.” Obama promised to “adhere to the Geneva Conventions.” He trashed them straightaway in office. He systematically violates rule of law principles. Nothing impedes his ruthlessness. No promise is too sacred not to break. He pledged “no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens.” “No more national security letters (NSLs) to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.” Most people never heard of them. Many are victims without knowing it. Others are gagged from discussing them. They involve abusive police state intrusions. Patriot Act authority gives FBI operatives access to whatever personal information they want. No court approval is needed. Most targeted individuals committed no crimes. They planned none. It doesn’t matter. NSL use is unconstitutional. Obama continues the worst of Bush administration abuses. Another promise made. Another broken. “No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war,” he said. “No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.” “That is not who we are…We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.” Obama pledged to end violating civil liberties. He called doing so unacceptable. He exceeded the worst of Bush administration policies. He lies claiming otherwise. He trashed rule of law principles. He mocks democratic values. He declared cyberwar on ordinary Americans. He supports draconian cybersecurity legislation. Cyber-preemption increases police state power. Homeland repression is worse than ever. Administration policies are the most secretive in US history. They’re the most lawless and out-of-control. On January 15, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked: “Will Obama Hit the Mark on Real NSA Reform?” He’ll announce so-called changes. He’ll claim he supports reform. “What can we expect,” asked EFF? “Many people are (justifiably) skeptical…Instead of actually stopping the spying, Obama could just make a pronouncement calling for more transparency or additional layers of bureaucratic oversight.” “(H)e could duck the most important thing (needed) to show leadership: rein in government surveillance.” EFF offered “common-sense fixes.” They address key issues. Don’t expect Obama to change anything meaningful. Expect worse than ever practices ahead. EFF reforms include: (1) “Stop mass surveillance of digital communications and communication records.” Stop using legislative or Executive Order cover to justify the unjustifiable. (2) “Protect the privacy rights of foreigners.” Calling them fair game doesn’t wash. (3) “Don’t turn communications companies into the new Big Brother: no data retention mandate.” End NSA’s telecommunications collection program. (4) Require judicial authorization for National Security Letters. End gag order authority. Rein in lawless FBI practices. Restore rule of law principles. (5) “Stop undermining Internet security, weakening encryption, and infiltrating companies.” Abolish these practices once and for all. (6) “Oppose the FISA Improvements Act (FIA).” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) sponsored it. She chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. On October 31, FIA was introduced. Senate Intelligence Committee members approved it. They voted 11 to 4 in favor. Legislation awaits a full floor vote. It’s a fake fix. Enactment would enhance NSA spying. It’ll codify it into law. (7) “Reject the third party doctrine.” Obama should say data held by third parties (like phone and Internet companies) have “the same constitutional protections as data stored at home.” (8) “Provide a full public accounting of our surveillance apparatus.” End administration secrecy. Tell Americans and others what they deserve to know. (9) “Reform the state secrets privilege and stop over-classifying.” Sunlight more than ever is needed. Public accountability is most of all. End rule of law abuses. (10) “Reform the FISA court: provide a public advocate and stop secret law.” FISA court judges are secretive, unaccountable and rubber-stamp. Abolishing their authority entirely should be ordered. (11) “Protect national security whistleblowers working for the public good.” Candidate Obama called whistleblowing “acts of courage and patriotism.” He pledged whistleblower protection, saying: “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out.” “We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.” He promised to do it. He promised protection. He’s targeted more whistleblowers than all his predecessors combined. It bears repeating. Another promise made. Another broken. (12) “Criminal defendants should know if national security surveillance is being used against them.” Failing to do so violates Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. They guarantee defendants “meaningful opportunity” to effectively challenge government accusations. EFF will score Obama’s Friday speech. It’ll publish its assessment online. It bears repeating. Policy pronouncements don’t matter. They ring hollow. Enforcing rule of law principles alone counts. Obama betrayed the public trust. He’s done so consistently. Expect no change going forward. Expect worse ahead than ever. Expect continuing police state lawlessness. Expect full-blown tyranny if not stopped. AFTER SPEECH SCORECARD = F .

LEFTY OBAMA ?? Jan 17 11:22 U.S. to airlift Rwandan forces into Central African Republichttp://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/us-centralafrican-france-pentagon-rwanda-idUSBREA0F05Y20140116 The U.S. military will soon begin flying Rwandan troops into the Central African Republic, possibly starting on Thursday, in its second such operation in support the African Union's efforts to stem bloodshed there, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The U.S. official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the airlift operation could last just over a month and would involve two U.S. military C-17 aircraft. The airlift mission would be very similar to the one the United States carried out flying forces from Burundi into the Central African Republic late last year, the official said. Rwanda's foreign minister has been quoted telling local radio that the country would send around 800 troops. Webmaster's Commentary: Please understand, this is NOT a "humanitarian mission: it is about the country's embarrassment of wealth in natural resources, yet to be exploited, and about which countries will have access to them, and which countries will not. Commentary WRH: The country has rich but largely unexploited natural resources in the form of diamonds, gold, uranium, and other minerals. Diamonds constitute the most important export of the CAR, frequently accounting for 40-55% of export revenues, but an estimated 30-50% of the diamonds produced each year leave the country clandestinely. There may be petroleum deposits along the country's northern border with Chad (Two billion barrels of oil are present in private estimates). Diamonds are the only of these mineral resources currently being developed; reported sales of largely uncut diamonds make up close to 60% of the CAR's export earnings. Industry contributes less than 20% of the country's GDP, with artesian diamond mining, breweries, and sawmills making up the bulk of the sector. Services currently account for 25% of GDP, largely because of the oversized government bureaucracy and high transportation costs arising from the country's landlocked position.