Steven Gaal

DHS Terror Document Lists Yawning, Goose Bumps As Suspicious Behavior Bodily functions are now potential indicators of terrorism Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Friday, March 16, 2012 Infowars has obtained a document from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security & Preparedness that lists banal bodily activities such as yawning, staring and goose pumps as “suspicious activity” indicative of terrorism. The document ( PDF), entitled Terrorism Awareness and Prevention, is presented as a guide for both “residents and workers of New Jersey,” along with employees of federal, state and local agencies, on how to “assist in combating terrorism” by identifying “unusual or suspicious activities and behaviors.” The guide encourages participants to “look for signs of nervousness (sweating,Gaal) in the people you come in contact with.” “Signs will become particularly evident in a person’s eyes, face, next and body movements.” The document then lists examples of suspicious behavior indicative of terrorism, which include, “Exaggerated yawning when engaged in conversation,” “glances,” “cold penetrating stare,” “rigid posture,” and “goose bumps”. Of course, any of these behaviors could be explained by a million other circumstances and the likelihood that they are indications of terrorist activity is virtually zero. However, as we have seen from recent literature put out by the DHS or related law enforcement bodies, the standard for being characterized as a potential terrorist is getting broader and broader all the time. Last month we reported on the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism (CAT) program, which encourages store managers and staff of numerous different businesses to report examples of suspicious activity to the authorities. In a flyer handed out to Internet Cafes, workers are encouraged to report people who use cash to pay for their coffee as potential terrorists. Expressing an interesting in protecting online privacy when surfing the web in public is also characterized as a suspicious activity. In a flyer issued to Military Surplus stores, the purchase of storable food supplies in bulk, an increasingly popular trend amongst “preppers,” is also defined as a potential indication of terrorism. Even more chilling, the feds have also begun to characterize perfectly legitimate political and economic beliefs as those held by terrorists, effectively denouncing them as thought crimes. As Reuters reported in February, authorities are now treating those who “believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard” as extremists who are a potential violent threat to law enforcement. Characterizing behavior which millions of Americans engage in every day as a potential indication of terrorism only serves to breed paranoia and distrust. If anything, it actually helps terrorists to blend in and not be identified, by increasing the chances exponentially of innocent Americans being mistaken for terrorists. ********************* Country that looks for “goose bumps” soon does goose step,Gaal

I am not claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood works with the U.S., even though this is a common conspiracy theory, but it is not true that the American government is against the Brotherhood and is working on toppling its rule. The opposite is closer to truth. Several American politics theorists argue that it is better for the United States to forge alliances with Islamist groups within the framework of political parties or to support Islamic governments like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Ennahda in Tunisia than do so with liberal or nationalist groups especially in the light of the Islamist tide that is preoccupying the West. forge alliances or works with TO ME ITS THE SAME The Muslim Brotherhood, especially in Egypt, worked on convincing the U.S. that they are the best faction among Islamists and several American political writers were actually convinced and are now praising the Brotherhood and severely criticizing other Islamist factions like the Salafis BLAH BLAH BLAH FORGET WRITTERS, USA STATE DEPARTMENT "forge alliances" with MB MY POINT OF THREAD

BELOW is basically the same as what I pasted from your HOLY NYT said about ARAB spring. Said NYT quote silenced/quilted Bill Kelly on the issue of Arab Spring and USA involvement from the very beginning (ie prior to Arab Spring).(BTW YOU INTERJECTED ON THAT THREAD A FEW TIMES ,SO I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DIDNT REMEMBER THE ISSUE I COVERED BEFORE and in this thread you made this comment about said issue) but rather posts you'd made months/years ago on different threads? Oh yeah, that makes sense.//Colby Golly USA NGO & MB work to same ends,Gheesh I have documented NGOs in Syria and CIA. Both work for regime change as dictated by the State Dept. with the NGOs doing more of the work in most (not all) countries at this time. from post # 135 An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.”

Bilderberg Behind Terrorist Attacks: Italian Supreme Court President Drops Bombshell! http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/bilderberg-behind-terrorist-attacks-italian-supreme-court-president-drops-bombshell/40735/ Posted on April 11, 2013 by # 1 NWO Hatr Before It’s News – by Live Free or Die Shocking information coming out of Italy today confirms much of what the so-called ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ have known for a long time, there is a secretive ‘Big Brother’ body behind much of the violence in Europe (and America!) including terrorist attacks and assassination attempts as well. This ‘shocking’ story is brought to us by Paul Joseph Watson and Infowars; the following testimony alone should give everyone a cause for alarm: “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,” Vinciguerra explained in sworn testimony. “The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened,” he added. This story from Paul Joseph Watson and Infowars confirms much of the knowledge already known by millions of Americans, Bilderberg (and their agents of terror) are one evil group and they MUST be held accountable for their crimes against humanity. Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com April 11, 2013 Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy and former Senior Investigative Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the man who prosecuted the case involving the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II, has sensationally accused the Bilderberg Group of being behind terrorist attacks in Europe. In an interview with the ArticoloTre website, Imposimato, who was also involved in the case involving the kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, said that he “found a document that left me appalled” implicating the Bilderberg Group in conspiring with the far right organization Ordine Nuovo to commit terror attacks. Speaking of unsolved murders in Italy and the document in his possession, Imposimato stated, “When it comes to slaughter it also speaks of the Bilderberg Group. I believe this document. I did some tests and I can say that behind the strategy of tension and the slaughters there is also the Bilderberg group, a sort of Big Brother is over, maneuvering, using terrorists and Masons.” Anyone who thinks that this ‘reign of terror’ by Bilderberg and their secretive groups is over only needs to watch the Infowars.com video below, which explains Operation Gladio and how the Cold War ‘black op’ continues today. http://beforeitsnews.com/international/2013/04/bilderberg-behind-terrorist-attacks-italian-supreme-court-president-drops-bombshell-2455434.html

John I havent looked into this recent release. .Maybe some new things RE CIA Latin America ?? http://ivn.us/2013/0...ssinger-cables/ =========================================== 99 Problems but Cuba Ain't One | Weapons of Mass Distraction

Egypt, the Brotherhood and the Americans see http://english.alara...-Americans.html Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today. ################### Muslim Brotherhood sows subversion in Gulf: Dubai police chief Khalfan complained that the West "sympathizes, adopts and supports" the Brotherhood, saying he did not understand why. (Gaal knows ,its Covert-op ,Gaal does not believe the offical pronouncements of STATE DEPT and MB) see http://atlasshrugs20...mmmmmmmmmm.html

The cited source was a long article from P.D. Scott, I only skimmed it but did not see rany eference to the CIA or other Western intelligence agencies sending Jihadists to Libya or elsewhere. // cOLBY ======================== THE THRUST OF THE PRINTED OUT ARTICLE IS THAT NGOs are doing the work of the CIA IN A SEMI-OVERT FASHION THAT ONCE THE CIA DID COVERTLY. By: Nesrine Hamedi Translated from As-Safir (Lebanon). اقرا المقال الأصلي باللغة العربية The subject of foreign jihadists coming to fight in Syria is nothing new. But the issue of Tunisian fighters who have flocked by the dozens over Syria's borders, passing through a long process of enlistment and training, has garnered a great deal of attention in recent days. It has shed light on the events transpiring behind the scenes of the jihadist journey to Syria, and upon those forces driving it. About This Article Summary : Many of the foreign fighters in Syria hail from Tunisia, while Tunisia struggles to deal with its own internal problems, writes Nesrine Hamedi. Publisher: As-Safir (Lebanon) Original Title: Tunisian Jihadists Voyage to Syria Author: Nesrine Hamedi First Published: March 18, 2013 Posted on: March 24 2013 Translated by: Al-Monitor Categories : Syria TunisiaSecurity At present, Tunisia estimates that around 40% of foreign jihadists in Syria hold Tunisian nationality. More than two-thirds of them are fighting in the ranks of Jabhat al-Nusra. A number of their families have organized demonstrations demanding that the authorities return their sons to Tunisia. At the same time, the Guide of the Ennahda Party, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, took the occasion as an opportunity to stress that his movement was not responsible for the phenomenon. For his part, President Moncef Marzouki minimized the gravity of the issue by noting that "their numbers don't amount to much" even as representatives in the Constituent Assembly demanded that the authorities identify the organizations now dispatching Tunisian youth to Syria. The Tunisian press has been occupied with exposing the extent of this phenomenon and its various aspects. The details of the journey undertaken by Tunisian jihadists embarking for Syria say a great deal about a country where jihadist propaganda is spreading at an alarming pace and a grinding war for which foreign jihadists provide a continuing source of fuel. More important than either is the foreign hand moving events. According to this Tunisian narrative now circulating, this hand is that of Qatar. On March 12, the Tunisian newspaper El-Shorouk released a detailed report, citing the Asia News Agency, stating that dozens of Tunisians had recently been killed in Syria. It included their names, their pictures, and their home provinces, as well as the places and dates of their deaths in Syria. It noted that most jihadists originated from the town of Ben Guerdane, south of Tunis. The town of Ben Guerdane, located in the Medenine province near the Tunisian-Libyan border, is one of the largest exporters of jihadists to Syria. Former head of al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is reputed to have said, "if Ben Guerdane had been located next to Fallujah, we would have liberated Iraq." According to El-Shorouk, Qatar is funneling money to Tunisian NGOs to recruit jihadists and dispatch them to Syria. From Qatar, these networks obtain "a pledge of $3,000 in exchange for every Tunisian youth who enlists." Al-Wasit, another Tunisian newspaper, printed another report detailing the isolation of these youths in military camps in the desert triangle between Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, and how they are subsequently transported to Turkey. There they are welcomed by other organizations who insert them into Syrian territory. They are given only a rushed period of training which, according to the paper, "facilitates their death or capture." According to As-Safir's sources, jihadist groups in Libya have established training camps in the Ghadames province, which is no further than 70 km from the Tunisian border. These young men receive some military training and are then transferred to the Zawiyah province, where they complete their training in a period of 20 days. From there they are transferred to Brega port for the voyage to Istanbul and thence to the Syrian borders. At that point, they are handed over to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusrah. According to these investigations, Lebanon might be another destination for Tunisian jihadists alongside Turkey. In the event a Tunisian jihadist seeks to join the FSA in Aleppo or other northern Syrian cities near to the border, they cross over from Turkey. If they wish to fight near Damascus, the surrounding countryside or other nearby areas, then they come through Lebanon. If Qatar is the main suspect in this process, the sources of funding for these movements remain a subject of debate among observers. Some information indicates that the secrecy of Tunisian authorities indicates that some of their leaders may be complicit in funding, aiding and dispatching Tunisian young men to wage jihad in Mali and Syria. According to El-Shorouk, "some members of the Constituent Assembly has a direct relationship with these associations and are fully aware of their activities". The paper promised to publish the complete details of officials' involvement soon. But the associations —or even government officials, should their involvement be proven — lack any authority to compel these youths to wage jihad. They do so of their own free will. The phenomenon itself sheds light on the extent to which ideological extremism is spreading in the Tunisian street. Before the revolution of Jan. 14, many organizations warned of jihadist cells emerging in Tunisia radicalizing unemployed youth with the intent of using them in jihad-related activities. These young men have been radicalized both through a proselytizing effort in the mosques and in more private settings. In this context, the sister of Ahmad Al-Tuhami, one of the young men killed in Syria, told As-Safir: "After the revolution, Ahmed started to frequent a mosque in the province of Sousse. Then he told us that he was determined to head to Libya to find work in the construction sector. He never came back. After that, we didn't hear anything from him until the Al-Dunya Channel broadcast his confession of infiltrating Syrian soil by way of Turkey." The families of these jihadists are also demanding that humanitarian organizations lend their weight to the cause of bringing their sons home. An official in the Tunisian League for Human Rights told As-Safir that "quite frankly, getting them back would be a very difficult process. Almost impossible for us, as a civil society organization. Even for the government it would be extremely difficult, since diplomatic ties between the two countries have been severed." She noted that it was possible for the Tunisian government to confront this phenomenon by tightening border security and undertaking a serious investigation to uncovering the identity of those behind luring the finest Tunisian youth to participate in these terrorist acts. It is worth mentioning here that a number of those who have gone to Syria have fought in Libya against the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. Tunisian press and observers are agreed that they are not acting as mercenaries, but rather seek to carry out the genuine convictions with which they have been indoctrinated by jihadist recruiters in their country. The general climate in post-revolutionary Tunisia encourages the proliferation of this phenomenon, as does the laxness and disregard exhibited by the ruling Ennahda party in its dealings with Salafist Jihadist groups. Perhaps Tunisia's granting of political asylum to the Jordanian Abu Qitadah — who issued a fatwa permitting the killing of women and children in Algeria on the pretext that they failed to support the jihadists in that country of a million martyrs — is the best example of the Tunisian government's indulgent attitude. On the other hand, the government's opposition believe that the reason for the government's behavior lies in Ennahda's need for Salafist votes in the coming elections. Read more: http://www.al-monito...l#ixzz2Q9CL6oId )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) from post # 135 An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.” )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) U.S. Steps up War on Syria: CIA is the Anchor of a Coordinated Secret Operation http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-steps-up-war-on-syria-cia-is-the-anchor-of-a-coordinated-secret-operation/5328721 ===== ...........One of the ridiculous fictions about the war against Syria is that the Obama administration publicly claims “caution” in arming the rebels, in contrast to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have openly acknowledged their role in fueling the civil war by sending arms and money to the enemies of the Assad government. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both absolute and hereditary monarchies whose existence is completely dependent on their role as clients of the United States. So too is the royal family in Jordan, which allows its territory to be a transfer pivot for the massive arms shipments into Syria. Qatar, with its citizen population of only 250,000 people, does not derive its fighting posture toward Syria from a robust military capability. That is a joke. Rather, Qatar is the location of the Pentagon’s Central Command Forward Headquarters and its Combined Air Operation Center. Qatar is also home to Al Jazeera, which promotes the cause of the armed rebellion against the Assad government. Qatar is not directing anything except that which the Pentagon approves......

of note MICROWAVE SPACE WEAPON WOULD BE WMD and would start to involve international bodies. ############################## see pg 16 below https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:PPUxHQMBDZ0J:www.hsdl.org/?view%26did%3D457824+creating+new+wmd+un+laws+microwave&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgjwW0UWxB4sNYTyXUapmwJOr_t-qQq7uNiTpTuMKbsl2fiw-v48WZIOGQxS5-Hfi_-bhAm1Qu2ID0Qt1HgFh5d2CzHUKqRmHkAXzMf0rG0nAnGY2DUCbr6b6ULWJGEnc6Ia93W&sig=AHIEtbR79t_euuZCg0w9SfBIsuxc7-EoUg =============== microwave in IRAQ http://www.brusselstribunal.org/WMD.htm

No just evidence that what you propose is feasible. For it to work it have to be blamed on something else. You've yet to post evidence that was the case. GEE YOU DIDNT SEE LINK TO US AIRFORCE WAR COLLEGE TO MICROWAVE SPACE WEAPON ?? in post # 197 ?? IS THERE A MORE authoritative/expertise sourcing than that ??? ANSWER NOPE . ################# EVIDENCE FROM WHERE ?? OH !! THAT WOULD BE INFORMATION FROM COLBY'S BELOVED MSM +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The New York Times and "Liberal Media" Helped Sell the Iraq War Wednesday, 20 March 2013 11:32 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | ========================================================== Michael Ratner: The NYT and other "liberal" commentators led the way in selling the WMD myth and justified the Iraq war; their mea culpas ring hollow. TRANSCRIPT: PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner, who joins us now from New York City. Michael's president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, and a board member of The Real News. Thanks for joining us again, Michael. MICHEAL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Good to be with you, Paul. So we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, March 20, 2003, when it began. In a few days it'll be March 20, 2013. And I think it's really important for everybody out there to know how many people we murdered in Iraq, how we got into that war, and who were some of the liberals, supposed liberals, who led us into that war, so that we don't depend on--we don't make that mistake again. And, of course, people should know how many people were killed. Nobody knows the real figure. There's numbers that go from 170,000 people killed, including combatants, maybe 120,000 civilians, up to 1 million. The Lancet reports 600,000 people killed with some kind of violence, whether that includes starvation or just plain old murders, but it's a huge number. And when you think about that number, you have to think: how did we get into this war, which I considered at the time an illegal and unnecessary war, in which I was not alone? It was the biggest demonstrations ever in the world against a war. In fact, they called the demonstration in Rome against the war in February 2003--it was 3 million people in Rome, 36 million people worldwide, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions in the United States as well. And yet we went to war in the United States, or on behalf of the United States, despite this. And, of course, many of us called it Bush's war, but as I'll explain, it's not just Bush's war. It was The New York Times' war, it was Bill Keller's war, Tom Friedman's war, and a number of other people who I will mention. The way they sold the war to the American people were two primary things. One was that Iraq was somehow developing weapons of mass destruction, of which they have literally no evidence, none at all. There were weapons inspectors who kept going there, came back with no evidence. The weapons inspectors group said there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Yet they sold us to war based in part on weapons of mass destruction. The other way--and it's an important lesson going forward--they sold us the war: by claiming that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein, who led Iraq at the time, and al-Qaeda. And of course al-Qaeda was on everyone's minds, because this was just two years after 9/11. And how did they go about getting and achieving and establishing that relationship, which even Colin Powell spoke about when he spoke to the UN in a speech that convinced many people that we had to go to war with Iraq? They did it through torture. And in particular there was a man named al-Libbi who was waterboarded. And when he was waterboarded, as he said later, I would have said anything to stop being waterboarded. And what he said and what actually Cheney, our vice president at the time, was looking for and why he was actually torturing people--or directing them to be tortured was because he wanted to prove a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. And what al-Libbi said was that members of al-Qaeda were sent to Iraq for training in how to use weapons of mass destruction. Of course, it was an utterly false story. It was actually a story, in some way, you could say was manufactured, because they tortured people to try and get that story. But it also shows you how bad torture is, in the sense that people will say anything to stop it. And whatever people say about the ticking time bomb scenario and torture and saving a life of someone's here or there, in the end, this torture was a key element in proving something, allegedly proving something that led us into a war that killed well over, probably, a half a million people. So that's one lesson you ought to take out of this, or we ought to all take, is torture is one of the worst things you can use for gaining actual intelligence. A second thing which has always bothered me is the role of the so-called liberal media, whether that's The New York Times, The New Yorker, New Republic, and the key people who ran all of that media. This is called the liberal media. You know, I don't think, Paul, that there's a war that The New York Times has not supported. But it was a particularly nasty piece of business on the Iraq War. You had, first of all, Bill Keller--I'm not sure he was executive editor during the beginning, but right around that period the head of The Times, a major reporter, major person at The New York Times. He wrote earlier, after 9/11, a 8,000-word article in The New York Times Magazine about what the effect of one kiloton bomb would be if it went into Times Square, in other words, getting everybody totally fearful of what would happen if Iraq had a weapon of mass destruction. Then The Times published column after column by Judy Miller and others pushing the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, columns that The Times ultimately had to apologize for. So we have Bill Keller, The New York Times; Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times; George Packer, New Yorker writer; Zakaria, Newsweek reporter; Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic; Peter Beinart; Hitchens; Paul Berman; a whole host of what I would have to call almost neoliberal liberals going for this war, going for it either because they thought we were in a war of civilizations or because they accepted [incompr.] there were weapons of mass destruction, etc. I asked myself at the time, how can these people believe this stuff? Any rational person can see that this is a BS story. This is a Bush war. This is a war in which they want to slap around a country that they can easily topple. This is about continuing U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, continuing our hegemony over oil, etc., making sure China and Russia are out there, whatever reasons. But how did these guys buy it? You know, I came--it's not that they just made a mistake. What I really have come to is that they are part and parcel of a belief in who this country--they really believe that this country is exceptional, it has to rule the world, and they buy into that fact. And therefore they're willing to really suspend their judgment and their reason and go for a war that was just completely fictitious. Now, I should say, when I have talked to some of these people about it, they say, well, we've done our mea culpas. We agree we were wrong about this war. This was a huge mistake. It's one of the worst wars we could have ever gone into. But when you read their explanations for it, their mea culpas, it's not that they thought the war itself was bad--or most of them didn't think the war itself was bad or that it was a bad idea; they thought it was executed badly, that we went into Iraq expecting or overestimating that the people would welcome us when they didn't, we botched up the post-war, we made lots of mistakes, we allowed the counterinsurgency to move forward, etc., etc. So they don't actually get at what I'm saying, which is they actually believed in this war. And I find mea culpas just completely insufficient, because at the core what these people did was believe in an American aggressive, illegal foreign policy that wound up killing half a million people. And in my view, there's no apologies for that. The best writer on this, and wrote an incredibly good article, was an intellectual who died, a writer, Professor Tony Judt. He died within the last couple of years. He wrote an article, and what he said in that about all of these so-called liberals who supported the war, what he said was today America's liberal armchair warriors are the, quote, "useful idiots," end quote, of the war on terror. And what he titled his article was "Bush's Useful Idiots". Now, I wish I could say that things have gotten better among this crowd--maybe a few of them a little better. You know. But a lot of them are still very, very aggressive about supporting the so-called war on terror, what was Bush's policy. Their mea culpas are just not very good. Bill Keller I want to single out because he still has these incredibly bloated, you know, superficial columns in The New York Times. And they had one recently that was related to my clients, particularly WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, and it was in the context of talking about Bradley Manning. And again he shows his stripes as completely biased and irrelevant. What he says is--first of all, he says that, well, had Bradley Manning given the documents directly to The New York Times, there probably wouldn't have been as much anger at either Bradley Manning or Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. And I must say that's the one thing he got right in the article, because Bill Keller is right, because Bill Keller, like he did in the case of the warrantless wiretap story, he ran to the White House and said, should I expose the warrantless wiretapping story, and they said, no, hold it up, don't do it, and he only did it when James Risen was going to go forward with it in a book. So Bill Keller, this man who brought us into the war in many ways, at least paved the way, is still writing the kind of bunk he was writing in 2001, '02, and '03. I mean, he did the same thing with Bradley Manning's motives. He said about Bradley Manning's motives, well, I don't think they were necessarily that political; his talk that he gave pleading guilty, which said they were all political, seems to be made up after the fact. And in fact that's not true. In fact, if you go to the early Bradley Manning statements that he made way before he was actually indicted, you would find that he was making political reasons. So this same core of so-called liberals is still out there. They're still controlling--I mean, another one is David Remnick at The New Yorker. He supported the war. So they just go on and on. And the question is, for all of us--I mean, just in some way it's an advertisement for you, Paul. But, you know, how do we get an accurate picture out there and how do we get journalists out there who are not just going to lead us into the next war? One of the stories I think you plan on doing is the Pentagon links to the Iraq torture centers. That's, of course, another story about the Iraq War and a story in 2004 and 2005 in which the U.S. sent two people there, a guy named Steele and Kaufmann, to essentially oversee what were set up as many, many detention and torture centers, in which literally tens of thousands of people were tortured. As a close to that, 'cause I know you're going to cover the story, I just want to point out that it again brings out the importance of WikiLeaks documents. When I talk to the people who did that story, what they did was they combed through the Iraq War Logs, which were revealed by Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. Those war logs had reports in it of soldiers from the U.S., their daily logs, telling about that they had perceived or seen that there was torture going on at these torture centers, or illegal activity, etc. And those are in the War Logs. And as a result of that, this important story, Guardian-BBC story, came out about the U.S. link to these detention and torture centers, and the link ultimately up the chain of command to Petraeus, and even to Rumsfeld. So, again, it's again about Iraq, it's about WikiLeaks, and it's about really great reporting. JAY: There's one other thing, I think, one other piece to this, because not all the liberals were in favor of this war--and by liberals, using your terminology, I'm talking about Democrats--and some Republicans, if you want--who believe in projecting American power but thought the Iraq War was stupid and opposed it on that basis 'cause it actually wasn't useful for projecting American power. And one of those people was Barack Obama, who came out against the war not 'cause he's against projecting American power any--this is back pre-Iraq War, and clearly we can see as president he's very gung-ho about projecting American power. But he and a lot of other foreign policy professionals thought this was just a completely dumb move in Iraq. And The New York Times should have known that. You'd think The New York Times would have reflected that. So there's something--I think there's something else going on other than being useful idiots, which is also the case. There's something about the money that gets made in the lead-up to war. The newspapers it sells, the fervor, the bloodlust, the chauvinism that this section of this kind of supposed liberals, they get excited by all this. And then there was also direct, nefarious connections between Judith Miller and the Bush White House. But The New York Times in theory is at odds with that White House, one would think, politically. There's some interest here. RATNER: You're making a very interesting point. You know, I talked to some people who were at the Barack Obama speech that he gave against the war--quote, against the war--in Chicago at the time. And what they said was he was careful, as you're sort of implying. What he said is he was against this particular thing, this war, but in fact he wasn't, like, just an antiwar person in general, that there were certain times that you would need to do war, I think. And that's what you're saying, that he'd still believe in the projection of American force. JAY: Yeah, I watched that very carefully, that speech, and he says, I'm not a pacifist; I'm against this war. But he did a followup interview, more in-depth--I can't remember if it was with 60 Minutes or somewhere else--not too long after that interview. Maybe it was six months or a year. And he was very explicit. He said, I thought this would actually weaken our ability to project power around the world. He said, I'm for projecting American power, I believe in it. RATNER: I think that's a good point, and I think he certainly illustrated that from the surge, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan and all the wars we're now carrying out in Somalia and Yemen. One important person I left out of this--and I'd be interested in how you see how she fit in here--is Hillary Clinton. I mean, it's hard to forgive Hillary Clinton for her vote, really hard, because let's assume she's, like, a projection person like you're saying Obama was, a projection of American force. What it seems to is she clearly could never have believed that this war was necessary. You had to be, as Tony Judt said, a useful idiot to believe that this war was actually a weapons of mass destruction war or an al-Qaeda, you know, BS war. You had to be a dummy. So the only thing I can think about Hillary is that she made a wrong judgment. Barack Obama must have felt this was going to help him be president. Hillary made a judgment that said, I need to vote for the war so I can be president. If I vote against the war, I won't be president. And it's actually what ultimately was her Achilles' heel. So I think she was an opportunist, which is to me almost the worst thing you could be is to actually kill people in the name of opportunism. JAY: Yeah. I think actually this goes--what you're saying goes to the core of it, because for The New York Times--remember the days. This is post 9/11. This is when there's all this tremendous buildup that we have to defend America and you're a traitor if you even critique the White House. And the way the media succumbed to that, they were--you know, both from the point of view of being worried about being labeled traitors, and even from a straight--and maybe more from a straight business interest, you know, you'd lose some of your market share if you're seen as soft on this stuff. RATNER: No, I think that's right. I agree. I mean, as I said, when I opened, I think I said, I don't think there's any war The New York Times has ever opposed. You know, I haven't looked back in history before probably the Second World War, but I think it's been right up there with the best of them. JAY: Alright. Thanks very much, Michael. RATNER: Thanks for having me, Paul, and I really appreciate what was a very useful discussion, particularly in the end. JAY: Thank you. ############################ Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole Now: Charles P. Pierce on the NYT and the anniversary of the war Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole Now By Charles P. Pierce Esquire Tuesday 19 March 2013 The "public editor" of The New York Times tells us today that the paper's coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War is likely to be less of a hoot than back in the drum-banging days when Judy Miller was standing atop a great pile of stove-piped bullxxxx while Bill Keller threw roses at her feet. I asked Dean Baquet, a managing editor, about the low-key approach. He said that while a few stories are planned, editors did not see a need for a major project or special section, as they did with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The war itself has been dissected to a tremendous degree," he told me. "You have to have something new or fresh to say." He would not provide specifics about the articles that are planned, but said there might be one or two that would make their way onto the front page this week...Is The Times's own role in the run-up to the war a part of this relative reticence, as some readers have suggested to me? Is there reluctance to revisit a painful period in the paper's history? Mr. Baquet said that's not a factor. "The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone," he said. "We certainly haven't been shy about doing that. We're doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile." That is, of course, all bollocks. Keller still writes a column. The Times is playing this on the downlow precisely because it never truly has atoned for its role in a fiasco. The op-ed page still welcomes submissions from people whose work on this most grotesque foreign-policy blunder should have been as definitive a career-killer as were Joe Hazlewood's navigational abilities. (snip) Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. David Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame. The rest: http://www.esquire.c...ppy_Anniversary A tour de force. Read it. ################## ALSO http://rinf.com/alt-...hypocrisy/30591

.No citations and WTF is LaTi? // COLBY ANSWER WHERE THE LINK WAS All 25 FBI flyers can be found here. ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) ”Once again you’ve failed to tell us which flyers supposedly “say using Google Maps or sweating is suspicious” // COLBY ################################### WTF per Colby...its where the answer to his question was located. If it isnt WASHPO/NYT as source he is upset . Is it me or is Colby a whiner at times ?? COLBY MR WRONG see below PER (WTF,Colby) LaTi link http://publicintelli...porting-flyers/ FBI “Communities Against Terrorism” Suspicious Activity Reporting Flyers February 1, 2012 in Federal Bureau of Investigation The following collection of 25 flyers produced by the FBI and the Department of Justice are distributed to local businesses in a variety of industries to promote suspicious activity reporting. The flyers are not released publicly, though several have been published in the past by news media and various law enforcement agencies around the country. We have compiled this collection from a number of online sources. To view the documents, click on a threat area in the menu to the left and the PDF will appear on the right side of the page. You can also download the complete collection of files (ZIP Archive, 6.27 MB). Threat Areas Airport Service Providers Beauty/Drug Suppliers Bulk Fuel Distributors Construction Sites Dive/Boat Shops Electronics Stores Farm Supply Stores Financial Institutions General Aviation General Public Hobby Shops Home Improvement Hotels/Motels Internet Cafes Shopping Malls Martial Arts/Paintball Mass Transportation Military Surplus Peroxide Explosives Recognizing Sleepers Rental Cars Rental Properties Rental Trucks Storage Facilities Tattoo Shops ####################################### UNDER INTERNET CAFE ABOVE Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC) Download content of extreme/radical nature with violent themes  Gather information about vulnerable infrastructure or obtain photos, maps or diagrams of transportation, sporting venues, or populated locations (GEE GOOGLE MAPS,Gaal)  Purchase chemicals, acids, hydrogen peroxide, acetone, fertilizer, etc.  Download or transfer files with "how-to" content such as: - Content of extreme/radical nature with violent themes - Anarchist Cookbook, explosives or weapons information - Military tactics, equipment manuals, chemical or biological information - Terrorist/revolutionary literature - Preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks - Defensive tactics, police or government information - Information about timers, electronics, or remote transmitters / receivers It is important to remember that just because someone’s speech, actions, beliefs, appearance, or way of life is different; it does not mean that he or s he is suspicious. )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) COLBY ASKS SWEATING ,"where" GOLLY ANY imagination about nervousness/apprehension words Geesh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"get back to us with any qualified experts who say such devices could be used to surreptitiously // Colby ALERT !! ALERT !! DEPOPULATION WILL NOT BE AN OVERT OPERATION !! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GOLLY YOU WANT THE INNER SECRET PAPERS OF THE NWO ???? see https://docs.google....kyZLerAcpnlNFug ============== see http://www.space.com...ce-weapons.html =============== see http://www.fas.org/s...ns/ch100309.htm 3.9 DEW-High Power Microwave (HPM) 3.9.1 Warfighter Needs The DoD requires improved capabilities in countering artillery fire, ship defense against cruise missiles, aircraft self-protection, suppression of enemy integrated air defense systems, space control, security, counter-proliferation, and disruption or destruction of command and control assets. All of these requirements can be addressed by HPM weapon systems which upset or damage the electronics within the target. HPM weapons offer military commanders the option of: Speed-of-light, all-weather attack of enemy electronic systems. Area coverage of multiple targets with minimal prior information on threat characteristics. Surgical strike (damage, disrupt, degrade) at selected levels of combat. Minimum collateral damage in politically sensitive environments. Simplified pointing and tracking. Deep magazines and low operating costs. Coordinated Army, Navy, Air Force and DNA HPM transition plans are focused on demonstrations of mission-oriented concepts: aircraft self protection, anti-ship missile defense, and counter munitions (EW Electronic Attack - degrade/neutralize enemy defenses); and lethal Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and C2W/IW (Precision Force, MOUT, and IW). Potential Warfighter payoffs include generic protection against a wide variety of missile/munition threats (IR, EO, RF, laser-guided), improved effectiveness and lower attrition rates of friendly systems, and negation (permanent damage, long-term disruption, and temporary degradation) of enemy command, control, and general information systems. Finally, electronic protection techniques developed under the HPM program are being continuously transitioned to users in order to harden US systems against hostile HPM weapons or inadvertent EMI/EMC. Joint development and test projects demonstrate the maximization of investments to meet individual Service/Agency mission requirements. 3.9.2 Overview 3.9.2.1 Goals and Timeframes. Technology development and demonstration efforts are oriented to establish a mature and comprehensive technology basis to support microwave weapon systems development decisions. In many cases, this requires an integrated demonstration of microwave source, pulsed power and antenna subsystems. Major goals and associated time frames include the following: Application/Mission Short-term (1-2 years) Mid-term (3-5 years) Long-term (6+ years) HPM System for Point Defense. Demo of compact, high-power UWB source. Demo of high average power narrowband source. Live fire cable-car demo. Field demo of high average power narrowband source. Ship-self-defense demo, Countermunition demo. HPM System for C2W/IW. Effects assessments. Field demo. Airborne demo. HPM System for SEAD. Demo of compact, high-power narrowband source. Explosively-driven single pulse device demo. Multiple-pulse device demo. HPM System for Space Control. Effects assessments. Modeling and simulation for concept development. Field demo. 3.9.2.2 Major Technical Challenges. The major technical challenges for HPM weapons include developing and demonstrating: Compact, high peak power and/or high average power HPM sources. Compact, high gain, ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas. Compact, efficient, high power, pulse power drivers. Predictive models for HPM effects and lethality. Low impact hardening of systems against hostile and self-induced EMI. Reliable and affordable system integration meeting military platform requirements. 3.9.2.3 Related Federal and Private Sector Efforts. DoD organizations have primary responsibility for the development and applications of HPM technology. However, both DOE and private sector efforts complement military HPM programs. Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories have HPM source development and effects programs which directly support Service efforts, while the private sector has evolved both independent and cooperative RF effects programs. CRDAs have been initiated to develop and transition improved techniques for measuring electromagnetic interference. The electronics industry as a whole is working closely with the Services to ensure compliance with new international standards for electromagnetic protection. 3.9.3 S&T Investment Strategy In executing the DoD HPM Program, focus is maintained on specific technology demonstrations, in order that the technology effort at the component level can also be focused. DoD investments among the various technology demonstration and technology development efforts are allocated in accordance with their potential payoff to warfighting needs and their relative contribution to achieving the HPM goals. 3.9.3.1 Technology Demonstrations. HPM weapons encompass a number of technology demonstrations in the field. Major demonstrations support two DTOs: Aircraft Self Protection Demonstration (WE.19) Command and Control Warfare/Information Warfare Demonstration (WE.22) Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) Demonstration (WE.22) 3.9.3.2 Technology Development. Coordinated Army, Navy, Air Force, and DNA HPM technology developments are subdivided into a number of major constituent areas, these include: Compact, High Power HPM Sources: Includes fourfold increase in UWB output power, six-fold increase in narrow band pulse length, and narrowband tunability up to an octave. Weight should be ~500 lbs and volume ~1.5 cu ft (exclusive of antenna and pulse power). Compact, High Power, High Gain, Ultra-Wideband Antennas: Requires reduction to 18 inch antenna diameter with approximately 15 - 20 dB of antenna gain. Compact, Efficient, High Power Pulse Power Drivers: Primary challenge is to develop compact (~500 lbs in less than 10 cu ft), high peak power (>50 GW) packages. HPM Effects and Lethality: Includes RF testing of a wide range of air, sea, land, and space military assets; RF effects database development; reliable prediction of RF effects to permit extrapolation to other systems, development of innovative countermeasure techniques and incorporation of HPM into accepted military weapon engagement models. Also includes assessment of biological effects necessary to establish safety thresholds for personnel protection. Systems Integration Meeting Military Platform Requirements: Encompasses integrating pulse power drivers, HPM sources, and output antennas into military platforms such as fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, naval combatants, land vehicles, aircraft pods, unmanned aerial vehicles and munitions. Low Impact Hardening of Systems Against Hostile and Self-Induced EMI: Includes transitioning EM hardening to users in response to existing EMI/EMC problems and projected threats; identifying susceptibilities in US air, land, sea and space militarily critical systems; and developing hardening countermeasures which minimally impact system performance, cost or maintainability. Evaluation of Additional Applications: Based on effects assessments and technology development efforts, evaluations are being performed to identify additional militarily useful applications. Applications under consideration include: ASMD, counter-proliferation, counter-munition, and space control. These evaluations will lead, where appropriate, to additional technology demonstrations. 3.9.3.3 Basic Research. Basic research efforts for high power microwaves emphasize the fundamental understanding of the limitations of microwave technology and its application, and investigation of promising new approaches and concepts. Efforts are conducted in RF sources, antennas, and pulsed power systems and in RF effects phenomenology.

HUH ?? PART 1of 2 I POSTED below (Gaal) Steven Gaal, on 09 April 2013 - 05:29 AM, said: 85 Things that Might Get You on a DHS Terrorist Watch List Because the Department of Homeland Security has asked parts of the public to report suspicious activity through the “Communities Against Terrorism” program , if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi. LaTi lists 85 things that might get you on a watch list, if a Halloween G-man spots you in the act:: 1) Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city. 2) Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums. 3) Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer. 4) Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others. 5) Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress. 6) Sweat. [...] THEN COLBY POSTED No citations and WTF is LaTi? And the list is absurd. Using Google Maps? That would cover 10s or 100s of millions of Americans and sweating LOL? BUT THEN COLBY POSTED and the link to the flyers was NOT in the post I was commenting on. (Colby) +++++++++++++++ HUH ?? THE LINK HE REPOSTED HIMSELF BY COPYING MY POST. “Communities Against Terrorism has the flyer link. ================= +++++++++++++++++++++++++ HUH ?? PART 2 of 2 I STATED (Gaal) PLEASE REREAD THIS THREADS SECTIONS ON ACLU> ACLU HAS JUST STARTED A PROGRAM ON SUCH ISSUE OF INCREASED MILITARIZATION OF POLICE USA (under Obama) THEN COLBY STATED Please get back to us with links to where they say such incidents (abusive raids) are increasing. // Colby MATERIAL PREVIOUSLY POSTED (I TOLD HIM TO REREAD ) ALL HE DID WAS ASK FOR SOMETHING I HAD TOLD HIM WAS ALREADY PROVIDED !!!!!!! I TOLD HIM TO REREAD ACLU SECTION OF THIS THREAD. (???)(Gaal) (SEE WHAT I POSTED ABOUT increasing militarization and ACLU below,the material I told him to reread) Posted by Steven Gaal on 11 March 2013 - 04:42 PM in Political Conspiracies ACLU The Militarization of Policing in America aclu.org/files/images/crimjustice/jus13-tdnt-landingpg-town-rel2.jpg' alt='Posted Image' class='bbc_img' /> American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war. Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend. It’s time to understand the true scope of the militarization of policing in America and the impact it is having in our neighborhoods. On March 6th, ACLU affiliates in 23 states filed over 255 public records requests with law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to determine the extent to which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and local police departments. Stay tuned as this project develops. Consider these ten chilling stories. If the anecdotal evidence is any indication, use of military machinery such as tanks and grenades, as well as counter-terrorism tactics, encourage overly aggressive policing – too often with devastating consequences: http://www.aclu.org/militarization (SEE LINK FOR ALL TEN) ##################################### COLBY POSTS COMMENTS AND HAS NO UNDERSTANDING WHATS HE IS SAYING. ABOVE IS PROOF. TWICE

OK get back to us with documentation for this claim, there wasn't any in the text you cut n' pasted below it COLBY++++++++++++++++ HUH ? I WENT OVER THIS TOPIC WITH BILL KELLY A BILLION TIMES ??????????? ============================================================ MIDDLE EAST: The CIA Operating behind a Web of “Pro-Democracy” NGOs By Patrick Henningsen Global Research, March 20, 2012 Url of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/middle-east-the-cia-operating-behind-a-web-of-pro-democracy-ngos/29864 For the past five decades, the CIA has enjoyed near total anonymity whilst operating behind a web of international shell companies and NGOs like USAID. In the 21st century, the agency has come to rely on a much more complex array of ‘human rights’ and ‘pro-democracy’ foundation-funded and US State Department-funded organizations around the globe like the National Endowment for Democracy, CANVAS and the Open Society Institute. But keeping its influence peddling and regime change activities hidden from the public view has become increasingly difficult in the age of digital awareness. Perhaps the foreign intelligence services have spread themselves too thin across the globe, or overestimated the public’s ability see through an increasingly transparent agenda. Or maybe this new revolution business has become too well-funded, with too many high-flying international consultants, and has tried too hard to look trendy in staging pop political campaigns like KONY 2012 - making it harder and harder to conceal their not-so-clandestine activities. Obama’s latest move sent a clear message to Washington’s New World Order partners: provided American operatives overseas are not harmed, Washington does not care all that much about human rights, and even less about its local NGO Arab operatives – like all those Arab NGO workers hung out to dry in Cairo this month. Present and future non-US NGO workers might take note here - as working for US-funded democracy and human rights programs in places like Egypt will not guarantee you any protection should you organization come under fire for spying. Egypt remains as the Middle East’s most populated country, and most strategically placed – controlling the Suez Canal, and bordering neighbors Israel, Sudan and Libya. \Unfortunately for Washington, Egypt’s military junta have quickly figured out how the US is always able to play both sides of the geopolitical game. Realizing that they had served their purpose in helping to secure Libya for NATO, Egypt knew it may soon fall fast out of favor with their paymasters in Washington, perhaps with yet another western-backed ‘Arab Spring’ at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, thousands of real pro-reform Egyptian protestors were literally beaten to death by Cairo’s brutal military junta. On December 27, 2011, Washington’s favored Egyptian military ruling government did the unthinkable - raiding 17 NGO’s in Cairo, many of which were arguably under the CIA’s cloak and dagger regime change workshop umbrella. The raids included the State Department-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI) founded by Madeleine Albright, and the International Republican Institute (IRI), headed by regime change enthusiast John McCain. Cairo’s surprise spook-house raid sent shockwaves through US State Department, as administrators led by Hillary Clinton decried the move “completely unacceptable”, not because it had anything specifically to hide (interestingly, we do not recall Clinton actually denying that spying was going on in Cairo), but because Egypt is the US’s second largest recipient of US military aid in the world - with annual military gift vouchers totally approximately $1.5 billion per annum – mostly for military hardware. In reality there is no real relationship between US foreign aid and the pro-democracy traits of its winning contestants. The Obama administration quickly reconsidered its previously stern position with Egypt over the NGO raids, going ahead with full military aid to Egypt. It’s hard to imagine another scenario that could do more damage to U.S. and British intelligence operations in the Middle East. Clinton was even forced to issue a “national security waiver” exempting the White House from explaining to Congress why Egypt is not “implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law”, yet still collecting its billions in US aid. Although Egyptian courts lifted their travel ban on all American espionage suspects on March 1, 2012, criminal trials are still due to resume this April 10th against Egyptian NGO workers. NGO’s under the gun are the NDI, the IRI and of course, George Soros’s Freedom House, along with some 400 other NGOs also under official investigation. Egypt played its role in bringing down Libya During the fabled Arab Spring in 2011, Washington and London were under a very tight time table because of what was going on next door in Libya and needed a partner they could rely on. In order for NATO’s al-Qaida rebel forces, the Egyptian military junta obediently smuggled arms and al-Qaeda fighters over their western border into eastern Libya to help overthrow the regime of the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi. The Wall Street Journal report confirmed this on March 17, 2011: “Egypt’s military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington’s knowledge, U.S. and Libyan rebel officials said… … The shipments-mostly small arms such as assault rifles and ammunition-appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters. Those fighters have been losing ground for days in the face of a steady westward advance by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.” Good for US: Christian persecuted in Egypt and the wider region Myth: Because of evangelical pro-Israel right-wing voters, Washington will care deeply about the mistreatment of Christians in the Middle East and East Africa. And here’s the point: once you get past the myth of the fabled Arab Spring, you quickly realize that it’s common practice now for Washington’s illustrious State Department and London’s Foreign Office to back Islamist governments throughout the region, along with the usual protocol of partnerships for dictatorships and monarchies throughout the Middle East. Christians are being targeted in what looks like obvious provocateur events against the Copts in Egypt, and Orthodox Christians in Sudan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey – and Washington appears not to care at all. Why? Obama’s ignorance of Christian persecution is no mere political omission – it is the policy of Washington. Don’t think for one second that if a Mitt Romney were to take office in January 2013, this policy would change at all. For Washington and London, Islamist governments, with their bent towards theocracies – unlike Christian secularists, are much easier to manipulated and play against neighboring nations. Washington and the CIA’s real priorites in the region are aligned with a policy of destabilization, namely Israel and backing Islamist regimes. Where the US wants stabilty, it will back Monarchies and Dictators – as is the case with the Gulf States and Egypt’s military junta. This also feeds into Washington and London’s strategy of surrounding the settler state Israel with Islamist regimes, thus furthering the old mantra that ‘Israel needs to defend itself’, and that is ’a clash of civilizations’ between east and west, and ensuring conflict for the next 50 years. For this very reason, it is a top priority of engineers in Washington and London to bring down the secular/multi-religious society led by President Assad in Syria. The goal is destabilization and this simply cannot happen with a solid secular regime in place there. The same observation should be applied to Libya too, and the results speak for themselves now as the al-Qaida’s own Jolly Roger is flying over Benghazi. Although GOP mouthpieces like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney speak about the horrors of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the reality is that this islamist group was created and is mostly steered by the British intelligences agencies who work in concert with the CIA. A classic case of controlled oppostion dating back to the the 1920′s – but still, US politicians name-drop ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in order to scare Americans about the horrors of Islamic extremism and what a threat they pose to Israel. Egypt is, and always has been the central choke-point in the Middle East, and no matter if it’s a brutal military junta or a pedestrian dictator- democracy matters little to Washington. The military aid will continue to flow and real reformers will continue to be killed and imprisioned there. And when placed under pressure, the US will throw all its Egyptian intelligence assets under the bus – and still send Cairo its $1.5 billion cheque. Alas, strange bedfellows these two countries do make. +++++++++++++++++++ ALSO SEE The US Engineered “Arab Spring”: The NGO Raids in Egypt http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-engineered-arab-spring-the-ngo-raids-in-egypt/28433 ============== and ALSO Syria Regime Change PR in High Gear: More ‘Newborn Baby Slaughter’ Propaganda http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-regime-change-pr-in-high-gear-more-newborn-baby-slaughter-propaganda/29186

Lefty Obama ?? AFL-CIO and AARP Rip Into Obama Over Medicare and Social Security Cuts April 8th, 2013 10:41 AM The AFL-CIO, generally slavishly backing Obama, no matter how genocidal his policies for Americans, has potentially thrown off its chains over Obama's "chained CPI" scam, which will impose huge cuts on Social Security and Medicare. The union alliance sent an e-mail to its members and supporters Saturday calling for a mobilization and petitions to stop Obama's plan to include the chained CPI in his budget proposal this week. AFL-CIO director of policy Damon Silvers posted the following on his blog: "In a time of rampant income inequality and stagnant wages, a blow to retirement security is the last thing we need. It's unconscionable we're asking seniors, people with disabilities and veterans to be squeezed of every last penny when corporations and the wealthiest 2% are not paying their fair share of taxes, despite soaring profits. This year alone, the job-killing sequester will cost 750,000 people their jobs. We need to invest in America's workers, not pull the rug out from under them. The 'chained' CPI is based on a fraudulent premise that the CPI is rising faster than the actual cost of living experienced by seniors, veterans and millions of other vulnerable citizens living on meager incomes. In fact, because seniors in particular have limited flexibility and spend a disproportionate share of their income on health care, they tend to experience more rapid inflation than the general population. 'Chained' CPI also hits the vulnerable people in the country people with disabilities who get long-term . Social Security benefits and women, because they live longer. America elected President Obama to protect us from bad Washington ideas like 'chained' CPI, not to advocate for them." Meanwhile the AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) polled their members, and found that more than two-thirds of voters over 50 years old oppose Obama's murderous policy of the chained CPI. On the more general issue of cutting Social Security benefits to help balance the budget, a whopping 84% said no, with 87% saying the issue is "very important" to them.

Get back to us with any qualified experts who say such devices could be used to surreptitiously kill large swaths of humanity and that the symptoms could be mistaken as being of biological origin // COLBY +++++++++++++++++++ TWO EXPERTS ALREADY CITED INDICATE SPACE ENERGY BEAMS DANGEROUS SATELLITE aiming technology here. Solar Cells to electrical to microwave technology already here. Drone technology already here. Lifting to orbit technology already here (but expensive), however in a pinch TRILLIONS of dollars in secret accounts (Source Mr. Simkin). QUISLING MSM and FALSE SOCIAL MEDIA ALREADY IN PLACE. (see above DOD and propaganda social media army) ONLY BIOLOGICAL LACKING. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Now to repeat (for the slow upstairs,wink) 1.ELITES WANT DEPOPULATION 2. DEPOPULTION WONT OCCUR UNTIL LATTER (AS PREVIOUSLY STATED = RUSSIA HAS WEST QUISLING LEADER and INDIA LEADERSHIP BRIBED,then deal struct with ISOLATED CHINA,CIRCA 2040 plus minus two years.) 3.QUISLING MSM and FALSE SOCIAL MEDIA ALREADY IN PLACE 4. ITS THE MEDIA THAT REPORT FALSE STORY FROM CORRUPTED WHO/CDC OF TWO DISEASES CONFLATED CDC/WHO release. WORLD WIDE ALERT . LETHAL HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS VIRUS CAUSES SKIN ERRUPTIONS IN 5 % OF CASES . AGENT IS 99.9 % Lethal. ((BUT ITS TWO BIOLOGICALS ,BUT PANDEMIC SKIN HELPS SELL IDEA OF WIDE SPREAD DEATH TO OCCUR)) SAMPLES MUST ONLY BE OBSERVED/TAKEN TO LEVEL FOUR CONTAINMENT. // END RELEASE Few level 4 labs will be outside of WESTS control (maybe sabotage one/two labs not in control).......who would / could counter the story ???????????????? answer NONE ############################ LOTS OF WORK BEING DONE ON HOW HIGH INFECTIVITY OF 1918 FLU. wiki 1918 flu pandemic Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred. Knobler S, Mack A, Mahmoud A, Lemon S (ed.). The Story of Influenza". The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? pp60-61 ========================= (EMERGING Zoonotic virus is a virus that coluld spread in a large way to humans.) Hendra virus has a high human mortality rate | Australian Medical ...https://ama.com.au/media/hendra-virus-has-high-human-mortality-rateCached Sep 4, 2011 – Hendra virus (HeV) infection in humans is an emerging zoonotic disease that has a high mortality rate but low infectivity, according to the latest ...

Police including SWAT using abusive tactics is nothing new, we have only anecdotal evidence from an obscure author writing for a far right media outlet it has increased under Obama. // COLBY ++++++++++++++ ???? PLEASE REREAD THIS THREADS SECTIONS ON ACLU> ACLU HAS JUST STARTED A PROGRAM ON SUCH ISSUE OF INCREASED MILITARIZATION OF POLICE USA (under Obama) +++++++++++++++++++++++++ No citations and WTF is LaTi? And the list is absurd. Using Google Maps? That would cover 10s or 100s of millions of Americans and sweating LOL? // Colby Mr COLBY ARE YOU A FRAUDSTER OR A FOOL ???DOCUMENTATION (FBI) FOUND AT LINK PROVIDED> I WILL GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT AND THINK THE LATTER !!!!! (Gaal) you continually comment on posts you haven read. didnt see below ????? All 25 FBI flyers can be found here.

Young Sunni men going to distant lands to 'defend Islam' is a tradition that dates back decades. // COLBY AND IN THE LAST 8 years its THE USA STATE DEPARTMENT/NGOs/CIA leading said young men to selected destinations. ^^^^^^^^^^^########o0o########^^^^^^^^^ WIKI Iran 2005-present President George W. Bush authorized the CIA to undertake black operations against Iran in an effort to destabilize the Iranian government.[143] A 2005 article in the New York Times stated that the Bush administration was expanding efforts to influence Iran's internal politics with aid to opposition and pro-democracy groups abroad and longer broadcasts criticizing the Iranian government. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns said the administration was "taking a page from the playbook" on Ukraine and Georgia. Unnamed administration officials were reported as saying the State Department was also studying dozens of proposals for spending $3 million in the coming year "for the benefit of Iranians living inside Iran" including broadcast activities, Internet programs and "working with people inside Iran" on advancing political activities there.[144] In 2006, the United States congress passed the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which directed $10 million towards groups opposed to the Iranian government. In 2007, ABC news reported that President Bush had authorized a $400 million covert operation to create unrest in Iran.[145] According to the The Daily Telegraph, the CIA has also provided support to a militant Sunni organization called Jundullah, which has launched raids into Iran from its base in Pakistan.[143] Alexis Debat separately claimed that the US encouraged Pakistan to support Jundullah, but his reporting was challenged after he was discovered to have allegedly fabricated numerous interviews.[146] Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, alleged that the US has provided funding and training to the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran and Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, militant groups opposed to the current Iranian government.[147][148] Prior to 2012, the U.S. State Department had listed the PMOI as a terrorist organizaion, despite the absence of any confirmed terrorist acts committed by the group in more than a decade.[149] Court square in Benghazi, April 2011; at the central place for gatherings and demonstrations the walls are draped with pictures of casualties, mourners passing by Libya 2011 Main article: Libyan civil war After the Arab Spring movement overthrew the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, their neighbour to the east and west respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011.[150][151] In response, the Obama administration sent in CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces.[152][153][154] During the early phases of the Libyan air strike offensive, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems.[155] There was also speculation in The Washington Post that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorized the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.[156] Muammar Gaddafi was ultimately overthrown in the Libyan civil war. Syria 2012 Main article: Syrian civil war In 2012, President Barack Obama authorized U.S. government agencies to support forced regime change in Syria. [157] In July, the Office of Foreign Assets Control authorised channeling financial support for the Free Syrian Army through the Syrian Support Group non-governmental organization.[158] ####################### (NGO BELOW) Tunisia: IRI Eager to Provide Support to Civil Society Lorne W. Craner 9 April 2013 La Kasbah — The International Republican Institute (IRI) is ready to help Tunisia achieve "actual participative democracy" said its President Lorne W. Craner, presently visiting Tunisia. "The IRI is eager to provide support to Tunisia's people to achieve actual participative democracy through support to the civil society and the democratic political parties", he said on Monday at the end of his meeting with Interim Prime Minister Ali Larayedh. "The main aim of my visit is to express admiration and solidarity with the Tunisian people who sparked off a peaceful revolution for democracy", he affirmed, adding that his organisation will spare no effort to make its experience available to the democratic transition process in Tunisia. He also said that the meeting had turned on the development of the economic situation in the country and on means to promote co-operation with the civil society. IRI is a political organisation aimed to support political and economic liberties, good governance and human rights in the world through enhancing the principles of democracy among citizens, political parties and governments. The Institute, based in Washington, had opened an office in

First Published: 2013-04-06 Painfully Following Iran in the U.S. Media I have no doubt that any impartial assessment of the professional conduct of most American media in covering the Iran situation would find it deeply flawed and highly opinionated, to the point where I say that mainstream media coverage of Iran in the United States is professionally criminal, writes Rami G. Khouri. Middle East Online BEIRUT - One of the most annoying aspects of spending time in the United States, as I have just done with a month’s working visit there, is to follow the news coverage of Iran in the mainstream American media. Well, calling it “news” coverage is a bit of a stretch, because the mainstream American media is not really reporting news about Iran, but rather repackaged ideological attacks and threats that emanate primarily from the American and Israeli governments. The main problem -- evident in virtually every story about Iran in the mainstream media, including the “quality” outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the leading television channels -- is that the coverage is inevitably based on assumptions, fears, concerns, accusations and expectations that are almost never supported by factual and credible evidence. Two things in particular are wrong in the coverage. First is that most media stories about Iran view the country almost uniquely through the lens of its being an adversary and a threat to the United States, Israel and Arab allies of the U.S., whether because of Iran’s alleged regional hegemonic aims or its terrorism links. Iran only exists for most American media as a threat to be beaten back at any cost. The second is that most media analyze Iran almost exclusively through the issue of its nuclear industry. This attitude sees Iran as secretly developing a nuclear bomb that it will use to threaten or destroy neighboring powers, including Israel and Arab oil-producing countries. For the U.S. mainstream media, Iran is first and foremost a nuclear threat, and little else about the country is deemed worthy of serious coverage. I have no doubt that any impartial assessment of the professional conduct of most American media in covering the Iran situation would find it deeply flawed and highly opinionated, to the point where I say that mainstream media coverage of Iran in the United States is professionally criminal. I base this on having learned my journalism craft and values in the United States, where quality press coverage of any issue ideally should be characterized by a combination of accuracy, balance, depth and context, within a rigorous attempt by the writer to remain impartial when reporting stories that include controversy or conflict. These professional qualities are usually absent from news coverage of Iran in the United States, and I say this is a criminal enterprise because the consequences of the flawed and aggressive coverage helps shape a public opinion environment in which it becomes acceptable to threaten and sanction Iran on the basis of mere suspicions and fears in the minds of American and Israeli politicians -- all of whom, I would guess, have never visited Iran or even spoken to any credible or “normal” Iranian who is not involved in political lobbying in Washington, D.C. The discussion of Iran in the media over the past two years has also been full of references about the possibility of attacks against Iran by Israel or the United States, with very little if any serious analysis of whether such unilateral attacks are permissible under international law. I am continuously amazed to see every accusation in every story about Iran’s alleged sinister and secretive nuclear bomb plans hedged with phrases like “it is assumed” or “officials believe” or “analysts suspect” or Iran “may be” or “is thought to be” or is “suspected of” doing this or that. There is no certainty, little credible proof, few verifiable facts, only anger, assumptions and fear. This same hollow and shoddy level of evidence presented in the media’s portrayal of Iran could never be used to frame, say, the actions of young African-Americans, Hispanic teachers, or professional women bankers, because it would be ejected by both professional media standards and common human rights standards as being a bag of wild prejudices and stereotypes that are not supported by fact. The mass media gets away with disguising ideological venom as impartial news coverage in the case of Iran, though, because a different standard of professionalism is at work here, one which makes it permissible for the media to ignore its role as a reporter of facts in favor of being an ideological warrior that serves the purposes of assorted governments. We saw at great cost in Iraq what destruction, waste and criminality this sort of behavior can lead to. It will be fascinating now to see how the media reports on possible signs of progress in the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries (U.K., China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany) that resume in Kazakhstan. I hope our American journalism colleagues will summon the moral and professional strengths within them to cover both sides of these talks in their full and accurate political and technical contexts, rather than continue to act like robotic cheerleaders for the American and Israeli governments.

85 Things that Might Get You on a DHS Terrorist Watch List Because the Department of Homeland Security has asked parts of the public to report suspicious activity through the “Communities Against Terrorism” program , if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi. LaTi lists 85 things that might get you on a watch list, if a Halloween G-man spots you in the act:: 1) Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city. 2) Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums. 3) Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer. 4) Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others. 5) Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress. 6) Sweat. 7) Avoid eye contact. 8) Use a cell-phone camera in an airport, train station or shopping mall. 9) Seek to work alone or without supervision. 10) Appear to be out of place. 11) Have bright colored stains on your clothing. 12) Be missing any fingers. 13) Emit strange odors. 14) Travel an “illogical distance” to do your shopping. 15) Have someone pick you up from a beauty supply store. 33) Act impatient. 16) Be nervous. 17) Be a new customer from out of town. 18) Use a credit card in someone else’s name. 19) Chant environmental slogans near construction sites. 20) Enter a construction site after work hours. 21) Rent watercraft for an extended period. 22) Make comments involving radical theology. 23) Make vague or cryptic warnings. 24) Express anti-U.S. sentiments. 25) Purchase a quantity of prepaid or disposable cell phones. 26) Leave store without preprogramming disposable phones. 27) Be overly interested in satellite phones and voice privacy. 28) Ask questions about swapping SIM cards in cell phones. 29) Ask questions about how phone location can be tracked. 30) Rewire cell phone’s ringer or backlight. 31) Express out-of-place and provocative religious or political sentiments. 32) Purchase a police scanner, infrared device or 2-way radio. 33) Act impatient. 34) Drive a vehicle that appears to be overloaded. 35) Depart quickly when seen or approached. 36) Be a person “acting suspiciously.” 37) Make illegible notes on a map. 38) Take photos of the Statue of Liberty or other “symbolic targets.” 39) Overdress for the weather. 40) Ask questions in a hobby shop about remote controlled aircraft. 41) Demonstrate interest that does not seem genuine. 42) Request specific room assignments or locations at a hotel or motel. 43) Arrive at a lodging with unusual amounts of luggage. 52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby. 44) Refuse cleaning service. 45) Avoid the lobby of a hotel or motel. 46) Remain in your hotel or motel room. 47) Leave your hotel for several days, then return. 48) Leave behind clothing and toiletry items. 49) Park your vehicle in an isolated area. 50) Be observed switching a cell phone SIM card. 51) Be observed using multiple cell phones. 52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby. 53) Communicate through a PC game. 54) Download “extreme/radical” content. 55) Exhibit preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks. 56) Wear a backpack when the weather is warm. 57) Speak to mall maintenance personnel or security guards. 58) Make racist comments. 59) Mumble to yourself. 60) Pass along any anonymous threats you may receive. 61) Discreetly take a photo in a mass transit site. 62) Arrive with a group of people and split off from them. 63)Demand “identity privacy.” 64) Appear to endorse the use of violence in support of a cause. 65) Make bulk purchases of meals ready to eat. 66) Arrive in America from a land where militant Islamic groups operate. 67) Take a long absence for religious education or charity work. 68) Travel to countries where militant Islam rules. 69) Study technical subjects that would aid a terror operation. 70) Work in a field that “serves as a cover for preparing for an operation.” 71) Exhibit ire at global policies of the U.S. 72) Balk at providing “complete personal information.” 73) Provide multiple names on rental car paperwork. 74) Receive an unusual number of package deliveries. 75) Replace rental property locks without permission. 76) Modify your property to conceal storage areas. 77) Fail to pay rent for a storage unit in a timely manner. 78) Inquire about security systems at your storage facility. 79) Place unusual items in storage units or dumpsters. 80) Avoid contact with rental facility personnel. 81) Access storage facilities an unusual number of times. 82) Request deliveries of items directly to a storage unit. 83) Be part of a group requesting identical tattoos. 84) Request tattoos that could conceal extremist symbols. 85) Fly while appearing to be Muslim on September 11 of any year. o0o###################o0o ===#########0o0##########=== The growing militarization of U.S. police Thousands of SWAT-type raids changing face of law enforcement http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/the-growing-militarization-of-u-s-police/ Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/the-growing-militarization-of-u-s-police/#28bGvltmyPVQxLre.99

Tunisia doing the work of the WEST. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tunisia Now Exporting ‘Jihadis’ to Syria by Giuliana Sgrena, April 09, 2013 Tunisian families have begun to dread knocks on their doors, or late-night phone calls, fearing that the messenger will bear the news that their son has been smuggled out of the country to join the “jihad” in Syria. Families here told IPS that they have no way of contacting their sons once they leave — whether by choice or coercion they will never know — for the warring nation nearly 3,000 miles away. At most, family members receive an inaudible telephone call from Libya, where the soon-to-be militants are trained, the muffled voice on the other end of the line saying a quiet and final goodbye. After that point, no news is good news. If they are contacted again, it will only be an anonymous caller announcing the death of a son, brother or husband, adding that the family should be proud of their martyred loved one. The next day, the family might find a CD, slipped under the door, containing filmed footage of the burial. There are no reliable data on exactly when young Tunisian men began rushing to join the Free Syrian Army, currently engaged in a battle to depose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but experts and civil society activists are agreed on one thing: the number is increasing. On Mar. 29, local sources reported that between 6,000 and 10,000 men have left the country, while the Algerian press say the number could be closer to 12,000. Families tell IPS the self-proclaimed jihadists leave in secret, often under cover of darkness, and change their names en route so that Facebook and internet searches yield no results. They believe mosques and charity organisations serve as fronts for this “recruitment” process. Widely considered the cradle of the Arab Spring, Tunisia has gained a reputation as a progressive country, bolstered by the strong democratic current that toppled former dictator Zine Abadine Ben Ali in January 2011. The election of the moderate Islamist party Ennahda in October 2011 further raised hopes that the country would stay on track towards a more inclusive future. But beneath the moderate veneer, a strong ultra-conservative undercurrent remained, steered by Salafist-controlled mosques – like Fath, Ennassr, Ettadhamen, and the great mosque of Ben Arous located on the outskirts of Tunis – that are now serving as headquarters for the smuggling of fighters. A true revolution is made by the people, not by jihadis coming from other countries. The imams of these mosques often hail from the Gulf and are skilled at convincing young men – who run the gamut from poor, uneducated Tunisians, to wealthy professionals — that they must “help their Syrian brothers” in the “jihad” against Assad. Charity organisations like Karama wa Horrya, Arrahma, Horrya wa Insaf, which provide basic humanitarian assistance to the poor, also play a role in this network that gathers able-bodied Tunisians, transports them to Libya and then, after a brief stop in Turkey, sends them onwards to the frontlines of the Syrian war such as the north-western border with Lebanon, and the city of Aleppo. Young fighters’ first point of contact in Syria is with the Jabhat al Nusra (meaning the ‘Support Front for the People of Syria’), considered the most aggressively militant arm of the FSA. Beyond these vague details, very little is known about the actual recruitment process. The only credible information comes from wounded jihadis who are sent back to Tunisia if their injuries have resulted in handicaps that render them unfit for battle. Most die in the fighting and those that return are often too afraid to speak of their experiences. Tunisian youth, who played a crucial role in the 2011 revolution here, have conflicting views about the Syrian uprising, and their countrymen’s participation in it. For some, like Semi Ghesmi, elected representative of the technological department of the National Student Union, Syrians are engaged in an outright jihad in the strictly religious sense of the term, meaning a battle between “good” Muslims and “kafirs”, or infidels. In this war, the FSA has the moral highground and must be supported. Others like Nassira, a student at the Manouba University in Tunis, say the Syrian conflict “is not a revolution like the Tunisian one”. In her opinion, a true revolution is “made by the people, not by jihadists coming from other Muslim countries”. She favours the Tunisian model, which was dictated not by a small circle of extremists but by the majority of the people. During the recent World Social Forum, held in Tunis from Mar. 26-30, the division between supporters and opponents of the Syrian rebels came to light when local participants burned FSA flags in the streets. Jihadis – or racketeers? Most families who spoke to IPS were too afraid to give their names, fearing reprisals. They suspect powerful and wealthy interests have a hand in the smuggling of fighters, since some families have received as much as 4,000 dollars in “payment” for each jihadi recruit. Those who spoke to IPS under condition of anonymity believe the recruiters themselves also receive a fee. Many denounced the government for allowing this “business” in human lives to thrive. A local journalist who has been investigating the process, but did not want to be identified by name, told IPS the government almost certainly makes money off this racket as well. Experts believe Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi’s statement, issued through the Ministry of Religion, that “we don’t suggest young people leave… but we have no right to prevent them” is tantamount to an admission that the government has no plans to put a stop to the practice, or apprehend those involved. Observers find further proof of the government’s complicity in an agreement, signed in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Dec. 11, 2011 by Ennahda’s Ghannouchi; Burhan Ghalioun, former chief of the Syrian National Council (SNC); and Mustafa Abdel Jalil, former chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), outlining plans to send weapons, along with Tunisian and Libyan jihadis, to Syria. The contents of the agreement were leaked to the public last year. Not content with recruiting only men, clerics have begun to urge women and girls – some as young as 14 years – to take up “jihad through marriage” by travelling to Syria to satisfy the sexual needs of anti-Assad forces. The phenomenon picked up speed after a Saudi religious scholar named Mohamed al-Arifi issued a fatwa in December 2012 allowing the “temporary marriage”, sometimes lasting just a few hours, of young girls to Syrian insurgents. Though he has subsequently revoked the edict, following a public outcry, the practice continues. Here again, numbers are impossible to pin down – but IPS has heard of several cases in the last three months of Tunisian teenage girls who have gone missing, which has sparked fears of a new form of religiously sanctioned sexual trafficking. This article was originally published at IPS News.

Freed Cuban spy seeks return for father's death http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014447868

Italian family's triple suicide 'blamed on government austerity measures which left them in huge debt' Couple hanged themselves at their home in Italian seaside town http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305362/Anna-Maria-Romeo-Dionisi-Italian-familys-triple-suicide-blamed-government-austerity-measures-left-huge-debt.html ===========================================================================

America Is Ruled by Billionaires, and They Are Coming After the Last Shreds of Our Democracy America is a plutocracy through and through — what are we going to do about it? CounterPunch / By Michael Brenner April 4, 2013 | Plutocracy literally means rule by the rich. “Rule” can have various shades of meaning: those who exercise the authority of public office are wealthy; their wealth explains why they hold that office; they exercise that authority in the interests of the rich; they have the primary influence over who holds those offices and the actions they take. These aspects of “plutocracy” are not exclusive. Government of the rich and for the rich need not berun directly by the rich. Also, in some exceptional circumstances rich individuals who hold powerful positions may govern in the interests of the many, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt. The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy – on a number of grounds. Let’s look at some striking bits of evidence. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80% of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2%, 65% to the upper 1 per cent. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 20% to 28 . In that period, real GDP has risen by 110 – it has more than doubled. To put it somewhat differently, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 8X more than those in the 60 percentile after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007; 10X those in lower percentiles. In short, the overwhelming fraction of all the wealth created over two generations has gone to those at the very top of the income pyramid. That pattern has been markedly accelerated since the financial crisis hit in 2008. Between 2000 and 2012, the real net worth of 90% of Americans has declined by 25%. Theoretically, there is the possibility that this change is due to structural economic features operating nationally and internationally. That argument won’t wash, though, for three reasons. First, there is no reason to think that such a process has accelerated over the past five years during which disparities have widened at a faster rate. Second, other countries (many even more enmeshed in the world economy) have seen nothing like the drastic phenomenon occurring in the United States. Third, the readiness of the country’s political class to ignore what has been happening, and the absence of remedial action that could have been taken, in themselves are clear indicators of who shapes thinking and determines public policy. In addition, several significant governmental actions have been taken that directly favor the moneyed interests. The latter include the dismantling of the apparatus to regulate financial activities specifically and big business generally. Runaway exploitation of the system by predatory banks was made possible by the Clinton “reforms” of the 1990s and the lax application of those rules that still prevailed. Attorney General Eric Holder just a few weeks ago went so far as to admit that the Department of Justice’s decisions on when to bring criminal charges against the biggest financial institutions will depend not on the question of legal violations alone but would include the hypothetical effects on economic stability of their prosecution. Earlier, Holder had extended blanket immunity to Bank of America and other mortgage lenders for their apparent criminality in forging, robo-signing, foreclosure documents on millions of home owners. In brief, equal protection and application of the law has been suspended. That is plutocracy. Moreover, the extreme of a regulatory culture that, in effect, turns public officials into tame accessories to financial abuse emerged in stark relief at the Levin Committee hearings on J P Morgan Chase’s ‘London Whale” scandal. Morgan officials stated baldly that they chose not to inform the Controller of the Currency about discrepancies in trading accounts, without the slightest regard that they might be breaking the law, in the conviction that it was Morgan’s privilege not to do so. Senior regulators explained that they did not see it as their job to monitor compliance or to check whether claims made by their Morgan counterparts were correct. They also accepted abusive treatment, e.g. being called “stupid” to their face by senior Morgan executives. That’s plutocracy at work. The Senate Finance Committee hearing drew only 3 senators – yet another sign of plutocracy at work. When mega-banks make illicit profits by money laundering for drug cartels and get off with a slap on the wrist, as has HSBC and others, that too is plutocracy. Continued from previous page When the system of law that is meant to order the workings of society without reference to ascriptive persons is made malleable in the hands of officials to serve the preferred interests of some, it ceases to be a neutral instrument for the common good. In today’s society, it is becoming the instrument of a plutocracy. There are myriad other examples of complicity between legislators or regulators, on the one hand, and special business interests on the other. EPA judgments that are reversed under the combined pressure of the commercial interests affected and beholden politicians is one. The government’s decision not to seek the power to bargain with pharmaceutical companies over the price of drugs paid for with public funds is another. Tolerance for the concealment of offshore profits in the tens of billions is a third. Relaxed interpretations of the tax laws by the IRS to the advantage of high income persons can be added to the list. So, too, can the give-away to sole source contractors of the tens of billions squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of such direct assists to big business and the wealthy is endless. The point is that government, at all levels, serves particular selfish interests no matter who holds high positions. While there is some difference between Republicans and Democrats on this score, it has narrowed on most major items to the point that the fundamental properties of the biased system are so entrenched as to be impervious to electoral outcomes. The most revealing experience that we have of that harsh reality is the Obama administration’s strategic decision to allow Wall Street to determine how and by whom the financial crisis would be handled. Systemic biases are the most crucial factor is creating and maintaining plutocratic orientations of government. They are confirmed, and reinforced, by the identities and identifications of the persons who actually hold high elected office. Our leaders are nearly all rich by any reasonable standard. Most are very rich. Those who weren’t have aspired to become so and have succeeded. The Clintons are the striking case in point. That aspiration is evinced in how they conduct themselves in office. Congress, for its part, is composed of two rich men/women’s clubs. In many cases, personal wealth helped win them their offices. In many others, they knit ties with lobbies that provided the necessary funds. Whether they are “bought off” in some sense or other, they surely are often coopted. The most insidious aspect of cooptation is to see the world from the vantage point of the advantaged and special economic interests. The devolution of the Democratic Party from being the representative of ordinary people to being just “another bunch of guys” is a telling commentary on how American politics has degenerated into a plutocracy. The party’s rolling over to accommodate the interests of the wealthy has been a theme of the past four years. From the Obama White House to the halls of Congress, party leaders (and most followers) have conceded the dominance of conservative ideas about macro-economic strategy (the austerity dogma), about retaining largely untouched the for-profit health care “non-system,” about bailing out the big financial players as the expense of everyone else and the economy’s stability, about degrading Social Security and Medicare. The last item is the most egregious – and revealing – of our plutocratic ways and means. For it entails a combination of intellectual deceit, blatant massaging of the numbers, and disregard for the human consequences in a time of growing distress for tens of millions. In other words, there is no way to conceal or spin the trade-offs made, who was being hurt and who would continue to enjoy the advantages of skewed fiscal policies. Continued from previous page There is another, absolutely crucial dimension to the consolidation of America’s plutocracy. It is controlling the means to shape how the populace understands public matters and, thereby, to channel thought and behavior in the desired direction. Our plutocratic guides, prophets and trainers have been enormously successful in accomplishing this. One object of their efforts has been to render the media into either conscious allies or to denature them as critics or skeptics. Their success is readily visible. Who has challenged the plutocracy serving falsehood that Social Security and Medicare are the main cause of our deficits whose imminent bankruptcy puts in jeopardy the American economy? Who even bothers to inform the public that those two programs’ trust funds draw on a separate revenue source from the rest of the budget? Answer: no one in or near the mainstream media. Who has performed the most elementary service in pointing out that of all the jobs created since 2009, small as the number has been, 60% at least have been either part-time or temporary? Answer: again, no one. Who has bothered to highlight the logical flaws in the market fundamentalist view of the world that has so deformed perceptions of what works and doesn’t work in macro-economic management? Yes, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and a handful of others – although even Krugman’s colleagues writing on business and economics at the NYT seem not to have the time to read him or else lack the wit to comprehend what he is saying. A second objective in a similar vein has been to dominate the think tank/foundation world. Today, nearly every major Washington think tank depends on corporate money. Businessmen sit on the boards and shape research programs. Peter G. Peterson, the hedge fund billionaire, took the more direct route of acquiring the International Institute of Economics, renaming it after himself. He then set about using it as in instrument to carry on the campaign against Social Security which has become his life’s work. Then there is Robert Rubin. Rubin is the distilled essence of financial malpractice, and the embodiment of the government-Wall Street nexus that brought the country to wrack and ruin. Author of Clinton’s deregulation program while Secretary of the Treasury: later super lobbyist and Chairman of CITI bank in the years before it was pulled from the brink of bankruptcy by Ben Bernanke, Paulson and Tim Geithner; and adviser to Barack Obama who stocked the new administration with Rubin protégés. He since has ensconced himself as Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and Director of the highly prestigious, lavishly funded Hamilton Project at Brookings. By happenstance, both organizations late last year featured presentations by Jaime Dimon. The one billed as a forum for a leading global CEO to share priorities and insights before a high-level audience of CFR members. That is plutocracy in action. The third objective has been to weaken public education. We have witnessed the assault on our public elementary school system in the name of effectiveness, efficiency and innovation. Charter schools are the watchword. Teachers are the heart of the problem. So privatization, highly profitable privitization, is sold as the solution to save America’s youth in the face of ample evidence to the contrary. Cast aside is the historical truth that our public school system is the one institution, above all others, that made American democracy. It also is a bastion of enlightened social thinking. It thereby qualifies as a target. The same for the country’s proud network of public universities. From state to state, they are starved for funding and made sacrificial lambs on the altar of the austerity cult. They, too, are stigmatized as “behind the times,” as no longer doing the job of supplying the business world with the obedient, practical skilled workers it wants. Business schools, long a dependency of the corporate world, as held up as the model for private-public partnership in higher education. Distance learning, often managed by for-profit ‘expert” consultants or “entrepreneurs”, is advertised as the wave a bright future – a future with fewer liberal-leaning professors with fuzzy ideas about the good society. Distance learning is the higher education companion to the charter school fad. Lots of promises, little delivery but well conceived to advance a plutocracy friendly agenda. Continued from previous page Here, too, boards of regents are led by business men or women. The abortive coup at the University of Virginia was instigated by the Rector who is a real estate developer in Virginia Beach. The Chairman of the Board of Regents at the University of Texas system where tensions are at a combustible level is a real estate developer. The Chairman at the University of California is CEO of two private equity firms – and the husband of Senator Diane Feinstein. His pet project was to have the moneys of the California teacher’s pension fund placed in the custody of private financial houses. Two former directors of the fund currently are under criminal investigation for taking very large kick-backs from other private equity firms to whom they directed monies – and which later employed them as ‘placers.’ That’s plutocracy at work. The ultimate achievement of a plutocracy is to legitimize itself by fixing in the minds of society the idea that money is the measure of all things. It represents achievement, it is the sine qua non for giving people the material things they want. It is the gauge of an individual’s worth. It is the mark of status in a status anxious culture. That way of seeing the world describes the outlook of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. It is Obama who, at the height of the financial meltdown, lauded Jaime Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein as “savvy and successful businessmen.” It is Obama who eagerly became Dimon’s golfing buddy – an Obama who twice in his career took jobs with corporate law firms. It was Bill Clinton who has been flying the world in corporate jets for the past twelve years. It is the two of them who promoted Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to press for the crippling of Social Security. That’s plutocracy pervading the leadership ranks in both parties of what used to be the American republic. Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of the plutocracy’s financial wing has been to win acceptance from the country’s entire political class that its largely speculative activities are normal. Indeed, they are credited with being the economy’s principal engine of growth. It follows that their well-being is crucial to the well-being of the national economy and, therefore, they should be given privileged treatment. The American version of plutocracy is noteworthy for its crassness. Subtlety, discretion and restraint are foreign to it. It has a buccaneering quality. That style has roots in the country’s history and culture. Much of the behavior is impulsive, grasping. Individuals are greedy for vivid displays that they are top dog, of what they can get away with, as well as the riches themselves. There is little interest in building anything that might endure – no ‘new order,’ no new party, no new institutions. Not even physical monuments to themselves. Why bother when the existing set-up works so well to your advantage, to that of your like-minded and like-interested associates – when you can turn ideas, policies and money in your direction with ease. And while the public is blind to how they are being deluded and abused. After all, the more things appear to stay the same, the more they can change in a country whose civic ideology imbues everyone with the firm belief that its principles and institutions embody a unique virtue. To challenge any of that would be to run the risk of raising consciousness – which is the last thing that the plutocrats want. There are exceptions. The most stunning is Wall Street’s biggest players’ audacity in co-opting a part of the NYC Police Department in setting up a semi-autonomous unit to monitor the financial district. Funded by Goldman Sachs et. al., managed by private ban employees in key administrative positions, and with an explicit mandate to prevent, as well as to deal with any activity that threatens them, it operates with the latest high tech equipment out of a dedicated facility provided by its sponsors. The facility for years was kept “under the counter” so as not to tempt inquisitive parties to expose it. This is the unit that coordinated the squelching of theOccupy movement’s Manhattan demonstrations. It represents the appropriation of a public agency to serve and to serve under private interests. The post-9/11 hyper-anxiety provided political and ideological cover for a deal devised by Mayor Mike Bloomberg (himself a Wall Street billionaire who has gone down the line to defend it against all charges of financial abuse) in collusion with his former associates. Is this simply Bloomberg registering NYC’s fiscal dependency on financial sector jobs? Well, this is the same Bloomberg who killed a widely supported initiative to set a minimum decent wage of $10 an hour with health insurance ($11.50 without) on development projects that receive more than $1 million in taxpayer subsidies. He stigmatized the measure as “a throwback to the era when government viewed the private sector as a cash cow to be milked…. The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR and that didn’t work out so well.” That’s as plutocratic as it gets – and in liberal New York. Continued from previous page Furthermore, the moving forces of the plutocracy are not very organized. There is no conspiracy as such. It is the convergence of outlook among disparate persons in different parts of the system that has accomplished the revolution in American public life, public discourse, and public philosophy. Nobody had to indoctrinate Barack Obama in 2008-2009 or intimidate him or bribe him. He came to the plutocrats on his own volition with his mind-set and values already in conformity with the plutocracy’s view of itself and of America. This is the man who, for the first two years of his presidency, repeatedly misstated the coverage of the Social Security Act of 1935 – ignorant and not bothering to find out or willfully ignorant so as to create a convenient comparison with his fatally flawed health care pseudo-plan. This was the man, after all, who cited Ronald Reagan as model for what sort of presidency American needed. He has been living proof of how effectively Americans had been brought into line with the plutocratic vision. This is not to say that the plutocrats’ success was inevitable – or that they were diabolically clever in manipulating everything and everyone to their advantage. There has been a strong element of good fortune in their victory. Their most notable piece of luck has been the ineptitude and shortsightedness of their potential opposition – liberal Democrats, intellectuals, and their like. The plutocrats pursued their goals is a disorganized, diffuse way. However, the absence of an opponent on the contested terrain assured success. As to cleverness, the American plutocracy is actually a stupid plutocracy. First, it is overreaching. Far better to leave a few goodies on the table for the 99% and even a few crumbs for the 47% than to risk generating resentment and retaliation. Since the financial meltdown, financial and business interests have been unable to resist picking the pockets of the weak. Fishing out the small change in the wake of grand larceny is rubbing salt into wounds. Why fight a small rise in the minimum wage? Why ruthlessly exploit all those temps and part-timers who have so little in the way of economic power anyway? Why squeeze every last buck from the small depositors and credit card holders whom you already systematically fleece? In the broad perspective, that sort of behavior is stupid. To explain it, we must look to the status compulsions of America’s audacious corporate freebooters. These peculiar traits grow more intense the higher one goes in the hierarchy of riches. One is the impulse to show to everybody your superiority by displaying what you can get away with. “Sharp dealing” always has been prized by segments of American society. It’s the striving, insecure man who has to prove to the world – and to himself – that he can act with impunity. He is little different from the hoodlum showing off to his pals and to his moll. These people at heart are hustlers – they crave the thrill of pulling off a scam, not constructing something. Hence, Lloyd Blankfein not showing up for White House meetings yet having Obama thank him for letting the president know, albeit after the meeting already had begun, that Blankfein can’t make it. Hence, Jaime Dimon indignantly protesting his verbal mistreatment by the press, by the White House, by whomever. Then there is Jack Welch, the titan of American industry who struts sitting down, who holds the Guinness record for the most manufacturing jobs outsourced by one company – and yet impudently calls Barack Obama “anti-business” after the president appoints his hand-picked successor, Jeffrey Immelt, to head the White House’s Job Council. Or Bank of America’s faking compliance with the sweetheart deal it got from Obama on the felonious foreclosure scam. Continued from previous page The ultimate episode of egregious lawlessness is the MF Holdings affair – whereby under its chief, former Senator and Governor Jon Corzine, this hedge fund took the illegal action of looting a few billion from custodial accounts to cover losses incurred in its proprietary trading. JP Morgan, which held MF Global funds in several accounts and also processed the firm’s securities trades, resisted transferring the funds to MF’s customers until forced to by legal action. Punitive action: none. Why? The Justice Department and regulatory bodies came up with the lame excuse that the MF group’s decision-making was so opaque that they could not determine whose finger clicked the mouse. To pull capers like these and get off scot free, without chastisement, is the ultimate ego trip. Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber of the 1940s, explained his targeting banks this way: “that’s where the money is.” Today’s financial swindlers go after the high risk gambles because that’s where the biggest kicks are. That is more important than the biggest bucks – although they add to the thrill. For the ever status striving, identity insecure financial baron is a compulsive gambler. He needs his fixes. Of winning, of celebrity, of respect. Of deference. All are transitory, though. For American culture provides few insignia of rank. No ‘Sirs,’ no seats in the House of Lords, no rites of passage that separate the heralded elite from all the rest. Oblivion shadows the most famous and acclaimed. Thus, the grasping for whatever badges of regard are within reach – however ludicrous they might be. When IR Magazine awarded JPMorgan the prize for “best crisis management” of 2012 for its handling of the London Whale trading debacle, at a black-tie awards ceremony in Manhattan, Morgan executives were there to express their appreciation, rather than bow out gracefully. The only Wall Street personage who has played the celebrity game without being marginalized in the public mind is Robert Rubin. Through nimbleness and political connection he has semi-institutionalized his celebrity status. Yes, there is Paul Volcker – but that is another world all together. His stature is built on an unmatched record of service to the commonweal and unchallenged integrity. The Blankfeins and Dimons and Welchs not only lack the critical attributes – they also lack the sense of what it means to serve the public from which they habitually distance themselves. The plutocrats’ compulsive denigration of the poor, the ill and the dispossessed is perhaps the most telling evidence of status obsession linked to insecurity that is at the core of their social personality. They find it necessary to stigmatize the latter as at best failures, at worst as moral degenerates – drug addicts, lazy, parasites, in part to highlight their superiority and in part to blur the human consequences of their rapacity. Behavior of this kind is the antithesis of what could be the cultivated image of the statesman of commerce – even though they pay a price in public esteem. They also pay in price in terms of the other aspect of their own self-image. Second, Americans have a craving to believe in their own virtue – as well as to have others recognize it. The perverse pride in beating the system cannot in and of itself compensate for the feeling that you’re a bad guy. Blankfein again: “I have been doing the Lord’s work.” No one laughs in public – so I’m right about that. Dimon swaggering through the Council On Foreign Relations or Brookings with the huddled masses in his audience – and on the dais – beaming their adulation as they bask in his fame and thirst for his wisdom on the great affairs of the world. Perhaps, his views on whether the BRICS can rig the LIBOR rate with the connivance of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve – or ignore regulatory reporting rules when they threaten to reveal a madcap scheme that loses $6 billion? Continued from previous page Plutocracy in the current American style is having pernicious effects that go beyond the dominant influence of the rich on the nation’s economy and government. It is setting precedents and modeling the unaccountability and irresponsibility that is pervading executive power throughout the society. Two successive presidential administrations and two decades of rogue behavior by corporate elites have set norms now evident in institutions as diverse as universities and think tanks, the military and professional associations. The cumulative result is a widespread degrading of standards in the uses and abuses of power. Plutocracy also raises social tensions in society. Logically, the main line of tension should be between the plutocrats and the rest – or, at least, between them and all those with modest means. But that is not the case in the United States. While it is true that there were bitter words about the Wall Street moguls and their bailouts during the first year or so after the financial collapse, it never became the main line of political division. Today, outrage has abated and politics is all about austerity and debts rather than the distribution of wealth and the power that goes along with it.The deep-seated sense of anxiety and grievance that pervades the populace manifests in outbreaks of hostile competition among groups who are in fact themselves all victims of the plutocrats’ success in grabbing for themselves most of the country’s wealth – thereby leaving the rest of us to fight for the leftovers. So, it is private sector employees pitted against government employees because the latter have (some) health insurance, some pension and some security relative to the former who have been shorn of all three. It’s parents worried about their kids’ education against teachers. Both against cash strapped local authorities. Municipalities vs states. It’s the small businessman against unions and health insurance requirements. It’s doctors against patients against administrators. It’s university administrators against faculty and against students, faculty against students in competing for a much reduced appropriations. It’s all of those against boards of regents and state governors. It’s everyone frustrated by the ever sharpening contrast between hopes and aspirations and darkening realities of what they might expect for themselves and their children. Meanwhile, the folks at the top wait confidently and expectantly above the fray they have engineered – ever ready to swoop down to strip the remains of combat by way of privatized public assets, no-bid contracts, tax and regulatory havens, commercially owned toll roads, student loan monopolies, rapacious buying up of foreclosed properties with federal incentives, and myriad tax breaks. President Obama used his State of the Union Address to send the message loud and clear. “Let me put colleges and universities on notice” he warned, “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” He thereby set forth a line of reasoning that put him on the same wavelength as Rick Perry. For the reality is the exact opposite. It is because funding has gone down by 2/3 over the past few decades that colleges and universities are obliged to raise tuition – despite flat-lining faculty and staff salaries. This is the essence of intellectual conditioning to the plutocracy’s self-serving dogma and the suborning of public authorities by the plutocracy. Beyond capture, it is assimilation. Does this sort of perverse pride go before the fall? No sign of that happening yet. Plutocracy in America is more likely to be our destiny. The growing dynastic factor operating within the financial plutocracy militates in that direction. Wealth itself has always been transferred from one generation to another, of course; reduced inheritance taxes along with lower rates at upper income brackets generally accentuate that tendency. With socio-economic mobility in American society slipping, it gains further momentum. Something approaching a caste identity is forming among the financial elites – as personified by Jaime Dimon who is the third generation of Wall Street stockbrokers/financial managers in his family – his father an Executive Director at American Express where the young Dimon joined forces with Sandy Weill. As a revealing coda to this generational tale, Dimon, last year, hired his 81 year old father to work for JP Morgan Chase. His father’s first-year salary was $447,000; slated to rise to $1.6 million – now that he has some work experience under his belt, presumably. A sense of limits is not part of the financial plutocracy’s persona. Continued from previous page All that has been recounted here is on the public record. Facts are facts; the inferred attitudes of the plutocracy are confirmed by an abundance of data – including the players’ own statements. The consequences analyzed are also a matter of public record. The tepid reaction should be no surprise; that is exactly what is to be expected in a plutocracy. So what is to be done? Rectify the sins of commission by rescinding them and those of omission by restoring responsible, enlightened policies. A model? How about 1974? Inglorious year, but….Richard Nixon was well to the ‘Left’ of Barack Obama – civil liberties included; corporate power, especially that of big finance, was kept in check by effective regulation; and the integrity of American institutions was a paramount concern of most elected officials and the political elite in general. The Word awaits…but The script is small The preacher is blind The audience is deaf And the echoes ricochet off bare walls soundlessly

911blogger Debunking The Real 9/11 Myths: Part 9: Larry Silverstein and Barry Jennings Posted by RL McGee on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 1:05pm Barry Jennings Larry Silverstein Popular Mechanics http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/748-debunking-the-... Editor’s note: This is Part 9 of an extensive report by 9/11 researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by the editors of Popular Mechanics (PM) in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold. * Larry Silverstein’s “Pull It” Quote * Analysis of Larry Silverstein’s statements about WTC7 reveals that they do not match the sequence of events that occurred on 9/11 PM’s next section deals with another controversial issue in the debate regarding WTC7 – the infamous quote from WTC7 owner Larry Silverstein regarding the building’s destruction. For reference, here is Silverstein’s full quote from his interview with PBS: “I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” And they made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse.”1 PM’s book says that “pull it” is not a term generally used in the demolition industry, meaning that it is unlikely that Silverstein was referring to demolishing Building 7. It also notes that Silverstein’s spokesperson later explained he was discussing pulling the firefighters from the building, when he spoke of “the decision to pull.” Although I cannot say with certainty what the meaning of Silverstein’s remark was, there are a number of undeniable facts that should be further investigated. Silverstein claims he spoke with the NYC “fire department commander” on 9/11, which was Chief Daniel Nigro. However, Daniel Nigro has confirmed that he did not speak to Silverstein on 9/11: 1. “I am well aware of Mr. Silverstein’s statement, but to the best of my recollection, I did not speak to him on that day, and I do not recall anyone telling me that they did either. That doesn’t mean he could not have spoken to someone from FDNY; it just means that I am not aware of it.”2 2. To date, not a single member of the FDNY has corroborated Silverstein’s story. When members of the group We Are Change confronted Silverstein about his comments, he commented that he received the call from the FDNY at around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m.3 However, according to the NIST report of WTC7, the decision to pull the firefighters away from the area surrounding Building 7 occurred at 2:30 p.m.4 This clearly contradicts Silverstein’s account of events. 3. According to mainstream journalist and 9/11 eyewitness Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, Silverstein discussed demolishing Building 7 on 9/11 with his insurance carrier. This report was sourced not by FDNY officials but by NYPD officers and ConEd employees. Bizarrely, Shapiro seems to think that his claim exonerates Silverstein and that it somehow removes the mystery about how the building came down symmetrically and in freefall without explosives.5 The fact of the matter is that we may never know what part Silverstein may have played in WTC7’s collapse until a real investigation is launched. As noted by the website RememberBuilding7.org, “As part of a new investigation, Mr. Silverstein should be questioned under oath about the conversation he had with the fire department commander, who should also be called to testify.”6 Shapiro, the witnesses he spoke with, and Larry Silverstein’s insurance carriers should also be questioned under oath. Barry Jennings While the cause of 9/11 survivor Barry Jennings’ death in 2008 has not been verified, his testimony about explosions in WTC7 lives on, despite the criticism of Popular Mechanics While PM’s next section regarding 9/11 survivor Barry Jennings may be true in some areas, it is completely false in others. Jennings, the former Deputy Director of the Emergency Services Department for the New York City Housing Authority, died in August 2008, although no official cause of death was provided. PM refers to various internet postings made by someone claiming to be Barry Jennings’ son, who states that he was with his father when he died of leukemia. However, the identity of the individual who made these postings has not been verified for authenticity. This section of PM’s book is clearly meant to play on the emotions of the reader, in order to make it seem that members of the 9/11 Truth movement have been insulting and disrespectful to the memory of Jennings. But beyond the obvious appeal to emotion PM uses in this section, it also claims that Barry Jennings’ death was not the result of foul play. However, it is completely obvious that PM cherry-picked this issue in regards to Jennings and thereby avoided more the important issues. The most important issue raised by members of the 9/11 Truth movement in regards to Barry Jennings is that he was one of the last people rescued from inside WTC7 on 9/11, and that while in the building Jennings claimed to have heard and experienced explosions. PM devotes two paragraphs to this issue. In 2007, Jennings, the father of four, gave an interview to the producers of Loose Change, alleging that he heard “explosions” in Building 7 before it collapsed. “I’m just confused about why World Trade Center 7 went down in the first place,” he says on camera. “I know what I heard. I heard explosions.” In that instant, Jennings became conspiracy theorists’ sole eyewitness for a Building 7 controlled demolition scenario… NIST’s analysis of the emergency response at the World Trade Center alludes to Jennings’s story, and provides a timeline suggesting the “explosions” he heard were actually the collapse of WTC1 roughly 300 feet away, along with the subsequent debris damage to Building 7. Jennings backed off his claims during a 2008 interview with the BBC, saying he “didn’t like the way (he) was portrayed” in the film. He added, “I didn’t appreciate that, so I told them to pull my interview.” (pg. 81) PM claims Jennings was the sole eyewitness to report explosions at WTC 7, ignoring the testimony of Air Force medic Kevin McPadden (above) and others PM refers to Barry Jennings as the sole witness to explosions in connection with the destruction of Building 7, when in fact that is completely untrue. There are several other individuals who claimed to have heard explosions right before and during the time Building 7 collapsed, including first responders Kevin McPadden7 and Craig Bartmer8. Furthermore, Michael Hess9, the former Corporation Counsel for New York City was trapped with Barry Jennings in Building 7, and he also claimed to have heard explosions inside the building. Hess has since retracted this claim. In any case, several people claimed to have heard explosions when WTC7 collapsed, and PM’s characterization of Barry as the sole eyewitness is flatly untrue. NIST’s analysis… provides a timeline suggesting the “explosions” he heard were actually the collapse of WTC1 The NIST analysis which PM discusses states that Barry Jennings and Michael Hess were rescued at around 12:00 to 12:15 p.m. However, as David Ray Griffin has demonstrated, the time Hess and Jennings were likely rescued was well before noon10, meaning that NIST’s timeline is inaccurate and that the explosions that Jennings and Hess said they experienced could not have been the result of debris from the collapse of the North Tower. Why did PM not also thoroughly examine NIST’s timeline of events and attempt to determine whether the PM timeline is consistent with it? Jennings backed off his claims during a 2008 interview with the BBC This claim is by far PM’s most dishonest one. Barry Jennings retracted only one aspect of his testimony to the Loose Change producers, and that was his claim that he stepped over dead bodies as he was rescued from the building. However, he never retracted his statement about hearing the explosions in WTC 7. But PM dishonestly portrays Jennings as if he retracted his entire testimony.11 1Quoted from: 2Quoted from: http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3440364&postcount=1 3See: http://911blogger.com/node/14361 4See: NIST NCSTAR 1-9, pg. 303 5See: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/22/jeffrey-scott-shapiro-jesse-ve... 6Quoted from: http://rememberbuilding7.org/silverstein-statement/ 7See: 8See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtX4xWV2q6k 9See: 10See: http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080918031403456 11For Jennings’ testimony to the Loose Change producers, see: http://blip.tv/i-am-dylan-avery/barry-jennings-uncut-1071126 For Jennings’ testimony to the BBC regarding his so-called “retraction,” see:

'Tunisia may need a second revolution' http://www.thenation...cond-revolution (WHAT DIRECTION WILL THAT BE ?) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Is Tunisia the New Hot Spot for Energy Investors? Interview with John Nelson Author: James Stafford · April 5th, 2013 Until recently Tunisia was considered to be a minor league and relatively underexplored venue in Africa’s rapidly expanding oil & gas scene. This situation has quickly changed with new bid rounds and forced relinquishments creating an opportunity for new companies to come in. Major American E & P companies like Shell have jumped at the opportunity to acquire ground that had been dominated for decades with little to no work conducted, mostly by European State oil & gas companies in this former French protectorate. For the first time major spending has been committed to test Tunisian basins which are arguably equally prolific as those in neighbouring environments with more work performed, such as Libya. Tunisia is now in focus for investors because exploration is increasing within the producing Pelagian Basin, which leads us to ask the following questions: Should Tunisia now be on energy investors watch list? Is Shell just the start of “big oil” making inroads into the country? And which are the plays that people should be watching? To help us look at the developing situation in the region we managed to speak with oil industry veteran John Nelson. John Nelson is CEO of Canadian-listed Africa Hydrocarbons Inc. (NFK). A veteran geologist, Nelson spent much of his career in East and Central Africa—much of it for Mobil Oil–studying regional and mapping rift basins at a time when no one else was shopping around in Africa’s interior. Over his 27 years in the industry, Nelson has also had junior E & P experience, recently serving as CEO for Lion Energy Corp., which was bought out by Africa Oil Corp ‘AOI’ in 2011 as a way for AOI to gain access to their impressive Kenyan land package that John had put together. Africa Hydrocarbons Inc has a 47.5% interest in the Bouhajla Block, located onshore Tunisia and surrounded by major Shell Oil. James Stafford: Is Tunisia right now a venue for the juniors or majors, and what makes Tunisia a good venue for small companies? John Nelson: There is a good cross-section of different sized oil companies exploring and operating in Tunisia. Some of the majors are present such as ENI, Total, CNOOC and Shell; however, most of the activity is with the smaller companies. Junior companies can be very successful on projects that may not meet the economic threshold of the majors, but can propel juniors quickly to mid-tier producers. This makes Tunisia a good place for smaller companies to explore. The basins in Tunisia are well established and understood. Services for seismic and drilling are available. There is a capable work force and French rule of law. Infrastructure in the way of roads and pipelines can be found across the country. Fiscal terms are good and the government is stable and reasonable to deal with. There are a number of smaller Canadian companies already there. James Stafford: Can you tell us a bit about Tunisia’s potential. What is the biggest field and what are the best exploration prospects? John Nelson: There is a lot of geological diversity in Tunisia which creates a number of different play types to explore for. The biggest onshore oil field is the Sidi el Kilani field in north central Tunisia. This field has produced over 50 Million barrels of light sweet crude from a small number of wells. In fact it is the similarities in Africa Hydrocarbon’s targets to Sidi el Kilani that got me interested enough in the “home run” size of the first drillable target, to decide to come and run this company. James Stafford: How does the geology compare to East Africa and the East Africa Rift System? John Nelson: The geology of Tunisia is not exactly like that of the great Tertiary rift system of east Africa. There are of course some geological similarities on a smaller scale where extension has caused the formation of horst and graben structures in some areas of Tunisia. In general what we are looking for is actually arguably more straight forward. James Stafford: What’s the business atmosphere right now in Tunisia? John Nelson: Business as usual. We have not seen any significant risks or changes in business practices since we have been involved there. In terms of North Africa, Tunisia is probably at the top as a jurisdiction in which to do business, and stability of the politics, etc. The economy seems to be doing well. There is construction going on in many of the cities. The country has not suffered at the same level from debt and poor fiscal mgmt like some of the Eurozone countries on the northern Mediterranean side. The country, like many countries these days, has unemployment issues especially with the younger generation. James Stafford: So if Big Oil is not looking in Tunisia, how does that help NFK? John Nelson: It is hard to compete against majors when it comes to acquiring sizeable acreage and making commitments. It allows smaller companies to cost effectively get positioned and undertake exploration initiatives. However, if a significant discovery is made then Big Oil may appear back on the scene to partner with or acquire small companies like NFK. Shell Oil surrounds our Block now but we were there first and were able to position ourselves with over 130,000 acres. James Stafford: Africa Hydrocarbons has a nice piece of contiguous acreage in Tunisia. Can you tell us a bit about the two blocks in question and where you are right now in the exploration process? John Nelson: We have a 47.5% interest in two adjoining concessions, the Bouhajla and Ktititir blocks, located in north central Tunisia and only 25 kms west of the Sidi el Kilani oil field. The blocks were acquired approximately 3 years ago when the govt made them available for bidding after being off the market for over 25 years. Our local partners were there first, and that is the opportunity. James Stafford: What are you chasing here? Conventional or unconventional plays? What do you think you’ll hit with drilling? John Nelson: We have several conventional type prospects and leads on our blocks and that is what we will be targeting initially. Our first well will be testing a fractured carbonate chalk reservoir, which is very similar to what is found producing at Sidi el Kilani. Last year, Shell acquired a large land position around us and have committed to spending over $150MM on their blocks. We have heard that Shell and others have an interest in testing shale (also called “unconventional”) plays within the region. The possibility for an unconventional play type also exists on our acreage but we have chosen what we believe is the “low hanging fruit” to target first. James Stafford: You’ve mentioned before the ability to “de-risk” exploration and development in Tunisia. Can you take us through the math here and demonstrate the economic feasibility of operating in Tunisia? John Nelson: Our situation is somewhat unique compared to many others in Tunisia or exploring in other remote parts of Africa. Only 25 kms from our block is the facility and pipeline for the Sidi el Kilani oil field. The facility was built to handle up to 25,000 bbls/d but now is only handling 1000 bbls/d. So there is much excess capacity in this nearby facility. There is also a pipeline in place from the field all the way to the port facility on the coast that is also under-utilized. That means it won’t take much time or money to get any future production on stream. As a result, we can still be profitable in the event of a smaller discovery size due to the infrastructure already being in place. It also allows the option to truck oil to the facility to obtain some cash flow while onsite facilities and a short pipeline are built to Sidi el Kilani if we make a discovery. In other words if we are successful on our first well next month, we should be able to start cash flowing very very quickly. James Stafford: Do you need a major operator in there like Tullow with Africa Oil in Kenya? What happens if you make a discovery? Can you develop it cost-effectively? John Nelson: In our situation we do not need the expertise or deep pockets of a large partner. In the event of a discovery we would be able to adequately finance a development project. We anticipate that fewer than five wells would be needed to optimize drainage of our first target area, which is substantially larger than the area of production of 50 million barrels at Sidi el Kilani James Stafford: How does the cost of drilling wells compare in Tunisia, Kenya, Somalia …? John Nelson: Our costs to drill a 2500m well is in the area of $7 million. The cost seems excessive compared to drilling costs in North America, but on an international scale it is reasonable. This actually isn’t very deep, and given the size of the target, not very expensive. We also have easy terrain and a network of roads in our area of Tunisia. Access is pretty easy and services are relatively close if needed. In more remote projects such as in Puntland, Kenya, Ethiopia or other areas far from infrastructure, the drilling cost of a similar well may be well over $50MM. James Stafford: Outside of Tunisia, where should smaller companies be looking? Can you rank the prospects for us here in terms of junior capabilities and potential? John Nelson: Juniors provide a valuable service to the industry by often being the first entrants into a new area or applying new technology to older areas. There are niches in most parts of the world. Myanmar is opening up. New opportunities may now come up in Venezuela. The rift basins of Niger, Chad and Sudan are attracting new investment. The new discoveries off of Israel are opening up a lot of new exploration initiatives there that look quite attractive. There is not so much a shortage of ideas and opportunities as there is a shortage of capital to pursue them. James Stafford: We understand that you have experience in Somalia—specifically in Puntland. Can you debunk any myths about working in Somalia and take us through the challenges? John Nelson: There were a lot of concerns about security issues both onshore Puntland as well as piracy in the offshore. It took a lot of careful planning to mitigate much of the risk. Local communities were engaged, informed and employed. Our security people worked with the govt and contractors to remove any possible threats along transportation routes. The airstrip and drilling camp were well protected. In the end, all the people and equipment were mobilized and the drilling took place without incident. James Stafford: What about Ethiopia and Eritrea? Eritrea seems open for business now after preferring to focus on its mineral resources for so long–and thanks to the new technology on the scene–and it’s got Red Sea territory that is virtually unexplored. John Nelson: Eritrea has been slow to open up to oil and gas exploration despite a fairly high level of interest. New laws and policy changes move slowly in many parts of Africa. Eritrea has been explored in the past and there are known oil seeps there. No major discoveries have been made yet. James Stafford: How do you view prospects in Ethiopia, as a possible extension of finds in Kenya? John Nelson: Ethiopia has a variety of play types throughout the country that are soon to be drilled. Africa Oil is currently drilling in SW Ethiopia along the Tertiary rift trend that extends north of Kenya. They may make the first significant oil discovery for Ethiopia in that area. James Stafford: How close are we to commercial viability in Kenya, and what do you think the next year to year and a half will show? John Nelson: Tullow and Africa Oil are close to determining commerciality. The recent testing suggests the rates and accumulations may be sufficient. Some additional drilling success in some of the other sub-basins on their acreage in blocks 10BA and 10BB as well as in Ethiopia will help initiate further development decisions. There is a lot of drilling and testing to be done over the next couple years. I am pretty sure the results will lead to major infrastructure plans for the area. It will take time–years–due to the remoteness and current lack of infrastructure in the area as well as political involvement of neighbouring countries. James Stafford: So what can we expect by the end of the year from Africa Hydrocarbons? What do potential investors need to know? John Nelson: We anticipate drilling our first well in April and should know the results in May. In over 27 years, I haven’t seen many wells with this kind of risk-reward—a $7 million well that is geologically so similar to a proven field only 25 km away where one well produced more than 20 million barrels. We have worked up the target with 2-D and 3-D seismic that are remarkably clear, and that give us what we call in the business a “play chance” that is much much higher than your typical International exploration well. Usually with a target this size you are looking at a 10%-15% chance of success – we have heard our chances rated by third parties between 28% and into the low 30% chance of success. This is actually a geometric difference in probabilities – really an order of magnitude. With success on our first well, we would look to start production from Bouhajla North, and follow in that area by preparing to penetrate the reservoir again with new wells. We would also establish a reserve and resource calculation to highlight the size of the produceable reservoir in that area. Concurrently we would develop an inventory of prospects all over our acreage which we would develop with additional seismic programs. Real success just on our first well would turn us from an explorer into an intermediate producer immediately. James Stafford: What happens if you hit—what kind of NPV do we get compared to current market cap. John Nelson: Well James, if we don’t hit we are backstopped by cash in the treasury as well as our land position and additional targets which we would then set our sights on. But with a discovery similar to a Sidi el Kilani well, our NPV10 based on our 47.5% working interest would be close to $100MM, which is about 10 times the current market capitalization of the company of $9 million – we will know within 8 weeks. . James Stafford: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us John. This piece is cross-posted from Oil Price.com with permission ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GEE IM GOING WITH USA OIL COMPANIES ON MIDDLE EASTERN FOREIGN POLICY ....and not COLBY. THE WEST WILL MOVE IN......WITH TUNISIA PROTECTING THE PIPELINES WITH WESTERN WEAPONS. COLBY TOTALLY WRONG ON THIS WHOLE THREAD.