Stop! Watch this. From the FED celebration at Jekyll Island over the weekend. Bernanke looks uncomfortable as Greenspan admits the truth. Runs 50 seconds.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Mystery Missile Launch
LOS ANGELES — A mysterious "missile" streaked across the sky off the Southern California coast Monday night and was caught on video by a local TV station's helicopter camera.
KCBS reported the trail was visible from Los Angeles. The station's helicopter crew described the missile's location as 35 miles out to sea north of Catalina Island.
Senior Pentagon and Navy officials told NBC News that they did not know who launched the missile.
A senior official told NBC News it was "possible" that the incident was an accidental launch by the military. However, the Navy, Air Force and Missile Defense Agency said they had no information to indicate they were involved, NBC News reported.
Military officials told said that a planned military exercise would not have been held that close to Los Angeles.
Officials were also examining the possibility it was a "commercial launch of some kind" or that amateurs had built a device capable of creating such a plume, NBC News reported.
A Navy spokesman told local CBS station KFMB that there was no Navy activity reported in that region Monday night, and that it was not the Navy's missile.
KCBS, which originally reported the incident, asked Robert Ellsworth, a former deputy secretary of defense and ambassador to NATO, about the mystery missile.
"It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," he told the TV station, emphasizing that he was purely speculating.
Source
War Over Monsanto Gets Ugly
by: Mike Ludwig
A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina's agricultural areas.
But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before they could reach the local school where the talk was to be held.
Dr. Carrasco and a colleague locked themselves in a car as the mob yelled threats and beat on the vehicle for two hours. One delegate was hit in the spine and has since suffered lower-body paralysis. Another person was treated for blows to the head. A former provincial human rights official was hit in the face and knocked unconscious.
Witnesses said the angry crowd had ties to local officials and agribusiness bosses, and police made little effort to stop the violence, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Carrasco is a lead embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council. His study, first released in 2009 and published in the United States this past summer, shows that glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto's popular Roundup formula caused deformations in chicken embryos that resembled the kind of birth defects being reported in areas like La Leonesa, where big agribusinesses depend on glyphosate to treat genetically engineered crops.
The deformations resulted from much lower doses of herbicide than those commonly found on crops, according to the study.
Biotech chemical giant Monsanto patented glyphosate under the trade name Roundup in the 1970's. The billion-dollar product is a main source of Monsanto's revenue and one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. One Monsanto blogger recently wrote that decades of success has made the Roundup brand name and glyphosate "interchangeable similar to the case of facial tissue and the brand name Kleenex."
Carrasco's report was largely ignored in the mainstream American media, but gained international attention among those opposed to genetically modified (GM) crops like Monstano's Roundup Ready crops, which are genetically engineered to tolerate the glyphosate-based herbicides.
The report is not the first to show that glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are more dangerous than government regulators and Monsanto have claimed, and Carrasco is not the first scientist to face intimidation after challenging the biotech industry, although he is the first to be threatened with violence.
Nevertheless, his report made an impact: journalists covered the results, environmentalists petitioned Argentina's high court to ban glyphosate and the government of the Argentinean province of Chaco began studying an eerie increase in birth defects and child cancer near the soy and rice fields sprayed with thousands of gallons of herbicide.
According to a spring 2010 report released by the Chaco government, an increase in birth defects and child cancer cases coincided with years of agricultural expansion and increased herbicide use in the province. The number of child cancer cases in La Leonesa, the small town where Carrasco and the other concerned citizens were attacked, has tripled from 2000 to 2009 and the number of birth defects in the province nearly quadrupled during that time, according to the report.
The report acknowledges that some local agribusinesses were unlawfully spraying herbicides too close to residential populations, but the Chaco study soon caught the attention of researchers across the world.
In September, an international coalition of scientists released a report citing the attack in La Leonesa and human tragedy in Chaco as proof that Roundup and genetically engineered soy crops are dangerous and unsustainable. The report provides a conclusive rebuttal to the industry's claims that spraying mutant crops with chemicals is the best way to feed the world. It's just another chapter in an information war that has raged for more than a decade, pitting independent scientists and embattled whistleblowers against the world's biggest biotech and petrochemical corporations.
Read more...
A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina's agricultural areas.
But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before they could reach the local school where the talk was to be held.
Dr. Carrasco and a colleague locked themselves in a car as the mob yelled threats and beat on the vehicle for two hours. One delegate was hit in the spine and has since suffered lower-body paralysis. Another person was treated for blows to the head. A former provincial human rights official was hit in the face and knocked unconscious.
Witnesses said the angry crowd had ties to local officials and agribusiness bosses, and police made little effort to stop the violence, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Carrasco is a lead embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council. His study, first released in 2009 and published in the United States this past summer, shows that glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto's popular Roundup formula caused deformations in chicken embryos that resembled the kind of birth defects being reported in areas like La Leonesa, where big agribusinesses depend on glyphosate to treat genetically engineered crops.
The deformations resulted from much lower doses of herbicide than those commonly found on crops, according to the study.
Biotech chemical giant Monsanto patented glyphosate under the trade name Roundup in the 1970's. The billion-dollar product is a main source of Monsanto's revenue and one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. One Monsanto blogger recently wrote that decades of success has made the Roundup brand name and glyphosate "interchangeable similar to the case of facial tissue and the brand name Kleenex."
Carrasco's report was largely ignored in the mainstream American media, but gained international attention among those opposed to genetically modified (GM) crops like Monstano's Roundup Ready crops, which are genetically engineered to tolerate the glyphosate-based herbicides.
The report is not the first to show that glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are more dangerous than government regulators and Monsanto have claimed, and Carrasco is not the first scientist to face intimidation after challenging the biotech industry, although he is the first to be threatened with violence.
Nevertheless, his report made an impact: journalists covered the results, environmentalists petitioned Argentina's high court to ban glyphosate and the government of the Argentinean province of Chaco began studying an eerie increase in birth defects and child cancer near the soy and rice fields sprayed with thousands of gallons of herbicide.
According to a spring 2010 report released by the Chaco government, an increase in birth defects and child cancer cases coincided with years of agricultural expansion and increased herbicide use in the province. The number of child cancer cases in La Leonesa, the small town where Carrasco and the other concerned citizens were attacked, has tripled from 2000 to 2009 and the number of birth defects in the province nearly quadrupled during that time, according to the report.
The report acknowledges that some local agribusinesses were unlawfully spraying herbicides too close to residential populations, but the Chaco study soon caught the attention of researchers across the world.
In September, an international coalition of scientists released a report citing the attack in La Leonesa and human tragedy in Chaco as proof that Roundup and genetically engineered soy crops are dangerous and unsustainable. The report provides a conclusive rebuttal to the industry's claims that spraying mutant crops with chemicals is the best way to feed the world. It's just another chapter in an information war that has raged for more than a decade, pitting independent scientists and embattled whistleblowers against the world's biggest biotech and petrochemical corporations.
Read more...
Monday, November 8, 2010
A Short Message: Question Everything
By Pat Anderson
It never fails to amaze me when I see otherwise intelligent people falling for the same lies over and over again, regardless of the facts shown to them. It’s bad enough when dealing with the sheeple who love to parrot the latest ZNN “news story” as fact. But, when I see “truthseekers” falling into the same pattern of falling for myth instead of fact, and continue to hold onto that myth with all their might, it bothers me. When I hear them parrot the same insults the sheeple have been taught by TPTB, it bothers me. It shows me they are willing to think critically in some areas, but some areas remain taboo or they think because someone in this “truth movement” told the truth in one area, it makes them trustworthy enough to tell the truth in others without checking evidence to the contrary. We see it time and time again in many different subjects.
For example, let’s take the followers of Alex Jones. Lord Alex declares critics of Israel to be “weak minded idiots” and his puppets on his forum declare the same things. Now, this is a so called “truth” forum that parrots the lies of the Hollowcost and would love to point you in the direction of the “queen bitches” as the very top tier, just don’t mention the fact of the Zionist bankers who of course control the money of the very “queen bitches” they claim are in complete control. It kind of throws a wrench into their not so well oiled machine and of course, will get you banned for your efforts. But, some of us wear that as a badge of honor. It’s a way to know you are on the right track if you have realized they are full of shit, call them and Lord Alex on it, and they attempt to silence you. Gee, don’t those tactics sound familiar?
Another example of course is the Hollowcost itself. This one always gets a chuckle out of me as I see otherwise intelligent people who simply cannot believe, even though they have been lied to about almost every other topic under the sun by the Zionist media, that this myth is absolutely true and to say it’s not is completely and totally anti-semitic. Never mind showing them the numbers don’t add up anywhere close to the “six million” claimed by the Zionists. Never mind showing them the Zionists tried to float that exact same number after WW1 and it was simply laughed at. Again, we look at a complete lack of critical thinking by people who have been so indoctrinated by the propaganda, they refuse to look at the facts, and continue to parrot the lies of the Zionist history books.
The point is this. I do not care how trustworthy one has proven themselves to be. It does not make them perfect and incapable of making mistakes. People need to question and learn to dig for themselves. They need to use their common sense when listening to the claims of another. They need to use common sense when drawing their conclusions, and see if the facts will back those conclusions. What does not need to happen is the constant parroting of what this one or that one said. That is not showing individuality, nor does it show the ability to stand on one’s own feet.
Question what is presented to you at all times, look for facts in any given subject. There are many myths that are taken for granted as simply being true, and yet when some brave individual looks for facts to back that myth, they see it for what it truly is. A myth, and nothing more.
It never fails to amaze me when I see otherwise intelligent people falling for the same lies over and over again, regardless of the facts shown to them. It’s bad enough when dealing with the sheeple who love to parrot the latest ZNN “news story” as fact. But, when I see “truthseekers” falling into the same pattern of falling for myth instead of fact, and continue to hold onto that myth with all their might, it bothers me. When I hear them parrot the same insults the sheeple have been taught by TPTB, it bothers me. It shows me they are willing to think critically in some areas, but some areas remain taboo or they think because someone in this “truth movement” told the truth in one area, it makes them trustworthy enough to tell the truth in others without checking evidence to the contrary. We see it time and time again in many different subjects.
For example, let’s take the followers of Alex Jones. Lord Alex declares critics of Israel to be “weak minded idiots” and his puppets on his forum declare the same things. Now, this is a so called “truth” forum that parrots the lies of the Hollowcost and would love to point you in the direction of the “queen bitches” as the very top tier, just don’t mention the fact of the Zionist bankers who of course control the money of the very “queen bitches” they claim are in complete control. It kind of throws a wrench into their not so well oiled machine and of course, will get you banned for your efforts. But, some of us wear that as a badge of honor. It’s a way to know you are on the right track if you have realized they are full of shit, call them and Lord Alex on it, and they attempt to silence you. Gee, don’t those tactics sound familiar?
Another example of course is the Hollowcost itself. This one always gets a chuckle out of me as I see otherwise intelligent people who simply cannot believe, even though they have been lied to about almost every other topic under the sun by the Zionist media, that this myth is absolutely true and to say it’s not is completely and totally anti-semitic. Never mind showing them the numbers don’t add up anywhere close to the “six million” claimed by the Zionists. Never mind showing them the Zionists tried to float that exact same number after WW1 and it was simply laughed at. Again, we look at a complete lack of critical thinking by people who have been so indoctrinated by the propaganda, they refuse to look at the facts, and continue to parrot the lies of the Zionist history books.
The point is this. I do not care how trustworthy one has proven themselves to be. It does not make them perfect and incapable of making mistakes. People need to question and learn to dig for themselves. They need to use their common sense when listening to the claims of another. They need to use common sense when drawing their conclusions, and see if the facts will back those conclusions. What does not need to happen is the constant parroting of what this one or that one said. That is not showing individuality, nor does it show the ability to stand on one’s own feet.
Question what is presented to you at all times, look for facts in any given subject. There are many myths that are taken for granted as simply being true, and yet when some brave individual looks for facts to back that myth, they see it for what it truly is. A myth, and nothing more.
Thrown Off the Wake-up Wagon
By Brandon Dean
WizardofOswald.com {be patient and wizardofoswald.com will be back up soon...}
November 7th, 2010
There once was a time when life seemed more plasticine, through more synthetic eyes. At some point in our pasts, whether distant or near, each of us crossed a threshold in our accepted cycles of living. For some of us, it feels like it's always been there, in one form or another--a final non-acceptance of our stations in life and society.
It could have been a seminal event, which, as presented, seemed inexplicable in the most obvious ways. Or it could have been the result of a lifetime of hardships forcing you to face up to the cold reality of this planet. Some inherently understand the depths of just how apathetic this sphere we're stuck to happens to be. It may be simply the shedding of your refusal to accept this reality.
We are creatures capable of endless feats of grace and beauty, and are only limited by our imaginations. But we also paint our histories with blood, and are capable of the most disgraceful acts.
We all deal with temptation. and we all know what is right and what is wrong, if we only take the time to ask ourselves.
It can be an overwhelming experience to all of a sudden gain access to the gulf of information available for investigating "the truth." Those who still wish to gather around a shepherd will most certainly find themselves a shepherd. They're all over the internet, and they're firmly ensconced in many a "truth seeker's" subconscious, much like the mainstream media still enjoys a firm grip on the minds of those afraid to face the cold reality of our apathetic planet. If those who've finally had enough shit and propaganda could only instantly see what they're truly up against, it really would separate the shepherds from the sheep...
This world--this globe--is not concerned in the least with your fate. We are so insignificant in the scope of the literal universe that it truly seems like there should be no hope for us at all. The mere contemplation of this reality sends the more lighthearted into pathetic depression cycles of shame and denial. To others it rests as a comfort against the very evil and desperation we face in our lives every day. We take comfort in the fact that we stand every bit as significant as those whose keys unlock chains.
He really is a frail little man, with a mind of wrought iron and sulfur.
Take refuge in your imaginations; they are the most valuable resources we possess as human beings. The restless spirit is that which cannot be chained by anyone but yourself. You are free right now to refuse to join the parade and hold their banner. No one is stopping you from being free. No one.
So you were thrown to the wolves by everyone for simply wanting the truth? It made you not only angry, but worse still, it made you cynical? Well, stand on a mountain and scream to God how it hurts if you have to, but get past it. There is a whole world to experience, and a wealth of resources to finally drown the most avid seeker of the truth.
Don't forget about your common sense. This is your divining rod.
© Brandon Dean, 2010
And for a bit of an explanation on the above article, along with some of Brandon's valuable insights:
WizardofOswald.com {be patient and wizardofoswald.com will be back up soon...}
November 7th, 2010
"Well I see that the world is upside-down
seems that my pockets were filled up with gold
and now the clouds, well they've covered everything over
and the wind is blowing cold..."
--Tom Waits
There once was a time when life seemed more plasticine, through more synthetic eyes. At some point in our pasts, whether distant or near, each of us crossed a threshold in our accepted cycles of living. For some of us, it feels like it's always been there, in one form or another--a final non-acceptance of our stations in life and society.
It could have been a seminal event, which, as presented, seemed inexplicable in the most obvious ways. Or it could have been the result of a lifetime of hardships forcing you to face up to the cold reality of this planet. Some inherently understand the depths of just how apathetic this sphere we're stuck to happens to be. It may be simply the shedding of your refusal to accept this reality.
We are creatures capable of endless feats of grace and beauty, and are only limited by our imaginations. But we also paint our histories with blood, and are capable of the most disgraceful acts.
We all deal with temptation. and we all know what is right and what is wrong, if we only take the time to ask ourselves.
It can be an overwhelming experience to all of a sudden gain access to the gulf of information available for investigating "the truth." Those who still wish to gather around a shepherd will most certainly find themselves a shepherd. They're all over the internet, and they're firmly ensconced in many a "truth seeker's" subconscious, much like the mainstream media still enjoys a firm grip on the minds of those afraid to face the cold reality of our apathetic planet. If those who've finally had enough shit and propaganda could only instantly see what they're truly up against, it really would separate the shepherds from the sheep...
This world--this globe--is not concerned in the least with your fate. We are so insignificant in the scope of the literal universe that it truly seems like there should be no hope for us at all. The mere contemplation of this reality sends the more lighthearted into pathetic depression cycles of shame and denial. To others it rests as a comfort against the very evil and desperation we face in our lives every day. We take comfort in the fact that we stand every bit as significant as those whose keys unlock chains.
He really is a frail little man, with a mind of wrought iron and sulfur.
Take refuge in your imaginations; they are the most valuable resources we possess as human beings. The restless spirit is that which cannot be chained by anyone but yourself. You are free right now to refuse to join the parade and hold their banner. No one is stopping you from being free. No one.
So you were thrown to the wolves by everyone for simply wanting the truth? It made you not only angry, but worse still, it made you cynical? Well, stand on a mountain and scream to God how it hurts if you have to, but get past it. There is a whole world to experience, and a wealth of resources to finally drown the most avid seeker of the truth.
Don't forget about your common sense. This is your divining rod.
© Brandon Dean, 2010
And for a bit of an explanation on the above article, along with some of Brandon's valuable insights:
Safed: 'the most racist city' in Israel
By Jonathan Cook
SAFED, ISRAEL // The tranquility of Safed, a small Israeli city nestled high in the hills of the Upper Galilee close to the Lebanese border, is not usually disturbed except by occasional pilgrimages by Madonna or other famous devotees of the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah.
But in the past few weeks, Safed - one of Judaism's four holy cities - has been making headlines of a very different kind. Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, last week declared it "the most racist city in the country".
The unflattering, and hotly contested, epithet follows an edict from Safed's senior rabbis ordering residents not to sell or rent homes to "non-Jews" - a reference to the country's Palestinian Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel's population.
At an emergency meeting called last month to discuss the dangers of assimilation caused by Arab men dating Jewish women, the 18 rabbis warned that Safed and its 40,000 Jewish residents were facing an "Arab takeover".
The number of Arabs in the city, though low, has been steadily rising as the student body at Safed Academic College has expanded. There are now some 1,300 Arab students enrolled at the school.
The rabbis' statements have provoked a series of attacks by ultranationalist Jews, in which several Arab homes have been attacked to chants of "Death to the Arabs". In one recent incident, three Arab students were beaten as shots were fired.
So far three Jewish youths, including an off-duty policeman, have been charged with participating in the violence. The policeman is accused of firing his gun.
The anti-Arab campaign escalated last week as posters were plastered across the city threatening to burn down the home of an elderly Jew if he did not stop renting to Arab students.
The owner, 89-year-old Eli Zvieli, said the posters appeared after he received phone threats and visits from several rabbis warning him to change his mind.
Jamil Khalaili, 20, a physiotherapy student at the college who rents an apartment with a friend in a Jewish neighbourhood, said the atmosphere in Safed was rapidly deteriorating.
"We're being treated like criminals, like we're trying to steal their homes," he said. "It's got to the point where many of my friends are wondering whether to leave. I want to study here but not if it costs me my life."
Leading the opposition to the presence of Arab students in the city is Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is employed by the municipality as head of its religious council.
"When a non-Jew moves in, residents begin to worry about their children, about their daughters. Many Arab students have been known to date Jewish girls," Israel National News quoted Mr Eliyahu as saying.
The 18 rabbis issued their statement after learning of the college's plan to build a medical school, which is expected to draw Arab students from across the Galilee.
In the statement, they urged Jewish residents to shun a "neighbour or acquaintance" who rents to Arabs. "Refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly ostracise him until he renounces this harmful deed," it said.
Similar anti-Arab sentiments are being heard in Karmiel and Upper Nazareth, two other cities in the Galilee. Both were established decades ago as part of what the government termed a "Judaisation" programme to settle more Jews in the country's most heavily Arab-populated region.
In Karmiel, 30km west of Safed, adverts in local newspapers have promoted a special e-mail address for residents to notify authorities about any neighbours planning to sell homes to Arabs. The e-mail account is overseen by officials for Oren Milstein, who was the city's deputy mayor until he was fired last week, according to Ynet, a news website.
Read more...
An ultra-Orthodox Jew walks through an alley in Israel’s northern town of Safed, where Kabbalah mysticism has its roots.Nir Elias / Reuters
SAFED, ISRAEL // The tranquility of Safed, a small Israeli city nestled high in the hills of the Upper Galilee close to the Lebanese border, is not usually disturbed except by occasional pilgrimages by Madonna or other famous devotees of the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah.
But in the past few weeks, Safed - one of Judaism's four holy cities - has been making headlines of a very different kind. Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, last week declared it "the most racist city in the country".
The unflattering, and hotly contested, epithet follows an edict from Safed's senior rabbis ordering residents not to sell or rent homes to "non-Jews" - a reference to the country's Palestinian Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel's population.
At an emergency meeting called last month to discuss the dangers of assimilation caused by Arab men dating Jewish women, the 18 rabbis warned that Safed and its 40,000 Jewish residents were facing an "Arab takeover".
The number of Arabs in the city, though low, has been steadily rising as the student body at Safed Academic College has expanded. There are now some 1,300 Arab students enrolled at the school.
The rabbis' statements have provoked a series of attacks by ultranationalist Jews, in which several Arab homes have been attacked to chants of "Death to the Arabs". In one recent incident, three Arab students were beaten as shots were fired.
So far three Jewish youths, including an off-duty policeman, have been charged with participating in the violence. The policeman is accused of firing his gun.
The anti-Arab campaign escalated last week as posters were plastered across the city threatening to burn down the home of an elderly Jew if he did not stop renting to Arab students.
The owner, 89-year-old Eli Zvieli, said the posters appeared after he received phone threats and visits from several rabbis warning him to change his mind.
Jamil Khalaili, 20, a physiotherapy student at the college who rents an apartment with a friend in a Jewish neighbourhood, said the atmosphere in Safed was rapidly deteriorating.
"We're being treated like criminals, like we're trying to steal their homes," he said. "It's got to the point where many of my friends are wondering whether to leave. I want to study here but not if it costs me my life."
Leading the opposition to the presence of Arab students in the city is Safed's chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, who is employed by the municipality as head of its religious council.
"When a non-Jew moves in, residents begin to worry about their children, about their daughters. Many Arab students have been known to date Jewish girls," Israel National News quoted Mr Eliyahu as saying.
The 18 rabbis issued their statement after learning of the college's plan to build a medical school, which is expected to draw Arab students from across the Galilee.
In the statement, they urged Jewish residents to shun a "neighbour or acquaintance" who rents to Arabs. "Refrain from doing business with him, deny him the right to read from the Torah, and similarly ostracise him until he renounces this harmful deed," it said.
Similar anti-Arab sentiments are being heard in Karmiel and Upper Nazareth, two other cities in the Galilee. Both were established decades ago as part of what the government termed a "Judaisation" programme to settle more Jews in the country's most heavily Arab-populated region.
In Karmiel, 30km west of Safed, adverts in local newspapers have promoted a special e-mail address for residents to notify authorities about any neighbours planning to sell homes to Arabs. The e-mail account is overseen by officials for Oren Milstein, who was the city's deputy mayor until he was fired last week, according to Ynet, a news website.
Read more...
U.S. EAVESDROPPING ON WHOLE WORLD THROUGH “ECHELON” SPY INTERCEPTS
By Sherwood Ross
The United States and three of its good buddies are operating “a network of massive, highly automated interception stations” codenamed ECHELON that is eavesdropping on the entire world, a distinguished Washington journalist reports.
“Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky, the National Security Agency(NSA) sucks it all up: home phone, office phone, cellular phone, email, fax, telex...satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communications traffic, microwave links, voice, text images (that are) captured by satellites continuously orbiting the earth and then processed by high-powered computers,” writes William Blum in his book “Rogue State”(Common Courage Press).
Calling it “the greatest invasion of privacy” ever, Blum says the ceaseless, illegal spy system sucks up perhaps billions of messages daily, including those of prime ministers, the Secretary-General of the UN, the pope, embassies, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, and transnational corporations and that “if God has a phone, it's being monitored.” As for messages sent via underwater cable, U.S. submarines have been attaching tapping pods to them for decades.
Launched in the 1970s to spy on Soviet satellite communications, the NSA and its junior partners in Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand operate this network of massive, highly automated interception stations covering the globe. “In multiple ways, each of the countries involved is breaking its own laws, those of other countries, and international law,” Blum writes, noting that “the absence of court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of specific individuals is but one example.”
Apart from targeted individuals and institutions, ECHELON works by gobbling up huge quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract those messages of interest. “Every intercepted message---all the embassy cables, the business deals, the sex talk, the birthday greetings---is searched for keywords, which could be anything the searchers think might be of interest,” Blum writes. Messages selected from the mass are then listened to by humans
Blum also said that during the countdown to its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. listened in on the conversations of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, "and all the members of the UN Security Council...when they were deliberating about what action to take in Iraq."
ECHELON is operated “without official acknowledgment of its existence, let alone any democratic oversight or public or legislative debate as to whether it serves a decent purpose,” Blum writes. For example, when Members of Parliament have raised questions about the NSA and its sprawling, 560-acre base in Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, “the government has consistently refused to supply any information” and members of the U.S. Congress “have not even raised questions.” When the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee challenged the operation in the 1990s, Blum said, it denounced Britain's role as a double-agent, spying on its own European partners.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has continued to expand ECHELON in Europe in part “because of heightened interest in commercial espionage---to uncover industrial information that would provide American corporations with an advantage over foreign rivals,” Blum points out. When ine German firm, the wind generator-maker Enercon, applied for a patent on what it thought was a secret invention, its U.S. rival Kenetech disclosed it had already patented a near-identical development. During the ensuing court battle, an NSA employee appeared in silhouette on German TV to reveal how he had stolen Enercon's secrets by tapping its telephone and computer link lines and passing the data on to ECHELON, Blum writes.
Again, in 1994, Thomson S.A., located in Paris, and Airbus Industrie, of Blagnac Cedex, France, also lost lucrative contracts to U.S. rivals “aided by information covertly collected by NSA and CIA,” Blum writes, and the same agencies “also eavesdropped on Japanese representatives during negotiations with the U.S. in 1995 over auto parts trade.” One German official worried the U.S. through its massive radar and communications complex at Bad Aibling, near Munich, was picking up secret information. He was right to worry as the complex was, in fact, an NSA intercept station, Blum says.
Reporter Blum resigned his post at the U.S. State Department because of his opposition to the Viet Nam war and co-founded the Washington Free Press. In 1999, he received a Project Censored award for “exemplary journalism” for a story about how the U.S. gave Iraq material to develop chemical and biological warfare. He currently publishes the monthly “Anti-Empire Report.” To obtain copies of his book “Rogue State” contact him at bblum6@aol.com .
(Sherwood Ross is the Miami-based director of Anti-War News Service. He has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and as a columnist for wire services. To contact him or contribute to his Anti-War News Service email: sherwoodross10@gmail.com )
The United States and three of its good buddies are operating “a network of massive, highly automated interception stations” codenamed ECHELON that is eavesdropping on the entire world, a distinguished Washington journalist reports.
“Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky, the National Security Agency(NSA) sucks it all up: home phone, office phone, cellular phone, email, fax, telex...satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communications traffic, microwave links, voice, text images (that are) captured by satellites continuously orbiting the earth and then processed by high-powered computers,” writes William Blum in his book “Rogue State”(Common Courage Press).
Calling it “the greatest invasion of privacy” ever, Blum says the ceaseless, illegal spy system sucks up perhaps billions of messages daily, including those of prime ministers, the Secretary-General of the UN, the pope, embassies, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, and transnational corporations and that “if God has a phone, it's being monitored.” As for messages sent via underwater cable, U.S. submarines have been attaching tapping pods to them for decades.
Launched in the 1970s to spy on Soviet satellite communications, the NSA and its junior partners in Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand operate this network of massive, highly automated interception stations covering the globe. “In multiple ways, each of the countries involved is breaking its own laws, those of other countries, and international law,” Blum writes, noting that “the absence of court-issued warrants permitting surveillance of specific individuals is but one example.”
Apart from targeted individuals and institutions, ECHELON works by gobbling up huge quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract those messages of interest. “Every intercepted message---all the embassy cables, the business deals, the sex talk, the birthday greetings---is searched for keywords, which could be anything the searchers think might be of interest,” Blum writes. Messages selected from the mass are then listened to by humans
Blum also said that during the countdown to its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. listened in on the conversations of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, "and all the members of the UN Security Council...when they were deliberating about what action to take in Iraq."
ECHELON is operated “without official acknowledgment of its existence, let alone any democratic oversight or public or legislative debate as to whether it serves a decent purpose,” Blum writes. For example, when Members of Parliament have raised questions about the NSA and its sprawling, 560-acre base in Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, “the government has consistently refused to supply any information” and members of the U.S. Congress “have not even raised questions.” When the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee challenged the operation in the 1990s, Blum said, it denounced Britain's role as a double-agent, spying on its own European partners.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has continued to expand ECHELON in Europe in part “because of heightened interest in commercial espionage---to uncover industrial information that would provide American corporations with an advantage over foreign rivals,” Blum points out. When ine German firm, the wind generator-maker Enercon, applied for a patent on what it thought was a secret invention, its U.S. rival Kenetech disclosed it had already patented a near-identical development. During the ensuing court battle, an NSA employee appeared in silhouette on German TV to reveal how he had stolen Enercon's secrets by tapping its telephone and computer link lines and passing the data on to ECHELON, Blum writes.
Again, in 1994, Thomson S.A., located in Paris, and Airbus Industrie, of Blagnac Cedex, France, also lost lucrative contracts to U.S. rivals “aided by information covertly collected by NSA and CIA,” Blum writes, and the same agencies “also eavesdropped on Japanese representatives during negotiations with the U.S. in 1995 over auto parts trade.” One German official worried the U.S. through its massive radar and communications complex at Bad Aibling, near Munich, was picking up secret information. He was right to worry as the complex was, in fact, an NSA intercept station, Blum says.
Reporter Blum resigned his post at the U.S. State Department because of his opposition to the Viet Nam war and co-founded the Washington Free Press. In 1999, he received a Project Censored award for “exemplary journalism” for a story about how the U.S. gave Iraq material to develop chemical and biological warfare. He currently publishes the monthly “Anti-Empire Report.” To obtain copies of his book “Rogue State” contact him at bblum6@aol.com .
(Sherwood Ross is the Miami-based director of Anti-War News Service. He has worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and as a columnist for wire services. To contact him or contribute to his Anti-War News Service email: sherwoodross10@gmail.com )
Saturday, November 6, 2010
CIA REQUIRES SECRECY TO COVER UP CRIMES THAT KILLED MILLIONS
By Sherwood Ross
If the CIA routinely lies to the American people, maybe that's because its got so much to lie about, like killing millions of innocent human beings around the world. As far back as December, 1968, the CIA's own Covert Operations Study Group gave a secret report to president-elect Richard Nixon that conceded, “The impression of many Americans, especially in the intellectual community and among the youth, that the United States is engaging in 'dirty tricks' tends to alienate them from their government.” According to Time Weiner's book “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor), the report went on to say, “Our credibility and our effectiveness in this role is necessarily damaged to the extent that it becomes known that we are secretly intervening in what may be (or appear to be) the internal affairs of others.”
President Bill Clinton, who first gave the CIA the green light to launch its illegal “renditions” (kidnappings,) told the nation on the occasion of the Agency's 50th birthday (1997), “By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage.” (Courage? For 22 agents to grab one Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan, Italy, and ship him abroad to be tortured?) Anyway, presidents who authorize criminal acts by the CIA, as virtually all have done since its founding in 1947, don't want the truth out, either, lest knowledge of those “dirty tricks” sicken and revolt the American people when they find out what crimes the Agency is perpetrating with their tax dollars. As former CIA agent Philip Agee once put it, “The CIA is the President's secret army.” This point was underscored at a luncheon by President Gerald Ford himself, which he hosted for New York Times top editors on Jan. 16, 1975. According to Weiner, Ford told them the reputation of every President since Truman could be ruined if the secrets became public. Asked by an editor, like what? Ford replied “like assassinations.”
One reason the Agency seeks to hide its operations is that it sadly is often guilty as charged. For example, take its complicity in the murders of American missionaries in Peru. As Reuters reported Nov. 21, 2008:
“The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries in Peru in 2001, the agency's inspector general(IG) has concluded. The (IG's) report said a CIA-backed program in Peru targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down by Peruvian air force jets without proper checks being made first.” A small plane carrying Veronica Bowers, her husband Jim, their son Cory and infant daughter Charity was shot down by a Peruvian jet on April 20, 2001, after it was tracked by a CIA surveillance plane that suspected it was carrying drugs. Veronica and Charity Bowers were killed, while their pilot, Kevin Donaldson, who crash-landed the bullet-riddled plane into the Amazon River, was badly injured. The IG's report said that in the aftermath of the 2001 incident the CIA sought to characterize it as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. "In fact this was not the case. The routine disregard of the required intercept procedures ... led to the rapid shooting down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life," the report from the Agency's own IG said. (One might ask why the CIA didn't wait for the plane to land to interrogate the passengers?)
The kicker in the Reuters account is “The IG said the CIA found 'sustained and significant' violations of procedure in its own internal investigation but had denied Congress, the National Security Council and the Justice Department access to its findings.” This raises the question of whether the CIA has become so powerful it can withhold findings even from the Justice Department and Congress? The answer is that it can, has, and likely continues to do so, because it is indeed both powerful and influential. After all, with the exception of President Clinton, who abetted the CIA's crimes, presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush Jr., and Barrack Obama all have been directly on the CIA payroll as employees at one time or another. Bush Sr., of course, headed the Agency during 1976-77. Bush Jr. worked for a CIA front in Alaska, and President Obama worked for CIA front Business International Corporation after he got out of college.
The CIA's influence is such that it can successfully forbid other agencies of government to conceal its crimes if they find out about them. Example: “The Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) knew about and helped cover up the CIA's involvement in Guatemala's drug war murders, a former DEA agent said,” the AP reported on July 23, 1996. Although the DEA denied the allegations, Celerino Castillo, who was a special DEA agent assigned to Guatemala, said he and other DEA agents there “were aware of specific murders committed by the Guatemala military with CIA involvement and were ordered to lie to keep the crimes secret.” AP said the Intelligence Oversight Board issued a report stating CIA agents in Guatemala “were credibly alleged” to have ordered, planned or participated in human rights violations such as murder, torture and kidnapping.” (I.e., Castillo's charges were true.) So it has long since gotten to the point that officials of other U.S. agents cannot report the CIA's crimes either, as if they were under a Mafia oath of secrecy.
CIA employees themselves are forbidden by secrecy agreements (under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed under President Ronald Reagan) to write anything about the Agency without first clearing it with a CIA publications review board. Accordingly, the CIA recently cracked down on a former officer who wrote under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones.” His “crime” was to publish two years ago “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” The Associated Press quotes Jones as saying, “CIA censors attack this book because it exposes the CIA as a place to get rich, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted or stolen in espionage programs that produce nothing.” Denying the truth, however, is a long established CIA practice. John Stockwell, for 13 years a CIA station chief in Angola or a top man in Viet Nam, said in a lecture, “What I ran into...was a corruption in the CIA and the intelligence business...what I found was that the CIA, us, the case officers, were not permitted to report about the corruption in the South Vietnamese army.”
Whether the Agency's John Stockwell, Ishmael Jones or DEA's Celerino Castillo, we note that many of the CIA's critics are former American intelligence officers who have seen too much, men apparently with a conscience and respect for human rights. Stockwell, a former Marine who held high posts in the field for the CIA was in a position to know when he charged that over the years the CIA has killed “millions” of innocents. He says the victims were largely “people of the Third World...that have the misfortune of being born in the Metumba mountains of the Congo, in the jungles of Southeast Asia...in the hills of northern Nicaragua...most of (whom) couldn't give you an intelligent definition of communism or of capitalism.” Stockwell estimated the CIA has perpetrated “10 to 20 thousand covert actions” between 1961, about the time of its Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco, and 1987.
Stockwell concludes “We are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis to people of the world...we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these (covert) programs in our name and we pretend like we don't know it's going on...And we're just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we've slaughtered and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was of the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide.”
Is it? The Obama administration apparently has no plans to expose and bring to trial past CIA killers and torturers, much less those who obstructed justice by destroying tapes of their torture or lying to Congress about it. This is the same country---which is now waging war in three Middle East nations and has been responsible for the violent and bloody overthrow of dozens of foreign governments---that keeps a quarter of a million pot smokers in prison who have never hurt another person in their lives. Pardon me if I ask whether my native land has not, in fact, become a lunatic asylum run by the criminally insane? #
(Sherwood Ross is director of the Anti-War News Service. He formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. To contribute to his news service or comment, reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
If the CIA routinely lies to the American people, maybe that's because its got so much to lie about, like killing millions of innocent human beings around the world. As far back as December, 1968, the CIA's own Covert Operations Study Group gave a secret report to president-elect Richard Nixon that conceded, “The impression of many Americans, especially in the intellectual community and among the youth, that the United States is engaging in 'dirty tricks' tends to alienate them from their government.” According to Time Weiner's book “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor), the report went on to say, “Our credibility and our effectiveness in this role is necessarily damaged to the extent that it becomes known that we are secretly intervening in what may be (or appear to be) the internal affairs of others.”
President Bill Clinton, who first gave the CIA the green light to launch its illegal “renditions” (kidnappings,) told the nation on the occasion of the Agency's 50th birthday (1997), “By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage.” (Courage? For 22 agents to grab one Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan, Italy, and ship him abroad to be tortured?) Anyway, presidents who authorize criminal acts by the CIA, as virtually all have done since its founding in 1947, don't want the truth out, either, lest knowledge of those “dirty tricks” sicken and revolt the American people when they find out what crimes the Agency is perpetrating with their tax dollars. As former CIA agent Philip Agee once put it, “The CIA is the President's secret army.” This point was underscored at a luncheon by President Gerald Ford himself, which he hosted for New York Times top editors on Jan. 16, 1975. According to Weiner, Ford told them the reputation of every President since Truman could be ruined if the secrets became public. Asked by an editor, like what? Ford replied “like assassinations.”
One reason the Agency seeks to hide its operations is that it sadly is often guilty as charged. For example, take its complicity in the murders of American missionaries in Peru. As Reuters reported Nov. 21, 2008:
“The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries in Peru in 2001, the agency's inspector general(IG) has concluded. The (IG's) report said a CIA-backed program in Peru targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down by Peruvian air force jets without proper checks being made first.” A small plane carrying Veronica Bowers, her husband Jim, their son Cory and infant daughter Charity was shot down by a Peruvian jet on April 20, 2001, after it was tracked by a CIA surveillance plane that suspected it was carrying drugs. Veronica and Charity Bowers were killed, while their pilot, Kevin Donaldson, who crash-landed the bullet-riddled plane into the Amazon River, was badly injured. The IG's report said that in the aftermath of the 2001 incident the CIA sought to characterize it as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. "In fact this was not the case. The routine disregard of the required intercept procedures ... led to the rapid shooting down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life," the report from the Agency's own IG said. (One might ask why the CIA didn't wait for the plane to land to interrogate the passengers?)
The kicker in the Reuters account is “The IG said the CIA found 'sustained and significant' violations of procedure in its own internal investigation but had denied Congress, the National Security Council and the Justice Department access to its findings.” This raises the question of whether the CIA has become so powerful it can withhold findings even from the Justice Department and Congress? The answer is that it can, has, and likely continues to do so, because it is indeed both powerful and influential. After all, with the exception of President Clinton, who abetted the CIA's crimes, presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush Jr., and Barrack Obama all have been directly on the CIA payroll as employees at one time or another. Bush Sr., of course, headed the Agency during 1976-77. Bush Jr. worked for a CIA front in Alaska, and President Obama worked for CIA front Business International Corporation after he got out of college.
The CIA's influence is such that it can successfully forbid other agencies of government to conceal its crimes if they find out about them. Example: “The Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) knew about and helped cover up the CIA's involvement in Guatemala's drug war murders, a former DEA agent said,” the AP reported on July 23, 1996. Although the DEA denied the allegations, Celerino Castillo, who was a special DEA agent assigned to Guatemala, said he and other DEA agents there “were aware of specific murders committed by the Guatemala military with CIA involvement and were ordered to lie to keep the crimes secret.” AP said the Intelligence Oversight Board issued a report stating CIA agents in Guatemala “were credibly alleged” to have ordered, planned or participated in human rights violations such as murder, torture and kidnapping.” (I.e., Castillo's charges were true.) So it has long since gotten to the point that officials of other U.S. agents cannot report the CIA's crimes either, as if they were under a Mafia oath of secrecy.
CIA employees themselves are forbidden by secrecy agreements (under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed under President Ronald Reagan) to write anything about the Agency without first clearing it with a CIA publications review board. Accordingly, the CIA recently cracked down on a former officer who wrote under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones.” His “crime” was to publish two years ago “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” The Associated Press quotes Jones as saying, “CIA censors attack this book because it exposes the CIA as a place to get rich, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted or stolen in espionage programs that produce nothing.” Denying the truth, however, is a long established CIA practice. John Stockwell, for 13 years a CIA station chief in Angola or a top man in Viet Nam, said in a lecture, “What I ran into...was a corruption in the CIA and the intelligence business...what I found was that the CIA, us, the case officers, were not permitted to report about the corruption in the South Vietnamese army.”
Whether the Agency's John Stockwell, Ishmael Jones or DEA's Celerino Castillo, we note that many of the CIA's critics are former American intelligence officers who have seen too much, men apparently with a conscience and respect for human rights. Stockwell, a former Marine who held high posts in the field for the CIA was in a position to know when he charged that over the years the CIA has killed “millions” of innocents. He says the victims were largely “people of the Third World...that have the misfortune of being born in the Metumba mountains of the Congo, in the jungles of Southeast Asia...in the hills of northern Nicaragua...most of (whom) couldn't give you an intelligent definition of communism or of capitalism.” Stockwell estimated the CIA has perpetrated “10 to 20 thousand covert actions” between 1961, about the time of its Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco, and 1987.
Stockwell concludes “We are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis to people of the world...we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these (covert) programs in our name and we pretend like we don't know it's going on...And we're just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we've slaughtered and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was of the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide.”
Is it? The Obama administration apparently has no plans to expose and bring to trial past CIA killers and torturers, much less those who obstructed justice by destroying tapes of their torture or lying to Congress about it. This is the same country---which is now waging war in three Middle East nations and has been responsible for the violent and bloody overthrow of dozens of foreign governments---that keeps a quarter of a million pot smokers in prison who have never hurt another person in their lives. Pardon me if I ask whether my native land has not, in fact, become a lunatic asylum run by the criminally insane? #
(Sherwood Ross is director of the Anti-War News Service. He formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. To contribute to his news service or comment, reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
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