News, views and opinions from the Alternative Media ... week ending August 14

Murtaza Hussain at TheIntercept
Canadian Man Killed During Police Raid Had Built Online Life Around Supporting ISIS

Aaron Driver was boarding a taxi outside his sister’s home in the small Canadian town of Strathroy, Ontario when armed law enforcement agents moved in to arrest him. Driver, 24, was known to local authorities as a prolific online supporter of Islamic State. He had previously been placed under government surveillance due to his social media postings and had received a judicial order in February banning him from use of the internet.

Acting on a tip that Canadian authorities say came from the FBI, police on Wednesday descended on the home of Driver’s sister on suspicion he was planning to carry out an imminent terrorist attack. In Driver’s possession were two explosive devices. As police approached, he detonated one device while sitting in the backseat of the taxi, before being shot. He died in the encounter, while his taxi driver escaped with minor injuries....

Marcel Woland at TheSaker
Are the Olympics dead yet? Unraveling the doping scandal

....The problem, that the McLaren report likely ‘leaked’ to WADA and CCES in advance, is devoid of evidence. At the press conference, McLaren said that he had evidence, but was not going to publish it. With zero evidence, the report had to refurbish Cold War memes: FSB agents emptying urine samples by moonlight and substituting them with clean urine, “through a mouse-hole”. But, most importantly, he had a Russian, who had defected to the USA and who was willing to turn on his state and tell ‘the whole truth’ about it.

The ‘Russian’, Grigory Rodchenkov, is the chief and only witness in McLaren’s Report, a report which owes a ‘tip of the hat’ to the late Colbert Report for its sophisticated use of ‘truthiness’. (Truthiness is a quality characterizing a “truth” that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively “from the gut” or because it “feels right” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. -Wikipedia)

Rodchenkov is the disgraced former head of RUSADA (Russian Anti-Doping Agency). This agency, located in Moscow, was the only WADA-accredited agency in Russia. In other words, WADA explicitly endorsed the methods, standards and authenticity of the results of that lab.

The plot of the real thriller thickens: Rodchenkov was kept on at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, with the tacit approval of WADA, even after he was charged in 2011 by Russia with selling banned, performance-enhancing substances to his sister, for resale to athletes. She was charged, convicted and jailed in Russia in 2013. Her brother got off the charge by claiming a ‘personality disorder’. Yet, in spite of all the above, WADA kept him on.

And last but not least is Juliya Stepanova herself, who has confessed to using banned substances and to paying Rodchenkov thirty thousand rubles ($1,000US) in 2010 to conceal her positive test results. Stepanova’s husband, Vitaly Stepanov, an anti-doping agent at RUSADA 2008-2011, knew of his wife’s and Rodchenkov’s practices, but told no one until 2015. In June 2016, the Stepanovs admitted receiving help to move to the USA and $30,000US in cash from WADA. Conspiracy at work: chronology, complexity and concealment!

In other words, Rodchenkov supplied banned substances to his sister, who sold them to athletes, from whom he then took bribes, in order to conceal the evidence of their drug use. But now Rodchenkov has a new role: he is the sole supplier of uncorroborated evidence to documentary film makers in Germany and the USA, whose so-called ‘investigations’ first stoked the fires of the conspiracy and, finally, to McLaren himself. Rodchenkov, is now wanted for questioning in Russia for the crimes he has confessed to. In fact, the highest official to be implicated in the alleged systemic doping in the Russian Federation, is Rodchenkov. Yet, McLaren states repeatedly in his report that Rodchenkov is “a credible and truthful source“......

Item has very informative comments from readers
From Off-Guardian  ... source Roger Annis of NewColdWar
Readers of Canada’s mainstream media mock latest “Russia did it” stories

following the lead of its counterparts in the United States, media mainstream in Canada has joined the latest anti-Russia assault, this time over alleged hacking of the U.S. Democratic Party machine which is now firmly in the hands of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. We are bombarded with the message that Russian government agencies “maybe” or “surely” hacked the computer records of the Democratic National Committee.

Upon reading, we learn that the sources are anonymous hackers and speculative commentators.

The story behind this non-story is exposed well in many alternative news outlets. Nathan Robinson, the editor of Current Affairs, published a commentary on July 27 titled ‘Democrats are redbaiting like it’s 1956‘. RT.com‘s current affairs program ‘Crosstalk’ devoted its episode of August 1 to the topic.

Nathan Robinson wrote, “The issue here is not really whether the Russian government was behind the DNC hack. It’s that liberals are using the hack, plus a lot of wild, speculative theories about [Donald] Trump, to avoid substantive criticisms from both their left and right…

Power of MONEY: #UN is silent as Saudi airstrikes kill 2432 children in #Yemen proving everything has a price... pic.twitter.com/sUD52tJ7qp

— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) August 11, 2016

From ZeroHedge
Former CIA Director And Hillary Supporter: "We Should Kill Russians And Iranians Covertly"

Last Friday, former deputy and acting director of the CIA, Mike Morell became the latest neocon to join the Hillary bandwagon with a NYT Op-Ed titled "I Ran the C.I.A. Now I'm Endorsing Hillary Clinton" in which he not only praised Hillary but slammed Donald Trump, as follows: "Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security....  In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

What Morell, who sought to portray himself as bipartisan, did not say, is that he was an active participant in painting the Benghazi attacks as caused by YouTube video. When Hillary Clinton says 'best information provided by the intelligence community" she is referring to her man in the CIA: Michael Morell was the CIA official who crafted the "talking points" on Benghazi with the Obama White House according to his own testimony in 2014 to Congress. In emails later uncovered by Congress, CIA Director David Petraeus called the resulting talking-point language 'useless.'

What he also forgot to mention is that in 2013, he left the CIA to join a DC consultancy group with strong links to Hillary Clinton. Beacon Global Strategies, Morell's employer, is a ten-person firm whose co-founders include Philippe Reines, a senior counselor to Hillary Clinton when she ran the State Department. Reines is still her spokesman, serving in that capacity in what New York magazine calls 'a second full-time job. “And if she runs again... Reines will be onboard,” the magazine concluded in Ferbruary 2014. Meaning that Morell, as a senior official at Beacon, will also likely be part of the Clinton spin machine. ...

...Here is the key exchange:

    Morell: We need to make the Iranians pay the price in Syria; we need to make the Russians pay the price.

    Rose: We make them pay the price by killing Russians and killing Iranians?

    Morell: Yes. Covertly. You don't tell the world about it. You don't stand at the Pentagon and say we did this. But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran. I want to go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base. I want to scare Assad. I want to go after his presidential car. I want to bomb his offices in the middle of the night. I want to destroy his presidential aircraft. I want to destroy his presidential helicopters. I want to make him think we are coming after him.
....




Nicholas Nicholaides at Katehon
Ukraine-Novorossiya crisis: un-biased western point of view

In trying to analyze the Ukraine-Novorossiya crisis we must first realize and accept the true nature of the current regime in Kiev, i.e. a nazi/fascist, racist, illegal junta, appointed and installed by the US, that overthrew a democratically elected president and parliament that was recognized by UN, EU, Russia, US and so on. This is an indisputable fact, but the US and their servants, the EU, try to distort this.

But how did it get this far? Why didn´t Russia react? After all, former Ukraine (together with Belarus, Kazakhstan and some other republics) are within the Russian sphere of interest. How could Russia (the Russian leaders) not notice the preparations for a coup against the legal president Yanukovich, that started even before he was elected? And if Russia did notice them – why was there no reaction? After all, he was – and still is – the legal president. I think we will never get a real answer to those questions, unfortunately.

The main stream media in the west, in EU, is controlled by a few people and corporations that themselves, in turn, are controlled by Washington. They do not spread the truth but only the propaganda lies of their masters. Fortunately, more and more people in the EU are realizing this fact, to a great extent thanks to the internet and Russian sources such as RIA, Sputnik, Russia Today and others. Still, a lot remains to be done in the information field.

In the summer of 2014, after the Odessa-massacre, and as the Ukrainian military was attacking and killing protesting civilians all over Novorossiya and especially in the Donbass, the general sentiment in the west was prepared for a Russian intervention to save the Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians that were against the “Maidan-coup part II”. People were mentally prepared for this scenario, and no-one would have found it illogical. All the pre-requisites were in hand – but still the awaited intervention/liberation did not happen. Why it did not happen is another question that will probably  never be clearly answered, and we can only speculate as to what made president Putin back down from his promise to defend the people of Novorossiya against armed aggression. Was it threats from the west? Did/does he have a “master-plan” for the liberation of all of Ukraine – not just Novorossiya? We don´t know. But to try to liberate more than Novorossiya including all lands east of the Dnepr river, is a bad idea because the people of western Ukraine and, especially, Galicia, are not Russian in contrast to those in Novorossiya and east of the Dnepr.

The liberation of Crimea was of course very positive in all aspects, but there is one aspect that is often forgotten:

Remember that "Ukraine" including the Crimea had a pro-Russian majority in the last legal elections. Without Crimea it is 50/50 division between pro and anti Russian voters at best, and without Donbass the pro-Russian voters in the remaining "Ukraine" are a minority. Because of this fact it is impossible to stop the liberation at the borders of Donbass. We cannot leave most of Novorossiya occupied by the fascists in Kiev who want to join NATO and attack Russia. So the liberation must continue into the rest of Novorossiya and preferably all land east of the Dnepr too.....

Gareth Porter at ConsortiumNews
Rigging the Coverage of Syria

Coverage of the breakdown of the partial ceasefire in Syria illustrated the main way corporate news media distort public understanding of a major foreign policy story. The problem is not that the key events in the story are entirely unreported, but that they were downplayed and quickly forgotten in the media’s embrace of themes with which they were more comfortable.

In this case, the one key event was the major offensive launched in early April by Al Nusra Front — the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria — alongside U.S.-backed armed opposition groups. This offensive was mentioned in at least two “quality” U.S. newspapers. Their readers, however, would not have read that it was that offensive that broke the back of the partial ceasefire.

On the contrary, they would have gotten the clear impression from following the major newspapers’ coverage that systematic violations by the Assad government doomed the ceasefire from the beginning.....

From TheNewAtlas
Exposing US-Funded "NGOs"

From Moscow to Myanmar, US-European funded organisations undermine the essential work of genuine NGOs.
A nongovernmental organisation (NGO) is described as a not-for-profit organisation independent from states and international governments. They are funded by donations and facilitated by volunteers drawn from the communities they serve.

Genuine NGOs fitting this description fulfil a vital role within the nations they work regarding issues including education, healthcare, the media, the environment, technology, and economic development.
They often perform their work in parallel with government organisations and may even cooperate with their national government. At other times, the provide a necessary but constructive check and balance to deficiencies present within a state.

However, NGOs can be abused. Foreign governments and financially motivated special interests can use the structure and appeal of NGOs as vectors to project unwarranted, coercive power and influence.

Funded not by the communities they claim to serve, but by these foreign interests, they often operate under the pretext of upholding the legitimate  roles and responsibilities of genuine NGOs while in reality undermining a targeted nation's government, its people, its institutions, and national peace and stability. Ironically, such organisations also undermine the perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of real NGOs....

US Elections

Mark Taliano at GlobalResearch
Interlocking Agencies that Conspire to “Create Terror”: 
We Do Not Need the Police to “Create More Terrorists”
...Most recently, in Canada, Justice Catherine Bruce disclosed the true nature of an RCMP terror plot when she overturned terror convictions against two patsies – John Nuttal and Amanda Korody – who were set up by police operatives to commit a terrorist act for which they would otherwise be totally incapable of performing.

Bruce stated the obvious when she observed that,

    Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.

The “forbidden truth” is that agencies of Canada’s federal government created a false flag terror event with a view to:

    create an atmosphere of fear (aimed at the general public as well as politicians),
    create  Islamophobia
    create a false pretext for a War on Terror (translated: illegal imperial invasions using un-Islamic terrorists as proxy armies)
    create a pretext for unconstitutional, fascist, police state legislation  (C-51 legislation)....

The Corbett Report from a few years ago. 


Emily Zanotti at HeatStreet
Mysterious Deaths of DNC’s Seth Rich 
and Other East Coast Politicos Fuel Conspiracy Theories
While the nation remains captivated by the presidential campaign, DC politicos and government officials across the East Coast are grappling with a string of high-profile and mysterious deaths, some of which remain unsolved.

The unsettling events have given way to a host of Internet conspiracy theories, with denizens of Reddit and social media platforms trying to connect the deaths. Popular theories include an underground Hillary Clinton-authorized murder spree, a bizarre United Nations plot to hide evidence of global involvement in American political affairs, and, occasionally, a connection to the oncoming apocalypse.

Of course, unless Clinton is far more capable of handling a multi-national scheme than she appears, it’s likely the Internet is simply letting its imagination run wild. But see if you aren’t a little unnerved by this list of six strange deaths that have taken place on the eastern seaboard.

1. Molly Macauley: The world-renowned “space economist” Molly Macauly was brutally murdered while walking her two dogs around the corner from her Baltimore home. The assailant attacked Macauley and left her for dead in ...


From Sputnik
Is Edward Snowden in Danger? 
Spooky Tweet May Trace to Cryptic Bitcoin ‘911’
An unexplained tweet issued on the whistleblower’s account sparked concern over his physical safety, tracing to a bitcoin transaction in the amount of "0.000911" leaving some wondering if it is a cyber distress signal.
Edward Snowden’s unexplained tweet of a 64-character hex code on Friday led many to question whether the message was a “dead man’s switch,” an automatic message set to release if the user is killed or captured, which, in that event, would prompt friends and journalists to release documents.

Alternate narratives were quickly proposed, including one purported to be by the whistleblower’s girlfriend, saying that he had been killed, while others speculated that the encrypted tweet, which was quickly erased, was a signal by an alive and well Edward Snowden, ahead of a major document release....


Ray McGovern at ConsortiumNews
Perhaps former CIA acting director Michael Morell’s shamefully 
provocative rhetoric toward Russia and Iran will prove too unhinged even for Hillary Clinton. It appears equally likely that it will succeed in earning him a senior job in a possible Clinton administration, so it behooves us to have a closer look at Morell’s record.

My initial reaction of disbelief and anger was the same as that of my VIPS colleague, Larry Johnson, and the points Larry made about Morell’s behavior in the Benghazi caper, Iran, Syria, needlessly baiting nuclear-armed Russia, and how to put a “scare” into Bashar al-Assad give ample support to Larry’s characterization of Morell’s comments as “reckless and vapid.” What follows is an attempt to round out the picture on the ambitious 57-year-old Morell....


from Jim Marrs' blog ... source Brenda Corpian of Get Off the BS blog
Deceased FBI Agent Found At Trump Tower With Silenced Pistol

A source within the NYPD has reported that an armed 62 year old man tried to sneak in to the Trump Tower late Tuesday night. Interestingly the suspect who was found with a semi-automatic handgun fitted with a silencer has been identified as Barry Lee Bush, a former Newark NJ FBI agent who has been dead since 2007.

A Secret Service agent discovered Bush after he had circumvented a security partition on the bottom floor of the Trump Tower.  Questioned by Secret Service at the scene, Bush who initially identified himself as Barry Franklyn, remained silent offering no explanation for why he broke security at the Trump Tower.

According to the NYPD source, Bush was arrested for trespassing and for illegally carrying a pistol fitted with an illegal silencer. During his booking at the NYPD Jail, Bush’s fingerprints were submitted to the National Crime Information Center, which immediately reported Bush’s true identity.

“I wasn’t sure if our system had malfunctioned, so I rescanned his fingerprints to confirm that our system was working correctly.  There was no system error. The man we have in custody was reported deceased in 2007 after being shot in an attempted bank robbery, “one source speaking on anonymity said.

The New York Times reported on April 6, 2007 that Barry Bush,  a veteran F.B.I. agent on a bank-robbery detail was fatally wounded apparently when another agent’s weapon accidentally discharged during a confrontation with three gunmen outside a bank in a quiet town in central New Jersey.

Speaking about the weapon found on Bush, the NYPD source stated, “We don’t find hardware like this on the streets–that Glock was never stamped at the factory [serial number]—those pieces are reserved for people with a lot higher pay grades than me.”...

Vid is from about 2 months ago. Shows how the elite are increasing against us the masses.


From RT
‘Kiev has turned to terrorism’: Putin on foiled sabotage plot in Crimea 

Kiev has turned to the “practice of terrorism” instead of trying to peacefully resolve Ukraine’s crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in commenting on an FSB report that it had foiled terrorist attacks in Crimea plotted by Ukrainian intelligence.
Ukraine is “playing a dangerous game,” the Russian leader said when talking to reporters on Wednesday, while calling Kiev’s actions “stupid and criminal.”

Moscow cannot turn a blind eye to the deaths of its servicemen who were killed during special operations to prevent terrorist attacks in Crimea, Putin said.

Given that the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (HUR MOU) was allegedly behind the thwarted terrorist attacks in Crimea, it is “pointless” to meet with Ukraine’s current authorities to seek a solution to the country’s crisis, Putin said.

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany were to meet in the so-called “Normandy format” to discuss the peace process in Ukraine on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 in China.....

Felicity Arbuthnot at GlobalResearch
Hiroshima – A Criminal Enterprise From Which Nothing Has Been Learned

When Paul Tibbets was thirteen years old he flew a bi-plane over Florida’s Miami Beach dropping a promotional cargo of Babe Ruth Candy Bars directly on to the promotional target area, in an advertising stunt. It was his first solo flight and: “From that moment he became hooked on flying.”

He became a test pilot and: “one of the first Americans to fly in world War Two.” Seventeen years later he had graduated from dropping Candy Bars to dropping the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Tibbets told the authors:

    “I got called on this bomb job … I was told I was going to destroy one city with one bomb. That was quite a thought … We had, working in my organization, a murderer, three men guilty of manslaughter and several felons; all of them had escaped from prison.

    “The murderer was serving life; the manslaughter guys were doing ten to fifteen years; the felons three to five. After escaping they had enlisted under false names. They were all skilled technicians … They were all good, real good at their jobs and we needed ‘em. We told them that if they gave us no trouble, they would have no trouble from us.

    “After it was over, we called each of them in and handed them their dossiers and a box of matches and said ‘Go burn ‘em.’ You see, I was not running a police department, I was running an outfit that was unique.”

The crime which the “oufit” committed was also unique, making the odd murder, manslaughter or felony on home soil pale in to insignificance in comparison.

In Hiroshima, a millisecond after 8.16 a.m., on 6th August 1945, the temperature at the core of the hundreds of feet wide fireball reached 50,000,000 degrees. Flesh burned two miles distant from it’s outer parameters.

80,000 people were killed or mortally injured instantly. The main area targeted was....


From RT
ISIS, Taliban call truce to fight US-backed forces in Afghanistan - military officials
 Having been engaged in fierce battles against each other for over a year in Afghanistan, Islamic State and Taliban militants have agreed a truce to counter US-backed forces in the region, military officials told American media.

Afghan government forces have been using the rivalry between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the Taliban to push the latter’s forces back from the territories under their control. But several months ago the conflict died out as the two terrorist groups seemed to have reached a shaky truce, Afghan officials say.

“They [IS] fought deadly battles with the Taliban before. But over the past two months, there has been no fighting among them,” the Wall Street Journal cites Mohammad Zaman Waziri, who commands Afghan troops in the east of the country, as saying.

The truce enabled Islamic State to regroup and concentrate on engaging Afghan forces in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, which used to be an Al-Qaeda stronghold, media report. ...