US Tries Again To Cram Counterfeit “Turkish Taliban” Down Karzai’s Throat

[With Karzai back in his box, the US drags-out its tired excuse for a “Taliban” leader, Mutasem Agha Jan, who doesn’t even live in the AfPak region; he lives in Turkey.

 

Taliban Leader Says Peace Talks On Horizon

Written by Shakeela Abrahimkhil

Mutasem Agha Jan, the head of Taliban Political Committee, said on Tuesday that peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban would recommence soon, signaling the first major sign of hope for a process that has been stalled since June.

With President Hamid Karzai away in London to participate in trilateral talks with Britain and Pakistan launched for the purpose of getting peace negotiations with the Taliban back on track, Agha Jan’s statement on Tuesday came as a welcomed surprise.

Many experts have grown doubtful of any reconciliation deal being struck between the militants and Kabul before the spring elections or the withdraw of foreign troops in 2014. However, Agha Jan leant credence to his claims by asserting that his authority to move the peace talks forward came on behalf of the Taliban’s supreme leader, the reclusive Mullah Omar.

The High Peace Council (HPC) was highly positive about the announcement, suggesting it was reliable signal that tangible gains in the peace process were soon to come.
“He doesn’t only speak for himself, he talks on behalf of the Taliban’s top commander Mullah Omar, and Omar is the leader of the Taliban group, so it’s really positive and we support it,” said HPC spokesman Maulavi Shahzada Shahid.

Agha Jan said the Taliban’s renewed willingness to come to the negotiating table was based on their desire to bring the country out of crisis and establish longstanding peace in Afghanistan.

“Taliban are ready for a ceasefire, we don’t support war,” he said. “All, including the Taliban, have paid a major price in the war.”

The Taliban political leader’s comments fly in the face of the fears of many Afghan and foreign officials and experts who have suggested the insurgent group is looking to derail the upcoming elections. Nevertheless, those fears are based on the observation of action, like the recent assassination of the Kunduz IEC Chief and abduction of five IEC officials in Faryab province. For now, the Taliban’s commitment to peace remains rhetorical.

That does not mean Agha Jan’s announcement on Tuesday was not a major break for the process that has been stagnant since an attempts at talks floundered in Qatar nearly five months ago. As the HPC’s remarks indicate, a statement of willingness and expectation that talks will begin soon is a major step.

Over the past months, the Afghan government has been focusing on making inroads with Pakistan in hopes of getting it to help get the peace process rolling. Those efforts have not seen much success, as Karzai’s request to have Taliban leader Mullah Baradar released from prison was agreed to by Islamabad, but then never carried through.

That issue was expected to be an item of discussion this week between Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in London.

Members of the Afghan government and their unofficial delegates have reportedly been engaged in backroom communication with the Taliban in hopes of kick-starting the peace process. Whether or not that behind-the-scenes dialogue played a part in Agha Jan speaking up on Tuesday is uncertain.

One of the major reasons Karzai government officials have been so eager to make progress on the peace process, other than the fact that Karzai will not be in a position to do so after the election in April, is that the NATO combat mission ends in December of 2014. The departure of coalition troops from Afghanistan has led to a significant amount of hand-wringing about a potential security vacuum that could mean a death blow to the still fledgling Kabul regime that has been in place since 2003.

Although not likely in favor of a continued presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, Agha Jan also expressed concerns about the stability of the country in the coming years.

“We have major concerns, and history shouldn’t be repeated,” he said. “Afghanistan should not slide back into a chaotic era as we witnessed following the collapse of President Najbullah when various groups engaged in bloody wars and Afghanistan was devastated.”

Incidentally, the Taliban was the group that brought that era of “blood wars” to an end.

Agha Jan served as the Minister of Finance during the Taliban regime. He was blacklisted by the U.S. two years ago. Around that time he was injured and left Afghanistan for Turkey to seek medical treatment. He has been residing there ever since.

Assad sacks deputy PM For Secret Meetings With US Ambassador Robert Ford

Assad sacks deputy PM over talks abroad

File – Syria’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Qadri Jamil listens during a news conference in Moscow, in this August 21, 2012.(REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov)

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Assad Tuesday sacked his vice prime minister for being absent without leave and holding unauthorized meetings abroad, the official SANA news agency said.

The president’s move came after Qadri Jamil, a vice premier for economic affairs, met Saturday with the U.S. point man for Syria, Ambassador Robert Ford, in Geneva to discuss proposed peace talks.

SANA said Jamil was sacked after an “absence without authorization from his post” as well as “activities and meetings outside the country without authorization from the government.”

The State Department confirmed the Jamil meeting with Ford.

“Ambassador Ford met on Oct. 26 in Geneva with the Syrian deputy prime minister, who … led a government-affiliated internal opposition party and who has now reportedly departed that post,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“Ambassador Ford stressed that we must all work for a political solution on the lines of Geneva, that Assad and the inner circle have lost legitimacy and must go.”

She would not confirm reports that, according to a political source in Syria, Jamil had proposed joining the opposition delegation to peace talks and that Ford had said he could not represent both sides at once.

But Jamil appeared to confirm this version of the meeting, speaking from Moscow during an appearance on the Russia Today television news channel.

Jamil said he had no information about his dismissal, after the interviewer asked him about breaking reports indicating that he had in fact been fired.

As for his recent meetings, Jamil acknowledged that he had met with State Department officials but declined to identify them. He added that Washington “misunderstood” the nature of his political orientation, as an opposition figure holding a Cabinet post.

“They wanted us to go [to Geneva] as part of the government delegation … we agree with the government on about 10 percent” of its policies, Jamil said.

He said he informed the American officials of his view that the National Coalition should not be seen as the sole representative of the opposition.

Jamil also told Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV that he had met with a Russian diplomat and U.N. officials. He did not say whether his moves were coordinated with Assad.

“I am not an employee,” he said. “I am a political activist.”

Assad has said in principle that his government would attend talks, but it would not negotiate with the country’s disparate armed rebel groups.

Assad Tuesday also issued a decree granting a general amnesty for all crimes committed up to Oct. 28, with a 30-day window for perpetrators to turn themselves in to authorities. The president has issued several such decrees since the uprising began in March 2011.

Separately, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem insisted that only the Syrian people could choose their future, rejecting Western and Arab demands that Assad step down.

Moallem made the remarks during a meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria.

“Syria will attend Geneva II based on the exclusive right of the Syrian people to choose their political future, to choose their leaders and to reject all forms of external intervention,” Moallem said.

“The dialogue will take place between Syrians,” he added, rejecting regional and international interference in any dialogue.

He also said that all statements about the future of the country, particularly “the one from London,” were “infringements on the rights of the Syrian people” and “preconditions to the dialogue before it has even started.”

That was a reference to the Oct. 22 meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria group of countries, key backers of the Syrian opposition.

At the meeting, Western and Arab powers agreed with Syrian opposition leaders that Assad had no future role to play in the country.

Brahimi himself insisted that the Geneva conference would be “between the Syrian parties” and that only Syrians would decide their future, SANA reported.

He added that there was an agreement on “the importance of ending the violence, terrorism and respecting Syrian sovereignty,” according to SANA.

Brahimi held a separate meeting with Hasan Abdel-Azim, the head of the National Coordination Body, a Syria-based faction interested in representing the opposition in Geneva.

As Brahimi presses his tour to drum up backing for the talks in Geneva, its prospects remain in doubt, with Syria’s

increasingly fractured rebels having yet to say whether they would attend.The main opposition National Coalition has said it would refuse to attend talks unless Assad’s resignation was on the table – a demand rejected by Damascus.

Assad himself has cast doubt on the possibility of talks, and has said he would not negotiate with any group tied to the rebels fighting his forces or to foreign states.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the National Coalition criticized Brahimi for dealing with the Syrian authorities and the opposition on an “equal footing,” and said the veteran diplomat had “gone beyond the role assigned to him.”

“Brahimi’s latest remarks on the possibility of Assad playing a role in the transitional period and the participation of Iran in Geneva II only intensify international polarization and make it harder to reach a political solution to the crisis in Syria,” the group said.

(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

Have Repeated Saudi/Mossad/CIA Intrigues Trained Lebanon To Be Civil War Resistant?

Why Syria still isn’t tipping Lebanon into civil war

Syria’s war has certainly heightened tensions in Lebanon, leading to sporadic sectarian violence, but there is a difference between spates of attacks and a full-scale war.

By Nicholas Blanford

• 

Lebanese army soldiers ride on their military vehicles after being deployed to tighten security after days of clashes between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in the northern port city of Tripoli October 28, 2013.

Omar Ibrahim/Reuters

• In Pictures Echoes of Syria’s war

Tripoli, Lebanon

The inability of the Lebanese authorities to quickly stamp out a week of fighting between rival sectarian factions in Lebanon’s second-largest city underlines the country’s vulnerability to further spillover from the war in neighboring Syria.

But Lebanon is not expected to descend into full-scale civil war like Syria, despite the likelihood that a rise in sectarian violence will continue its trajectory in coming months, particularly if an anxiously anticipated offensive in the Qalamoun area of Syria – which some say has already gotten off to a low-grade start – spills over into Lebanon as many expect.

The clashes in Tripoli between Sunni gunmen and local Alawites, a Shiite sect that also forms the backbone of the Syrian regime, have killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens since Oct. 21. They come amid a gradual deterioration of security across the country, stretching the capabilities of security forces and raising speculation that the country could slide into civil war.

In the last few months, Lebanon has also experienced several deadly car bomb attacks, a battle between Sunni militants and the army in south Lebanon, artillery shelling and rocket fire by both the Syrian army and Syrian rebels against different areas of Lebanon, and numerous alleged plots uncovered by the security forces to stage further car bombings and suicide attacks.

In the past week alone, Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington, warned that “Lebanon is very much on the brink of … civil war” while Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon claimed that it had already started. “To those who are not aware, there is already a civil war in Lebanon,” he said, citing the recent car bomb attacks and rocket firings.

Still, Lebanese analysts say such assertions are overly alarmist and do not take into account the important distinction between periodic civil violence and civil war, similar to the intensity of conflict experienced by Syria today and Lebanon between 1975 and 1990.

“Civil war in a country like Lebanon entails a large-scale political, financial, and military mobilization of all the major communities with the goal of reshaping power politics in a way that is definitive and difficult to reverse,” says Aram Nerguizian, senior fellow at the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “While civil war in the traditional sense is not likely, there is a far higher likelihood – if not certainty – that Lebanon will experience a protracted cycle of violence, especially if the Syria conflict goes on unresolved.”

The violence in Tripoli is a case in point. The rivalries between the impoverished Sunni neighborhood of Bab Tebbaneh and the Alawite-populated Jabal Mohsen date back to Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and outbreaks of fighting here are not uncommon. But the fighting, while tragic for the city’s residents, does not have a domino effect of triggering clashes elsewhere. The Tripoli battles remain confined to the warring neighborhoods.

Still, the recent fighting in Tripoli led to a week-long paralysis in much of the city, with schools and businesses closed and residents staying at home. The Lebanese government, which has been in a caretaker capacity since its resignation in March, appeared helpless (instability has forced a postponement of elections of a new government). Lebanese troops repeatedly came under fire when they attempted to come between the battling sides, leaving residents frightened and exasperated.

“With [this] scene of terror, we ask what have the prime minister, ministers, and lawmakers of the city done [to end the clashes]?” asked Mosbah Ahdab, a former lawmaker from Tripoli in a news conference on Sunday. “They held meetings and gatherings and launched stances and statements and, as usual, the decisions of their meetings remain secret and they just declare that the political cover should be lifted from fighters.”

An empty street strewn with rubbish and brass bullet casings marks the frontline dividing the mainly Sunni-populated Qobbe neighborhood with the hilltop Alawite district of Jabal Mohsen. The Lebanese army established checkpoints at either end of the street, but few people ventured down it Monday – persistent sniping killed more Tripoli residents throughout the day. In Jabal Mohsen, the streets were empty of traffic and residents gathered in small huddles beside shops and buildings.

“We didn’t want to get dragged into the battle with Bab Tebbaneh but they attacked us with rifle grenades and it turned into a full battle,” says Ali Fouda, the political spokesman of the Arab Democratic Party, which represents Lebanese Alawites. “The only solution for our troubles will be when the war is over in Syria and we have a new leadership in Lebanon and then there will be no more fighting between Bab Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.”

Shortly afterwards, three soldiers were wounded by suspected Sunni gunmen when they attempted to deploy in Bab Tebbaneh.

The latest clashes were provoked in part by accusations from the Lebanese judiciary that some of the perpetrators of twin car bomb attacks against Sunni mosques in August that left 45 people dead and hundreds wounded were residents of Jabal Mohsen, working in collusion with Syrian intelligence. Mr. Fouda denied that the wanted men were from Jabal Mohsen and blamed a security agency for promoting “rumors.”

Although a tenuous calm returned to Tripoli on Tuesday morning after the deployment of additional troops, few expect it to last.

“This is not over. We will keep the pressure on Jabal Mohsen until they hand over those accused of the bombings,” says Sheikh Shadi Jbara, an imam of a Sunni mosque in Bab Tebbaneh and a local militia leader.

Bekaa Valley Tense, Waiting for Either Bandar’s Boys or Hezbollah

All quiet on the eastern front

 

Ana Maria Luca

It’s been quiet for a couple of weeks. But it looks like the quiet before the storm. People in Eastern Beqaa can tell something big is about to happen in the Qalamoun Mountains across the border. There is a lot of movement on the ground in Qalamoun, and it’s not the usual Syrian rebel making and unmaking of alliances.

 

In a ground floor room of the small house that serves as municipality of the Eastern Beqaa village of Arsal, the vice president of the institution, Ahmad Fleeti, is surrounded by five Syrian refugees, four men and a woman.  They all have complaints: They just arrived from Syria where the rebels are getting ready for a major battle with Hezbollah and the Syrian army, and they had put their tents on someone’s land. The landlord, however, asked them to evacuate. The woman, in her 50s, soon starts crying and looks at us in search of help. It’s already cold out there in the empty arid valleys of the Ante-Lebanon Mountains, but she’s still wearing her summer slippers, the skin on her feet cracked by cold. She doesn’t have any other clothes: That’s how they crossed the border one night.

 

Fleeti calls in a municipality councilman and tells him to either negotiate a way out or find them another home.  A home to rent would cost the refugees $500 a month, and the prices are rising quickly. “We’ll be having many more refugees with the Qalamoun battle on the horizon,” Fleeti explains as the refugees and the local council member make their way out.

 

In other words, war is coming. Imminently. Terrifyingly. Locals and refugees in Eastern Beqaa are bracing up for a long, terrible, and hungry winter.  It might also be bloody: The battle of Qalamoun is going to start soon, they say, and Fleeti fears this time it’s going to be worse.

 

“We’ll be dragged, sucked into it. If Hezbollah goes into the Qalamoun Mountains, the rebels will shell the Beqaa Valley,” he says, breathing in deeply and leaning back in his chair. “The battle in Qalamoun will be much more serious than Qusayr.”

 

The Eastern Beqaa Valley was caught in the battle of Qusayr in spring 2013, when Hezbollah fighters and the Syrian army attacked the rebel-held border town with the goal of capturing a major supply route for rebels fighting Syrian government forces in Homs. During the battle, thousands of Sunni refugees fled into the Sunni enclave of Arsal, while regime supporters fled into the Hezbollah-controlled region of Hermel, which borders Arsal in the north. The fighting in Qusayr spilled into the Eastern Beqaa: The Syrian army bombed Arsal in search for Syrian rebels talking shelter there, while Free Syrian Army rebels shelled Hermel in retaliation for Hezbollah’s involvement in the fight.

 

But Qalamoun would be much more complicated than that, Fleeti says. “Qusayr was surrounded, people were trapped inside. Many refugees and wounded were smuggled out of the town and brought to Arsal. There was no immediate border with Lebanon; Qusayr was surrounded by Shiite villages,” he explained. But Qalamoun is a larger mountain area, several villages with direct access to the 55-kilometer Lebanese border, a strand of farmlands between El-Qaa and Arsal villages. Syrians, both refugees and rebels, would find shelter there.

 

The rumors Fleeti hears from people coming to Arsal from Syria and from his connections he maintains in the Syrian border villages worry him nonetheless. The Syrian rebels are regrouping and reestablishing their positions on top of the mountains. “They are these mountains that you see from the road, right there.  Rebel fighters from Moadimyiat al Sham have moved to Qalamoun, and the brigades have now enough weapons to hit Shiite villages in the Beqaa Valley if Hezbollah decides to interfere in the battle.” he says.

 

The tensions in Qalamoun Mountains mean trouble for Lebanon without a doubt, and not just because Hezbollah is participating in the Syrian conflict and might get involved in a battle in Qalamoun. The fighting in Syria has been triggering fighting between Sunni and Alawite fighters in Tripoli for the past six years, and the most recent Syria-related clashes left scores of people wounded or dead.

 

Tripoli-based politician Moustapha Alloush told NOW that he finds it improbable that the Party of God would get involved in Qalamoun, because it doesn’t have the resources to fight on so many fronts in Syria and maintain its security at home in Lebanon. “However, if the Syrian army tries an offensive in the Qalamoun region, there are thousands of rebels there who can cross the border into Lebanon easily and can disperse in the Beqaa Valley. The Sunni regions there will definitely accept them. This means that the balance of power in the area will change dramatically,” he pointed out. He also said that this is why Hezbollah’s leaders asked the Lebanese army to form a barrier between the Qalamoun region and the Beqaa Valley.  But, he continued, “that is also pretty much impossible, because it’s a 55 kilometer line, and when the army has been stretched over the entire country, that’s not a valid option.”

 

Trouble has been brewing in the Beqaa for a while. But recently, with the Qalamoun battle looming, the Lebanese Army has been stopping cars at checkpoints more often. On Thursday, the LAF intercepted a car carrying 250 kilograms of explosives and clashed with Syrian armed men, allegedly Jabhat al-Nusra fighters, in the Western Beqaa Valley. A day before, four Syrians had been arrested when their car proved to be filled with weapons and ammunition. Arsal’s 55-kilometer border through the farmlands is the rebels’ way in and out from Syria.

 

In spite of his attempts to reassure himself, Arsal’s Fleeti is obviously worried about the immediate future of his village. He keeps up to date with the news and tries to maintain contact with people in villages across the border, imagining every possible scenario like a military analyst. The worst that can happen, in his view, is that Hezbollah attacks Qalamoun rebel positions, which they can do from Baalbek and al-Qaa. Syrian villages like Qarah, Der Atiyah, al-Nabak, and Maaloula will be in the line of fire from Qalamoun, as he heard the rebels have control of the highest spots in the area.

 

People in Arsal already talk about what’s about to happen in Qalamoun. Many of the town’s residents cross the border every day in search for fuel.  “They have better weapons now. They look ready in Qalamoun. The fighters are ready to invade Shiite villages in the Beqaa if Hezbollah interferes in Qalamoun like it did in Qusayr. There are three brigades already on position,” a source in the village told NOW on condition of anonymity.

 

“We need the government to be more present in this area. There are many roads through the mountains, and the Lebanese Army is not guarding any of them,” says Mohammad Ezzedine, raising his voice. The man, in his 50s, lost his dairy farm on the border in Mashariah el-Qaa in a Syrian army incursion in spring 2012. He doesn’t believe things will ever get better for the Eastern Beqaa villages because the government in Beirut is not interested in keeping the peace in that region of Lebanon. “I am not critical of the army, but it seems like every checkpoint commander does as he pleases around here!”

 

Since his farm was destroyed and he started transporting wounded Syrians from the border to hospitals in Beqaa Valley and Tripoli, Ezzedine has had quite a few altercations with soldiers at checkpoints. “Once I was taking a 7 year old boy who was shot in the leg to Tripoli and I was roughed up at an army checkpoint. I told you, every commander does what he wants,” he says.

 

“And I’ll tell you what I think of the Lebanese government: [politicians] are all liars!”

 

Luna Safwan contributed reporting.

 

Ana Maria Luca is on Twitter @aml1609.

Saudis Block Peace Talks In Syria, Push Civil War In Lebanon

[SEE:  Eid: Saudi Arabia to burn Lebanon if Hezbollah participates in Qalamoun battle ; Eid accuses Saudi Arabia of stopping army from entering Bab al-Tebbaneh ]

Saudi blocking Syria peace talks: Hezbollah chief

 

An image grab from Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV shows Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s militant Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, giving a televised address from an undisclosed location on October 28, 2013 in LebanonAn image grab from Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV shows Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s militant Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, giving a televised address from an undisclosed location on October 28, 2013 in Lebanon

AFP – The head of powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and key Damascus ally Hassan Nasrallah on Monday accused Saudi Arabia of blocking a political solution to the conflict in Syria.

Nasrallah said the Gulf kingdom was “furious because the situation in Syria has not worked out in its favour”, in a speech broadcast on a large screen set up in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Riyadh has been a key backer of rebel groups fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011.

“Today, political dialogue and the search for a political solution are enjoying international, regional and interior support … but there is a state in the region which is furious (about the proposed Geneva II peace conference), and its name is Saudi Arabia,” Nasrallah charged.

Relations between Washington and Riyadh have been strained since the United States backed away from military action against Assad over alleged chemical weapons attacks in August.

Ties have worsened further between the two allies over Washington’s recent engagement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s arch-foe in the region.

Nasrallah said that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom had sent foreign fighters, weapons and money to back Syrian rebels fighting the government in Damascus to bring about Assad’s fall.

“But it didn’t work,” said Nasrallah, who has admitted sending Hezbollah fighters to battle alongside government troops in Syria as they seek to crush rebel forces.

“The region cannot be torn apart by war because a state is furious and is trying to hinder any political dialogue and push back Geneva II,” he said.

“Their obstinacy is pointless,” he added.

The Geneva talks slated for next month aim to bring rebel and regime representatives to the table in a bid to seek a negotiated end to the Syrian conflict, which according to a rights group has claimed more than 115,000 lives since March 2011.

Americans Slowly Waking-Up To Harsh Reality of the Unaffordable Nature of “Affordable Care Act”

[Barack Obama is just another sleazy Big City lawyer, hired for his innate ability to lie convincingly, so that he could con the American people into giving-up their expensive healthcare plans for the promise of something better (SEE:  Obamacare Is A Bureaucratic Cyber-Weapon—”Stuxnet” for Healthcare Plans).

Report: W.H. knew plans would be canceled under ACA

Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

Up to 75% of those with individual insurance will have policies cancelled, experts say.

President Obama makes remarks during a ceremony at FBI Headquarters on Monday.(Photo: By Alex Wong, Getty Images)

Millions of Americans are getting their health insurance cancelled under the Affordable Care Act and the Obama administration has known for about three years that this would happen, NBC News is reporting.

Between half and three quarters of 14 million consumers who buy health insurance individually will receive a cancellation letter or its equivalent in the next year because their current policies don’t meet the standards laid out by the new law, the news organization reports.

Of those who will be forced to buy new insurance, many will face huge price increases, NBC reports.

Initially, the administration stipulated that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010, could be kept even if they don’t meet the requirements of the new law, but later changed the law to dictate that if any part of those policies substantially changed since then, they would then be cancelled.

NBC alleges the administration knew that up to 67% of customers on the individual market could have their policies cancelled, but instead, President Obama said as recently as in 2012, “If (you) already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

The White House told NBC that people whose policies will be cancelled will, in most cases, be automatically shifted to plans with better protections.

“Nothing in the Affordable Care Act forces people out of their health plans,” White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo told the news organization.

White House spokesman Jay Carney acknowledged that some plans would not meet the new minimum standards and would “not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.”

The Silencing and Robbing of Edward Snowden, Or, America’s Occult Journey Into the Dark Ages

 

[As always, Mr. Shimatsu, former editor of Japan Times, has come through with a very unique perspective on the NSA/Snowden spy game, tying it all together with his expansive knowledge of the elitist conspiracy to conquer the planet.  As so many writers have speculated, all that we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg, never to glimpse the body of the evidence which would validate the concept of Big Brother in our lives.  Mr. Snowden has had an unusual opportunity to leak helpful, valid evidence which would prove the existence of the American Police State as a fact, NOW.  Instead, he played himself right into the hands of the Zionist press with Greenald, without even providing for his own insurance or leaking anything lethal enough to paralyse the Obama police state.  All in all, the only thing he accomplished was to piss-off America’s subordinates.]

Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald And Omidyar

 

Snowden now has the most difficult job on the planet – staying alive and sane

THE 5TH ESTATE
By Yoichi Shimatsu
10/24/2013

Whistleblower Edward Snowden was taken for a ride by con artists in the service of the US and UK intelligence agencies. Under the cover of “independent journalism”, the scammers conned him out of his trove of secret NSA files, hustled him from Hong Kong ahead of legislature-sponsored public hearings on cyber-espionage, and unceremoniously dumped him, minus documents, in a transit lounge at Moscow Airport. This report shows how the American and British spymasters retrieved the top-secret files by luring the fugitive into a well-laid trap, while the mass media went along with the deception to aid the authorities in evading public calls to abolish the global surveillance state.

Pierre Omidyar, founder of the online flea market e-Bay, is betting a reported $250 million that the accomplices of whistleblower Edward Snowden can follow up their caper with the launch of an online news site with global reach. The ethnic Iranian tycoon is funding a new media project for the team of Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill because he became “more alarmed about the pressures coming down on journalists with the various leak investigations in Washington” (Pacific Business News).

An angel investor committed to press freedom and opposed to government surveillance is every journalist’s dream even though it sounds too good to be true. There are serious grounds for questioning the credibility of Greenwald and his newest patron, whose business venture Omidyar Network is closely connected with NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Edward Snowden’s erstwhile employer.

Known for his globalist vision and “social-impact” projects in the developing countries, backed by immense personal wealth, Omidyar follows in the footsteps of other billionaires who launched their own electronic media projects: George Soros with his slew of propaganda organs, Ariana Huffington at HuffPost and Michael Bloomberg with his financial news arm, to name a few. These well-oiled publicity machines hardly qualify as standard-bearers of objective reporting since each of these opinion-shapers has a political agenda, from running City Hall to fomenting uprisings for regime change in support of market economics. Early on, it already appears that Omidyar, for all his sentimental sound bites, could turn out to be the worst of a bad lot.

Partnering Booz Allen

In stark contrast to his libertarian posturing, Omidyar is connected at the hip to the very same intelligence nexus that he publicly condemns, particularly Booz Allen Hamilton, the NSA security contractor that employed Snowden in Hawaii and Japan. One of the major investment partners with Omidyar Network, Salvadore ”Sal” Gambianco, sits on the board of directors of Booz Allen Hamilton Holdings.

Omidyar

As head of Omidyar Network’s human capital operations, Giambanco vets trainees and assesses employee performance for promotion or termination. For more than a decade, Omidyar Network has had a revolving door for its employees with Booz Allen, shuttling staffers and interns for intelligence-related postings. Just a few of these individuals who worked for both Omidyar Network and Booz Allen include:

– Dhaya Lakshminarayan who was sent to Cuba to research development programs;

– Pranay Chulet hired to head Omidyar-backed Quikr in India;

– Patricia Sosrodjojo, Indonesian venture capital expert in Jakarta; and

– Michael Kent, a Booz Allen counter-terrorism specialist who served as a research associate at the Omidyar campus in Redwood City, California.

The relationship, simply put, is corporate collusion, and if businesses could be married, Booz Allen and Omidyar Network are husband and wife.

Inside the NSA’s Big Tent

Booz Allen and Omidyar Network are corporate members of an NSA-linked consortium called Innocentive, a consultancy focused on crowdsourcing (read: data-mining of public-opinion polls, consumer surveys and Internet-based personal data). Other member-companies include In-Q-Tel, a developer of communications monitoring software spawned with millions in start-up capital from the CIA.

Also represented is the In-Q-Tel spin-off Palantir, which creates fictive personas or virtual trolls to mount smear campaigns to debunk or threaten journalists and critical websites online and in letters to editors. Palantir, which refers to itself as an “electronic warfare” firm, has created a meta-data collection program similar to the NSA’s PRISM. Michael Leiter, former head of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, is the executive counsel to Palantir.

Another corporate partner in Innocentive is Lilly Ventures, the investment arm of Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals, which produced LSD for the MK-ULTRA mind-control program and is now the lead partner in the Obama-sponsored national brain-mapping project. Full-spectrum surveillance is advancing from wireless electronics into the bio-network of the human synapses, the last frontier for total mind control. The objective of pre-crime pre-cognition, that is, the detection of criminal tendencies, for instance, resistance to authority, and intervention before the crime can happen. Using drugs to impair the mental capabilities of individuals is, of course, only a part of a wider and larger program of social engineering to ensure domination of the globalist elites over any increasingly dependant and expendable population.

As birds of the feather that flock together, Booz Allen Hamilton and Omidyar Network are a pair of ducks in the NSA-CIA pond. These intelligence links are so thinly guised, it beggars belief that an attorney like Greenwald who practiced law in New York City could be so oblivious to the conflict of interest in regard to the security of his client Edward Snowden.

Either Glenn Greenwald is a gullible village idiot or he is one of many actors planted in this spy charade. Nobody in the intelligence game is allowed to be that naïve, especially when it is crystal clear from these interlocking corporate connections that Pierre Omidyar is hardly an innocent when he has every incentive to work on behalf of Booz Allen and the NSA to recover the Snowden files.

Sell-Out or Set Up?

It took $250 million for Omidyar to win the fealty of the “courageous” and “independent” journalists who surrounded Snowden and controlled his every movement. The team of Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, along with filmmaker Laura Poitras, not only kept the fugitive in the dark while mounting a clever sting operation. (“You can’t let the Chinese or Russians confiscate the files”, as if Moscow or Beijing would be that stupid while the whole world was watching.) Taking his data as a “security precaution”, the thieves thus managed to retrieve the secret documents for the spymasters in London, Langley and Fort Meade.

“We’ll be working with them and others, but we have a long way to go in terms of what the (news) organization looks like, people’s roles and responsibilities,” said Omidyar to Pacific Business News. This leaves no doubt about who’s the boss, while his other statements indicate Greenwald, Poitras and Schahill can collect the bounty money and disappear until their next Mission Impossible assignment, so long as they keep their mouths shut. Otherwise, a new team of actors will hunt them down one at a time. Accidents happen.

What business executive in the current risk climate commits $250 million of his own savings to a vaguely defined project without a management structure or financial plan? And the objective is to protect the public from government intrusion, even if his own company profits from those encroachments on privacy? In the fantasy world of comic-book heroes, a magnate like Bruce Wayne would never throw away his fortune to buy the Daily Planet so that Jimmy Olson and Lois Lane can be crusading reporters.

The patently ludicrous statements show that Pierre Omidyar is acting as a minder for a powerful entity, for example, the National Intelligence Council, and serving as babysitter for the non-profit funded ”journalists” who conned Snowden out of this trove of documents and dumped him at the Moscow airport transit lounge. As winter bears down over the steppe, Snowden as his surname suggests is snowed in for the duration, thanks to the Greenwald-Poitras snow job.

600-pound Gorilla in the Salon

Early in his legal career in the 1990s, Greenwald was reprimanded for secretly taping witnesses during his pro bono defense of a white supremacist. This self-proclaimed civil libertarian employed the same sort of illegal surveillance that he would later criticize so loudly. Soon after being questioned in court about his electronic recording activities without the prior signing of consent forms, he closed down his private practice. If Greenwald hadn’t he could be disbarred.

Greenwald

In 2002, Greenwald went on to bigger things as a business partner in Master Notions, whose clients included the video production company Hairy Jocks, which produced homosexual pornography. A falling out among the partners led to Greenwald forming a new company called Hairy Studs. On the bright side of this shady business, his background in porn could mean a gold mine for Omidyar’s future news company in ads from gay bathhouses and escort services from New York to Rio.

Meanwhile, when the Internal Revenue Service put a lien on his earnings for failure to report past income, Greenwald launched his own blog to complain about overbearing government intrusion. As luck had it, his timing was perfect because CIA veteran Valerie Plame was being outed in the press by Scooter Libby, legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Rebounding from his unsavory start as a purveyor of sleaze, the counselor reinvented himself as a “journalist” writing a civil-liberties column for Salon.com, that paragon of muddled murmurs from lapdog liberals founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Despite its reputation as forum for pathetic poseurs and depressed Generation-X losers, Salon provided the strategic boost that propelled Greenwald into national prominence. All along something was amiss. Greenwald was being cherry-picked by an invisible hand as the anointed spokesman for civil liberties, while veteran activists with the Electronic Frontier foundation and ACLU were being bypassed and ignored.

Cognitive Infiltration

His golden moment arrived with a 2008 PBS radio debate over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) hosted by Amy Goodman, pitting the crusading lawyer-cum-journalist against information tsar Cass Sunstein.

The University of Chicago law school professor rode into the White House office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on the coattails of his protege and former student Barack Obama. Married to NSA staffer Samantha Power (who was since appointed American ambassador to the UN), Sunstein is renowned for his pet cause of animal protection, advocating the right of a dog or cat to file lawsuits as a plaintiff against abusive owners. The FISA dual was therefore a match made in media heaven between world title holder Dr. Kibble Bits and the up-and-coming contender Harry Stud. (The rather dull transcript, which fails to capture the geist of the zeit, is available at http://www.democracynow.org.)

Greenwald won hands down by a TKO (taking Kibblebits out), scoring against Sunstein on the issue of retroactive immunity for war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble is, however, the fix was in. The bout went according to Sunstein’s “cognitive infiltration” game-plan. By taking the role of bad cop, the professor set up Greenwald to emerge as the good cop, the nation’s top reformer since nobody else ever had the privilege of debating the information tsar.

After this ploy, morally outraged jurists and lawyers who wanted to press war-crimes and even genocide charges against the Bush administration were sucked into the blog-and-debate routine and nudged into the position of being the loyal opposition. The national debate rapidly shifted from condemnation of torture in Guantanamo to the minutiae of legal procedures, while candidate Obama’s promise to shut down the abominable prison camp was politely forgotten. Cognitive infiltration proved to a most effective psywar technique, manipulating critics to volunteer for their own castration.

Sunstein, who strategizes global information control for the executive branch (Office of the President, the CIA, FBI and NSA): has also promoted dirty war with the planting of agents provocateurs to infiltrate terrorist cells, protest groups and domestic militias. As seen at the Boston Marathon, government-recruited dupes and crisis actors were scripted to score astonishing feats against the “oppressive” government. On one hand, the violence and theatrics scare the daylights out of the public, which wipes out objections to the repressive state apparatus. On the other hand, the provos for the intelligence agencies succeed in impressing extremist movements worldwide, which then can be steered into proxy wars, false-flag attacks and assassinations of one’s own troublesome political allies.

These sorts of police-agent tactics were tested during the Vietnam War era by Obama’s mentors in the Chicago circle of phony leftists, which discredited and disrupted Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) by financing the Weather Underground’s rampages of arson and window-smashing. Distribution of firearms by provocateurs to young radicals brought on the Nixon COINTELPRO campaign to assassinate community leaders, notably Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party and imprison others like H. Rap Brown.

A Better Rat Trap for Squealers

One of Sunstein’s major projects has been to contain the epidemic of insider disclosures by whistleblowers. Knowing quite well that disgruntled government employees will invariably seek legal counsel, what better tactic than to fabricate a “civil liberties” crusader working pro bono along with his wide network of media contacts and deep-pockets funders?

The trap was set, and as predicted the quarry arrived, by the name of Edward Snowden. Like a mouse after cheese, the gullible mark took the bait and followed Greenwald’s every instruction. Dr. Sunstein succeeded brilliantly when his “mini-me” puppet did what no law-enforcement agency could ever pull off – the voluntary surrender of top-secret files.

OK, you won. That’s enough of the rough-trade scowl for the cameras, Glenn, when you’d rather just howl and roll on the floor at how easily Eddie was reeled in hook, line and sinker. Hey, stud, you deserve the reward at the rainbow’s end, those big fat checks from the Iranian dude. Maybe for your next assignment, you should take over the lead role from Tom Cruise for the upcoming episode “MI-6.”

Hong Kong Exfiltration

From the time of Snowden’s sojourn in Hong Kong, it was clear to journalists and politicians that his local lawyer Albert Ho and the minders with British and US intelligence were not going to allow unfettered disclosure of the NSA documents to an astonished global public. When the Western spies learned that parliamentarians with the Legislative Council (LEGCO) were planning to call for open public hearings with Snowden as star witness, the whistleblower was suddenly packed off to Moscow.

As Snowden himself had figured, Hong Kong was the ideal place of refuge with its Basic Law and legal community fiercely committed to free expression, a regional hub for the major media, a cyber-security center with top university computer departments and experts at global banks, local protesters and the Foreign Correspondents Club demanding his protection, a police force that was ordered to prevent anyone from harming the fugitive, and a Chief Executive, the city’s top official, who gave his personal assurances that Snowden would not be extradited. What more could anyone ask for?

His local lawyer Albert Ho, a legislative council member with the Democrat Party, claims that he was visited in the middle of the night by “somebody” urging Snowden to get out of Hong Kong. The Catholic-dominant Democrat Party is famously funded by the Washington neocon patrons, the National Endowment for Democracy, It is an open secret that since the days of Senator Jesse Helms, Democrat leaders fly to Washington to pick up checks from the intelligence chiefs.

There was no threat from mainland authorities as falsely reported since Beijing had an interest along with every bank, company and individual in Hong Kong in the NSA communications intercepts. It was a big lie from his so-called protectors that triggered Snowden’s flight from a Hong Kong ready to offer him immunity.

Glenn Greenwald went along with the deception, meaning he had to be in on the plot to retrieve the secret-level documents for the NSA. That he has so quickly accepted an editorship with Omidyar, one of the closest allies of Booz Allen, only confirms all the other evidence on his collaboration with the spy agencies.

Instead of an intense three weeks of public hearings revealing all of the NSA wrongdoing, with daily commentaries by cyber-security experts and, more important, the victims of state violations of privacy, Greenwald and Poitras has reduced the flow of documents to a drip feed.

The blog called Rancid Honeytrap has sharply punctured the hot-air balloon from Snowden’s erstwhile handlers, notably Greenwald:

“Viva the new journalism of lying repeatedly about the size of your document trove to teach the rubes valuable lessons in proper whistleblowing.

“Viva the new journalism of leaking 300 pages in four months from a trove that exceeds 60,00 documents.

“Viva the new journalism that probably suppressed at least one story on government orders.

“Viva the new journalism of putting 50k-plus docs in the care of The New York Times since they had proven themselves so worthy in Cablegate.

“Viva the new journalism that talks about the crucial role of the heroic journalist far far more than it talks about the secrets in his care.

“Viva the new journalism that hoards leaks while it negotiates movie and television rights with Sony and HBO.”

To that last point might we add: Viva for winning $250 million from the NSA nexus for your financial security into old age, if by some miracle you make that far.

Jewel in the Crown

At that early phase, the Greenwald show was run by the Guardian. Its editor in chief Alan Rusbridger took the spotlight role for breaking the Snowden story. The Guardian breaking-news spectacle was run by the same Royalist intelligence network that harbored Julian Assange on the country estate of military officer, sniper and journalist Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club that conducted intelligence operations in the Balkans war.

The strategic decision-making at the Guardian goes far higher than editor Rusbridger. The publishing group’s chairwoman is Amelia Chilcott Fawcett, a confidante of Prince Charles who also supervises the Prince of Wales Foundation. The career of Dame Fawcett, Commander of the British Empire, shows her to be a force to be reckoned with: international attorney, CEO and executive director of Morgan Stanley Europe, director of State Street Corporation, board member of the Bank of England, and head of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, Observer and other media assets.

Although born in Boston, the cradle of American independence, Chilcott Fawcett is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Britain, and Atlanticist of unquestionable and unquestioning Tory persuasion. She is eminently qualified and adequately connected to direct Prince Charles’s long-running dispute with upstart cousins at the CIA and NSA. While the Foreign Office remains shamelessly in debt and beholden to the Americans, British military intelligence is a Royalist bastion.

The Princess Diana investigative reporting by the now defunct News of the World, owned by the adoptive American Rupert Murdoch, were particularly offensive to the Saxe-Coburg family aka the Windsors. The personal animosity between President George W. Bush and Prince Charles nearly wrecked the Anglo-American relationship. The mystery of the 7/7 London Tube bombing during the Gleneagles G-8 summit was especially galling, since a former CIA executive was in charge of Metro security. Only special agents had access to blast the “tunnel below the Tube”, which has been used to convey British troops across London since World War II, according to a Special Branch police intelligence officer interviewed by this writer.

British agents and sympathizers in Hong Kong were instrumental in erecting the security cordon around fugitive Snowden, and the Guardian new-hire Greenwald was enlisted as the American liaison. The media leaks were calibrated to cause discomfort, rather than excruciating pain, to the arrogant lads at NSA. The few documents released had no effect on British interests, but the bulk of files that affect the common interests of America and Europe remain secreted under royal seal. As the Obama White House flounders under the debt-ceiling dispute and pressure from bankers in the City of London, the Royals are enjoying a revival.

In a nutshell the Snowden case was used by the British military intelligence in partnership with a CIA faction opposed to the heavy-handed Pentagon-NSA eavesdropping programs that threaten to knock over sensitive operations, for instance, joint operations with Qatar and Saudi intelligence to direct Al Qaeda units in Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. Since assassination targets could include American, British and other allied European officers who know too much, the Agency prefers to operate without its communications with field agents and MK-ULTRA types being monitored by lads like Snowden or any of the many generals who have a grudge against the CIA. As for disclosures on snooping, the public be damned.

As for Greenwald’s sidekicks Poitras and Schahill, so-called journalists who depend on non-profits for their handouts do not deserve mention. They have to yet pay their dues by working the night shift as sub-editors and chasing ambulances at cub reporters before boasting about their stories made for sponsors Journalism is an old-school profession not a luxury voyage of global exploration and personal discovery. No wonder Pierre is so worried about finding good editors since none of the trio qualify.

Who is Pierre Omidyar?

Since the existing grude match between the clowns of American and British intelligence cannot continue indefinitely, a new character must be introduced onto the circus to relieve the tension. As a person with close ties with the spy masters of U.S., Britain, France and Abu Dhabi, Pierre Omidyar arrives with a shocking suddenness as ringmaster for the Greenwald acrobatics.

Born in Paris in 1967 to Iranian émigrés, Pierre Parviz/Morad Omidyar came to Maryland at age 6 with his father, a physician at Johns Hopkins, and mother, a Sorbonne-trained linguist. He attended the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, which is better known as Langley.

Key facts on his background are not disclosed: his family’s religious affiliation, ancestral home in Iran, rank and status in the traditional social system, and ethnicity (Iranian society has been a melting pot for many millennia). His official biography is sanitized of facts and adorned with public-relations flourishes.

One of few facts that cannot be suppressed by Omidyar obsession with privacy is his schooling at Punahou, a private academy in Honolulu, staring a year after fellow alum Barack Obama’s departure. Insider connections were essential for admission to the prep school, and in that era the few channels of access for children from the Third World were through parents working for the CIA, like Obama’s mother Ann Dunham (see Wayne Madsen’s in-depth expose of the Obama family’s work for the CIA in “The Manufacturing of a President”).

Persia not Iran

Pierre’s mother Elahe Mir-Djalali Omidyar had similar credentials as a Farsi linguist at Georgetown University in the mid-1970s when the Carter administration was grappling with the upsurge in popular protests in Iran against the Shah’s regime, while USAID advisers were trying to identify the underlying socioeconomic causes of the unrest. At the time when the Shah of Iran’s grip on power was starting to crumble, Ayatollah Khomeini was in exile in Paris. Elahe Omidyar’s Ph.D.-level fluency in both Farsi and French had to be an outstanding asset.

Founded by Dr Omidyar, the Roshan Institute for Cultural Heritage is dedicated to the preservation of Persian culture. Since the institute’s literature makes a point of using Persia rather than Iran, a bit of explanation is needed. Though the two names are somewhat interchangeable, Persia refers to the polyglot empire and the ancient language that is the basis of Farsi, while Iran is more associated with the modern nation-state. The word Iran is based on Aryan, the ancient Indo-European term for “Land of Light” (as opposed to the higher latitudes as one travels northward). Persian in cultural reference also tends to imply the imperial dynasties and the courtly culture of the native emperors and conquering dynasties that adopted the regional culture.

The Roshan symbol of 24-ray sun is based on a carving at the ruins of Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, who best-known emperors were Xerxes and Darius II. Alexander the Great, avenging Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (depicted with extreme bias in the movie “300”), either allowed or ordered the destruction of the-then world’s greatest city. The two Shahs of modern Pahlavi dynasty, Reza and the CIA-installed Mohammad Reza, staged massive performances at Persepolis to identify themselves with the Achaemenid dynasty. Fate being ironic, their rule ended nearly as disastrously. For purposes of discussion here, the Omidya valorization of Persepolis indicates attachment to the Shah of Iran, whose court included many advisors and officials were Bahai followers or Jewish by birth.

Oddly, the Roshan Institute board includes only one cultural expert, Dr. Omidyar. The others are deans, which makes sense because Roshan’s main activity is to provide scholarships to students and place them in allied universities. One of the more interesting board members is former Democrat Florida congresswoman Jan Scheider, a former staffer with Terry McAuliff and lawyer for Bill Clinton. Mrs. Omidyar is one of her campaign contributors.

Social Impact Investing

In a similar vein with Dunham, a social worker who conducted CIA research in poor rural areas of Kenya and Indonesia, Elahe Omidyar’s academic work has stressed the cultural and social milieu of Iranian society, an approach that has greatly influence her son. Pierre Omidyar advocates a “social impact” to investment in the developing countries, with financial support for non-governmental organizations along with private-sector investment.

The emphasize on poor rural communities may sound benign, even noble-hearted, but that is exactly the same policy as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations in manipulating and suppressing grassroots movements with the goal of regime change to oust populist nationalist governments and preserving natural resources for Western corporations.

A three-point program of liberal development theory can be summarized as:

– winning hearts and minds to wage counterinsurgency and proxy wars;

– takeovers of land, water and essential resources to subjugate the population;

– promoting construction of highways, bridges and ports to gain World Bank loans and lucrative contracts through corrupt puppet leaders.

Survivalism and Super-Flu Virus in Hawaii

Closer to home, Omidyar funds non-profit groups involved in organic farming in Hawaii. So what could be so sinister about such exemplary clean living? Here is what the Honolulu Advertiser daily reported: “While he’s clearly enamored with the Island culture, he is also aware of the danger of living in the middle of an ocean. Omidyar worries that a pandemic could cut Hawaii’s lifelines and leave it with an 11-day supply of food. To that end, he has made pivotal donations to local nonprofits dedicated to building sustainable local food supplies. At the same time, he has stockpiled several months of food for his personal use at storage facilities on O’ahu.”

H5N1 weaponizers Kawaoka, Fouchier

That sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy theory. A pandemic, perhaps of highly lethal avian influenza depopulates Hawaii and the West Coast by disease and starvation, since no food arrives by ship or plan for more than two weeks. It means much of North American population is also exterminated. So what does Pierre Omidyar know that public is completely unaware of? Always remember, they who spread the plague have a monopoly on the antidote.

Loose ends in need of tying: Pierre and his mother Elahe Omidyar founded the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, discussed below. Among the board members is former University of Hawaii Mano chancellor Virgina Hinton. The microbiologist is a top expert in the avian influenza or bird flu virus, which whe weaponized poses the greatest threat of a mass-destruction epidemic.

Before coming to Hawaii, Dr. Hinton served as head of the animal lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her chosen successor at that position was Yoshikiko Kawaoka, the Japanese scientist from Kobe University who in fact did soon at UW weaponize H5N1 into a highly lethal and contagious super-flu strain.

Here is an excerpt from a report in the seemingly innocuous UW Alumni Association newsletter “On Wisconsin”:

“Virginia Hinshaw, a former colleague at both St. Jude and UW-Madison and now provost of the University of California- Davis, recalls him as being ‘extremely bright and very creative. It was obvious that he was extraordinary.’

“It was Hinshaw who again set the stage for Kawaoka’s next move. In 1995, she left her flu lab in the School of Veterinary Medicine to become dean of the Graduate School. With her encouragement, Kawaoka applied for her job, eventually joining the faculty in 1997. ‘I remember him coming to my office in the Graduate School and looking around, saying, ‘”I just want to see where I’m going next,” Hinshaw laughs.

”Where he was headed next, however, was Hong Kong. Four months after he arrived in Madison, Kawaoka was chosen by the National Institutes ofHealth to join a select team of international researchers analyzing the H5N1 virus, which had been identified in poultry in China and had begun to appear in humans. By the end of the year, the bird flu had infected eighteen people, killing six — a foreboding sign of the virus’s potential that raised the alarm of public health officials around the world.”

In one word: Biowarfare. A French-born Iranian moved to Hawaii as an ideal place to raise his children, but then starts to stockpile food and drugs. It gets more worrisome because he is equipped for a biological Armageddon. Read on.

Deseret Empire of the Mormons

Security, of course, becomes an issue during food riots and mass panic. Not to worry, because Pierre has the leadership corps to create a private army. “Omidyar employs a group of former Secret Service agents and ex-State Department officials to serve as his private security team and to fly his private jet, a French-made Dassault Falcon 900EX, which he keeps parked in a private hangar at Honolulu International Airport.”

Omidyar has set up safe houses on an island in France, Southern California and Nevada along with a 640-acre ranch in Montana. “I’d say we’re probably more significantly prepared than the average family,” Omidyar said. “We have property all over the world and we have property we can fly to.”

His long residence in Nevada and Montana, inside the greater Deseret Empire, offer a clue to his cult-like perspective. One of few new religions not hostile to the Church of Latter-Day Saints is the Bahai Faith, which originated in Iran although its largest temple, the Universal House of Justice, is based in Haifa, Israel.

Another clue to Omidyar’s covert connection to Bahai is his focus on development projects in Zambia, the chief target of the sect’s missionary activities in Africa.

Then, there’s Omidyar’s sponsorship of virus research and food stockpiling in Hawaii that corresponds to the End Times predicted by Bahai found Bahaullah: “Soon will the present-day order be rolled up and a new one spread out in its stead.”

The Universal House of Justice confirmed the validity of the prophecy with an epistle to this worldwide membership: “The old order cannot be repaired; it is being rolled up before our eyes. The moral decay and disorder convulsing human society must run their course; we can neither arrest nor divert them. Our task is the build the Order of Bahaullah.”

As this next look at numerology indicates, the old order of God the Supreme Law-Giver is “being rolled up” in these End Day. Only then, through mass destruction, will the vessel of faithful followers deliver the authentic world divinity, the adamant and prideful One.

No.9 in Numerology – Yesod

The Bahai inner sanctum has persistently obscured the meaning of the number 9 as an “Arab symbol for fulfillment.” No, the mystic symbol is derived from Jewish Kabbalist numerology as the symbol the final step before divine perfection. Number 9 symbolizes the sephirot (node of knowledge and power) “Yesod”, the vessel for action. The action is toward the fulfillment of the double-digit representing “Malkuth” or kingship, in the sense of divine-right monarchy. (Kabbalism and its extension Illuminism, has therefore has had an attraction to royalists and pretenders worldwide, especially in Western Europe.)

Nine is strangely identified with the qualities of adamancy and pride that are the characteristics of Lucifer, the most intelligent angel surpassed only by God. The uneasy potency of this number, however, is limited to the institutional structure of the religious group. In fact, the actual ritual symbol of Bahai is the pentagram.

The God-Lucifer dichotomy has earlier roots in Zoroastrian dualistic philosophy of a cosmos divided between the god of light Ohrmadz (Ahura Mazda) and his doppelganger Ahriman (Angra Mainyu), prince of darkness. This duality helps to explain the hostility of the Bahai founders toward Islam and Zoroastrianism, and their willing affiliation with the Illuminati and Kabbalist-influenced Zionism. To substitute Lucifer-as-usurper in the stead of God the good requires distancing from the fallen angel’s evil image as Satan, whose reputation Bahai has done its best to rehabilitate, sanitize and salvage.

This brings up the question: Is Lucifer aka Ahriman, No.10? Are these cultists devil worshippers? To put things more charitably, the Bahai along with the Illuminati put highest esteem on pure reason (in rejection of the charismatic nature a and capricious will of a God who imposes tough rules on mankind.) Lucifer, without his terrifying image as Satan, is an adamant hero who teaches humans to be proud of themselves, to stand tall and not to grovel before a morally oppressive and restrictive divinity of the orthodox priesthood. A defender of reason, Lucifer can therefore be the rightful God of mankind to one who is a heretic deviating from Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

Illuminati of the Oxford Movement

It is no odd coincidence then that veneration of the evening star is shared by the seemingly disconnected cults of Illuminism and Bahai The historical links between these two cults can be found in Hermano Maximiliano’s “Freemasonry, the British Empire and the Formation of the Baha’I Cult”. In a cultural crusade to preserve British imperial power, a group of elite academics formed the Oxford Movement, which promoted radical new religious leaders across the Muslim world, particularly Bahai founder Bahaullah. (The Roman Empire underestimated the growing influence of religions from the Orient, including Christianity, which led to its collapse, and the Oxford Movement was determined to avoid that fatal ideological mistake.}

In a classic divide-and-rule exercise, Bahai was created as a “super-faith” that amalgamated the teachings of all world religions, and therefore deserve to replace Islam with a “one world faith.” It was in the interest of British imperialism in Iran and the Middle East to weaken the influence of Islam and to gain control over the Shia-promoted trend of emerging nationalism.

“Although it began as an experimental British foray in non-religious freemasonic cults, the Bahai movement would spawn the organizer of the future pan-Islamic movement, Jamaleddine Al-Afghani,” writes to Maximiliano. An early advocate of Bahai, Al-Afghani went on to form the Salafi school of fundamentalist Islam, which provided the ideological foundation for the Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.

The British spymasters who fostered Bahai and Salafism included Orientalist scholar Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Cambridge dean Edward G. Browne, while field operations with the Wahabi Salafists were led by St. John Philby.(Blunt’s grand-nephew Anthony, art adviser to Queen Elizabeth II, and Philby’s descendant Kim were leading members of the celebrated Oxford spy ring.) Besides the penchant for the occult and pederasty, heresy runs deep in the Oxbridge circle. (http://www.arabamericanencyclopedia.com/) offers a good read on the Oxford Movement and Bahai.)

In contrast to Salafism, which openly calls for a theocratic state, Bahai operates covertly behind the scenes to manipulate politicians and opinion leaders. For instance, unbeknownst to the public, Pierre Omidyar provided his private jet to fly State Department officials incognito for talks with Hamas and also transported former President Jimmy Carter to Tehran for secret diplomacy.

Fatwa Against Bahai

Behind the public pose of peacemaking, Bahai’s role has not always been benign. In August, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against contact with Bahai, following the discovery that terrorist cells included Bahai operatives. The term “Iranian Freemasons” recurrently arises whenever U.S. neoconservatives hatch plans to attack Iran. It has also been a mystery of how the criminal terrorist group Mujaheedeen Al-Khalq obtained the funding to build a mini-army inside neighboring Iraq and mounted elaborate assassination campaigns in Iran.

One incident familiar to this writer was the so-called Iranian bombing in Bangkok in 2012, which were attributed to the Tehran regime. (Two suspects were convicted in August by a Thai court.) The key figure in this incident was an Iranian woman with a Jewish family name, who managed to flee immediately after inadvertent blast damaged a safe house. At the time, her escape pointed to an Israeli connection, as the planned attacks were timed to match a Mossad international campaign to offer security services and training to Asian governments.

Alliance with Israel

Bahai’s closest international ally is the State of Israel. Nearly every Israeli president and prime minister has made an official homage to the Shrine of Bab at the Bahai World Center in Haifa. Why would the head of the Jewish state honor a new religion that claims to be the world’s supreme belief?

One motivation is the “enemy of my enemy” alliance, since both Bahai and Zionist are sworn to regime change in Iran. Another, historically deeper connection is the role of Jewish Kabbalism in the creation of the Bahai sect. Although developed in Al-Andalus, the Moorish realm in late-medieval/early Renaissance Spain, the Kabbala has earlier origins in the alchemistry, numerology, astronomy and philosophy of Persia and Mesopotamia as developed by Jewish, Islamic and Indian thinkers.

These early scientific explorations led to syncretism of the respective religious beliefs and occult doctrines, often expressed as sub-schools of Sufism. The syncretistic approach was especially favored by Donmeh Jews, the disciples of Sabbatai Zevi who became superficial converts to Islam under orders from Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV.

The various streams of hidden Jewish thought, which spread through the vast Islamic domain, eventually made its way into Europe with the Frankist movement and the Asiatic Brotherhood secret society, which profoundly influenced major figures such as Emperor Joseph of the Habsburgs (husband of Maria Theresa, “Queen of the Night” in Mozart’s “Magic Flute”) and the German princes of Hesse (Frankfurt region) whose banker was Mayer Rothschild, founder of the powerful Jewish banking dynasty. The merger of Kabbalist practices, including sexual libertinism, with Enlightenment philosophy led to Adam Weiskopf’s formation of the Order of the Illuminati.

During the era of British world mastery, following the defeats of Napoleonic France, the English Illuminati scholars enchanted with Orientalism reintroduced Kabbalist occultism to the Near East among the Young Turks led by Ataturk, the Bahai and the Salafists. The Rothschild clan’s financing of Zionism promoted ties with and recruitment of hidden Jews across the Muslim realm, cementing a close relationship between Bahai and Israel as well as between Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and the Mossad.

The official Bahai account paints themselves as victims of Shia Muslim persecution and pogroms, whereas the historical causes of nationalist opposition to the Bahai are more complicated. The Bahai were generally supportive of the Shahs of Iran before and after the CIA coup against the democratic Mosaddeqh regime, which nationalized the Iranian oil reserves. Bahai advisers to the court of successive Shahs promoted the secularization of Iranian society in order to banish Islamic values and undermine the nationalist Shia clergy. For Iranian nationalists, however, both secular and religious-inspired, the Shah’s regime was a tool for Western control over Iran’s immense oil reserves. The Bahai are thus perceived as agents of the CIA and MI-6, which in fact many of their leaders actually were.

Occult Triangle

The triangular relationship of the Disraeli/Rothschid – Oxford Movement – Bahai/Salafism of the 19th is now being reflected in the Snowden affair with the collusion of the Zionism/Greenwald – Guardian/Royalist – Bahai/Omidyar. History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as a farce.

As Israel edges toward a first-strike attack against Iran, while ramping up its covert wars against Iranian influence in Sudan and Palestine, is it any wonder that Pierre Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald are preparing to launch a major online propaganda mouthpiece? Is this new media venture, too, part of the Bahai plan to prepare for the imminent End of the World to be delivered by an unstoppable contagion of super-flu?

Instead of playing dangerous games, Pierre Omidyar is far better off in the luxury of fiction where he belongs rather than sentencing himself to hard labor at journalism. To lead the budding writer to the fabled shores of epic poetry and apocalyptic scenarios, let me guide him without personal ill will to his literary destiny with this short-short story of epic dimension, salted with plagiarism and peppered with cultural chauvinism, inspired by a world-renowned figure of ancient Persia whose ambitions were nearly as grand as his.

Whenever history reaches an impasse, onto the desolate field of the forum rumbles a juggernaut bearing a demigod who showers silver coins on his new subjects like droplets of water for the thirsty. At this hour of desperate survival, citizens, spurn the siren song of obedience, for even power-obsessed Xerxes and his cruel cohort of Immortals proved weak in spirit when bloodied between the stony heights and unfathomable depths. Cunning in the sophistry of One World at Peace, the satraps of empire are masters of the dark arts of treachery and betrayal as taught by their uncanny master Angra Mainyu.

Today, the beast again approaches to snuff out the world’s one hope for reason and justice, the voice of truth arising from faith in the heart. The overwhelming odds of their 250 million pieces of silver against our 300 in bronze mean an even contest, for the difference will be tallied in righteous ferocity and deeds of glory.

Freedom is won only by those who have faced the blood rage of the wolves and have known the Spartan conditions of this real world of hungry villages and dying towns. The privileged perspective from gilded chariots and vast palaces under the protection of princes delivers only delusion, enslavement and slaughter.

Freedom is for those who earn it by sacrifice, we few, the brave and happy few. Remember us. Here, at the crux of history where bards sing of hard choices, is the unforgiving soil of liberty, not a perfumed Persian garden of delights. On this rosy dawn, they come to see and to conquer. But at twilight begins the eternal night in the hell that they so fear. For us, descended from the bringer of light Apollo who in the East is called Ahura Mazda, bravery in battle and virtue in death are the greatest joys this life can bestow. Give thanks. To Victory!

Yoichi Shimatsu

Yoichi Shimatsu, a Hong Kong-based journalist who wrote commentaries on the Edward Snowden affair published in the South China Morning Post, is the former editor of The Japan Times Weekly in Tokyo and Pacific News Service in San Francisco.

Syria rebel groups brand Geneva talks ‘treason’

A man reacts fearing sniper fire at a Free Syrian Army checkpoint in Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr, REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: A group of powerful rebel groups in Syria say that attending the proposed Geneva II peace talks with the regime would constitute an act of betrayal, as fighting raged on the border with Iraq and in Homs. An international watchdog said, meanwhile, that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime handed over on time a detailed plan on destroying its chemical weapons stockpile. The move was in line with a US-Russian deal reached last month that headed off threatened military strikes on Syria and that triggered an initiative for peace talks to be staged in Geneva next month. But the initiative has struggled to win the support of the warring parties in Syria, where more than 115,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 31-month conflict. In the latest blow, 19 Islamist groups fighting to topple Assad issued a statement Saturday casting further doubt on whether the talks dubbed Geneva II will actually go ahead. “We announce that the Geneva II conference is not, nor will it ever be our people’s choice or our revolution’s demand,” said the statement read out by Suqur al-Sham brigade chief Ahmad Eissa al-Sheikh in a video posted online. “We consider it just another part of the conspiracy to throw our revolution off track and to abort it.” They warned anyone who attends such talks would be committing “treason, and… would have to answer for it before our courts”. The statement comes as the UN-Arab League peace envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, prepares to travel to Damascus on Monday, a Syrian government source told AFP. The talks slated for next month aim to bring rebel and regime representatives to the table in a bid to seek a negotiated end to the conflict. Under pressure from its Western backers to attend, the National Coalition is to meet on November 9 to decide whether to take part. But it insists it will only do so if there are guarantees Assad will step down, and its leader Ahmad Jarba has also said no talks can take place unless the regime frees women and children from its jails. Assad for his part has said “the factors are not yet in place” for such talks, and he has repeatedly rejected negotiations with any group with ties to the rebels or to foreign states. Chemical plan submitted In a separate development, Damascus handed over a detailed plan to destroy its chemical stockpile on time, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said. “On 24 October 2013, the Syrian Arab Republic submitted to the OPCW its formal initial declaration covering its chemical weapons programme,” it said, adding Damascus had had until Sunday to do so. Damascus was required to submit the plan under a UN Security Council resolution that also called for a political settlement to end the war. On Syria’s eastern frontier with Iraq, Kurdish militia took over most of the town of Yaarubiyeh a day after they routed jihadists from the border post, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. By Sunday, the Kurds had “near-total control” over the town, said the group, adding that fighting was still raging in the south of Yaarubiyeh. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al-Qaeda front group fighting the Kurds there, called on jihadists to join them in the fight over Yaarubiyeh, said the Observatory. The opposition Coalition said Saturday that Iraq “continues to interfere with Syria’s internal affairs”, and that its troops “shelled” the Yaarubiyeh border post in cooperation with the Kurdish fighters. The Observatory said the allegations were unfounded. In the central province of Homs, battles pitting rebels against regime troops as opposition fighters pushed an advance to take over major weapons depots in the area. One of the battlegrounds is Sadad, a Christian town in the province where shelling killed two men and three women from the same family. The Assyrian Human Rights Network appealed Saturday to fighters on both sides “for an immediate ceasefire” in Sadad. Such a ceasefire “is needed, even if just for a few hours, to evacuate the killed and wounded civilians, and to bring in medicines, water and other humanitarian supplies to the civilians trapped in their homes since last Monday”. – With The Daily Star

Volgograd Bus Bomb Explosion Caught On Dash-Cam

Saudi Hit Men -vs- Syrian Hit Men, Claiming 5 More Lives In Tripoli, Lebanon

Restive calm prevails on deserted Tripoli streets

Smoke billows from Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh Sunni neighbourhood during clashes with Alawite, pro-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood, on October 25, 2013. The death toll from five days of clashes in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime has climbed to five, a security official said. AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID

By Antoine Amrieh, Misbah al-Ali

 

 

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Although a general sense of calm prevailed in Tripoli Saturday following fierce clashes that killed two people overnight, the lack of a definitive truce and a tangible government plan to end the crisis left the northern city almost deserted.

 

Clashes between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad killed 10 people and wounded more than 75 in the 17th round of fighting since the crisis in neighboring Syria began.

 

The deadly fighting entered its sixth day Saturday with little hope that the crisis would end soon despite measures taken by the country’s officials in a meeting headed by President Michel Sleiman Thursday to restore calm in the northern city.

 

Business owners failed to show up at the Abu Ali Roundabout to begin preparations for opening the weekly Sunday market, fearing a sudden recurrence of clashes and sniper fire.

 

Shops remained closed throughout Saturday and very few people were seen on the city streets. The Army has increased its deployment in the city and is visibly patrolling some neighborhoods.

 

In response to the renewed violence in Lebanon’s second largest city, civil society groups along with some residents gathered outside the Tripoli Serail and called on authorities “to impose security and stability … and reject the notion of consensus security.”

 

They also asked the judiciary to arrest and punish the perpetrators behind the August car bombings, criticizing ministers and MPs from Tripoli for failing to take any measures to end the violence.

 

Reading a statement prepared by the groups, one of the activists also warned that civil society groups would adopt measures such as civil disobedience if the state fails to shoulder its responsibility toward Tripoli.

 

Nehme Mahfoud, head of the Private Schools Teachers Association, who was at the protest, said residents of Tripoli are gradually losing faith and trust in security agencies.

 

“Do not let us reach the point when we stop trusting the Army and the security agencies,” he said.

 

Mohammad Khalideyeh and Abu Baker Miqati were killed in the overnight fighting as the death toll from this round of violence rose to 10. Most of those killed were hit by sniper fire, including at least two children.

 

Several people were reportedly wounded Saturday by intermittent sniper fire.

 

The families of Khalideyeh and Miqati held burial ceremonies for their loved ones in separate mosques as armed relatives of the deceased fired in the air causing damage to two parked vehicles.

 

The Lebanese military clashed with gunmen in several areas Friday night. In one incident, the military came under fire during a burial ceremony near Ameraa Mosque in Bab al-Ramel around 11:30 p.m. when gunmen from the Abu Ratee Shatah group shot at a patrol.

 

The brief clash wounded civilians Issa Hawat and Mohammad Shatah.

 

Soldiers also traded fire with gunmen in al-Tall and al-Meytenn neighborhoods when the Army began pursuing armed individuals as per Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr’s judicial order to arrest security violators.

 

The Army also clashed for two hours with gunmen in the Abdel-Hamid Karami Square. The gunmen fled and scattered in nearby neighborhoods as the Army pursued the perpetrators throughout the night.

 

Six shops belonging to Alawites in Al-Nejmeh Square, a commercial area in Tripoli, were looted and set on fire last night.

 

“I live near Nejmeh Square and I couldn’t sleep for a full hour last night,” a business owner told The Daily Star.

 

“We are just fed up with this,” the father of two said.

 

Clashes broke out between the Sunni anti-Assad neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh and inhabitants of its rival area, the Alawite pro-Assad neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, after residents of the latter fired gunshots in the air as they celebrated the appearance of the Syrian leader in a television interview Monday.

 

The fighting also comes weeks after the Internal Security Forces Information Branch arrested several people on charges of involvement in the Aug. 23 bombings outside two mosques in the city.

 

Two car bombs exploded outside Al-Taqwa and Al-Salam mosques where prominent sheikhs in Tripoli were delivering their Friday sermons, killing 47 people and wounding over 100.

 

The military court has charged seven in connection with the blasts, some of whom belong to the Jabal Mohsen-based Arab Democratic Party, a staunch ally of Assad.

 

Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri who enjoys strong support in Tripoli said Saturday the Syrian regime is waging a “dirty war” on Tripoli as a punishment for revealing what he said was the terrorist network behind the car bombings.

 

Hariri also held the state fully responsible for the volatile security situation in the northern city, saying the government should take all necessary measures to resolve the crisis “or it will be an accomplice in the war that the Syrian regime has launched.”

 

Earlier Saturday, Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati who hails from Tripoli, said security agencies and the Lebanese Army will take the necessary and needed measures to end the violence and chaos in the city.

 

Speaking to visitors Saturday at the Grand Serail, Mikati said: “The Army’s leadership and the heads of the agencies have informed concerned officials that they will use all the powers given to them having exhausted all means to restore security and stability in the city.”

 

“There is a feeling that Tripoli is being used as a mailbox to send messages … but the honorable people of Tripoli … know who has been on their side under all circumstances and who has shown up occasionally to support them,” Mikati said.

 

We Won’t Have Mikheil Saakashvili To Kick Around Anymore

NO MORE TIE EATING

Georgia votes in elections as Saakashvili’s rule ends

NO DISHEVELED “STATESMEN” TO SERVICE US/ZIONIST NEEDS

NO MORE MIKHEIL THE MAGNIFICENT.

NO ONE TO EXPLAIN GEORGIA’S FIERCE “HAMSTER MANEUVER,” USED TO NO EFFECT, AFTER FORCING A RUSSIAN INVASION.

NO ONE FOR “W” TO HOLD HANDS OR MAKE-OUT WITH IN HIS OWN RETIREMENT.

The Tragic Journalistic Crime of Cover-Up, By Pretending That “Al-Qaeda” Doesn’t Have A State Sponsor

[No journalist with any integrity at all would try to write such an article, attempting to explain a new resurgent “al-Qaeda” without first explaining how this was even remotely possible.  How could this mythical militant force possibly have transformed itself from being practically decimated one minute, to one boasting a standing force that other journalists have estimated to be as high as one-hundred thousand killers, within the span of a few months, a year at best?  Someone saved the “Al-Qaeda” brand name from the dustbin of obscurity and everyone who reads news from No Sunglasses understands exactly who that is.   Didn’t this particular writer, who claims to be a “journalist,” have a responsibility to name those Sunni terrorist benefactors, or at least to ask who they are?]  

The West thought it was winning the battle against jihadist terrorism.

It should think again

The new face of terror

A FEW months ago Barack Obama declared that al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”. Its surviving members, he said, were more concerned for their own safety than with plotting attacks on the West. Terrorist attacks of the future, he claimed, would resemble those of the 1990s—local rather than transnational and focused on “soft targets”. His overall message was that it was time to start winding down George Bush’s war against global terrorism.

Mr Obama might argue that the assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi by al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate, the Shabab, was just the kind of thing he was talking about: lethal, shocking, but a long way from the United States. Yet the inconvenient truth is that, in the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any time in its 25-year history (see article). Mr Obama must reconsider.

Back from the dead

It all looked different two years ago. Even before the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda’s central leadership, holed up near the Afghan border in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, was on the ropes, hollowed out by drone attacks and able to communicate with the rest of the network only with difficulty and at great risk. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), its most capable franchise as far as mounting attacks on the West is concerned, was being hit hard by drone strikes and harried by Yemeni troops. The Shabab was under similar pressure in Somalia, as Western-backed African Union forces chased them out of the main cities. Above all, the Arab spring had derailed al-Qaeda’s central claim that corrupt regimes supported by the West could be overthrown only through violence.

All those gains are now in question. The Shabab is recruiting more foreign fighters than ever (some of whom appear to have been involved in the attack on the Westgate). AQAP was responsible for the panic that led to the closure of 19 American embassies across the region and a global travel alert in early August. Meanwhile al-Qaeda’s core, anticipating the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan after 2014, is already moving back into the country’s wild east.

Above all, the poisoning of the Arab spring has given al-Qaeda and its allies an unprecedented opening. The coup against a supposedly moderate Islamist elected government in Egypt has helped restore al-Qaeda’s ideological power. Weapons have flooded out of Libya and across the region, and the civil war in Syria has revived one of the network’s most violent and unruly offshoots, al-Qaeda in Iraq, now grandly renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

The struggle to depose the Assad regime has acted as a magnet for thousands of would-be jihadists from all over the Muslim world and from Muslim communities in Europe and North America. The once largely moderate and secular Syrian Free Army has been progressively displaced by better-organised and better-funded jihadist groups that have direct links with al-Qaeda. Western intelligence estimates reckon such groups now represent as much as 80% of the effective rebel fighting force. Even if they fail to advance much from the territory they now hold in the north and east of the country, they might end up controlling a vast area that borders an ever more fragile-looking Iraq, where al-Qaeda is currently murdering up to 1,000 civilians a month. That is a terrifying prospect.

No more wishful thinking

How much should Western complacency be blamed for this stunning revival? Quite a bit. Mr Obama was too eager to cut and run from Iraq. He is at risk of repeating the mistake in Afghanistan. America has been over-reliant on drone strikes to “decapitate” al-Qaeda groups: the previous defence secretary, Leon Panetta, even foolishly talked of defeating the network by killing just 10-20 leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The general perception of America’s waning appetite for engagement in the Middle East, underlined by Mr Obama’s reluctance to support the moderate Syrian opposition in any useful way has been damaging as well.

A second question is how much of a threat a resurgent al-Qaeda now poses to the West. The recently popular notion that, give or take the odd home-grown “lone wolf”, today’s violent jihadists are really interested only in fighting local battles now looks mistaken. Some of the foreign fighters in Syria will be killed. Others will be happy to return to a quieter life in Europe or America. But a significant proportion will take their training, experience and contacts home, keen to use all three when the call comes, as it surely will. There is little doubt too that Westerners working or living in regions where jihadism is strong will be doing so at greater risk than ever.

The final question is whether anything can be done to reverse the tide once again. The answer is surely yes. When Mr Bush declared his “war on terror”, his aim was the removal of regimes that sponsored terrorism. Today, the emphasis should be supporting weak (and sometimes unsavoury) governments in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Niger and elsewhere that are trying to fight al-Qaeda. Even Kenya and Nigeria could do with more help. That does not mean a heavy bootprint on the ground, but assistance in intelligence, logistics and even special forces and air support. Most of all, it means more help to train local security forces, to modernise administrations and to stabilise often frail economies.

The most dismaying aspect of al-Qaeda’s revival is the extent to which its pernicious ideology, now aided by the failures of the Arab spring, continues to spread through madrassas and mosques and jihadist websites and television channels. Money still flows from rich Gulf Arabs, supposedly the West’s friends, to finance these activities and worse. More pressure should be brought to bear on their governments to stop this. For all the West’s supposedly huge soft power, it has been feeble in its efforts to win over moderate Muslims in the most important battle of all, that of ideas.

America’s Addiction to Imperialism

Libya 360°

Veritas

“The people must demand an end to war, not because it costs trillions of dollars, but because it cost millions of lives.”

By Solomon Comissiong

“The US has never gone a decade without being engaged in some sort of military conflict.”

The U.S. is Number One in weapons of war and domestic civilian gun deaths – and very little else. Historically, peace has not been a priority for the United States, which has waged war every decade since 1776. A common description for the term addiction is, “the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences,or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors…” This definition is most appropriate in regard to the world’s most destructive killing machine – the United States military. The United States government has long developed an acquired taste for war. And because much of the US population is completely obsequious to whatever their duplicitous government tells them, they, too, have become complacent to a perpetual state of war. Americans punch-drunk on nationalism fail to realize that “their” government is beholden to the interests of imperialism, not their general well being. Like well controlled puppets they chant, “USA number one”, over and over and over again, failing to ever question what “their” country is actually number one in.

The mental sickness of “American Exceptionalism” maintains the asylum known as American society. American Exceptionalism designs baseless sayings like, “USA number one.” US society is an extremely competitive and insecure environment. Ultimately, a place that encourages its citizens to ritualistically chant how good they are is not so sure of itself. Either that, or it does not wish the Hoi Polloi to ever question their government at all. The US is not number one in quality of life, education or overall healthcare. The USA is not even the happiest nation in the world, by a long shot. However, a few things the United States is number one in are: incarceration, gun related deaths and yes, military expenditure.

These are among some of the unsavory rubrics in which the US reigns supreme. If Americans meant any of those areas when they blindly chant, “USA number one”, then they would be spot on, especially when it comes to military “firepower.” With around 1,000 military bases, well over 10,000 nuclear warheads, and an almost constant state of war, the US is numero uno, without rival. The US is an imperialist monster with a voracious appetite for destruction. It has an uncontrollable appetite for war, caring little what it murders on its way toward global domination. This is evident in the vast number of civilians killed as a result of the US’s military campaigns. The vast majority of people murdered when the US decides to unleash its war machine, are, in fact, civilians. This is news to most Americans because they have been socially programmed to not even think about civilian casualties. They only worry about US military casualties as if those are the only lives that matter. Thinking about the catastrophic impact their government’s wars inflict upon innocent people, in “far off lands”, is well beyond many Americans’ social radar. This mode of thinking (or lack there of) has conditioned numerous Americans to lose vast segments of their humanity.

“The vast majority of people murdered when the US decides to unleash its war machine, are, in fact, civilians.”

It is of little surprise that the United States government cares little about the “adverse consequences” that come with being constantly entrenched in war and global conflict. However, when the populace have adopted that inhumane way of thinking it paves a destructive road that we are traveling upon. The people are the ones whose responsibility it is to, not request, but demand an end to these wars of imperialism. Unfortunately, the United States’ mind control program, otherwise known as corporate media, has had a firm grip on the conscience of many Americans. This fact continues to prevent Americans from understanding that the people being terrorized by the US’s imperialist wars, are human beings – just like them. It especially prevents them from understanding that people in places like Afghanistan are, in fact, being terrorized by the US military.

Americans have bought into the orchestrated mythology that “their country,” when it enters/instigates a war, is doing so for some sort of benevolent reasons. Historically speaking, this could not be further from the truth, especially when we consider the number of civilians killed. Since World War I there has been a complete reversal of civilian deaths. During World War I, 10% of all casualties were civilians. During World War II, the number of civilian deaths rose to 50%. During the Vietnam War 70% of all casualties were civilians. In the war in Iraq, civilians account for 90% of all deaths. And when we look at the number of civilians killed by way of George Bush and Barack Obama’s drone strikes (alone), more that 90 percent of the victims have been civilians. However, don’t look at the fourth branch of the US government (the corporate media), to inform you of this. They, like the Pentagon and White House, could not give a damn about the number of innocent civilians killed. When former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and Secretary of State) Colin Powell was asked, in 1991, about the number of Iraqi civilians killed as a result of the US Gulf War against Iraq, he simply stated: “Its not a number I’m terribly interested in.” It is important to note that the Associated Press at the time quoted US military officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, estimating that the number of Iraqi dead at 100,000. However, other independent estimates place the number much higher. Not surprising, the Pentagon refused to provide an estimate of the number of dead Iraqi civilians.

The shear lack of regard for human life, especially that of civilians, is akin to that of a serial killer. The US military apparatus operates like that of a pathological killing machine with lust for war. The history of the United States more than backs up this assertion, especially when we consider the fact that since the US’s “founding” in 1776, this country has been at war 216 of those years. That’s right, out of the US’s 237 year existence it has been engaged in military conflict 216 of those years. If that is not an addiction to war, this author does not know what is. The US has never gone a decade without being engaged in some sort of military conflict.

“An American life is no more valuable than that of someone from any country in which the U.S. is waging war.”

United States imperialism is destroying the world, one nation at time. And within those nations are living breathing human beings. Is it really hard to fathom why many people despise the US? It has nothing to do with Americans’ so-called “freedoms” – instead, it has everything to do with the military destruction of their countries. The politicians that ultimately control the US military care little about the soldiers they command to fight in their capitalist conquests of wealth and resources. And they certainly could not give a damn about the innocent civilians in places like Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. They are not concerned with how they are perceived by much of the globe; they are only concerned with maintaining their imperialist advancements and control. You are either “with them” or “against them”; there is no middle ground. And for these reasons it should be crystal clear why people living within the United State must care.

Organized critical masses of concerned people must serve as the moral compass, and rehabilitation, needed to end the US’s addiction to war. Bluntly put, humanity depends on it. The people must demand an end to war, not because it costs trillions of dollars, but because it cost millions of lives. There is no dollar amount that can be used to measure a human’s life. All human life must be seen as invaluable, period. An American life is no more valuable than that of someone from any country in which the U.S. is waging war. The financial cost of war is enormous and is an issue, in and of itself – however, this cost pales in comparison to the cost of human life.

We must unite and be prepared to organize to end the culture of war within the US. Ending the culture of war in this country will pave the way for wars to cease globally, especially since the US global war footprint is virtually everywhere. Creating a culture of peace begins with changing our acceptance of the United States’ addiction to war. Demanding this radical, yet humane, change to take place is paramount if we are to mold a brighter future for subsequent generations. Peace starts with all of us. It is one of the most important tasks before us. We must be firmly against war, in addition to being for peace. They go hand in hand. Now is the time to start building that brighter and more humane future.

Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org). Mr. Comissiong is also a founding member of the Pan-African collective for Advocacy & Action. Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org.

Surveillance of the Fittest—Sheep Nation

Cologne, the mural on the Datagate: the eagle watches over the flock 

Jordanian Father, Wanting His Children To Be Treated As Well As Syrian Refugees, Sneaks Them Into Al-Zaatari Camp

Jordanian sneaks into refugee camp in his own country, saying he could no longer feed his family

Adam Nicky, The Media Line 

Jeff Mitchell/Getty ImagesUnder cover of night, Abu Ali smuggled his family of three girls and two boys into the Al-Zaatari refugee camp for Syrians in the north of the country

AMMAN, Jordan – Most people want to get out of refugee camps, not sneak in. But under cover of the night, Abu Ali smuggled his family of three girls and two boys into the Al-Zaatari refugee camp for Syrians in the north of the country.

A Jordanian, he could no longer put food on the table and came to Al-Zaatari to feed his family.

Ali, who asked that his last name not be used, now lives in a small tent among asylum seekers from Syria. With United Nations food parcels scattered around his bed, Ali says lack of work opportunities and subsequent abject poverty was behind his decision to seek refuge in the camp. With no functioning social security aid in Jordan, the 54-year-old Ali is a refugee in his own country.

Several other Jordanian families are believed to have entered the camp in search of a stable source of food and medical aid.

“There is no place for me out there anymore. My children cannot find food or proper medical treatment. I was evicted from my house because I could not pay the rent,” said Ali.

Ali blames an army of refugees from across the region for his misfortunes.

I used to stand on the corner of streets waiting for day jobs, but an overwhelming number of Egyptian and Syrian workers meant my chances of landing a job became very difficult

“For a year I could not land one job,” he said angrily. “In every street corner you find an Egyptian, an Iraqi or Syrian looking for jobs.

“I used to stand on the corner of streets waiting for day jobs, but an overwhelming number of Egyptian and Syrian workers meant my chances of landing a job became very difficult,” he said.

Figures released by the government-run department of statistics in early October put unemployment at 14%, the highest rate in four years. Independent studies placed unemployment at 26% and poverty at 25%.

Jordanian workers say they face strong competition from people who agree to work long hours with lower wages and no social security and health benefits.

Jordan is home to 900,000 illegal Egyptian laborers, mostly working in agriculture and construction sectors. An additional 160,000 legal Egyptian workers are employed in the tourism and textile industries.

The kingdom is home to around one million Syrian refugees, most of whom live in urban cities and compete with the local workforce.

The Ministry of Labor says a flood of Egyptian workers during the past two years has put pressure on the job market.

The government this month said it launched a campaign to flush out illegal workers.

Kurdish fighters seize Syrian border post from Islamists

 

 

BEIRUT

(Reuters) – Kurdish militants seized a Syrian border post on the frontier with Iraq early on Saturday, fighters and monitors said, after three days of clashes with an al Qaeda-linked group which had held the crossing since March.

The armed Kurdish group YPG told Reuters fighting carried on through the morning and a senior security official on the Iraqi side of the crossing said he could hear gunshots, mortar fire and shelling.

The Yarubiya post and surrounding areas in the northeast were taken from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant rebel group, who had seized it from the army, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Ethnic Kurds in Syria have a complex role in nearly three years of conflict that started when President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on a pro-democracy uprising.

The ensuing war has pitted Sunni Muslims against Assad’s Alawite minority and different Kurdish militia have fought on both sides, normally over territory or power disputes.

YPG spokesman Redur Xelil told Reuters Kurdish areas in Syria were blockaded by Islamist groups on one side, Turkish forces on the other and the closed border with Iraqi Kurdistan. But he said it was “too soon to talk about using the crossing”.

Forty people died when a car bomb exploded outside a mosque in Wadi Barada in Damascus province on Friday, said the anti-Assad Observatory, which verifies reports through a network of sources around Syria.

State news agency SANA said many “terrorists” – a term it uses for those fighting Assad – were also killed in the explosion and quoted a witness who said the mosque’s two entrances collapsed when the bomber struck before the end of Friday prayers.

State TV said on Friday Abu Mohammad al-Golani, leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, a rebel group that has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings, had been killed.

Fighters from the Islamist group told Reuters Golani was alive.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the United Nations.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Isabel Coles in Arbil and Ziad al-Sinjary in Mosul; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Syrian Army Kills Zawahiri’s Last Hope In Syria

Nusra leader Abu Mohammad Golani killed, after “Baghdadi forced Golani and some of his men to go underground, confiscating some Nusra weapons. Many other Nusra fighters went home or joined other Islamist brigades.”

Regime says Nusra leader killed in Latakia

Relatives of victims and medics help a casualty after a car bomb exploded near Osama bin Zaid Mosque at Souk Wadi Barada in the Damascus countryside.

DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: Syrian state television said Friday that the leader of the hard-line Islamist group Nusra Front was killed during clashes with government troops in rural Latakia province.

The television gave no details about the death of Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the head of the Al-Qaeda-inspired group, which was designated as a terrorist organization late last year by the United States.

In April, Golani denied that the Nusra Front had merged with the other Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. The two groups have maintained a tenuous relationship in the months since, alternating between cooperation and clashing in various parts of Syria.

Earlier, a car bomb exploded outside a mosque in rural Damascus as government troops killed at least 40 opposition fighters in an ambush elsewhere in the capital.

Twenty were killed and dozens wounded in the bomb after Friday prayers in the town of Souk Wadi Barada, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and other witnesses.

The town is under rebel control, but troops loyal to President Bashar Assad were positioned just outside it, the group said.

Anti-regime activists blamed the attack on government forces, while state news agency SANA said “the car exploded while the terrorists were packing it with explosives.”

The Observatory said at least three of the dead were children, and SANA said a 7-year-old child was killed.

Anti-government activists also posted several videos purporting to show rebels defusing a second car bomb, in the village of al-Hameh, near the site of the Souk Wadi Barada blast.

Assad’s forces have been gaining ground in rebel-held areas around the capital, and have made progress against outgunned and fragmented fighters in several areas.

SANA said 40 rebels were killed in the ambush near Otaiba to the east of the capital. Soldiers seized a large arms cache, including anti-tank rockets from the rebels, the agency said.

The state-run Al-Ikhbariya television station broadcast footage showing more than a dozen bodies near the largely dried-out Otaiba lake, some wearing flak jackets strapped with ammunition. Automatic rifles and hand grenades lay nearby.

“Eastern Ghouta is a graveyard of terrorists,” read a scroll on the broadcast.

“It was a highly accurate operation,” an unidentified army officer told the channel. “We will be moving from one victory to another.”

The Observatory said at least 24 fighters, some of them foreign, were killed in the ambush. It gave no further details and the differing death tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

North of Damascus, rebels and government forces clashed for a fifth consecutive day in the Christian town of Sadad, trapping hundreds of residents. Al-Qaeda-linked groups captured a checkpoint earlier in the week that gave them control of the western part of the town.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said Kurdish gunmen made advances in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hassakeh. The Kurdish militiamen entered the town of Yaaroubieh Friday, clashing with several jihadist groups, including Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria and the Nusra Front.

Rebel-held Yaaroubieh lies along one of the main border crossing points into Iraq and its capture would give the Kurdish militiamen a direct supply line from Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Both the government and rebels want to strengthen their position on the ground ahead of the talks, expected next month. No final date has been set, however, and it is unclear whether the sides will reach an agreement on the agenda.

The Supreme Military Council, the Turkey-based leadership of the Free Syrian Army, said it refused to sit down with officials involved in killing Syrians.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met the head of the mainstream FSA and other commanders Thursday as part of a regional tour aimed at rallying support for the talks.

FSA chief General Salim Idriss “reaffirmed that we are all striving for a solution and for the bloodshed to stop,” his spokesman Louay Moqdad said Friday.

According to Moqdad, Idriss “insisted the FSA wants a democratic, free state in Syria, the fall of the [Assad] regime, the establishment of a transitional government and for the criminals to be tried.”

“We want a solution, but it must begin with making the killers accountable,” Moqdad said.

The stance was echoed in Friday’s nationwide protests, held under the slogan “The solution is in the Hague, not Geneva,” a reference to a proposal to try Assad at the International Criminal Court.

At least 125 people were killed across the country, the Local Coordination Committees activist network said.

Saudi spy chief in Jordan on Secret visit

AMMONNEWS – The Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan is visiting Jordan, on a secret visit, Ammonnews learned.

The sources told Ammon that Prince arrived Kingdom this week and met with Jordanian officials and discussed the ways of coordination and communication with the head of Saudi intelligence, recent developments in the region, especially the Syrian file.

Ammon learned that Prince had intended to hold meetings in Aqaba this Friday, but it’s postponed.

Obamacare Is A Bureaucratic Cyber-Weapon—“Stuxnet” for Healthcare Plans

Obamacare wipes out more than 1 million plans

Cancellation notices from insurers continue to mount

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/obamacare-wipes-out-more-than-1-million-plans/#KseUz1tidkzyvteL.99

[Obamacare was created with one purpose—to demolish individual healthcare plans as a first step to total control over our lives.  This is dictatorship by stealth.  When the dust settles and all is said and done, whoever studies our peculiar epoch of human history may come to understand just how the government gained total control over the lives of the people through comprehensive, bureaucratic regulation.  The “teeth” in Obamacare, consists of regulations of what is NOT COVERED.  The result will be widespread, unnecessary death and higher levels of human misery, even among those who manage to hang-on to their health coverage.  According to Obamacare legislation, everyone will pay, EVEN those who have no health coverage.]

Obamacare wipes out more than 1 million plans

Cancellation notices from insurers continue to mount

Owners of individual health-insurance policies already have received more than 1 million cancellation notices, according to a compilation of news reports.

But the pain likely won’t end there.

Health-policy expert Bob Laszewski has concluded that about 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare.

Laszewski explained that about 19 million Americans are in the individual health insurance market.

“Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85 percent of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal,” he said.

The 16 million, he said, will receive letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll to avoid a break in coverage .

“Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases, he said.

Blue Cross in New Jersey, alone, is dropping more than 800,000 customers due to Obamacare.

In a letter earlier this month to customers who purchase insurance on the individual and small-employer markets, the insurance giant explained that their health-insurance plan would no longer exist next year because it does not cover all the essential benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.

The Daily Caller reported 1.1 million Aetna customers are at risk in New Jersey, where the leading insurer also won’t be a part of the state’s new Obamacare exchange.

As WND reported, some insurers are canceling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare forbids insurers from rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher prices.

In Florida, Kaiser Health Network reported, Blue Cross is terminating 300,000 polices.

Half a million Californians with catastrophic plans are losing their insurance plans because they don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles reported Oct. 10.

Those who try to sign up for new ones, KNBC said, are learning the cost may be significantly higher.

Actor Paul Divito asked in KNBC’s report: “Affordable for whom? It’s basically squeezing us right out of the middle class.”

Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, estimates that “a half million people who are currently insured might be paying more premiums or higher premiums next year because the policies that they have today, those lower-cost, high-deductible skinny benefit policies are not going to be allowed next year on the marketplace.”

Blue Cross dropped Medicare D , the prescription drug plan, for some 13,000 senior citizens in Louisiana, according to the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.

Blue Cross announced in a letter that prescription drug coverage will end Dec. 31, and seniors enrolled in the plans will have to find new Medicare part D coverage.

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield in New York state announced its Medicaid and Family Health Plus programs will be dropped, affecting 13,000 in certain counties, reported WHAM-TV in Rochester, N.Y.

“The health plan is incurring losses approaching $100 million on these products in 2013 and we expect that amount to increase in 2014,” the company said in a statement.

“Losses of this magnitude are simply unsustainable.”

In September, conservative media entrepreneur Michelle Malkin, founder of HotAir.com and Twitchy, reported Anthem Blue Cross canceled her family plan.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield sent a letter telling customers that plans which don’t meet Obamacare’s requirements will be discontinued in 2014.

The Washington Post reported that the Fairfax County Water Authority in Northern Virginia expects to drop employee coverage because of Obamacare.

The Post cited a letter by Burton Jay Rubin, chairman of the authority’s government relations committee, declaring that if the “Cadillac Tax” is enacted in 2018 as planned – a 40 percent excise tax on insurers – the authority will likely drop insurance coverage for its nearly 400 employees.”

“[I]t is irrefutable that the ACA is fatally flawed,” wrote Rubin. “If it is intended to make health care coverage available to those who do not have it, it does so only by jeopardizing the coverage earned by those who have it.”

Rubin said that by 2018 the Fairfax County Water Authority expects to pay $13,450 to cover individual employees and $33,300 per employee family for coverage.

It only makes sense, he concludes, to pay the fine rather than pay for health insurance.

“[I]f we provide our workforce with no health care coverage, we merely pay the government $2,000 for each employee,” he wrote.

In a wrap-up, the Daily Caller found 10 states, including New Jersey, in which Obamacare will wipe out health plans.

In Missouri, patients of the state’s largest hospital system will not be covered by the largest insurer on Obamacare exchanges, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield.

In Connecticut, Aetna won’t offer insurance on the Obamacare exchange in the state in which it was founded in 1850. The company explained that “modification to the rates filed by Aetna will not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans and meet the service expectations of our customers.”

In Maryland, 13,000 individuals covered by Aetna and Coventry Health Care won’t be allowed to keep their insurance plans if they want Obamacare subsidies on the exchanges.

In South Carolina, the state’s second largest insurer, Medical Mutual of Ohio, decided to leave the state, dropping 28,000 people.

In New York, Aetna pulled out of the state’s exchange in late August to keep its plans “financially viable.”

In Iowa, the largest insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which sells 86 percent of the state’s individual health insurance plans, won’t offer plans on the Obamacare exchange.

In Wisconsin, two of the three largest insurers in the state won’t offer plans on the exchange.

In Georgia, just five insurers are participating in Georgia’s Obamacare exchange.

Marketwatch reported in August that UPS has joined a growing list of companies kicking spouses off health insurance.

UPS said some15,000 UPS spouses who can obtain health coverage through their own jobs will be dropped from the plan.

Walgreens, the nation’s biggest drug store chain, has dropped 160,000 workers.

The company said it will move its workers into a private health insurance exchange to buy company-subsidized coverage.

It followed similar action this year by Sears and the Orlando-based Darden Restaurants.

Darden Restaurants, the the Orlando Sentinel reported, said about 1,000 employees nationwide who were eligible for its traditional health plan won’t qualify because they did not work an average of 30 hours weekly over the past year.

Darden, which owns chains such as Olive Garden and Red Lobster, employs more than 200,000 people.

The Orlando paper noted that starting in 2015, Obamacare will require large companies to offer insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours a week.

Darden will no longer offer part-timers limited-benefit insurance because Obamacare forbids it, the paper said.

Bloomberg reported America’s biggest employers, from GE to IBM, are increasingly moving retirees to insurance exchanges where they select their own health plans.

Time Warner also has said it would move retired workers to a privately run exchange

Health-policy expert Bob Laszewski has concluded that about 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare.

Laszewski explained that about 19 million Americans are in the individual health insurance market.

“Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85 percent of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal,” he said.

The 16 million, he said, will receive letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll to avoid a break in coverage .

“Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases, he said.

Blue Cross in New Jersey, alone, is dropping more than 800,000 customers due to Obamacare.

In a letter earlier this month to customers who purchase insurance on the individual and small-employer markets, the insurance giant explained that their health-insurance plan would no longer exist next year because it does not cover all the essential benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.

The Daily Caller reported 1.1 million Aetna customers are at risk in New Jersey, where the leading insurer also won’t be a part of the state’s new Obamacare exchange.

As WND reported, some insurers are canceling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare forbids insurers from rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher prices.

In Florida, Kaiser Health Network reported, Blue Cross is terminating 300,000 polices.

Half a million Californians with catastrophic plans are losing their insurance plans because they don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles reported Oct. 10.

Those who try to sign up for new ones, KNBC said, are learning the cost may be significantly higher.

Actor Paul Divito asked in KNBC’s report: “Affordable for whom? It’s basically squeezing us right out of the middle class.”

Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, estimates that “a half million people who are currently insured might be paying more premiums or higher premiums next year because the policies that they have today, those lower-cost, high-deductible skinny benefit policies are not going to be allowed next year on the marketplace.”

Blue Cross dropped Medicare D , the prescription drug plan, for some 13,000 senior citizens in Louisiana, according to the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.

Blue Cross announced in a letter that prescription drug coverage will end Dec. 31, and seniors enrolled in the plans will have to find new Medicare part D coverage.

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield in New York state announced its Medicaid and Family Health Plus programs will be dropped, affecting 13,000 in certain counties, reported WHAM-TV in Rochester, N.Y.

“The health plan is incurring losses approaching $100 million on these products in 2013 and we expect that amount to increase in 2014,” the company said in a statement.

“Losses of this magnitude are simply unsustainable.”

In September, conservative media entrepreneur Michelle Malkin, founder of HotAir.com and Twitchy, reported Anthem Blue Cross canceled her family plan.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield sent a letter telling customers that plans which don’t meet Obamacare’s requirements will be discontinued in 2014.

The Washington Post reported that the Fairfax County Water Authority in Northern Virginia expects to drop employee coverage because of Obamacare.

The Post cited a letter by Burton Jay Rubin, chairman of the authority’s government relations committee, declaring that if the “Cadillac Tax” is enacted in 2018 as planned – a 40 percent excise tax on insurers – the authority will likely drop insurance coverage for its nearly 400 employees.”

“[I]t is irrefutable that the ACA is fatally flawed,” wrote Rubin. “If it is intended to make health care coverage available to those who do not have it, it does so only by jeopardizing the coverage earned by those who have it.”

Rubin said that by 2018 the Fairfax County Water Authority expects to pay $13,450 to cover individual employees and $33,300 per employee family for coverage.

It only makes sense, he concludes, to pay the fine rather than pay for health insurance.

“[I]f we provide our workforce with no health care coverage, we merely pay the government $2,000 for each employee,” he wrote.

In a wrap-up, the Daily Caller found 10 states, including New Jersey, in which Obamacare will wipe out health plans.

In Missouri, patients of the state’s largest hospital system will not be covered by the largest insurer on Obamacare exchanges, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield.

In Connecticut, Aetna won’t offer insurance on the Obamacare exchange in the state in which it was founded in 1850. The company explained that “modification to the rates filed by Aetna will not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans and meet the service expectations of our customers.”

In Maryland, 13,000 individuals covered by Aetna and Coventry Health Care won’t be allowed to keep their insurance plans if they want Obamacare subsidies on the exchanges.

In South Carolina, the state’s second largest insurer, Medical Mutual of Ohio, decided to leave the state, dropping 28,000 people.

In New York, Aetna pulled out of the state’s exchange in late August to keep its plans “financially viable.”

In Iowa, the largest insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which sells 86 percent of the state’s individual health insurance plans, won’t offer plans on the Obamacare exchange.

In Wisconsin, two of the three largest insurers in the state won’t offer plans on the exchange.

In Georgia, just five insurers are participating in Georgia’s Obamacare exchange.

Marketwatch reported in August that UPS has joined a growing list of companies kicking spouses off health insurance.

UPS said some15,000 UPS spouses who can obtain health coverage through their own jobs will be dropped from the plan.

Walgreens, the nation’s biggest drug store chain, has dropped 160,000 workers.

The company said it will move its workers into a private health insurance exchange to buy company-subsidized coverage.

It followed similar action this year by Sears and the Orlando-based Darden Restaurants.

Darden Restaurants, the the Orlando Sentinel reported, said about 1,000 employees nationwide who were eligible for its traditional health plan won’t qualify because they did not work an average of 30 hours weekly over the past year.

Darden, which owns chains such as Olive Garden and Red Lobster, employs more than 200,000 people.

The Orlando paper noted that starting in 2015, Obamacare will require large companies to offer insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours a week.

Darden will no longer offer part-timers limited-benefit insurance because Obamacare forbids it, the paper said.

Bloomberg reported America’s biggest employers, from GE to IBM, are increasingly moving retirees to insurance exchanges where they select their own health plans.

Time Warner also has said it would move retired workers to a privately run exchange
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/obamacare-wipes-out-more-than-1-million-plans/#KseUz1tidkzyvteL.99

Your Life Depends on Literally Taking Your Money Out of the Bank

Dave Hodges

The Common Sense Show

 

Your life depends on whether you begin to take your assets out the bank and begin to purchase life sustaining supplies.You need to start this process, today, in accordance with the principles I laid out in a previous article.

The Death of the American Economy

There was an obscure story which ran two years ago which is receiving scant attention and yet, it is the banking story of the decade. It is the number one banking story in human history. It is the story which will destroy America’s banking accounts. It is the story that spells the beginning of the end of America’s financial empire. This is the end of the America’s financial empire and NOBODY is talking about it. What is that story? First, the prerequisite background.

Our Crushing Debt

Nearly every publication estimates the derivatives debt to be in the range of one quadrillion dollars to $1.5 quadrillion dollars. Conservative estimates tell us that this derivatives debt, that has been assumed by the governments of the world, is at least 16 times the entire value of the assets of Planet Earth. This generation cannot pay off this debt. Your children, grandchildren and even great-great-great-great-great grandchildren cannot pay off this debt. If the status quo were to remain in place this debt could not be paid off in the 25th century, the 30th century, nor the 50th century. My estimates place the interest on the debt to exceed the entire value of the world’s assets and the interest is increasing far faster than the governments of the world can service the debt. Who is the debt owed to? It is owed to the first movers, the owners of the central banking system. If you want an identifiable target, let’s call the debt owners of the planet the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) along with their henchmen at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and their minions at the United Nations. The BIS is collapsing its own banking empire in order to usher in a New World Order which will be discussed later in the article.

The world’s economy has been dealt a fatal blow from which it cannot recover. No amount of budget, belt tightening will ever change this fact. We could literally be taxed at a 100% rate and the derivatives debt and the interest on this debt will continue to increase faster than the nations can pay the debt down.

Bank of America Case In Point

In an obscure, but well reported 2011 event, Bank of America announced it was shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment-banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC. This was announced as a news blurb in the main stream media and was prominently reported in the Daily Bail.

This was the single biggest financial event in the history of America. It was bigger than the 1929 stock market crash and it was bigger than the beginning of the bail outs in 2008, but it did not received the banner headlines that it should have received. What does this mean? It means that the Bank of America’s European derivatives are now going to be “insured” by U.S. taxpayers and its two most important financial institutions, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. What is even more distressing is that the Bank of America did not even seek or receive regulatory approval for this action. This action was simply acted upon on behalf of frightened counterparties. Under the Federal Bankruptcy Act of 2005, the counterparties derivatives debt receive “super priority” when it comes to the disbursement of FDIC insurance payments to failed banks. Where do the rest of us stand in terms of reimbursement for a failed bank? We are in last place. In short, when your bank fails, your money is gone.

Just how serious is the derivatives debt for the Bank of America? The Daily Bail reported that this was a “direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input . . . “  The estimated total of derivatives debt tied around the neck of Bank of America is a little under 80 trillion dollars and is growing exponentially because of the interest payments. And yet, there is another shocker, JP Morgan Chase is receiving the same undue government benefit with $79 trillion of its  national derivatives debt guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve. What this means for you and me is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in insurance derivatives contracts, labeled as credit default swaps (CDS) which were sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. This is when you will lose all control over your money and ultimately your life, if you are not prepared ahead of time.

As Plain As the Nose on Your Face

When the derivatives debt reaches the point where it causes our debt load to be so great that we cannot even service the interest, all financial institutions will fail. All governments will go into default.  If the Federal Reserve engages in “print money out of thin air policy” to cover the insurmountable debt, as they did with the bailouts in 2008, the resulting hyperinflation will make the German Weimar Republic seem like a prosperous economy. And do you think your money is safe because of the FDIC? Let me repeat, the FDIC, by law, must first pay the derivatives counterparties. Since the derivatives debt exceed the world’s total wealth by a fact of at least 16, do you now understand how and why you are not getting your money back when EVERY bank fails in the near future?  Just the debt insurance that Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase have obtained from the American people totals nearly 160 trillion dollars. Before you accuse me of being paranoid, first explain how that debt can be paid? IT cannot be paid back, ever!  However, the banksters are grasping for breath as they die on the vine. However, they will not go down without a fight. They are delaying the inevitable crash which will take them down with us. So, they are trying to keep their heads above water by stealing your bank accounts, your pensions and 401K’s. When your money is gone and your life is destroyed, the one solace we can take is that Wall Street will follow us right into the gates of hell as they will not survive either, and this is all by design. The purveyors of the central banking system are as evil as they come. They have set into motion the derivatives scheme so as to destroy all civilization so they can remake this planet in their own twisted image of their conceptualization of a Brave New World (order).

Out of Chaos Comes the New World Order

The Bank of International Settlement and its henchmen (i.e. World Bank, IMF) and the United Nations want to collapse the existing order on this planet. Their assault upon humanity has begun. They are beginning the demise with collapsing the world’s financial empire. When economies crumble, national governments will fail and then the people will soon come to understand the term, the New World Order. We are not talking about the creation of just an evil world government. We are talking about the creation of a planetary structure in which most will not survive (see the Georgia Guidestones) and those that do will live in a hellish and biologically transformed slave planet. Without going into great detail here, I would refer you back to the first 30 minutes of the movie, Man of Steel, where the ideals of Krypton will soon be visited upon the Earth in which the inhabitants of this planet will be bred for specific purposes. This new empire will be Satan’s empire and it will be based on their perverted notion of transhumanism.

Under the new transhumanism, you will be bred for servitude and your skill sets will be biologically programmed. In 1932, when Brave New World appeared, it was still science fiction. As my friends Patrick Wood and Barbara Peterson can attest to, that day is here. As I write these words we are entering into a Brave New World. This will be the topic of a future article.

In the meantime, get your money out of the bank while you will can and purchase essentials for your survival, and begin taking your money out today. Buy the essential supplies with your existing bank account. If you delay, your ability to feed, water and protect yourself and your family will disappear as the banksters make off with all of it.

You cannot stop what is coming, you can only prepare to try and survive for as long as you can.

UNIFIL Clarifies Its Willingness To Defend Lebanese Offshore Drilling and Exploration Operations

UNIFIL clarifies position on offshore gas exploration

UNIFIL Commander Maj. Gen. Paolo Serra speaks during an interview with The Daily Star at the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013. (The Daily Star/Mohammed Zaatari)

BEIRUT: The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon clarified Friday its position regarding its role in assisting the country’s offshore oil and gas exploration efforts following remarks attributed to UNIFIL commander Gen. Paolo Serra in the Al-Akhbar daily. “UNIFIL has nine vessels and will offer all the logistic capabilities to aid Lebanon in the drilling process,” the publication quoted Serra as saying. “But until now we did not receive an official request from the Lebanese government so everything remains pending until a political solution [among Lebanon’s rival groups is reached],” Serra’s comments continued. The commander is also said to have added that once the political solution is reached, UNIFIL would also use its nine naval units to help ensure the security of Lebanese waters. Speaking to The Daily Star Friday afternoon, UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti however explained that while the force has “every good intention to assist” Lebanon’s efforts its activities are strictly governed by its U.N. mandate. “We are obliged to operate within the scope of the 1701 mandate,” Tenenti said, adding that there is “no room for speculation in the mandate.” Resolution 1701 was signed in August 2006 following the July war with Israel. Under the mandate, the Lebanese Navy requested UNIFIL’s assistance at sea in preventing the unauthorized entry of arms into Lebanon, the spokesperson said. He also pointed out that the mandate allows UNIFIL to assist the Lebanese Navy with training and capacity building. Beyond this there is no scope for UNIFIL involvement in offshore exploration. In south Lebanon, UNIFIL is mandated to patrol the land border between Lebanon and Israel, but Tenenti pointed out that there is no “agreed maritime border” between the two states. But Tenenti went on to point out that if a “maritime security line” was agreed between Lebanon and Israel, then if requested to do so the force could work to prevent violations of that line. No such security line exists at present, and while Tenenti says UNIFIL has raised the matter with both sides and at tripartite meetings of Lebanon, Israel and the peacekeeping force no decision has been reached. Tenenti did however point out that maritime border discussions do “indirectly relate” to offshore gas exploration. Earlier this year, Lebanon officially launched its first oil and gas licensing round with 46 international energy companies prequalifying to bid for offshore exploration contracts, but progress on awarding the contracts has stalled. Decrees demarcating 10 maritime oil exploration blocks and establishing a revenue-sharing model require Cabinet approval before oil and gas contracts can be awarded. Caretaker Energy Minister Gebran Bassil has called on the caretaker Cabinet and Parliament to hold extraordinary sessions to approve the oil sector decrees, but caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Future Movement argue that only a new Cabinet is entitled to address the oil issue. Meanwhile, Bassil said earlier this year that Lebanon’s ongoing dispute with Israel over its maritime borders won’t affect the exploration progress as “Israel is drilling in a location far from the Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone, and their operations don’t affect us.” (The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

Bandar Bush’s mad, mad world

All signs are showing that the otherwise secretive Saudi regime is angry. Very, very angry. Not only did the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia refuse to take a seat at the UN Security Council, [1] but now the Saudi spy chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, appears to be threatening a “major shift” in “relations with the United States at its perceived inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran”.

The Wall Street Journal provides further details:

In the run-up to expected US strikes, Saudi leaders asked for detailed U.S. plans for posting Navy ships to guard the Saudi oil center, the Eastern Province, during any strike on Syria, an official familiar with that discussion said. The Saudis were surprised when the Americans told them U.S. ships wouldn’t be able to fully protect the oil region, the official said.

Disappointed, the Saudis told the U.S. that they were open to alternatives to their long-standing defense partnership, emphasizing that they would look for good weapons at good prices, whatever the source, the official said.

In the second episode, one Western diplomat described Saudi Arabia as eager to be a military partner in what was to have been the U.S.-led military strikes on Syria. As part of that, the Saudis asked to be given the list of military targets for the proposed strikes. The Saudis indicated they never got the information, the diplomat said.

Bandar (aka Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, aka Bandar Bush) spent most of his career in Washington DC, where he was the Saudi ambassador from 1983 to 2005 and was considered exceptionally close to the Bush family. Not only that, he could observe, as no one else could, how the US went to war against Iraq not once, but twice, in 1991-1992 and, again, in 2003-2005.

So he, of all people, should now that:

• the US does not have the physical capability to “fully protect” the entire oil region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia;
• the US would only share a critical proposed strike list with close Anglo allies (the UK and, maybe, some other Anglo country). Not even the Israelis or the French would be given that kind of access.

So what in the world is Bandar upset about?

Sure, there are other good reasons for him to be angry: the entire Saudi strategic plan to defeat the Shi’ite in the Middle East has fallen apart. The Saudis wanted to trigger an insurrection in Syria, then execute a “false flag” chemical attack, then have the US take out the Syrian regime and replace it with a Saudi puppet regime of Wahabi liver-eaters. That would isolate both Hezbollah and Iran. The Saudis would let the Israelis deal with Hezbollah while they would then push the US into a confrontation with Iran.

As strategic plans go, this was a pretty good one too, but it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding the of Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah determination to defeat it.

We know that Russia sent a very powerful naval task force to the Syrian coast, we have pretty good information showing that Iran covertly sent both equipment and combatants to Syria and Hezbollah publicly admitted that it sent several thousands of its combatants into Syria. These combatants are really those who turned the tide of the war on the ground (especially around al-Qusayr).

What we don’t know (but what must have happened for sure) is what Russia, Iran and Hezbollah told the US through their back-channel communications. I personally have a very strong feeling that some very serious threats were made by one or several of these parties and that these threats were taken very seriously by the White House. Yes, of course, we then had US Secretary of State John Kerry’s “rhetorical point” about Syria giving up chemical weapons, but there are plenty of indicators that the US had already decided to “fold” two or three days before this actually occurred.

Whatever may be the case, it is clear that the US took the only possible sane decision and decided that it did not want to start a major war in the Middle East.

Did the Saudis really think that the US would take on Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia on their behalf?

Now let’s look at the Saudi reaction. First, they refused to take their seat at the Security Council. So what? With the predictable exception of Kuwait and Bahrain, who is going to be heartbroken at not having the Saudis sit at the horseshoe table? Kosovo?

And now comes this threat of a “major shift” in the US-Saudi alliance.

What in the world is Bandar talking about again?

First, does Bandar really believe that the US vitally needs the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Does he not realize that the US will be self-sufficient in energy pretty soon? Or does he not realize that the days when ARAMCO was the key to the strength of the dollar are long gone and that now the strength of the dollar depends mostly on US military and financial power? And even if Saudi Arabia was vital to the strength of the dollar, does Bandar really think that he can threaten US vital strategic interests with impunity?

Second, if Bandar wants to shift away from the alliance with the US, where does he think he could shift to? Most definitely not China, which has a very serious “Islamic problem” on its hands in its western provinces; not the EU, which is faithfully committed to its colonial status in the US empire, and nobody in Africa – even less so after the recent carnage in Kenya. Nobody in Latin America for sure, if only because of its long history of anti-US struggle and its large Arab population which know what kind of sick ideology Wahabism is.

In Asia, maybe the desperate rulers of North Korea or Myanmar would want to explore options, but that’s about it.

So unless Bandar thinks he can punish the US by shifting its alliance to some “heavyweights” like Kuwait or Bahrain, one can only be left wondering of what Bandar has in mind.

Think about it: first he threatens Putin with terror attacks during the Sochi Olympics [3] and now he threatens to “dump” the US. This would be comical if the House of Saud was not sitting on a huge amount of money which they have – and will – use to spread terror and Wahabi extremism all over the planet.

Which brings me to my last questions: does Bandar really not understand how fragile his regime is? Does he seriously believe that he can threaten both the US and Russia and get away with it?

Maybe the poor man believes that the Bush clan will do something about it, but if so, then that hope misplaced. Sure, the Bush family and the House of Saud are old accomplices in all sorts of ugly deals, but not only are the Bush people currently not in power, they will always love their money more than they will love their friends. And the truth is, neither the Bush family nor even the US need the Saudis all that much.

The reverse, however, is not true. The Wahabi house of Saudi is sitting on top of a treasure trove of Shi’ite oil (the oil rich regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are also the ones where a repressed Shi’ite minority lives). Both Bahraini and the Saudi regimes have held on to power only thanks to a ruthless and systematic repression against its population, especially Shi’ites. For the Wahabis, to stay in power means killing Shi’ites, lots of them. And to do that, one needs a “protector” at the Security Council. In the case of Saudi Arabia, this protector has always been the US. But just imagine what could happen if the US withdrew its protection of the kingdom at the Security Council. Imagine what kind of signal that would send to the repressed Shi’ites in these two countries?

Without even going into an R2P (responsibility to protect) situation, it is pretty obvious that the Saudi regime only serves “at the pleasure of the US President” and that it could be summarily dismissed.

But Bandar seems to be completely oblivious to that.

Bandar must have gone clinically insane. Either that or it is the entire House of Saud has gone mad, maybe as a consequence of its degenerate lifestyle. Who knows?

If Bandar is “retired” – administratively or physically – sooner rather than later, then its option one. If not, then its option two. But either way, the writing is on the wall for the House of Saud.

Notes:
1. Saudis Lash out at UN Council After Rejecting Seat, Associated Press, October 23, 2013.
2. Spy Chief Distances Saudis From U.S., Wall Street Journal.
3. Bandar Bush threatens President Putin with Sochi terrorist attack, Voice of Russia, August 29, 2013.

The Saker is an anonymous blogger and occassional contributor to Asia Times Online who writes at The Vineyard of the Saker.

(Copyright 2013 The Saker)

What would be the tripwire resulting in open American rebellion?—(reposted from Oct 6, 2008)

The Tripwire

by
D. van Oort & J.F.A. Davidson
From The Resister

“How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?”— Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago

What would be the tripwire resulting in open rebellion? Examining the Bill of Rights, and considering EXISTING laws only, and not failed attempts, you will find that every clause has been violated to one degree or another.

Documenting those violations would fill volumes, and it is important to remember that only government can violate the exercise of unalienable individual rights and claim immunity from retribution. We omit martial law or public suspension of the Constitution as a tripwire. The overnight installation of dictatorship obviously would qualify as “the tripwire,” but is not likely to occur. What has occurred, what is occurring, is the implementation of every aspect of such dictatorship without an overt declaration. The Constitution is being killed by attrition. The Communist Manifesto is being installed by accretion. Any suggestion that martial law is the tripwire leads us to the question: what aspect of martial law justifies the first shot?

For much the same reason, we will leave out mass executions of the Waco variety. For one thing, they are composite abuses of numerous individual rights. Yet, among those abuses, the real tripwire may exist. For another, those events are shrouded in a fog of obfuscation and outright lies. Any rebellion must be based on extremely hard and known facts. Similarly, no rebellion will succeed if its fundamental reasons for occurring are not explicitly identified. Those reasons cannot be explicitly identified if, in place of their identification, we simply point to a composite such as Waco and say, “See, that’s why; figure it out.” Any suggestion that more Wacos, in and of themselves, would be the tripwire, simply leads us back again to the question: what aspect of them justifies rebellion?

For the same reasons, we leave out a detailed account of Ayn Rand’s identification of the four essential characteristics of tyranny. She identified them quite correctly, but together they are just another composite from which we must choose precipitating causes. These characteristics are: one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalisation of private property, and “above all,” censorship.

With regard to the first characteristic of tyranny, what is the real difference between the Fabian socialist Republican Party and the overtly [Bolshevik] socialist Democratic Party? Nothing but time. Regarding the second we have the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and the ATF’s enforcement branch. In action they simply avoid the embarrassment of a trial. Regarding the third, we have asset forfeiture “laws,” the IRS, the EPA, the FCC, the FDA, the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, and a myriad of other executive branch agencies, departments, and commissions whose sole function is to regulate business and the economy. Regulating business for the common good (fascism) is no different in principle than outright nationalisation (communism).

However, the fourth characteristic of tyranny, censorship, is the obvious primary tripwire. When ideology and the reporting of facts and how-to instructions are forbidden, there is nothing remaining but to fight. Freedom of speech and persuasion — the freedom to attempt to rationally convince willing listeners — is so fundamental an individual right that without it no other rights, not even the existence of rights, can be enforced, claimed, debated, or even queried.

Does this censorship include the regulation of the “public” airwaves by the FCC, as in the censorship which prohibits tobacco companies from advertising — in their own defense — on the same medium which is commanded by government decree to carry “public service” propaganda against them? Does it include federal compulsion of broadcasters to air politically-correct twaddle for “The Children”? Does it include the Orwellian “Communications Decency Act”? Does it include any irrationalist “sexual harassment” or tribalist “hate speech” laws which prohibit certain spoken words among co-workers? The answer: unequivocally yes.

Although the above do not pertain to ideological or political speech, yet they are censorship and are designed to intimidate people into the acceptance of de facto censorship. We say that any abrogation of free speech, and any form of censorship, which cannot be rectified by the soap box, the ballot box, or the jury box, must be rectified by the cartridge box — or lost forever.

Americans have been stumbling over tripwires justifying overt resistance for well over 130 years. On one hand, we submit that gun confiscation is a secondary tripwire only. It is second to censorship because if speech is illegal we cannot even discuss the repeal of gun control, or any other population controls. If only guns are illegal, we may still convince people to repeal those laws. On the other hand, gun confiscation may be a sufficient tripwire because the primary one, censorship, can be fully implemented only after the citizenry has been disarmed.

Resistance, in the context of this article, means those legitimate acts by individuals which compel government to restrict its activities and authority to those powers delegated to the Congress by the people in the Constitution.

The distinction to be drawn here is that the objective of patriotic resistance is to restore original Constitutional government, not change the form of government. To this end we believe:

The enforcement of any laws — local, state, or federal — that through the action or inaction of the courts makes nugatory the individual means of resisting tyranny, justifies resistance.

The operative terms of the above statement are the parameters that must be defined and understood if resistance to tyranny and despotism is to be honourable, and for the cause of individual liberty, rather than anarchy resulting from a new gang of tyrants. Rebellion can never be justified so long as objective means of redress are available, which are themselves not subverted or rendered impotent by further or parallel subjective legislation.

The goal of patriots throughout the country must be the restoration of objective constitutional law and order. The failure to enforce a subjective law (i.e. the Communications Decency Act) does not justify that law existing, but it also does not justify resistance. This is because non-enforcement leaves avenues of redress, including the forbidden activity itself, still available. Should a lower court uphold or ignore a case that challenges subjective law, peaceable means of redress are still open by higher or lateral courts in another jurisdiction.

However, should the U.S. Supreme Court uphold subjective laws, or refuse to hear the cases challenging them, then the legislative, executive, and judicial branches have all failed to guarantee individual liberty, from the widest principles to the smallest details. A single refusal by the highest court in the land to overturn a whim-based subjective law, or to refuse to hear the case, is sufficient to justify resistance to that law because there is simply nowhere left to turn for further attempts at redress. At such time nobody is morally bound by that law. Tyranny gets one chance per branch.

America is either a constitutional republic or it is not. If we can restore our republic it will ultimately occur through reason, and reason will then lead our representatives to make unconstitutional those laws which, by any objective standard of justice, should have never been considered in the first place. However, we cannot assert our claim to restore our liberty if we but accede to a single socialist construct. Freedom and serfdom cannot coexist. We cannot have it both ways.

Life, and the means to preserve it, cannot coexist with disarmament. Liberty, and its rational exercise, cannot coexist with subjective constraints. Property, and its acquisition, use, and disposal cannot coexist with expropriation. The federal government’s first task is to obey the Constitution. It has refused. Our first task as free men is to force the government to obey it again. The Constitution of the United States of America is a constraint on the federal government, not on the individual.

Likewise, the constitutions of the various states are constraints on the state governments, not on the individual. The Constitution contains many provisions allowing the violation of our natural rights as free men by immoral and unethical men in government. The true heroes of the ratification debates were the Anti-federalists, who secured Federalist guarantees that the Bill of Rights would amend the Constitution.

To their undying credit, the Federalists lived up to their promise. Nevertheless, only after constitutional limitations on government have been restored in their original form can we consider amending the Constitution to redress its very few remaining defects (for example, the absence of a separation of state and the economy clause).

Laws that make nugatory the means of resisting tyranny and despotism determine the tripwire. The creeping legislative erosion of the 2nd Amendment is not the only tripwire that justifies resistance. We submit that any gun control is a secondary tripwire. Not only because it can be effortlessly evaded, but also because it strengthens our cause. It is second only to censorship. If speech is illegal we can discuss neither repeal of gun control, or the repeal of any other unconstitutional “law.” Censorship is not a tripwire, it is THE tripwire. Thus, by default, censorship morally justifies rebellion.

Under censorship, no other rights, including the right to be free from censorship, can be advocated, discussed, or queried. It is incorrect to say that after censorship comes utter subjugation. Censorship is utter subjugation. There is no greater usurpation of liberty while remaining alive. After censorship come the death camps, and they are not a prerequisite of censorship, they are merely a symptom of it. Censorship qua censorship is sufficient in itself to justify open rebellion against any government that legislates, enforces, or upholds it.

However, that is not the half of it. Censorship is alone in being the only violation of individual rights that does not require actual enforcement or challenges in court, before rebellion is justified. When the government forbids you to speak or write, or use your own or a supporter’s property to address willing listeners or readers, that government has openly and forcibly declared that the art of peaceful persuasion is dead and will not be tolerated. Upon that very instant, all peaceful avenues of redress have been closed and the only possible method of regaining that liberty is force. Whenever we give up that force, we are not only ruined, we deserve to be ruined.

Censorship is already being “legally” imposed through accretion by compromisers, appeasers, and pragmatists within government at all levels. Note the demands by “progressive” organisations and self-appointed “civil rights” groups to ban so-called “hate” speech (they mean thought and debate), or “extreme” language (they mean principled dissent), or “paramilitary” books (they mean the knowledge of how to resist). When our government imposes censorship, it will be because our ability to use force to resist censorship no longer exists. Buying copies of The Resister is not yet prohibited; buying machine guns already is. Unwarranted search for unlicensed books has not yet occurred; unwarranted search for unlicensed weapons has already begun. As your unalienable right of peaceable discussion and dissent is being daily abridged, your right to peaceably assemble and associate in advocacy of your own self-defence, according to your own free will, has already been outlawed (courtesy of ADL’s “model” anti-militia legislation).

Unconstitutional federal agencies now arm themselves with weapons that you may not own, and train in tactics that you are prohibited from mastering. Before a government is sure you won’t resist, it will make sure you can’t resist.

The most irrational, contradictory, short-range, whimsical notion possible to men who claim the unalienable right to resist tyrannical government is the notion that they must first let their ability to resist be stripped from them before they have the right to use it. This is the argument of so-called conservatives who pish-tosh the notion of legislative “slippery-slopes,” and sycophantic adherents of a supreme Court that has no constitutionally delegated authority to interpret the Constitution in the first place. We reject the notion of mindless compliance with subjective “laws.” Subjective laws must be resisted on metaphysical and epistemological principles, moral and ethical grounds, and on constitutional and historical precedence.

No rational man desires ends without means. No rational man can be faced with his own imminent subjugation and truly believe that, once things are as bad as they can get, “sometime” “someone” will do “something” “somehow” to counteract that trend. Any man who counsels another to appeal to those mystical equivalents of “divine intervention” for “deliverance” from tyranny is our enemy by all principles conceivable within the scope of rational human intelligence.

The time to organise resistance is not after censorship, but before it. The time to prepare resistance is when our ability to resist is being threatened. The time to begin resistance is when that threat has been upheld or ignored by the courts. The unalienable rights that safeguard our ability to resist are limited to those which, if not violated, allow us to plan and use all materials necessary for resistance. We submit that only the following meet that criteria:

• freedom of speech and of the press, and the right to peaceably assemble–so that we may advocate ideas, report and discuss news, and instruct others how to carry out resistance activities (1st Amendment);
• the right to keep and bear arms — so that we may have appropriate force in our hands should we need it, and be trained to use such force as necessary (2nd Amendment);
• the right to be let alone — so that we may be free of government intrusion in our lives, liberty, and property (3rd Amendment));
• the right to be secure in our persons, dwellings, papers, and property from unwarranted, unaffirmed searches and seizures — so that our records, ideological materials, and weapons will remain in our hands (4th Amendment).

For the purpose of this discussion, we believe that no other rights are relevant because if every individual right other than those four were violated — although it would be an unspeakably evil act on the part of the government, justifying immediate and unforgiving resistance — their abridgement would not effect our ability to resist. If any of the first four amendments are infringed by legislation, enforced by executive power, and their abrogation is upheld or ignored by the courts, unremitting, forcible resistance, and aid and comfort to its citizen-soldiers, is a moral imperative for every single person who believes that life, liberty, and property are unalienable and self-existing, and not grants of government privilege.

“The United States should get rid of its militias.” — Josef Stalin, 1933

“The foundation of a free government begins to be undermined when freedom of speech on political subjects is restrained; it is destroyed when freedom of speech is wholly denied.” — William Rawle, LL.D. Philadelphia, 1825

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” — Thomas Jefferson (1764) — Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment

Spying eclipses migrant deaths at EU summit

[Here is a clear case where the NSA revelations on American spying have even gotten in the way of the Imperial agenda…putting some teeth into the “R2P” “Humanitarian warfare” plans of the Evil Empire (SEE:  The Obscenity of Humanitarian Warfare).  “Boat People” were supposed to be the “keys to the kingdom” in American plans to overcome the world with its strategy of “soft dictatorship,” a.k.a., “the New World Order.”  The horrendous image of dozens of women and children, the sick and the elderly, crammed into life rafts and tiny boats, bobbing about on the choppy Mediterranean Sea, was intended to produce a sufficient level of misplaced guilt upon Western audiences to move them into acceptance of American war plans for the region.  Merkel has spoiled the moment.

What has been missed, or overlooked by the global press, however, was the US/EU elitist attempt to open the floodgates of dark humanity into the spoiled, white, soft European underbelly.  Just like the unintended consequences of American inability to do whatever the Emperors want to solve the Syrian military situation to everybody’s liking, this particular tentacle of the American “Octopus” will not be able to wrap around the issue of Boat People and weaponize it into another weapon of “soft” war, at least not at this time.  This means that it will now take just a little bit longer to ignite the desired race war in Europe (SEE: THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS). 

That is the reallly tragic part in all of this, that there really are a handful of powerful individuals in the United States and in Europe who are doing everything in their considerable, pooled power, to turn whites against blacks, and vice versa, as a path to ultimate power.  Every individual with a conscience or a soul has a moral duty to do everything within their own power realm to oppose these evil men whose intent is covering the world with their evil seed.

END THE IMPERIAL WARS NOW!  Nothing else will solve either the problem of the Boat People, or put an end to the American invasion of everyone’s God-given right to privacy.]

 

“Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national.”

EU leaders have resumed a Brussels summit with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and banking union on their agenda. Overshadowing the summit are claims of US spying on the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

VIDEO | Journal 01:52

White House remains evasive

Leaders of the 28-member European Union were due to debate the issue of migration on Friday, facing demands to deliver reform to end boat refugee deaths.

But allegations that the US had tapped Chancellor Merkel’s mobile phone looked set to dominate day two of the summit.

Italy and Malta, which have been confronted with a number of recent boat refugee incidents along Europe’s outer border pressed for a coordinated response from all EU nations.

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said the capsize deaths of 366 people off Italy’s island of Lampedusa on October 3 “cannot repeat itself.”

European Parliament President Martin Schulz told leaders on the summit’s first day on Thursday that Lampedusa had become a “symbol of a European migration policy which has turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard.”

DW.DE

US eavesdropping: What’s all the noise about?

The German government is boiling. But on the other side of the Atlantic, allegations that the NSA eavesdropped on the German chancellor’s mobile phone hardly caused a ripple. Some even say Germany should stop sulking. (25.10.2013)

Some politicians want the EU to change is so-called Dublin rules, which force asylum-seekers to first enter the bloc’s territory before being able to submit an application.

Reform ideas include the setting up of legal EU migration corridors that would put people traffickers out of business.

Foot-dragging on banking union

An ambitious timetable for banking union within the eurozone was also on the summit agenda, amid signs of integration fatigue.

A summit policymaker quoted anonymously by the Reuters njews agency said doubts were emerging over more transfers of power from the national to pan-European level after five eurozone bailouts over the past three years to member states including Greece and Cyprus.

This reluctance was compounded by fears that anti-European parties could gain ground in next year’s European Parliament election.

Anger over spying claims

EU leaders entered talks Friday still united in anger after reports during their first summit day on Thursday of widespread US spying on its allies’ communications by its National Security Agency (NSA).

In the early hours of Friday, European Council President Hermann Van Rompuy invited other EU members to join Germany and France in seeking “before the end of the year” a trust-based “understanding” with the US on intelligence gathering.

Asked about Britain’s deep intelligence ties with the US, Rompuy said all 28 EU member nations were “on board with this text.”

Earlier, Merkel had said “trust between partners” needed to be “re-established.”

French President Francois Hollande said a special EU team appointed to review leaks by the fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden needed to “accelerate their work with our American allies.”

More tensions seemed imminent with a fresh slew of damaging claims by Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the US had listened in on the conversations of 35 world leaders.

Costa Rican Press Claims 24 Tons Cocaine Transported By USAF for DEA Incineration In Miami…NOW MISSING

Costa Rica Will Stop Sending Cocaine to Miami

Posted by Jaime Lopez on August 5, 2013 in Costa Rica, Politics News

Source: Flickr

According to an official press release from the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish), Costa Rica will no longer send cocaine or other controlled substances to the United States, at least for the time being. The announcement comes in the wake of news reports about nearly 24 tons of cocaine transported by the U.S. Air Force to Miami on Saturday, July 27^th 2013.

The OIJ further explained that officials in Costa Rica had spoken to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) about the temporary lack of an incinerator to destroy seized powder cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs. Prior to the massive airlift of cocaine to Miami in late July, the OIJ had managed to destroy almost 23 tons of drugs over the years at a cement factory in Cartago, but a couple of unfortunate incidents resulted in the stockpiling of confiscated drugs, and the OIJ ended up with too much coke.

A Warehouse Full of Yeyo

Before a Boeing C-17 Globemaster from the U.S. Air Force landed at the Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport (LIR) in late July to transport pallets upon pallets of cocaine to Miami, the OIJ evidence warehouse in San Joaquin de Flores, province of Heredia, was ready to burst from all the drugs contained therein -particularly cocaine hydrochloride in powder form. The only incinerator in Costa Rica to handle the destruction of tons of drugs, routinely seized by the OIJ, Fuerza Publica (the national police force), the Border Police, and the National Coast Guard Service is currently out of commission.

At one time, the OIJ entrusted a cement and concrete factory in Cartago to handle the destruction of seized drugs in its massive incinerators. In 2009, however, a bag holding 20 kilograms of flake was stolen by employees of the cement factory during the destruction of 4,300 kilos. The individuals responsible for the theft were caught, tried and given prison sentences between 6 and 7 years, and the OIJ stopped using that factory altogether.

By 2011, OIJ employees complained that they could not even walk around the warehouse because of all the cocaine stuffed inside. The cement factory agreed to donate an incinerator the size of a jacuzzi to the OIJ, and agents got busy destroying up to 300 kilograms per hour. By February of 2012, however, agents had burned so much coke that the incinerator began to malfunction. Fumes were escaping the incinerator’s chambers and those involved in the destruction -who included judges in charge of supervision- were basically getting high, and thus the OIJ went back to stockpiling seized drugs.

The U.S. Air Force to the Rescue

The OIJ has acknowledged that storing that much cocaine in Costa Rica is an inherent risk, and thus the DEA was called in to help. This is when things start to get a bit murky. Apparently the OIJ took the matter to the Judicial Branch and the Ministry of Public Safety (MSP in Spanish); but, according to online news daily CRHoy, which broke the story, at least two magistrates at the Judicial Branch were in the dark about the U.S. Air Force arriving in Costa Rica to pick up a massive amount of cocaine.

One of the magistrates who did not know about the operation, which was shrouded in secrecy until CRHoy’s Alvaro Sanchez investigated, is Carlos Chinchilla, President of the Criminal Affairs Committee of the Supreme Court in Costa Rica. Magistrate Chinchilla explained that the OIJ and DEA were supposed to file a request for a legislative permit that would grant permission for a foreign military aircraft to land in Costa Rica.

The OIJ assured CRHoy that the C-17 Globemaster was not armed and had legislative permission to enter Costa Rica’s airspace, land and fly away loaded with cocaine with Miami as its ultimate destination. The problem is that no legislator recalls seeing such request or permission come through the docket at the National Assembly. When questioned about the type of aircraft, the OIJ repeated that it was “from the U.S. Air Force with a legislative permit.” The Minister of Public Safety, Mario Zamora, said that he was thankful that the United States arrived to transport cocaine away from Costa Rica, but he was quick to mention that the OIJ was responsible for obtaining all permits.

Passing the Buck

Even the identification of the C-17 from the U.S. Air Force remained a mystery until recently. CRHoy obtained a series of documents related to the ongoing investigation, which apparently include a letter signed on July 10^th by a U.S. Coast Guard Commander named B.J. Ripkey requesting permission for a military aircraft from the U.S. to land in Costa Rica with 12 individuals aboard. According to that letter, the aircraft would not fly directly to Miami after takeoff: it would first stop in Nicaragua and later in Honduras while carrying all that cocaine.

The letter was addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MSP and the Director of Air Surveillance -a special police unit in Costa Rica that is known for their presence at our airports. According to a 2011 Coast Guard document, there is a Commander Bradley Ripkey assigned to DDE-COSTA RICA SEC ASST. Somehow his request ended up in the hands of Gerardo Masis Delgado, who is apparently in charge of Aeronautical Operations of Costa Rica’s Civil Aviation Directorate. Mr. Masis issued an interesting letter that authorizes:

“aircraft type C-17 with registration 00534, or alternatively 10186, 66165, 66167, 66168, 77169, 77170, 77173, 77174, 77175, 77176, or 7717”

to enter Costa Rica’s airspace and land between the 26^th and 28^th of July. Mr. Masis also ordered reminded that no airport costs should be assessed to any of the aircraft above. It is interesting to note that the number 77178 corresponds to the “Spirit of Delaware,” which is the C-17 Globemaster III out of Dover Air Force Base pictured in this article, and that number happens to have been underlined with an ink pen on the letter above.

What is also interesting about the above is that Civil Aviation has been admonished by the Constitutional Chamber Court (Sala Cuarta), the highest court in Costa Rica, of having illegally approved the arrival of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters prior to President Barack Obama’s historic visit to our country earlier this year. Civil Aviation seems to the the go-to guy, or maybe the fall guy, in these matters; but, many legislators in Costa Rica are not amused. The Constitution clearly requires legislative permission for foreign military forces to enter Costa Rica, and the U.S. has a history of being snubbed in this regard.

So What Happened to All That Cocaine?

The OIJ’s official press release assures that the controversial payload left Costa Rica on Saturday July 27^th, at 2:00 in the afternoon. The C-17 presumably stopped in Nicaragua and Honduras before landing in Miami, this is in accordance to the letter signed by USCG Commander B.J. Ripkey. A judge from Costa Rica supposedly flew with all the blow and met with the Consul in Miami, who was the last link in the chain of command to certify the arrival and destruction of the drugs.

The Consulate usually answers to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, but in this case that entity has not published anything on the matter. The OIJ, however, assures that the destruction process started at 6:00 am on Monday, July 29^th, and that it lasted five hours until the last bag was incinerated. The OIJ also mentioned that U.S. and Costa Rican officials were present during the process, although there are no local media reports to corroborate.

As to the matter of legislative permit for this operation, some legislators interviewed by CRHoy indicated that everything was fine as long as the military aircraft did not land with bellicose intent. The OIJ mentioned that the C-17 was not armed, but a legal expert interviewed by CRHoy mentioned:

“Do you really think that the U.S. Air Force would risk picking 24 tons of cocaine in Costa Rica and then land in Nicaragua and Honduras without some sort of armed escort or weaponry to defend the aircraft and crew?”

The Need for Legislative Permits

News about this incident have prompted debate on the requirement of legislative permits for U.S. military forces to enter Costa Rica. Many people think that such permits add a layer of bureaucracy to worthy causes such as drug interdiction. No one is questioning the value of the assistance by the U.S. Air Force and other authorities from that country in taking away a prodigious amount of drugs that our country could not destroy; the problem is one of transparency and sovereignty.

The original story by Alvaro Sanchez of CRHoy and the English language version by The Costa Rica Star were picked up by various international media outlets, and many of the comments left by readers indicate a significant level of skepticism about the operation. Allowing foreign military forces to enter a country to transport narcotics in bulk calls for a certain amount of transparency that can be achieved with legislative permits.

History has shown that nothing good happens when you the U.S. government interests transport controlled substances from Central America. When such operations take place in a shadowy manner, you end up with Colonel Oliver North of the U.S. Marine Corps, the late American pilot Barry Seal smuggling for the CIA, shady companies such as DIASCA and Frigorificos de Puntarenas, and other kinds of malfeasance. The people of Costa Rica have a right to know about these things; this can be accomplished with legislative permits.

The short answer as to why that U.S. Air Force C-17 should have had permission to land in Costa Rica is: Because our Constitution requires it. The rationale is simple: As a country who abolished her military more than six decades ago, Costa Rica can’t afford to have foreign military or forces entering the country at their pleasure or with a permit issued by a mid-level government official. We have enough problems with Nicaraguan Army invasions and paramilitaries entering the country. As a peace-loving representative democracy, Costa Rica must discuss and decide these matters at the legislative level.

Yemen Fighting Bandar’s Boys Under the Alias of “Al-Qaeda In Arabian Peninsula,” AQAP

[Yemen, like all Muslim nations, will continue to be plagued by this militant Sunni terrorism until they approach the problem with open eyes, meaning that they are willing to acknowledge the dirty Saudi hands buying terrorism, right before their eyes.  Tribal authorities will have no better luck at getting the terror problem under control, as long as the Saudi royals have a free hand to sow the seeds of terrorism at will.

SAUDIS=Shaitan.]

Yemen is fighting a sprawling giant

Yemen Post Staff “Prisoners who are in the jails of the oppressors because of their religion” and told them to “rejoice … as your brothers are pounding the walls of injustice and demolishing the thrones of oppression… We have not forgotten you and will never forget you,” said Nasser al-Wahishi this August. Little could Yemenis have foreseen that those words would signal an unprecedented return in violence and insecurity across the country. Over the past three months not one week has passed without the media having to report on the targeted killing of an intelligence or military officer, the targeting of a military position, the kidnapping of a foreign worker, or even the targeting of foreign diplomats. Over the past three months alone, Yemen has seen more bloodshed and terror-related violence than in the past two years. The intensity and frequency of the attacks has security experts both abroad and at home in Yemen, ponder over the validity and relevance of Yemen’s national counter-terror strategy. Even with the full weight of the US military, Yemen coalition government still finds itself vulnerable to al-Qaeda’s attacks, having been unable to prevent the cancerous growth of its terror cells. Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright scholar based in Yemen, now at Princeton University told PBS Newshour back in August that if al-Qaeda militants were only a few hundred-men strong back in December 2009, when the group carried it out its Christmas Day attack on a US airliner, he estimated their number to be closer today to several thousands. “What we have seen over the past three-and-a-half years is that AQAP has gone from a group of about 200 to 300 people on Christmas Day 2009 to, according to the U.S. State Department, more than a few thousand fighters today.” Johnsen has often warned that Yemen’ strategy against al-Qaeda essentially worked to strengthen the ranks of its militants rather than weaken their ability to carry out terror operations. While such warnings have often fallen on deaf ears, in favour of a heavier military footprint, officials in Sana’a have begun to see the rational reasoning standing behind Johnsen’s thinking. Johnsen has long called for a different, more proactive approach to counter-terrorism, one which would involve clerics and tribal leaders as opposed to the blind targeting of civilian communities on the off-chance that terror militants might be passing through. “The only people in a position to decisively disrupt, dismantle and defeat AQAP are the tribesmen and clerics in Yemen. It is men like Salim al-Jabir, a local preacher, who have the standing and stature to take the fight to al-Qaeda,” Johnsen wrote in Bloomberg this August. One has only to take a look at Yemen’s mounting death toll to realise that so far the real winners of the war against terror, are actually the terrorists. Over the span of a week, al-Qaeda has killed at least three high ranking officers, wounded dozens of soldiers in drive-by shootings and flash-attacks against military outposts in the southern provinces. In the past month alone terror militants have grown as bold as to target two military bases: one in Mukalla on September 30 and one in the southern restive of Abyan on October 18th. More troubling yet, the killing of a German diplomat in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on October 6th by suspected terror operatives brought home the reality of radicalism, dissipating many Yemenis’ false sense of security and belief that al-Qaeda belonged to the country’s restive tribal regions and not its buzzing capital. Short from completely cordoning off its capital and deploying an unsustainable number of security personnel to the streets, Yemen coalition government has no real mean at its disposal t protect its people and its interests. The central government’s inherent political shortcomings, its stumbling hold over the state institutions and its internal divisions have allowed al-Qaeda to grapple Yemen by the neck and hold it hostage. To make matters worse, recent claims made by Tribune Washington Bureau established that contrary to their public statements foreign powers have been handing wads of cash to terror militants in exchange for their nationals’ release, thus jeopardizing any hope of a financial asphyxiation. Yemen has worked hard at drying up all terror militants finding sources in an attempt to diminish its pull and zone of influence. “Over the last two years, AQAP, as Western officials refer to the group, has extorted $20 million in ransom money, according to an estimate by Alistair Burt, who until this month was the top British diplomatic official for the Middle East,” wrote the Tribune Washington Bureau. Burt also warned at a diplomatic meeting in New York earlier this month, “If those payments continue, AQAP’s attack capability in Yemen and against its friends and neighbours will only strengthen.” Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi said on the matter, “Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil, which I may describe as a profitable trade and a precious treasure,” underscoring the profound irony and counter-productivity of Yemen’s anti-terror strategy. So far Yemen has only managed to feed its now-sprawling monster, rather than cut off its head. Yemen Post Staff

ROTHSCHILDS HIDDEN BEHIND obama AND THE GENOCIDAL OBAMACARE ?

[SEE:  Obama To Save Medicare By Killing-Off the Sick and the Elderly]

ARE JACOB ROTHSCHILD, BENJAMIN DE ROTHSCHILD, ARIANE DE ROTHSCHILD AND EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD HIDDEN BEHIND obama AND THE GENOCIDAL OBAMACARE ?

” HOW OBAMA FIRST GOT THE STACHE—THEY PLAN TO KILL YOU

– FACT SHEET: On the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 –

by Marcia Merry Baker

The United States was suffering from a crisis in health care when President Barack Obama came into office. As a result of the deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the privatization of health care into profit-making ventures, and deregulation, both the health care system and the health of the American population was rapidly deteriorating.
Obama’s health care program, however, has made the situation much worse. If allowed to continue, it will turn the U.S. government into the enforcer of a worse-than-Hitler genocide machine.
In other locations, EIR has provided in-depth examination of the Nazi premises behind what is called Obamacare. Here we restrict ourselves to a presentation of crucial facts which show that such Nazi measures are already underway and leading toward mass death.
– I. PROVENANCE—HITLER’S T4 –

1. HITLER T4 HEALTH CARE. In October 1939, Adolf Hitler issued his official directive on selectively putting people to death, which was already underway in Germany on handicapped children and concentration camp inmates. It was titled, “The Destruction of Lives Unworthy of Life.” It arose from a prior meeting he held with medical professionals, to review “criteria” for practical and cheap methods of removing people, deemed to be “unrehabilitable” and thus burdens on the nation.
Hitler’s directive was administered out of headquarters in Berlin at No. 4 Tiergarten Strasse, where the Reich Work Group of Sanatoria and Nursing Homes, began by conducting surveys of patients nationwide, designating who was not worthy to continue to live. They were put to death; the principle involved came to be applied on a mass scale through the gas ovens at concentration camps.
2. TONY BLAIR T4 HEALTH CARE. In Britain, on April 1, 1999, the first initiative was taken by the Tony Blair government (1997-2007) in the name of health care “reform,” to institute an updated version of the Hitler T4 program: the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) was formed, to dictate what treatments would, and would not, be given to designated groups of patients in the British National Health Services (NHS), which had served the nation since the 1940s.
Blair’s health adviser to set up NICE, Simon Stevens, then moved to takedown the NHS system, by privatizing key functions, in particular through the private insurer UnitedHealth Group UK, which Stevens joined.
The record shows how the death rate has climbed for whole classes of Britons, especially the elderly and cancer patients, as a result of both NICE barring treatments, and the NHS being dismantled. For example, as of 10 years after NICE went into effect, only 40 to 48% of British men diagnosed with cancer survived, and 48 to 54% of British women; in stark contrast to Sweden, for example, where 60% of men and 61% of women survived after a cancer diagnosis.
A particular program to speed up death was put into effect called the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP). According to extensive exposes in the British press, over the 2000s, participating NHS hospitals were offered financial inducements to put patients deemed as at the end-of-life, on the LPC list, under which all treatment is discontinued, and even water and hygiene removed. The LCP started originally for cancer patients in Liverpool in the 1990s, with royal patronage; by 2012, it involved 178 NHS hospitals throughout Britain, and involved patients with any illness. On average, 130,000 persons a year were put under LCP, under the claim of saving medical resources, which as of 2012, had rewarded hospitals with at least $40 millions. An estimated 60,000 on LPC died yearly, without having given their consent to discontinue care. After storms of protest, the U.K. government in July 2013, ordered the LCP to be phased out over the next 12 months.
3. OBAMA T4 HEALTH CARE. In 2009, the Tony Blair/Hitler health concept was launched in the United States, by the new Obama presidency, as a campaign under the euphemism of care “reform,” just as Tony Blair had done in Britain. The Obama drive culminated in the March 23, 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Leading up to this were 18 months of intense propaganda, including 30 hearings and round-tables, under the cynical slogan that, under Obamacare, all Americans will get “access to care” through access to insurance.
In reality, the ACA law is made up of sets of measures to accomplish deliberate cuts in care, the destruction of the means to deliver it, and to perpetrate death. At the same time, private Wall Street insurers get Federal subsidies.
Key figures in bringing about the ACA—including several with direct involvement in imposing this on the British health system— have explicitly expressed the T4 principle, that there are “lives not worthy” to continue.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a longtime advocate for this Hitler health view, was appointed by Obama, in early 2009, as the health adviser to the Office of Management and Budget. In April, 2009, he was put on the new Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, to devise rationalizations for cutting medical treatment. In particular, Emanuel stressed that the Hippocratic Oath caused “over-use” of medical resources, which must stop.
Peter Orszag, Obama’s first head of the Office of Management and Budget, promoted the panoply of Hitler health arguments and mechanisms. He is considered the leading architect of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)—the analogue to NICE, called the death panel. He advocates cost-benefit analysis to justify whether medical treatment is warranted for a person. He backs the statistical “Quality Adjusted Life Years” (QALY) metric for whether it is worth it for a person to continue to live. Orszag’s London collaborator, Sir Michael Rawlins, head of NICE, pumped the QALY formula, in a Time interview March 27, 2009, saying, “A QALY scores your health on a scale from zero to one: zero if you’re dead, and one if you’re in perfect health. You found out, as a result of a treatment, where a patient would move up the scale…” and you decide, based on how much a year of life is worth, whether to permit it or not, if it takes too much away from society’s scarce resources.
Moreover, Orszag holds that, even if you are not sick, but are living “excessively long,” he advises that you should have your Social Security “adjusted” (i.e. reduced), according to a statistical formula he backs, called the “Longevity Index.”
Simon Stevens, Tony Blair’s Hitler health operative, who re-located from the U.K. to the United States in 2007, personally advised the Obama White House, on what to set up in the new health law. In May 2009, he presented a report titled, “Reducing Avoidable and Inappropriate Care,” saying that $520 billion can be “saved” in the first 10 years of a new reform act, by cutting services to non-worthy people, especially the old. Stevens is the Medicare expert at UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance HMO in the United States (70 million policies).
Sir Donald M. Berwick, knighted by Queen Elizabeth, for his work on NICE and “reforming” the British National Health Service, to cut out excessive lives, was given a recess appointment by Obama on July 7, 2010, to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As such, he was responsible for initiating T4 policies in programs affecting 49 million older Americans in Medicare, and 48 million poor, disabled and dependent, in Medicaid. He stayed in office as long as his recess-appointment tenure would allow, leaving in December 2011, to avoid the scrutiny that would ensue in the Senate from a proper nomination to CMS head.
While in office, he moved to strike certain cancer drugs from approved Medicare reimbursement; to set up ways to financial penalize hospitals for “over-treating” patients; and limit physicians by financial penalties and pushing top-down “evidence-based” medical practice dictates. He was followed in office by Marilyn Tavenner, a technocrat for Obamacare, with a pedigree as top executive at HCA, the mega for-profit hospital chain, benefitting from the takedown of the traditional community hospital system.
– II. CONTEXT—POVERTY; ILLNESS; –

– HOSPITAL SYSTEM DEGRADED –

The ACA measures are being imposed as the final health care “solution” to the poverty, illness, and suffering already underway as of 2010, and now far worse.

1. IMPOVERISHMENT. Of the U.S. population of 314 million, roughly 135 million are working, but 20 million are working only part-time, and more than 50 million (inclusive of most of the 20 million) have work defined as low-wage (twice poverty line or lower). 52 million people are in households defined as poor ($22,000 or less income for a family of four); this is the highest ever. The number of people living in “deep poverty,” represented by an impossible $11,000 annual income for that family of four, has jumped to 20 million—one in 15 Americans.
Some 50 million must use food stamps; and 50-80% of public school students in 20 southern and western states are poor, and rely on discount and free meals through the school-lunch programs of the Agriculture Department.
In the official jobless picture: 11.8 million Americans are unemployed; 8.8 million are forced to work part-time; 4.5 million eligible workers have left the labor force or, coming of age, never entered it. This is 25 million eligible workers who need but do not have full-time work.
Due to actual inflation as defined by major categories of the market basket of living, in government statistics, the lower-income 60% of the population has experienced a drop of 10-15% in its real income since 1999. The fourth quintile has somewhat more than broken even and the top 20%’s real income has doubled. Another measure of this for the lower 60%; their actual average income is $500 more per household than in 1999; their actual expenses of living are $5,000 more.
The ratio of the total population employed is at 4-decade low, 52.4%. For young people aged 18-34, the ratio of employed has fallen from 84% in 2000 to 72% in 2012.
But if one abstracts from self-employment, and takes Americans employed full-time by an employer not themselves, that ratio is down to 43.4%. According to Gallup, which surveys it, it has fallen by 5.0% since 2010, a tremendous drop.
As to “saved” wealth (mainly houses), more than 90% of the households in the country have less wealth than they had in 2008.

2. DESPERATION—SUICIDE RATE. The U.S. suicide rate has skyrocketed. The rate at which Americans between 50 and 64 years of age kill themselves, rose 45% between 1999 and 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Women aged 60 to 64 had a rise of 60%; and men in their fifties, had a rise of 48%. The CDC researchers point out that these age cohorts of citizens are being squeezed under impossible pressures of lack of means to care for themselves, their elderly parents, and their own children, also hit by economic crisis.

3. DISEASE, DEATH RATES RISING. Sickness and mortality rates are increasing for cohorts of the population, who are poor, jobless and with no future. Many illnesses are associated with increased accident rates, obesity, malnutrition, parasites, drug and alcohol abuse, and other factors of despair, plus lack of medical treatment.
Add to this, the increased diseases associated with globalization and decline in public health services.
The CDC in September sounded the alarm about the increase in drug-resistant bacteria, in a 114-page report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States 2013, giving particulars for 18 microbes. Two million Americans—at the very least—are affected by one or more of the prevalent microbes each year, with at least 23,000 deaths from the infection.
Consider food-associated illnesses. 48 million Americans—one in six—are sickened each year from food-borne illnesses; 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die, as reported by the CDC. A high percentage of the microbes come in food imports, which now supply 15% of U.S. food consumption overall, and much higher percentages for particular types, e.g. seafood (85%).
Overall, even crude vital statistics for the county level, show that U.S. life expectancy is declining for millions of Americans. The July 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association ran coverage titled, “The State of U.S. Health”, showing that in 1,405 counties (mostly in the South, Western tribal lands, and Appalachia)—which is 45% of the total number of 3,014 counties in all 50 states—female life expectancy remained static, or declined from 1985 to 2010. In 72 of these counties, the decline was very significant—over two years or more. The same for men in poor counties. If you were born a male in McDowell County, West Virginia, in 2010, your life expectancy is 63.9 years. (The analysis covers all counties; and a set of 291 diseases. See http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/)

4. SAFETY NETS FAIL—MEDICAID. There are now more than 51.5 million Americans on Medicaid, the Federal program—run in conjunction with states—enacted in 1965, as a safety net to see that people out of means for necessities—temporarily or for reasons beyond their control—have medical care. Moreover, this roster of one in six Americans being so poor as to qualify for medical care, does NOT represent the extent of low-income persons who need help, because in recent years, most state governments have imposed ever-stricter enrollment requirements, to try to keep down the numbers. Over the last 10 years, Medicaid expenditures overall grew 90%, and became in many states, the foremost budget category.
Instead of seeing this as the reflection of the economic collapse, many Congressional delegations express their version of Hitler’s health care, by opposing not only Obamacare, but also demanding cuts to Medicaid, in order to “cut the deficit” by cutting lives.

5. HOSPITAL SYSTEM DISMANTLED. Over the past 40 years of worsening economic conditions, the nationwide system of hospitals, which had been built up since the 1946 Hill-Burton Act (Hospital Survey and Construction Law), has been drastically dismantled. The advent of HMOs after the enabling act of 1973, and further deregulation allowing the predation by for-profit Wall Street hospital chains, to take over or shut down non-profit local hospitals, drove the takedown.
As of 1980, when the ratios of standard care (hospital beds and physicians per 100,000 persons) was the best, there were 5,810 community hospitals, spread over 3,000 counties, which provided 987,000 beds for 226 million people. But by 2011, the number of hospitals dropped 15%, down by 837 to below 5,000. The number of beds dropped by 20%, down by 189,000, to 798,000. Yet there were 85 million more people to care for. The national average bed-to-population ratio fell from 4.4 per 1,000 people in 1980, down to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2011, a 41% drop.
In the course of this, waves of local, non-profit community hospitals have been taken over, scaled down, or shut, in the process of a few mega-chains—many of them for-profit—coming to dominate hospital care. This is another aspect of Wall Street. The hospital chains—six of the biggest are publicly traded—are positioning on how to profiteer, in the new corporatist/government ACA world.

6. PUBLIC HEALTH TAKEDOWN. Vital public health services by the Federal government, states and localities—from pest eradication, to food safety monitoring—have been cut back drastically in the last few years, under attempts at cutting government functions to try to “balance the budget” on Wall Street terms.
For example, federal aid has dropped for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division, Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Disease, down from around $35 million yearly in the early 200s, down to $10 million by 2012. Among many other things, this is the agency supplying resources for fighting mosquito-borne diseases, such as West Nile Fever, which surged back this Summer.
– III. OBAMACARE KILLER MEASURES –

1. SHUT DOWN HOSPITALS. The U.S. hospital-centered health care system, already contracting, is now under assault from multiple Obamacare measures.
Overall, Obamacare identifies cuts of $716 billion over 10 years in cuts to Medicare, as well as cuts in other programs. Much of this directly and indirectly hits hospitals.

* Penalize readmissions. Financial penalties against hospitals are in effect for their too-frequent re-admission of sick patients. Since October 2012, hospital rates of re-admission are reported quarterly and evaluated. A rate considered too high results in docking Medicare payments to the hospital. The cut is up to 1% in FY 2013; up to 2% the next year; and 3% thereafter.
On Sept. 30, 2013, the end of the first year of the ACA Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), 2,225 hospitals were penalized a total of $227 million, according to Kaiser Health news.
The intent was clear right from the state. As of the first quarter of the program, of the 3,282 hospitals in the HRRP, fully 66.7%, or 2,189 facilities suffered a cut in Medicare payments. Teaching hospitals, which tend to have complex cases of elderly patients, and safety-net hospitals serving the poor, predictably have the most need for re-admissions, and they are reeling from the cuts. HRRP will cut Medicare spending by $8.2 billion from 2013 to 2019, say Obamacare statisticians.

* Cut charity care. Obamacare specifies cuts in Federal aid to hospitals, which has defrayed costs of treating the uninsured poor. Starting in 2014, Obamacare will cut what is called DSP—Disproportionate Share Payments. The hospitals are to get $22 billion less over the current 10 year period, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges and the Commonwealth Fund.

* Sequester cuts. Some $95 billion in other cuts in Medicare programs, are underway, including the impact of the sequester, all of which are slamming hospitals, according to Caroline Steinberg, vice president for analysis at the American Hospital Association. In fact, a specific sequestration automatic cut has taken away $45 billion from hospitals—more than double what the Obamacare DSP charity cut was.

* Mass threat to rural hospitals. In August, 2013, the Obama Administration proposed a rule change to what is called the Critical Access Hospital (CAH) program, which would shut down hospitals in rural areas en masse. There are currently 1,332 CAH hospitals nationwide, with potentially two-thirds in line for shut down. The CAH system was set up in 199x, to act to curb closures of rural hospitals.

The way it has worked prior to the Obama proposed change, is that, under the CAH system, since 2006, state health officials designate which of their community hospitals—often in low population density areas—are critical to remain open and viable in their localities, in order to provide residents, in particular the Medicare age bracket, the physical means to receive care. The criteria include that the facility not have more than 25 beds, it be at least 35 miles distant from other hospitals, and other rubrics. These CAH facilities then get reimbursed by the Federal CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) at 101% for their Medicare-related expenses, not at any lower Medicare reimbursement rates.
But in August, Inspector General Daniel Levinson, for the Health and Human Services (DHS) Department, issued a report declaring that hundreds of these CAH hospitals no longer meet the criteria. So states should no longer have the right to designate CAH facilities; the HHS/CMS should henceforth do so, and they will disqualify many such hospitals from adequate reimbursement. This will financially ruin hundreds of rural hospitals, and cut access to care for millions of people, whether or not they may have health “insurance.” Particularly vulnerable are Iowa, with 82, and Kansas with 83 CAH hospitals.
2. DRIVE OUT DOCTORS. Under various Obamacare measures, physicians are under financial pressure and subjective coercion to acquiesce to the intent of the ACA to cut care and lives. To begin with, two-thirds of the doctors in the United States no longer practice medicine independently, but they are now in the employ of other entities—groups and hospital systems, to the point where the American Medical Association, in November, 2012, issued guidelines on how to cope with the “conflict of interest” involved—namely, where the physician wants to treat his patient according to the Hippocratic Oath, and the Obamacare system does not.
Only 36% of all U.S. practicing physicians own their own practice (in whole or in part), which is way down from 57% in 2000; and way below 85% or higher in the 1960s.
Rural areas are desperate for physicians, and the threat to shut down Critical Access Hospitals is a threat to cut off all advanced care in these localities, in particular in the farm states, where counties have a high percent of elderly.

PHYSICIAN VALUE BASED MODIFIER This program mandates that all doctors who see Medicare patients, as of 2017, will be paid by the CMS on a new basis of Federal judgment of the “quality” of their “performance,” instead of being paid according to the traditional reimbursement for actual treatment administered to patients—the examination, procedures, tests, etc. Physicians who are classified as “over-treating” will be financially penalized. There a “bonus” system for doctors considered compliant. Obamacare foresees having 500,000 doctors now working in group practice, under this program by 2017..
The system is being implemented in phases, according to what the Obama Administration announced in July, 2013:
Starting in 2015, group practices of 100 or more health professionals (doctors, nurses, technicians, social workers, etc.) will gain or lose up to 1% of their pay, depending on their rating. This will rise to 2% the following year.
Starting in 2016, mid-size physician groups (10 to 99 health professionals). They will be offered 2% bonuses, and the first-year free of penalties, to ease into the system.
Starting in 2017, the remaining physicians, in practices of 9 or fewer health professionals, will be phased in. the CMS estimates this will bring in 350,000.
A whole system of “quality” measures is pending, to rate doctors, with differing factors for each specialty. All physicians and health staff will have to file reports on every case, which in itself, will be an impossible burden for all but the large-scale practices now taking over what’s left of doctoring.
There is already an acute shortage of primary physicians everywhere, and certain specialties (obstetrics and orthopoedic) from region-to-region. In the District of Columbia itself, out of 8,000 physicians licensed to work in the capital, only 453 of them are primary-care doctors, who see patients more than 20 hours a week, according to a September, 2013 report by the D.C. Board of Medicine.
3. CUT DIAGNOSTICS. Screenings and diagnostics for diseases and conditions, and the staff and facilities to conduct them, are being denied and reduced under Obamacare. One of the methods, is the issuance of guidelines to cutback on preventive screening, by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a pre-existing agency in the Department of Health and Human Services. Private insurers, accordingly, move to implement the new restrictions. Just two examples show the thinking.
* Breast cancer. Within three months of the enactment of Obamacare, new guidelines were, that women should get less frequent mammograms. This decree was made, despite the national concern for the fact that mammography use was already declining in the 2000s, mammography facilities were decreasing, and doctors feared a rise of breast cancer mortality rates. As of 2009, 27% of U.S. counties had no mammography facilities at all, a pattern associated with poor and rural areas.
In May, 2010, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force stated that screening mammography for women aged 50 to 74 should be every two years, not yearly; and for younger and older women, such screening should be less often, and decided on an “individual” basis only.
This went directly against the modern standard, recommended by cancer specialists, for women to have annual screenings age 50 and above; and every two years for those 40 to 49.
Since the USPSTF decree, preventive mammography rates in women in their 40s have dropped nearly 6%, as of 2012. (Mayo Clinic study).
* Upper age limits on screenings? The Task Force is considering an upper age limit for screening mammography. In The Netherlands, women over 75 are not prohibited from mammograms, but they are no longer reminded to do it, despite the fact that breast cancer for elderly women is still a clinical concern, and treatment can extend their lives.
* Prostate cancer. In May, 2012, the Task Force recommended against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer.
4. MAKE MEDICINES SCARCE. Obamacare, which empowers Big Pharma to effectively run the health system, has also given them virtual carte blanche over drugs. At present, it is presiding over a fast-worsening situation of medication shortages. This involves cancer drugs, sterile injectibles, certain anti-biotics, and many other basics. For example, in recent months, the frontline drug for tuberculosis, INH (isoniazid), has been scarce.
This is the characteristic, not the exception, under the ACA. As of July, 2013, supplies were short for 302 drugs, which is up from 211, same time in 2012.

5. CUTS TO HOME HEALTH CARE. CMS has issued plans to cutback many Medicare programs, for example home health care. There will be $100 billion in cuts over 10 years to home health care, from the combined impact of new CMS proposals and cuts already under way. Nationally, 3.5 million seniors are lined up for a 14% reduction in Medicare home health payments, potentially losing the skilled services on which they depend to live at home. The entire nationwide system of home-health agencies is jeopardized by what CMS Administrator Tavenner calls, her new plan to “re-base”the rates used to calculate funding for payments for home health care.

6. BASIC RESEARCH STARVED OUT. Funding for public medical research has fallen 20% in the last 10 years to the National Institutes of Health. This holds throughout the nation, at Federal, state and private centers, such as those working with the CDC. In particular, the pipeline is running dry for ways to treat drug-resistant microbes.
Instead, the priorities and grants for studies are concentrated in the control of Wall Street networks, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the like. For example, the Weill Cornell School of Medicine, named for its financial patron Sandy Weill, former CitiGroup executive, is focusing priority research on “precision medicine”—the polite name for individual gene-profiling and custom-treatment for the elite. If you can pay, you can live.

7. IPAB—CUT LIVES, TO CUT COSTS, BY DECREE. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was authorized in 2010 under the ACA, in sections 3403 and 10320. Its purpose is to formulate specific cuts to medical care, mostly for those on Medicare—the old, in order to save money. Because of its infamous mandate, its 15 member board, which must be approved by the Senate, has not even been appointed so far. Unprecedented power is designated for IPAB, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2014. While the law is written to say that IPAB will not cut care according to costs, it will simply accomplish the same objective through application of the criterion of statistical “effectiveness,” and financial benchmarks. The Medicare program is under orders to implement whatever IPAB orders, unless those cuts are expressly overruled by a vote in Congress, which must be through a super-majority.
IPAB is modeled exactly on the 1999 agency created under the Tony Blair government, NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), which has ordered cuts in treatment by the National Health System of Britain, resulting in a record of increased death rates since then.

8. SIGN-UP PRETENSE. After only two weeks into the operation of the new online markets of obtaining insurance, the drastic malfunctioning of the system, the rate of non-signups, and most of all—the fact that 5 to 9 millions of people are known in advance to be disqualified for coverage—manifest how the process is a pretense.
The “disqualified” status hits those poor persons, who make too little annual income to qualify for a Federal subsidy on an insurance policy from the exchange—specifically, less than 138% of the official poverty line; and too much money, to qualify to enroll in Medicaid, relative to the poverty line rules in their state.
These people reside mostly in the 26 states, 17 of which are in the South, where Medicaid has not been expanded under inducement of Federal financial incentives upfront, which are to be then cut back in three years. Both the White House and the respective state Congressional leaders have known all along about these categories of people, considered “unqualified” for arrangements for medical care.
Two national estimates have been done on how many people are in this category nationwide, based on census data, plus Obamacare and Medicaid rules:
A New York Times Oct. 2 report, titled, “Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law,” estimates that nearly nine million are in a “gap” preventing them from any insurance. Obamacare “will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers, and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance…” (by S. Tavernise and R. Gebeloff).
A report Oct. 17 by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, puts the national figure at 5.2 million Americans denied health insurance coverage. The study reports:

* Texas. More than 1 million people won’t have access to insurance.

* Florida. 763,890 won’t get insurance. Also large numbers of uninsured under Obamacare are in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

* Tennessee. Up to 220,000 won’t get insurance.

On the technical dysfunction of the exchanges, details are provided in the Oct. 12 New York Times report titled, “From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal.” A research team (R. Pear, S. LaFranier, and I. Austen) summarized the analyses of many IT experts. The conclusion, “‘These are not glitches,’ said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange…Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives, and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.” In other words, planned failure is the name of the game. As the Times noted, “just a trickle of the 14.6 million people who have visited the federal exchange so far, have managed to enrol in insurance plans….” The Obama Administration refuses to say how many.

9. PENALIZE TRADE UNION INSURANCE PLANS. Trade union members covered by multi-employer plans—referred to as the Taft-Harley plans—are considered by the ACA as high-end insurance-policy holders, and as a class, ineligible for usage and benefit from the new exchanges. An estimated 26 million U.S. workers fall into this group, according to the National Coordinating Committee for Multi-employer Plans.
Additionally, in 2018 these types of insurance plans, among those considered “Cadillac plans,” are subject to a large new Obamacare tax.

10. BACK COMPANIES TO CUT WORKFORCE. Many companies and local government entities are cutting hours of employees to below 30 hours per week, to avoid the ACA mandate for providing coverage for all “full-time” employees, and making other kinds of downshifts. For example, Trader Joe’s and Home Depot are shifting part-time workers to the Obamacare exchanges.
Smaller companies are socked by the “Employer Shared Responsibility Payment” Obamacare mandate, which, under pressure, was postponed a year to 2015.

11. COST SHOCK. Insurance premium prices on exchanges vary by state, but cost shock is hitting online shoppers cross country for various types of policies. For example, in some states, rates for large and small companies, which already have gone up an average of over 20% a year for the last three years, will now jump as much as 40% the first year (2014). These costs will be passed on to their workers.

12. INSURANCE SUBSIDIES TO WALL STREET. Under Obamacare, the insurance mandate constitutes unprecedented flows to the insurance wing of the Wall Stree/London financial crowd. Dimensions of the matter are reported in Forbes, Oct. 1 (Robert Lenzer), noting that the “value of the S&P health insurance index has gained 43% this year alone.” Among the major companies, CIGNA is up 63%, Wellpoint 47%, and United Healthcare 28%. Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, the stock values of these big firms have risen 200-300%.
– IV. WHAT MUST BE DONE –

1. The first step is to repeal the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This must taken in the course of Congressional action to restore the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, as the gateway for stopping the Wall Street crash process, and issuance of credits to rebuild the economy.
Glass-Steagall re-instatement bills are in both chambers of Congress: In the House of Representatives, HR 129 (The Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013 ), with 75 co-sponsors, which is in the Senate as S.985 (Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013), filed by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa); and S. 1282 (21st Century Glass-Steagall Act of 2013), filed by by Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), with nine co-sponsors.
Bills to repeal the ACA have been passed repeatedly in the House of Representatives. With passage in the Senate, the corollary measures outlined below can proceed.

2. Initiate impeachment proceedings to remove Barack Obama from office, for the crimes inherent and on record, from the ACA and his conduct in office.

3. Declare a moratorium on closures of hospitals, clinics, radiology centers, doctors practices, public health and research laboratories, and other vital parts of the health care delivery system, pending review, and initiation of a new program to build up health care delivery capacity to modern standards for all Americans.

4. Affirm and implement the priniciples embodied in the Hill Burton Act (Hospital Survey and Reconstruction Act of 1948), 42 U.S.C. 291 et seq., as the governing principles for U.S. health care policy.

5. Launch new research initiatives for advanced medical, biological and chemical research, in conjunction with a renewed drive for a nuclear fission-based economy, and soon, nuclear-fusion economic platform.

6. Activate anti-trust action throughout the health care sectors, in which facilities and services have been taken over and dominated by extensions of Wall Street operations in pharmaceuticals, hospital care, group practices of physicians, research, and other matters.
In particular, cancel the 1973 Health Maintenance Organization authorization law, and nullify subsequent laws to the same effect. This means, repeal 42 U.S.C. Section 300c, et seq.

7. Examine and act on the best way to provide health care for all Americans, under the principle of the clause in the Preamble to the Constitution, “to promote the General Welfare.”

The “Medicare for All” act in Congress, is the current foremost proposal to cut Wall Street out of looting health care and dictating death. It calls for instituting an insurance coverage system (called “single payer”)—different from that which worked in the pre-1970s/HMO period—but still aimed at seeing everyone gets treated. Those under age 65 would be eligible for Medicare coverage; premiums and practices would be set accordingly.
In recent years, Medicare’s overhead costs amount to only 3% of its expenditures, in contrast to what has been 30% overhead under the Wall Street HMO insurance system, and the fake mandate under Obamacare, which asks insurers to limit overhead to 20%.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has a bill (HR 676—”Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act”) in the current session of Congress, with 51 co-sponsors.” http://larouchepac.com/node/28620

IN THIS ARTICLE WE CAN NOTE VARIOUS PERSONS INVOLVED IN THE HEALTH CARE “REFORM”.
THE FAMILY OF TONY BLAIR HAS FRIENDSHIPS WITH THE FAMILY OF JACOB ROTHSCHILD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Rothschild,_4th_Baron_Rothschild
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6672904/Roman-Polanski-will-be-too-late-to-complete-his-film.html
“Tony Blair. Illegitimate Son Of Jacob Rothschild….Evidence”
http://the-tap.blogspot.com/2012/06/can-you-spot-it.html
TONY BLAIR IS ALSO A FRIEND OF EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD AND OF HIS WIFE . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Robert_de_Rothschild
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138789/Now-Tony-Blairs-finally-got-private-jet-hes-wanted-rented.html
SIR DONALD M. BERWICK IS AN AGENT OF THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY.
THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY IS CONNECTED WITH JACOB ROTHSCHILD, BENJAMIN DE ROTHSCHILD, ARIANE DE ROTHSCHILD AND EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD. http://larouchepac.com/node/28600
” Lord Jacob Rothschild, the behind-the-scenes controller of the Inter-Alpha Group, was a partner at Rothschild at the time he set up the Inter-Alpha Group in 1971, using its resources and then leaving in 1980 to continue his special mission, which includes advising the genocidal British Crown and managing the funds of Prince Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall, to finance his kooky, “green” schemes.”
http://unitednationsoffilm.com/?p=1728
” Prince Charles already played polo with Evelyn de Rothschild in his student years and later set up the Interfaith consultations with him. ”
http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/people_with_the_endless_bios.htm
Evelyn de Rothschild ” In 1989, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II,[2] for whom he serves as a financial adviser. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Robert_de_Rothschild
But the Royal Bank of Scotland, that is a bank controlled by the British Royal Family, is also connected with the Edmond De Rothschild.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-charles-dumps-rbs-boss-372885 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/laura-scolan/a/ba1/7b7 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-phillips/4/5b9/772
THE EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD IS OWNED BY BENJAMIN DE ROTHSCHILD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_de_Rothschild ) AND BY HIS WIFE ARIANE DE ROTHSCHILD
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_de_Rothschild ) http://www.lejdd.fr/Economie/Images/Les-plus-grosses-fortunes-de-France/Benjamin-de-Rothschild-206941
THE SAME obama IS A PUPPET OF THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13489879
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225080/District-nurse-90-year-old-father-Liverpool-Care-Pathway-home–consulting-family.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238916/Ministers-order-inquiry-care-pathway-payments-saw-hospitals-receive-millions-implement-controversial-system.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240075/Now-sick-babies-death-pathway-Doctors-haunting-testimony-reveals-children-end-life-plan.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9716418/Half-of-those-on-Liverpool-Care-Pathway-never-told.html

” United Healthcare, the largest insurer, with about 70 million insured, reported last summer that they had a particularly strong past year, with net income of $5.1 billion, up by 11% from the previous year; similarly for the others — even before the bonanza to result from the corporatist plan to force every American to buy their inflated products, beginning on October 1.
United Healthcare, it should be recalled, has as a top executive Simon Stevens, who was Tony Blair’s health policy advisor and the architect of NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) in 1999, the “reform” of the British National Health Service which imposed triage and genocide on the British people through selective denial of cancer drugs, surgeries, kidney dialysis, and other treatments. This was the model for the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is now the law of the land under Obamacare. Genocide can be profitable. ” http://larouchepac.com/node/28409
( Obamacare Genocide in Action: What is Already Underway http://larouchepac.com/node/28608 )

“UnitedHealth Group Incorporated is a diversified managed health care company headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S. It is No. 17 on Fortune magazines top 500 companies in the United States.[5] UnitedHealth Group offers a spectrum of products and services through two operating businesses: UnitedHealthcare and Optum. Through its family of subsidiaries and divisions, UnitedHealth Group serves approximately 70 million individuals nationwide. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnitedHealth_Group
THE BIGGEST SHAREHOLDER OF UNITEDHEALTH GROUP IS FIDELITY. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=UNH
FIDELITY IS CONNECTED WITH BOOZ ALLEN & HAMILTON.
” Abigail Pierrepont (Abby) Johnson[4] (born December 19, 1961) is an American businesswoman. Johnson is President of Fidelity Investments Personal and Workplace Investing. Fidelity was founded by her grandfather Edward C. Johnson II and her father Edward C. (Ned) Johnson III is its current CEO. As of March 2013 The Johnson family owns a 49% stake in the company.[3]
She had a brief stint as a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton from 1985–86, completed an MBA at Harvard, and joined Fidelity Investments ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Johnson
Arthur Johnson, an Independent Trustee of Fidelity, is also a director of Booz Allen & Hamilton. http://www.boozallen.com/media-center/press-releases/48399320/49502902
BOOZ ALLEN & HAMILTON IS LINKED WITH CARLYLE, BLACKSTONE AND DEUTSCHE BANK. http://transmissionsmedia.com/the-911-illusion-part-ii-deutsche-bank-blackstone/
“In 2008 Carlyle Group bought a majority stake in Booz Allen for $2.54 billion.”
” Carlyle is the 11th largest defense contractor in the US. It is 20%-owned by Mellon Bank (http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Mellon_family) and is controlled by the powerful Blackstone Group (seeOverthrow of the American Republic), which dined cheaply on the carcasses of looted S&L’s at auctions held by Bush Sr.’s Resolution Trust Corporation. ”
http://www.almartinraw.com/uri1.html http://transmissionsmedia.com/the-911-illusion-part-ii-deutsche-bank-blackstone/
” Henry Kissinger’s good friend Lord JACOB ROTHSCHILD sat on Bioport owner Blackstone’s International Advisory Board. (See Corexit Linked to the Blackstone Group and Lord Jacob Rothschild) ”
http://transmissionsmedia.com/the-911-illusion-part-ii-deutsche-bank-blackstone/ http://beforeitsnews.com/gulf-oil-spill/2010/06/corexit-linked-to-the-blackstone-group-and-lord-jacob-rothschild-76363.html
” Blackstone was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions boutique by Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone_Group
Peter G. Peterson ” is founding Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_George_Peterson http://larouchepac.com/node/28610
Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the wife of EVELYN DE ROTHSCHILD, is a director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. http://www.petersoninstitute.org/institute/board.cfm
Blackstone is also related with the LCF EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD, for example, through the person of Daniel Costa Lindo that is a M&A Analyst at Blackstone and was Private Equity Analyst at LCF Edmond de Rothschild. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-costa-lindo/32/255/543 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_de_Rothschild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_de_Rothschild
FIDELITY (FMR, LLC) IS ALSO A SHAREHOLDER OF THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES CIGNA AND WELLPOINT THAT HAVE PROFITS FROM THE HEALTH CARE “REFORM” OF obama.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=CI http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=WLP

” Obama’s Budget Argument for Killing People: Meet the Elephant in the Living Room

If you are fed up with all the arguments for justifying genocidal budget cuts coming from Obama and his Democrats, as well as the Republicans, consider the following. After the orchestrated government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis, the American population is now being told we have no choice but to swallow a national discussion of how to go about:

* Cutting some $100 billion per year in health expenditures via Obamacare, by wiping millions from the rolls of the insured, reducing payments to hospitals and other providers, and denying care to the elderly and sick whose lives are “not worthy of being lived”—just as Hitler did under the T-4 policy;
* Eliminating $140 billion per year through the “sequester,” half from defense expenditures and half from other budgetary items; and
* Chopping another $95 billion per year from Social Security and other entitlements, through such ruses as the so-called chained CPI.

Those items alone add up to some $335 billion per year in cuts whose predictable—and intended—effect will be genocide. And yet the Federal Reserve is bailing out the bankrupt Wall Street banking system to the tune of $1 trillion per year in Quantitative Easing. That’s three times what we are told we have to cut from the flesh and blood of our people and our productive economy! Not to mention the much larger speculative bubble of worthless international financial assets, which now totals some $1.6 quadrillion, which the British Empire says has to be saved no matter how many billion humans are killed in the process.
And yet when Lyndon LaRouche says we should stop the bailout of Wall Street, and reorganize the banking system based on the Glass-Steagall standard, people holler that he’s “over the top.” The only thing that’s “over the top” here is the damned elephant sitting in the living room. Get rid of him. ”

Obama Tries the “Good Islamist/Bad Islamist” Hat Trick In Syria

[It is always the same, wherever the CIA replays this tired old worn-out routine..”We only back the “good Islamists.”  I CALL BULLSHIT!  The warped American spy-trash relies upon the gullibility of the American people to continue their bloody games, since the plays that they call are so ridiculously stupid that people cannot believe that this is the best that “the government, the US Government, has to offer.”]

[This concept of an American proxy army composed of the most fearsome militant Islamists has always been run on the shakiest of grounds.  Now it has just become a tragedy, a farce, with no ending in sight.  This is especially true now because the source of that concept, the Saudi royals, have determined to form an “Islamist NATO,” from their terrorist hordes, working in concert with the Sunni Gulf State Armies.

Despite the dangers and uncertainty of utilizing “Mujahedeen” jihadis, some US allies have adapted the CIA strategy as their own national “anti-terrorist” policies, in particular, Pakistan.  The Pak Army has taken the “good Islamist/bad Islamist” to the next level, with its own “good Taliban/bad Taliban” ploy, attempting to utilize this CIA escape strategy to justify its own misunderstandings with their American task masters.  This ploy has been played very effectively in the Pak attempt to use its own homegrown militants as a control mechanism against the people of FATA. 

Bandar has followed this example in his sponsorship of Islamist terrorist units in Syria.  This has set-off a splitting process among the Muslim Brotherhood/Qatari forces arrayed against Bashar al-Assad, providing the smokescreen needed to hide Obama’s slithering-off into the sunset, hand-in-hand with Putin, as they attempt to transmute their chemical weapons agreement into that American/Russian-enforced “New World Order,” envisioned by Daddy Bush. 

Even though it seems likely now, that the Saudis will be made into the fall guys in Syria, this prediction has not restrained Bandar’s subverience to the CIA plot to sabotage any plans which King Abdullah thinks that he has made with his shady, probably treasonous, intelligence chief.]

U.S. Campaign Against Turkish Spy Chief Continues

Human Rights Watch and the Wall Street Journal blamed Turkey and especially its intelligence chief Hakan Fidan for supporting the “bad” insurgents and terrorists in Syria and to thereby hindering the U.S. plans to use the “good” insurgents and terrorists to achieve regime change there. The recent allegations were also covered in the Turkish press, often in support of the Turkish government strategy.

U.S. interference and the recent campaign against Hakan Fidan continue. The unofficial CIA-spokesperson, Zionist defender and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius now peddles allegations, based solely on mysterious “knowledgeable sources”, that the Turkish intelligence service outed ten Iranians who worked as informants for the Israeli Mossad:

The Turkish-Israeli relationship became so poisonous early last year that the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to have disclosed to Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers.

Knowledgeable sources describe the Turkish action as a “significant” loss of intelligence and “an effort to slap the Israelis.”

First allegations against Hakan Fidan about contacts with Iranian services were made by Israeli officials back in 2010. Ignatius surely knows about the poisonousness of Turkish-Israeli relations. It was Ignatius who in 2009 in Davos denied (vid) the Turkish premier Erdogan a chance to respond to Israel’s president Peres defense of the deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Now Ignatius is defending Israel again. He alleges that it is Turkey which is responsible for bad Israeli behavior. In May 2010 Israel attacked a Turkish ship, on its way in international waters to bring aid to Gaza, and killed nine Turkish activists on board. Turkey demanded an apology. Only earlier this year, which the Turkish president Gül called “too late”, did Israel apologize. Ignatius now claims that the apology came so late because the Turks in 2012 outed the Iranian Mossad agents:

Israeli anger at the deliberate compromise of its agents may help explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became so entrenched in his refusal to apologize to Erdogan about the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident.

So according to Ignatius an incident that happened, allegedly, in spring 2012 prevented the Israelis to give an apology for the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Either the Israelis have some mysterious capabilities of foresight or Igantius has the cause and effect relations backwards.

If the Turks indeed outed Mossad spies it was likely in response to Israeli drone support for the Kurdish liberation movement and terrorist group PKK.

The Ignatius attack on Hakan Fidan must be seen in light of a change in U.S. strategy towards Syria as the focus of U.S. policy moves from regime change towards the prevention of a new Al-Qaeda stronghold in northern Syria. The Turkish intelligence services actively supported the Jihadists and that support must now be starved off.

There are signs that the campaign against such support is somewhat succeeding. On Tuesday the Turkish army claimed to have shelled a Syrian hill next to its borders after Jihadists in Syria had taken it as a new military position. If that shelling indeed took place it did not help. Today ISIS and the Tawhid brigade took control of the Bab al Salama border gate with Turkey. Thanks to Hakan Fidan and his boss Erdogan Al-Qaeda is now a direct neighbor of Turkey.

Obama To Save Medicare By Killing-Off the Sick and the Elderly

[SEE: Tell Your Dying Mother That She Can’t Have Her “High Cost, Low-Value Treatments” ;  The forced healthcare plan that will force people to take-up arms ]

“Stop Genocide in America: The Premeditated Crime of Obamacare.”

SHUT DOWN HOSPITALS

The U.S. hospital-centered health care system, already contracting, is now under assault from multiple Obamacare measures.

Overall, Obamacare specifies cuts of $716 billion through 2020 in Federal health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid and “new”), much of which are cuts to hospitals, directly and indirectly.

* Penalize readmissions. Financial penalties against hospitals are in effect for their “too-frequent” re-admission of sick patients. Since October, 2012, hospital rates of re-admission are reported quarterly and evaluated. A rate considered too high results in docking Medicare payments to the hospital. The cut is up to 1 percent in FY 2013; up to 2% the next year; and 3% thereafter.

As of early 2013, of the 3,282 hospitals in the HRRP (Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program), fully 66.7%, or 2,189 facilities suffered a cut in Medicare payments. Teaching hospitals, which tend to have complex cases of elderly patients, and safety-net hospitals serving the poor, predictably have the most need for re-admissions, and they are reeling from the cuts. HRRP will cut Medicare spending by $8.2 billion from 2013 to 2019, say Obamacare statisticians.

* Cut charity care reimbursement. Obamacare specifies cuts in Federal aid to hospitals, which has defrayed costs of treating the uninsured. Starting in 2014, Obamacare will cut what is called DSP—Disproportionate Share Payments. The hospitals are to get $22 billion less over the current 10 year period, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges and the Commonwealth Fund.

* Sequester cuts. Some $95 billion in other cuts in Medicare programs are underway, including the impact of the sequester, all of which are slamming hospitals, according to Caroline Steinberg, vice president for analysis at the American Hospital Association. In fact, a specific sequestration automatic cut has taken away $45 billion from hospitals—more than double what the Obamacare DSP charity cut was.

* Mass threat to rural hospitals. In August, the Obama Administration proposed a rule change to what is called the Critical Access Hospital (CAH) program, which would shut down hospitals in rural areas en masse. There are currently 1,332 CAH hospitals nationwide, with potentially two-thirds in line for shut down. The CAH system was set up in 199x, to act to curb closures of rural hospitals.

The way it has worked prior to the Obama proposed change, is that, under the CAH system, since 2006, state health officials designate which of their community hospitals—often in low population density areas—are critical to remain open and viable in their localities, in order to provide Medicare residents the physical means to receive care. The criteria include that the facility not have more than 25 beds, it be at least 35 miles distant from other hospitals, and other factors. These CAH facilities then get reimbursed by the Federal CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) at 101 percent for their Medicare-related expenses, not at the usual lower Medicare reimbursement rates.

But in August, Inspector General Daniel Levinson, for the Health and Human Services (DHS) Department, said that hundreds of these CAH hospitals no longer meet the criteria. So states should no longer have the right to designate CAH facilities; the HHS/CMS should do so, and they will disqualify many such hospitals from adequate reimbursement. This will financially ruin the hospitals. Particularly vulnerable are Iowa, with 82, and Kansas with 83, CAH hospitals.

DRIVE OUT DOCTORS

Under various Obamacare measures, physicians are under financial and subjective pressure to acquiesce to the intent of the ACA to cut care and lives. Already, two-thirds of the doctors in the United States no longer practice medicine independently, but they are now in the employ of other entities—groups and hospital systems, to the point where the American Medical Association, in November 2012, issued guidelines on how to cope with the “conflict of interest” involved—namely, where the physician wants to treat his patient according to the Hippocratic Oath, and the Obamacare system does not.

Only 36% of all U.S. practicing physicians own their own practice (in whole or in part), which is way down from 57% in 2000; and way below 85% or higher in the 1960s.

Rural areas are desperate for physicians, and the threat to shut down Critical Access Hospitals is a threat to cut off all advanced care in these localities, in particular in the farm states, where counties have a high percent of elderly.

In addition, new “ratings” for physicians, upon which their pay will be evaluated, are being devised under the title of the “Physician Value-Based Modifier.”

CUT DIAGNOSTICS

Screenings for diseases and conditions, and the staff and facilities to conduct them, are being denied and reduced under Obamacare. One of the methods, is the issuance of guidelines to cut back on preventive screening, by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a pre-existing agency in the Department of Health and Human Services.

* Breast cancer. Within three months of the enactment of Obamacare, new guidelines were issued that women should get less frequent mammograms. This decree was made, despite the national concern for the fact that mammography use was declining in the 2000s, mammography facilities were decreasing, and doctors feared a rise of breast cancer mortality rates. As of 2009, 27% of U.S. counties had no mammography facilities at all, associated with poor and rural areas.

In May 2010, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force stated that screening mammography for women aged 50 to 74 should be every two years, not yearly; and for younger and older women, such screening should be less often, and decided on an “individual” basis.

This went directly against the modern standard, recommended by cancer specialists, for women aged 50 and above to have annual screenings; and every two years for those 40 to 49.

Since the USPSTF decree, preventive mammography rates in women in their 40s have dropped nearly 6 percent, as of 2012 (Mayo Clinic study).

* Upper limits on screenings? The Task Force is considering an upper age limit for screening mammography. In The Netherlands, women over 75 are not prohibited from mammograms, but they are no longer reminded to do it, despite the fact that breast cancer for elderly women is still a clinical concern, and treatment can extend their lives.

* Prostate cancer. In May 2012, the Task Force recommended against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer.

Links:
[1] http://larouchepub.com/

Mainstream Press Slowly Waking-Up

Survey finds distrust in government to handle emergency

Olga Hajishengallis, USA TODAY 

A survey reveals that a majority of Americans would not turn to the government for help in case of a major catastrophe.

Only 14% say a government agency would be the most help in a catastrophe.(Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)

In the aftermath of the federal shutdown and congressional fight over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, a survey finds that a majority of Americans would turn to family and friends rather than the government for help if a major catastrophe struck.

Nearly nine in 10 said it is likely the world will experience a major catastrophe, and about a third expect it will occur in “less than a year from now,” according to the online survey of more than 1,100 Americans 18 and older, conducted Sept. 27-Oct. 2 by the National Geographic Channel and Kelton Research.

In case of such an emergency, 57% said they would prefer to turn to family, friends or neighbors for help. Just 14% said FEMA or another government agency would be “the most help.”

Eric Uslaner, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-College Park, said the nation is experiencing the lowest level of public trust in government it has seen. “This has been the least productive Congress on record in terms of number of laws passed,” he said.

Also contributing to the level of distrust, Uslaner said, is that the Democrats and Republicans are “more concerned with attacking each other than fixing each others’ problems.” In the past, sitting down and negotiating was more common in politics, he noted.

According to a USA TODAY/Princeton Survey Research Poll released this week, nearly half of respondents say Congress would work better if nearly all members were replaced next year.

Joseph Nye, a professor and former dean at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said public opinion polls show public trust in government moves up and down and very dramatically.

“It’s not one straight line,” he said. “Right now, it’s at a low spot, and it’s not that it was high and slid. It’s been a roller coaster.”

Though unfamiliar with the National Geographic survey’s specifics, Nye said some of the findings struck him as an “exaggeration.”

“If you have a cyber-attack, you are going to have cooperation from both the public and private sector,” Nye said. “And the government is ahead in some parts of the private sector and [vice versa].”

According to the survey, 77% say the USA will experience a “catastrophic cyber-attack” during their lifetime, and more than half (55%) say the United States is not fit to deal with a “potentially disastrous cyber-attack.”

The survey was released before National Geographic’s premiere of American Blackout on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The movie depicts chaos spreading across the USA during a 10-day national power failure caused by a cyber-attack that shuts down the U.S. electric grid.

Pakistan Passes Sweeping Anti-Terror Law With Real Teeth

Pakistan passes new ordinance to fight terror

Meena Menon

Close on the heels of amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, the President has passed a new Protection of Pakistan ordinance, 2013, with enhanced powers to security forces to take action, stringent punishments and special courts at the federal-level with a provision to detain suspects for three months at the minimum.

A government background note said that about 40, 000 lives have been lost in terrorism, which inflicted a monetary damage of over US$ 100 billion in the country. Borrowing from similar laws around the world, including the Homeland Security Act in the US and the repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act in India, against which there have been many protests, the new ordinance has a slew of provisions with high security prisons, separate police stations for specified crimes with federal prosecutors to argue cases in special federal courts, preventive detentions and enhanced punishments. Such offences as designated under the law will be cognisable and non-bailable. It has a provision to conduct trials out of the jurisdiction of where the crimes were committed. Now the minimum quantum of punishment is set at ten years.

The ordinance also targets “millions of non-Pakistanis” living in the country “for any reason, including distressful conditions in their parent country, especially those since 1979,” and they “shall not be allowed to abuse the temporary liberty to commit depredation.”

It defines an “enemy alien” to be a person who fails to establish citizenship of Pakistan and is suspected to be involved in waging of war or insurrection against Pakistan or depredation on its territory. It gives powers to police officers, a member of the armed forces or civil armed forces to arrest, without warrant, any person who has committed a scheduled offence or against whom a reasonable suspicion or credible information exists that he/she has committed, or is about to commit any such an act or offence. The officer may enter and search, without warrant any premises to make an arrest or take possession of any property likely to be used, in the commission of any scheduled offences.

This includes waging war or threatening the security of Pakistan, crimes against ethnic, religious and political groups or minorities, including offences based on discrimination, hatred, creed and race, use of arson, fire-bombs, suicide bombs, biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear arms, plastic explosives, apart from killing, kidnapping, extortion, assault or attack of members of the Parliament, the judiciary, the executive, media, and government employees, including the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, foreign nationals and welfare workers.

 

A person arrested or detained under this ordinance whose identity cannot be ascertained shall be considered as an enemy alien and shall be presumed to be waging war or insurrection against Pakistan. Detentions can extend upto 90 days or more. The law puts the burden of proof on the accused facing the charge of a scheduled offence. The final appeal of a case decided in the special court will be with the Supreme Court.

It also exempts members of the police, armed forces or civil armed forces acting in aid of civil authority, the prosecutor-general, prosecutor, special judicial magistrates or the judge of a special court from being liable for any action for the acts done in good faith during the performance of their duties.

Interpol Chief Advises Arming Citizenry To Counter Terror Attacks

 

 

Exclusive: After Westgate, Interpol Chief Ponders ‘Armed Citizenry‘

 

By JOSH MARGOLIN

Kenya Civilians who had been hiding during a gun battle hold their hands in the air as a precautionary measure before being searched by armed police leading them to safety, inside the Westgate Mall, Sept. 21, 2013.

Jonathan Kalan/AP Photo

 

 

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said today the U.S. and the rest of the democratic world is at a security crossroads in the wake of last month’s deadly al-Shabab attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya – and suggested an answer could be in arming civilians.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called “soft targets” are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves.

“Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”

Noble’s comments came only moments after the official opening of the 82nd annual gathering of the Interpol’s governing body, the General Assembly. The session is being held in Cartagena, Colombia, and is being used to highlight strides over the last decade in Colombia’s battle against the notorious drug cartels that used to be the real power in the country.

The secretary general, an American who previously headed up all law enforcement for the U.S. Treasury Department, told reporters during a brief news conference that the Westgate mall attack marks what has long been seen as “an evolution in terrorism.” Instead of targets like the Pentagon and World Trade Center that now have far more security since 9/11, attackers are focusing on sites with little security that attract large numbers of people.

At least 67 were killed over a period of days at the Westgate mall, more than 60 of the dead were civilians. The Somalia-based al Qaeda-allied terror group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack as it was ongoing but investigators are still trying to determine exactly who planned the strike, where they are and what is next for them. U.S. authorities in Uganda, fearing another similar incident in Africa, issued a warning late last week.

Citing a recent call for al Qaeda “brothers to strike soft targets, to do it in small groups,” Noble said law enforcement is now facing a daunting task.

“How do you protect soft targets? That’s really the challenge. You can’t have armed police forces everywhere,” he told reporters. “It’s Interpol’s view that one way you protect soft targets is you make it more difficult for terrorist to move internationally. So what we’re trying to do is to establish a way for countries … to screen passports, which are a terrorist’s best friend, try to limit terrorists moving from country to country. And also, that we’re able to share more info about suspected terrorists.”

In the interview with ABC News, Noble was more blunt and directed his comments to his home country.

“Ask yourself: If that was Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Noble said, referring to states with pro-gun traditions. “What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.”

“For me it’s a profound question,” he continued. “People are quick to say ‘gun control, people shouldn’t be armed,’ etc., etc. I think they have to ask themselves: ‘Where would you have wanted to be? In a city where there was gun control and no citizens armed if you’re in a Westgate mall, or in a place like Denver or Texas?'”

Prior to the Westgate attack, the gun control debate has been ignited time and time again in the U.S. in the aftermath of a series of mass shootings, including one in a movie theater in Aurora, Col., a suburb of Denver.

Murder By UAV Drone—US War Crimes In Yemen

“Between a Drone and Al-Qaeda”

The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen

October 22, 2013

The 97-page report examines six US targeted killings in Yemen, one from 2009 and the rest from 2012-2013. Two of the attacks killed civilians indiscriminately in clear violation of the laws of war; the others may have targeted people who were not legitimate military objectives or caused disproportionate civilian deaths.

Read the Report
ISBN: 978-1-62313-0701

Between A Drone and Al-Qaeda

“Two these attacks were in clear violation of international humanitarian law—the laws of
war—because they struck only civilians or used indiscriminate weapons. The other four
cases may have violated the laws of war because the individual attacked was not a lawful
military target or the attack caused disproportionate civilian harm, determinations that
require further investigation. In several of these cases the US also did not take all feasible
precautions to minimize harm to civilians, as the laws of war require.”

Russian Suicide Bomb Sparks Terror Alert as Putin to Meet Muftis

 

By Henry Meyer & Ilya ArkhipovRussian investigators probed yesterday’s suicide bombing that killed six bus passengers in Volgograd as the southern region was placed on high alert hours before President Vladimir Putin meets Muslim clerics.

The suspected female suicide bomber arrived from the capital of the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan, disembarking from a bus that was en route to the Russian capital about an hour before she blew herself up in Volgograd, the Investigative Committee in Moscow said on its website today.

The bomber’s partner, an ethnic Russian Muslim convert accused of involvement in previous terror attacks, is suspected of preparing yesterday’s strike, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing unidentified law-enforcement officials. The regional government set the terrorist threat level at “yellow,” the second highest, meaning authorities have reliable information further attacks are possible.

The bombing is one of the biggest terror attacks in Russia since a suicide bombing claimed by Islamic militants killed at least 37 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport in 2011. Putin plans to discuss measures to prevent nationalist conflicts in Russia at a meeting of the State Council in Ufa, Bashkortostan. The murder of an ethnic Russian in Moscow earlier this month provoked the biggest nationalist riots in almost three years. Police have detained a suspect from Azerbaijan.

Unidentified attackers late last night smashed the windows and hurled two Molotov cocktails into a prayer hall of a private home belonging to a Muslim leader in Volgograd, RIA Novosti reported, citing the Interior Ministry. The fire was put out before it spread to other rooms, according to RIA.

Sochi Games

Volgograd, once known as Stalingrad, is located less than 700 kilometers from Sochi, the Black Sea resort that will host next year’s Winter Olympics. Russian federal troops have fought two wars after the collapse of the Soviet Union against separatists in nearby regions of the North Caucasus and violence by Islamic militants represents a continuing threat.

The Investigative Committee identified the six casualties of the explosion and said the bomb had the force equivalent to 500 grams to 600 grams of TNT. Volgograd’s airport was evacuated today after a report that a bag was left unattended, RIA Novosti reported. Thirty people injured in the blast remain hospitalized, according to Russian state television broadcaster Rossiya 24.

The Investigative Committee said 50 eyewitness and bystanders have been questioned in connection with the attack. Authorities were interrogating the suspected suicide bomber’s mother in Dagestan, the regional Dagestan capital on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, state-run RIA reported, citing unidentified local security officials.

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers accused in April’s Boston Marathon bombing, were immigrants of Chechen descent who had moved to the U.S. from Dagestan.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net; Ilya Arkhipov in Ufa, Russia at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net

Obama, Aren’t You Tired of Being Wrong?

U.S. tries to calm Saudi anger over Syria, Iran

US Seeking to Soothe France Over NSA Snooping

Mexican Government Shocked to Learn the U.S. Spies they Let into the Country Were Spying on Them

Obama faces tough task of soothing Pakistan relationship

 

Ultimately, the Free Syrian Army Is On Countdown To Liquidation

‘FSA headed to military elimination’

Interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley

Press TV has conducted an interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, about the crisis in Syria.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: With the Syrian army being able to gain more ground and kill more insurgents, just how do you assess the Syrian crisis at this point in time?

Tarpley: On the one hand, the military developments of the past 24 hours or so confirmed this pattern of slow, steady, inexorable progress by the Syrian army against the rebels, of course, facilitated by the fact that the rebels are avidly fighting among themselves, killing each other, assassinating each other’s leaders and so forth. This then leads to a very grim political situation for the rebels and their international backers.

There’s going to be a friends of Syria meeting – again, that ironically named gathering. They’re going to be meeting in London next week. They really are in total disarray.

On the one hand, the Syrian National Coalition, supposedly linked to the Free Syrian Army, now says that they will not attend any Geneva talks, although there are factions of them that say they might after all attend. Total confusion!

Then we’ve got, I think really, the symptoms of mental disintegration on the part of the backers of the rebels. For example, the Saudi government was offered a seat on the United Nations Security Council, one of the rotating seats, and Saudi Arabia says that they’re not happy with what the Security Council has done so they’re going to go home. It’s like a tantrum. They’re not going to participate in the Security Council. It’s really an absurd thing.

Then we have Secretary of State John Kerry who is reported to be under psychiatric observation for symptoms of schizophrenia. Two weeks ago he was praising the Syrian government for complete cooperation, total cooperation with the survey and inspection of the chemical weapons arsenal which are in the process of being eliminated, and then at the beginning of this week he then had a rage fit and began ranting about his personal opinion that President Assad is illegitimate and has to go. One week it’s “thank you to the Syrian government for your responsible behavior”, and this week it’s “but, by the way, you have to go”.

The political disintegration of this entire adventure couldn’t be any clearer.

Press TV: Briefly doctor, just how much can the Syrian crisis be solved diplomatically and speaking of diplomacy, just what are the chances for a successful Geneva II conference?

Tarpley: Well, it’s obviously important for people of goodwill to try to secure a diplomatic solution. That’s what Russia is doing. That’s what the Assad government has accepted. That’s what quite a number of other governments have supported.

But of course, the Syrian rebels are incorrigible. They simply will not negotiate and that’s the most recent authoritative word we have from the Syrian National Council. So, if they won’t negotiate, one might say that those same rebels are making a military solution at their expense inevitable. If they won’t cooperate with some political solution then only the military solution is actually left.

I suspect that it’s going to be a military solution at the expense of the rebels taking several more months. But I think the die is cast and the situation is going in the direction of the elimination of these micro-states or mini-state or emirates that the rebels have been creating in northern Syria which are absolutely intolerable for the people who live there. The popularity of these people as rulers is at an all time low and most Syrians would like to get rid of them.

At that rate, I think it’s going to be ultimately their military liquidation that will end this.

Author Claims Obama Govt Shutdown Intentional, Intended To Sabotage Repuglicans In 2014

Obama adviser ‘architect’ of showdown: author

 

By Carl Campanile

Top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett — dubbed “The Night Stalker” by some staff because of her close ties to the First Family — has been called the “architect” of the government shutdown showdown.

Photo: Getty

 

 

President Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett was behind a plan to force a showdown with Republicans over ObamaCare as part of a strategy to regain Democratic control of the House next year, claims author Ed Klein.

 

Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.

 

Klein, who is conducting a research for a new Obama tome scheduled for next spring, called Jarrett the “architect” of Obama’s take-no- prisoners approach when it comes to his signature domestic policy initiative.

 

It was Jarrett who advised Obama that voters would mostly blame Republicans if the federal government ground to a halt, providing a golden opportunity to swing back control of the House to Democrats in the 2014 mid-term elections, according to Klein.

 

A Democratic House would give Obama an opportunity to pass immigration and other legislation blocked by the current Republican majority.

 

“It was during one of those nightly sessions that Jarrett devised the no-negotiating strategy that Obama has employed in his fight with the GOP over the government shutdown,” Klein said, citing sources within the administration.

 

“Valerie came up with the concept late at night, after the kids and grandma and were gone.”

 

“She convinced the president that a government shutdown and default offered a great opportunity to demonize the Republicans and help the Democrats win back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2014 .

 

. . Valerie also came with the idea of using the words `hostage’, and `ransom,’ and `terrorists’ against the Republicans,’” Klein said.

 

Jarrett, who like the Obamas hails from Chicago, has deep ties to the president, First Lady Michelle and the extended family.

 

“Everyone in the Beltway knew Valerie Jarrett was influential. They didn’t know how influential she was,” said Klein, who interviewed more than a half dozen White House and former presidential advisers about the shutdown strategy.

 

“Her power derived from one simple fact — proximity, No one except Michelle Obama is closer to the president than Valerie,” Klein quoted Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan as saying. Jordan’s wife is a cousin of Jarrett.

 

Jarrett is the one who advised Obama “do not cooperate one iota on ObamaCare. Don’t given an inch. Let the Republicans stew in their own juice,“ Klein said.

 

“The Republicans walked into a trap set up by Valerie Jarrett and President Obama, The Republicans are in an untenable position,” he added.

 

Klein said Jarrett is the conscience of the administration, “the keeper of the flame” who reminds Obama why he wanted to become president.

 

“The government shutdown is about protecting ObamaCare, yes. But it’s much larger than that. It’s about the 2014 House elections,” said Klein.

 

The White House had no immediate comment.

Saudi Rejectionism Increases the Appeal of Iranian Help

Saudi rejection of UNSC seat signals a new Middle East power balance

Saudi Arabia’s astonishing decision to turn down a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reflects an ongoing realignment of power equations in the Middle East. Although the Saudi foreign ministry cited the UNSC’s failure to ‘decisively’ deal with Syria as a primary reason for its decision, the sudden about-face was as much a culmination of discontent with US handling of Middle East affairs. While Riyadh had emphasised its displeasure over Washington’s decision to reconsider military action against Damascus, it was left stunned by the recent thawing of US-Iran relations.

Underscoring the development is Washington’s newfound flexibility in the Middle East. Thanks to greater energy self-sufficiency — shale gas is predicted to make the US a net energy exporter in the near future — Washington can now take a more balanced approach to the Shia-Sunni conflict plaguing West Asia. Iranian oil exports — currently subjected to sanctions — can offset any reduction in Saudi production. Besides, if al-Qaida and its ilk are indeed Washington’s top security priority, then this leaves it with more room to put pressure on Riyadh to check petro-dollar fundamentalism which is mostly a Sunni affair.

Meanwhile, good relations with Iran can boost regional security, especially in the context of the impending American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Iran can become an important player in supporting stability to Afghanistan, benefiting both US and India. It’s welcome that the US and Iran have begun negotiations on the latter’s nuclear programme with Washington also contemplating easing sanctions. Washington must press for a breakthrough that would change the course of history in the Middle East. And New Delhi must offer its services as an honest broker — much as Islamabad served as a go-between during the Nixon-Mao rapprochement.

Are Chechen Terrorists In Syria Receiving Aid From USAID?

Photo claims to show ISIS linked Commander Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham in a USAID tent

Al Qaeda-linked Syria group enjoying USAID?

Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham — that is, “Caucasus and Syria.” His nom de guerre suggests that he has come from the Caucasus to wage jihad in Syria, and is one of the many international jihadis to take up the jihad against Assad.

In any case, if this photo is real, it indicates yet again that our leadership in Washington is utterly clueless, and that their assurances that we are aiding only “moderates” are completely hollow.

“Al Qaeda-Linked Syria Group Enjoying USAID? You’ve Got to See This to Believe It,” by Sara Carter in The Blaze, September 24 (thanks to Casey):

If this image is real, then it confirms the worst fears about U.S. aid to Syria falling into the hands of terrorists:

A photo circulating that purports to show Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) linked Commander Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham inside a USAID tent.

Recent images from the front line of the Syrian war suggest that terrorists are enjoying the small comforts of U.S. equipment and supplies that are meant to aide legitimate rebels, who are part of the Free Syrian Army. This appears to prove all the concerns among U.S. lawmakers and analysts that aid to the Syrian rebels could end up in the hands of Al Qaeda.

The photograph allegedly shows Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) linked Commander Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham, along with other rebels dawning battle-gear and an RPG, inside a USAID tent.

The terror group is known inside Syria by its acronym, ISIS. It is an Al Qaeda-linked jihad organization and recently it announced a campaign of “cleansing evil” at pro-Western opposition groups inside Syria….

Al-Zawahiri and the Rest of “Al-Q” ALL Work For Bandar

Prince Bandar

Jordan’s ambassador to Damascus: Prince Bandar is the real leader of the base

Syrian Ambassador in Amman:

Prince Bandar camped on the border with Jordan to secure support for terrorism mercenaries who are targeting Syria

Osama bin Laden is the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and al-Zawahiri Media Inc. The Bandar is the true leader

---

Participated in the dissemination of news:

Attacked the Syrian ambassador in Amman Gen. Bahjat Suleiman harshly Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and accused him publicly to stay in a special camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border to support terrorism. Suleiman said that Prince Bandar camped on the border with Jordan to secure support for terrorism mercenaries who are targeting Syria.

Saudi Arabia has rejected more than once the accusations and said it was fighting a war against “Al Qaeda” Prince Bandar also distanced himself from the Islamic jihadist organizations close to the ideology of al Qaeda. And multiple reports have talked about security and logistical activity and Saudi military in a border area near the center of the shield border between Jordan and Syria, where he took control of the Free Syrian Army Saudi support at the border post.

The real leader of the base
Suleiman described Prince Bandar as al-Qaeda leader and founder of the organization of real “Daash” in Syria, saying that Osama bin Laden is the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and al-Zawahiri Media Inc. The Bandar is the true leader. Mark Solomon, who resorted to several weeks of silence that Saudi Arabia is not qualified to teach the Syrian people for democracy and freedom, said in an interview broadcast by satellite fields that Saudi Arabia is seeking to play the role of a cop for not more than one country يتمظهر tribes, some bands sometimes look.

Bandar’s Terrorists Dispatch 4 Fully-Prepped Car Bombs To Lebanon

Nusra Front sent rigged cars to Lebanon: report

BEIRUT: The extremist Islamist Nusra Front sent four rigged cars to unknown areas in Lebanon, media reports said Sunday. Referring to a leaked memo, dated Oct. 18 and sent from the head of General Security’s unit in the Rafik Hariri International Airport to the chief of airport security, reports said that the Nusra Front had rigged a white Mercedes 300 with a fake license plate along with a gray Nissan Patrol Jeep. The two vehicles were rigged under the supervision of Palestinian Sheikh Abu Ammar Toufic Hijazi, from the Nusra Front, and Lebanese Kayed Ghadada, who allegedly replaced the deceased Omar Atrash. The memo said that the two rigged cars left the Bekaa Valley town of Arsal to unknown areas on Oct. 17. The third car was a black Mercedes 230 with forged Hezbollah signs and the fourth vehicle was a grey Blazer Jeep.

Clinton/Sharif Conversation —What About “Al-Qaeda”?—They Never Used That Alleged Name

Today’s news brought the following, US sought Pakistan’s help in 1998 to avert al-Qaeda attack: Document, which is a mediocre story at best, but the documents referred to in the report help to form a body of circumstantial evidence that the term “al-Qa’ida” was invented by the CIA.  The Economic Times report about Al-Q brings-up the question could two presidents have discussed what to do about an impending “Al-Qaeda” bombing without using the word al-Qaida?

Sharif told Clinton that the Taliban are “very stubborn” and “very uncooperative”, according to the document.

CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY DOCUMENT

EXCERPT:

If we look to the only other authoritative source about US Govt position on Bin Laden’s “Islamic Army,” CIA documents dated at or before the White House transcript, we find the following in the National Security Archives of GWU—

1998-09-02 – “Talking Points Regarding Usama Bin Ladin for the DCI’s 2 September 1998 SSCI Briefing,” Central Intelligence Agency.
[9/11 Commission Report – Chapter 4, Endnote 102]

Sometime between Sept. 2 and Sept. 22, the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, started calling the jihadists of Bin Laden “al-Qa’ida.”

1998-09-22 – [Title Excised]. “Terrorism: Incorporation of Ayman Zawahiri’s al-Jihad Organization into Usama Bin Ladin’s al-Qa’ida; Recent Activities of Egyptian Associates of al-Qa’ida,” Central Intelligence Agency Intelligence Report.
[9/11 Commission Report – Chapter 2, Endnote 82]

Deprive Israel and Saudi Arabia of An Enemy and They Will Collapse from Within

[When the Russians did the same thing to us, we had to invent our own enemies—the “Militant Islamists,” a.k.a., “Al Qaeda.”] 

Alexei Arbatov, “What we’ve done worst is to deprive you of an enemy”

Israeli and Saudi leaders could lose out if Iran deprives the US of its enemy

THE IRISH TIMES

Opinion: Previous offer from Tehran was dismissed by Bush’s neocons

President Hassan Rouhani: offered the Bush administration a “grand bargain” back in 2003/2004. Photograph: Reuters

Paul Gillespie

 

 

‘The Saudis’ worst nightmare would be the administration striking a grand bargain with Iran. ” Robert Gordon, US ambassador to Riyadh in 2001-2003, so highlights the potential significance of this week’s constructive talks in Geneva between Iran and six world powers, chaired by the European Union.

They are to reconvene in three weeks, encouraging speculation that a larger geopolitical shift might be possible if agreement is reached on Iran’s nuclear programme and economic sanctions are lifted. Relations between the US and Iran, frozen since the 1979 revolution, could be transformed – putting in question fundamental US policies and alignments in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Israel would be the main losers in any such realignment, or rather their existing leaderships would be.

Since they take US hostility to Iran so much for granted, it is not surprising that they and their allies in the US Congress are so hostile. These, up to now, highly influential actors have run into a qualitatively new element at play – the strong force of public opinion in Iran and the US in favour of diplomatic rather than military solutions to the conflict.

The Geneva talks recall Iran’s previous offer of just such a grand bargain made to the Bush administration in 2003-2004. They dismissed it in the euphoria of the Iraq invasion and neoconservative enthusiasm for regime change in the “axis of evil” including Iran.

After that the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005 and the nuclear programme was accelerated. Iran is entitled to nuclear energy, is a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and there is no proof it intends to build a nuclear weapon; but threatened with regime change does that option not make sense in a realist calculus of power politics?
Rouhani offer
The 2003-2004 offer came from Hassan Rouhani, then its chief nuclear negotiator and now president of Iran – having defeated hardline candidates decisively in the first round of June’s election on a 73 per cent turnout.

It included a nuclear deal, enhanced security, mutual respect and access to technology in return for Iranian recognition of Israel and a two-state settlement, help in stabilising Iraq, halting aid to Hamas in Gaza and a changed Iranian relationship with Hizbullah in Lebanon.

There is no indication as yet that any similar offer is now in prospect. Events since then cannot simply be rolled back, there is a different balance of power in both states and great scepticism in Washington about Iranian intentions from a commentariat still steeped in neoconservative nostrums about Iran’s dangerous regional role.

Nonetheless the intensity, candour and speed of this week’s talks deeply impressed US officials. All are mindful of how perilous the Middle East now is, and how open the region might be for change. The moment seems right for a realignment and it is not fanciful to sketch out scenarios.
Growing cleavage
The elements of what was on offer 10 years ago are still in fact highly relevant in Syria, for Israel, for Iran’s proxy force in Hizbullah and for the wider Arab region undergoing uprisings, deflected revolutions, frustrated reforms and a growing cleavage between Sunni and Shia Islam.

That should not be obscured by disbelief in Israel and Saudi Arabia, the two states whose leaders have a deep interest in spoiling change. Their disconbobulation recalls the remark Gorbachev’s advisor Georgi Arbatov made in 1989 to the West: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you: we are going to deprive you of your enemy”.

A US-Iranian grand bargain along these lines would force Israel to deal seriously with the Palestinian question and abandon creeping annexation of their land. It would leave the Saudis stranded with the Sunni opposition they have stoked up in Syria, having to rethink their support for the army in Egypt for fear of the Muslim Brotherhood.

They would have to confront a likely future when fracking in the US makes them a less indispensable source of oil, no longer the main arms purchasers and base hosts for the Americans and having, like other Gulf monarchies, to prepare their own societies for political change.

Above all such a bargain could de-escalate the sectarian cleavage in the Muslim world which Iranian-Saudi rivalry has brutally instrumentalised, reinforcing anti-Islamic stereotypes in Europe and elsewhere.

Obama needs a legacy and responded shrewdly by delaying military intervention in Syria, recognising the strong tide of US public opinion against it. Having failed to deliver on his pivot to Asia he will, one hopes, be tempted to pursue this bargain.

pegillespie@gmail.com

Another Spy-vs-Spy Explosion—This One In Egypt

Explosion at military intelligence building in Ismailia

Al-Masry Al-Youm

Reuters

A huge blast rocked the military intelligence building in Ismailia.

At least six soldiers were wounded in the car bomb explosion, security sources said.

No group has claimed responsibility, but Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in the largely lawless Sinai region have stepped up attacks on soldiers and police since the army toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsy in July. The militants have on occasion extended their campaign into major cities.

Military spokesperson Ahmed Ali said in a statement the bombing was “a continuation of the wave of cowardly terrorist attacks,” by groups he described as promoting strife.

Security personnel searching the area found another car bomb, which had not gone off, state media and security sources said. Heavy smoke could be seen rising from a building nearby.

The force of the blast caused part of the military intelligence building’s outer wall to collapse.

Some security sources said the bomb was planted in a car belonging to a doctor who lived in a nearby building.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

Was the MV SEAMAN GUARD OHIO Assisting Tamil Tigers’ Arms Smuggling?

[MV SEAMAN GUARD OHIO is a pre-deployed operator support vessel (OSV), owned by AdvanFort private security company of Herndon, VA.  Advanfort provides maritime guard service in a network guarding the High-risk Area between India and the Persian Gulf.  They offer the services of a contingent of allegedly “retired” US and Brit. Special Forces and intelligence agents, who supposedly provide expert guard service on the seas.

On the surface, it might seem as though this were all a legitimate operation.  Why would Indian authorities arrest all of the men if this was all above board?

We might be able to make a case, which implicates these former US Special Forces in assisting the Tamil Tigers to smuggle arms.  The ship was stopped twelve miles off the Indian coast, very near Sri Lanka.  Whether these men were actual military, or “private security,” the 35 arrested were all Americans.   They transported enough assault rifles and ammunition for the soldiers.

Evidence gathered online suggests that these guys may have been in contact with the Tamil Tigers, based upon known locations and ports of call linked to the ship. The vessel was offshore of UMM AL QAYWAYN, A.E. on 8/30/2013.  This is the home port for the “Sharjah network,” used by Victor Bout to supply the Taliban.  Near here is the LTTE-owned “Otharad Cargo” company, the center of Tiger gun-running and human-trafficking network, where Sri Lankan boat people are sold passage on boats which are often loaded with weapons.

The Seaman Guard “left Kochi 45 days ago” (SEE:  Kochi, a haven for the defeated Tamil Tigers/LTTE) 

The Seaman Guard was following the same route used by Otharad Cargo.  Perhaps the weapons carried for a large squad of men were simply handed over to the Tiger fighters at the end of the line?]

[From FLEETMON.]

The ship SEAMAN GUARD OHIO announced DRIFTING as its next destination via AIS.
The estimated time of arrival is 2013-08-30 07:10 UTC.

The SEAMAN GUARD OHIO called for the port of Ash Shariqah and left it on 06/30/2013.

US ship with arms was in Indian waters for a month

The vessel berthed in Kochi on August 23 to pick up provisions but no declaration was made of arms on board.

By Arun Janardhanan, TNN |

CHENNAI: The seizure of MV Seaman Guard Ohio off Tuticorin in southern Tamil Nadu for carrying heavy weapons and ammo on board without clearance has once again exposed chinks in Indian maritime security. Sources told TOI that the ship owned by a US-based security firm named AdvanFort was in Indian waters for nearly a month and was spotted repeatedly before it was intercepted and detained on Saturday.

The vessel berthed in Kochi on August 23 to pick up provisions but no declaration was made of arms on board. It sailed out after three days for Sharjah and then returned to Indian waters, said sources in the office of the director general of shipping. There have been concerns of unregulated floating armouries moving in the Indian Ocean region. These vessels claim to provide security to merchant vessels against pirates and offer storage of arms for a fee when the ships visit a port where weapons aren’t allowed.

The Union home ministry has now sought a report from the state after the interception of the vessel by the Coast Guard. The case was investigated by the marine police wing before being handed over to the intelligence branch.

However, experts feel that the intelligence wing of TN police, which has been handed over the probe, is ill-equipped to deal with a case that demands knowledge of maritime technology. Commodore R S Vasan, former eastern regional commander of Indian Coast Guard, said the investigation should be handed over to National Investigation Agency (NIA). The Union home ministry’s own protocol evolved after the Mumbai attacks suggests that such a case should be handed over to NIA or CBI. The mercantile marine department (MMD), which has expertise in retrieving voyage data records, too, is yet to step in.

Preliminary investigations found that the Sierra Leone flag-bearing MV Seaman Guard Ohio, which earlier bore the name Kaio Maru, entered Indian waters by the second week of September, after it left Sharjah. Sources said the Indian Coast Guard had repeatedly spotted the vessel in the last four weeks, but chose not to inspect it, for unknown reasons. “This is a major security breach,” said a senior security official. Only at 10.30pm on October 11 did the coast guard assign a tracking vessel. At 3.30am on Saturday, it intercepted the ship 12 nautical miles east of Tuticorin port. The ship was found to be carrying 31 assault weapons and 5,000 rounds of ammunition. On board were 10 crew members and 25 ‘security guards’.

Officials at the Kochi Port Said the vessel did not make any declaration of arms when it was berthed on August 23. “On statutory provisions, it sailed out on August 26 without any inspections on board,” said an official.

Maritime safety experts who are advisers to central investigation agencies said lack of coordination between different agencies delaying a proper investigation might spoil chances of retrieving crucial communication including its voyage details. “There is no logic to the delay in handing over the case to NIA or CBI,” said a consultant to NIA on maritime affairs. “We should not forget that a two-week delay in retrieving satellite and communication data from Italian vessel Enrica Lexie helped the crew members tamper with evidence.”

The MMD headquarters in Chennai said they are not yet part of the investigation. Sources in the investigation team said they are yet to retrieve voyage date recorder (considered the ‘black box’ of a vessel) and other communication equipment on board the vessel, which would help reveal the route, communication and wireless messages the ship transmitted since it entered the Indian waters.

“The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah.”

[THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM….WAR IS POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS.]

“The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah.”

“It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship.

In this New World Order the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands.”

— Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, ‘La Revue de Paris’, p.574, June 1, 1928

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Saudi Royals Should Be Made To Suffer For Their Criminal War Against In Syria

Saudi Arabia rejects seat on U.N. Security Council, says 15-nation body unable to solve world’s crises

Prince Saud Al-Faisal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud (R), Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, delivers a speech next to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 26, 2012. / Getty

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia is rejecting its seat on the U.N. Security Council and says the 15-member body is incapable of resolving world conflicts.

The move came just hours after the kingdom was elected as one of the Council’s 10 non-permanent members.

In a statement carried on Friday by the official Saudi Press Agency, the Saudi Foreign Ministry accused the Council of having “double standards” and failing in its duties toward Syria.

It says this alleged failure enabled Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime to perpetrate the killings of its people, including with chemical weapons, without facing any deterrents or punishment.

The Council remained divided for more than two years over taking action against Assad’s government, with his allies Russia and China using their veto power as permanent members to block resolution after resolution aimed at imposing tough sanctions.

Finally, Russia and the U.S. found common ground just weeks ago, agreeing to a mandate for international inspectors to destroy Assad’s vast chemical weapons stockpile and manufacturing capabilities. That hard-won agreement, however, does nothing to address the ongoing war with conventional weapons, which has already claimed more than 100,000 lives.

Hopes for a negotiated peace are currently pinned on an international summit aimed at getting both sides to agree to a transitional government. That summit, known as Geneva II, is meant to take place in November, and a Syrian official said earlier this week that it had been scheduled for near the end of that month. Western officials have not confirmed the date commitment, but Secretary of State John Kerry said this week it was “urgent” to make it happen.

The Ministry also says the Council has not been able to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the past decades and has failed to transform the Middle East into a zone free of weapons of mass destruction.

In the Middle East, the prize of peace is now there for the taking

As with Kennedy and Khrushchev or Nixon and the Chinese, resolution of conflict only comes when we reach out to our enemies and negotiate.

• Email

 

• Hans Christof von Sponeck, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann and Denis J Halliday

 

US president Richard Nixon with China’s premier Chou Enlai, left, and Shanghai Communist party leader Chang Chun-chiao during his 1972 visit. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

 

In February 1972, US president Richard Nixon made a “surprise” visit to China, recognising Mao Zedong’s communist regime and opening the door to the more or less peaceful relations that have prevailed ever since between the two countries. Although Nixon had built his political career on the anticommunist campaigns that were in part a reaction to the “loss of China” in 1949, he was then following in the footsteps of General Charles de Gaulle, who had established diplomatic relations with China eight years earlier, in 1964, because, as De Gaulle said, one must “recognise the world as it is”, and “before being communist, China is China”.

In 1973 Nixon and Henry Kissinger signed the Paris accords that put an official end to the US war in Vietnam. A decade before that, John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev resolved the Cuban missile crisis by, on the Soviet side, withdrawing missiles from Cuba, and, on the US side, by promising not to attack Cuba and withdrawing missiles from Turkey.

These events changed the course of history away from endless confrontation and the risk of global war. It must be remembered that neither China nor the Soviet Union nor North Vietnam met western standards of democracy, less so in fact than present-day Iran. De Gaulle, Kennedy, Nixon and Kissinger were no friends of communism and, on the other side, neither Khrushchev, Mao nor the Vietnamese had any use for capitalism and western imperialism.

Peace is not something to be made between friends but between adversaries. It is based on a recognition of reality. When countries or ideologies are in conflict, there are only two issues: total destruction of one side, as with Rome and Carthage, or peace and negotiations. As history shows, in the case of the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam, peace was a precondition that made the internal evolution of those countries possible.

During recent decades, when it comes to the Middle East, the west has forgotten the very notion of diplomacy. Instead, it has followed the line of “total destruction of the enemy”, whether Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the Assad regime in Syria or the Islamic Republic of Iran. That line has been based on ideology: a mixture of human rights fundamentalism and blind support for the “only democracy in the region”, Israel. However, it has led to a total failure: this policy has brought no benefit whatsoever to the west and has only caused immense suffering to the populations that it claimed to be helping.

There are signs that the situation is changing. First, the British and then the American people and their representatives rejected a new war in Syria. Russia, the US and Syria reached an agreement over Syria’s chemical weapons. US president Barack Obama is making moves towards honest negotiations with Iran, and the EU’s foreign policy chief and Iran’s foreign minister judged talks just concluded in Geneva as “substantive and forward-looking”.

All these developments should be pursued with the utmost energy. The planned second Geneva conference on Syria must include all internal and external parties to the conflict if it is to constitute an important step towards finding a solution to the tragedy of that war-torn country. The unjust sanctions against Iran, as in the earlier case of Iraq, are severely punishing the population and must be lifted as soon as possible.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his supporters are staunchly opposed to these moves towards peace. But they must realise that we might start asking questions about the biggest elephant in the room: Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. Why should that country, alone in the region, possess such weapons? If its security is sacrosanct, what about the security of the Palestinians, or of the Lebanese? And why should the US, in the midst of a dire financial crisis, continue to bankroll a country that superbly ignores all its requests, such as stopping settlements in the Occupied Territories?

The west must understand that before being Ba’athist or Islamist, or communist in the past, countries are inhabited by people possessing common humanity, with the same right to live, regardless of ideology. The west must choose realism that unites over ideology that divides. It is only then that we will move towards achieving our real interests, which presuppose peaceful relations between different social systems and mutual respect of national sovereignty.

Ultimately, our interests, if well understood, coincide with those of the rest of mankind.

• Hans Christof von Sponeck was UN assistant secretary general and United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann was president of the UN general assembly between 2008 and 2009 and foreign minister of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990

Denis J Halliday was UN assistant secretary general from 1994-98

To A Saudi Royal, Every Democrat Is An Iranian Spy

[Abdullah may call himself a “king,” but he is no brighter than the Wahhabi devils who advise him and wrap him in his cloak of legitimacy.  The Arab regals are not even up to the moral standards of the inbred European monarchies, which they would love to emulate.  Real kings understand that their people hold the ultimate power, the irresistible Power of the People, and sane regals, therefore, at least pay attention to their people (through the millions of ears of the bureaucracy), enabling them to understand that ordinary criticism is NOT “sedition.” 

The primitive, degenerate Saudi minds (or should that be “retrograde” minds?) cannot grasp the concept of “democracy,” at all.  If they see people joining together to claim their God-given rights, then it must be the result of “outside” subversion.  “It must be Iran’s fault.”   If their subjects, or even the subjects of their friends, dare to understand certain concepts, in particular, the basis of democratic rights, then they become dangers to Saudi, or Jordanian, or Bahraini totalitarian rule. 

For so-called “religious” leaders, they are truly imbeciles, in that they cannot grasp the fact  that God Himself has given every living being a natural birthright to Life itself, the Freedom to live that life as he or she wills it, and the Right to try to pursue whatever makes us happy, or fulfilled during our lives.  I cannot truthfully say that I am sorry for the many mental shortcomings of the Saudi royal family, since they are boxing themselves in to the same fate as Bashar al-Assad, except perhaps, for the helping Russian hand. 

By listening to the liar, Netanyahu, the Saudi king has fallen under the hypnotic Zionists’ spell, believing the obvious lie that either Saudi Arabia, or Israel can remain standing in the sea of instability churning around them, without direct American intervention.  Together, their unholy union has sounded the alarm to all of their neighbors, arousing all sane individuals to the struggle to eliminate them both.  Both Tel Aviv and Riyadh are living on borrowed time.  Riyadh should be making peace with the Shia minority while they still have the prerogative to do so.]

peter.chamberlin@hotmail.com

“What is often overlooked is that Gulf rulers tend to conflate external ideological threats with internal political dissent. Put differently, Gulf reformists and dissidents are frequently seen to be the agents (or potential agents) of outside powers who are bent on destabilizing Gulf monarchies.”  

What to Make of Saudi Hand-Wringing

Frederic Wehrey

Senior Associate
Middle East Program

@FWehrey

These are troubling and uncertain times for Saudi diplomacy. A string of regional upsets and friction with the United States has cast the kingdom into rocky, uncharted waters. Washington’s support of the Islamist government in Egypt and its response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria elicited outrage and accusations of U.S. unreliability and even betrayal from Riyadh. Then came the slight warming in U.S.-Iranian relations—highlighted by the unprecedented phone call between U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. That mild rapprochement brought to the fore an old specter: an U.S.-Iranian breakthrough that marginalizes the Gulf states and erodes their long-standing position as beneficiaries of U.S.-Iranian hostility.

On the editorial pages of Saudi newspapers, columnists have sounded familiar themes with new levels of intensity: The Gulf is being shut out of regional negotiations. The United States was duped on Syria and Iran. The Gulf needs to adopt a more muscular, unilateral approach to safeguard its own interests, and it should cultivate new security patrons to compensate for U.S. capriciousness, perfidy, and retreat from the region.

But what does this latest round of hand-wringing, protest, and introspection really mean in terms of new directions in Saudi foreign policy?

If history is any guide, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf more generally, will continue to pursue policies that align with the broad contours of U.S. strategy—but with a creeping preference for hedging and unilateralism that will, in some cases, clash with U.S. interests. It is in the Gulf’s domestic landscape that the sharpest breaks between Saudi and U.S. views are emerging: regional tensions have enabled a harsh security campaign against a wide range of dissidents, the rise of sectarianism, and the troubling use of censorship.

A Wake-Up Call in Egypt

A key trigger for the recent round of misgivings in the Gulf was Washington’s tepid and confusing approach to the Egyptian military’s ejection of the Muslim Brotherhood government, which had been in power in Egypt since June 2012. In July 2013, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a military coup that ousted Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi from the presidency. At the time, the United States solicited Saudi and Emirati back-channel help in imploring Sisi to reach a peaceful compromise with Morsi, but there is ample evidence that the Gulf states were working at cross-purposes with Washington.

Riyadh’s ultimate interests lay in the unequivocal end of the Brotherhood government and the quashing of Brotherhood protests. The ruling al-Saud family fears that the Brotherhood’s ideology and political activism could animate opposition inside the kingdom and challenge Saudi Arabia’s quietist form of Salafism. In the aftermath of the Brotherhood’s ouster, King Abdullah chided U.S. policymakers for “supporting the very terrorism they call for fighting against.” Together with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, the kingdom quickly promised $12 billion in aid to the military regime.

In the Saudi press, commentators defended the move as being made to advance Riyadh’s overarching objective of stability in Egypt not to further an intentional campaign against the Brotherhood. Having an unstable Egypt on top of parallel crises in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, these voices argued, would be simply too much for the kingdom to bear. Moreover, Riyadh’s backing of Sisi was a matter of simple expediency: Saudi Arabia had a long-standing relationship with the Egyptian military, so the army was a natural partner.

According to prolific columnist Khaled al-Dakhil, Saudi aid is intended to pave the way for a resumption of Egypt’s regional role in opposing Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq. He also explained that the current military arrangement should be a transitional bridge to an Egyptian government that is even more predisposed to Saudi interests.

Regardless of the desired end state, the messages underlying Saudi policy and the ensuing commentary are clear: the United States is increasingly hesitant, weak, and indecisive—and Saudi Arabia (along with the UAE and Kuwait) cannot afford to wait while Washington vacillates.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, some observers have argued that the seemingly one-sided U.S. position toward the Brotherhood heralds a major rift in U.S.-Saudi relations. Comparisons are made with the Arab-Israeli war and the oil embargo imposed by Saudi King Faisal in 1973, implying that when confronted with a choice, Saudi Arabia will always stand on the side of Arab fraternity rather than with the United States. Other voices advocate greater ties to Russia and France as a means to counterbalance the warming of U.S.-Iranian relations. Such warnings are not new and are in line with a general trend that sees Gulf states attempting to broaden contacts with China, European governments, India, and Russia.

The Syrian Chemical Weapons Bombshell

On top of the Egypt debacle, Obama’s decision not to take military action against Syria and the U.S. administration’s acceptance of a Russian-backed deal to dismantle the country’s chemical weapons stockpiles further shook Saudi policy.

Riyadh has been backing the Syrian opposition with the intent of toppling the Assad regime, eroding the power of the Syrian Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, and clipping Iran’s influence in the Levant. Working with Turkey and Jordan to provide funds and weapons to its favored rebels, Saudi Arabia recently gained an edge over its competitor, Qatar, which had been backing Brotherhood factions in the opposition. Riyadh has also tried to strike a blow against al-Qaeda-allied factions by sponsoring the creation of a new Syrian Salafi umbrella grouping, the so-called Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam). In a parallel track, Riyadh is backing secular-oriented strongmen in Syria who would preserve the Syrian security bureaucracy but would eliminate the inner circle of President Bashar al-Assad and marginalize the Syrian Brotherhood.

In the initial wake of the Syrian chemical weapons attack in August 2013, pro-government Saudi commentators seemed relieved that Obama had “finally decided to enforce his redline” and launch a military strike in response to the Assad regime’s actions. In the ensuing deliberations over a U.S. strike, Saudi officials pushed for an overwhelming operation that would decapitate the regime. Saudi leaders were among the signatories of a statement at the G20 calling for military action, and they reportedly offered economic incentives to lobby Moscow to back down from its opposition to a military strike. But the limited scope of the planned attack, followed by the deferral of authorization to U.S. Congress, was decried in Riyadh as a catastrophic move that would empower al-Qaeda in Syria.

Saudi hopes were further dashed with the passage of the UN Security Council resolution that demanded Assad turn over Syria’s chemical weapons, which Saudi commentators saw as a “ploy” that had tricked an unsuspecting Obama into prolonging the conflict, thus ensuring the survival of Assad. Some wondered whether a chemical weapons deal still meant that regime change was on the table. Even worse than the dwindling possibility of a military strike, one columnist argued, was the snub to Saudi steadfastness: the U.S.-Russian agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and leave Assad in power had marginalized “regional actors” (that is, the Gulf states, Jordan, and Turkey) who were carrying the lion’s share of the burden in backing the opposition. Moreover, the cooperation of those actors is essential to a lasting solution. Instead of striking Syria as he promised, one observer noted, Obama had struck his longtime allies in the Gulf.

At the diplomatic level, Saudi Arabia’s official displeasure over Syria was reflected in the cancellation of its UN General Assembly speech, although the hidden subtext behind this protest was the remarkable set of conversations between U.S. and Iranian officials.

Fears of a U.S.-Iranian Breakthrough

The Iranian president’s tentative steps toward bilateral engagement with the United States, although certainly far from a Nixon-in-China breakthrough, are disconcerting for Saudi Arabia on a number of levels. One commentator argued that it is precisely the prospect of an incomplete and circumscribed rapprochement—what he terms “the politics of the minimum”—that is so dangerous for other countries in the region (the Gulf and Turkey) because it gives Iran more space to maneuver but leaves unchecked the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ ability to meddle in Saudi Arabia’s neighbors.

Familiar and overhyped themes of betrayal have also resurfaced: any compromise on the Iranian nuclear file will come at the expense of Arab Gulf states and Arab countries in general. In tandem, these commentators raised the fear of Iran reassuming the role of the Gulf’s policeman that it played during the era of the shah, with Obama’s backing. For others, it is not so much the danger of rapprochement—they agreed that U.S.-Iranian reconciliation would be good for regional peace—but rather the fact that the Gulf states are being sidelined, especially on a potential regional settlement of the Syrian crisis. “The road to Tehran goes through Moscow and Riyadh . . . only after Damascus,” trumpeted the headline of one op-ed in al-Hayat.

Also at play here is a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran stemming from their contested views about the U.S. role in the region and specifically the Gulf. Iran sees Saudi Arabia as America’s local proxy, responsible for inviting American forces to the region, where they have encircled the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia sees Iran’s attempt to project power and break free from this encirclement as a form of hegemonic ambition in the region.

The disagreement over the U.S. presence is rooted in an imbalance of national power that has existed in the Gulf since the days of the shah. Recognizing their weakness compared with Iran’s, the Gulf have always solicited an external power (whether the British or the Americans) to balance Iran. Tehran, for its part, has made routine calls for the ejection of “extraregional forces” (read: the United States) and for the Gulf to be policed through a Gulf-only security architecture—an arrangement that is a nonstarter for Riyadh because it would relegate the kingdom to the status of junior partner to Tehran.

This fundamental asymmetry is made worse by the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, which have invited meddling and inflammatory rhetoric by both sides. Iran’s nuclear ambitions also add fuel to the fire, and the Saudis remain deeply suspicious of any solution short of full suspension of enrichment or the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Greater Hedging in Store

In assessing these trajectories, it is important for policymakers to take the long view in U.S.–Saudi Arabia relations. They should accept that warnings of U.S. impotence in the face of regional threats, moves toward unilateralism, and solicitation of new security patrons are hardly new. They surfaced at the height of Iraq’s civil war, when Saudi voices goaded Washington into taking a more active role in curtailing Iranian influence. The warning signs once more became clear in the midst of the 2006 Lebanon war, when these same figures warned that “pan-Arab” files—Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine—were being wrested from Gulf hands by Iran and Hezbollah. And the hand-wringing appeared again in the wake of the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that downgraded the Iranian nuclear threat and during the U.S.-Iranian-Iraqi trilateral talks in Baghdad in May 2007.

In many respects, recent lamentations in the Gulf press arguing that Saudi Arabia’s support for the Syrian rebels came too late are reminiscent of previous admissions that the Saudis failed to develop a plan for safeguarding their interests in a post-Saddam Iraq and thus ceded the strategic advantage to Iran. Among those currently calling for a remedy to these past mistakes, Khaled al-Dakhil has been the most articulate in demanding a more muscular and unilateral Saudi foreign policy. He attributes the kingdom’s diplomatic setbacks to a long-standing overreliance on soft power—financial and diplomatic tools—rather than on building up its own military capability. More directly, he argues that Saudi Arabia needs to be a player in the regional balance of power (that is, military might), not just in the balance of interests.

Echoing this, the editor in chief of Asharq al-Awsat, whose views are often believed to signal those of King Abdullah, makes a similar case. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, he advises, should act in the region as if Washington does not exist. The United States and the West will invariably follow the Saudi lead, as they did in Egypt and will do, eventually, in Syria. Toward Iran specifically, there are similar calls for the Gulf to leverage its newfound economic and political power to thwart a potential Western-Iranian alliance or backdoor deals made against the Gulf.

At least one writer, Jamal Khashoggi, opposes this school of thought, arguing that its timeworn tropes should be jettisoned. The Saudis need to overcome their excessive fear of a secret U.S.-Iranian alliance that would hurt Gulf interests. The Middle East, he notes, is capable of containing all of the region’s countries, including Iran and Turkey, and reconciliation with Iran is in everyone’s interests. He also contends that the idea of a regional policeman role in the Gulf, played by either Iran or Saudi Arabia, is exaggerated given the enduring presence of U.S. troops and the apparent stalling of the U.S. pivot to Asia.

The actual trajectory of Saudi diplomacy may lie somewhere in the middle of the two extremes articulated by these writers, for a number of reasons. For one, the road to a real breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian relations—to say nothing of a more modest nuclear détente—will be longer and more uncertain than both Saudi alarmists and Washington optimists believe. If and when it occurs, its effect on U.S.-Gulf relations and the broader region is likely to be less seismic and transformative than is commonly assumed. Saudi Arabia will continue to embrace U.S. diplomatic and defense cooperation for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, Washington is still the only game in town, given Europe’s disarray and China’s unwillingness to shoulder a security burden for the region.

In addition, Saudi Arabia may find that the so-called Sunni front it is leading against Iran is becoming increasingly diluted. In fact, consensus among the Gulf states about Iran, the Arab uprisings, and the regional order has always been more elusive and fractured than outside appearances imply. Competition and crosscutting policies have been the norm, whether in the form of Qatari-Emirati rivalry during Libya’s revolution, Qatari-Saudi competition in Syria, Kuwait’s abstention from meaningfully contributing to the Gulf’s Peninsula Shield forces that deployed to Bahrain to quell the uprising there, or Oman’s deviating from the norm by maintaining good relations with Iran.

This absence of clear unanimity in the Gulf, combined with the momentum of U.S.-Iranian talks, leave Riyadh few options. Moving forward, it is likely to follow in the broad wake of U.S. policy, but with a greater preference for hedging. It may pursue multiple, overlapping policy initiatives as a form of insurance, some of which may clash with U.S. strategies and goals. This is evident most recently in Syria with Riyadh’s sponsorship of the Army of Islam, which is intended to undercut al-Qaeda but which also weakens Washington’s favored clients in the Syrian rebel joint military command, the Higher Military Council.

Saudi Arabia may actually be spurred to pursue its own unilateral initiative toward forging greater ties with Iran in the wake of Rouhani’s professed desire for better relations and moves toward dialogue with Washington. Despite the common assumption of an immutable and primordial rivalry based on sectarian and geopolitical differences, Riyadh and Tehran have shown the propensity to temper sectarian tensions and cooperate on areas of shared interest. Conflict regulation between the two sides has emerged in areas where both governments have realized that continued confrontation harms their respective national interests and economies. Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 war was one such instance; there are signs that the two sides may eventually reach similar exhaustion over Syria. Yet, even under the most favorable outcomes, there are still limits to just how far a warming can go because of Saudi domestic politics, the power of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and the fragmented state of the Middle East regional order.

The Domestic Backlash in the Gulf

If there is a real chasm opening between Saudi Arabia and the United States in light of regional developments, it may not be on the foreign policy front at all, but rather in disagreements over how the Gulf states are conducting their internal affairs in response to regional tumult. What is often overlooked is that Gulf rulers tend to conflate external ideological threats with internal political dissent. Put differently, Gulf reformists and dissidents are frequently seen to be the agents (or potential agents) of outside powers who are bent on destabilizing Gulf monarchies.

This dynamic has been manifested lately in a Gulf Cooperation Council agreement on internal security coordination: states will share blacklists; intensify roundups of reform activists, dissidents, and expatriates believed to be tied to Hezbollah, Iran, or the Brotherhood; and link censorship efforts. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are also attempting to depoliticize clerics by muzzling those who make public reference to events in Syria and Egypt. In the UAE, the ripple effects—mostly from Egypt but also from Syria—have been felt in dragnet arrests of Brotherhood activists. In Bahrain, the security backlash has been particularly corrosive. The regime of King Hamad Al Khalifa recently forbade political societies, most pointedly the Shia grouping Al Wefaq, from meeting with foreign diplomats or NGOs. In the state-controlled media, there have been repeated accusations that Shia activists in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are proxies for Iran.

While these worrisome trends are unlikely to seriously jeopardize the survival of Gulf regimes, they are creating a toxic political environment. In the midst of the heady developments on Iran and the continuing impasse in Syria, U.S. policymakers must not lose sight of these domestic dynamics.

The author is grateful for the research assistance provided by Carnegie Junior Fellow David Bishop.

Saudis and Emirates Seek Offensive US Weapons Before Anticipated Breakup With Superpower

[The Saudis and the UAE are attempting to purchase large quantities of long-rang “stand-off” missiles, anti-ship missiles, bunker-busters and F16 datalink pods for control of the electronics in the missile systems sought.  They are trying to make the unprecedented purchase of all of these systems right in the middle of a possible breakup with the US over Saudi hijacking of US foreign policy in the wrong direction.  The fact that there have been no loud Israeli objections to the sale only confirms the Israeli/Saudi military union (SEE:  Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips into View).  King Abdullah must have been drinking Bandar’s “Kool-Aid,” if he is thinking of going up against Iran.]

Gulf states request stand-off weapons

Jeremy Binnie, London – IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly

15 October 2013

Seen here in a 2003 test, the AGM-154C version of the JSOW has a two-stage penetration warhead. Source: US Navy

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are interested in acquiring new air-launched weapons that will allow them to carry out precision ground attack strikes at stand-off ranges, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) revealed on 15 October.

A senior US defence official announced in April that Washington had agreed to supply the two Gulf states with “more advanced weaponry than we’ve sold before”, but the munitions involved were not identified.

The DSCA revealed that the munitions include Raytheon AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOWs), Boeing AGM-84H Standoff Land Attack Missiles – Expanded Response (SLAM-ERs), and Boeing GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs).

While Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been allowed to buy advanced European weapons for their Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Mirage fighters, the only land-attack missiles they currently have for their US jets are AGM-65 Mavericks, which entered service in 1972, as well as anti-radiation missiles.

The JSOW is a 1,000 lb-class glide bomb with a range of 130 km when launched from high altitude, meaning strike aircraft could remain outside the engagement envelope of many air defence systems.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have respectively requested 973 and 1,200 of the AGM-154C variant, which has a two-stage warhead for penetrating hardened targets. It uses an inertial navigation system (INS) with GPS updates for mid-course guidance and, unlike the other variants, has an imaging infrared (IIR) terminal guidance system that is locked on to a target by the pilot.

The SLAM-ER is a further development of the land-attack variant of the AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile. It has a range of 280 km and also has an IIR seeker for terminal guidance. Saudi Arabia has requested 650 SLAM-ERs and the UAE 300.

Both countries have also requested the AWW-13 datalink pods that feed IIR imagery from the AGM-154C and AGM-84H weapons back to the pilots, with Saudi Arabia asking for 60 and the UAE 30.

The GBU-39/B SDB is a 250 lb-class (130 kg) glide bomb that uses a GPS-aided INS guidance system and has a maximum range of about 110 km. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have requested 1,000 and 5,000 SDBs respectively. The latter’s request also includes BRU-61 carriage systems, which allow four SDBs to be carried on a single hardpoint.

Unlike the UAE, Saudi Arabia has also requested AGM-84L Harpoon Block II missiles, which have INS/GPS guidance systems that allow them to engage targets on land as well as at sea.

The DSCA said the estimated costs of the Saudi and Emirati requests, which include associated equipment and support, are USD6.8 billion and USD4 billion respectively. If the proposed sales go ahead, the weapons will be used with Saudi Arabia’s Boeing F-15SA and the UAE’s Lockheed Martin F-16E/F multirole fighters.

Bandar Cannot Supply His Boys In Syria Without the US—Saudi Arabia Is A Parasite Power

Click to access 143-syrias-metastasising-conflicts.pdf

Saudis struggling to supply Syrian rebels: ‘We are not in the arms dealing business’

Special to WorldTribune.com

LONDON — Saudi Arabia has been struggling in supplying weapons to the Sunni revolt in Syria, a report said.

The International Crisis Group reported that Saudi Arabia, deemed the leading ally of the Sunni rebels, was finding it difficult to maintain the flow of effective weapons in the war against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

New recruits attend military training to be part of the Free Syrian Army. /Reuters

In a report, ICG said Saudi Arabia, which took over sponsorship of the revolt from Qatar in June 2013, has been hampered by inadequate supply routes, tension with Turkey and U.S. restrictions on the transfer of American weapons sold to the Gulf Cooperation Council kingdom.

“We found it harder to do than we thought, because we are not in the arms dealing business,” the report, quoting a Saudi official, said. “We are not authorized to use our own military arsenal because of our agreement with the U.S. prohibiting third-party transfers. So it took us more time.”

Titled “Syria’s Metastasising Conflicts,” the report said Saudi Arabia provided what the official termed was “some ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades” to unidentified rebel militias. But the official said the arms were insufficient in quality and quantity.

“What the opposition really needs are landmines in order to target tanks, as well as long-range rockets and surface-to-air missiles,” the official was quoted as telling ICG in November 2012.

Other officials said Saudi Arabia, which the report asserted was working closely with Jordan, was not directly aiding the rebels. They said the cash stemmed from both individual Saudis as well as Syrian exiles in the GCC kingdom.

“They transfer cash from bank accounts in Europe which we do not regulate, and they do it for a good cause,” the official told ICG. “But that means it might end up with groups on the ground that differ from the ones we would like to support.”

As a result, rebel militias have been switching affiliations depending on their foreign suppliers. The report, released in June 2013, said the changing allegiances was greatest in northern Syria, where the militias were in constant search for more funding and equipment.

“Erratic flows of weapons, ammunition and money in turn have given rise to a messy landscape of factions vying for resources, fighting over spoils and reshuffling their alliances,” ICG said in the report. “Newly-minted
guerrilla fighters tend to flock to whatever group has more guns and bullets, irrespective of its ideological leaning; offers superior opportunities for personal enrichment; or, in contrast, enjoys the most impeccable  reputation.”

Turkish Artillery Fires On Saudi-Backed Islamists In Syria—Still Backing FSA Losers

Turkey says it fires at Islamist militants in Syria

AFP/Getty Images

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Turkey’s army said on Wednesday it had fired on al Qaeda-linked militants in northern Syria after a stray mortar bomb hit Turkish territory, highlighting the growing threat from radical groups over its southern border.

Fighters from the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have seized territory in parts of Syria near the Turkish border in recent weeks, leaving the already fragile frontier even more vulnerable.

Turkey’s general staff said the army had fired four artillery shells on Tuesday at ISIL positions around Azaz, a strategic area around 5 km (3 miles) from the frontier seized by the al Qaeda-linked fighters last month.

Turkey has repeatedly carried out such retaliatory action when fire from Syria has hit its soil in the past but this appeared to be the first time it had targeted ISIL militants.

The move comes as Turkey, a key backer of the Syrian opposition, faces accusations from Western allies that it has allowed arms and foreign fighters to cross into northern Syria, facilitating the rise of radical groups, a charge it denies.

Turkey has maintained an open-door policy throughout Syria’s two-and-a-half-year conflict, sheltering half a million refugees and allowing the Syrian opposition to organise on its territory. But it denies arming the rebels.

The military said a mortar bomb was fired from the Azaz/Parsa mountain area of northern Syria at around 1:30 p.m. (1030 GMT) on Tuesday and landed, unexploded, 450 metres (1,500 feet) east of a military border post at Demirisik in Kilis province.

“In response to this situation, four shells were fired by two Firtina (Storm) howitzers at positions of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in the Azaz/Parsa mountain,” it said.

It was not clear if the shells caused any damage.

Fighting around Azaz between ISIL and rebels from the local Northern Storm brigade prompted Turkey to briefly close its border crossing last month, a lifeline for Syria’s rebel-held areas which allowed humanitarian aid in and refugees out.

Divisions among the rebels have hurt their fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s better equipped and organised forces. Tensions have been rooted partly in conflicting ideologies, but more often in disputes over resources, land and the spoils of war. (Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Roche)

 

Beautiful Kurdish Eyes

Pale eyed portraits of Kurdistan

“Most striking of all is the fact that nearly all have stunning blue eyes – unusual among Middle Eastern peoples for whom liquid dark brown is the norm.”

 

Haunting photographs offer insight into the lives of refugees forced from their homes by the conflict in Syria

• French photographer Eric Lafforgue travelled to refugee camps near the town of Erbil in northern Iraq
• Erbil is part of Kurdistan, an unrecognised autonomous statelet handed to the Kurds after Saddam Hussein’s defeat
• Many of Lafforgue’s subjects have been forced out of their Syrian homes after being bombed out of their homes

 

By Ruth Styles

Staring into the camera, the girl’s striking blue eyes are full of unshed tears. And she isn’t alone. The girl in the polka dot headscarf and her family are just some of the thousands of people who have crossed the border into Iraq in a bid to escape the slaughter in Syria.

Although the raging civil war has cost her family their home, the girl is luckier than most. An ethnic Kurd, she has managed to escape the fighting that has taken the lives of thousands of her compatriots as well as the bouts of ethnic violence that have taken the lives of Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran over the last century.

Now she and other Kurdish refugees are the subject of a series of stunning photographs by French snapper Eric Lafforgue who travelled to Iraq last month to meet them.

Refugee: This girl, a Syrian Kurd, was forced to flee with her family to a refugee camp in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil after her home was bombed

 

 

Bandar to escalate Syria conflict

All plots by Saudi prince Bandar to escalate Syria conflict!

As Syria’s rebels refuse to take part in Geneva-2, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the primary state-backer of rebel groups now trying to escalate the Syrian conflict and topple President Bashar al-Assad by force.

 

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – When President Vladimir Putin met with Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia in August, the newly appointed Intelligence Chief reportedly tried to cut a deal with Moscow by promising to buy billions in Russian arms and pledging not to challenge Russian gas sales to Europe in exchange for withdrawing support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Though later refuted by the Kremlin, the media reports suggested that Bandar told Putin to forget about any political solution to the Syrian conflict.

 In addition to being the main propagator of a militant anti-Shia form of Islam that many rebel fighters subscribe to, the Saudi monarchy has become the chief financier of anti-Assad movements aimed at toppling the Syrian government and weakening its allies in Iran and Hezbollah. Russian diplomatic sources claim that the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus was carried out by a Saudi-black op team with support from the Liwa Al-Islam group, a hardline militia headed by the son of a Saudi-based Salafi cleric.

 Following the attack in August, Saudi Arabian diplomats pressured Obama to take military action – the collective message was, “You can’t as president draw a line and then not respect it.”

 The Saudi strategy consisted of staging the August 21 attack that Assad’s forces would be credited with, and using it to support foreign intervention to topple Damascus.

 The landmark chemical weapon disarmament deal hatched by Russia tripped the House of Saud and prevented US unilateral actions against Syria, but Assad’s opponents are by no means ready to explore a political solution to the conflict.

 Washington claims to be working towards Geneva-2, but, like many rebel groups, maintains that Assad should resign before any talks take place. Essentially, this position is a form of blackmail of Russia and Assad’s allies – it calls for either the Western-backed opposition in exile to absorb executive power, or a prolonged military conflict. Assad’s opponents are not serious about a political solution, as demanding that one party resigns as a precondition before the other party can negotiate completely undermines the premise of dialogue to begin with.

A civil war within a civil war

 The main feature of the Syrian battleground is that armed groups of the opposition are becoming more and more split and prone to infighting.
Recent fighting between the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant group against battalions linked to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army have killed dozens in Aleppo; this discord between rebel groups paints of a picture of what Syria could look like even if Assad is toppled.

 The levels of instability seen today in Libya and Iraq are an indication of how bad things can get when lawless militias are empowered in the absence of a central governing authority. If Assad’s opponents had their way in Syria, dozens of groups would take advantage of the post-Assad power vacuum to vie for control. This means that although the Baath-dominated political establishment would be toppled, it would certainly not result in an end to the conflict, only the beginning of a new and more ruthless chapter.

 The Free Syrian Army is increasingly losing clout on the ground as rival groups refuse to take orders from their command structure, which is gradually being viewed with suspicion by other rebel battalions due to its links with Washington.

 Islamist factions such as Al-Nusra Front, the Farouq Brigade, and Jaish Al-Islam seek to form a new caliphate with Damascus as its capital. This new state would be subservient to Saudi Arabia and its brand of ideological Wahhabism and it would reject an inclusive secular framework; it would be hostile to Alawites, Shia, Christians, and anyone branded an “unbeliever.”

 In this scenario, Syria would become a global hub for jihad and those foreign fighters who took part in the war would return to their home countries and potentially carry out similar tactics used in Syria, posing a potential threat. The Pandora ’s Box of radicalism has already been opened in Syria, and the only chance of closing it will come through a partnership between the Syrian government and those groups who allege to be moderates.

Moderate war criminal vs. Radical war criminal

 The distinction is often made between the radical Islamist elements and the more secular and moderate elements of Syria’s opposition, but it should not be forgotten that both camps are widely credited with war crimes by various human rights organizations.

 Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a compelling report detailing a systematically planned campaign against civilians in the pro-government Alawite-stronghold of Latakia, where nearly 200 innocents were killed by means of torture, beheading, and execution. Although the report details how several private donors from Persian Gulf countries contributed funds to rebel groups, the report falls short in its failure to ask tough political questions about the sources of funding.

 Syria’s opposition militias are more mercenaries than rebels, and the significant resources they’ve amassed signal massive state-sponsorship. Saudi Arabia and the CIA have been the principal financiers of rebel groups, and although it is publically denied, the massive influx of arms they’ve provided for the conflict have empowered radical elements in Syria – to gloss over these realities would be negligent.

 As the chief of Saudi Intelligence, Prince Bandar is now building a new strategy that would see Riyadh’s central foreign-policy goal of toppling Assad realized. As long as that goal comes to fruition, the secular or radical orientation of the militias really does not make a difference.

 Bandar’s aim is to broaden Saudi Arabia’s regional clout so as to position himself strategically when the next royal succession takes place. As Washington and Riyadh evidently have no interest in a political solution, a new pretext would be required to escalate the conflict to force Assad out. If chemical weapons are used again, Assad can either be blamed for their use or blamed for allowing rebels to capture his stockpiles. Intervention can be justified on the basis of “punishing” Assad or under the mandate of peacekeeping and humanitarianism.

 If the work of the foreign inspectors, tasked with dismantling Syria’s chemical stockpiles, is disrupted, or if either party harms OPCW personnel, this can also be another channel that would allow Washington to threaten Assad with unilateral strikes and other consequences. If the Obama administration is truly interested in resolving this conflict, it should tell Bandar to halt and freeze its aid to the rebels in exchange for dialogue with Assad, with no preconditions under the framework of Geneva-2.

Washington State Liquor Board Approves Rules for State Marijuana Industry

Liquor board approves rules for state marijuana industry 

Posted by Matt Kreamer

The Associated Press

Washington state has approved rules for its new legal marijuana industry.

After nearly a year of research, planning and public hearings, the three-member state Liquor Control Board adopted the rules today.

The regulations cover everything from the security and size of licensed marijuana gardens, to how many pot stores can open in cities across the state.

Washington and Colorado voted last year to legalize marijuana and allow its sale for recreational use at state-licensed stores. In Washington, supporters hope the sale of taxed pot to adults over 21 might bring the state tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

The proposed rules allow up to 334 pot stores to open in Washington. The stores are expected to open by next summer.

Colorado approved its marijuana industry rules last month.

I-502 Washington State Draft_Rule_Summary_VII_9-17-13 

September 16, 2013
Proposed Rules Highlights
Revised: September 16, 2013
LCB Rulemaking Objective
o Creating a tightly controlled and regulated marijuana market;
o Including strict controls to prevent diversion, illegal sales, and sales to minors; and
o Providing reasonable access to products to mitigate the illicit market.
LCB Role and Responsibility
o Ensuring public safety is the top priority;
o Creating a three-tier regulatory system for marijuana;
o Creating licenses for producers, processors, and retailers;
o Enforcing laws and rules pertaining to licensees; and
o Collecting and distributing taxes.
Timeline
December 6, 2012 Effective date of new law
September 4, 2013 File Supplemental CR 102 with revised proposed rules
October 9, 2013 Public hearing(s) on proposed rules (time and location TBD)
October 16, 2013 Board adopts or rejects proposed rules (CR 103)
November 16, 2013 Rules become effective
November 18, 2013 Begin accepting applications for all three licenses (30-day window)
December 1, 2013 Deadline for rules to be complete (as mandated by law)
December 18, 2013 30-day window closes for producer, processor and retailer license applications
Proposed Rules Highlights
License Requirements
 30-day Window
o The LCB will open registration for all license types for a 30-calendar-day window (November 18, 2013)
o LCB may extend the time or reopen application window at its discretion
 State Residency Requirement
o I-502 requires a three month state residency requirement (all license structure types)
 Background Checks
o Personal criminal history completed by applicant. Risk of license forfeiture if incomplete or incorrect.
o Fingerprinting of all potential licensees
o Background checks of license applicants and financiers
 Point System
o The LCB will apply a disqualifying point system similar to liquor
o All applicants must disclose all arrests and/or convictions
o Non-disclosure of arrests regardless of conviction will result in point accumulation
September 16, 2013
 License Limits
o Licensed entity or principals limited to three producer licenses
o Licensed entity or principals limited to three processor licenses
o Licensed entity or principals limited to three retail licenses. Multiple-location licensees not allowed to hold more than 33 percent of the allowed licenses in any county or city.
 Production Limits
o The maximum amount of space for marijuana production is limited to two million square feet.
o Applicants must designate on their operating plan the size category of the production premises and the actual square footage in their premises that will be designated as plant canopy. There are three categories:
 Tier 1: Less than 2,000 square feet;
 Tier 2: 2,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet;
 Tier 3: 10,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet.
o The LCB may reduce a licensee’s or applicants’ square footage designated to plant canopy for the following reasons:
 If the total amount of square feet for production of all licensees exceeds the two million square feet maximum, the LCB will reduce the allowed square footage by the same percentage.
 If 50 percent production space used for plant canopy in the licensee’s operating plan is not met in the first year of operation, the board may reduce the tier of licensure.
 If the total amount of square feet of marijuana production exceeds two million square feet, the LCB may reduce all licensees’ production by the same percentage or reduce licensee production by one or more tiers by the same percentage.
 Maximum Allowable Amount on Licensed Location
o Producer license
 Outdoor or greenhouse: 125 percent of its year’s harvest
 Indoor: six months of its annual harvest
o Processor license
 Six months of their average useable marijuana (plant material); and
 Six months average of their total production (finished product).
o Retailer license
 Four months of their average inventory
 Licensed Location: 1’000 foot Measurement*
o Distance will be measured along the most direct route over or across established public walks, streets, or other public passageway between the proposed building/business location to the perimeter of the grounds of: an elementary or secondary school, playground, recreation center or facility, child care center, public park, public transit center, library or arcade where admission is not restricted to those age 21 and older.
*Important Note Regarding the 1,000 foot Measurement: The LCB will file an emergency rule on October 16, 2013, that will revise the current language regarding the 1,000’ buffer. The language in the emergency rule will state: “The distance shall be measured as the shortest straight line distance from the property line of the licensed premises to the property line of an elementary or secondary school, playground, recreation center or facility, child care center, public park, public transit center, library or arcade where admission is not restricted to those age 21 and older.”
September 16, 2013
 Costs and Fees
o $250 application fee
o $1,000 annual renewal fee
o Additional fees for background check and filing for local business license
 Taxes
o License applicants must submit a signed attestation that they are current on taxes owed to the Washington State Department of Revenue
 Insurance
o Licensees are required to carry commercial liability insurance.
Public Safety
 Producer Structures
o Rules allow producer operations in secure: indoor and outdoor grows as well as greenhouses
 Traceability
o LCB will employ a robust and comprehensive traceability system (software) that will trace product from seed/clone to sale.
o LCB enforcement can match records to actual product on hand
 Background Checks
o Personal criminal history form
o Fingerprinting of all potential licensees
o Background checks of licensees and financiers
 Point System
o LCB will apply a disqualifying point system similar to liquor (exceptions for possession)
 Violation Guidelines / Standard Administrative Procedures Act Guidelines
o $1,000 criminal penalty for sales to a minor
o Sets strict tiered system of violation record over a three year period
 Group 1 public safety:
 First violation: 10 day suspension or $2,500
 Second violation: 30 day suspension
 Third violation: license cancellation
 Local Authority Objections
o Substantial weight will be given to a local authority during the renewal process based upon chronic illegal activity associated with the licensee’s operation of the premises.
 Child Resistant Packaging
o Specific requirements for marijuana and marijuana-infused products in solid and liquid forms
 Security and Safeguards
o Alarm and surveillance video camera requirements (including minimum pixels and lockbox encasement)
September 16, 2013
o Strict transportation and record keeping requirements (no third party transport of product)
o Hours of operation limited to 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.
 Advertising Restrictions
o Law restricts advertising within 1,000 feet of schools, public parks, transit centers, arcades, and other areas where children are present.
o May not contain statements or illustrations that are false or misleading, promotes overconsumption, represents that it has curative or therapeutic effects, depicts a child or may be appealing to children
o All advertising must contain two statements: a: “This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming.” And, b) “Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination, and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug.”
 Limits on Retail Stores
o Total number or retail outlets limited to 334 statewide
o LCB to provide advance notice to local authority
o Per I-502, LCB to determine number of retail outlets per county
 BOTEC Analysis Corporation provided initial county consumption levels
 Retail stores allocation proportionate to population and consumption
Consumer Safety
 Behind the Counter Storage
o No open containers or handling of product
o Sniff jars with sealed, screened-top lids allowed
 Strict Packaging and Label Requirements
o Limited servings and concentration per package
o Lot number
o Warning label
o Net weight
o Concentration of THC
o Usage warnings (specific warning for ingestible foods/liquids about effect delays)
o Upon request
 Third party lab that tested lot and results
 All pesticides, herbicides, fungicides found in product
 Defined Serving Size
o Defined serving sizes on marijuana-infused product label
 10 mg of THC per serving
 100 mg of THC per product
 A single unit of marijuana-infused extract for inhalation cannot exceed one gram
 Transaction Limits on Concentrates (extracts)
o A single transaction is limited to seven grams of marijuana-infused extract for inhalation
September 16, 2013
 Lab Tested and Approved (monograph)
o All lots will be tested by independent accredited labs
o Established and uniform testing standards
o Quality assurance testing
 Store Signage and Product Warnings
o No minors allowed in stores
o Required product and usage signs within stores
For more information regarding Initiative 502, please visit the Liquor Control Board website at http://www.liq.wa.gov.
###

 

Photos of Israeli “Spy-Eagle,” Captured/Killed In Southern Lebanon

Pictures .. Eagle Israeli espionage in an atmosphere Kesserwan

 

 

 

 

Has not surprised many people hear the news of the arrest of a client Israelis in Lebanon, but surprising that this client birds جارحا , as a group fishing enthusiasts in the town of Achkout in the district of Kesrouan of catching eagle ” باشق ” on the weekend , was found in the post he holds a transmitter on his back, and bracelet نحاسيا a leg written upon “Israel ” in English, followed by letters to symbolize the University “Tel Aviv” , in addition to a third device implanted in the body is connected to the external transmitter .

With reference to this kind of work the Israeli spy and gather information already been revealed the arrest of birds carrying similar devices in Saudi Arabia in 2010, and Turkey 2012 and Egypt in 2013, and identified as listening devices Israeli vehicle of this type of bird , sparking uproar media and political tension between those countries and Israel.

High-level security source confirmed in connection with the site يبانون Devalt , said security forces began their investigations to uncover the mystery bird and nature of the device that holds and technical specifications which is a very sensitive file can not be tolerated at all.

maharat news
2013 – October – 15

Senate Leaders’ Agreement Extends Debt Limit to Feb. 7

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reached an agreement on a compromise that would fund the government until Jan. 15 and extend the debt limit until Feb. 7.

Senate Leaders’ Agreement Extends Debt Limit to Feb. 7 as Cruz Steps Aside

 

WASHINGTON

By ABBY D. PHILLIP and JEFF ZELENY

US Credit at Risk as Default Deadline Looms

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reached an agreement on a compromise that would fund the government until Jan. 15 and extend the debt limit until Feb. 7.

“This compromise we reached will provide our economy with the stability it desperately needs,” Reid, D-Nev., said on the Senate floor today.

“This has been a long challenging few weeks for Congress and for the country,” McConnell, R-Ky., added. “It’s my hope that today we can put some of the most urgent issues behind us.”

The proposal would also require income verification for people receiving health insurance premium subsidies from the federal government and it would ensure that the Treasury Department has the authority to use “extraordinary measures” to extend temporarily the debt limit, if necessary.

And in a bid to potentially prevent a replay of this crisis, the House and Senate would appoint a new committee to negotiate a budget for the remainder of the year, with their agreement due by Dec. 13.

With less than a day remaining before the debt limit is reached, Congress needs to work feverishly to pass the legislation that would also end the partial government shutdown.

A major obstacle that could have complicated plans to move the Senate proposal today appears to have been alleviated now that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has said he would not block a vote.

“There’s nothing to be gained from delaying this vote one day or two days,” Cruz told reporters today as Senate leaders announced the deal on the floor. “I never had any intention of delaying the timing of this vote.”

Of the deal, Cruz lamented that it does not provide “relief” to Americans from the Obama health care law.

“The United States Senate and the Washington establishment are doing nothing to provide relief to the American people,” he added.

The second potential obstacle could come in the House, where Speaker John Boehner is faced with a decision about whether he will take up the Senate’s compromise first, a procedural move that could dramatically speed up the process of approval by Congress.

If he does take it up, he would need to rely on Democratic votes.

The speaker has not made a decision, a spokesman said today.

Boehner and the House Republican Conference were scheduled to meet behind closed doors this afternoon in the Capitol to provide his members with an update on the way forward.

Boehner suffered a major loss Tuesday when his proposals to end the impasse twice did not appear to have enough votes from Republicans to pass on the House floor.

And the Senate’s proposal was not expected to include much of what conservative Republicans could support, which could make its path in the House rockier.

Ted Cruz’s Hometown Newspaper Regrets Endorsement

Time is not on Congress’ side, so the best prospects for the bill’s passage could involve starting the process in the House of Representatives. In that scenario, Boehner would take the Senate’s compromise to the House floor in a procedural move designed to speed up the process of passage because filibusters are not allowed in the House.

In a second scenario, the Senate would move first and work with members to avoid objections that could slow down the bill’s progress. The bill could move quickly in the Senate, but only if Senators do not object.

If Boehner insists on passing legislation with a majority of his caucus, he would be forced to amend a Senate proposal. Democrats, on the other hand, have encouraged him to take up the Senate’s proposal with help from Democratic votes. But such a scenario would be a damaging political defeat for a Republican House speaker who has already struggled to corral his strong-willed caucus.

Either way, however, Republicans now face the reality that they will not get any major concessions from Democrats in exchange for raising the debt limit and re-opening the government. It will be an ignominious end to a saga that has ravished the party in public opinion polls and has raised doubt in financial markets that the two political parties are capable of resolving their differences.

Neither the Senate plan nor the House’s short-lived proposal defunded or postponed President Obama’s health care law, which was the center of tea party Republican demands for re-opening the government.

And even more modest concessions put forward by Boehner — for example to repeal the unpopular tax on medical devices and repeal government subsidies for congressional and administration staffers’ health care — could not get enough Republican support to pass.

All eyes will be on financial markets today as the clock ticks closer to zero hour for the debt limit.

Asked whether there are concerns about how the markets will react tomorrow, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that they would be heartened by signs of progress.

“Obviously we want to get this done as quickly as possible for the good of the country, the markets, etc but the markets should know that right now it’s not done yet but we’re on a good track,” Schumer said Tuesday night.

ABC News’ Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

The Anatomy of a Breakdown

Tess Pennington
Ready Nutrition

 

 

 

 

 

 

If we can all agree on one thing, it’s that the government and disaster organizations alike grossly underestimate how dependent the majority of the population is on them during and after a disastrous event takes place. We need not look any further than the last major disasters that have occurred to find our answers: the Haitian earthquake that occurred in 2010, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2011 super tornado of Joplin, MO, and even as recently as Hurricane Sandy.

As preppers are well aware, when the needs of the population cannot be met in an allotted time frame, a phenomena occurs and the mindset shifts in people. They begin to act without thinking and respond to changes in their environment in an emotionally-based manner, thus leading to chaos, instability and a breakdown in our social paradigm.

When you take the time to understand how a breakdown behaves and how it progresses, only then can you truly prepare for it.

The Anatomy of a Breakdown

This glimpse into a systemic breakdown is based on an isolated, limited disaster or event where emergency responders have been deployed. I must emphasize that all bets are off if the event is wide spread, affecting multiple tens of millions of people simultaneously.

Phase 1: The Warning

Although disasters such as earthquakes and tornadoes can come on so quickly that timely warnings are not always given, for the most part, governments typically provide adequate time to get a population ready in advance. Local governments even go as far as to err on the side of caution and sternly warn the citizens to evacuate.

For one reason or another, there will be a select group that stays behind. Some of these citizens are prepared and ready for what may come and may feel the need to stay to defend what is rightfully theirs but the majority of the population will not be ready for what they are about to endure. Those that are in this unprepared majority who choose to ride out the disaster do so because they are either unaware of how to fully prepare for disasters, have become complacent or numb to the heeds of warning from the local government and news media, or are overly confident.

This is the point in this cycle where herds of people go to the grocery stores frantically grabbing supplies. Most grocery stores will not be able to meet the demand of the people’s need for supplies, and many could go home empty handed.

Bracing for the disaster, the prepared and unprepared will be hoping for the best outcome. What many do not realize is the hardest part of this event is soon to be upon them. Within days, the descent into the breakdown will begin.

Phase 2: Shock and Awe (1-2 Days)

After the initial shock wears off  of the disaster, many will have difficulty in coping and adapting to what has just occurred. As they are  trying to wrap their thoughts around the severity of the disaster, their losses and what their future holds, local government leaders are scrambling for answers and trying to assess the situation.

At this point, the unprepared survivors will be expecting organizations and local government to step in to meet their immediate needs at any moment. The reality of the situation becomes more bleak when they realize that due to downed power lines or debris blocking roadways and access points, emergency organizations, emergency response and distribution trucks supplying food, water, fuel and other pertinent resources will be unable to get to the area. Once the realization hits that resources are scarce and the government leaders are incapable of helping them in a timely fashion, desperate citizens will take action into their own hands.

The breakdown has begun.

Phase 3: The Breakdown (3-7 Days)

Have you ever heard the saying, “We’re three days away from anarchy?” In the wake of a disaster, that’s all you have is three days to turn the crazy train around before crime, looting and chaos ensue. In reports during the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, residents from Staten Island were pleading for help from elected officials, begging for gasoline, food and clothing.

“We’re going to die! We’re going to freeze! We got 90-year-old people!” Donna Solli told visiting officials. “You don’t understand. You gotta get your trucks down here on the corner now. It’s been three days!”

Similar stories of looting occurred during the tornado in Joplin, MO of 2011. This time, the looting occurred from national guard soldiers patrolling the area.

“The night of the tornado, as emergency responders rushed from one shattered home to the next, Steve Dixon sat outside his father’s destroyed house with a baseball bat. They wouldn’t see me sitting here in my chair, I was in the dark,” he told NPR. “I’d turn my bright spotlight on them and tell them they needed to move on. Then when the police came by, I’d tell them which way they went.”

Multiple factors contribute to societal breakdowns including failure of adequate government response, population density, citizens taking advantage of the grid being down and overwhelmed emergency response teams.

For whatever reason, 3-5 days following a disaster is the bewitching hour. During this short amount of time, the population slowly becomes a powder keg full of angry, desperate citizens. A good example is the chaos that ensued in New Orleans following the absence of action from the local government or a timely effective federal response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In such troubled times, people were forced to fend for themselves and their families, by any means necessary. This timeline of Hurricane Katrina effectively illustrates “the breakdown,” and within three days, the citizens of New Orleans descended into anarchy, looting and murder (Source).

If this scenario isn’t bad enough, at the end of this time frame, there will be an increase in illnesses due to cramped living quarters from emergency shelters, sanitation-related illness, compromised water sources and exposure to natural elements. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, sanitation- related epidemics became a large concern for the disaster victims. In fact, the outbreak erupted into the world’s largest cholera epidemic despite a huge international mobilization still dealing with the effects of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake (Source).

Victims from Hurricane Sandy are also beginning to see their share of illnesses. Due to the horrible weather plaguing the area, many of the evacuation shelters in Brooklyn were closed last week for sterilizing due to a vicious viral outbreak that struck.

Phase 4: Recovery (8-30+ Days)
Despite what we want to believe, most recoveries are slow and difficult in progression and require long-term planning. On average it takes a city around 1-2 weeks after the event took place to start this phase of the cycle. Every disaster is different and the length of recovery efforts vary greatly on the nature of the incident.

7 years after Hurricane Katrina leveled parts of Louisiana, the state is still in the recovery phase.. ”We are in a process of long-term rebuilding,” said Christina Stephens, Spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority. “There is at least another 10 years of recovery.” (Source)

Within this recovery phase, essential goods and resources could will still be hard to come by, thus forcing local officials to implement the rationing of resources to ensure there is enough for the population. We are seeing this right now with the gasoline rationing in New York.

It could be months before the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy is cleaned up. Damaged communities are coming to terms with the devastation that delivered an unprecedented punch to the region’s economy, causing more than an estimated $50 billion in losses and forcing hundreds of thousands to rebuild their lives. (Source)

Don’t Be Another Statistic

Now that you understand what we’re dealing with, there are ways you can use this information to prepare for the next event so that you will be a part of the population that is ready for what may come.

Trust yourself. Learn to be self-sufficient and rely on yourself. When it is all said and done, you are the only one who can care for yourself and your family the best. You will be the one who has your family’s best intentions at heart. Having a stock of your family’s favorite canned or dry goods, a supply of water and a simple medical kit can maintain your basic needs for a short-lived disaster. This simple preparedness supply could set you apart from the unprepared.

If you live in a highly populated area, understand that resources will diminish quickly, so preparing beforehand can circumvent this. You can always start out with the basic 10 preparedness items you will need to skirt through a disaster:

1. Food and alternative ways to cook food
2. Water
3. Fuel for generators, cooking stoves and mantels, charcoal for outdoor grills
4. Batteries
5. Generator
6. Emergency lighting
7. Ice
8. Medical supply
9. Baby formula
10. Sanitation supplies

Or, if you want a more comprehensive supply, take a look at the 52-Weeks to Preparedness series.

Educate yourself. Learn from the disasters, folks! Each time there is a disaster, the same pattern occurs: the warning, shock and awe, the breakdown and recovery. Study the effects of disasters that effect your area and what items you will need to get through the event. Further, find the weak points in your preparedness supply and correct them. Supply inventories twice a year can do wonders in this area.

Get into the mindset. Learning what to do in the face of a disaster or how to care for your family during extended grid-down emergencies can put you well ahead of the race. The more prepared you are, the faster you are at adapting to the situation. You can learn anything as long as you research, gather and apply the information. For example, while many on the East coast were still in shock from Hurricane Sandy and were sitting in their homes panicking and watching their perishable food items go bad, those that had learned how to survive in off-grid, cold environments were well prepared for this type of disaster, and had already begun packing their perishable items in the snow to preserve them. It’s that simple!

Practice makes perfect. Practice using your skills, your preps and prepare emergency menus based around your stored foods. The more you practice surviving an off-grid disaster, the more efficient you will be when and if that event occurs. Moreover, these skills will keep you alive! For a list of pertinent skills to know during times of disaster, click here.
Further, to make your family or group more cohesive, cross-train members so they can compensate for the other during a disaster.

In summation, only until we see the cycle for what it is and the effects it has on society will we be able to learn from it. There is always a breakdown in some form or fashion after a disaster. If you can prepare for this, you will be able to adapt more quickly to what is going on around you.

The cycle is there and we can’t look past it. Prepare accordingly and do not overlook ensuring you have your basic preps accounted for.

Tess Pennington is the author of The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals. When a catastrophic collapse cripples society, grocery store shelves will empty within days. But if you follow this book’s plan for stocking, organizing and maintaining a proper emergency food supply, your family will have plenty to eat for weeks, months or even years. Visit her web site at ReadyNutrition.com.