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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Leave alone millions dead by bombs,etc , here's a list of Refugee Deaths since Empire's wars on Muslim countries


If not for wars inflicted by the warmongering powers-that-be on the Muslims in the Middle East and Africa, there wouldn't be deaths by drowning, by missiles, by headchopping, by car bombs, by suicide bombs ... and incidentally there would not be the millions of Shariah-loving folks making their way to the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and to the main warmonger, the United States of America.
What's not to like about the situation, eh?  STFU about refugees coming over and enjoy the coming shariah in every aspect of your lives. You didn't protest when your heroes were invading and bombing the Muslim lands, did you?  So, why complain now about the consequences?

From UNHCR dated Jan 31, 2012
More than 1,500 drown or go missing trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2011

UNHCR figures also show that a record 58,000 irregular migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees managed to make it to Europe by sea last year.
The UN refugee agency on Tuesday released figures showing that more than 1,500 irregular migrants or refugees drowned or went missing last year while attempting crossings of the Mediterranean Sea.

“This makes 2011 the deadliest year for this region since UNHCR started to record these statistics in 2006. The previous high was in 2007 when 630 people were reported dead or missing,” Senior Communications Officer Sybella Wilkes told journalists in Geneva, while adding that at least 18 people had drowned this year to date after setting off from Libya for Europe.

“Our teams in Greece, Italy, Libya and Malta, warn that the actual number of deaths at sea may be even higher,” Wilkes said. “Our estimates are based on interviews with people who reached Europe on boats, telephone calls and e-mails from relatives, as well as reports from Libya and Tunisia from survivors whose boats either sank or were in distress in the early stages of the journey,” she explained.

Wilkes also revealed that a record 58,000 irregular migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees managed to make it to European shores last year after setting off in boats from Asia or North Africa. The previous high was in 2008, when 54,000 people reached Greece, Italy and Malta.

During 2009 and 2010, border control measures sharply reduced the number of arrivals in Europe. The frequency of boat arrivals increased in early 2011 as the governments in Tunisia and Libya collapsed.

The majority of last year’s arrivals by sea landed in Italy (56,000, of whom 28,000 were Tunisian) while Malta and Greece received 1,574 and 1,030 respectively. The majority arrived in the first half of the year and most were migrants, not asylum-seekers or refugees. Only three smuggler’s boats arrived after mid-August.....

From the Guardian dated July 11, 2012
Fifty refugees drown in Mediterranean
 Asylum seekers from Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan die after after boat capsizes en route to Italy. One man survives to tell the tale
More than 50 asylum seekers trying to reach Italy died when their boat capsized, according to a man who has said he is the sole survivor.

Rocco Nuri, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tunisia, told the Guardian that the survivor, whom he named as Abbas, was spotted by Tunisian fishermen on Monday night clinging to a fuel tank and the remains of the boat. The 25-year-old Eritrean was taken to hospital in the town of Zarzis.
After interviewing him, Nuri quoted the man as saying that he had set off from Tripoli in Libya with 55 others – 33 Eritreans, 20 Somalis and two Sudanese. At some point in the journey – "He is very confused about timing," said Nuri – the rigid inflatable boat on which they were travelling developed a puncture on one side. Many of the passengers fled to the opposite side of the vessel and the wooden base of the boat gave way under their weight.....



From UnitedAgainstRacism dated Jan 11, 2012 (list is from way back even before Empire's war on Afghanistan and documents until Oct 2012)
The documented deaths of refugees up to that date is 17,306. But by this date now in 2016, I am willing to bet that that figure has gone well over 25K  because of the intensity of the wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and renewed hostilities in Libya.

List of 17306 documented refugee deaths through Fortress Europe

From Telegraph dated April 2015
Mediterranean migrant death toll '30 times higher than last year': as it happened
 

More than 1,750 migrants perished in the Mediterranean since the start of the year - more than 30 times higher than during the same period of 2014, says the International Organisation for Migration


WorldSocialistWebsite  dated May 30,2016
Over 700 refugees drown in Mediterranean shipwrecks

More than 700 refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since Wednesday attempting to reach Europe from Libya. It is the single deadliest week for refugee drownings this year, according to the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.

Three shipwrecks in just three days account for most of the week’s enormous death toll. Other agencies, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSN), have estimated more than 900 deaths. “We will never know exact numbers,” MSN tweeted on Sunday, “Around 900 people may have died in the Central Mediterranean in the last week alone. Europe, this is unbearable.”....

Monday, May 30, 2016

The Rothschild Family ... the Main Member of the Powers-that-be



Imagine that! An RCMP bully torturing his own son, but hey, the poor man is a victim himself, doncha know!


If an RCMP officer could do this to his own flesh and blood, heaven help us ordinary folks who might come across such others from the  force for a minor offense of speeding or giving one of the bullies a dirty look.

Wonder why the RCMP officer's identity is kept hidden.  One lenient law for the privileged and another severe one for the rest of us?
The item is from over a month ago, but I just came across it today.

Isn't it amazing how the RCMP officer's lawyer has coached him to take on the role of a victim when the fact of the matter is, it's his SON who is the actual victim.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!


Laura Fagan at CBC
Ottawa Mountie on trial for abusing son details own sexual abuse as child

An Ottawa Mountie on trial for the severe abuse of his son testified today that he was himself sexually assaulted as a boy growing up in Lebanon.

Both the man, now 44, and the victim's stepmother were charged in February 2013 with aggravated assault, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessaries of life in what investigators called "the worst case of abuse" they'd seen.

The woman is also charged with assault with a weapon, while the man is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon.

Both have pleaded not guilty. Neither accused can be named in order to protect the identity of the victim, who was 11 years old when the charges were laid.

The trial resumed Monday after being adjourned last fall.

The man told court that when he was eight, a boy living next door to him in Beruit assaulted him repeatedly over a one-year period. 

The man claimed he was later assaulted by another man, and again by a trusted teacher at the school where the accused worked with his father.

"I was ashamed and embarrassed," the Mountie told the court.

The man, who is suspended without pay from the RCMP, recalled exact details of the sexual assaults, but remained composed during his testimony.

He said the abuse happened against a backdrop of civil war in Lebanon, with bombs exploding continually around the home he shared with his parents and five siblings.

"This becomes your reality," the man told court. "Is the next [bomb] coming down on your head? That's how I lived."

"My life is no longer the same," he said. "I grew up asking why am I being targeted ... I lived with the guilt, shame and anger inside of me for the whole time."...

....Asked by defence counsel asked if he thought his son was exhibiting sexually predatory behavior, the man replied: "Morally, he was dead to me."

The man also testified that while preparing for his entrance exams for the RCMP — a process that included a psychological test — an officer cautioned him against mentioning his ongoing nightmares related to his childhood in Lebanon. 

Last fall the court saw a video of the man's son, naked and restrained in the basement of the family home. ....

Sunday, May 29, 2016

News, opinions, views ... all from the Alternative Media ... week ending May 29


David Icke moves away from his fantasy world of "lizards and shape shifters" to something very real and credible.


euronews has one version of same article for Russian speakers and another with loads of disinformation for non-Russian speakers. AND, you thought only the Arab media played such tricks, didn't you?
From RT
The Menace of Unreality: How euronews spreads misinformation & distorts news  about Russia
 Heavily twisted and biased western media coverage of Russia is nothing new. However, few outlets are as blatant about it as euronews has been this week.

Parody accounts are a fact of life on social media. Some attract little attention and others are hugely popular: A fake Twitter page ‘dedicated’ to the American actor Bill Murray has half a million followers, while Facebook posts by ‘Keanu Reeves’ have gone viral, despite the Hollywood star making it clear that he doesn’t use the service.

Ordinary folk can be forgiven for falling for these pranks but the standard for journalists is different. Especially when the evidence of intended mischief is so obvious. As such, it’s hard to believe that an organization as experienced as euronews genuinely believed that a Twitter account named "@SovietSergey" belonged to Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister.

While the username's invocation of the USSR should have been sufficient, the fact that the page actually states “NOT the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation,” should have been the clincher.

Yet, in another example of how western media, both state-backed and corporate, continues to distort coverage of Russia, euronews embedded a Tweet from this source in an article....

A Must Read
John Pilger at his blog
Silencing America as it prepares for war
Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party's rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America's victims in faraway places.

"We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don't you forget it."  So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, "Which side did you fight on?"

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called "The Price of Freedom" at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa's grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved "a million lives"; Iraq was "liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision". The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members .....


Silvia Cattori at GlobalResearch
Amnesty International Takes off Its Mask in a Fund-Raiser, Endorses Syria’s “Moderate” Terrorists

Sent in May 2016 to every household: We have just received from a Arret sur info reader this flyer calling for donations, distributed in letter boxes by Amnesty International.

The flyer leaves no doubt about the outrageous political bias adopted by the NGO from the beginning of the war in Syria.

We denounce this misleading campaign that comes at the detriment of the Syrian people.

The Syrian state is the only secular state in the region, and Amnesty is combatting it, seeking the overthrow of the Assad government. This means imposing on Syrians the destruction of their state, and bringing armed groups, who want to establish an Islamic state, to power, the groups supported by obscurantist regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait.

Image translation: “Why does this man let his people suffer so much? YES I support Amnesty International and I am making a 70 Franc donation. Amnesty International, Swiss section”....

To understand Amnesty International's motives for siding with jihadis, check out here who their paymasters happen to be and how the org operates under the guise of  goodwill.  We are living in an Orwellian world and don't know it.

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
NFL's war against science and reason
Perhaps it’s because I just watched the movie, “Concussion,” which tells the story of the National Football League’s haughty denial of the science proving football-related brain damage – and the NFL’s abuse of the truth-tellers – but I still can’t understand why so many people side with Commissioner Roger Goodell in the absurd “Deflategate” case against Tom Brady.

Surely, the NFL’s four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback on the charge of tampering with the air pressure of footballs is not as serious as the NFL covering up the dangers from concussions (reminiscent of how the cigarette industry long denied links between smoking and cancer), but the Brady case is a microcosm of how power works and how checks and balances, including the major news media, fail....

Vid is not new.  We have to be reminded time and time again how we are being herded around like the sheep we have become.  Prodded and  probed and made to feel like criminals or fed and watered until the slaughter.  The powers-that-be have their own jets or if not, and before they buy their own, they have friends who will jet them around without going through the torture lesser earthlings are put through at airports.
The fact that the multitude has learnt to accept the erosion of our privacy with only a few whimpers from some of us, should tell you how ready and willing earthmen have become to slavehood and an acceptance of slavemasters.



From Memri 
Article In Saudi Daily: U.S. Planned, Carried Out 9/11 Attacks – But Blames Others For Them

On the eve of President Obama's April 2016 visit to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Congress began debating the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), that would, inter alia, allow the families of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue the Saudi government for damages. Also in April 2016, the New York Times published that a 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks had found that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot. The commission's conclusions, said the paper, were specified in a report that has not been released publicly.[1]

 The JASTA bill, which was passed by the Senate on May 17, 2016, triggered fury in Saudi Arabia, expressed both in statements by the Saudi foreign minister and in scathing attacks on the U.S. in the Saudi press.[2] On April 28, 2016, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat published an exceptionally harsh article on this topic by Saudi legal expert Katib Al-Shammari, who argued that the U.S. itself had planned and carried out 9/11, while placing the blame on a shifting series of others – first Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, then Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and now Saudi Arabia. He wrote that American threats to reveal documents that supposedly point to Saudi involvement in 9/11 are part of standard U.S. policy of exposing archival documents to use as leverage against various countries – which he calls "victory by means of archives."

Following are excerpts from Al-Shammari's article:[3]

 "Those who follow American policy see that it is built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities. This is because it occasionally presents a certain topic to a country that it does not wish [to bring up] at that time but [that it is] reserving in its archives as an ace to play [at a later date] in order to pressure that country. Anyone revisiting... [statements by] George H.W. Bush regarding Operation Desert Storm might find that he acknowledged that the U.S. Army could have invaded Iraq in the 1990s, but that [the Americans] had preferred to keep Saddam Hussein around as a bargaining chip for [use against] other Gulf states. However, once the Shi'ite wave began to advance, the Americans wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, since they no longer saw him as an ace up their sleeve.

"September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings... Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation – they were not the reason for the collapse. But the U.S. still spreads blame in all directions. [This policy] can be dubbed 'victory by means of archives.'

"On September 11, the U.S. attained several victories at the same time, that [even] the hawks [who were at that time] in the White House could not have imagined. Some of them can be enumerated as follows:

"1.   The U.S. created, in public opinion, an obscure enemy – terrorism – which ....

US soldiers aka robotic killing machines who will come back and either off themselves or whine because they are not getting enough drugs and sympathy from the govt and the public at large, seen in Syria (without boots of course!)


From ZeroHedge
Guess What Occupation Is Most Frequently Cited In The Panama Papers?
With all the anti-one-percenter rhetoric and tax-evading-evil-doer narratives spewing forth from the mainstream media mouthpieces of the establishment since The Panama Papers were exposed for all to see, it may come as a surprise to some to find out which cohort of the elites are the most populous among the tax-haven-creating documents...

From Sott.Net
Moscow warns of dire consequences if Taliban chooses warlord Haqqani as new leader
Moscow warns of dire consequences if Taliban chooses warlord Haqqani as new leader
There will be severe consequences if Sirajuddin Haqqani, considered one of the most dangerous warlords in the Middle East, becomes leader of the Taliban following the reported killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, a Russian Foreign Ministry official has said.

Haqqani, believed to be in his mid-40s, has been largely cited as a possible successor to Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was reportedly killed in a targeted US drone strike in a remote Pakistani area on Saturday.

"There will be hell to pay" if the Afghan guerrilla commander replaces Mansour, Foreign Ministry official and the Russian president's special representative on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told Interfax on Monday.

The Russian diplomat added that so far Haqqani is regarded as the most possible candidate to become the new Taliban chief, and said that although Moscow does not yet possess any final data on Mansour's death, "the probability [of him being killed] is high."

Taliban militants choosing Haqqani as their new chief will be the worst possible scenario, Kabulov told RIA Novosti, adding that he's "the most radical figure in their leadership." ....


39K Verizon workers have been on strike for 6+weeks, but did the MSM report on it as much as they do on mind-numbing stuff  about the degenerate Kadashian family?  The MSM won't report such things because doing so goes against the govt policies (of outsourcing jobs) that has brought on the strike.



Paul Craig Roberts
Our Prospects Against The Russians And Chinese In World War III

 The Saker reports that Russia is preparing for World War III, not because Russia intends to initiate aggression but because Russia is alarmed by the hubris and arrogance of the West, by the demonization of Russia, by provocative military actions by the West, by American interference in the Russian province of Chechnya and in former Russian provinces of Ukraine and Georgia, and by the absence of any restraint from Western Europe on Washington’s ability to foment war. http://thesaker.is/how-russia-is-preparing-for-wwiii/

Like Steven Starr, Stephen Cohen, myself, and a small number of others, the Saker understands the reckless irresponsibility of convincing Russia that the United States intends to attack her.

It is extraordinary to see the confidence that many Americans place in their military’s ability. After 15 years the US has been unable to defeat a few lightly armed Taliban, and after 13 years the situation in Iraq remains out of control. This is not very reassuring for the prospect of taking on Russia, much less the strategic alliance between Russia and China. The US could not even defeat China, a Third World country at the time, in Korea 60 years ago.

Americans need to pay attention to the fact that “their” government is a collection of crazed stupid fools likely to bring vaporization to the United States and all of Europe.....

From StraitTimes
Belgium police fire water cannon at anti-austerity protest in Brussels

 Belgian police Tuesday (May 24) fired water cannon during clashes with protesters at a huge demonstration in Brussels against the centre-right government’s labour reform plans, leaving 10 people injured.

A group of around 100 masked protesters broke away from the peaceful main rally of around 60,000 people in the Belgian capital and started hurling objects and firecrackers at riot police, AFP journalists said.

Officers then drove them back with jets of water from three cannon in the clashes, which took place near the terminal for the Eurostar high-speed international train that links London and Brussels.



Bill Whatcott at RadicalPress
Whatcott commentary and photos on Facebook censorship 
Dear Friends,
Once upon a time when Facebook first came online in 2004, it was an environment that allowed a robust sharing of views. Christians, feminists, communists, National Socialists, Buddhists, atheists, homosexual activists and just about everyone else were free to say their piece. I recall “community standards” were in place early on, but they weren’t used to censor viewpoints back then. In the beginning I remember Facebook did censor some things that most reasonable people would agree should be censored in a public forum where children are present. Pornography and graphic, gratuitous violence was censored on Facebook back then. Those days are over.

In recent years Conservatives have been complaining that the enforcement of Facebook’s community standards seem to be slanted against them. News that favours conservative viewpoints tends not to trend while news favorable to liberals always trends. People who are vocal in favour of the pro-life and pro-family viewpoint seem to have their accounts shut down for saying very little, while left wing pages containing all sorts of vulgarity and hate speech remain accessible on Facebook.

This week Facebook released a public statement at the conclusion of their investigation of themselves for bias against conservatives saying, “we were unable to substantiate any of the specific allegations of politically-motivated suppression of subjects or sources, as reported in the media.”

Facebook’s deletion of my account is clear evidence of bias against socially conservative viewpoints. What should also be concerning for Christians and parents who care about what their children are exposed to is what Facebook is no longer banning ie: pornography and graphic snuff films.

In my view Facebook has actually become a politically correct sewer. Unfortunately, breaking away from the sewer might be too much work for North America’s psychologically and spiritually emasculated Christians. I note many Christian charities chose.....

International Military Review - Syria, May 27


CraigMurray at his blog
Time to End Religious Apartheid in Scotland – and England

....Public mass displays of hate speech do not to me come under freedom of speech. My guide as usual is the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who stated that to argue that corn merchants are parasites who thrive on the misery of the poor is freedom of speech. To yell the same thing to an armed mob outside a corn merchant’s house at night is not....

...The Catholic/Protestant divide is particularly acute in Scotland, but England has precisely the same problem with faith schools. If you filter out the substantial degree of Islamophobia in many reports, it is still plain that there is a problem with “Islamic” schools which teach values which have no place in modern education. (I would argue they are also a deviation from Islam, but that is a different argument for another day). I recently highlighted the interview by Mark Wallis Simons about education at a Jewish Orthodox school in England where pro-Israel propaganda was such that the pupils would fight for Israel against Britain. Thanks to Tony Blair, the leader who believes God wanted him to start war in Iraq, England has actually seen a growth in state schools which are a strong feature of the neo-cons’ “Academy system”. This has led to state schools being run by all shades of religious nutter including creationists.

Finally I would add to this sorry mix my experience in Blackburn, where with the active connivance of a Labour council there were apparently normal state schools under local authority control, within a couple of hundred yards of each other, which were 99% Muslim or 99% non-Muslim.

The answer to this problem is not to cherry-pick which faith is acceptable and which faith is not. The answer is simple. It has been accepted for centuries that the state has the right and duty to prescribe and provide education for children. There must be no segregated religious education in the UK. Children should attend school in a mixed environment and there learn a broad educational curriculum in which shade of religious belief has no place. Outside of school the religious life of the family is no business of the state. The children’s education is no business of the religion.

Private schools are a further different question. Quite simply I would abolish them, irrespective of the faith question, as they entrench the networks of growing social inequality...


William Blum at ForeignPolicyJournal
CIA Motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”

....Imagine if Cuba insisted that the United States make “concessions in the area of human rights”; this could mean the United States pledging to not repeat anything like the following:

Invading Cuba in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.
Invading Grenada in 1983 and killing 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
Blowing up a passenger plane full of Cubans in 1976. (In 1983, the city of Miami held a day in honor of Orlando Bosch, one of the two masterminds behind this awful act; the other perpetrator, Luis Posada, was given lifetime protection in the same city.)
Giving Cuban exiles, for their use, the virus which causes African swine fever, forcing the Cuban government to slaughter 500,000 pigs.
Infecting Cuban turkeys with a virus which produces the fatal Newcastle disease, resulting in the deaths of 8,000 turkeys.
In 1981 an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever swept the island, the first major epidemic of DHF ever in the Americas. The United States had long been experimenting with using dengue fever as a weapon. Cuba asked the United States for a pesticide to eradicate the mosquito involved but was not given it. Over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities.

These are but three examples of decades-long CIA chemical and biological warfare (CBW) against Cuba.  We must keep in mind that food is a human right (although the United States has repeatedly denied this).

Washington maintained a blockade of goods and money entering Cuba that is still going strong, a blockade that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, in 1997 called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.

Attempted to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro on numerous occasions, not only in Cuba, but in Panama, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela....

John V Walsh at DissidentVoice
Only Donald Trump Raises Five “Fundamental and Urgent” Foreign Policy Questions

Stephen F. Cohen Bemoans MSM’s Dismissal of Trump’s Queries

“Only Donald Trump (among the Presidential candidates) has said anything meaningful and critical of U.S. foreign policy.” No, that is not Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, speaking up in favor of the presumptive Republican nominee. It is Stephen F. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, a contributing editor for The Nation, that most liberal of political journals.

Cohen tells us here that: “Trump’s questions are fundamental and urgent, but instead of engaging them, his opponents (including President Obama) and the media dismiss the issues he raises about foreign policy as ignorant and dangerous. Some even charge that his statements are like ‘Christmas in the Kremlin’ and that he is ‘the Kremlin’s Candidate’ — thereby, further shutting off the debate we so urgently need.” (Cohen’s comment about the lack of a meaningful critique of U.S. foreign policy also covers the statements of Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

Cohen first enunciated Trump’s five questions during one of his weekly discussions on relations between Russia and the West on The John Batchelor Show, on WABC-AM  (also on podcasts).  On the April 6, 2016 broadcast, Cohen says:...


TheSaker at his blog
How Russia is preparing for WWIII

This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/how-russia-is-preparing-for-wwiii/

I have recently posted a piece in which I tried to debunk a few popular myths about modern warfare. Judging by many comments which I received in response to this post, I have to say that the myths in question are still alive and well and that I clearly failed to convince many readers. What I propose to do today, is to look at what Russia is really doing in response to the growing threat from the West. But first, I have to set the context or, more accurately, re-set the context in which Russia is operating. Let’s begin by looking at the AngloZionist policies towards Russia.

The West’s actions:
First on this list is, obviously, the conquest by NATO of all of Eastern Europe. I speak of conquest because that is exactly what it is, but a conquest achieved according to the rules of 21st century warfare which I define as “80% informational, 15% economic and 5% military”. Yes, I know, the good folks of Eastern Europe were just dreaming of being subjugated by the US/NATO/EU/etc – but so what? Anyone who has read Sun Tzu will immediately recognize that this deep desire to be ‘incorporated’ into the AngloZionist “Borg” is nothing else but the result of a crushed self-identity, a deep-seated inferiority complex and, thus, a surrender which did not even have to be induced by military means. At the end of the day, it makes no difference what the locals thought they were achieving – they are now subjects of the Empire and their countries more or less irrelevant colonies in the fringe of the AngloZionist Empire. As always, the local comprador elite is now bubbling with pride at being, or so they think, accepted as equals by their new masters (think Poroshenko, Tusk or Grybauskaite) which gives them the courage to bark at Moscow from behind the NATO fence. Good for them.

Second is the now total colonization of Western Europe into the Empire. While NATO ...
 
The Empire Files "Used & Betrayed-100 years of US Troops as Lab Rats"

Thursday, May 26, 2016

70% accuracy in face recognition app - so what happens to the 30% who might be falsely recognized as criminals ....


when this deviously evil app is bought into play by the law enforcement bodies of our world gone mad?
 

I looked in my crystal bowl and I can see this "thing" being used at airports, stadiums, theatres or whereever people gather. This would have the added incentive of giving the bullies making use of such contraptions, to further humiliate the sheeple and to bring the not-so-sheeple in line with the rest.

It will be easy to pick someone from the crowd and take him aside based on this 70% "accuracy" which might make the suspect "victim" miss his flight or his game. Hours later, or days later or perhaps even weeks or months later, the "suspect" is indeed found to have been nothing but a victim of this draconian app and viola the law enforcement bullies will have a tonne of lawsuits dropped on them.  Nice, eh?

Shaun Walker at TheGuardian
Face recognition app taking Russia by storm may bring end to public anonymity

FindFace compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability

If the founders of a new face recognition app get their way, anonymity in public could soon be a thing of the past. FindFace, launched two months ago and currently taking Russia by storm, allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities, with 70% reliability.....

....But the FindFace app is really just a shop window for the technology, the founders said. There is a paid function for those who want to make more than 30 searches a month, but this is more to regulate the servers from overload rather than to make money. They believe the real money-spinner from their face-recognition technology will come from law enforcement and retail.....

Cara McGoogan at Telegraph
Revealed: How facial recognition can expose your life to strangers 

A facial recognition app that can work out the identities of strangers in a crowd by matching their faces with profiles on social media is taking Russia by storm.

In just two months FindFace has gathered 500,000 users who have run nearly 3 million searches, according to its founders.

The technology gained international attention when a photographer used it to create an art project that revealed just how much information strangers can gather about you with a picture of your face.

Russian photographer Egor Tsevtkov wanted to know how much personal data he could find out about complete strangers on the underground. With this idea in mind he photographed a selection of strangers, and used a free facial recognition software with terrifying results. 

The software he used is a website called Find Face, which lets users look up people online using a photo, and accurately matches them up with a Facebook profile, based on their faces.

"I learnt a lot about a person's life without any contact," said Tsevtkov. "I felt slightly uncomfortable.".....

Cartoons on the Most Watched Election Circus of All Time


 


Caliph Erdogan: "No visa-free for my Turks? Okay then - more refugees for you!"


Blatant and extreme blackmail committed right in front of the eyes of the entire world but as long as this particular piece of shit comes up smelling like roses to the powers-that-be, the warmongers and scum extraordinaire, everything is okey-dokey.

From BBC
Migrant crisis: Turkey could block EU deal over visas

Turkey's parliament will block a deal with the EU on migrants if Turks do not gain visa-free access to the bloc, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.

Access to the EU's passport-free Schengen area was a key demand by Turkey in an agreement struck in March.

But the EU says Turkey still needs to meet certain conditions, including changes to its terror laws, before access can be granted.

The agreement is aimed at halting the mass movement of people into Europe.

Mr Erdogan has also said funds promised by the EU have not yet been released....

As the MSM is deaf and blind, the cries of Yemenis are only heard on Twitter


This is the most under-reported war of total and utter misery wrought on innocent Yeminis and the reason it is hardly spoken about, leave alone any "jounalist" writing about it, is BECAUSE the USA and UK are both making tonnes of $s from selling cluster bombs and other weapons of mass destruction to the Saudis+gang coalition.

This is our world of today.  Yet, there are multitudes of the sheeple who still insist the West is helping to bring "democracy" to the people their bombs are shattering into pieces. The doublespeak is beyond what you read about in Orwell's "1984"


















Sunday, May 22, 2016

Stuff from the Alternative Media ... week ending May 22


Glenn Greenwald at TheIntercept
The Intercept Is Broadening Access
to the Snowden Archive. Here’s Why
From the time we began reporting on the archive provided to us in Hong Kong by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we sought to fulfill his two principal requests for how the materials should be handled: that they be released in conjunction with careful reporting that puts the documents in context and makes them digestible to the public, and that the welfare and reputations of innocent people be safeguarded. As time has gone on, The Intercept has sought out new ways to get documents from the archive into the hands of the public, consistent with the public interest as originally conceived.

Today, The Intercept is announcing two innovations in how we report on and publish these materials. Both measures are designed to ensure that reporting on the archive continues in as expeditious and informative a manner as possible, in accordance with the agreements we entered into with our source about how these materials would be disclosed, a framework that he, and we, have publicly described on numerous occasions.

The first measure involves the publication of large batches of documents. We are, beginning today, publishing in installments the NSA’s internal SIDtoday newsletters, which span more than a decade beginning after 9/11. We are starting with the oldest SIDtoday articles, from 2003, and working our way through the most recent in our archive, from 2012. Our first release today .........

Want to read some of the docs?  Go here.
Daniel McAdams at RonPaulInstitute
Bill Clinton to Poland and Hungary: Do As We 
Say on Immigration, You Dirty Little Putins!

...Lately the US (and EU bureaucrats in Brussels) have taken to browbeating Hungary and the rest of the "bad boys" in central Europe like Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic for refusing to accept tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from the countries being bombed by the US (with the assistance of EU bureaucrats in Brussels). Don't make your problem our problem, say the central European leaders.

Who do these pipsqueaks think they are questioning Washington like that, scoff the US power elite. The latest missile fired at central Europe came from former President Bill Clinton, who slammed Poland and Hungary in New Jersey earlier this week over their refusal to obey Brussels and Washington.

Clinton's message was clear: "we liberated you and gave you back your sovereignty - now do as we say!"

Said Clinton:
    Poland and Hungary, two countries that would not be free but for the United States and the long Cold War, have now decided now that this democracy's too much trouble. They want Putin-like leadership. Just give me an authoritarian dictatorship and keep the foreigners out. Sound familiar?

As he did for much of his eight years in office, Clinton got this one horribly wrong. Hungary has not "given up on democracy" when it comes to accepting refugees. In fact, Hungary has embraced more democracy than Clinton and his wife would ever tolerate from voters on the immigration issue. Earlier this month the Hungarian parliament approved a nationwide referendum on whether Hungary should accept the mandatory refugee quotas imposed by Brussels. Democracy enough?......
Jason Ditz at Antiwar
Israeli DM Resigns, Warns Extremists Have Taken Over

Ya'alon's Predecessor Warns New Govt Shows 'Signs of Fascism'
A right-wing, relatively hawkish figure by any other nation’s standards, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has found himself increasingly vilified by the rest of the far-right coalition, which has lashed him for repeated calls for the Israeli military to behave in an ethical manner and not kill indiscriminately.....


From AHTribune
The pinnacle of hypocrisy: Israeli general calls for tolerance
A few days ago the Israeli army deputy chief of staff gave a speech in which he called on Israeli society to engage in self-reflection because, according to him, the atmosphere in Israel is reminiscent of 1930’s Germany. Then, as people were still scratching their heads in amazement, the Israeli army embarked on yet another ruthless attack on Gaza. Typical of Israeli hypocrisy, this general sees no wrong in being a willing executioner, to borrow from the words of the late Edward Said, serving the Israeli army for thirty-five years. Presumably he was talking about others, perhaps people in Israel who blatantly talk about murdering Palestinian children and mothers without shame. Needless to say, he is not one of those, because he is just following orders, serving his country and all he really ever wanted was peace.

Standing somberly at a Holocaust Day memorial ceremony, major-General Yair Golan bowed his head and read the remarks he prepared for this occasion: “We must uproot the budding of intolerance, violence, and the budding of moral decline.” He must have been asleep when they taught about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that occurred in 1948. Oh, never mind, they do not teach about the ethnic cleansing in Israeli schools, in fact teachers in Israeli schools are forbidden from mentioning the “Nakba” the Palestinian catastrophe. The moral standard held by Israel is at such a low that there is very little from which Israel can decline. There is also no, as the deputy chief of staff called it, “budding of intolerance and violence.” The evidence shows that the flowers of Israeli racism bore fruit long ago, and Israeli state sanctioned murder of civilians has been common practice for the past 68 years.  Indeed, having been ripe .....

Chris Hedges at TruthDig
Welcome to 1984

The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.

“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”

This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers citizens the final chance to embrace a new vision and a new direction.

This vision will only be obtained through mass acts of civic mobilization and civil disobedience across the country. Nader, who sees this period in American history as crucial, perhaps the last opportunity to save us from tyranny, is planning to rally the left for three days, from May 23 to May 26 at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in what he is calling “Breaking Through Power” or “Citizen’s Revolutionary Week.” He is bringing to the capital scores of activists and community leaders to speak, organize and attempt to mobilize to halt our slide into despotism.....


Lisa Sullivan at CounterPunch
Greetings from the state of Aragua in Venezuela 
where we are concluding a small US delegation focused on grassroots solutions to the massive food crisis here.

I am reaching out to you to share my grave concerns about what is happening here in Venezuela, my home for over three decades where I worked for 21 years as a Maryknoll Catholic lay missioner, then as Latin America Coordinator for the School of the Americas Watch.

It is out of concern for the most vulnerable sectors in Venezuela, such as my neighbors, that I break my silence to write. As I watch their efforts to obtain food for their families become more desperate and more futile, and as I witness pounds dropping from their bodies, I think the time has come to do more than share from my own scarce cupboards and gardens as they share with me.....

....The reaction of the US and other global interests seems clearly based on Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves  (the world’s largest). Those interests are circling our nation like vultures, ready to swoop in and devour......

I have spent countless hours leading delegations to Venezuela over the past 12 years to share the enormous advances in education, health care,  housing and nutrition that returned dignity to millions of Venezuelans under the Bolivarian  revolution.   Throughout those years there was an almost total boycott of the international media to acknowledge these advances that led to Venezuela becoming the most equal society in the Americas, to its surge to 5th place worldwide for college enrollment and to building new homes for  a fifth of its families.

The achievements of the Bolivarian revolution were real, palpable and inspired a continent. Today our reality is widespread hunger. The current government points to an economic war unleashed by wealthy business owners with international support from the US that has led to hoarding and shortages of food.....

...However, having spent a decade traveling the continent witnessing the horrors unleashed by US- trained Latin American military upon their own people, I want to at least alert you to the possibility of a similar scenario here....

From LifeNews
Little Sisters Win: 
Supreme Court Tells Lower Courts to Protect Them From HHS Mandate
The Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion today in the case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor, which have been fighting to not be forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

The Little Sisters of the Poor are asking the nation’s highest court to ensure they do not have to comply with Obamacare’s abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.

Without relief, the Little Sisters would face millions of dollars in IRS fines because they cannot comply with the government’s mandate that they give their employees free access to contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. Today’s decision removes all of those threats of possible fines.

“The Court’s decision is a win for the Little Sisters and other groups who needed relief from draconian government fines,” the Becket Fund, the Little Sisters’ attorneys, told LifeNews.

“We are very encouraged by the Court’s decision, which is an important win for the Little Sisters. The Court has recognized that the government changed its position,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead Becket attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor. “It is crucial that the Justices unanimously ordered the government not to impose these fines and indicated that the government doesn’t need any notice to figure out what should now be obvious—the Little Sisters respectfully object. There is still work to be done, but today’s decision indicates that we will ultimately prevail in court.”....


Paul Craig Roberts at his blog
Zionist Israel Hides Its Crimes Behind Its Smears of Truth-Tellers

Several years ago two very distinguished American scholars wrote a book, The Israel Lobby.

The book made a very understated case that the Israel Lobby has far more power over the US government and media than is good for America or Israel, as it silences constructive critics who are Israel’s friends. The two scholars were demonized by the Israel Lobby as advocating the return of the Holocaust.

The Israel Lobby presented itself as just a poor little weak thing unable to stand up to all the Nazis assailing Israel. Meanwhile the US Congress was unanimously passing outrageous resolutions handed to it by the Israel Lobby.

A number of former US Senators and Representatives, including Cynthia McKinney, have publicly stated that they were removed from office by the Israel Lobby for criticizing actions of the Israeli government, such as the Israeli government’s attempt to sink the USS Liberty, in which a majority of the American crew were killed or injured.

Instead of defending the US Navy, the cowardly US government was so scared of Israel that the President of the United States and the Admiral conducting the inquiry, Senator John McCain’s father, rushed to the defense of Israel and covered up the incident.

The coverup has been so successful that few Americans today know that a vessel of the US Navy was decimated by an Israeli air and torpedo boat attack, and Washington did not even file a protest. Really! The US is a “superpower,” and the cowardly government cannot even stand up to Israel?

What do you think will happen to these pussies in Washington when they confront by their carelessness and unjustified arrogance the power of Russia and China?....

Tony Cartalucci at LandDestroyer
When dark deeds unfold, point the finger in this direction

This is your real government; they transcend elected administrations, they permeate every political party, and they are responsible for nearly every aspect of the average American and European's way of life. When the "left" is carrying the torch for two "Neo-Con" wars, starting yet another based on the same lies, peddled by the same media outlets that told of Iraqi WMD's, the world has no choice, beyond profound cognitive dissonance, but to realize something is wrong.

What's wrong is a system completely controlled by a corporate-financier oligarchy with financial, media, and industrial empires that span the globe. If we do not change the fact that we are helplessly dependent on these corporations that regulate every aspect of our nation politically, and every aspect of our lives personally, nothing else will ever change.

The following list, however extensive, is by far not all-inclusive. However after these examples, a pattern should become self-evident with the same names and corporations being listed again and again. It should be self-evident to readers of how dangerously pervasive these corporations have become in our daily lives. Finally, it should be self-evident as to how necessary it is to excise these corporations from our lives, our communities, and ultimately our nations, with the utmost expediency....

 
Really heartbreaking. My blood pressure jumped beyond where it usually does when I hear about gross injustice.  UK social services and the legal system are stealing children from parents and putting them in foster homes or giving them up for adoption to the tune of approx. 25,000 kids annually.  It has become big business in the UK.  I wonder if the same evil is happening in Canada and the US.  Nothing surprises me anymore. 
This particular show has touched a lot of people who have listened to it as can be seen from the comments to the vid on YouTube.



From DemocracyNow
AMY GOODMAN: What about what’s happening
right now in Brazil, where protests are continuing over the Legislature’s vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial? Now El Salvador has refused to recognize the new Brazilian government. The Brazilian—the Salvadoran president, Cerén, said Rousseff’s ouster had, quote, "the appearance of a coup d’état." What’s happening there? And what about the difference between—it looked like perhaps Bush saved Latin America simply by not focusing on it, totally wrapped up in Iraq and Afghanistan. It looks like the Obama administration is paying a bit more attention.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I don’t think it’s just a matter of not paying attention. Latin America has, to a significant extent, liberated itself from foreign—meaning mostly U.S.—domination in the past 10 or 15 years. That’s a dramatic development in world affairs. It’s the first time in 500 years. It’s a big change. So the so-called lack of attention is partly the fact that the U.S. is kind of being driven out of the hemisphere, less that it can do. It used to be able to overthrow governments, carry out coups at will and so on. It tries. There have been three—maybe it depends how you count them—coups, coup attempts this century. One in Venezuela in 2002 succeeded for a couple of days, backed by the U.S., overthrown by popular reaction. A second in Haiti, 2004, succeeded. The U.S. and France—Canada helped—kidnapped the president, sent him off to Central Africa, won’t permit his party to run in elections. That was a successful coup. Honduras, under Obama, there was a military coup, overthrew a reformist presidentThe United States was almost alone in pretty much legitimizing the coup, you know, claiming that the elections under the coup regime were legitimate. Honduras, always a very poor, repressed society, became a total horror chamber. Huge flow of refugees, we throw them back in the border, back to the violence, which we helped create. Paraguay, there was a kind of a semi-coup. What’s happening—also to get rid of a progressive priest who was running the country .....

Wayne Madsen at StrategicCulture
South China Sea Hypocrisy:
 Washington's Imperialistic Hold on Tiny Islands
 While the Pentagon and US State Department continue to issue forth missives and warnings to China about it activities in staking territorial claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, Washington has its own sordid history of retaining control of islands claimed by other nations.

Navassa Island is a small 5.2 square kilometer outcropping in the Caribbean Sea between Haiti and Cuba. In 1857, US President James Buchanan unilaterally annexed the island to the United States. Before the American Civil War, the island had previously been the virtual private domain of the Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore, which sent African-American contract workers (the American Union’s quaint term for slaves) to Navassa where they worked to mine phosphate-rich guano. In 1889, the workers rebelled against their horrible working conditions and killed five of their white bosses.

The US Navy quelled the rebellion and returned eighteen of the workers to stand trial for murder. In 1890, the US Supreme Court ruled the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which provided the legal framework for the annexation of Navassa by the United States, constitutional. The high court also upheld ....

Ryan Dawson at ANCReport
Origins of the Syrian War
By Richard H. Black
Senator of Virginia, 13th District
The Syrian War was never an expression of domestic unrest. From the outset, the Syrian War was a foreign covert action, undertaken by NATO intelligence operatives and Arab dictators. The former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, said that as early as 2009, “Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.” Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker, that President Bush ordered clandestine operations to destabilize Syria in 2007—long before the so-called “Arab Spring.” The Saudi Arabians helped conceal the war plans by providing necessary funding, thus hiding them from public disclosure. Together, the U.S., France, Britain and the radical Gulf dictators mapped out plans to topple the free and popular government of Syria. They prepared the sinister Muslim Brotherhood to instigate violence–and impose regime change on the Syrian people.

In 2011, Syria had greater religious freedom and greater women’s rights than any other Arab nation. President Assad kept peace with all nations. He valued religious freedom and respected every faith. In the midst of the war, in 2013, Christians erected one of the world’s greatest statues of Jesus Christ—a towering statue atop a mountain that is visible from Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Our Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, would have beheaded anyone who tried to do that in their countries. The Saudis are determined to force violent Sharia Law on Syria. They want Syria purged of Christians and other minorities. Toppling the elected government of Damascus would end religious freedom and extinguish women’s rights in Syria forever.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of State and CIA launched its long-standing plan to topple secular governments in the Mideast. The Department of State launched plans for Wahhabists to overthrow Mideast secularists and impose brutal Sharia Law in Syria. NATO Commander Westley Clark disclosed that U.S. plans to overthrow seven countries were revealed to him in 2001. Not one of the targeted nations was involved in the 9-11 attacks on the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. WikiLeaks published plans drawn up by the U.S. Embassy in Damascus in 2006, to instigate a revolution to overthrow Syria. In 2011, ten years after General Clark discovered the plans for wars of aggression, covert operatives set in motion their deadly plans for Syria.

In Hama, Syria, the homes of all Christian residents were marked with the “Nazarene” symbol. Upon order, Muslim Brotherhood thugs swarmed from radical mosques and attacked them. In just three days, 70,000 Christians fled to Damascus, seeking President Assad’s protection. The strategy employed by covert operatives and the Brotherhood was identical to that used by Nazis, who.....

From Telesur
Brazil Explodes as Social Movements Fight Temer Coup Government

The removal of elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff — and installation of right-wing vice president and U.S. informant Michel Temer — has led to a sharp outburst of resistance against the interim coup regime.



Pepe Escobar at RonPaulInstitute
Beware What You Wish For: Russia is Ready for War

So foreign ministers from the 28 NATO member-nations met in Brussels for a two-day summit, while mighty military power Montenegro was inducted as a new member.

Global Robocop NATO predictably discussed Afghanistan (a war NATO ignominiously lost); Iraq (a war the Pentagon ignominiously lost); Libya (a nation NATO turned into a failed state devastated by militia hell); Syria (a nation NATO, via Turkey, would love to invade, and is already a militia hell).

Afghans must now rest assured that NATO’s Resolute Support mission – plus “financial support for Afghan forces” – will finally assure the success of Operation Enduring Freedom forever.

Libyans must be reassured, in the words of NATO figurehead secretary Jens Stoltenberg, that we “should stand ready to support the new Government of National Accord in Libya.”

And then there’s the icing on the NATO cake, described as “measures against Russia.”

Stoltenberg duly confirmed, “We have already decided to enhance our forward presence in the eastern part of our alliance. Our military planners have put forward proposals of several battalions in different countries in the region. No decision has been taken on the numbers and locations.”

These puny “several battalions” won’t cause any Russian planner.......
..

Murad Makhmudov, Noriko Watanabe, and Lee Jay Walker at ModernTokyoTimes
Alawites Massacred in al-Zara by Sunni Takfiris:
Alawites to the grave, Christians to Beirut

Sunni Islamist Takfiris from Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra overran a mainly Alawite village in central Syria several days ago. Since then, reports stress that many Alawite civilians have been butchered. Equally disturbing, many civilians from the village of al-Zara are missing and presumed either dead or kidnapped. Therefore, the death toll is likely to increase given the brutal nature of Sunni Takfiris.

Contrary to the mantra of many Gulf and Western media outlets, this was the aim of Sunni Islamists from day one. After all, the slogan “Alawites to the grave, Christians to Beirut” is the objective of various Sunni Islamist sectarian forces in Syria. Given this reality, the latest brutal attack against mainly Alawite civilians, along with the cleansing of Christians and other minorities throughout Syria, is a continuation of what opposition Sunni Takfiris have been doing since outside nations began to meddle into the internal affairs of this nation.

Associated Press reports “Al-Qaida fighters and other ultraconservative Sunni insurgents seized a predominantly Alawite village in central Syria on Thursday, sparking fears of sectarian violence as families from the village were reported missing by activists.”

Reuters also highlights the grim attack by reporting, “Syrian state television broadcast interviews with men and children who had fled the attack. They said rebels killed women, children and elderly people, slaughtered livestock and destroyed houses as they attacked.”....

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Views, news and opinions from the Alternative Media ... week ending May 15



Larry Chin at GlobalResearch ( vid at link)
During a Fox News telephone interview in which he criticized his fellow presidential aspirant Senator Ted Cruz, Donald Trump cut loose with potshot that Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of president John F. Kennedy.

Shortly after this incident, Ted Cruz ended his 2016 presidential bid. But the incident itself and its ramifications remain significant. The fact that Trump dared bring up the JFK assassination is remarkable. It is a further demonstration that Trump is unpredictable—and why he is feared and reviled by the Washington establishment and ruling elite.

Whether it was done thoughtlessly or with more studied intent, it does not matter. In evoking the JFK assassination, Trump yanked aside the curtain of secrecy just enough to cause a small firestorm, allowing another glimpse at the forbidden truth that the American elite has spent 53 years covering up.


NGOs, the Pentagon and the Human Rights industrial complex


From TheSaker blog
Toronto Parks Officials try to thwart Victory Day Celebration

....This year the Victory Day celebration might not have happened at all – if bureaucrats in the City of Toronto had their way. Officials at the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation did everything in their power to exclude organizers from Earl Bales Park, to prevent the community from honouring the sacrifice of their loved ones.

A dizzying array of unreasonable, ever-changing restrictions and obstacles had been placed in order to discourage the organizers and the community. Firstly, the bureaucrats denied the request to have a small parade of veterans and family members in one of the park’s roadways. Next, they’ve tried to shuffle the event as far away from people’s eyes into a remote parking lot that looks more like a construction site than a place where veterans should be honoured. They placed restrictions on the use of washrooms and other park facilities, tried to deny space for an art exhibition, and demanded that a garbage collection company be contracted one day before the deadline.

City of Toronto officials forced the organizers to rent, at their expense, the amphitheatre in the park regardless that organizers had no use for it. The amphitheatre is not wheelchair accessible and could not possibly be used by veterans, many of whom are wheelchair bound and are approaching their centenary.

Next was the demand to erect a stage, also not needed. Building permits, crowd control plans, etc. Park officials did everything in their power to drown organizers in paperwork in order to satisfy constantly changing demands. Catering, signs, banners, all of the literature to be distributed or sold at the event had to be pre-approved by Parks officials. Even though the event is not political in nature, City bureaucrats had effectively barred political organizations sympathetic to the cause from participating in the event.

Organizers worked ceaselessly to satisfy the ever-changing whims of the bureaucrats. It took a month ....

Brazil's prez Dilma Rousseff 's speech on her ouster by the corrupt powers-that-be.



Tim Anderson at GlobalResearch
'Aleppo hospital' smokescreen used to coverup NATO-backed massacres in Syria

Over April-May dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed 'rebel' groups.

They were even filmed firing their 'hell cannons' and saying "throw it on the civilians"

Meanwhile, western media ran fantasy stories about the besieged city.

If you believed the western corporate media you might think that the Syrian Government, for some unknown reason, has been bombing its own hospitals, and had killed Aleppo's only paediatric surgeon. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Aleppo faces a large operation by the Syrian Army, after the liberation of Palmyra on 28 March, to reclaim those sections of the city held by Islamist fighters since 2012. Almost half Aleppo's population has been displaced because of the fighting, but there are still about 1.8 million residents.

The withdrawal of the Saudi-backed 'High Negotiations Committee' from the Geneva peace talks on 21 April was followed the very next day by a pre-emptive counter-offensive. Many hundreds of rockets were fired into government-held areas by a coalition led by the internationally banned terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra.

These attacks came mostly from 'hell cannons', which shoot large gas canisters filled with explosives and at times chemicals. They caused havoc, killing and wounding many people in the streets, residential areas, schools and hospitals. The Syrian Army responded by shelling the al Nusra hideouts.

Aleppo Doctor Dr Nabil Antaki estimates that 1.5 million live in the government controlled western parts of the city, with another 300,000 in the Islamist controlled mostly eastern areas. Dr Antaki complains bitterly that the western media "only talk about loss of life in east of Aleppo which is entirely controlled by al Nusra. The three quarters of Aleppo under Syrian Government control, where numerous paediatricians are practising are of no consequence".

He was referring to the string of NATO-Islamist bomb attacks on major state hospitals including Ibn Rushd, al Dabbit and al Razi. Many dozens of people were killed and injured. Those attacks were filmed by Syrian and Russian people on the ground, but very little of this reached the western media.

Aleppo Medical Association doctors stand with Syrian soldiers, demanding an end to the western mis-information about Aleppo attacks.
Dr Antaki wasn't the only Aleppo doctor who was upset. ....


Worth a listen.


Bob Adelmann at TheNewAmerican
Driver Arrested for Remaining Silent, Sues Police and State 

At 9:30 p.m. on October 16, 2015, attorney Rebecca Musarra was driving in Warren County, New Jersey, when she was pulled over by two state troopers. Trooper Matthew Stazzone followed protocol and asked to see her driver’s license, her vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. While she was providing them, Stazzone asked, “While you’re looking for that, do you know why you’re being pulled over tonight?”

Musarra, aware of her right to remain silent, remained silent. Stazzone asked her again, “Do you know why you’re being stopped tonight?” Again, no answer.

Things then went off track. Stazzone said, “If you don’t answer my questions, I am going to arrest you.” Musarra responded, “Are you detaining me because I refused to speak?” Said Stazzone, “Why aren’t you answering my questions? Yeah.” Stazzone’s partner, Demetric Gosa, added “Yeah. Obstruction.”

Musarra then told the officers that she was an attorney and that she had the right to remain silent.

The officers ordered her out of her car, told her to put her keys on top of the car, patted her down, handcuffed her, and placed her in the back of their cruiser. On the way to the police station one of the troopers read Musarra her rights, which included the familiar phrase, “You have the right to remain silent.”
When she arrived at the local station, she was removed from the car, patted down again, and placed in a holding cell and handcuffed to a bench....

From SouthFront
The West Negotiates with former Al Qaeda Leader to Empower the Unity Government in Libya
The ongoing crisis in Libya pushes the West to make attempts to consolidate powerful political leaders over the “unity government” project. The main criteria of such involvement is the ability of these leaders to provide military assistance to the Western-backed government. The leaders’ biographies’ or even involvement in terrorist actions are ignored. By this, the EU and the USA are trying to avoid the situation where they will be forced to deploy a significant ground force in the region.

The Special Representative, Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, Martin Kobler, is negotiating with Libyan politician and military leader, Abdelhakim Belhadj. Belhadj is the former head of the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and a major player in the U.S.-backed overthrow of Muammar Gadhafi. Belhadj has a reputation for involvement in international jihad, as well as playing a key role in the 2004 Madrid train station bombings, and is accused by investigators of being involved in the murder of two Tunisian politicians at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood....


From ZeroHedge
Full List Of 214,000 Offshore Shell Companies Linked To "Panama Papers" 
Released Online
Whether it was funded by Soros, the CIA, the Rothschilds or even Putin is unclear, but moments ago the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - the group responsible for preparing and organizing the Panama Papers leak - published a searchable database laying out 214,000 offshore entities created in 21 jurisdictions, from Nevada to Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.

According to the ICIJ, "the data, part of the Panama Papers investigation, is the largest ever release of information about offshore companies and the people behind them. This includes, when available, the names of the real owners of those opaque structures."......

Mark Taliano at AmericanHeraldTribune
It's about time to unmask the Axis of Evil: 
23 million Syrians are besieged
The West and its allies are perpetrating unspeakable yet well-documented crimes against humanity as Washington forges ahead with its pre-planned agenda to destroy non-compliant areas in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in favour of its Wahhabi-inspired proxy armies, which include ISIS and al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nursra.

US led NATO and its allies, including Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Apartheid Israel, are perpetuating these crimes beneath ridiculous banners of “humanitarian interventions” and/or the “Global War On Terror” (GWOT).

This rampaging project of deception, death, and destruction follows a predictable colonial script wherein domestic populations are deceived as target countries and their peoples are destroyed and subjugated....

Violence has escalated in Afghanistan


From TruePublica.UK
Britain slowly emerges as new totalitarian state

The UK has too many CCTV cameras and the public is ignorant of the true extent of snooping which, are useless when it comes to combating crime –  the government’s own Surveillance Camera Commissioner said.

In a biting critique, he said Europeans are shocked the British public readily accepts the number of cameras we have. Porter, a former senior counter-terrorism police officer in Manchester, said the UK “must not sleepwalk into a surveillance state.”

Too late, Britain has been a surveillance state for years. This government mouthpiece is merely making distracting comments to hide the truth about Britain moving from surveillance state to a totalitarian one.

If ever confirmation was needed that government, politicians, lawmakers and the police need to be kept in check, here we have a powerful and persuasive set of examples. It is not alarmist to say this but by definition, the UK is slowly becoming a totalitarian state if state terror laws are being used for low-level misdemeanours such as dog fouling.

The BBC is using laws designed to catch terrorists and organised crime networks to track down people who dodge the licence fee. The publicly-funded corporation uses the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), designed by the last Labour government to fight terrorism, to catch those who evade paying the licence fee........

M K Bhadrakumar at AsiaTimes
Russia and Iran move cautiously on Aleppo

At first glance, it may seem the US-Russia truce agreement on the Aleppo frontline in Syria could be unravelling sooner than one thought. There are ominous signs already.
The Saudi Arabian media reported that the Syrian government forces exchanged fire with rebel fighters even before the extended ceasefire ended midnight Wednesday and that Syrian war planes are back in action over Aleppo.

Again, the flow of fighters to join the Syrian rebel groups from across the Turkish border shows no signs of let-up.

The Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak, which is linked to the ruling party, reported Tuesday on a limited incursion into Syria by Turkish special forces, 8 kilometers deep along a 18-kiolemtere stretch in the Jarablus region.

Turkey has possibly tested the Russian reflexes. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US knew about the Turkish incursion.

The Turkish report also claimed that the US has agreed to transfer its advanced High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to Turkey for deployment on the Syrian border in May. These rockets have a 90-kilometre range, which enables Turkey’s projection of power deep into northern Syria....


From MintPressNews
Police Are Getting Shot More In 2016, And It’s White Men Pulling The Trigger

Although police unions and conservative politicians blame Black Lives Matter and Beyoncé, in 71 percent of fatal shootings of police so far in 2016, the shooter was a white man.
Fatal shootings of police are up in 2016, and the culprits are overwhelmingly white men....

...Of 35 on-duty police officers who died this year, 17 were deliberately killed by gunfire, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks police deaths in the United States.
According to an analysis published Wednesday by Shaun King, the senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, this marks a 59 percent increase from the number of shooting fatalities during the same period of last year. ....
Ann Wright at ConsortiumNews
Army Chaplain Resigns over Drone Wars

U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain Captain Christopher John Antal resigned from the U.S. Army Reserves on April 12 in opposition to U.S policies regarding militarized drones, nuclear weapons and preventive war. Antal stated he could not serve as a chaplain for an “empire” and could not “reconcile his duty to protect and defend America and its constitutional democracy and his commitment to the core principles of his religious faith including justice, equity and compassion and the inherent worth and dignity of every person” with policies of the United States.

His letter of resignation stated that he resigned because he could not support “unaccountable killing” through the U.S. armed drone policy and the Executive Branch claiming “the right to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any time, based on secret evidence, in a secret process, undertaken by unidentified officials.”.....