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Saturday, May 31, 2014

Ukraine's misery




Is America starting her usual tricks in yet another country?


This looks very much like the usual CIA mischief in any country the world's policeman decides is against her and so has to be taught a lesson.  It's like you better suck up to the USA or else you will be roasted alive, slowly and painfully. Sheesh!
I like how Cuba is pretending to not know that America is behind this and is instead asking for America's help in the investigation.
Way to go!  Give them a taste of their own medicine.

From YahooNews:
Four Cuban exiles from Miami are being held for planning "terrorist actions" against military targets on the island, Havana authorities said Wednesday in announcing the first such arrests in years.

The Interior Ministry said the men were detained April 26, but released few specific details. It was not clear why it took so long to make the arrests public.

"They intended to attack military installations with the goal of perpetrating violent actions," the ministry said in a statement published by the Communist Party newspaper Granma. "To such ends, since mid-2013, three of them had made several trips to the island to study and carry out their plan."

The arrests come amid increased exchanges between exiles and their homeland, including visits by several prominent former hardliners who had vowed never to set foot in Cuba while brothers Fidel and Raul Castro were still in charge.

The statement identified the detained men as Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodriguez Gonzalez, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Felix Monzon Alvarez.

None are well-known within the exile community in South Florida, but Cuba claimed they were acting on orders from others who do have a history of militancy. Pacheco had been part of a tiny exile group called Fuerza Cubana de Liberacion Inc., defunct since 2010.

The ministry said it was reaching out to U.S. authorities to investigate.

"We have seen the statement by the Cuban Ministry of Interior," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "We don't have any further information at this time. The Cuban government has also not been in touch with us yet on these cases."

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana and the FBI office in Miami had no immediate reaction.

In its statement, the Interior Ministry alleged the plot was masterminded by Santiago Alvarez Fernandez Magrina, Osvaldo Mitat and Manuel Alzugaray in Miami. It also linked them to perhaps the best known militant Cuban exile, Luis Posada Carriles, whom Cuba and Venezuela have sought to prosecute for a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people aboard a flight bound for Cuba.

"We categorically deny that Luis has absolutely anything to do with this or has any knowledge of any of these individuals who were allegedly arrested in Cuba," said Arturo Hernandez, Posada Carriles' attorney.

Hernandez said that Posada has been ill with cancer for most of the past two years and that it was "ridiculous" to suggest he would lead any military incursion in Cuba.

Santiago Alvarez and Mitat pleaded guilty in 2006 in the United States to conspiracy after an informant tipped the FBI that a large cache of weapons, including machine guns and a grenade launcher, was being moved from apartments Alvarez owned...........

On Maps and Countries ... pre-WW1 and now


These days, I am reading, listening, watching stuff on WW1 to better understand how WW2 happened. Many historians, when writing about WW2 maintain that the humiliation of defeat in WW1 and the redrawing of her borders plus the loss of her wealth in Africa , was the main cause for the bitterness Germans felt toward the United Kingdom and why they hated her so. UK, as it happened, had the loudest voice in the decision making of those days and as we all know, UK also had a whole big multitude of cartographers. 
Below is a nice little summary on the re-mapping of regions.



Jihadi recruiting cell smashed in Spain


No country is safe from this disease.

From EuroNews:
....Spanish police have detained   six militants suspected of recruiting fighters for Mali and Libya, according to the interior ministry.

The arrests took place in the enclave of Melilla, one of two Spanish cities in mainland Africa that shares a border with Morocco.

One Spanish militant who had been to training camps run by the Movement for Unification and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) was among those arrested in the ongoing operation.

In March, police from Spain and Morocco broke up a similar cell which had been sending fighters to conflict zones such as Syria.

Seven people were arrested during the joint operation, including two French nationals.

T-I- E in Spelling Bee contest


Wow!  Both winners are either Hindu or Buddhist ... or one is Hindu and the other is Buddhist and they can spell better than those whose language is English.  Go figure!



Syria was one of the items on the Agenda at the NAM meeting in Algeria ....


and from several statements made by delegates it is crystal clear that the rest of the world has had it with the USA and her allies. The Non-Aligned Movement  (NAM) is the second largest group of member countries after the United Nations and resolutions, agreements and even decisions about boundaries and changing of maps and borders are items on the agenda at their meetings. One such resolution or opinion or agreement .... call it what you will, is below.  It's from an Iranian online site. 

From EnglishAlalam:
.....NAM condemns insurgent atrocities in Syria.Foreign Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) have censured the crimes committed by foreign-backed terrorists in Syria, underlining their support for a political solution to the persisting crisis in the Arab country.

At the 17th meeting of the Foreign Ministers of NAM which was held in the Algerian capital Algiers with the participation of Syria, the NAM member states also rejected all forms of western sanctions against the Syrian people.

The ministers asserted in "Algiers Declaration" which is the final statement issued by the meeting, rejection of all forms of sanctions imposed on NAM member states for political reasons and expressed concern over the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Syria.
They reiterated that all measures taken by the Israeli occupation forces in the occupied Syrian Golan are null and void.

The ministers further condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli aggression against Syria in 2013 and stressed that such acts of aggression are flagrant violation of the international law.

Syria’s Assistant Foreign and Expatriates Minister Hussam al-Din Ala said that the interference in the country's internal affairs and the violation of their sovereignty were made under various pretexts, such as what they refer to as the right of humanitarian interference and the protection responsibility......

Sudanese woman, Meriam Ibrahim to be freed


The power of we the people forcing the MSM to blow this in the open and put pressure on the right people in the ivory towers.... has worked.  Meriam was lucky that her husband is an American and hence he and his supporters were able to create this uproar on her behalf.  There must be thousands of women like her languishing in Muslim jails serving long prison terms or awaiting death .... and nobody even knows they exist.


From BBC:
....Meriam Ibrahim: Sudan 'to free'    death row woman
Sudanese authorities are to free a woman who was sentenced to death for having abandoned the Islamic faith, a foreign ministry official says.

Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter in custody, will be freed in a few days' time, the official said.

Abdullahi Alzareg, an under-secretary at the foreign ministry, said Sudan guaranteed religious freedom and was committed to protecting the woman.

Khartoum has been facing heavy criticism over the death sentence.

Is Angela Merkel getting too big for her boots?


That "I am the One" attitude accidentally slips out now and then.

From BBC:
....German Chancellor Angela Merkel  has said she wants former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker to become the next EU Commission president.
But some European leaders have voiced opposition to the move.
Correspondents say the UK government sees Mr Juncker as too much of an EU federalist. It pointed to the need for "a lengthy process to find consensus".

Mr Juncker belongs to the European People's Party, which won the most seats in the European polls last week.
The centre-right party, which also includes Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrat party, won 213 out of 751 seats in the European Parliament and chose Mr Juncker as its candidate for the presidency succeeding Portugal's Jose Manuel Barroso.

Mr Juncker's main rival is the Socialist candidate Martin Schulz.
EU leaders traditionally choose the Commission head on their own, but under new rules have to "take into account" the results of the European parliamentary elections.

Chancellor Merkel said on Friday that the EPP "with its top candidate Jean-Claude Juncker has become the strongest political power which is why I am now conducting all talks exactly in this spirit, that Jean-Claude Juncker should become president of the European Commission".
It is seen as her clearest statement of support for the veteran politician, who once chaired the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers that had to make tough decisions about struggling debt-laden countries......

US Sen. Richard H Black of Virginia, a true Christian, writes to thank Assad for saving Christians....


and lo and behold ....  the silence of the MSM is deafening.  

BuzzFeed, who requested the senator for a copy of the letter and got it, is the only online site of note to have posted the letter. The few others that have deemed to give this any notice, have given it just a few sentences in print and made the whole thing look like it was a stupid thing to do.  When did thanking someone for the good they have done become a "NO NO".  Even Buzzfeed, although taking the initiative to post the entire 2-page letter online,  calls it "fawning."

From the depths of the steaming hot pile of rot which makes up the political body of today, comes one person like Sen. Richard Black and gives us hope that within that dirty heap there might be others like him who just need a hot water bathing to discover that they too have a conscience and that conscience wants to speak up and tell the truth ... consequences be damned.

Miriam Berger and Gideon Resnick writing at BuzzFeed
....Republican State Senator Richard Black of Virginia has written a letter to Bashar al-Assad praising the Syrian president for his fight against “criminals linked to al-Qaeda” and thanking him for his “heroic rescue of Christians.”
“You have followed the practice of your father by treating with respect all Christians and the small community of Jews in Damascus…. I am grateful for that,” the letter reads. It concludes: “Until then, I pray that the Syrian armed forces will continue to exhibit extraordinary gallantry in the war against terrorists.”
Assad has been accused of widespread human rights abuses in his country’s three year long civil war.

Reached by cellphone, a man identifying himself as Senator Black confirmed to BuzzFeed that he had written the letter, which was dated April 1 (though it did not appear to be an April Fools’ joke). It was addressed to Assad, but Black said it was “difficult” to get the letter to the Syrian president. He refused to elaborate further on his channels to Assad. “I had not published it because I didn’t know how long it would take to get it delivered to President Assad,” 

Black said. “I didn’t want to just publish it in the newspapers without it ever being received. It accurately reflects my views on the Syrian situation.”

Black received unofficial confirmation that the letter had been received by the government after a contact, who he declined to name, told him that the Syrian First Lady, Asmaa al-Assad, had posted it to her Facebook page. “The individual who wrote [me] wanted to confirm that it wasn’t a prank,” Black said. “I’m not much of a prankster.”

When asked if he feared backlash over the letter’s contents, Black said, “Anytime you take a stand there will be certainly people who disagree. But Al Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and I’m deeply troubled that we are now assisting al-Qaeda in Syria.”...................

Friday, May 30, 2014

"Uprising" in Saudi Arabia began in 2011 ....


but because that cavemen country happens to be our ally, our Western  media keeps all this dirt nicely stacked up under the carpet, away from the public view.  



From BBC: 
....Shia voice discontent at Saudi Arabia's ruling Sunni.

Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province is home to many of the country's minority Shia population.

Many there have long complained of marginalisation at the hands of the Sunni ruling family.

Shia people saying they are poorer than the Sunni despite living on one of the world's largest oil fields

In a special investigation for the BBC's Our World, Saudi journalist Safa Al Ahmad has gained unprecedented access to film in the region.

She spoke to activists, some of whom were on the government's most wanted list, and uncovered how the Shia community was reacting to a violent government crackdown.

Wanna know the reason why gold stocks are going downhill? It's the weather, stupid!


Yup .... better believe what our lords and masters at the Manipulation Tower, otherwise known as the Stock Market and their minions the talking heads on TV and MSM are telling us.  

Tyler Durden writing at ZeroHedge:
Here Is What The Slide In Gold Is Being Blamed On (Hint: Weather)
When the US economy underperforms expectations, the weather is blamed; and now, on the heels of Japan's pre-emptive blaming of weather for crushed consumer spending patterns; The FT proclaims that El Nino is responsible for the weakness in gold (as monsoon season will reduce physical demand from India)... welcome to mainstream media meteoronomics 101. What is odd about this reasoning is that we are actually more prone to a La Nina than an El Nino pattern this year based on the Southern Oscillator Index.
Gold down due to El Nino - Via The FT,
Concerns about the effect of El NiƱo, which have hit commodities markets since the start of the year, is spreading to gold, as some analysts point to the weather phenomenon’s potential impact on India’s monsoon season.

he lack of physical buying by Indian consumers, normally active purchasers of the yellow metal, has been one of the bearish factors for the gold market this year. The precious metal was down 3 per cent on the week at $1,253.90 a troy ounce, and Edel Tully, precious metals strategist at UBS in London, said India was likely to be on the radar in June as the monsoon season started........

The distressed citizens of Donetsk


Put yourselves in the shoes of the people of Donetsk ... whether they are pro-Russian or pro-Kiev doesn't matter .... and imagine how you would be reacting to what's happening there.  There are videos at You Tube which can be accessed only after you sign in .... that's how graphic and  bloody they are. I have seen one where five civilians were killed by the Ukrainian army snipers ... one of them a woman.  Their bodies were left in the street because the snipers targeted anybody who dared to come to collect the corpses.
War makes ordinary men into blood-thirsty monsters of the very worst kind.

The following is from a Photojournalist's point of view.


...Filip Warwick is a photojournalist who has stayed in Donetsk after many foreign journalists have left. Here he documents how daily life goes on, but is this the calm before the storm in Donetsk?

It is late morning, the skies are clear and the sun is shining - the mood is, for the moment, relatively calm on the streets of Donetsk. But if you scratch below the surface, there is a feeling of anxiety which is driving many people's activities, even as life appears to carry on as normal. Some residents have been busy exchanging Ukrainian hryvnia's for foreign currency; others have been stocking up on food supplies, and still others are preparing to leave the city.
Leaving en masse
Foreign journalists have also recently left en masse as tensions continue. Many of the journalists came exclusively to cover the elections but some feared for their safety as the number of roadblocks has increased. It was suggested that I leave the city center hotel where I had been staying and move to a residential part of the city. But that move gave me a chance to observe how citizens here are going about their daily lives.......

Brian Lilley talks to Tom Quiggin, the author of the report "Muslim Brotherhood in Canada"


Good to see that at long last Canada is waking up to the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood.



Al-Amriki, American suicide bomber goes to hump those mythical 72 virgins


HAHAHAHAHA!  America the brave, America the great, America rife with Al-Amrkis! 
An American suicide bomber. This is something new, isn't it?
What was it that preacher mentor of Obama's had said?  Was it "Chickens are coming home to roost"  or something like that?
Yup .... many, many chickens are returning from Syria to the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and elsewhere.
Boom! Boom! Boom!

Simon Tomlinson writing at DailyMail:
....Syria suicide bomber calling himself 'Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki' in Al Qaeda video was U.S. citizen who grew up in Florida
Social media sites claim attacker blew himself up in Syria on May 25
U.S. officials say he grew up in Florida and went to school there
But they haven't revealed any other details about him or his real name
Abu Hurayra is companion of Mohammed, Al-Amriki means 'the American'
A suicide bomber who reportedly blew himself up in Syria was a U.S. citizen who grew up in Florida, it emerged today.
According to internet postings, the man - who called himself 'Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki' - carried out one of four suicide attacks on May 25 in Syria's Idlib province.
He is believed to have been fighting on behalf of Jabhat al-Nusra, Al Qaeda's affiliate attempting to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Two U.S. officials have now confirmed to CNN that the bomber was an American jihadi who grew up in Florida and went to school there..........

Thursday, May 29, 2014

On Syria ..... May 29


The conflict in Syria has opened the eyes of thousands of people, nay millions of people worldwide ... and we have begun to see how the USA and Israel act as one against a country or a country's leaders they decide to neutralize without giving a damn about  the misery they cause to the innocent millions of people within that country. 

I tell you .... it's such a relief to be out of love with Israel. Now, I just don't give a fuck what happens to Israelis or the Jews or to Israel.  It used to bother me no end whenever I read even the tiniest little slur aimed at the Jewish diaspora here or at Israelis ... either in print or from my friends. Now? I just bypass such and move on without breaking into a sweat of rage like I used to. 

Assad has won and rightly so.  Syria will prosper and so will its people. The countless killed will be mourned by their families.  Syria will be rebuilt but alas its historical monuments and priceless antiquities have been destroyed and lost to mankind. The criminals and instigators of these crimes will never see justice .... or will they?

From AP:
....Assad's supporters abroad vote   in Syrian election.
 Tens of thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad voted Wednesday at embassies abroad, clogging entrances to the Lebanese capital for hours and clashing with soldiers overwhelmed by their sheer numbers a week before national elections widely expected to give him a third seven-year term.....



....The June 3 election is all but guaranteed to give the 49-year-old Syrian leader, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades, a new mandate to continue with his crushing of the armed rebellion.....

From MiddleEastMonitor:
....Syrian schools to start  teaching Russian as second foreign language next year 
....The Syrian Ministry of Education has decided to teach Russian as a second foreign language starting from next year. After learning English as a first foreign language in primary school, students will be able to choose between learning Russian and French as a second foreign language from the seventh to the twelfth grades, the ministry announced on its website. .....

From VOR:
.....Russia to allocate 240 million euros to Syria for solving social problems.
This year, Russia is going to allocate 240 million euros (more than 11.2 billion rubles) to Syria as financial assistance for social needs, the Kommersant daily reports on Wednesday referring to a high ranking source in the Russian government.

According to the source, earlier, the Syrian government appealed to Russia with a request to grant a non-repayable financial support to Damascus. "This year, within the framework of assistance, the Syrian government will receive 240 million /euros/, it is the agreed figure," said the source.
According to the newspaper, at the end of April, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree according to which more than 46 million euros from this sum will be gratuitously transferred to the Syrian authorities from the account of the Russian Vnesheconombank................

From NSNBC:
....Syria cements cooperation with China and South Africa.  
Syria is cementing its cooperation with China and South Africa with focus on rebuilding the war torn country.Meetings focused on rebuilding housing, industry and a modernization of Syria’s Mediterranean ports, which could boost the Syrian economy after the completion of the Iran – Iraq – Syria gas pipeline that prompted Qatar, in 2007, to begin preparing the attempted subversion of Syria. 
The Syrian news agency SANA reports, that Syria’s Minister of Public Works, Hussein Arnous, stressed the importance of the rapid rebuilding of Syrian homes and structures through cooperation and partnerships between the two countries construction companies.

At a meeting with representatives of the Chinese Kansai  Co., Arnous underlined the necessity of making use of the company’s expertise, modern technologies and the potential to take part in the rapid construction of building projects in Syria................

Major manipulation going on of the stock markets ....


one has to be totally blind not to see it.  Zero Hedge has lots more on the shenanigans of the last few days.

From ZeroHedge:
......Someone Decided To Buy $1 Billion eMinis In 1 Second At The All Time High.  Someone decided that 1436ET was the perfect time to buy $1bn worth of S&P 500 futures (10k contracts) in 1 second (and $1.8 billion in that minute)... this flush of volume is the largest minute of the day and lifted all equity indices and ETFs in one magical move. As a result of the order, bonds rallied even as and VIX is higher on the day.

Canada's #1 cheats and liars .... The Liberals


They always put the Conservative party in second place when it comes to lying and cheating with a straight face.  

Wish Andrea Horwath was not of the NDP .... I definitely like her. If we had leaders of her calibre, Canada would never meddle in the politics of other countries nor would we ever go prancing into illegal and unnecessary wars.  

Guess, will have to hold my nose and vote for the conniving Cons one more time. Wish I could get over my loyalty to the blasted Cons once and for all. They are no better than the Libs, but  it  takes time to fully disengage..... although, of late, Harper and Baird have been helping many Conservative voters run to the arms of one of the other two parties.  



From CBCNews:
....PCs say Wynne hid $317M bailout of MaRS developer
NDP claims Liberals hired consultant to create fake Twitter accounts for transit plan.

Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne spent Thursday morning fending off attacks and allegations from her two main opponents.

The day began with the Progressive Conservatives releasing government documents they say show the Liberals secretly approved a $317-million bailout of a downtown Toronto real estate development.

The Liberals gave $71 million to build a second tower at the MaRS research complex near Queen's Park and provided a $234-million loan for the project, but the documents show the registered charity and the real estate developer behind it can't repay the money.

Former Tory MPP Frank Klees says a whistleblower turned over the cabinet documents. Klees and party leader Tim Hudak accused Wynne of approving the bailout behind closed doors to avoid embarrassment during the election campaign.

NDP campaign co-chair Gilles Bisson said in a statement that the NDP has written to the auditor general requesting he look into the incident.

Klees says the Liberals also failed to put the liability on the books in the May 1 budget. The opposition parties refused to support the budget, triggering Wynne to call the June 12 election.

The Tories say the government should take the hit on the books but let MaRS suffer the consequences of bankruptcy from a bad real estate deal........

Warmongers are happy


War, glorious war of the warmongers!  How the warmongers must be enjoying the war porn of torn and bleeding bodies!
Do you think it bodes well for a president elect, well before the man is inaugurated, to shell civilian areas? My crystal ball screams a loud "NO" and I can see terrible calamity in the chocolate king's future. 



I wonder when the bully politicians of the West will dare to impose sanctions on China ....


you know China, don't you?  Yeah ... the powerhouse that's holding most of the USA's debt.
Here's a listing of the CICA members and observers  

From CBSNews:
China's president called Tuesday for  the creation of a new Asian structure for security cooperation based on a regional group that includes Russia and Iran and excludes the United States.

President Xi Jinping spoke at a meeting in Shanghai of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building measures in Asia, an obscure group that has taken on significance as Beijing tries to extend its influence and limit the role of the United States, which it sees as a strategic rival.

"We need to innovate our security cooperation (and) establish new regional security cooperation architecture," said Xi, speaking to an audience that included President Vladimir Putin of Russia and leaders of Central Asian countries.

Xi made no mention of Beijing's conflict with Vietnam over the deployment of a Chinese oil rig in a disputed portion of the South China Sea.

CICA, whose 24 member nations also include Korea, Thailand and Turkey, should become a "security dialogue and cooperation platform" and should "establish a defense consultation mechanism," Xi said. He said it should create a "security response center" for major emergencies.

The proposal marks the latest effort by Beijing to build up groups of Asian or developing governments to offset the influence of the United States and other Western governments in global affairs............

If you thought everything was quiet and calm in Tunisia .....


think again.

Bouazza Ben Bouazza of AP at OttawaCitizen:
.....Gunmen attack police lguarding home of Tunisian interior minister, killing 4.
Gunmen attacked the home of Tunisia's top security official while his family was inside, killing four of the policeman standing guard, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

The attack on Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou's home in the southern city of Kasserine took place just before midnight and involved six or seven attackers in a commandeered sports utility vehicle, ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui told local radio stations.

The Tunisian public radio said that the minister's family, including his wife, two children and two brothers had been inside the house during the attack and were unharmed. Ben Jeddou was in Tunis at the time.

Kasserine, in Tunisia's impoverished interior, is near Mount Chaambi, where soldiers have been battling al-Qaida-linked extremists near the Algerian border. Two soldiers were killed Friday when their vehicle hit a mine on the mountain. Aroui said the attackers were from the Chaambi region.

Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa described the attack as a sign of desperation after security officials arrested suspected Islamist radicals Sunday. Authorities said they uncovered a terror plot allegedly targeting industrial and tourist sites...........

Glenn Greenwald talks about NSA documents with Middle East media


In the next few days, we will be told how much joined at the hip the NSA has been with dictators of the Middle East.  

From Al Akhbar:
....Glenn Greenwald: NSA documents on Middle East to be disclosed.
Numerous documents focusing on partnerships and surveillance tactics between America’s National Security Agency and regional security apparatus’ in the Middle East, especially the Gulf region, will be released soon, according to the journalist leading the reporting on the explosive NSA leaks.

In his first exclusive interview with Arab media, Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who first broke the NSA story in 2013 and has since won a Pulitzer prize for his fearless and consistent reporting on the revelations, told Al-Akhbar there are many more documents to come out from the region.



Greenwald is one of a select few in possession of all the documents and, while working closely with whistleblower Edward Snowden, continues to play a pivotal role in exposing the intrusive level of surveillance by the NSA and its partners across the globe.

The latest damning NSA revelations appear in his new book, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State,” where Greenwald released new documents highlighting the scope of surveillance conducted by the NSA on foes and allies alike, including evidence of what the NSA designated as ‘approved SIGNIT partners’ such as Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Now taking the time to speak from his home in Brazil, Greenwald gives his take on the agency’s role, the effect the leaks have had on changing attitudes and relations with the US, and what more can be expected from the documents in the future.

Al-Akhbar – Tells us about the NSA documents on the Middle East…

Glenn Greenwald – We did a pretty big story that unsurprisingly didn’t get as much attention as it deserved in the American media back in September [2013] in the Guardian on how the NSA turns over massive amounts of communications to the Israelis without bothering to minimize it, and there was a Memorandum of Understanding between the Israeli surveillance agency and the NSA that we published, detailing how close the relationship was, and also part of that story there were also documents saying that although the US gives huge amounts of aid to the Israelis the Israelis are actually one of the most aggressive eavesdroppers on the US government and America generally, and that they try to make the relationship completely one-sided on behalf of Israel, so there is that that we published.

AA – Why wasn’t it made a big deal in the US?

GG – Because anything that reflects poorly on Israel is systematically ignored by most of America’s media….It got some attention, it just didn’t get nearly the amount of attention it deserved – I think the NYT public editor, if I’m not mistaken, even criticized the NYT for not reporting and following up on it................

............AA – Have you noticed from the documents the types of partnerships between the NSA and regional security agencies (in the Middle East)?

GG – The one thing I try not to do is talk in interviews or elsewhere about reporting we haven’t done yet, because it has to go through the reporting process for me to responsibly describe the documents, but yes, one of the things we want to work on are documents that detail NSA cooperation with some of the worst tyrants in the Gulf region, both to augment their own domestic surveillance capabilities and also for the NSA to share with those regimes information they get about those countries. This is definitely a big story that remains to be told that we want to work on now…. All I can say is there is a lot more reporting to do on that region of the world.

..........AA – Have you seen evidence of this?

GG – There is already some reporting we’ve done about that – there’s reporting we’ve done where the NSA has targeted what they call ‘radicalizers’ – people who establish radical views, but who are not, says the document, actual terrorists or even associated with terrorist organisations, and some of the documents we’ve uncovered talk about monitoring their online activities to see if there are any sex-chats or visiting pornographic sites and using that as a means to destroy their reputation and discredit them. So that’s targeting people who the government believes have radical ideas and using the surveillance as a means to ruin their lives, which is what the surveillance scandals of the 1960s and 70s were about. There are other documents we’ve reported on where they collect the data on people who visit the Wikileaks website, or ways in which they try and harm the reputations of activists on behalf of Anonymous, but one of the big stories that’s left to be told, which is the one we’re working on most now, is reporting on who it is specifically that the NSA has targeted with the most evasive type of surveillance on US soil, and who these people are, and what are the reasons for it, and that is the story of targeting of dissidents, and activists, and advocates as retaliation for their political views......

And, the winner of "most favorite country in the EU" to immigrate to, is .....


Germany!

Annika Breidthardt writing at Reuters:
....Euro zone crisis propels   German immigration to 20-year high.
Net immigration to Germany leapt by over 18 percent to a 20-year high in 2013, fuelled largely by migrants from euro zone debt-crisis states Italy and Spain as well as a continued influx of Poles, data from the Statistics Office showed on Thursday.

With Germany's population shrinking and ageing, industry has actively called for immigration to help fill the gaps. But abuse of the welfare system has also been a hot topic, especially before European Parliament elections this week.

Net migration - the balance between immigration and emigration - rose to 437,000 people, the highest level since 1993.

Net immigration to Europe's largest economy from Italy was up 52 percent to 32,000, and from Spain it rose 19 percent to 22,000. But migration from Greece, where the euro zone debt crisis started, fell by 9 percent.

The biggest number of immigrants still came from Poland, with a net influx of 72,000 people......

Children crossing over illegally into America ....


becomes another big headache for the Obama regime and an additional burden on the taxpayers.  
What kind of parents would send these kids on their own? How desperate are South Americans to get out of their own countries and into America?  Don't they know the USA itself is headed towards becoming like one of their own countries .... maybe even worse?



Stephen Dinan writing at WashingtonTimes:
.....Children swarming southern border prove a test to Obama’s immigration policy
Estimated 60,000 minors likely to double.
Children traveling without their families, including an “overwhelming” number younger than 12, are flooding across the southwestern border in the latest test of the Obama administration’s immigration policy.
Homeland Security Officials predict that 60,000 minors will cross the border this year and that the number will double next year, accounting for an astonishing percentage of people trying to jump the border — braving the tremendous perils of crossing Mexico and trying to evade border authorities, hoping to eventually connect with family in the U.S.
The administration seems powerless to stop most of the border breaches and instead has searched for ways to manage the flow of vulnerable, and politically sympathetic, immigrants.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will raise the issue with Congress. He will recount his trip this month to the border in Texas, where he saw such children, which the government calls “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs.
“I have been closely following this emerging issue since coming into office, with a particular focus on the Rio Grande Valley,” Mr. Johnson will tell the House, according to his prepared testimony. “I traveled to McAllen, Texas, to view the situation and saw the children there firsthand — an overwhelming number of whom were under 12 years old.”............

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

War is inevitable


Yup .... World War 3 is coming.  Many of us can feel it in our bones.  Lot of home truths in the article below.

Paul Craig Roberts writing at RonPaulInstitute:
....Memorial Day is when we commemorate our war dead. Like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war.

Those who lose family members and dear friends to war don’t want the deaths to have been in vain. Consequently, wars become glorious deeds performed by noble soldiers fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Patriotic speeches tell us how much we owe to those who gave their lives so that America could remain free.

The speeches are well-intentioned, but the speeches create a false reality that supports ever more wars. None of America’s wars had anything to do with keeping America free. To the contrary, the wars swept away our civil liberties, making us unfree...........

.........By overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine, Washington has brought the United States into confrontation with Russia. This is a confrontation that could end badly, perhaps for Washington and perhaps for the entire world.

If Gaddafi and Assad would not roll over for Washington, why does Washington think Russia will? Russia is not Libya or Syria. Washington is the bully who having beat up the kindergarden kid, now thinks he can take on the college linebacker.

The Bush and Obama regimes have destroyed America’s reputation with their incessant lies and violence against other peoples. The world sees Washington as the prime threat.

Worldwide polls consistently show that people around the world regard the US and Israel as the two countries that pose the greatest threat to peace. http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008 and
http://www.jewishfederations.org/european-poll-israel-biggest-threat-to-world-peace.aspx

The countries that Washington’s propaganda declares to be “rogue states” and the “axis of evil,” such as Iran and North Korea, are far down the list when the peoples in the world are consulted. It could not be more clear that the world does not believe Washington’s self-serving propaganda. The world sees the US and Israel as the rogue states.

The US and Israel are the only two countries in the world that are in the grip of ideologies. The US is in the grip of the Neoconservative ideology which has declared the US to be the “exceptional, indispensable country” chosen by history to exercise hegemony over all others. This ideology is buttressed by the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz doctrines that are the basis of US foreign policy...........

...........Neither the US nor Israel is embarrassed by their worldwide reputations as the two countries that pose the greatest threat. In fact, both countries are proud to be recognized as the greatest threats. The foreign policy of both countries is devoid of any diplomacy. US and Israeli foreign policy rests on violence alone. Washington tells countries to do as Washington says or be “bombed into the stone age.” Israel declares all Palestinians, even women and children, to be “terrorists,” and proceeds to shoot them down in the streets, claiming that Israel is merely protecting itself against terrorists. Israel, which does not recognize the existence of Palestine as a country, covers up its crimes with the claim that Palestinians do not accept the existence of Israel.

“We don’t need no stinking diplomacy. We got power.”
This is the attitude that guarantees war, and that is where the US is taking the world. The prime minister of Britain, the chancellor of Germany, and the president of France are Washington’s enablers. They provide the cover for Washington. Instead of war crimes, Washington has “coalitions of the willing” and military invasions that bring “democracy and women’s rights” to non-compliant countries.

China gets much the same treatment. A country with four times the US population but a smaller prison population, China is constantly criticized by Washington as an “authoritarian state.” China is accused of human rights abuses while US police brutalize the US population........

What a lovely idea .....


wonder if it will spread to other cities..... especially to Toronto, my city.  


Anonymous 'Hidden Cash' Twitter Hunt Moves... by newsbreaker

From BBC:
An anonymous tweeter  in San Francisco has been hiding dollar bills around the city and posting pictures of their location to help people find them.

The first tweet - a picture of a vegetable patch - appeared on Friday. Since then, pictures of money hidden under plant pots, benches and parking meters have been posted, each with a clue as to their location. Sometimes the money is tucked away with only a famous landmark to suggest its whereabouts. The city's famous Golden Gate Bridge and Palace of Fine Arts have both featured in the game.

Each new message prompts people to search for the money, usually around $100 (£60). After just five days the account the @HiddenCash Twitter account has more than 120,000 followers, and as news of the game has spread, people who have located money have begun posting pictures of themselves clutching their find at the chosen spot.

San Francisco resident Forrest Hanson told the BBC's Newsday he found the money after a new picture showing the city's iconic bridge was published. "My friend and I jumped in our car and headed to Baker Beach, just West of the Golden Gate Bridge," he said. "There was a bridge, and a fence, and this bit of shrubbery... I happened to toe my foot in the sand in the right spot.".....

..........The person behind the account is believed to have made a fortune in the property market, and claims the project is "an anonymous social experiment for good". "There is nothing wrong with donating money to a traditional charity, but I also wanted to donate in a more spontaneous way," he told People magazine. "I want this to expand to other cities. I want this to become a movement," he said.....

Visitors to Qatar for the World Cup 2022 ....


can expect to have a grand old time getting nicely broiled in full heavy clothing.
Curse the total fucks at FIFA who must have been heavily bribed to award Qatar with the hosting. If they were honest, Qatar would have never got the World Cup .... not in a million years.  



From HeraldSun:
......THE Arab emirate of Qatar  has issued a decree telling tourists that leggings are not pants.

The Gulf state has launched a modesty drive to make sure tourists understand what is and isn’t appropriate dress. And leggings fail to make the cut.

The Reflect your respect campaign, managed by Qatar’s state-run Islamic Culture Centre, uses Twitter, Instagram and leaflets distributed in public places to inform visitors of basic modesty laws in preparation for the 2022 Football World Cup.

“If you are in Qatar, you are one of us. Help us preserve Qatar’s culture and values. Please dress modestly in public places,” the leaflets explain........

Mexico next on the menu ?


The citizens' distrust in governments around the world is growing. And, guess what?!  USA figures in largely everywhere where there's trouble ... either causing or instigating the trouble and either working against the government or for the government. In Mexico's case, USA is hugging the government of Enrique PeƱa Niet in a close, loving embrace. So .... that means,  that govt. can do no wrong. 

Andalucia Knoll at VICE:
.....A Protest Site Gets Shut Down in Mexico, and All Fingers Point to U.S. Homeland Security.
As President Enrique PeƱa Nieto of Mexico was set to be sworn in on December 1, 2012, a coalition of activists prepped in their own way: They set up an online platform to publicize videos documenting expected abuses and repression during protests planned at the president’s inauguration. It was called 1dmx.org, reflecting a hashtag used to organize the demonstrations, #1dmx, itself marking the date of PeƱa’s inauguration.

The protesters were dead-on in their prediction of police brutality, which led to the illegal detention of dozens that day and the subsequent death of one demonstrator who was hit in the head with a police projectile.

What the activists did not foresee, however, was that the website that hosted documentation of the brutality would be shut down a year later, with no stated legal justification. Authorities remain tight-lipped, but a trail of clues leads to the likely intervention of the U.S. government, on behalf of counterparts in Mexico.

When pressed, the site’s hosting service, GoDaddy, has said it received a request from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to suspend the site, which was taken offline on December 2, 2013, a year and a day after PeƱa Nieto’s contentious inauguration.



In response, the site’s administrators and their lawyers filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Mexico City on December 24, 2013 against ten government agencies that they claim violated their constitutional rights. To date, all agencies have denied involvement, leaving the lawyers without a concrete plaintiff, which may cause the lawsuit to be thrown out on a technicality Tuesday morning. (If one of those agencies is actually confirmed to have been involved in the censorship of 1dmx.org, they could be charged with the crime of lying to a federal judge.).............

...........After digital-rights activists started making noise in the press about the site’s shutdown, GoDaddy reinstated it in March............

John M. Ackerman writing at TheNation:
Enrique PeƱa Nieto is using violence and repression to dismantle his country’s progressive legacy.

PeƱa has relied on violence, repression and censorship in order to impose these policies on a recalcitrant public. Human rights violations and attacks on the press have skyrocketed under the new administration, according to recent reports by Article 19, Amnesty International and a leading network of local NGOs. Since PeƱa’s inaugural seventeen months ago, protests and marches have typically met with violent repression and arbitrary arrests.

An important community organizer who participated peacefully in the inaugural protests, Juan Francisco Kuykendall, recently passed away due to the wounds he received when a police tear gas canister or rubber bullet struck his head during the rally. A leader of community policing initiatives in the state of Guerrero, Nestora Salgado, is today in jail for supposedly “disturbing the peace” by putting into question the integrity of corrupt officials. A Greenpeace activist is being aggressively prosecuted by the PeƱa administration for allegedly damaging a light on the building from which she hung a protest banner in the state of Veracruz. This month, a distinguished leader of indigenous communities in Chiapas linked to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) was brutally killed by members of a paramilitary group historically linked to PeƱa’s Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI).

Meanwhile, PeƱa has faithfully followed instructions from Washington to continue with the disastrous militarized “kingpin” drug war strategy, based on taking out leading narcotraffickers without attending to the root social and economic causes of the problem. The result has been a continuation of the bloodbath initiated under the previous president, Felipe CalderĆ³n, who governed from 2006 until 2012. During 2013, PeƱa’s first year in power, there were more than 18,000 violent killings and more than 2,500 kidnappings.......

Cold War without debate


Naturally!
Once politicians gain power, they discard the opinions of voters who placed them there.  What else is new?

Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen writing at TheNation:
.....Cold War Against Russia—Without Debate.
  
The Obama administration’s decision to isolate Russia, in a new version of “containment,” has met with virtually unanimous support from the political and media establishment.

Future historians will note that in April 2014, nearly a quarter-century after the end of the Soviet Union, the White House declared a new Cold War on Russia—and that, in a grave failure of representative democracy, there was scarcely a public word of debate, much less opposition, from the American political or media establishment.

The Obama administration announced its Cold War indirectly, in a front-page New York Times story by Peter Baker on April 20. According to the report, President Obama has resolved, because of the Ukraine crisis, that he can “never have a constructive relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and will instead “ignore the master of the Kremlin” and focus on “isolating…Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world…effectively making it a pariah state.” In short, Baker reports, the White House has adopted “an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment.” He might have added, a very extreme version. The report has been neither denied nor qualified by the White House.

No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War—its epicenter on Russia’s borders; undertaken amid inflammatory American, Russian and Ukrainian media misinformation; and unfolding without the stabilizing practices that prevented disasters during the preceding Cold War—may be even more perilous. It will almost certainly result in a new nuclear arms race, a prospect made worse by Obama’s provocative public assertion that “our conventional forces are significantly superior to the Russians’,” and possibly an actual war with Russia triggered by Ukraine’s looming civil war. (NATO and Russian forces are already mobilizing on the country’s western and eastern borders, while the US-backed Kiev government is warning of a “third world war.”)

And yet, all this has come with the virtually unanimous, bipartisan support, or indifference, of the US political establishment, from left to right, Democrats and Republicans, progressives (whose domestic programs will be gravely endangered) and conservatives. It has also been supported by mainstream media that shape and reflect policy-making opinion, from the Times and The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal, from The New Republic to The Weekly Standard, from MSNBC to Fox News, from NPR to commercial radio news. (There are notable exceptions, including this magazine, but none close enough to the mainstream to be “authoritative” inside the Beltway.)..........

Plight of refugees in Spain and France feature largely in Human Rights report ...


just released. 

From Human Rights report
...Tens of thousands of Spanish families have faced, or are currently facing, eviction from their homes after falling behind on mortgage payments, with households headed by women and immigrants among those hardest hit. ......

.....Busloads of riot police have arrived at migrants camps in the French city of Calais this morning to begin expelling those living there. Around 800 migrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa are occupying camps near the city's port. Many migrants are trying to reach Britain, and say they have nowhere to go once the camps are destroyed. But French authorities say the camps must be cleared to deal with an outbreak of scabies. ....

.......The deliberate targeting of journalists in Libya seems to have one objective: muzzling free speech and political dissent. Human Rights Watch says that almost three years after the fall Muammar Gaddafi, it’s "a national tragedy" that journalists still can’t express their views without fearing arrest, attack, and even death.......

USA funded and trained terrorists give interviews to Frontline ....


but the documentary itself is a POS.

You will, however, see how the USA supplies Russian made weapons so the gullible will think it's the Russians, and only the Russians,  supplying arms to conflict areas.  
Of course, the USA-made documentary is slanted to be favorable to the USA's image but many will see through the hypocrisy of it all.  
This documentary is aligned to be shown to the American public just when the news is out that Obama regime is clearly aiming to arm and fund the rebels even more.  If not the Obama regime directly,  then there are plenty of billionaires all over America with deep pockets and ulterior motives for destroying historical Syria and these individuals are panting and drooling to supply the terrorists with weaponry.
Even though the Ghouta chemical attack is now widely known to have been a false flag, the documentary still weaves it in as Assad's doing.  
That should tell you the kind of elements that went into the making of this POS.



USA-led NATO mess in Libya


Informative reading.  All links to statements within article found at first link.

Paul Jackson, Professor of Politics at University of Birmingham
....NATO must take responsibility for spiralling violence in Libya.
Libya has drifted out of our news recently, swamped and obscured by other conflicts. But the repercussions of the NATO intervention, and the subsequent failure of any credible central government to control the powerful militias, have led to a series of increasingly serious incidents.

These include kidnappings (even the abduction of the prime minister), bombings, assassinations (both attempted and successful), and the massacre of protesters on the streets of Tripoli – all this on the watch of a western-installed government charged with protecting its citizens.

Escalating violence over the past few months has led several major oil companies to pull out and expatriate staff, and fuelled fears that Libya’s economic recovery could be delayed as a result. New Libya envoys have been appointed by the UK and US and terms like “civil war” are starting to circulate.

All this after the West declared Libya a victory for liberal interventionism.

Unlike Bush and Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the western “victory” in Libya was achieved without boots on the ground and principally by allowing locals to take the lead. Much of the clamour to intervene in Syria invoked the Libyan “success”, and the West’s reluctance to dive into that conflict has prompted accusations of weakness in the White House. The Economist, for example, running the headline What Would America Fight For?

But the violence now mounting in Libya makes it clear this was a serious misrepresentation. Instead, Libya should serve as a warning that an apparently simple military intervention can still have dire consequences – especially for the people who actually have to live with them.

Once Gaddafi fell, Libya was supposed to be free, but Libya now appears to be stuck in a cycle of escalating violence. This reached its nadir when the CIA-linked General Hiftar launched his second coup attempt in three months; the chief of staff called on the Islamist militias to defend the government as the country heads towards elections.

Hiftar was head of the National Salvation Front and enjoys some external support from the US in his opposition to the Islamists. He is also openly supported by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and by the Egyptian regime of General Sisi, which has shot a number of its own Islamists.

Blowback from Libya has also managed to spread insecurity across north Africa and into the Sahel, where the Sahara desert fades into the Sudanese savanna. The first country to experience this was Mali, where Tuareg fighters returned from Libya armed with military-grade heavy weapons. They tipped a fragile balance in northern Mali when they allied with Islamist groups and marched south, and the violence in the country is still a major regional crisis.

Another group to benefit from this lax arms control was Boko Haram, who have similarly laid hands on a formidable new arsenal brought in to the north of Nigeria via the Sahel..........