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Showing posts with label olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label olympics. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Some of my tweets from Feb 16 - 20






































Posted by MariaS at 22:40 0 comments
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Friday, February 16, 2018

Some of my tweets from Feb 11 - 15


































































Posted by MariaS at 16:25 0 comments
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The two Koreas know what's best for them and don't give a damn about the West's warmongers


For those watching even a tiny segment of the rapport between the peoples of  the South and North Korea, it is all too plain that the winter Olympics have brought them together and  the West-controlled propaganda from those profiteering from wars and discord around the world have failed ... at least for now.

Dennis J Bernstein at ConsortiumNews
Korean Olympic Diplomacy Moves Forward Despite U.S. Intransigence

An interview by Dennis J. Bernstein with writer, activist and regional expert, Kay Jay Noh, about the big-power politics swirling around the Olympic Games now being held in South Korea.

By many accounts, the Koreans – North and South – have prevailed over the disruptive desires of the United States, coming together in a series of very public actions, clearly meant to turn down the political heat generated by President Donald Trump and the U.S. pressure for military action. This pressure can be seen as a continuation of President Barack Obama’s “Asia Pivot,” a policy that called for full U.S. dominance in the region, including by containing China and the new emerging regional powers through a set of expansive, coordinated, and aggressive military alliances with Japan and other Pacific Rim countries.

The high-profile actions taken by the North and the South – both acting independently of Washington – left U.S. Vice President Mike Pence pouting and twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines during some very effective international diplomacy. In this regard, there does indeed seem to be a new and genuine desire on the part of the president of South Korea to forge a more peaceful and cooperative relationship with the North, even though U.S. officials and commentators seem to be dead set against it, portraying the warming relations between North and South as an attempt by the North to subvert the long and close relationship with the South.

In congressional hearings this week, the moves toward North-South de-escalation were dismissed by a leading Republican, Sen. James Risch of Idaho, as a “smile campaign.”

“The South Korean people seem to have been charmed to some degree, some of them seem to have been captivated by it,” Risch fretted.

Meanwhile, on the media front, CBS reported that its rival network NBC “was forced to fire one of its Olympic analysts after he inexplicably said Koreans are grateful for Japan’s role in their economic development – while ignoring the one-time imperial power’s brutalization of the peninsula.”

I spoke to writer and regional expert, Kay Jay Noh, about the Olympics and the big-power politics swirling around the Olympic Games in Seoul. Noh is a special correspondent for Flashpoints show on Pacifica Radio.

Dennis Bernstein: Welcome back Kay Jay Noh. We want to get to some of the bigger political issues but let’s start with a media story. We’ve heard that NBC fired one of its analysts because it turned out he didn’t have a clue about Korean history and ended up insulting Koreans while trying to somehow curry favor with Japan.

Kay Jay Noh: This commentator, Joshua Cooper Ramo, is the Co-CEO of Kissinger Associates and a supposed expert on the geopolitics and culture of Asia.  The history is that Korea was brutally colonized and subjugated by Japan for three and a half decades.  As the Japanese athletes were coming in, Ramo said “Now representing Japan, a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945.  But every Korean will tell you,” he went on to say, “that as a technical, cultural and economic example, Japan has been so important to the transformation of Korea.”

This didn’t go over well with Koreans.  As one Korean put it, “After decades of human rights violations, exploiting our resources and attempting to destroy our heritage, Japan is not in a position to expect our gratitude.”  This is just one example of the extraordinary ignorance surrounding Korea, by so-called “experts.”....
Posted by MariaS at 15:37 0 comments
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Sunday, February 11, 2018

The happy situation with the two Koreas ... what those meant to be united, let the warmonger USA not keep apart


Things are looking good for the the Korean people despite you-know-who wishing they were not so.



From NYTimes
Two Koreas, Split by War, Use Olympics to Make Rare Shows of Unity

....It’s a different picture three decades later, as South Korea prepares to host its second Olympics. The North Koreans are not only joining, but their athletes will march with the South Koreans in the opening ceremony and compete side by side in the Koreas’ first joint Olympic team, in women’s ice hockey.

The turnaround underscores the changed role that the Olympics have come to play in the tense relations between the two Koreas, which never signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War. For years, the rival Koreas used the Games to showcase their competing claims to represent the Korean people, and try to one-up each other.....

From Yahoo
Two Koreas Form Single Ice Hockey Team in Show of Olympic Unity


North and South Korea solidified plans to march together under a unified flag at next month’s Winter Olympics and agreed to compete with a joint women’s ice hockey team in a rare show of unity amid heightened tensions about Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program.

With the games to be held in South Korea, the agreement signed Saturday offers a moment of reconciliation amid mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula involving missile tests and military exercises. North and South Korea will enter the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang under a single flag. The two nations haven’t competed as a team in 27 years...

From Yahoo
  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister
headed home Sunday night after a whirlwind three days in South Korea, where she sat among world dignitaries at the Olympics and tossed a diplomatic offer to the South aimed at ending seven decades of hostility.

Kim Yo Jong and the rest of the North Korean delegation departed for Pyongyang on her brother's private jet, a day after they delivered his hopes for a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during a lunch at Seoul's presidential palace. It was a sharp, but possibly fleeting, contrast with many months of rising tensions connected to the North's continued development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles....
Posted by MariaS at 23:33 0 comments
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Thursday, December 7, 2017

Some of my tweets from Dec 1 - 6


































Posted by MariaS at 17:10 0 comments
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Monday, August 22, 2016

The Rio Olympics 2016 and how Canada fared in it


The Canadian team went in hoping they would get 12 medals.  Well they did much better than that.  For a country whose population is less than 38 Million, Canada did awesomely good.

From TheStar dated Aug 3
Canada's Goal...
A lucky 13, says The Associated Press. A slightly better 16, Sports Illustrated projected. A decidedly sunny 19, predicted hometown The Canadian Press.

But for Canada’s Olympic team — as a whole — in Rio, there’s one number that matters: 12.

That’s what chef de mission Curt Harnett reiterated as Team Canada’s goal to finish in the medal standings, an improvement — albeit by just one place — from London...

From CTVNews dated Aug 21
Team Canada hits the mark in Rio with one of its best medal hauls
Canada's summer athletes moved the needle at the Rio Olympics with one of their best performances ever.

Lagging behind their winter counterparts since the turn of the century, Canadians won 22 medals to equal the most at a non-boycotted Games after Atlanta in 1996.

Four gold, three silver and 15 bronze bettered the 18 medals and single gold of London four years ago. Quadruple gold was also the best since seven in 1992.

"Our athletes have proved we're one of the best teams ever sent to any Olympic Games," chef de mission Curt Harnett said at Sunday's news conference. "They delivered a historic performance."...


In the last Summer Olympics in 2012 Canada was placed 36 with 18 medals.  Now, Canada is ranked 20 with 4 golds, 3 silvers and 15 bronze.
What a great job overall !!

As for the 1st 4 ranked countries, in spite of the political stink aimed at Russian athletes, Russia still managed to retain its 4th place, albeit taking fewer medals.
Says something about staying power, doesn't it?

South Korea and Australia didn't do as well as they had in 2012. 

As for the Ukraine, to drop from ranked 14 to now a sad, sad 31... tells me that the best athletes in Ukraine were Russians and they have probably left for their original homeland or moved to Crimea.

Bottom line:  Well Done Canada!   Who knows, maybe next time 2020 Tokyo, Canada might jump ahead and find a place in the top 10.

Here's this year's count from Bing. 

I did not watch a single Olympics event this time round, not even the opening or closing ceremonies, although I was hugely tempted to watch events where Canada had reached the finals.
Reason being it was my own little protest for Olympics being hosted in countries where there's a multitude of the poor.  Instead of spending the tonnes of money it requires to hold such an event, wouldn't it have been better to use that money to uplift a segment of the population from the millions of dirt poor Brazilians of the favelas?
Posted by MariaS at 18:38 0 comments
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Sunday, August 14, 2016

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…




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. ...
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Olympics 2016


Posted by MariaS at 22:09 0 comments
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Monday, August 8, 2016

Some news, views and opinions from the Alternative Media ... Week ending Aug 7


Neil Clark at RonPaulInstitute
Milosevic Exonerated, as the NATO War Machine Moves On

The ICTY’s exoneration of the late Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia, for war crimes committed in the Bosnia war, proves again we should take NATO claims regarding its “official enemies” not with a pinch of salt, but a huge lorry load.

For the past twenty odd years, neocon commentators and “liberal interventionist” pundits have been telling us at every possible opportunity, that Milosevic (a democratically elected leader in a country where over 20 political parties freely operated) was an evil genocidal dictator who was to blame for ALL the deaths in the Balkans in the 1990s. Repeat after me in a robotic voice (while making robotic arm movements): “Milosevic's genocidal aggression” “Milosevic's genocidal aggression.”

But the official narrative, just like the one that told us that in 2003, Iraq had WMDs which could be launched within 45 minutes, was a deceitful one, designed to justify a regime-change op which the Western elites had long desired.

The ICTY’s conclusion, that one of the most demonized figures of the modern era was innocent of the most heinous crimes he was accused of, really should have made headlines across the world. But it hasn‘t. Even the ICTY buried it, deep in its 2,590 page verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was convicted in March of genocide (at Srebrenica), war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There was no official announcement or press conference regarding Milosevic‘s exoneration. We’ve got journalist and researcher Andy Wilcoxson to thank for flagging it up for us.

How very different it all was when the trial of the so-called “Butcher of the Balkans” began in February 2002! Then, you‘d have to have been locked in a wardrobe not to be aware of what was going on.....
 
....When Milosevic died, his accusers claimed he had “cheated justice." But in fact, as the ICTY has now confirmed, the injustice was done to Milosevic.

While he had to defend himself against politically-motivated charges at The Hague, the US and its allies launched their brutal, illegal assault on Iraq, a war which has led to the death of up to one million people. Last year a report from Body Count revealed that at least 1.3 million people had lost their lives as a result of the US-led “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Those sorts of figures help us get Kosovo into some kind of perspective. Even if we do hold Milosevic and the Yugoslav government responsible for some of the deaths there in 1999, (in a war which the West had clearly desired and provoked) far, far, greater death and destruction has been caused by the countries who were the keenest to see the President of Yugoslavia in the dock. As John Pilger noted in 2008, the bombing of Yugoslavia was the “perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Since then we’ve also had the NATO destruction of Libya, the country which had the highest living standards in the whole of Africa and the backing of violent “rebels” to try and achieve “regime change” in Syria.

You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see a pattern here.

Before a US-led war or “humanitarian intervention” against a targeted state, a number of lurid claims are made about the country‘s leader and its government. These claims receive maximum media coverage and are repeated ad nauseam on the basis that people will bound to think they’re true.

Later it transpires that the claims were either entirely false (like the Iraq WMD ones), unproven, or greatly exaggerated. But the news cycle has moved on focusing not on the exposure of the fraudulent claims made earlier but on the next aggressive/genocidal “New Hitler” who needs to be dealt with. In 1999 it was Milosevic; now it’s Assad and Putin....

From
SouthFront


From LaRouche
Obama Launches Yet Another Criminal War on Libya

A classified map was presented to the White House this week, then leaked to NBC who posted it on their website, showing the "progress" of Obama's war on ISIS over the past two years. ISIS and its affiliates, the map shows, are now active in 18 countries, whereas in 2015 it was 13, and in 2014 it was only 7. Did this convince the warrior-president that his policy was a failure, and to accept President Putin's repeated proposals to bring the world's nations together to fight the common terrorist enemy?

Of course not. Rather, Obama launched a second war on Libya, bombing the city of Sirte (Qadaffi's home town) on Monday and Tuesday, supposedly to prevent ISIS from consolidating a base in the country. Obama went on TV Tuesday to say that the war was "critical" to help Libya's Government of National Accord fight ISIS, and that the war would continue as long as necessary.       

There are several lies involved, as usual. The Government of National Accord is not a government of national accord, but a pseudo government hand-picked at the UN and shipped into Tripoli with the assignment to "invite" the US to start bombing, using US special forces on the ground as spotters. Obama did not ask for or receive authority from the UN, nor from the US Congress, to launch another war, proving once again his credentials as a war criminal. And, of course, ISIS would not be there in the first place if Obama had not bombed the country back to the stone age and killed its anti-terrorist leader in 2011, which, along with G.W. Bush's similar treatment of Iraq in 2003, constitute the greatest war crimes of our age, responsible for the terrorist chaos internationally and the horrendous refugee crisis across Southwest Asia and Europe.       

Leading bankers, including investment bankers, are now warning....

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
The widespread disdain for Donald Trump
and the fear of what his presidency might mean have led to an abandonment of any sense of objectivity by many Trump opponents and, most notably, the mainstream U.S. news media. If Trump is for something, it must be bad and must be transformed into one more club to use for hobbling his candidacy.

While that attitude may be understandable given Trump’s frequently feckless and often offensive behavior – he seems not to know basic facts and insults large swaths of the world’s population – this Trump bashing also has dangerous implications because some of his ideas deserve serious debate rather than blanket dismissal.
Amid his incoherence and insults, Trump has raised valid points on several important questions, such as the risks involved in the voracious expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders and the wisdom of demonizing Russia and its internally popular President Vladimir Putin.

Over the past several years, Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment has pushed a stunning policy of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia in pursuit of a “regime change” in Moscow. This existentially risky strategy has taken shape with minimal substantive debate behind a “group think” driven by anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda. (All we hear is what’s wrong with Putin and Russia: He doesn’t wear a shirt! He’s the new Hitler! Putin and Trump have a bro-mance! Russian aggression! Their athletes cheat!)

Much as happened in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War......

From Sputnik
US-Backed Syrian Rebels Shoot Down Russian Helicopter, Abuse Crew Bodies

No group has claimed responsibility for downing a Russian Mi-8 helicopter on a humanitarian mission to aid the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo, but the crash site is controlled by a rebel alliance, comprising al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and several other radical groups. Interestingly, the US views some of them as moderate.

Several gruesome videos that Sputnik will not publish for ethical reasons have appeared online following the attack that claimed the lives of three crew members and two officers. Their authenticity has not been verified.
Footage shows a crowd looking at the burning wreckage of what appears to be a Russian helicopter with several bodies nearby. Some bystanders can be heard shouting Allahu Akbar, or God is great in Arabic. One of the videos shows a rebel standing on a naked body, while another one depicts a mob dragging the body of what is said to be a Russian pilot through the dirt....

Robert Bridge at RT
The hysterical ‘information war’ just stopped being funny. 
 The influential Atlantic Council has released a paper calling for Poland to ‘reserve the right’ to attack Russian infrastructure, including Moscow’s public transport and RT’s offices, via electronic warfare.

There are some ideas that are so outlandish, so outrageous, so off-the-reservation weird that the only way they should enter the public realm is by sheer accident, or in haphazard fashion through whistleblowers and WikiLeaks data dumps.

Regrettably, however, that was not the case with the Atlantic Council’s latest paper, alarmingly entitled ‘Arming for Deterrence: How Poland and NATO Should Counter a Resurgent Russia’. The recommendations put forward in this paper are the result of a deliberate decision (predicated upon the unfounded idea that Russia would initiate a military attack against Eastern European and Baltic nations), and that’s what makes its contents all the more disturbing.

Heeding Tolstoy’s advice, let’s jump right into the action: Page 12, paragraph 7 and I quote: “Poland should announce that it reserves the right to deploy offensive cyber operations (and not necessarily in response just to cyber attacks). The authorities could also suggest potential targets, which could include the Moscow metro, the St. Petersburg power network, and Russian state-run media outlets such as RT.”....

Craig Murray at his blog
The Killings of Tony Blair

The film has been predictably lambasted by the mainstream media. But it does include some very essential first hand evidence – myself apart, two other British Ambassadors tell what they themselves witnessed, as do Cabinet members. Noam Chomsky adds some important perceptions. This cannot just be dismissed by cries of “Oh look! George Galloway’s in a hat!! Remember when he was on Big Brother!!” The mainstream media’s response to this film has been unanimously puerile.

The Blair-loving Guardian gave the film two stars and called it “sanctimonious”. If one cannot express moral condemnation of a man who forced through an aggressive war, directly killing hundreds of thousands and destabilising both the Middle East and communities in Europe, and who then went on to make multiple millions of pounds promoting vicious dictatorships, then are we to suspend the very idea of ethics itself?

The Guardian subscribes to the world view propounded weekly by Nick Cohen, that to appear on an Iranian government TV channel is a far greater sin than to promote a war which killed and maimed countless thousands of small children........

Ron Paul
Americans Are Going to be Disappointed in Election Outcome

It is a sad commentary on the state of political life in the United States that our political conventions have become more like rock music festivals than competitions of ideas. There has been a great deal of bombast, of insults, of name-calling, and of chest-beating at both party conventions, but what is disturbingly absent is any mention of how we got to this crisis and how we can get out. From the current foreign policy mess to the looming economic collapse, all we hear is both party candidates saying they will fix it, no problem.

In her convention speech Hillary Clinton promised that she would “fight terrorism” and defeat ISIS by doing more of what we have been doing all along: bombing. In fact we have dropped more than 50,000 bombs on ISIS in Iraq and Syria over the past two years and all she can say is that she will drop more. How many more bombs will defeat ISIS? How many more years will she keep us in our longest war, Afghanistan? She doesn’t say.

In fact, the New York Times – certainly not hostile to the Clintons – wrote that it was almost impossible to fact-check Hillary’s speech because, “she delivered a speech that was remarkably without hard facts.”

Clinton’s top foreign policy advisor said just a day after her convention speech that her big plan for Syria was to go back to square one and concentrate on overthrowing its secular president. How many more thousands more will die if she gets her way? And won’t she eventually be forced to launch a massive US ground invasion that will also kill more Americans?

Clinton does not understand that a policy of endless interventionism has brought us to our knees and made us far weaker. Does she really expect us to be the policemen of the world with $20 trillion in debt?

Likewise, Republican candidate Donald Trump misses the point. He promises to bring back jobs to America without any understanding of the...

Rick Sterling at ConsortiumNewds
With the Rio Summer Olympics starting on Aug. 5,
 there is a huge controversy about Russian participation. On the basis of a report by Canadian lawyer Richard Mclaren (the “Mclaren Report”), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recommended the banning of all Russian athletes from the Rio Games.

Before his report was even issued, Mclaren influenced the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) in their decision to ban all Russian athletes from track and field events, including those who never failed any doping tests, in Russia or elsewhere.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been under media pressure to ban all Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics. The New York Times has carried many reports and editorials. The Daily Mail in London went so far as to publish a front-page story falsely claiming the “entire Russian team banned from Olympics” — two days before the IOC decision to the contrary.

Ultimately the IOC decided against banning all Russian athletes across all Olympic sports. They decided that that each sporting federation should decide the issue on their own. At the same time the IOC imposed special conditions on Russian athletes which prevent them from competing if they have ever tested positive, even if their suspension has already been served, unlike the rules for other Olympic competitors.
In the wake of this decision, there have been aggressive attacks on the IOC and its president for “failing” to impose collective punishment on the entire Russian team.

How Did we Get Here?
The sequence of significant events is as follows:...

Eric Zuesse at StrategicCulture
US Gov’t Refused US Entry to Jihadist It Employs for Overthrowing Assad
 A four-minute video that was posted to YouTube on April 29th documents that the US government has been lying about an organization, the White Helmets, the US government hires to assist Syria’s al-Qaeda, called «al-Nusra», to dispose of corpses of persons al-Nusra executes. Al-Nusra kills Syrian government soldiers; and, according to Seymour Hersh and other investigative journalists, has, throughout the Syrian war, been supplied guns and other weapons by the governments of the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, for that purpose. This is part of America’s operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, whom even Western polling shows to be popular amongst the Syrian general population. That same polling shows Nusra and other jihadist organizations (and the US government, which arms them) to be extremely unpopular in Syria.


On April 19th, the US State Department had blocked entrance into the United States by Raed Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, and refused to say why. Saleh had been invited to receive in NYC an award by USAID and NGOs that the US government finances, but he was barred at the airport, apparently because the FBI had placed him onto its no-fly list as a known terrorist.

The White Helmets claim to receive no funds from any government, but the four-minute video shows a State Department official admitting «we supply through USAID about twenty-three million dollars in assistance to them» (which might be annually, but that question wasn’t addressed in the video). The White Helmets’ founder, James Le Mesurier, is himself funded by the governments of the UK, Japan, Denmark and the Netherlands, all of which are likewise trying to overthrow Assad.

Vanessa Beeley at 21stCenturyWire
SYRIA: CNN Normalizes Suicide Bombers  and Embeds Reporters with ISIS and Al Qaeda
As the battle for Aleppo gathers momentum and the encircled terrorist factions respond violently to the strangulation of their supply lines and diminishment of their territory in eastern Aleppo, CNN  goes to extraordinary lengths to obfuscate US connections to these terror gangs, romanticise the role of terror in Syria and even more astonishingly “normalise” suicide bombers and promote the re-branded Al Nusra as the new “moderates”.

Al Nusra Front (aka Al Qaeda in Syria) under new nomenclature suddenly become ‘freedom fighters’ (sounds familiar) and the new ‘reasonable option’ in the US mainstream media and the US voting public barely seem to notice?

On August 2nd 2016, as the Syrian Arab Army made serious advances on the ground against the NATO and GCC-backed terrorist factions occupying the eastern sectors of Aleppo, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Al Nusra made the announcement that it was changing the name of the group.  Naturally, CNN ran with this story almost immediately.

This re-branding also coincides with the agreement between Russia and the US to finally combine forces in combating Al Qaeda/Al Nusra fighting inside Syria. Here we can see the true function of CNN in the conflict theatre – to help sculpt the US government narrative – and to carefully nudge the public perception along those lines.

CNN’s crack journalist, Clarissa Ward, who has visited terrorist held areas inside Syria 14 times since the NATO dirty war on Syria began 5 years ago, even donning the full veil and chador, or niqab, presumably to “respect” the ‘moderate rebel’ jihadi extremist demands, has played the staring role in the CNN team producing these sensational reports....




From Sott.Net  Source: Christoph Schult and Klaus Wiegrefe of Spiegel Online
DC Leaks: Breedlove conspired to lie about Russian aggression in Ukraine, get more weapons deliveries for Kiev
Working with dubious sourcing, a group close to NATO's chief military commander Philip Breedlove sought to secure weapons deliveries for Ukraine, a trove of newly released emails revealed. The efforts served to intensify the conflict between the West and Russia.

In private, the general likes to wear leather. Philip Mark Breedlove, 60, is a well-known Harley-Davidson fan, and up until a few weeks ago, he also served as the commander of NATO and American troops in Europe. Even during his tenure as the military leader of the alliance, the American four-star general would trade his blue Air Force uniform for motorcycle gear and explore Europe's roads with his friends.

Photos show a man with broad shoulders, a wide gait and an even wider smile. The pictures of the general's motorcycle tours were recently made public on the online platform DC Leaks. Restraint, it seems, was never Breedlove's thing.

The photos are the entertaining part of an otherwise explosive collection of Breedlove's private email correspondence. Most of the 1,096 hacked emails date back to the dramatic 12 months of the Ukraine crisis after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014. Thousands died in the skirmishes between Kiev's troops and Moscow-aligned separatists. More than 2 million civilians fled eastern Ukraine.

Russia supports the separatists with weapons, fighters and consultants. When people began calling for Washington to also massively intervene in 2015, the Ukraine conflict risked escalating into a war between East and West. ...

Nafeez Ahmed at Medium
How America’s Afghan crusade came home to Orlando

Orlando ISIS gunman was embedded in expatriate US-backed Afghan jihad network

There are many threads to this tragic, horrifying story of a gay American son of an Afghan mujahid.

There’s the question of blowback: the deep politics of short-sighted military interventions and the self-defeating profiteering of the military industrial complex. There’s the escalating clash of cultures and the crisis of multiple identities that is becoming evermore fractious as Western wars have brought unresolved chaos to foreign shores, and invited foreign refugees from theatres of war to the homeland. And ultimately, there’s the destructive force of repressed sexuality.

This investigation throws light on the complex political, cultural, religious and personal forces that likely nurtured the Orlando terrorist into a man capable of tremendous violence.

The story opens up from an exclusive analysis of the network of companies surrounding Omar Mateen’s father........



2016 NATO Summit: "Achtung, Russia!" from Inessa S on Vimeo.


Darius Shahtahmasebi at AntiMedia
10 Facts the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About the War in Syria

Corporate media regularly attempts to present Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria as solely responsible for the ongoing conflict in the region. The media does report on events that contradict this narrative — albeit sparingly — but taken together, these underreported details shine a new light on the conflict.

10: Bashar al-Assad has a higher approval rating than Barack Obama...
9: The “moderate” opposition has been hijacked

There is no longer such a thing as “moderate” opposition in Syria – if there ever was. The so-called Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been dominated by extremists for years. The U.S. has known this yet has continued to support the Syrian opposition, despite the fact the New York Times reported in 2012 that the majority of weapons being sent to Syria have been ending up in the hands of jihadists. A classified DIA report predicted the rise of ISIS in 2012, stating:

“If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria… and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”....

....1: Western media’s main source for the conflict is a T-shirt shop in Coventry, England

This is not a joke. If you follow the news, you most probably have heard the mainstream media quote an entity grandiosely called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (SOHR). This so-called “observatory” is run by one man in his home in Coventry, England — thousands of miles away from the Syrian conflict — yet is quoted by most respected Western media outlets (BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, and International Business Times, for example). His credentials include his ownership of a T-shirt shop just down the road, as well as being a notorious dissident against the current Syrian president.....

Watch from the 25min mark.  Hollande and gang never seem to miss an opportunity to degrade and harrass Christians, especially Roman Catholics. Ask yourself this:  Would the Hollande creature have done this to a mosque and the mullahs within a mosque?
Wonder what the only Catholic leader of note in France, Marine Le Pen thinks of this outrage.  France's powers-that-be would rather have a car park instead of a Catholic church.  Goes to show you how much hatred of Christians happens to  be in France, and only half of it is coming from the Muslims there.  You don't believe me?  Go visit France and see who really is in power there. 


Peter Symonds at WorldSocialistWeb
“Thinking Through the Unthinkable”

RAND Corporation lays out scenarios for US war with China
5 August 2016

A new study by the RAND Corporation titled “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” is just the latest think tank paper devoted to assessing a US war against China. The study, commissioned by the US Army, provides further evidence that a war with China is being planned and prepared in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.

That the paper emerges from the RAND Corporation has a particular and sinister significance. Throughout the Cold War, RAND was the premier think tank for “thinking the unthinkable”—a phrase made notorious by RAND’s chief strategist in the 1950s, Herman Kahn. Kahn devoted his macabre book On Thermonuclear War to elaborating a strategy for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

According to the preface of the new study, released last week, “This research was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and conducted within the RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army.”....

From NewObserver
Clinton: Destroy Syria for Israel

A newly-released Hilary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately provoked the civil war in Syria as the “best way to help Israel.”

In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the “right thing” to personally threaten Bashar Assad’s family with death.

In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the “best way to help Israel” is to “use force” in Syria to overthrow the government.

The document was one of many unclassified by the US Department of State under case number F-2014-20439, Doc No. C05794498, following the uproar over Clinton’s private email server kept at her house while she served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Although the Wikileaks transcript dates the email as December 31, 2000, this is an error on their part, as the contents of the email (in particular the reference to May 2012 talks between Iran and the west over its nuclear program in Istanbul) show that the email was in fact sent on December 31, 2012....





Polly Hughes at CounterPunch
The Nightmare of Rev. Pinkney: 
the Scales of Justice No Longer Exist for You and Me

In April 2014, Reverend Edward Pinkney submitted 728 signatures to the Michigan Berrien County Clerk’s office to recall then Mayor James Hightower. The required number of signatures was 393. Upon review, by the clerk’s office, 300 signatures were disqualified, leaving 428 confirmed and certified. With 428 signatures, the requirement was met in excess by 35 signatures. The recall date was set at May 6, 2014.

Then, the nightmare began.
After the recall date was set, Hightower questioned some dates on the petitions and, ultimately, the petitions were handled by multiple individuals until, finally, they were delivered to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab to determine if any dates had been fraudulently altered. This is where things get fuzzy. The crime lab determined that some dates were changed based on a change in ink color and variations in the type of pen that was used. The prosecution, after charging Pinkney with five counts of election forgery of changing five dates on signatures, contended that the reason for the change was to meet the 60-day rule (signatures on petitions dated more than 60 days before they were filed with the county clerk, would be invalid).

The kangaroo court, in Berrien County, Michigan that followed later that year, convicted Pinkney of the five counts as felonies and he was sentenced to serve 2.5 to 10 years in prison.

Fast forward to July 2016, after Pinkney’s legal team has filed multiple appeals for bond and briefs to ....
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