Some views, news and opinions from Alternative Media ... Week ending July 17

The Nice massacre and the failed Turkey coup are posted as separate items below this one.  

There have been several important news items during the last week right here in the Americas but because of the Nice massacre and the failed coup in Turkey, our focus has been diverted. 

The most important, IMO, is the release of the redacted 28 pages from the 9/11 report. One of the items below is authored by a widow of the 9/11 murders.  I am sure there will be many more people looking into those pages and coming to the conclusion that the govt of  KSA definitely had a role in that tragedy and in spite of knowing about that horrendous deed, the elite in the govt of the United States of America have stayed in bed with the Saudis, and to this day continue to  wallow in the kind of dirt that even swine would keep miles away from.  There are no more loathsome creatures on this our planet than the American politicians.

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
MH-17: Two Years of Anti-Russian Propaganda

Perhaps it’s only fitting that as we reach the second anniversary of the horrific shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flights 17, The New York Times would mark the occasion by once more using the tragedy as a propaganda club to advance the neocon goal of a new, costly and very dangerous Cold War with Russia.

On Saturday, the Times again demonstrated its disdain for normal journalistic practices as it picked up an amateur assertion that the Russians had faked satellite imagery showing Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine before the civilian airliner was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014.

Since that moment, the Times and other mainstream Western publications have been determined to pin the blame for the deaths of 298 people on Russian President Vladimir Putin so the world could plunge ahead into the latest neocon scheme of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia with the eventual aim of “regime change” in Moscow.

As revolting as it has been to watch the deaths of innocents exploited in the name of big-power geopolitics, what has been most troubling from a journalistic perspective is that the Times has cast aside any pretense of professional objectivity, much as it did during the deception of the American public over Iraq’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction in 2002-2003.

In this latest burst of anti-Russian propaganda, the Times gives great weight to some bloggers who applied a computer program supposedly to show that two Russian government satellite images were manipulated. The point is to cast doubt on whether the Ukrainian military had missiles in place in eastern Ukraine that could have shot down MH-17.

What the Times leaves out is the fact that Western intelligence has already confirmed that Ukraine’s military did have powerful anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. Last October, a Dutch intelligence report stated that fact based on NATO intelligence gathering, i.e., the West’s own satellite and other data collection.

Indeed, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) concluded that....

Naomi LaChance at TheIntercept
Underwear Model-Turned-RNC Speaker Wants Clinton and Obama in Guantánamo
Antonio Sabato Jr., who will speak at the Republican National Convention next week at the invitation of Donald Trump, frequently bashes Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Twitter. Last month, he said that Clinton and Obama should be sent to Guantánamo.

The Italian immigrant became prominent in the 1990s as a Calvin Klein model, Janet Jackson backup dancer, and actor on the soap opera General Hospital. He starred in a reality show called My Antonio, where women competed to become his girlfriend (his ex-wife, whom he had divorced 16 years prior, came in third place).

Today he spends his time at shooting ranges, on talk shows, dancing at Chippendale’s in Las Vegas — and cheering for Trump......

Baxter Dmitry at InvestmentWatchBlog
Paris At War, Media Blackout

We have entered the third month of ongoing protests as the French rise up in their millions against a ruling class determined to take away their rights. They are protesting against undemocratically imposed anti-worker laws that are designed to enrich and protect a wealthy elite at the expense of ordinary people.

There is anarchy on the streets of France, and the mainstream media continues to collude with the establishment to cover up the scale of events and suppress the Nuit debout (“At Night on our Feet”) movement.
...The threatened ban by the French government on demonstrations was reverted on June 22 after a widespread backlash criticising the government’s authoritarian plans.

France’s police watchdog is now dealing with 48 judicial inquiries into police brutality during three months of civil unrest and strikes against the government’s anti-worker laws.

One police officer is facing criminal prosecution after being filmed punching a restrained high school student on the sideline of a school demonstration in March. The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said he was shocked by the case....

From KatehonNews
Mass protests in Argentina against Macri

The streets in Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities are filled with protesters in a "Cacerolazo" against President Mauricio Macri’s major hikes in utilities, including a 700 percent rise in electricity, over 2,000 percent in gas in some places and 350 percent in water.

The Supreme Court demanded Monday that Macri justify the “social and economic aspects” of the measure within the next 10 days. The government of La Plata decided Thursday to suspend all bill increases, saying the government failed to implement the required public audits before imposing the price hike in April.....

Marc Ash at OpedNews
....Micah Johnson, the man who attacked police 
with an assault rifle at an anti-police violence rally in Dallas, was the 566th. Five more people have been killed by U.S. police since the events in Dallas. This according to The Guardian's ongoing landmark investigation, The Counted: People killed by police in the US.

Vice President Joe Biden delivered an address today [July 9] that eulogized in heroic tones the police officers killed and wounded in Dallas. His rationale, while heart-rending, leads toward, not away from, the violence he urged Americans to reject.
Biden said in part, "Being a cop wasn't just what they did. It was who they were -- like every officer who joined for essentially the same reason. There was something about them that made them think they could help, that they should serve, that they had a duty." While those are stirring words, they obfuscate the truth.

The truth is that U.S. police are trained to kill. Not just maim, wound, or subdue -- kill. The problem is systemic, from the highest echelons of government right down to the patrol officer on the street. "Kill when you need to kill. We've got your back."

There are a number of initiatives in the U.S. to promote training that would teach police officers to de-escalate potentially violent situations. The instruction is referred to as "de-escalation training." It is a good idea that will fail. As long as police officers are confident that they can kill with impunity, they will continue to kill. Make no mistake about it: today in America, police kill with impunity....

Meet the guy who saw and filmed the horror of Alton Sterling's murder by the heartless cops of Baton Rouge.

Part 2 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAbGvr3-w34  ">here


Todd E Pierce at ConsortiumNews (originally published Dec 11,2015)
Chicago Police Adopt Israeli Tactics

From the Archive: Recent cases of white police killing unarmed black men raise concern that some U.S. police are applying counter-terrorism tactics, including some learned at Israeli academies, retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce wrote in 2015.
After more than a year of stonewalling and what some might call obstructing justice, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued an apology for the horrific execution of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason van Dyke. Laquan McDonald was the black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by the police officer on Oct. 20, 2014. The video showing the shooting was only released by Chicago officials when they were ordered to do so by a judge in late November 2015.

But apology or not, the underlying substantive issue is that the summary execution of McDonald was the sort of atrocity that one would expect to see in what the U.S. once called “police states.” In fact, one can imagine a death squad execution in El Salvador in the 1980s looking very similar on video to McDonald’s slaying.
Dashcam video of Chicago police shooting Laquan McDonald.

Dashcam video of Chicago police shooting Laquan McDonald.

“Police state” is a term which has fallen into disuse since 9/11 with the adoption of so many similar practices by the so-called “democracies” in their domestic policies. The term generally was applied to Fascist or Communist governments and described a country where the police and the military exercised martial law over citizens or military occupation powers that uses military force to control a civilian population.

Sometimes these arbitrary powers were enforced by summary executions, depending on how much the authorities could get away with in their “extreme measures.” This was the practice in countries such as Nazi Germany; Pinochet’s Chile; El Salvador and Guatemala during the Cold War; to a lesser degree, apartheid South Africa; and military occupied territories such as Tibet, Israeli-occupied Palestine, and Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union.

But Chicago isn’t under martial law or military occupation, is it? Nor is it an apartheid state, with apartheid enforced by domestic martial law and military force, is it? To a normal civilian-oriented mind, one would think it is not under military occupation or martial law.

Seeking Israeli Training
Yet, under Mayor Emanuel, a former Israeli Defense Force (IDF) volunteer, and Garry McCarthy, the now former Chicago Police Superintendent (Emanuel fired him Dec. 1, 2015), it seems that parts of Chicago were treated as if they were occupied territory under police or paramilitary rule.....

...This policing model is being sold by Israel’s government to gullible or authoritarian-leaning U.S. police officials as a legitimate domestic policing model when, in fact, it is a military model of the sort used by militaristic, authoritarian regimes, customarily referred to as “fascist.”....

....The Chicago Police Department maintained that the warehouse was not a secret facility “so much as an undercover police base operating in plain sight.” But, as the Guardian reported, people were shackled and held for hours or even days without access to attorneys in violation of the U.S. Constitution, but the sort of detention permitted of Palestinians under IDF occupation.

A Chicago civil rights activist said he was abducted by masked officers, shackled and held on false charges, “with no food, no water, no access to the outside world” at the behest of “covert operations.” In other words, he simply disappeared.....

...Also, with Israel making its counter-insurgency police training a major export to U.S. police forces and with American cities such as Chicago eager to adopt that training, it is little wonder that minorities increasingly feel they are under repressive military-style occupation in their communities. They have good reason to feel that way since the police are getting training from a country that is expert at keeping a conquered people under an open-ended military occupation.....

From description at vid: As protests against police brutality spread across the United States, a shocking new joint investigation by the New York Times and the Marshall Project looks at a little-examined part of the criminal justice system: the horrific, and sometimes fatal, private prison extradition industry. Each year, tens of thousands of fugitives and suspects — many who have never been convicted of a crime — are entrusted to a handful of small private companies that specialize in transferring the men and women across the country. After reviewing thousands of court documents and interviewing more than 50 current or former guards and executives, two reporters with the Marshall Project uncovered cases two prisoners dying of perforated ulcers, another woman was sexually assaulted and a third who had to have both legs amputated from complications of untreated diabetes. For more we speak with the two reporters, Eli Hager and Alysia Santo, as well as Roberta Blake, who was arrested in 2014 after not returning a rental car on time, and a former private prison guard Fernando Colon.


Kristen Breitweiser at ConsortiumNews
The Long-Hidden Saudi-9/11 Trail
The U.S. government and mainstream media are playing down the long-hidden 9/11 chapter on official Saudi connections to Al Qaeda’s hijackers, hoping most Americans won’t read it themselves, as 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser observes.

By Kristen Breitweiser
First and foremost, here is what you need to know when you hear any member of our government say the newly released 29-page chapter from the congressional 9/11 report contains no smoking gun — THEY ARE LYING.

Our government’s relationship to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is no different than an addict’s relationship to heroin. Much like a heroin addict who will lie, cheat and steal to feed his vice, certain members of our government will lie, cheat and steal to continue their dysfunctional and deadly relationship with the KSA — a relationship that is rotting this nation and its leaders from the inside out.

When CIA Director John Brennan states that he believes the 29 pages prove that the government of Saudi Arabia had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks, recognize that John Brennan is not a man living in reality — he is delusional by design, feeding and protecting his Saudi vice.

When Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Anne W. Patterson, testifies — under oath — that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an ally that does everything they can to help us fight against Islamic terrorism, recognize that her deep, steep Saudi pandering serves and protects only her Saudi vice.

Read the 29 pages yourself and know the facts. Do not let any person in our government deny the damning reality of the 29 pages. And as you read the 29 pages remember that they were written during 2002 and 2003. President George W. Bush did not want the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia investigated.

President Bush has deep ties to the KSA and its royal family and only wanted to protect the Kingdom. President Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq — not Saudi Arabia. So, a 29-page chapter that said “Saudi” and “Bandar” instead of “Hussein” and “Iraq” was a huge problem for President Bush. (The solution was to hide the information for 13 years.)

It is well documented that the Joint Inquiry received enormous push-back ......

From Sott.Net ...Source: Andrew Korybko of OrientalReview
Macedonia's 'Colorful Revolution' masquerade: 
A U.S. regime change strategy to block Russian and Chinese projects in Eurasia
ORIENTAL REVIEW exclusively publishes the interview, given by the Hybrid Warfare expert Andrew Korybko to the Macedonian edition "Vecer" late June, in English. He speaks about the US R-TCR (Regime Tweaking - Regime Change - Regime Reboot) strategy in the Balkans, and efforts by Russia and China to stabilize Eurasia.

You're in Skopje at the moment, where the so-called "Colorful Revolution" has been ongoing for two months already. What are the real reasons and the goals behind this in the context of the geopolitical constellations in the region?

The "Colorful Revolution" that's presently ongoing in the Republic of Macedonia is nothing more than a Color Revolution masquerading as a "legitimate" civil society movement. It's really a foreign-supported regime change attempt that employs state-of-art political technologies inspired by the teachings of Gene Sharp, the godfather of this stratagem. Some participants and international observers genuinely believe that what's happening in Skopje is an organic initiative, but others are aware of its artificial nature and pursuit of ulterior motives. It doesn't take much effort for any neutral observer to find out which forces are pulling the protesters' strings, since much information has already been publicly released by the patriotic elements of the Macedonian media about the involvement of the Soros Foundation and the close coordination between the protesters and the US Embassy. Soros and his multitude of affiliated organizations provided the "seed funding" for organizing the wide assortment of "NGOs" that are leading the anti-government movement, and the billionaire philanthropist controls the finances that allow SDSM to pay protesters and bus them into Skopje from all across the country. These protesters, of course, are either "useful idiots" or willing conspirators like was already mentioned. They participate in these events for a few reasons, all of which could potentially overlap depending on the particular individual involved: ....

From SputnikNews
Gulenist Involved in Killing of Russian Pilot Took Part in Attempted Coup
A member of the movement tied to the so-called parallel state linked to prominent Turkish oppositionist Fethullah Gulen, who was involved in killing of Russian pilot over Syria last year, participated in attempted coup in Turkey, Mayor of the Turkish capital of Ankara Ibrahim Melih Gokcek said.
 On Friday, the military coup attempt was carried out in Turkey. According to the Turkish General Staff, 104 coup supporters were killed, while 47 civilians, 41 police officers, 2 soldiers died in clashes. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edrogan accused Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, an outspoken critic of the government in self-imposed exile in the United States, of organizing the unrest.

"It was the 'parallel state' that has deteriorated our relations with Russia. It was an incident, in which one of the pilots of this structures has participated, I guarantee it. He was one of the coup's participants. We have not voiced it until now. But I, Melih Gokcek, say that our relations have been deteriorated by these villains," Gokcek said, as quoted by CNN Turk.....

Claire Bernish at AntiMedia
Jill Stein Just Promised to Pardon Snowden and Appoint Him to Her Cabinet If Elected

...Stein said her pardons wouldn’t stop with Snowden, but would extend to others, including CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who first revealed proof of U.S. government employment of waterboarding and other torture tactics, as well as Chelsea Manning....

...Remarking whistleblowers “have done a great service,” Stein described those who expose governmental—and other—wrongs as “people who’ve paid an incredible price for our rights of not only the freedom to communicate on the Internet, but also the freedom to guard our privacy.”

Stein—whose cutting-edge campaign platform includes the call to end wars, cut the U.S. military budget in half, stop police brutality, end mass incarceration, forego corporate trade agreements in favor of fair trade, label genetically-modified food, and much more—quickly became the favorite of Bernie Sanders supporters who felt betrayed by his endorsement of war hawk, Hillary Clinton.

In the 24 hours following that capitulation, Stein’s campaign saw an astonishing 1,000 percent swell in donations—receiving over $80,ooo since Tuesday....

From ZeroHedge
Civil Unrest Explodes In Berlin - Over 3500 People Riot Against Police

"Civil Unrest is exploding," warnshttps://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/civil-unrest/civil-unrest-explodes-in-berlin-over-3500-people-riot-against-police/  Armstrong Economics' Martin Armstrong,
Some 1800 police were called in and at least 120 policemen were injured in what is becoming a street battle. This has been the most aggressive and violent protest in Germany for the past five years.
Protesters were throwing bottles, cobblestones and fireworks, as well as they destroyed cars in addition to attacking police officers. It appears at least 3,500 rioters took part in the uprising and possibly more than 4,000.
The protest is against police operations and involved mostly young people who have risen up against the police operations in the Riga street area. Protesters wore black hoods carrying banners with slogans like “Riga defend 94” and “Housing solidarity against state terror.”....

From AllGov  Source: Matt Reynolds, Courthouse News Service
Thousands of U.S. Military Veterans Deported Due to Lack of Citizenship

LOS ANGELES (CN) - In poverty-stricken South Central Los Angeles, a television commercial for the U.S. Marines grabbed the attention of 11-year-old Enrique Salas Garcia.
"I wanted that sense of honor and pride that comes from being a Marine. I wanted to be a badass Marine," Garcia said.

Seven years later, the week after he graduated from high school, Garcia's dream came true when his parents allowed him to enlist in the Marines. He served in the first Persian Gulf War, won many commendations and became a lance corporal.

But as recounted in the American Civil Liberties Union report, "Discharged, Then Discarded," Salas's fortunes dramatically changed when he left the Marines and came home.

In adjusting to civilian life, Salas grappled with a drug problem. He was sentenced to six months in jail for possession. Though he vowed not to repeat that mistake, in a cruel twist of fate, Salas's permanent resident card was stolen during a family trip to Tijuana in 2006.

Border officials voided his legal status when he reported the green card stolen. And unknown to Salas, his conviction meant that despite his four years of military service, he faced deportation and separation from his children and family.

Now Salas is exiled in Tijuana, where he repairs industrial tanks. It is a long way from that snapshot of a young boy who believed America could offer him a better future.

Salas is not the only one, said ACLU staff attorney Jennie Pasquarella, co-author of the report on deported veterans, released last week by the ACLU.

Pasquarella says the U.S. government is letting down Salas and thousands of others by not educating active service members and veterans about how to naturalize.

 All immigrants who are in the country legally are entitled to U.S. citizenship because of their military service. But while some deported veterans believe they earned citizenship simply by signing up for military service, others were misinformed by recruiters or officers about their legal status, Pasquarella said.

"That's one of the greatest tragedies of this. People didn't realize that they weren't already a citizen. Had they known, they could have applied and naturalized when they were in the service," the attorney said.....

The vid below is from 2012, a few months after the initial unrests in Syria


Claire Bernish at AntiMedia
Stop Blaming Black Liberation Groups for the Acts of the Dallas Shooter
Despite popular reports to the contrary, alleged cop-killer Micah Xavier Johnson — who purportedly carried out the murders of five police officers in Dallas — was not a member of a militant black power organization.

In fact, the alleged shooter had been effectively blacklisted from multiple groups — a move several leaders told the Daily Beast would have nullified potential membership in such organizations across the board.
That blacklisting occurred once leaders performing a background check of Johnson discovered he had been sent home from Afghanistan for stealing women’s underwear — and was discharged from the U.S. Army during the period of tumult in the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.....

A sample of Paris riots of last month