Monday, November 30, 2009

Alex Jones and Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts on The Alex Jones Show 1/3:The Ugly Truth



My response to the above video:



This blogger's email: stevengerickson@yahoo.com

Am I considering becoming a Patriotic US Ex-Patriot? That questioned asked, and maybe answered [click here]

[click here] for post called, "Coming to America"

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If I was to have thugs out looking to kill me, I'd have thought it would be because of my political activism and the testing of Free Speech. I sold cars for a used car dealer for about the last year. I found out he allegedly was one of the bigger powdered cocaine dealers in the area in the past, maybe he's still involved, I don't know. He seems to have kept his organized criminal associations. The boss of the used car dealer seemed to like grabbing male butts, making inappropriate sexual advances towards men, and even seemed to want to, or did, grab male genitalia of work associates and/or employees. I covertly shot video and some it can be seen if you click on the link below. So, Lanoue might have to worry about being arrested and being civilly liable. Allegedly hiring killers was his first reaction to covering up his wrongdoing.

The former sales manager of the used car dealership told me that Mark Lanoue had hired heavily tattooed thugs to come up from New York to find me. Mark knows plenty of people that would cheaply, or maybe even for free, just beat me up and probably get away with it. So, to hire out of town thugs, I assumed it was a murder-for-hire plot. I was tipped off the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Mark Lanoue threatened my life when he fired me. I immediately stopped staying where I was living and where I could be easily be found. So, I have basically been in "semi-hiding" since about September 4, 2009. Had I been living life as I normally did before Sept. 4, I would probably have been killed. Mark Lanoue claims to own the police in New Hampshire and Vermont, so if that is true, there would have been no real investigation.

So, I wouldn't have assumed I'd be stalked, terrorized, and have to worry about being murdered for just having wanted to earn a living, be left alone, and live. Riding a motorcycle, a Harley, and writing about what I do on the Internet, might be testing the limit too. I will never take my own life ... I love life too much.

[click here] for:

Bi-polar meltdown?



This guy, Mark Lanoue owns a used car lot in Brattleboro, Vermont, and lives on a lake in Spofford, New Hampshire. [more]

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... try and hide from someone who you think is trying to kill you and all you have to get around on is one of these:

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Coming to America


My Great Grandmother, Anna Sandness, emigrated from Norway to the USA. Her brother made her the jewelry box to take over aboard ship. The picture is of her jewelry box.


My Great Grandmother, Lena Cassatt's clock. She is of German and French descent.

I'm related to the French Impressionist Painter, Mary Cassatt, friend of Edgar Degas.

My Great, Great Grandfather Sven G. Erickson came from Sweden to settle in North Dakota. He lived in a sod house. Dirt cubes were cut out of the ground and a house was made. It is almost arctic cold in North Dakota. It was so cold, furniture was once burned in my Great, Great Grandfather's home. If they didn't do that to keep warm, I may not be here.

Will there be a push for Americans to consider leaving America to be "Free" and "American" elsewhere. I talk about the possibility of leaving for Costa Rica, Ecuador, or other destination in [this post].

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Steven G. Erickson questions Phil Donahue at a Free Press Event, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA:


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Steven G. Erickson's reason for wanting to live outside the US:


This blogger's email: stevengerickson@yahoo.com

http://thegetjusticecoalition.blogspot.com/


To share this post, click on white envelope below.

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OpEd News post with video [click here]

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Monday, December 14, 2009

US Rigged Courts





http://www.liveleak.com/user/SvenVonErick

Justice, Money, and Political Influence

Connecticut

ROBBERY ATTEMPT

No Jail For Ex-Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy's Son




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Someone without a record can be attacked on their own property can receive a year in prison for resisting being mugged, where is justice?

[more about judicial misconduct in Connecticut]

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[click here] for:

HPD Officer Robert Lawlor, "The Teflon Badge"


The "Teflon Badge", Hartford Connecticut Police Officer, Robert Lawlor









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A Norwalk, Connecticut, police officer, Matthew Morelli, allegedly committed suicide by holding an AK-47 out by its barrel, yeah right! There are allegations of all sorts of police misconduct including risk of injury to minors and worse. [more]


[click here] for blogger's fair use of copyrighted materials notice

http://judicialmisconduct.blogspot.com/

[click here] for Steven G. Erickson's main beef with the US legal system with docket # and other information.

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A Secret Police in America?


By Trutha Diver (about the author)


opednews.com Permalink


RAND lays out plans for the body snatchers.

If you don't think Americans can be pulled off the streets by a secret police for having controversial, and anti-establishment views, then think again. Search warrants are a thing of the past. And if you think the people will object against illegal arrests, then you have learned nothing from the last eight years. In poor societies that are on the verge of economic collapse it is more often the case that neighbors turn against neighbors, and any sense of community is restricted to intimate friends and family.

Every news headline out of Washington suggests America is a full-fledged police state. The kleptocratic government is hoping that Americans will squeal on each other, by encouraging distrust in communities, and advancing propaganda that serves the weakening of public morale. It is not outlandish to think that some Americans will tattle to the authorities about what they view as 'suspicious behavior', if a sizable amount of money is offered. And there's a lot of money to go around within the American government. Especially for pretty much anything intelligence or police related, making it very likely that Americans will seize on this economic opportunity in hard times, even if it means betraying their countrymen, and their own conscious.

But that's petty spying. The real treachery is being done in the NSA spying facilities that have been built across the country, including one in Texas, and another one in Utah, which is estimated to cost $1.5 billion dollars, and take up 1.5 million square feet. The high-tech surveillance capabilities in these facilities and others have been greatly expanded under Obama's administration. But the real dangers for individual liberty and public safety is the establishment of a highly trained secret police that will operate above the law, and behind the view of public scrutiny.

A new civilian policing agency, created for sophisticated and wide-ranging challenges like crowd control, intelligence operations, and analyzing high-level political threats, is being proposed by the RAND corporation for security stabilization in war-battered regions, and other hostile environments overseas, but it is possible that this same agency could potentially be used for domestic purposes. RAND says the advantages of a Stability Police Force (SPF) outweighs the political and economic costs, which they estimate could cost upwards of $1 billion per year, consisting of 6,000 highly effective agents, who will be able to do specialized tasks that are critical for establishing security. The report entitled A Stability Police Force for the United States, says:

Our analysis clearly indicates that the United States needs an SPF or some other way to accomplish the SPF mission. Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of U.S. foreign policy. Establishing security with soldiers and police is critical because it is difficult to achieve other objectivessuch as rebuilding political and economic systemswithout it. The cost of not fixing this gap is significant. The United States will continue to experience major challenges in stability operations if it does not have this policing capacity. These challenges include creating the ability to establish basic law and order, as well as defeat or deter criminal organizations, terrorists, and insurgents.

Of course, this means that traditional laws like the Posse Comitatus Act will have to be thrown completely overboard because they constrain the government from using the military for law enforcement activities in the United States.

And there are serious concerns about installing such an elite police force, especially if its operations both within the United States and abroad are kept secret. Images of Stasi come to mind. Indeed, it's a dark picture: dissenting Americans dragged off in the middle of the night, detained without trial, and their faces hidden from news cameras.

So if you still doubt that political repression could happen in America, in the land of the free and home of the brave, then you are about to be rudely awakened. Because it has already happened. Maybe not in your neighborhood, or to a person you know, but it has, and will continue to happen. Being in political denial is suicide at this point. So don't resort to political taunting just because a few aware Americans are deciding to organize in numbers and are planning to physically defend themselves from a criminal government. You may not know it now, but your silence in the face of, and your support for political repression, whether from the right or left hand, will forever mark you as a fearful traitor to the good and the just.

http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/




My comment to the above OpEdNews.com piece:

I know the contents of this piece to be true

Police and the courts have unions for government workers. They have bosses. There are managers for the courts and for the police. There is a secret network that really operates the government. The prostitutes, vandals, drug dealers, and common criminal parasites can belong to a gang operated by police paid for by taxpayers. These “cut-outs” do the dirty work for police terrorizing citizens, setting them up, beating them up, and worse. Law enforcement and the courts are more about “protecting the integrity of the system" than anything to do with laws and justice.

Propose court reform and civilian oversight of police to elected officials and get harassed by police, threatened, physically attacked, stalked, fear for your life, and end up in prison. I did and I didn't get a tee-shirt.

It may be a good idea to be “free” and “American” outside the US. I could then feel free to exercise free speech. I probably wouldn't be too critical of any nation I visit, temporarily live, or live out my days.



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This blogger's email address: stevengerickson@yahoo.com

Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan Revealed

By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. Posted November 24, 2009.

The below re-posted [from here]


An elite division of Blackwater plans targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. And everyone's denying it.

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, "We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature." A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to do that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out, period," the official said. "There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services." The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency's director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. "This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country. Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan."

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source's claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.
His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater's covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for anonymity, told The Nation, "From my information that I have, that is absolutely correct," adding, "There's no question that's occurring."

"It wouldn't surprise me because we've outsourced nearly everything," said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater's role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater's involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. "Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don't have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it's that simple. It would not surprise me."

The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi

The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is "not really visible, and that's why nobody has cracked down on it," said the source. Blackwater's operations in Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. "It's Blackwater via JSOC, and it's a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis." The main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. "It's a very rudimentary operation," says the source. "I would compare it to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts. It's very bare bones, and that's the point."

Blackwater's work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a "media-scouring/open-source network," according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.

The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater's classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, "The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you're doing is really one military guy to another." Blackwater's first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified "black" operations. "With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above 'secret'--even though you have no business doing so," said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that "do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust," he added. "Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That's exactly what it is: a circle of love." Blackwater, therefore, has access to "all source" reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. "That's how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors," said the source. "We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don't unless they ask."

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's classified for JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT "was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it." Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. "Nobody even gives them a second thought."

The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as "Qatar cubed," in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. "This is supposed to be the brave new world," he says. "This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest. It's strategically located so that they can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They don't have to deal with that because they're operating under a classified mandate."

In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"

Pakistan's Military Contracting Maze

Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he calls "Blackwater Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That's probably a good thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they're the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It's not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They're very good at what they do."

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, "that's not entirely accurate." While he concurred with the military intelligence source's description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral's main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

A spokesperson for the US State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for The Nation that Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. "We cannot help you," said department spokesperson David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. "You'll have to contact the companies directly." Blackwater's Corallo said the company has "no operations of any kind" in Pakistan other than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to inquiries from The Nation.

According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues "regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States." Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.

For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. "Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship," he said. "They've met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another." Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.

According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral's forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry's paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as "frontier scouts"). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater "is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral's folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they're having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they're executing the job," he said. "You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas." He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. "You've got BW guys that are assisting... and they're all going to want to go on the jobs--so they're going to go with them," he said. "So, the things that you're seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that--in some of those cases, you're going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house." Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it.' But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work."

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, "There's no real oversight. It's not really on people's radar screen."
In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the weapons were being used by "a private American security contractor." The statement said, "Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments."

Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral.

In August, the New York Times reported that Blackwater works for the CIA at "hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company's contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft." In February, The Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The New York Times also reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in Pakistan.

The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes. "Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government Agency, intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it's JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes." The Pentagon has stated bluntly, "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan."

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence themselves or it's been shared with them and they take that person out and that's how it works."

The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. "Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that," he says. "Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don't care. If there's one person they're going after and there's thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That's the mentality." He added, "They're not accountable to anybody and they know that. It's an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?"
In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.

Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the norms of international relations. "The immediate question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?" asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for The News, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. "Let's forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan that aren't about logistics or getting food to Bagram; that are actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force inside of Pakistani territory."

JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney's Extra Special Force

Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General McChrystal's elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war--which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan--there is a concomitant rise in JSOC's power and influence within the military structure. "I don't see how you can escape that; it's just a matter of the way the authority flows and the power flows, and it's inevitable, I think," Wilkerson told The Nation. He added, "I'm alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations Command," under which JSOC operates. "That's backward. But that's essentially what we have today."

From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater's 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces operators--which several former military officials pointed to as the basis for Blackwater's alleged contracts with JSOC.

Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the highly specialized work they did in uniform. "The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they've been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don't," said retired Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. "They're known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they've got the experience. They're very valuable."

"They make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia," said the military intelligence source. "They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they're talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types of] operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future operations. It's a ridiculous revolving door."

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing," said Colonel Wilkerson. "That's dangerous, that's very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don't tell the theater commander what you're doing."

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. "I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good," says Wilkerson. "I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions." He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because Rumsfeld didn't get the responsiveness. He didn't get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch--read: Cheney and Rumsfeld--wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier."

Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the United States across the globe. "When these teams started hitting capital cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld] didn't tell the State Department either. The only way we found out about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, 'Who the hell are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our capital cities?' So we discovered this, we discovered one in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him--we rendered him home."

As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation," according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end "near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations.

The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the "darkest acts" in part to keep them concealed from Congress. "Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress," said the source. "They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: 'Preparing the Battlefield.'"

The significance of the flexibility of JSOC's operations inside Pakistan versus the CIA's is best summed up by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress," she said. "If they are not, that is a violation of the law."

Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan

For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about Blackwater's alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater's operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company has been involved--almost from the beginning of the "war on terror"--with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater's presence in the country, stating bluntly in September, "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." In her trip to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani press about Blackwater's rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan.

The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater "provides security for a US-backed aid project" in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. "We have no contracts in Pakistan," Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently. "We've been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there."

Reports of Blackwater's alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. "The US [intelligence] agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi and Peshawar," he said. "That is why [Blackwater] agents are operating in these two cities." Ambassador Patterson has said that the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are "wildly incorrect," saying they had compromised the security of US personnel in Pakistan. On November 20 the Washington Times, citing three current and former US intelligence officials, reported that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has "found refuge from potential U.S. attacks" in Karachi "with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service."

In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater allegedly submitted by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to the federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Karachi's Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did say, "The port jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and they would revert to what they know: the ocean, instead of flying stuff in."

The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired "bungalows" in the Defense Housing Authority in the city. According to the DHA website, it is a large gated community established "for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan." Its motto is: "Home for Defenders." The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them.

The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it's the contractors' fault, not the government's. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. "We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention," said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it's almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations." Addicott added, "If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That's one of the reasons we're not members of the International Criminal Court."

If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the State Department despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater's alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of its new frontier. "Having learned its lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger and anticipating other places we're going to go as a nation that are dangerous," he said. "It's as simple as that."

See more stories tagged with: blackwater, pakistan, erik prince, jeremy scahill, xa

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at RebelReports.com.



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NSA eavesdropping more widespread than reported

By Wayne Madsen (about the author)

opednews.com Permalink


Reprinted from Online Journal

National Security Agency (NSA) sources have reported to WMR that the signals intelligence agency's warrantless wiretapping program was more widespread than originally reported and that it began shortly after the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney,some six months prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Former Qwest CEOJoseph Nacchio reported that NSA requested that his firm take part in the warrantless wiretapping program in a February 27, 2001, meeting but that he told NSA that Qwest would refuse to participate. AT&T, BellSouth, SBC, Sprint, and Verizon all agreed to participate in the wiretapping program, which resulted in such a large database of intercepted calls, faxes, and e-mails, that NSA recently announced it was building a huge 1 million square feet data warehouse at a cost of $1.5 billion at Camp Williamsin Utah, as well as another massive data warehouse in San Antonio. The cover story is that the warehouses are part of NSA's new Cyber Command responsibilities. NSA sources have told WMR that the warehouses are to store the massive amount of intercepts collected by the ongoing Terrorist Surveillance Program, an above top secret program once code named STELLAR WIND by the NSA.

Nacchio was later convicted on 19 counts of insider trading of Qwest stock and sentenced to six years in federal prison. Nacchio maintained that his prosecution and conviction was in retaliation for his refusal to participate in the illegal NSA surveillance program. NSA also canceled a major contract with Qwest over its refusal to wiretap calls without warrants.

President Obamaordered his Justice Department's attorneys to press U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker to toss out a lawsuit brought against the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program, details of which were revealed by AT&T engineer Mark Klein. Our NSA sources revealed that Obama has asked the lawsuit to be dismissed because the warrantless wiretapping program is as robust in collecting massive amounts of intercepted communications without a warrant under Obama as it didduring the Bush-Cheney administration. Obama also backs immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies participating in the illegal surveillance operations. The Justice Department is using the draconian State Secrets Privilege to battle against lawsuits against the telecommunication carriers.

NSA collects domestic communications by installing specialized eavesdropping equipment, including traffic analyzers,at over 25 telecommunications facilities around the United States, including where Klein worked at AT&T'scentral office in theSBC Buildingat 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco and at major switching facilities in Bridgeton, Missouri; San Jose; San Diego; Seattle; Los Angeles (1150 South Olive Street, as well asthe Beverly Hills central office that targets the area's rich and famous celebrities); Chicago (227 West Monroe Street); New York (Lower Manhattan at 33 Thomas Street, 375 Pearl Street,and 811 10th Avenue); Northern Virginia/Washington, DC; Miami; Atlanta (Midtown Center); Houston; Minneapolis; Detroit (1365 Cass Avenue); Jacksonville, Florida; Philadelphia; Kansas City; Dallas (One AT&T Plaza); Memphis; Pittsburgh; Bedminster, New Jersey; Boston; Nashville (333 Commerce Street); Baltimore; Cleveland (Huron Road Building); and Denver.

One of the first targets of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in February 2001, a few weeks after Bush's inauguration, was Iraqi-Americans and other Arab-Americans, as well asresident aliens from Arab countries in the United States. The warrantless wiretapping of the Arab-American community coincided with “surge operations” directed by NSA against the communications of Saddam Hussein and his top government officials in Iraq and other countries.

The NSA warrantless wiretapping program soon grew to include millions of Americans, including elected and appointed government officials, federal judges, anti-Bush celebrities and clergy, and even intelligence and law enforcement officials. WMR previously reported that a joint NSA-CIA database code-named FIRST FRUITS maintained a database on the intercepted phone calls of U.S. journalists.

WMR previously reported that NSA “fishnet” surveillance was used in the take down of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as well as political dirt gathering directed against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Senator Joe Biden. There is also every indication that NSA intercepted the phone calls and emails of the junior senator from Illinois -- one Barack Obama.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com

For more, visit Wayne Madsen Report, which its publisher, Wayne Madsen, keeps refreshed with more news than any one reporter has a right to.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Internet Hype or Real Story?

If the below isn't a bunch of crap, it would mean that the mainstream media in the US is a bunch of crap.

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BIOTERRORISM IN THE UKRAINE?


By Tim Alexander, Earl of Stirling, Posted by Noeline Clayfield (about the submitter)

opednews.com Permalink

I post this report which adds further important information on the current state of the viral pandemic in the Ukraine and the lack of mainstream media reporting. Full and graphic information is available on this site:
http://www.labvirus.com

Tim Alexander, Earl of Stirling on Baxter's Ukraine Advanced Bioweapon Outbreak:
ARMAGEDDON HAS BEGUN

europebusines.blogspot.com

Armageddon Has Begun

A Tale of Two Stories: The European BioWar outbreak and the censoring of it by the mainstream news media.

UPDATE: Latest Ukraine Plague figures: 1,253,558 very ill; 65,615 hospitalized in serious to critical condition. These are Ukraine only figures. [estimated deaths are 11 percent of the hospitalizations - or around 6000 or so -ed]

The biggest story on the Planet today is the outbreak of a very serious Advanced Biological War virus in Europe. The second biggest story on the Planet is the suppression of this story for almost two weeks by the corporate owned mainstream news media.

There is a lot we know and a lot that we can only speculate on about what is unfolding in Central Europe. We know that in mid-October, less than a month ago, there was a growing number of cases of what many thought was Swine Flu (A/H1N1) in the western part of the Ukraine. We know that many hundreds if not thousands of people in western Ukraine witnessed low flying light airplanes aerosol spraying something over Ukrainian cities during the days of October 29, 2009 and October 31, 2009. We know that beginning the night of October 29th, massive numbers of people begin to get very sick. We know that the Ukraine government issued a statement denying that it was doing any aerial spraying to combat the growing disease or authorizing any spraying over Ukrainian cities. We know that
by October 30th, the Ukrainian authorities closed all schools for three weeks and banned public gatherings.

We do NOT know what disease the people were/are coming down with. We do know that doctors are describing the disease as Pneumonic Plague, or as some type of hemorrhagic fever, or as hemorrhagic influenza, or as hemorrhagic pneumonia. We know that the illness, whatever it is, does not appear to be A/H1N1. We do not know if the disease is a recombination of A/H1N1 with other viruses or some totally different virus or if it is in fact a virus. We know that the World Health Organization (WHO) has had several days to sequence the genes of the disease but has failed to release this data.

We know that WHO has NOT called for the quarantining of the Ukraine or the shutdown of all global travel to/from the area of infection and that this is the same thing that they did when Mexican Swine Flu (A/H1N1) first broke out and that the failure to contain that virus early on ensured its spread throughout the world.

We know that the internal temperature of the lungs of those with a terminal case of what many are calling 'Ukrainian Plague' is often from 130F to 135F. We do know that autopsies show that the lungs are filled with blood, and are black in color, and that the lung tissue has turned to mush. We know that patients who first show any signs of illness usually crash in less than 48 hours, sometimes the same day.

We know that the disease was spreading by about 200,000 per day but that this has slowed to about 100,000 day now, in the Ukraine, as people take extraordinary steps to contain the spread of the disease. We know that well over
one and a third million people in the Ukraine are very ill with the disease (according to published official sources) and that over 60,000 are hospitalized in serious to critical condition. We know that the disease has a very high transmission rate with a likely low amount of viral (if it is in fact a virus) material needed to cause an infection. We know that the official reports of deaths are under 300 in the Ukraine. We also know that it is normal for hospital
admissions of people with ARI (acute respiratory infection) to have a fatality rate of from 5% to 10%. We know that non-official sources were reporting over 3,000 deaths several days ago and that this number is more in tune with the
5-10% fatality rate than the official figures.

We do not know what effective treatments are for this illness. We do know that young adults seem to be more in danger of this illness. We suspect that 'cytokine storming' similar to that in the 1918 Spanish Flu, that killed
approximately 50 million people, is taking place.

We know from official Ukrainian Health Ministry reports that the illness does not test out as Mexican Swine Flu (A/H1N1). We do not know if the existing Swine Flu vaccine has any effect, but based on the non-positive response to Swine Flu in testing, we suspect that the vaccine is ineffective as the viral protean shell is different than A/H1N1 (if in fact it is a virus that causes the illness).

We know that the illness has spread to Poland, where over one quarter of a million people are now very ill. We know that it has spread to Belarus and to Hungary and elsewhere in central Europe. We know that 900,000 people are said to have Swine Flu in Norway but we do not know if this is related to Ukraine Plague in any way.

We know that on November 8th a South African site (fto.co.za) carried the following:

"Suspicious aircraft were forced to land. A US operated (Russian-made long-range heavy transport) AN-124 changed its call sign from civilian to military which then triggered a response from the IAF (Indian Air Force) upon entering
Pakistani air space (forcing) the plane to land in Mumbai while (a) second one was forced down by Nigerian fighter jets that also arrested the crew."

"According to reports, China's People's Liberation Army Air Force contacted the Indian and Nigerian intelligence officials about the presence of these US operated Ukrainian aircraft amidst growing concern that the United States was spreading 'biological agents' in the Earth's atmosphere, which some Chinese officials believed to be an attempt to (commit) mass genocide via the spread of H1N1 swine flu."

These aircraft "were carrying 'waste disposal' systems that could spray up to 45,000kg (nearly 100,000 pounds) of aerial type mist from sophisticated "nano pipes" in the planes' wings – called chemtrails.

We know that Baxter International Pharmaceuticals sent 72 kilos of human influenza H3N2 vaccine materials to 16 labs in European nations which contained live H5N1 Bird Flu viruses. We know that this was only discovered when a Czech lab tested the material on several ferrets (ferrets have a similar respiratory system to humans) and all of the ferrets died in short order. We know that Baxter claimed that this was human error. We also know that such a 'human error' is basically impossible with the containment protocols in place at Baxter and any other modern biolabs using Biosafety Level 3 (BLS-3) lab technology.

We know that in mid-August a Joseph Moshe, who is a Mossad biological warfare expert, called in to Dr. A. True Ott's national radio talk show and reported that Baxter was getting ready to release a deadly plague from its Ukrainian lab
and that he was shortly meeting with US Attorneys in Los Angles to give evidence about this. We know that shortly thereafter Moshe was apprehended by Federal agents and LA police and taken to the Israeli Consulate. We know that he was quickly flown to Israel and that no further word has come from him.

We know that over the last three or so years a large number of biological experts, from a number of places all over the world, have died strange deaths and that this has been commented on by various publications in the past.

We know that the sudden appearance of Mexican Swine Flu (A/H1N1) virtually had to have been a release from a biological warfare lab. We know that A/H1N1 has gene sequences from three different types (American, Asian, and African) of Swine Flu, of Bird Flu, of two different types of human seasonal flu, and of Spanish Flu and that such a recombination is so unlikely in nature as to be virtually impossible. We know that the WHO policies of not requiring a major quarantine of Mexico ensured that A/H1N1 would spread throughout the world.

We know that the current Swine Flu "Vaccine" is almost totally untested, and that the manufactures are protected from lawsuits for even deliberate acts that result in deaths and that nations acquiring the vaccines are required to sign contracts agreeing not to release negative information on the "vaccine" to the public. We know that published additives to the "vaccine" include highly dangerous-to-human-health substances.

We know that the corporate owned mainstream news media (with strong links to global banking families) have censored this story in a way that has never happen before. We know that the outbreak of a unknown but deadly and very rapidly spreading disease in Europe is the largest story on Earth but that it is NOT being reported on.

more info: http://www.labvirus.com


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http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lietuva Torture Prisons?

The below was [found here]

Home > US
Report: CIA torture prison found in Lithuania
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:33:19 GMT
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This former Lithuanian horse stable was converted into a secret CIA detention center.
The CIA has built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, ABC News has reported.

Citing a Lithuanian government official and a former US intelligence agent, the US TV network said the agency built the concrete prison inside what had been an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius.

Documents provided by Lithuanian officials showed a now-defunct CIA front company, Elite LLC, bought the property from a family and built the "black site" in 2004, the report added.

After former president George W. Bush visited Lithuania in 2002 and pledged to support its bid to join NATO, the country agreed to allow the CIA prison, according to ABC News.

"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the US role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the (United States) asked for during that period," said former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who now works as an ABC News consultant.

This is while Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite denied ABC's request for an interview.

ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now, the precise site had not been confirmed.

Former CIA officials told ABC that as many as eight al-Qaeda suspects were held for more than a year at the prison. A thick concrete wall inside the onetime riding area hid cells and interrogation areas from locals' view.

The Lithuanian prison was the last "black" site open in Europe, after the CIA's secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.

The prison was the last of eight built after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks where the CIA detained and interrogated alleged al-Qaeda operatives ABC said. Other CIA prisons were in Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco and Afghanistan it added.

SG/SS/RE


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I have very warm memories from my two stays in Lithuania. It bothers me that the torturing of others for questionable US interests could be going on in Lithuania.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

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Monday, November 16, 2009

From "My Hate Speech" blog:

Why Switzerland Is Still Free and America Is Not



The American Time magazine article headline asks, "Will Switzerland Vote to Ban Minarets on Mosques?"

Swiss citizens are becoming concerned about the threat that Islam presents to their traditional culture, economy and religious institutions. As an American, I know how I would vote were I Swiss but the decision will be made by the Swiss electorate as they have this referendum right on all issues.

In Switzerland, the people still rule and have the ultimate right to decide decisions above the government or parliament. Through the right of referendum they can cancel legislation and with the initiative they can pass or create legislative action on issues parliament refuses to act upon.

The bias and closed statist views shown in the article is business as usual for the US media elites out to protect the American political establishment and are so evident in this headline and article. It isn’t the question they asked but rather the question they didn’t dare ask is the "700-lb gorilla in the room."

Quoting from the article, "Critics say the SVP, the largest party in Switzerland's coalition government, has taken advantage of the country's unique brand of direct democracy to push its populist, anti-immigrant agenda on the Swiss electorate. Citizens have the right to propose new laws in Switzerland – the only thing they need to force a nationwide vote on an initiative is a petition of 100,000 signatures."

The question not asked is why doesn’t the American electorate have oversight over legislation and unpopular government regulations in the United States like in Switzerland? Imagine if 4% of the American voters signed a petition requiring a nationwide vote "yea or nay" on the banking bailouts, going to war in Iraq, auditing the Federal Reserve, nationalized health care or on the trillions in new Washington debt added because of the financial meltdown. The United States would still be a decentralized republic with limited government had we had the political option to hold back Washington and the special interests.

How America would be different if we had Swiss-style political rights to restrain government where the people rule instead of the special interests. Imagine an America where the billions in graft and political influence that control Congress could still buy legislation but not ultimate control if we as a people could overrule their actions.

What if the will of the people still ultimately controlled the political system and direction with true limited government at the federal, state and local level? Imagine the American electorate overriding Congress and demanding a strong dollar backed by real gold reserves, an audit of the Federal Reserve, a rollback of the bailouts, a declaration of war for foreign military intervention, the abolishment of the Patriot Act and a return to banking privacy.

Yes, a Swiss political party (The Swiss Peoples Party) promotes a nationalist agenda to the Swiss voters and they will ultimately decide in referendum yes or no on the issue. This is currently impossible in the United States but Swiss direct democracy and limited confederation government have worked in Switzerland for hundreds of years.

This is far superior to the two-party monopoly in America where the elites controlling both parties can push their self-serving agendas without restraint. Currently, short of the Tenth Amendment movement, state nullification or outright state secession, there is no real effective way to push back against Washington.

Until the American people can find a way to restrain the Federal government, the bureaucracy and the judiciary, the best place for Americans to secure and safeguard their wealth is outside their own country. Switzerland is one of the best jurisdictions to consider because their political system has preserved the rights and freedoms we once had as Americans. Still the ultimate problem for Americans is the necessity to restore our liberties at home because history has shown that wealth without liberty is only a temporary condition at best.

I say, it is time to take a real look at direct democracy in the United States or else Americans who value their property and liberties will have little choice but to first transfer their wealth to safety outside the US as it will be lost in the coming crash of treasury debt and the dollar. Next we must stand and fight the Washington leviathan through the political tools of the 10th amendment and John C. Calhoun’s political ideal of nullification both of which the Feds will probably just ignore. Our final democratic political tool is to exercise the political right of state-by-state secession with all the political and historical baggage this entails.

Trust me, Swiss style direct democracy in the United States would be an easier way to control Washington and the special interests but we only have a few years before the Washington debt and dollar collapse is upon us. Therefore I’ll close with a question. Is anybody here for secession?


Source: LewRockwell.com

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