Two soldiers killed in Muzaffarabad suicide hit

27 06 2009

Two soldiers killed in Muzaffarabad suicide hit

TTP claims responsibility

By Sayed Abid Hussain Shah

MUZAFFARABAD: Two soldiers were killed and three others injured in the first-ever suicide attack on security forces in Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Friday.

A suicide bomber ripped through an Army vehicle near Shaukat Lines, Muzaffarabad. Two soldiers embraced martyrdom, while three others sustained injuries in the attack, official sources said. The injured were shifted to the Combined Military Hospital, Muzaffarabad.

Agencies add: Local authorities strongly condemned the blast and demanded a swift investigation and ordered the law-enforcement agencies to step up security. Police and security forces cordoned off the blast site and started combing the area for clues.

“We have beefed up security and started a search operation,” top administrative official in Muzaffarabad, Chaudhry Imtiaz, told AFP. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, said that the assault was launched to prove that Mehsud had not been weakened by more than a week of strikes on his suspected hideouts in the South Waziristan Agency.

“We are in a position to respond to the Army’s attacks, and time will prove that these military operations have not weakened us,” Hakimullah Mehsud said. President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Muhammad Zulqarnain Khan strongly condemned the attack and said India’s hand in the incident could not be ruled out.

Talking to media persons and various delegations, he said: “Terrorists who are trying to disrupt peace in the Valley have the support of India.” Former prime minister, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry also strongly condemned the Muzaffarabad blast. He pointed out that it was part of a conspiracy to spread terrorism to Azad Kashmir. In his message, he said the perpetrators of this heinous act were the enemies of Islam and Pakistan.





US Marines in position for Afghan offensive

27 06 2009

US Marines in position for Afghan offensive

CAMP LEATHERNECK: A new wave of US Marines sent to Afghanistan by President Barack Obama to turn the table on Taliban insurgents is in position and ready for action, the military has said.

About 10,000 fighters of Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade have arrived in Helmand, an opium-growing southern province where the Taliban have widespread power despite being ousted from government by US-led forces in 2001.

“All the Marines being deployed have now got here,” Lieutenant Abe Sipe, spokesman for the brigade, said Friday. “Our overall troop number is 10,700, of which 7,000 are at Camp Leatherneck and about 3,000 elsewhere in Helmand.

“These Marines form the major part of the US troop increase.”

A total of 17,000 US troops and 4,000 military trainers have been pledged for Afghanistan as part of Obama’s new strategy to defeat the Islamist Taliban, who have been gaining in strength over the past few years.





Our Terrorists Are “Freedom Fighters”

27 06 2009

California congressmen want Iranian militant group taken off terrorist watch list

03:38 PM | Kitty Felde | KPCC

A pair of California Congressmen – one Democrat, one Republican – urged the U.S. to “get out of the way” of an ex-patriate group of Iranian militants. KPCC’s Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde says the group is on a U.S. terrorist watch list.

Kitty Felde: Democrat Bob Filner from San Diego and Republican Dana Rohrabacher from Huntington Beach want U.S. support for the Iranian resistance movement. Congressman Filner says instead of invading or appeasing Iran, the U.S. could follow a third course: take the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq off the terrorist watch list.

Congressman Bob Filner: The MEK is a democratic non-nuclear secular group fighting for freedom for all the people in Iran and we should be doing what we could to help them and not get in their way.

Felde: The Council on Foreign Relations describes the MEK as the largest and most militant group opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran. It participated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but the MEK clashed with the Islamist regime that took over and moved to Iraq.

It landed on the State Department’s terrorist watch list for its cooperation with Saddam Hussein in attacking Iran. Congressmen Filner and Rohrabacher also want protection for 3,000 MEK fighters currently under American protection at an airbase in Iraq.





Tyranny’s Signature–Preventive detention

27 06 2009


It has taken the Obama presidency four months to hit moral rock bottom of totalitarian tyranny. It did so over the past week. The occasion was an official White House announcement in which a spokes-lady stood forward to inform Americans and the world that Mr Obama is: “The first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.” “Preventive detention” allows for indefinite imprisonment not based on any proven crimes or past violation of law. In effect, it can be a life sentence.  Even in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, similar laws were partially disguised by using such terms as “Protective Arrest” or “Protective Detention”. These were euphemisms meaning that a person had been grabbed by the authorities to protect the public before they committed a crime or that a person had been taken into custody for the same purpose with no crime having been committed. The US mainstream press took note of the White House announcement and went on to other matters. On the internet, the American political “left” was silent – Obama is their man – while the American political right wing sites applauded.

“Preventive Detention”:
In the US case of “Preventive Detention”, there is no access to the US courts. The Constitution has been bypassed as if it no longer exists. The worst part of it is that the Obama White House is looking at this as merely a matter of a change of procedure and therefore in itself of no great importance.
The First Rule Of Law:
The first rule of law is that when a person has been grabbed by the authorities, that person must be brought before a court at the earliest opportunity. Once there, the authorities have to give the judge very good reasons as to why they took that person into custody because the deprivation of liberty is the most serious thing that can be done to a person short of killing the individual. This is what Habeas Corpus – “present the body” – is for. The writ compels the authorities to present the arrested person in an open court which ensures that an arrested person does not disappear inside a jail somewhere. If a judge then agrees with the authorities, the person stays in jail, but now in the custody of the court, until a speedy trial can take place. If the judge does not agree with the authorities, the arrested person is promptly released.

The Power Of Precedent:
The Obama law of “Preventive Detention” will likely initially be applied inside the War on Terror claim but the law of precedent ensures that as time goes by, it will also be applied by authorities on all levels in more and more instances. The next problem arises when people picked up under this heading have to be on the record of the arresting authorities – somewhere. What if this is not made public? If it is not, then we are in the political area of the “disappeared” – as historically practised all over Latin America where people disappeared and were not heard from again until all the military regime fell into a heap.

From Here On – The Political Risks Climb:
Political risk is normally a term used in economics when foreign investors in another country face a climbing danger of having their investments expropriated. In the strict political context, it is where people face a climbing danger of having their individual freedoms and liberties expropriated. This is the case in the United States today. Bad laws are one thing. They can be changed over time. But when the political power reaches for the direct detention of people and the power to hold them without trial, then the political power in the land is literally making war upon the liberties of the people in their own nation.  Millions of Americans in the time to come may well say: “‘We couldn’t believe it could happen here.”





Baitullah claims Muzaffarabad suicide attack

27 06 2009

Baitullah claims Muzaffarabad suicide attack

Friday, 26 Jun, 2009 | 11:29 PM PST | // The blast was targeted at a military vehicle. —Reuters/File photo

MUZAFFARABAD: Two soldiers were killed and at least three others were wounded here on Friday in what was the first ever suicide bombing in Azad Kashmir, police and military officials said.

The early morning attack in an army barrack in Shaukat Lines, housing many army installations, caught security personnel unawares although according to a police official ‘they were on alert for the past four months.’

Witnesses and official sources said the suicide bomber who appeared to be in early twenties walked through a ground, used by army personnel for physical training and local youths for playing cricket and football, and entered into the adjacent residential barrack of non-commissioned army officials where he blew himself up at 6:25 pm after engaging some soldiers in conversation ostensibly to cause maximum casualties.

‘On the premises of barrack the bomber was intercepted by a soldier whom he tried to engage in conversation presumably to attract other soldiers around for maximum physical losses,’ the sources said, adding, the bomber then exploded himself, killing one soldier on the spot and wounding four others who were evacuated to the Combined Military Hospital where one of them died of his wounds.

An army pick-up parked 5-10 yards away from the bomber’s position turned turtle while another one was also damaged by the impact of blast which was heard in most parts of the town.

An intelligence source who reached the affected barrack within moments of explosion told Dawn that he saw the ground splattered with blood and lower limbs and also some parts of the upper limbs of the bomber.

‘But I could not see his head and torso,’ he added.

AJK Inspector General Police Javed Iqbal and other senior officials of AJK administration reached the site of the explosion shortly afterwards and discussed various aspects of attack, its fallout and investigation techniques with military officers who were later joined by the Murree based General Officer Commanding of 12-Division.

It may be mentioned here that the junior section of Army Public School is located in the closest proximity of the barrack that came under attack and several other educational institutions as well as the 5-AK Brigade headquarters also exist nearby, at a distance of two to four hundreds yards.

Several parents were heard voicing concern about the security of their children in the area.

AJK minister for social welfare Mrs Noreen Arif who lives hardly 100 yards away from the targeted barrack also visited the place four hours later and termed the incident ‘very tragic.’

‘We ought to devise a comprehensive strategy to ensure security of our people and combat the menace of terrorism,’ she said, but declined to give a direct reply to the question if the need had arisen to shift the army installations away from civilian populations.

Though Pakistan is in the grip of terrorist attacks, mostly targeting the security personnel, it was the first time that such bombing had taken place in AJK.

A senior police official who did not want to be named told Dawn that the masterminds of Friday’s attack had chosen an army installation in Muzaffarabad for some definite reason, most probably to realise the authorities that they could expand their activities and retaliate the security forces anywhere including Azad Kashmir.

It may be mentioned here that the targeted barrack falls under 5-AK Brigade which is part of Azad Kashmir (AK) Regiment, reportedly carrying out operation against the militants in Swat and adjacent areas.

Responsibility:

A Pakistani Taliban sAJKesman claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, told The Associated Press the attack was launched to prove that Mehsud had not been weakened by the recent strikes on his suspected hideouts in northwest Pakistan.





Israeli Tanks Amass along Border, Over Flights Intensify

27 06 2009

Israeli Tanks Amass along Border, Over Flights Intensify

The Israeli army has stepped up its presence along the border with Lebanon deploying armored tanks and setting up fortifications as it intensified airspace violations in the area, the National News Agency reported Thursday.

In “unusual military activity,” the Israeli army deployed Merkava tanks and soldier carriers, among other armored vehicles, along the barb-wired fence separating Shebaa Farms from liberated Lebanese territories, the NNA said.

Israeli tanks were also amassing along a five-kilometer area, stretching from Tallat Sobaih army post to Jabal al-Sheikh observatory. Sporadic gunfire was also heard throughout the day, the NNA reported.

Meanwhile, the Israeli air force carried out several flights over Shebaa Farms, al-Arqoub villages, Hasbaya, Marjayoun, western Bekaa and Iqleem al-Tuffah. Israeli choppers were also spotted over the Farms from 6:00 am till 8:30 am.

On the outskirts of al-Abassiyeh, the Israeli army set up fortifications and barricades as part of a military workshop around al-Dohaira post, off the town of al-Ghajar. Heavy machinery was being used including bulldozers, drills and large cranes. A similar workshop was taking place at Jabal al-Sheikh’s observatory with soldiers setting up military equipment.

sraeli Tanks Amass along Border, Over Flights Intensify
The Israeli army has stepped up its presence along the border with Lebanon deploying armored tanks and setting up fortifications as it intensified airspace violations in the area, the National News Agency reported Thursday.In “unusual military activity,” the Israeli army deployed Merkava tanks and soldier carriers, among other armored vehicles, along the barb-wired fence separating Shebaa Farms from liberated Lebanese territories, the NNA said.

Israeli tanks were also amassing along a five-kilometer area, stretching from Tallat Sobaih army post to Jabal al-Sheikh observatory. Sporadic gunfire was also heard throughout the day, the NNA reported.

Meanwhile, the Israeli air force carried out several flights over Shebaa Farms, al-Arqoub villages, Hasbaya, Marjayoun, western Bekaa and Iqleem al-Tuffah. Israeli choppers were also spotted over the Farms from 6:00 am till 8:30 am.

On the outskirts of al-Abassiyeh, the Israeli army set up fortifications and barricades as part of a military workshop around al-Dohaira post, off the town of al-Ghajar. Heavy machinery was being used including bulldozers, drills and large cranes. A similar workshop was taking place at Jabal al-Sheikh’s observatory with soldiers setting up military equipment.





UNIFIL Finds 20 Katyushas Ready for Launch in the South

27 06 2009
Lebanon

Jerusalem Post: UNIFIL Finds 20 Katyushas Ready for Launch in the South

U.N. peacekeepers have found around 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch in southern Lebanon, Israel’s Jerusalem Post reported Friday.
The newspaper said that UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches in an effort to prevent a flare-up along the border with Israel.

According to the Israeli army, Hizbullah has deployed most of its forces and weaponry – including Katyusha rockets – inside homes in southern villages.

The Post also said that UNIFIL has recently succeeded in thwarting attacks that were planned against its own personnel.

UNIFIL’s increased activity comes amid concerns in Israel that Hizbullah will launch an attack along the border to avenge the assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh in a Damascus car bombing last year.

The newspaper quoted foreign sources as saying that Hizbullah was behind a thwarted attempt earlier this year to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan.

According to the daily, the group has also tried using Palestinian proxies for attacks within Israel, without success. “These frustrations, Israel fears, might lead the group to try a retaliatory attack against the northern border, which would be easier operationally.”





Israeli military build up along borders with Lebanon

26 06 2009

Israeli military build up along borders with Lebanon

Posted: 2009/06/26
From: MNN

<!–Twitter: Follow | RT

The NNA described the Israeli military setup as `unusual military activities,` while the Israeli air force carried out several flights over Al-Arqoub village, Hasbaya, Marjeyoun, West Bekaa and Ialim al-Toufah in southern Lebanon.

// <![CDATA[//

&lt;a target=’_top’ href=’ads.heyu.net/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a0a21972&amp;amp;cb={random}’&gt;&lt;img border=’0′ alt=” src=’http://ads.heyu.net/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=24&amp;amp;n=a0a21972&amp;amp;cb={random}’ /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

BEIRUT, June 25 (Xinhua) — The Israeli army has set new military buildup along its border with Lebanon Thursday, amid intensified air force flights over Lebanese territories, the official national News agency (NNA) reported.

Merkava tanks and armored vehicles were deployed along the wired fence separating occupied Shebaa Farms from Lebanese territories, the report said.

The NNA described the Israeli military setup as “unusual military activities,” while the Israeli air force carried out several flights over Al-Arqoub village, Hasbaya, Marjeyoun, West Bekaa and Ialim al-Toufah in southern Lebanon.

Israel fought a 34-day devastating war with the Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah in July 2006.

Lebanon is still in a state of war with Israel. However, an Israeli army delegation has proposed to a Lebanese military delegation Wednesday during a meeting sponsored by UN interim forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), direct political bilateral talks between the government of Lebanon and Israel, according to a report by local As-Safir daily Thursday.

The Lebanese side replied that the Lebanese government instructions were limited to discuss the implementation of UN Resolution 1701.

Resolution 1701 ended the Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006, and set restrictions on both sides to cease all acts of hostility.





Beware Of The ADL’s Cyberbullying Law

26 06 2009

Beware Of The ADL’s Cyberbullying Law

ADL’S Anti-Christian Agenda Articles

BEWARE OF THE ADL’S CYBERBULLYING LAW
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2009


THE BATTLE TO SAVE AMERICA FROM BECOMING A ZIONIST POLICE STATE must be waged against the powerful Jewish organization known as the Anti-Defamation League Of B’nai B’rith (ADL).

In addition to the Federal Hate Crimes Bill, drafted by the ADL and now going through rigged Senate committee hearings, the ADL is also pushing its stealthy so-called ‘anti-bullying’ bill, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, introduced to the House Judiciary Subcommittee On Crime on May 26, 2009.

This Cyberbullying Prevention Act is another integral part of the ADL’s agenda of domination and subjugation of what remains of free America. Shepherded by its legal counsel, Michael Lieberman, (a Zionist Jew, of course) the bill, among other things, would permit the FBI to acquire & collect permanent data on ‘bias motivated’ so-called ‘criminal’ activity on the Internet.

It is important to know who we are fighting against. The ADL is the ‘civil rights’ (for whom?) arm of the B’nai B’rith – a powerful Jewish religious, educational, fraternal, and charitable organization. The B’nai B’rith has persuaded 55 nations (in which it has 2100 lodges and 200,000 Jewish members) to unite under the authority of a central Hate Crimes Command Center.

The ADL is now engaged in intensive efforts to organize city governments, schools, civic organizations, and Zionist-oriented churches to combat ‘hate and homophobia’ towards homosexuals and blacks. In REALITY, any ‘hate crime’ legislation can be immediately used by the ADL to attempt to silence ANYONE who seeks to differ with its social agendas and self-aggrandizing concept of history.

HAVING BEEN RAISED IN JUDAISM, I can attest that Jews really don’t care about homosexuals, whom they call “fagellas,” or blacks, whom they call “schwartzas.” Jews consider it a horror not to perpetuate their own through procreation and consider it a disgrace to live in a black neighborhood. And now, the ADL is at the doors of the Internet to eradicate the last bastion of free speech in America with their mission of ostensibly protecting homosexuals & blacks.

Right now, the ADL is infiltrating American public schools with various ‘training and educational’ programs aimed at imposing Internet censorship against so-called ‘bullying’ tactics on E-mails and Web Sites directed towards targeted students.

This is the ADL’s first step through gradualism, (Jews don’t care about Gentile students whom they call “goys”), in preventing all criticism ON THE INTERNET of Jewry’s criminal activities in the various nations that host these ingrates. Yes, those who criticize the activities of Zionist Jews will be next on the ADL’s cyberbullying hit list.

THE REAL ‘CYBER BULLIES’

THE ZIONIST JEWS OF THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE are truly the real ‘cyber bullies.’ On May 29, 2009, the Gestapo Jews of the ADL posted their first Cyberbullying Prevention Model Statute defining their upcoming Internet censorship.

This ADL censorship of the Internet will commence with their Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act if passed by the Zionist-bought Congress. (A record number of Jews are now in office).

Targeting the Internet, the freedom-hating Jews of the ADL are quite specific in their Model Statute to destroy the last bastion of free speech under the pretense of protecting students:

“Electronic communications must be included in any definition of bullying. With increasing access to online technology, the Internet has become a vehicle to harass and bully. Cyberbullying is more harmful than traditional bullying because of the invasive and pervasive nature of Internet communication.

Cyberbullying means any electronic communication including, but not limited to, intimidation shown to be motivated by a student’s race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression (trans-sexuals).

Electronic communication means any communication including but not limited to, E-Mails, instant messaging, text messages, Blogs and Web Sites.” View Entire Story Here.

Indeed, a national Thought Police Gestapo is being created right before our eyes led by the ADL. Wicked Zionist Jews will soon censor and indict the politically incorrect ON THE INTERNET here in Zionist-occupied America….

___________________________________
For More See: How The New US Hate Laws Will Change Our Lives Click Here

And: The ADL Hates Our Freedoms Click Here





Bankster “Holiday” Planned for September?

26 06 2009

Bankster “Holiday” Planned for September?

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
June 22, 2009

Bob Chapman’s influential International Forecaster is reporting on the possibility of a so-called “bank holiday” planned for late August or early September. According to Chapman’s sources, U.S. embassies around the world are selling dollars and stockpiling money from respective countries where they operate.

featured stories   Bankster Holiday Planned for September?
nazis
FDR imposed a “bank holiday” soon after taking office. It resulted in the government stealing gold from the American people and giving them useless fiat paper money in return.

“Some US embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies,” writes Harry Schultz, “enough to last them a year.” Schultz publishes the Harry Schultz Letter, an international investment, financial, economic, and geopolitical newsletter named as “Newsletter of the Year” by Peter Brimelow of Market Watch in 2005 and 2008.

Schultz believes the global elite are in the process of engineering an FDR-style “bank holiday” of undetermined length in order to “sort-out the bank mess” and impose new bank rules.

On March 5, 1933, in the depths of the banker engineered “Great Depression,” newly elected Franklin Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday” that forced banks closed for four days. Roosevelt then rammed the Emergency Banking Act through the legislature. Passed by Congress on March 9, the act granted FDR near dictatorial control over the dealings of banks. It also allowed the Secretary of the Treasury the power to compel every person and business in the country to relinquish their gold and accept paper currency in exchange.

On March 10, Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6073, forbidding people from sending gold overseas and forbidding banks from paying out gold. A few weeks later, on April 5, Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6102 ordering Americans to deliver their gold and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve bank in exchange for paper fiat money.

In other words, FDR engaged in one of history’s greatest rip-offs — that is until now.

FDR not only ripped-off the American people, but foreigners holding dollars as well, thus ensuring the “Great Depression” would spread around the world like a bankster engineered contagion.

As Schultz notes, another forced “bank holiday” will likely lead to a formal devaluation of the already broadsided U.S. dollar. “But devalue against what? The euro? Doubtful. Gold? Maybe. Or vs. the IMF basket of currencies,” which he feels is more likely.

In fact, this is precisely what the globalist have in mind. In March, the media reported the IMF was poised print billions of “global quantitative easing” dollars to be dubbed global “super-currency” to address the (bankster engineered) economic crisis. “The principle behind it is that everyone would get bonus dollars and instead of the Federal Reserve having to print them, everyone gets them,” declared Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF.

Can you say inflation?

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
  • efoods

It is no secret the elite have envisioned a global currency for some time now. In 2007, the director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations stated that the dollar and the euro are but temporary currencies. “It is the market that made the dollar into global money – and what the market giveth, the market can taketh away. If the tailors balk and the dollar falls, the market may privatize money on its own,” Benn Steil pontificated.

More like the banksters taketh away — and not only money but national sovereignty as well because a global currency will demand an end to “monetary nationalism.”

Or as Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has said, “states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function.”

Mr. Schultz believes a “bank holiday” would suit the burning desires of the international bankster elite. It will lead to “nationalization,” which is a polite word for brazen thievery. It will allow the government — owned lock, stock and barrel by the global elite and run by their corrupt whores and cronies — to rape secured creditors and bondholders. Nationalization is the unfettered process of grabbing up of insurance companies, mortgage companies, banks, medical care, and car companies and handing them over to the monopoly men.

During the FDR “bank holiday,” Schulz notes, “thousands of banks never reopened; it was a face-saving way of shutting them down. I would guess the same would occur today; thousands have little or no net value, loaded with debt, bad mortgages.”

In order soften the nation up for the coming pillage, the Obama administration has proposed a plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy. The new rules would see the Fed given the authority to “regulate” any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets — that is to say if it “threatens” the monopolistic interests of the bankers.

“Obama’s regulatory ‘reform’ plan is nothing less than a green light for the complete and total takeover of the United States by a private banking cartel that will usurp the power of existing regulatory bodies, who are now being blamed for the financial crisis in order that their status can be abolished and their roles handed over to the all-powerful Fed,” write Paul Joseph and Steve Watson. “The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone.”

A “bank holiday” would work wonders for any “regulation” the Fed and the bankers have in mind. It would compliment the criminal consolidation now underway. It would allow them to finally and formally devalue the dollar and usher in a global “super currency” of control and enslavement.

A Bob Chapman subscriber added a little dinger to the prospect of the banks going dark. The subscriber claims to have overheard two men in FEMA jackets talking with a police chief in California, all who agreed that the federalization of police around the country — a process largely complete — will be required if the banks are shuttered in late August or early September because it will get “ugly” out there.

No doubt. Because the sort of enduring and polite American who weathered the “Great Depression” is now in seriously short supply.

If Mr. Schultz’s prediction is correct, we can expect riots in bank foyers and ultimately martial law to be imposed.





H. R. 45, They Want Our Handguns

26 06 2009

H. R. 45CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

To provide for the implementation of a system of licensing for purchasers of certain firearms and for a record of sale system for those firearms, and for other purposes. (read it here)





Twilight of the Psychopaths

26 06 2009

Twilight of the Psychopaths

by Dr. Kevin Barrett

Twilight of the Psychopaths

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” – John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman

When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.

Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the leisure to develop arts and sciences. And while that would be a good idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.

Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and “warfare.” Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.

The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:

1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;

2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits);

3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.

Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.

Political Satire

Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.

In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true “Revolution in Military Affairs” was not Donald Rumsfeld’s move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall’s discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: “Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges” (Grossman, p. 4).

Marshall’s discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers — the 5% who are natural-born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators—did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for humanity’s genetic endowment!)

Marshall’s work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science. In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane majority, would rather die than fight.

Political Satire

The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers’ behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that psychopaths were in control of society’s perception of military affairs. Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly sane, normal society.

How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.

So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers, Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history, doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world. As a leading “conspiracy theorist” according to Wikipedia, I feel eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate than the prevailing wisdom: The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.

Political Satire

Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld—the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or “endgame” (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists—in short, the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.

Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.” Given that Bush is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement to McClendon should be taken seriously.

Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.

Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being — a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish — militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.

Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths co-opt and corrupt normal human beings. One way they do this, is by manipulating shame and denial — emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced among normals.

Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths’ guilds in disguise) recruit new members. Some criminal gangs and satanist covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to “earn their stripes.” Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in front of older members while reciting the candidate’s entire sexual history. By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths’ guild destroys the candidate’s normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place, and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of his former self — a manufactured psychopath or psychopath’s apprentice.

This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society. Despite easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld. Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone, Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic leaders. They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust. They refuse to see the evidence that the psychopaths’ guilds running America’s most powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes, Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys. And of course they refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that their own psychopath-dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.

All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view. If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens’ wilful blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.

But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere are waking up. The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either party with significant grassroots support.

If “love” is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul — a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies — implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath’s tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together.

The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the people’s growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation since the dawn of so-called civilization).

Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism — ritualized mass slaughter — is increasingly unavailable. And if war was the great human tragedy, the pathocrats’ pathetic attempt at a war-substitute — the transparently phoney “war on terror” — is repeating it as sheerest farce.

Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths. Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.

About the writer:

Dr. Kevin Barrett, co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth, LINK, has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Barrett became a 9/11 truth activist in 2004 after reading David Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and conducting follow-up research that convinced him Griffin had accurately summarized evidence indicating 9/11 was an inside job.

In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his students. He has appeared in several documentary films, lectures widely on 9/11 and hosts three radio programs on three different patriot networks.

Click to make a donation-pledge herein

Become a Member:

Would you like to see other similar articles and critical commentaries in The Canadian National Newspaper? Then, show your support. Make a member-pledge donation, in support of the Membership Drive of the Pro-Democracy Media Foundation.

The Canadian can only continue to publish investigative articles in such areas, with the donations from members of the public in Canada, the U.S., and abroad. Consider making a donation of $50.00, $75.00, $100.00, $200.00 or more. Donors are eligible to receive our first collector’s print edition in mail. Alternatively, you can send us a note to be placed on our special email list of members. Member-donors can also suggest articles or commentaries to be published in The Canadian.

The Canadian is a socially progressive and not-for-profit national newspaper, with an international readership. We provide an alternative to the for-profit commercial focused media, which often censors vital information and perspective of potential interest to the diverse Canadian public, and other peoples internationally.

Become a member of The Canadian, with your donation-pledge. Help support independent, progressive, and not-for-profit journalism.





Ewen Cameron, Memory Thief – Part 2

26 06 2009

more about "Ewen Cameron, Memory Thief – Part 2", posted with vodpod





Even Cameron: Memory thief Part 1

26 06 2009

more about "Even Cameron: Memory thief Part 1", posted with vodpod





Operation Monarch:Ewen Cameron

26 06 2009

more about "Operation Monarch:Ewen Cameron", posted with vodpod





What are our soldiers dying for?

26 06 2009

What are our soldiers dying for?

Islamabad diary

Friday, June 26, 2009
Ayaz Amir

If the present fight against the Taliban leads to a new Pakistan, it is worth fighting and winning. But if our ways don’t change, if our ruling elites remain as corrupt and self-centred as they have always been, then doubts will arise whether the blood being shed was worth anything. The Taliban are a threat to our way of life. But the Taliban, it bears remembering, were the product of our folly, the general staff and our military intelligence agencies (ISI and MI) chasing shadows and fantasies at the altar of muddled strategic theories.

American folly and narrow self-interest was also an ingredient in this witches’ brew. But there was no divine command that we had to follow American orders. That we did ourselves, our ruling generals — from Zia to Musharraf — all too willing instruments of American policy. No one forced Zia to become an American surrogate. No one compelled Musharraf to become an American puppet. They followed this path out of pure self-interest.

Blaming the US for all our ills has become a national industry. We must look more closely at our own doings. Yes, the Americans will do what they perceive to be in their self-interest. But what stops us from looking out for ourselves? So unless the nation goes through a process of re-education, unless the military mind purges itself of the follies embraced in the name of ‘jihad’, Pakistan’s soul will remain troubled and the fight against the Taliban will remain unfinished business.

The intelligence services need over-hauling. The ISI and the Military Intelligence (MI) must revert to being spy agencies, not exercises in self-aggrandisement. The quality of their analysis doesn’t seem to be very high. If it were we wouldn’t be in the mess that we are in.

The ISI depends heavily on the regular rotation of army officers moving in and out of its ranks. It should be able to attract the best university minds, which will not happen unless it becomes an agency like the CIA, the erstwhile KGB or even India’s RAW, instead of being an extension of GHQ and the army. The Intelligence Bureau too can do with a bit of reform. At present it is no better than a dumping ground for discarded ideas and sidelined officers.

Parts of the army have begun to look too much like commercial enterprises. What business has the army to run bakeries and food outlets? Lahore’s army-owned Fortress Stadium has nothing of any fortress about it. It is now an ugly shopping mall. What business do army doctors have to conduct private practice in military hospitals? Shouldn’t army doctors have their hands full treating the wounded and maimed of Swat and Waziristan? This is commercialism run wild.

If the army–and also the air force and navy for that matter–are so convinced of their commercial skills they should become self-supporting enterprises instead of being a drain on the national budget. The nation pays–through its nose, it may be added–for a professional fighting force. It has never been inclined to the idea of supporting a commercial circus, which is what parts of the military now look like.

If fighting the Taliban is to have any meaning, the military must return to its comparatively frugal and austere roots, reforming if not completely eschewing the real estate culture which is now the bane of senior ranks, generals, admirals and air marshals less symbols of martial valour than icons of the real estate trade.

If the real estate mania is really beyond cure it may be an idea worth pursuing to make Malik Riaz of Bahria Town–Pakistan’s leading real estate enterprise with a bevy of retired senior ranks on its payroll–an honorary field marshal. That should serve everyone right.

To be fair to the military, it has only followed where the civil services have led. The original freebooters of Pakistan were members of the higher civil service. The one good thing Musharraf did was destroy their power, if not their privileges. The demise of the deputy commissioner was an event un-mourned throughout the country. The bad thing which Musharraf did was that the cure he found for the deputy commissioner, in the form of the district nazim, was worse than the disease. The deputy commissioner was a nuisance. The district nazim became a raging menace.

Mian Shahbaz Sharif’s idea of administrative reform is to try to revert to the nuisance. He hasn’t succeeded but he remains possessed with the idea, somehow convinced that if the deputy commissioner returns peace and nirvana will automatically follow.

It is a funny thing hearing chief secretaries and other civil servants speak. They will talk of setting aright the problems of the universe but one thing they will never mention is corruption in the revenue department which is their primary responsibility.

The police are corrupt and inefficient. Wapda is corrupt. Other line departments are beehives of corruption. The money-making of the highway department is legendary. But if anything beats all of these it is the revenue department–the kingdom of the patwari, the girdawar, the tehsildar, the DDOR, DOR, EDOR, etc, etc. You will never catch a higher civil servant overly agitated about their loot and plunder.

If the people of Pakistan were ever to be empowered in the Bolshevik sense, the first person to be lynched or soundly thrashed would be the patwari and the local tehsildar, followed by the leading lights of the local police station (followed, I have no doubt in my mind, by the local politician–MNA, MPA).

The inspector general of the Punjab Police sits atop a force which comes to more than five or six divisions of the army. But to see this force in action is to give up on any concept of law and order. The higher ranks of this force constitute a privilegentsia more concerned about promotions and postings than the investigation and prevention of crime. Armchair or sofa warriors is a description which fits them perfectly. The terror threat of the Taliban demands a new approach to policing but police stations are still mired in the old culture of lining their pockets to the exclusion of almost every thing else.

The army at least has been woken out of its dream-sleep by the Taliban and for this we owe the Taliban leadership our thanks. But the civil and police services haven’t changed at all. They are still prisoners of their old ways. Yet, and this is the funny thing, my friend Mian Shahbaz Sharif thinks that the DMG (civil service) and PSP (police service) are descended directly from the angels. He trusts their advice while tending to look with suspicion at politicos, virtually convinced that scratch a politician and out comes a confirmed criminal.

He may have a point but it doesn’t capture the whole truth. The corruption of politicians–unless they are in the very highest of leagues–is often crude and stupid. Local politicos are great ones, say, for land-grabbing which immediately puts them in the public eye. But civil servants and police officials do things in more clever and sophisticated ways.

On a slightly different subject, why is the desecration and despoiling of GOR-1 (originally a residential estate for the paladins of the higher services) continuing at such an alarming rate? This is no one’s private land but almost a national heritage. For the sake of those who are to come after us we have a duty to preserve what’s left of our green spaces. Pervaiz Elahi, no one’s idea of a culture czar, went to great lengths to destroy the natural beauty of GOR-1 but if the same process is to continue now, then what’s the difference between him and the new order?

I am mentioning these things only to point out that if nothing is to change in the way we conduct our national affairs then there is very little point in fighting the Taliban. This war will make sense only if it becomes an opportunity to change some of our ingrained habits and restructure Pakistan, change our priorities and orient national policies towards the welfare of the vast mass of our people rather than a privileged elite.

Two things must happen at once if Pakistan is to even approximate to the republic of our dreams: the first steps towards a common education policy–one syllabus, one set of books, one medium of instruction, one examination for all Pakistani boys and girls, from the highest mountains to the shores of the Arabian Sea; and a heavy emphasis on public transport–a revitalisation of our railways, the discouragement of the automobile industry and more and better buses for the general public.

And if Pakistan is to become a modern republic we will have to revisit the morality tales of that prince of hypocrites, General Ziaul Haq, whose preaching and enforced piety, added to his Afghan follies, gave us first the ‘mujahideen’ and then the Taliban. America tried prohibition and what did it get? Secret drinking and organised crime centred on the alcohol trade. It is common knowledge that many of our leading doctors of the faith are closet imbibers. Whom do we deceive?

All power to the people and an end to all unconscionable privileges for an already pampered elite: this is the only way to make sense of the war against the Taliban.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com





Obama’s Afghan War, the US Media, and the UN: the New Metric of Civilian Casualties

26 06 2009

Obama’s Afghan War, the US Media, and the UN: the New Metric of Civilian Casualties

During 2009, seven out of ten civilians killed by the Obama and NATO military machines have been women and children. Clearly, the Obama regime has failed on the metric of civilian casualties.

By Prof. Marc W. Herold

Cartoon By Eneko
By Eneko in Diagonal Periódico.

A tacit agreement operates between the Obama administration, the U.S corporate media, most progressive U.S. liberals, and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA). All dream to a lesser or greater degree of a future social democratic paradise in Afghanistan where girls’ schools would be flourishing and small farmers exporting pomegranates. (1) Some debate exists over the means to achieve this end. Much ado has been made during the past five months as to whether the Obama approach to Afghanistan differs or not with that of its predecessor.

What is certain is that Afghanistan has become Obama’s war. (2) Words matter: this is Obama’s war and it is a military surge. Obama has put in motion a surge of U.S occupation troops raising them by 50% to a level of 55,000 by mid-summer 2009 (including a 1,000-strong contingent of Special Forces). He is continuing and expanding Bush’s use of mercenaries. Pentagon data indicates that private security contractors working for the Pentagon have risen by 29% during the first quarter of 2009. (3)

A debate centers upon to what degree the Obama approach is one of counter-terrorism (CT) or counter-insurgency (COIN). Central to the latter is the metric of civilian casualties and this is where the U.S media by commission and the UNAMA by omission enter the evolving Afghan tragedy. Much of the U.S left by having earlier proclaimed that the Afghanistan was the “good war” and being inebriated by the nation-building of humanitarian imperialism is now suffering from a bi-polar disorder, rendering it irrelevant.

With the sacking of General McKiernan and the entry of General McChrystal (along with the continuing prominence of counter-insurgency aficionado Kilcullen), Obama appears to tilt towards the COIN approach in Afghanistan. Put in other terms, the approach is population-centric rather than military-centric. General McChrystal stated in congressional testimony that “the measure of American and allied effectiveness would the ‘number of Afghans shielded from violence,’ not the number of enemies killed.” (4) He also said, “This is a critical point. It may be the critical point. This is a struggle for the support of the Afghan people. Our willingness to operate in ways that minimize casualties or damage, even when doing so makes our task more difficult, is essential to our credibility. I cannot overstate my commitment to the importance of this concept…Sir, I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous things we face in Afghanistan, particularly with the Afghan people, the Pashtun most likely.” (5)

His approach hence is classic COIN, rather than focusing forcefully upon taking the fight to the Taliban and their associates (military-centric). Naturally, the COIN strategy if successful by providing better actionable intelligence enables better carrying out the military fight against “insurgents.” This strategy finds favor both in Karzai’s Kabul (to which yet more monies will flow) and in European capitals where the military-centric approach is unacceptable. The “new” U.S strategy which it turns out is not new at all, involves building up the Afghan military-police apparatus, pressuring NATO to take a greater role, employing “precision strikes” to avoid civilian casualties, etc. All this was tried under Bush and failed. Why should we expect anything different under Obama? But what is new is the metric of Afghan civilian casualties. This was well expressed in an editorial of the Boston Globe,

McChrystal and the new number two commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, must make one tenet in their guerrilla warfare playbook an absolute priority: protection of the civilian population. The Taliban are reaping benefits from a dynamic that should be familiar from other guerrilla wars. When Taliban fighters stage an ambush, US forces frequently feel compelled to call in air strikes or artillery fire. And all too often, as happened last week, innocent Afghan villagers are hurt or killed. The inevitable outcome is widespread anger against the foreign army. This is what Afghan President Hamid Karzai lamented again and again last week during a visit to Washington. He begged Americans to stop killing Afghan civilians. What Karzai knows, and what McChrystal must take to heart, is that nearly all Afghans despise and fear the Taliban. Yet no US strategy can defeat the Taliban unless the foreigners become protectors – not destroyers – of Afghan families. (6)

An editorial in the New York Times of June 8th added

Protecting Afghan civilians and expanding the secure space in which they can go about their lives and livelihoods must now become the central purpose of American military operations in Afghanistan. (7)

As pointed out by Jeff Huber, the McChrystal metric of winning – the number of Afghans shielded from violence – is nonsense. How many shielded Afghans will equate to victory? Who is going to shield them? (8) General McChrystal who was head of secretive Joint Special Operations Command, involved in widespread murder and carnage across Afghanistan? In other words, under the McChrystal metric, it will be impossible to know when we have won. This is an invitation to war without end.  (full report here)





I don’t believe in Facebook, Twitter, VOA, BBC,CNN

26 06 2009

The situation in Iran is an equation with more than two sides:
1- Iranian people, fighting for their right.
2- Government, trying to push people back.
3- Reformists, trying to gain power in government. Aligned with people.
Rafsanjani, the representative of the pragmatist faction of the theocracy, trying to overthrow the supreme leader (aligned with people).

4- West, trying to destabilize Iran, to reach its nasty goals (Democracy for Iranians is a filthy trick of the west).

I don’t believe in Facebook, Twitter, VOA, BBC,CNN. They are all trying to make a fuss about the sad side of the events in Iran, FOR THEIR OWN PURPOSES. I can see their evil hand.
It is true that Iranians are fighting for their right. They should fight, and they will. But the West is the filthy side of the equation.
I think that, theoretically, potentially, the Mullah’s regime is capable to do anything to hold back people, to stay in power and they will in time, if the revolt continues. They are capable of killing tens of thousands, but, killing 1000 people in Baharesrtan a couple of days ago, is a big lie. Tehran would turn into a volcano if they did that.
I am not defending the despotic government here. They did enough to disgrace themselves, to show their despotic nature, I am just telling you how I see the different sides of the “equation”.
The bizarre thing is that in this multi-side equation, the real enemies of Iran (Administration of the Western countries) are aligned with people of Iran TEMPORARILY, and that can be confusing.
How funny (and sad) it is to hear from them about democracy and freedom!

So, I say again, all of you administrators of the West who are shedding tears for Iranians, who are with your apparent hypocrisy and double standards talking about democracy, NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. You had better think of  democracy in your own country. Just stop invasions. Stop manipulating weaker countries. Stop wars, stop genocide. Stop manipulating your own people with your big lies.

Where were you when thousands of Gaza people were being killed? Why don’t you talk about dictatorship of your close allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia? Do you really believe that Iranians are more oppressed than Egyptians and Saudi-Arabians?
You make a hero of Roksana Saber, a self-confessed spy. You try to shout loud about Neda Soltan, to use all your evil power in all media, to spread the news and the clip. Now I doubt if she was killed by Iranian militia . Because, regarding your hypocrisy, your real purpose, your other big lies, all the black spots in your foreign and home policy, a rational mind would  think   that probably, (The most probably I dare say) the killing of Neda Soltan was your own act, a false flag to help destabilizing Iran, NOT TO HELP IRANIANS.
Vahab in Tehran




GRANDMOTHER AND RETIRED NURSE LABELED A TERRORIST

26 06 2009

GRANDMOTHER AND RETIRED NURSE LABELED A TERRORIST

B Y R O N C A S S I E N E W S – P O S T S TA F F RCASSIE@FREDERICKNEWSPOST.COM

Bette Hoover, a 61-year-old retired nurse and grandmother of two, learned last fall the Maryland State Police had labeled her a terrorist. It was a fact she couldn’t reveal to family members and friends until the following spring.

“Initially I was in disbelief and then I was numb,” said Hoover, of Dayton. “I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it with anyone for months.”

Currently an adjunct instructor at Howard Community College, Hoover’s experience began with what she described as a “chilling” Oct. 3, 2008, letter from Col. Terrence B. Sheridan, state police superintendent.

You are “presently described in the MSP’s Case Explorer database program as ‘suspected of involvement in terrorism,’” wrote Sheridan, while acknowledging they had “no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime.” Sheridan offered Hoover, also a conflict resolution mediator and founder of Just Peace Circles, an opportunity to review her file before the state police purged the information from its files. The Maryland State Police’s surveillance of area activists and infiltration of local peace groups — which the agency said was limited to a 14-month period from March 2005 to May 2006 — received national attention when the story broke last summer. When Hoover went to see her file in November, she was given only five pages to review, which made her suspicious that she wasn’t getting the whole story. “The last one is numbered ‘page 18,’” Hoover said, pointing to the last page of the file she received. “That makes me think I’m missing the rest.” As with the other text document pages she received — pages 2, 6, 8, 16 — page 18 is sparse and highly redacted. Further, the legible information is completely wrong, she said. Her file listed two groups Hoover was said to be a part of: The Ruckus, a social justice organization that trains groups in nonviolent protests, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “I have never been a member or had anything to do with either organization,” Hoover said. “I have one friend, I’m aware of, who did something with The Ruckus, that’s it, and nothing to do with PETA. I love animals, but to be honest, PETA annoys me. I once raised sheep on a farm here and we used to sell their wool at the Howard County Fair, and PETA always came to protest shearing.” Included in Hoover’s file was an enlarged Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration photo of her taken from an old driver’s license application. Nothing in the document referenced any group she actually belonged to, or demonstration she had joined. She said she is now active only with the Howard County Coalition for Peace and Justice. Hoover said she was not active politically over the 14-month period during which the state police have admitted to spying on her and other civilians. Retired from nursing, she was busy finishing her bachelor’s degree in social science at the University of Maryland University College at the time.

“The only protest that’s in the report they say I attended (and was not redacted), I can prove I wasn’t there,” she said. “I had just graduated and that weekend I was having people over at my house for a party.”

“The one thing I did during that period was fly to England with a ‘Woman to Woman’ Quaker group,” Hoover said.

A Quaker and anti-war activist in the 1980s against U.S. involvement in Central America and more recently against the war in Iraq, Hoover volunteered for 10 years with the American Friends Service Committee’s office in Washington. She worked under the daily terrorism alerts in the nation’s capital, and seeing the label “terrorist” in a letter from the Maryland State Police affected her profoundly, she said.

“Like nothing else before,” she said.

Hoover said, as much as anything, she thought it was the Bush administration’s “hype” of the word terrorist that left her emotionally shaken after she received the letter. “It boiled down to fear,” Hoover said. “I don’t live in fear and I’m fine now, but it took me months even to say the word. And then I got angry.”

One positive thing that has come from all of this, she said, was that her daughter-in-law invited her to speak to her high school social studies class.

“They were discussing the need to balance civil rights and security threats,” Hoover said. “When I told them about my experience, they didn’t know I was related to their teacher, my daughter-in-law.

“When they found out, they were in shock that this could happen to somebody’s grandmother.”

Bette Hoover, of Dayton in western Howard County, is a 61-year-old grandmother, retired nurse and founder of Just Peace Circles, which does conflict mediation. Hoover was a subject of the Maryland State Police spying program. Photo by Ron Cassie
Publication:Frederick News-Post; Date:Jun 21, 2009; Section:Horizon; Page Number:C-1

M S P S P Y I N G F I L E S

O N E Y E A R L A T E R : QUESTIONS REMAIN
ACTIVISTS STILL FRUSTRATED OVER REDACTED STATE POLICE SPYING FILES
B Y R O N C A S S I E N E W S – P O S T S T A F F R C A S S I E @ F R E D E R I C K N E W S P O S T. C O M

KEVIN JOHNSON,” A 30-YEAR-OLD FREDERICK ENGINEER, WAS NOT SURPRISED WHEN THE STORY BROKE LAST JULY THAT THE MARYLAND STATE POLICE SPIED ON PEACE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS. THERE’S A HISTORY OF THIS SORT OF THING IN THE U.S., SAID JOHNSON, WHO ASKED THAT HIS REAL NAME NOT BE USED IN THIS STORY BECAUSE HE RECENTLY STARTED A NEW JOB AND DOESN’T KNOW HOW HIS EMPLOYER WOULD REACT TO NEWS HE WAS ONCE LABELED A TERRORIST BY POLICE.

Later, he wasn’t surprised to learn how badly the state police bungled the operation — lumping groups and individuals without association together, misidentifying activists and leaders of organizations and placing certain people at marches and meetings they never attended.

But what still upsets the Frederick Progressive Action Coalition member is the heavily redacted copy of his file that he received from Maryland State Police, the result of ACLU public information requests. The files received by activists, they say, hardly close the door on the issue.

“There are still a lot of questions,” he said. “Nobody has been getting unredacted files that I know of.” Unredacted files would shed light on how all of this was organized, he added. Flipping through his own two case files, he showed that basic information such as the date the investigation opened was redacted, as were several alleged “secondary crimes.” All but 2 1 /2 sentences of a half-page “narrative” are blacked out. His file, as with others, is accompanied by a grainy Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration photograph.

The second personal file he was given begins on page 2 and ends on page 35. Only pages 2, 12, 18, 29, 32, 34 and 35 are included, and 80 percent of those are redacted.

Explaining the missing pages and redacted material, state police spokesman Greg Shipley said only the information pertinent to each individual was released to them. Johnson said it’s hard to understand why nearly the complete narrative needs to be redacted.

Local activists believe, as does ACLU of Maryland attorney David Rocah, that names of people and organizations formerly under the target of spying by state police remain withheld.

“I’ve heard from two other people who have recently received notice the state police have files on them, and I know of at least one other file where the person hasn’t been notified,” Rocah said earlier this spring. “This is not over,” he repeated in another interview last month.

TRIAL REVEALED SPYING

The spying program came to light after the ACLU received initial replies from state police to Maryland Public Information Act requests based on discovery evidence from a trial of activists, including Baltimore peace advocate Max Obuszewski. Those on trial had participated in a peaceful protest near the National Security Administration headquarters at Fort Meade.

The NSA activists were found innocent, and a second round of MPIA requests revealed the spying case was much broader than state police first acknowledged.

“We took an educated guess based on their initial responses, and requested the files on 32 organizations that we thought might been included,” Rocah said. “We got hits on 20.” To date, 53 individuals are known to have been labeled “ terrorists” in an MSP internal database.

Rocah reiterated recently that the ACLU is negotiating to get more withheld information released, which Shipley confirmed. Rocah did not rule out a lawsuit to force their hand. “That’s typically not the fastest way to get information … and we do have other tools,” Rocah said. “But it may prove necessary.”

If forced to take action in court, the case could drag on indefinitely. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on this,” Rocah said.

Just by comparing the structure of files involving four Frederick residents — with the more complete file released on Obuszewski — local activists believe they have evidence demonstrating at least several people and a number of organizations with area ties have had their names withheld by state police.

BIGGER PICTURE

The links to the Department of Homeland Security, federal law enforcement agencies, as well as police surveillance activities in other states, have led Frederick activist Barry Kissin to conclude a national initiative was behind the Maryland spying. Montgomery County activist Pat Elder concurs. He pointed to “the one thing” that wasn’t redacted in his file — a mistake, he thinks — a reference to an e-mail intercepted by the Homeland Security office in Atlanta. “I received 12 to 15 pages total, almost all of it redacted — no information — except it exposed the fact that they infiltrated a FredPac meeting,” Kissin said. “My wife, Margo (also targeted by state police), blew up a sheet that was entirely redacted except for three words without any context.” She made it into a poster that she carried to a press conference. Kissin cited Colorado as an early example of post-9/11 spying on American citizens by its own state law enforcement agencies. In 2002, the ACLU of Colorado disclosed documents revealing the Denver Police Department had been monitoring and recording the peaceful protest activities of Denverarea residents and keeping files on the activities of law-abiding advocacy organizations. In 2003, the ACLU filed state Freedom of Information Act requests in Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania about those states’ participation in a new federal database surveillance system. Other examples abound as well, before and after Maryland State Police admitted surveillance of area peace activists. For a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, The New York Times reported, undercover officers from the New York City Police Intelligence Division traveled the country, infiltrating street theater companies, church groups, anti-war organizations, environmental and anti-death penalty groups, among others, that had no apparent intention of breaking the law. During the same time frame of the Maryland police spying, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2006 several incidents involving the Office of Homeland Security’s spying on animal rights, peace activists and women’s groups in California. Maryland U.S. senator Benjamin L. Cardin said after hearings in late April, he was not satisfied that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had fully answered requests about data shared from Maryland State Police spying operation.

In an interview this week, Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said the senator, chairman of the Senate Judiciary terrorism and homeland security subcommittee, is still concerned that innocent individuals labeled at terrorists could be in federal databases. Walitsky said that further hearings likely will be scheduled at some point later this year.

GOING FORWARD

Meanwhile, the ACLU in Maryland is waiting for replies to Freedom of Information requests sent to federal law enforcement organizations and national security agencies, Rocah said.

The Maryland General Assembly did pass legislation earlier this year prohibiting police from spying on activists not suspected of criminal activity. But Kissin said he’s afraid it will simply give law enforcement agencies a “line they will walk right up to.”

Gary Staples, a FredPac and Peace Resource Center member, described as a terrorist, environmental and animal rights extremist and anarchist by police, said those labels don’t make sense.

“At no point did they match anything we were doing,” he said. “They pulled these out of a hat.” For some, like Johnson and Staples, wrongly labeled by state police, they worry that although the surveillance has stopped — the repercussions have not. “I am concerned about the future, about credit and job applications,” Staples said. “I just applied for a job, which they said I was a shoo-in for, and I didn’t get it. I don’t know if something like this could have come up or not.” Rocah has received numerous e-mails and phone calls from politically active people worried about potential repercussions. Failed clearances for state and local jobs, and travel restrictions, may be small problems, however, Rocah said, for someone labeled a terrorist by the government.

“Our federal government has labeled people terrorists and enemy combatants, and decided that means they can detain them indefinitely — no charges, no judge, no attorney — not even a military review,” Rocah said. “This has happened to American citizens.”

“The consequences for me are a minor issue,” Staples said. “The bigger consequences are that it restricts individual rights on free speech. That has to stop.”





‘Saudi royals funded 9/11′

26 06 2009

‘Saudi royals funded 9/11′

Friday, 26 June 2009 06:26 Editorial

terror_dees

The role of the Saudi royal family in sponsoring Muslim extremism has once again come under the spotlight with the recent claim of lawyers representing the families of the 9/11 victims, to be in possession of evidence proving the Saudi royal family’s financial support for al-Qaeda.

The immediate reaction of many people in the dissident movement was to disqualify the lawyers’ claim as yet another attempt to distract from Israel’s active role in the events of 9/11. Or maybe, they are suggesting, the lawyers are trying to give Arabs a bad name.

Saudi treachery

What those dissidents overlook is the role of the Saudi elite in the big scheme of things. The Saudi royal family and the likes of the Bin Ladens are an integral part of the Anglo-Judean Axis of Greed. Their most important job, apart from controlling the strategic Saudi oil reserves, is to create an image amongst Westerners of Muslims and Islam as backwards, dangerous and cruel. Such an image is in the interest of Western governments and corporations because it makes it easier for them to bully and plunder Muslim countries. It also makes it easier for Israel to get away with its policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide.Initially, the Saudis only sabotaged the Muslim image by maintaining their caricature of a medieval Islamic society. Government and corporate media kept bombarding Western citizens with testimonies of the ridiculous treatment of Saudi women and graphic reports on cruel and disproportionate punishment. Under George Bush and Bill Clinton the Saudi traitors became even more aggressive. They started sponsoring foreign Islamic clerics who want to turn back time by 1200 years and extremist groups willing to use violence to fight against their governments and the West.

The foot soldiers amongst those extremist groups such a Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are obviously unaware that their groups are brankrolled by the Saudis on behalf of Western governments. If they knew, they would be less inclined to go on suicide missions.

Whoever holds the purse strings calls the shots

It would be naïve to believe that the Saudis just hand over coffers of money and then wait and see. It is far more likely that those terrorist organisations are not only infiltrated with spies recruited by Western government agencies such as bored Saudi billionaire’s son and would-be James Bond Osama Bin Laden but – one way or another – take orders from the West. That’s where September 11, Lucky Larry Silverstein and the ‘Dancing Israelis’ come in.

There can’t be any doubt that the Israelis and the American government knew about the imminent attack. It couldn’t have been successful without the American government knowing and allowing it to happen.

Larry Silverstein wouldn’t have bought the WTC buildings just a few months before the attack and made billions of profits. The Israeli run airport security firm wouldn’t have let the terrorists slip through. Hundreds of millions of dollars wouldn’t have been invested in unprecedented numbers of put options for US airline shares, betting on a sudden drop of their share values. Dick Cheney wouldn’t have run an air safety drill on that day to practice exactly for that kind of event. US air control would have taken over control of the hijacked planes by remote control and forced them to land safely, once it became aware what was going on. The building wouldn’t have been stacked with thermite explosives, which must have taken weeks if not months to prepare. Mossad wouldn’t have had a film crew on stand-by in New York to film the events.

Who benefits?

Most likely, the American and the Israeli government not only knew about the imminent attack and allowed it to happen. They actually ordered it, either directly through their moles or via their Saudi patsies. The latter didn’t benefit from the following ‘war of terror’ as much as the Americans and the Israelis. They were just acting on their behalf.

Footnotes:
[1] Saudi royals funded 9/11








Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 43 other followers