ibtimes | In 2012, the EU parliament voiced concern about "rising nationalistic
sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support of the Svoboda party".
"[Parliament]
recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the
EU's fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to
pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine's legislature] not
to associate with, endorse, or form coalitions with this party."
In
2005 Tyahnybok signed an open letter to then Ukrainain president Viktor
Yushchenko urging him to ban all Jewish organisations, including the
Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed carried out "criminal
activities [of] organised Jewry", ultimately aimed at the genocide of
the Ukrainian people.
In December, US Republican senator John McCain flew to Kiev to meet
the three leaders of the opposition at a rally against then president
Victor Yanukovich. McCain sparked criticism when he shook hands with
Tyahnybok.
In a leaked phone conversation
with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, US secretary of
state Victoria Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain "on the
outside" but to consult opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk "four times a
week".
Fifteen thousand Svoboda members held a torchlit ceremony
in the city of Lviv in January to honour Stepan Bandera, a Nazi
collaborator who led forces to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of
Poles in 1943 and 1944. Over 90,000 Poles and many Jews were killed.
"Lviv
has become the epicentre of neo-fascist activity in Ukraine, with
elected Svoboda officials waging a campaign to rename its airport after
Bandera and successfully changing the name of Peace Street to the name
of the Nachtigall Battalion, an OUN-B wing that participated directly in
the Holocaust," AlterNet explained.
In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) .
"By
the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA
members. Reagan personally welcomed Stetsko, the Banderist leader who
oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983.
"'Your struggle is our struggle,' Reagan told the former Nazi collaborator. 'Your dream is our dream'," AterNet claimed.
In 2010, Viktor Yushchenko who was president of Ukraine at the time, awarded Bandera the title National Hero of Ukraine.
"When
the European parliament condemned Yushchenko's proclamation as an
affront to European values, the UCCA-affiliated Ukrainian World Congress
reacted with outrage, accusing the EU of another attempt to rewrite Ukrainian history during WWII," AlterNet continued.
"On its website, the UCCA dismissed historical accounts of Bandera's collaboration with the Nazis as Soviet propaganda."
medium | Political IQ test: What does it mean when CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the
President’s Twitter account all agree that a foreign state poses a
suddenly increased threat to America?
A) If they all agree it must be true! B) Well I dislike some of those outlets, but I trust one of them. C) The US intelligence community would never lie to us. D) Hmm… this sounds an awful lot like the leadup to Iraq?
If you said anything but D, you are of course a fucking moron.
The United States power establishment has an extensive history of using
lies, false flags and propaganda to manipulate its hundreds of millions
of citizens into supporting needless military interventionism. From the
Gulf of Tonkin incident to the false Nayirah testimony to the amazing network of lies spun about Saddam Hussein to the “humanitarian” intervention in Libya to the unconscionable Bana Alabed psy-op
in Syria, there is no depth to which the US war machine will not stoop
in deceiving the public about the need to unload the military-industrial
complex’s expensive inventory onto some third world country overseas,
no limit to the evils that America’s unelected power establishment will
commit in order to secure geopolitical dominance, and no end to the mass
media propaganda machine’s willingness to report war propaganda as
objective fact.
It
is quite literally impossible to be too paranoid about these people. If
you had an acquaintance who was a known compulsive liar with an
extensive history of duping people into fighting one another for his own
sociopathic amusement, how would you react if he handed you a gun and
told you that your neighbor is getting ready to attack you?
The US government lies about war, and Phil Donahue was fired from his top-ranked show for expressing skepticism about the Iraq invasion.
This fact should overlay every single segment of news media you consume
which has anything to do with a potential military rival of the United
States and its allies/client states. Like Dr. Gregory House’s perpetual
mantra “people lie”, awareness of the US war machine’s love of deceit
and manipulation is absolutely essential in forming a clear worldview.
thedailybeast | Instead, the group of students thwarting Mock’s scheduled
lecture—those belonging to SJP—do, in fact, pressure people to conform
to their mind-set on the Middle East and quash intellectual diversity.
Sadly,
Mock caved to the pressure. Though the petition drew just 160
signatures, Mock canceled days before she was expected to speak on March
21 because, “We feel the focus of Janet’s work was lost leading up to
the proposed event,” her representative reportedly told the Moral Voices
organizers.
Way to go, student activists at Brown! You succeeded
in creating a hostile environment that led to a trans woman of color
being discouraged from sharing her voice and opinions. This all helped
the Palestinian people how, exactly?
Brown President Christina
Paxson expressed disappointment. “I respect her decision to avoid having
her talk be overshadowed by an issue unrelated to her work. However, I
am disappointed that a valuable learning opportunity was lost,” she said
in a Sunday email to the student body.
In that same email, Paxson also referred to campus housing facilities that had been defaced. According to the Brown Daily Herald, “Gay will die” and “Holocaust 2.0” were written on hallway walls.
“I
want to emphasize that there is absolutely no evidence that the
cancellation of the Mock event is related to the homophobic and
anti-Semitic graffiti that appeared,” Paxson wrote. “However, taken
together, these two events are deeply troubling. They come at a time
when the nation and colleges across the country are grappling with
concerns about injustice against individuals based on religion, race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender expression.”
In their
op-ed, SJP members defended their group’s “my way or the highway
approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the initial the
petition stressed, the students’ objections were not over Mock but
rather her willingness to take part in an event even slightly tied to
Hillel. In other words, they wanted Mock to speak—but only as long as
she agreed to the terms they dictated. It’s hardly the stuff of
international diplomacy; has digging in your heels and refusing to let people share their opinions ever brought about peace or stability?
shameproject | Author of The Bell Curve; Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Charles Murray is one of the most influential right-wing ideological architects of the post-Reagan era. His career began in a secret Pentagon counterinsurgency operation in rural Thailand during the Vietnam War, a program whose stated purpose included applying counter-insurgency strategies learned in rural Thailand on America's own restive inner cities and minority populations. By the late 1970s, Charles Murray was drawing up plans for the US Justice Department that called for massively increasing incarceration rates. In the 1980s, backed by an unprecedented marketing campaign, Murray suddenly emerged as the nation's most powerful advocate for abolishing welfare programs for single mothers. Since then, Murray revived discredited racist eugenics theories "proving" that blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to whites, and today argues that the lower classes are inferior to the upper classes due to breeding differences.
maebrussell | Why were Hippies such a threat, from
the President on down to local levels, objects for surveillance
and disruptions?
Many of the musicians had the potential
to become political. There were racial overtones to the black-white
sounds, the harmony between people like Janis Joplin, Otis Redding,
and Jimi Hendrix. Black music was the impetus that got the Rolling
Stones into composing and performing.
The war in Vietnam was escalating. What
if they stopped protesting the war in Southeast Asia and turned
to expose domestic policies at home with the same energy? One
of the Byrds stopped singing at Monterey Pop to question the
official Warren Report conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was
a "lone assassin."
Bob Dylan's "Bringing it All Back
Home" album has a picture of Lyndon Johnson on the cover
of Time.
By 1966, LBJ had ordered all writers
and critics of his Commission Report on the JFK murder to be
under surveillance.
That research was hurting him. Rock concerts
and Oswald. What next?
While preacher preach of evil fates
teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
to stand naked.
Bob Dylan "It's Alright Ma"
Bringing it All Back Home album
John and Yoko Lennon were protesting
the Vietnam war. The State Department wrote documents describing
them as "highly political and unfavorable to the administration."
It was recommended their citizenship be denied, and they be put
under surveillance.
Mick Jagger, before he was offered Hollywood's
choicest women and heavy drugs, was concerned about the youth
protests in Paris, 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at the
London Embassy.
"War stems from power-mad politicians and patriots. Some
new master plan would end all these mindless men from seats of
power and replace them with real people, people of compassion."
Mick Jagger
July, 1968, the FBI's counterintelligence
operations attacked law abiding American individual's and groups.
The stated purpose of these assaults
was to disrupt large gatherings, expose and discredit the enemy,
and neutralize their selected targets.
Neutralization included killing the leaders,if
necessary. Preferably, turn two opposing segments of society
against each other to do the dirty work for them.
Remember that among these dangers to
the security of the United States were persons with "different
lifestyles" and also "apostles of non-violence and
racial harmony."
CIA Director Richard Helms warned National
Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Feb. 18, 1969, that their study
on "Restless youth" was "extremely sensitive"
and "would prove most embarrassing for all concerned if
word got out the CIA was involved in domestic matters."
The FBI sent out a list of suggestions
on how to achieve their goals. They can all be applied to what
happened to musicians, youngsters at folk rock festivals, and
hippies along the highway.
Gather information on their immorality. Show them as scurrilous
and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
Explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex,
break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them. Send
articles to the newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics
and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt.
Get records of their bank accounts. Obtain specimens of handwriting.
Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death.
"Intelligence Activities and Rights of Americans"
Book II, April 26, 1976
Senate Committee Study with Respect to Intelligence
NYTimes | Mr.
Colby refused comment on the domestic spying issue. But one clue to the
depth of his feelings emerged during an off‐the‐record talk he gave
Monday night at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
The
C.I.A. chief, who had been informed the previous week of the inquiry by
The Times, said at the meeting that be had ordered a complete
investigation of the agency's domestic activities and had found some
improprieties.
But he is known to have added, “I think family skeletons are best left where they are—in the closet.”
He
then said that the “good thing about all of this was the red flag” was
raised by a group of junior employes inside the agency.
It
was because of the prodding from below, some sources have reported,
that Mr. Colby decided last year to inform the chairmen of the House and
Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees of the domestic activities.
Mr.
Schlesinger, who became Secretary of Defense after serving less than
six months at the C.I.A., similarly refused to discuss the domestic
spying activities.
Anguish Reported
But
he was'described by an associate as extremely concerned and disturbed
by what he discovered at the C.I.A. upon replacing Mr. Helms.
“He
found himself in a cesspool,” the associate said. “He was having a
grenade blowing up in his face every time he turned around.”
Mr.
Schlesinger was at the C.I.A. when the first word of the agency's
involvement in the September, 1971, burglary of the office of Dr. Daniel
Ellsberg's former psychiatrist by the White House security force known
as the “plumbers” became known.
It
was Mr. Schlesinger who also discovered and turned over to the Justice
Department a series of letters written to a Mr. Helms by James W. McCord
Jr., one of the original Watergate defendants and a former C.I.A.
security official. The letters, which told of White House involvement in
the Watergate burglary, had been deposited in an agency office.
The
associate said one result of Mr. Schlesinger's inquiries into Watergate
and the domestic of the C.I.A. operations was his executive edict
ordering a halt to all questionable counterintelligence operations
inside the United States.
During
his short stay at the C.I.A., Mr. Schlesinger also initiated a 10 per
cent employe cutback. Because of his actions, the associate said,
security officials at the agency decided to increase the number of his
personal bodyguards. It could not be learned whether that action was
taken after a threat.
Many past and present C.I.A. men acknowledged that Mr. Schlesinger's reforms were harder to bear because he was an outsider.
Mr.
Colby, these men said, while continuing the same basic programs
initiated by his predecessor, was viewed by some as “the saving force”
at the agency because as a former high‐ranking official himself in the
C.I.A.'s clandestine services, he had the respect and power. to ensure
that the alleged illegal domestic programs would cease.
Some
sources also reported that there was widespread paper shredding at the
agency shortly after Mr. Schlesinger began to crack down on the C.I.A.'s
operations.
Asked
about that, however, Government officials said that they could
“guarantee” that the domestic intelligence files were still intact.
“There's certainly been no order to destroy them,” one official said:
When
confronted with the Times's Information about the C.I.A.'s domestic
operations earlier this week, high‐ranking American intelligence
officials confirmed its basic accuracy, but cautioned against drawing
“unwarranted conclusions.”
Espionage Feared
Those
officials, who insisted on not being quoted by name, contended that all
of the C.I.A.'s domestic activities against American citizens were
initiated in the belief that foreign governments and foreign espionage
may have been involved.
“Anything
that we did was In the context of foreign counterintelligence and it
was focused at foreign intelligence and foreign intelligence problems,”
one official said.
The
official also said that the requirement to maintain files on American
citizens emanated, in part, from the so‐called Huston plan. That plan,
named for its author, Tom Charles Huston, a Presidential aide, was a
White House project in 1970 calling for the use of such, illegal
activities as burglaries and wiretapping to combat antiwait activities,
and student turmoil that the White House believed was being “fomented”
—as the Huston plan stated—by black extremists.
The CIA began domestic recruiting operations in 1959 in the process of finding Cuban exiles they could use in the campaign against communist Cuba and Fidel Castro. As these operations expanded, the CIA formed a Domestic Operations Division in 1964. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson requested that the CIA begin its own investigation into domestic dissent—independent of the FBI's ongoing COINTELPRO.[4]
The CIA developed numerous operations targeting domestic dissent,
many operating under the CIA's Office of Security. These included:[2]
HTLINGUAL
– Directed at letters passing between the United States and the then
Soviet Union, the program involved the examination of correspondence to
and from individuals or organizations placed on a watchlist.
Project 2 – Directed at infiltration of foreign intelligence targets
by agents posing as dissident sympathizers and which, like CHAOS, had
placed agents within domestic radical organizations for the purposes of
training and establishment of dissident credentials.
Project MERRIMAC
– Designed to infiltrate domestic antiwar and radical organizations
thought to pose a threat to security of CIA property and personnel.
Project RESISTANCE – Worked with college administrators, campus security and local police to identify anti-war activists and political dissidents without any infiltration taking place
Domestic Contact Service – Focused on collecting foreign intelligence from willing Americans.
When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS.[5]
Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar
activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods
such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers.[3] In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants
for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located
in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups.[2]
Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist
or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement.[1] The domestic spying of Operation CHAOS also targeted the Israeli embassy, and domestic Jewish groups such as the B'nai B'rith. In order to gather intelligence on the embassy and B'nai B'rith, the CIA purchased a garbage collection company to collect documents that were to be destroyed.[6]
Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:[5]
Officially, reports were to be compiled on "illegal and subversive"
contacts between United States civilian protesters and "foreign
elements" which "might range from casual contacts based merely on mutual
interest to closely controlled channels for party directives." At its
finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a
computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000
groups.[8]
The initial result of investigations lead DCI Richard Helms to advise
then President Johnson on November 15, 1967, that the agency had
uncovered "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace
movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." Helms
repeated this assessment in 1969.[1] In total 6 reports were compiled for the White House and 34 for cabinet level officials.[2]
Counterpunch | I will never forget an encounter I had back in the ‘90s with
then-Senator Joe Biden from Delaware. I was working as the house
photographer for Widener University, which is just south of the Philly
airport and just north of the Delaware line. Biden was then working hard
in the Senate to fund more cops and prisons. He came to Widener to
speak on the topic, and I was assigned to photograph him. After taking a
few shots, I decided to stay to listen to the man and his pitch for the
Drug War, something that personally interested me, beyond my job as a
flak photographer.
I forget exactly what the beloved working-class senator from the
corporate state of Delaware said. But it didn’t sit right with me. I had
been spending my vacation time as a photographer in places like El
Salvador and Nicaragua, in the middle of the Reagan Wars. I’d also been
photographing addicts on the street through a needle exchange program in
inner city Philadelphia and had been reading on Harm Reduction
research. Later, I become aware, from a book by Ted Gest called Crime & Politics: Big Government’s Erratic Campaign for Law and Order,
that when Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, Democrats were
freaked out: they feared they were finished politically.
According to
Gest, it was Joe Biden who saved the day by saying, “‘Give me the crime
issue and you’ll never have trouble with it in an election.’” Crime
bills were the way for Democrats to stay in the political game.
“How did so much crime legislation pass during the partisan 1980s?”
Gest asks. “A key element was important personal relationships in the
Capital, especially between Biden and the new Senate Judiciary Committee
chairman Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.” This is the famous racist
Dixiecrat who, following the Nixon Strategy, had changed his party
affiliation to Republican, keeping his Senate seniority. It was the
beginning of a fruitful political friendship — “fruitful” that is, if
you were a politician willing to pander and fuel the Drug War fears of
the time. The result was money for more cops and more prisons. It was
part and parcel with what Michelle Alexander has dubbed “the new Jim
Crow,” where the stigma of being a felon replaced the old stigma of being a nigger. Bill Clinton went on to pursue a similar strategy to stay in the political game.
It was thus that I encountered Senator Biden in a Widener University
auditorium shilling for the Drug War. I was in the second row and raised
my hand. Biden called on me, stepping toward me as I stood up. We were
maybe ten feet apart. My question focused on why he seemed to dismiss
addressing the demand problem in the United Stares. I mentioned Harm
Reduction. The important word I used was decriminalization. My
point was why couldn’t we try something other than using the military
and police and prisons to address our very real drug problem?
I might as well have said something about his children. He knew I was
there as some kind of working PR person, and he lit into me with
vicious glee. He turned to address the audience, avoiding both me and my
question.
“This fellow thinks he’s smart. He cleverly uses the term
‘decriminalization’ — when he really means legalization. He wants to
make drugs legal, folks.” He went on some more. All the time I wanted
to say: “Listen — SIR! — would you answer my question.”
It was personal. But it made the man’s huge investment in the Drug War very clear. He knew very well that decriminalization and
all the very reasonable Harm Reduction research was the Achilles heel
of the Drug War. If the well-respected Ted Gest is correct, the Drug War
virtually made Joe Biden’s political career; working with Strom
Thurmond to put away black people made him who he is today. Is this
unfair to Joe Biden? No doubt, his bi-partisan cooperation with Thurmond
to some degree mitigated the South Carolina senator’s Old South racism.
It did nothing, however, to ease up the trend that led to the mass
incarceration of African Americans; and some would add it did nothing to
mitigate the current dysfunctional national bruise caused by the
ideological struggle between the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives
Matter movements.
We all know Joe Biden’s well-nourished public persona as the working
man’s politician, the guy all of us want to sit down and have a beer
with. The fact is, I would have loved to sit down and have a beer with
Joe. I’d ask him to answer the question he parried away in that
auditorium. What do we have to do now to undo what you and your
bi-partisan allies created back in the ’80s? We all may have the
opportunity to ask him these questions, since it feels like he’s running
for 2020. But let’s hope the Democrats get their act together and do
better than running good ol’ Joe.
unz |The
various levels of government that make up the United States seem to be
preparing for some kind of insurrection, which may indeed be the case
somewhere down the road if the frustrations of the public are not
somehow dealt with. But there is another factor that has, in my opinion,
become a key element in the militarization of the police in the United
States. That would be the role of the security organs of the state of
Israel in training American cops, a lucrative business that has
developed since 9/11 and which inter alia gives the “students” a
whole different perspective on the connection of the police with those
who are being policed, making the relationship much more one of an
occupier and the occupied.
The
engagement of American police forces with Israeli security services
began modestly enough in the wake of 9/11. The panic response in the
United States to a major terrorist act led to a search for resources to
confront what was perceived as a new type of threat that normal
law-and-order training did not address.
Israel,
which, in its current occupation of much of Palestine and the Golan
Heights as well as former stints in Gaza, southern Lebanon and Sinai,
admittedly has considerable experience in dealing with the resistance to
its expansion manifested as what it describes as terrorism. Jewish
organizations in the United States dedicated to providing cover for
Israeli’s bad behavior, saw an opportunity to get their hooks into a
sizable and respected community within the U.S. that was ripe for
conversion to the Israeli point of view, so they began funding
“exchanges.”
Since
2002 there have been hundreds of all-expenses-paid trips including
officers from every major American city as well as state and local
police departments. Some have been sponsored by the American Jewish
Committee (AJC) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA). The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also been directly funding
trips since 2008, explaining that “As a people living under constant
threat of attack, the Israelis are leading experts in security
enforcement and response strategies.” The intent? To “learn” and “draw
from the latest developments” so the American cops can “bring these
methods back home to implement in their communities.”
AIPAC has several pages in its website dedicated to security cooperation
between the two countries. It asks “Did you know? In May 2010, 50
retired Generals and Admirals wrote to President Obama, highlighting the
value of U.S. Israeli cooperation.” It goes on to cite an Alabama
sheriff who enthuses that “There is no other country [Israel] that
shares the same values and overarching goal to allow others to live in
peace.” Regarding airport security, it also quotes a U.S. “security
expert” who states “We should move even closer to an Israeli model where
there’s more engagement with passengers…We’ve just stated to do that at
TSA…” Indeed. That’s called profiling and pre-boarding interrogations.
Understanding of each topic is broken down as Official Story, Limited Hangout, Best Evidence, and Disinformation and Distractions. This analysis technique helps one to make sense of topics where someone is deliberately blowing smoke. The Limited Hangout is a professional Information Warfare method of which Rabinowitz provides a number of examples.
On the topic of *Limits to Growth* the Official Story is that Growth is Always Good, the Limited Hangout is that technology will solve the Limits to Growth problem, the Best Evidence is that Limits to Growth are already biting and will result in Collapse, while the Disinformation pertaining to *Limits to Growth* includes Climate Change Denial.
On the topic of *Oil and Energy*, the Limited Hangout is that we are addicted to oil but can kick the addiction with windmills and solar panels, the Best Evidence is that Industrial Civilization is utterly dependent upon oil for such basics as food, while the Disinformation teaches that the energy crisis is a scam to make money.
On *Peak Oil* the Official Story is the world can keep increasing oil extraction for decades, the Limited Hangout is that we may have a problem but technology will save us, the Best Evidence is that collapse is likely, while the abiotic oil theory is an example of Disinformation.
On the topic of *9/11*, the Official Story is that Al Queda attacked us because they hate our freedom, the Limited Hangout is that mistakes were made which might have prevented the attacks, the Best Evidence is that the 9/11 attacks were allowed and assisted as a pretext to invade Iraq and establish Homeland Security, while the Disinformation includes stories like "no plane hit the Pentagon".
On the topic of *Election Fraud* in the USA the Official Story is USA elections are honest and fair, the Limited Hangout involves 'fixing' the existing laughably insecure voting system, the Best Evidence is that paper ballots counted by hand remains the most secure and effective voting system, while the Disinformation includes mostly true claims about Election Fraud by unsavory organizations whom no one wants to be seen agreeing with.
On the topic of the *JFK Assasination* the Official Story is that the president was murdered by a lone gunman, the Limited Hangout is that the Mafia or Cubans killed JFK, the Best Evidence is that JFK was killed by his own security apparatus, while the Disinformation is so expansive that the term 'conspiracy theorist' became media short hand for 'crackpot'. Fist tap Woodensplinter.
theintercept | That core truth is: The war on drugs has always been a pointless
sham. For decades the federal government has engaged in a shifting
series of alliances of convenience with some of the world’s largest drug
cartels. So while the U.S. incarceration rate has quintupled since
President Richard Nixon first declared the war on drugs in 1971, top
narcotics dealers have simultaneously enjoyed protection at the highest
levels of power in America.
On the one hand, this shouldn’t be surprising. The voluminous
documentation of this fact in dozens of books has long been available to
anyone with curiosity and a library card.
Yet somehow, despite the fact the U.S. has no formal system of
censorship, this monumental scandal has never before been presented in a
comprehensive way in the medium where most Americans get their
information: TV.
That’s why “America’s War on Drugs” is a genuine milestone. We’ve
recently seen how ideas that once seemed absolutely preposterous and
taboo — for instance, that the Catholic Church was consciously
safeguarding priests who sexually abused children, or that Bill Cosby
may not have been the best choice for America’s Dad — can after years of
silence finally break through into popular consciousness and exact real
consequences. The series could be a watershed in doing the same for the
reality behind one of the most cynical and cruel policies in U.S.
history.
There’s no mealy mouthed truckling about what happened. The first
episode opens with the voice of Lindsay Moran, a one-time clandestine
CIA officer, declaring, “The agency was elbow deep with drug
traffickers.”
Then Richard Stratton, a marijuana smuggler turned writer and
television producer, explains, “Most Americans would be utterly shocked
if they knew the depth of involvement that the Central Intelligence
Agency has had in the international drug trade.”
Next, New York University professor Christian Parenti tells viewers,
“The CIA is from its very beginning collaborating with mafiosas who are
involved in the drug trade because these mafiosas will serve the larger
agenda of fighting communism.”
For the next eight hours, the series sprints through history that’s
largely the greatest hits of the U.S. government’s partnership with
heroin, hallucinogen, and cocaine dealers. That these greatest hits can
fill up most of four two-hour episodes demonstrates how extraordinarily
deep and ugly the story is.
NPS |Following the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish American War in December of 1898, the United States took control of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
Companies from the segregated Black infantry regiments reported to the Presidio of San Francisco on their way to the Philippines in early 1899. In February of that year Filipino nationalists (Insurectos)
led by Emilio Aguinaldo resisted the idea of American domination and
began attacking U.S. troops, including the 24th and 25th Infantry
regiments.
The 9th and 10th Cavalry were sent to the Philippines as
reinforcements, bringing all four Black regiments plus African American
national guardsmen into the war against the Insurectos.
Within the Black community in the United States there was
considerable opposition to intervention in the Philippines. Many Black
newspaper articles and leaders supported the idea of Filipino
independence and felt that it was wrong for the United States to
subjugate non-whites in the development of what was perceived to be the
beginnings of a colonial empire. Bishop Henry M. Turner characterized
the venture in the Philippines as "an unholy war of conquest." (21)
But many African Americans felt a good military showing by Black
troops in the Philippines would reflect favorably and enhance their
cause in the United States.
slate |The FBI has a lead. A prominent
religious leader and community advocate is in contact with a suspected
sleeper agent of foreign radicals. The attorney general is briefed and
personally approves wiretaps of his home and offices. The man was born
in the United States, the son of a popular cleric. Even though he’s an
American citizen, he’s placed on a watchlist to be summarily detained in
the event of a national emergency. Of all similar suspects, the head of
FBI domestic intelligence thinks he’s “the most dangerous,” at least
“from the standpoint of … national security.”
Is this a lone wolf in league with foreign sponsors of terrorism? No: This was the life of Martin Luther King Jr. That FBI assessment was dated Aug. 30, 1963—two days after King told our country that he had a dream.
We now find ourselves in a new surveillance debate—and the lessons of
the King scandal should weigh heavy on our minds. A few months after
the first Edward Snowden revelation, the National Security Agency disclosed that it had itselfwiretapped
King in the late 1960s. Yet what happened to King is almost entirely
absent from our current conversation. In NSA reform debates in the House
of Representatives, King was mentioned only a handful of times, usually
in passing. And notwithstanding a few brave speeches by senators such
as Patrick Leahy and Rand Paul outside of the Senate, the available
Senate record suggests that in two years of actual hearings and floor
debates, no one ever spoke his name.
There is a myth in this country that in a world where everyone is
watched, everyone is watched equally. It’s as if an old and racist J.
Edgar Hoover has been replaced by the race-blind magic of computers,
mathematicians, and Big Data. The truth is more uncomfortable. Across
our history and to this day, people of color have been the
disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance; Hoover was no
aberration. And while racism has played its ugly part, the justification
for this monitoring was the same we hear today: national security.
salon | More than three decades ago, as I was winding up a major investigation
of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its leader Huey Newton, I received
a call from Abbie Hoffman, the antic anti-Vietnam War activist, then a
fugitive from criminal charges for selling cocaine to a nark. Abbie and I
had been friends and fellow street-fighting buddies on the Lower East
Side in numerous demonstrations of the antiwar Yippies. His purpose, he
said, was to talk me out of publishing that 1978 investigation in New
Times. It would hurt the left and the struggle for black justice, he
warned.
My story exposed Newton’s bizarre
leadership (for a time he carried a swagger stick à la Idi Amin). Far
worse was the extortion racket he presided over that shook down pimps,
drug dealers, after-hours clubs and even a theater owner. Non-compliance
left one club owner dead and undiscovered for days in the trunk of his
car, which was parked at the San Francisco airport. The theater owner,
Ed Bercovich, declined the tithe and refused to give jobs to Panther
thugs. The theater burned down — it was arson. Murders of rivals were
also carried out on orders from above for perceived disloyalty to the
Panthers; vicious beatings of lower-rank Panther males were regular
punishments, along with turning out Panther women as prostitutes in the
Panther-owned bar and restaurant the Lamp Post. The Panthers always
needed cash for themselves and their programs. Paranoia was rampant,
with internal schisms fanned by the FBI and local red squads of the
police but also anchored in the egos and fear of rivals.
Newton
had a way of being tough on the streets, the mean streets of Oakland he
grew up in, but he managed to conceal it from his respectable friends,
black and white. He cultivated liberal politicians such as U.S. Rep. Ron
Dellums and state Rep. Tom Bates; a host of celebrities, including
Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Dennis Hopper; and opinion leaders such as
Yale president Kingman Brewster, author Jessica Mitford and conductor
Leonard Bernstein, all of whom became supporters of the Panthers.
At
first, I was puzzled as to why Abbie would call me from the underground
after a long silence — he was a fugitive, after all. Suddenly, in a
flash, I knew: “Did Bert put you up to this?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he
admitted sheepishly. Bert Schneider, I already knew, had underwritten
Abbie’s fugitive existence, just as he had for Huey Newton. I turned
Abbie — and Bert — down: The Panther investigation would run.
politicswestchesterreview | In her book, A Taste of Power (page 167 on) Brown admits she was
TRAINED and PAID and sent into the Party by Jay Richard Kennedy, the
informant in Dr. King’s inner circle for the CIA Security Research
Section (birth name: Richard Solomonick).
Jay Richard Kennedy was a former Bureau of Narcotics, OSS man who was
also the manager for Harry Belafonte, until Belafonte FIRED him in the
1950s.
JRK was a partner in the Mafia-owned Sands Hotel in Vegas, which is
where Elaine Brown met him while working as a hooker in ’63 (her own
admission, see her book).
JRK was the owner of a factory in Quebec that produced proximity
fuses for the US military during the VietNam war, and (like the UK’s Ian
Fleming) the author of numerous spy books from ‘the inside’ of the
agency, such as “Man Called X” and his bestselling his book / movie ‘The
Chairman’.
JRK was the one who postulated to SRS that Dr. King was a tool of Mao
and laid the groundwork for the premise that allowed his assassination.
His ‘confession’ can be found in the British documentary ‘The Men who killed Martin Luther King’.
More information can be found in David Garrow’s book ‘The FBI and Martin Luther King’.
WaPo | While the FBI leadership’s animus toward MLK fixated on his reported
sexual appetites, the CIA entertained and memorialized accounts that
described the crucial secret conflict within the civil rights movement
as one between Soviet-controlled agents and Communist China’s
sympathizers. Top CIA officials relied upon an informant who explained
in meeting after meeting how a battle for subversive control over King
was being waged between New York lawyer Stanley Levison and
activist/entertainer Harry Belafonte. In the CIA’s version of civil
rights history, Levison, a onetime Communist Party financial
functionary, was actively representing Moscow as he advised King,
whereas Belafonte supposedly favored Beijing.
The CIA’s source on King turned out to be novelist and television host
Jay Richard Kennedy, who had long-standing friendships with civil rights
leaders A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer, and who moderated a
nationwide August 1963 telecast featuring the leaders of the March on
Washington. But Kennedy (born Samuel Richard Solomonick) and Levison,
his longtime business partner,
had fallen out years earlier. Indeed, by the 1950s, Levison’s first
wife, psychotherapist Janet Alterman, was married to Kennedy, who by
then was Belafonte’s business manager. Kennedy and Belafonte then had a
falling out of their own, and Kennedy subsequently published a roman Ã
clef about Belafonte, “Favor the Runner.”
The Kennedy-Levison-Belafonte story may sound better than fiction but,
more importantly, it is a case study in the ways anonymous intelligence
sources may have multiple agendas when they tattle on, and smear, people
for whom they have preexisting antipathy. Kennedy was not an opposition
research contractor like Steele, but when — as in the Steele case, and
in the case of the FBI’s most important informant
close to King, accountant James A. Harrison — a source is compensated
for the information they provide, their incentive to spin a narrative
that the payer wants to hear is that much greater.
WND | Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate
Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to
testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake
donations from international donors.
According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6 percent of donations granted by
international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose
of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian
organizations. A further 9.6 percent ended up with the Haitian
government. The remaining 89.8 percent – or $5.4 billion – was funneled
to non-Haitian organizations.
“The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they
are liars, they are a disgrace,” Eberwein said at a protest outside the
Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year.
According to the Haiti Libre newspaper, Eberwein was said to be in
“good spirits,” with plans for the future. His close friends and
business partners are shocked by the idea he may have committed suicide.
“It’s really shocking,” said friend Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
The Haitian government issued an official notice thanking Eberwein for his service and mourning his untimely death.
miamiherald |Klaus Eberwein,
a former Haitian government official, was found dead Tuesday in a South
Dade motel room in what the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office is
ruling a suicide.
“He shot himself in the head,” said
Veronica Lamar, Miami-Dade medical examiner records supervisor. She
listed his time of death at 12:19 p.m.
The address where Eberwein’s body was discovered according to police, 14501 S. Dixie Hwy., is a Quality Inn.
“It’s really shocking,” said Muncheez’s owner Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
Bailly said he last spoke to
Eberwein, 50, two weeks ago and he was in good spirits. They were
working on opening a Muncheez restaurant in Sunrise, he said.
But it appears that Eberwein had
fallen on hard times. An Uber spokesperson confirmed that he worked as a
driver for awhile in South Florida.
During and after his government
tenure, Eberwein faced allegations of fraud and corruption on how the
agency he headed administered funds. Among the issues was FAES’
oversight of shoddy construction of several schools built after Haiti’s
devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.
Eberwein was scheduled to appear
Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption
Commission, the head of the commission, Sen. Evalière Beauplan
confirmed. The commission is investigating the management of PetroCaribe
funds, the money Haiti receives from Venezuela’s discounted oil
program.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article160983614.html#storylink=cpy
theconspiracyblog | How many people have died under very unusual circumstances ( ARKANCIDE )
that stood in the way of the Clinton Crime Family’s rise to wealth and
power? The deaths connected to the Clintons are so numerous and so
suspicious that there is even a term for it… ARKANCIDE (Don Adams / Died
January 7, 1997)
gfintegrity | My name is Jack Blum. I am a Washington attorney specializing in money laundering compliance and issues of offshore tax evasion. I am appearing on behalf the Tax Justice Network-USA and Global Financial Integrity. Both organizations endorse the bill sponsored by Senator Levin, S. 569, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act.
The single most important tool in the toolkit of people trying to hide money from law enforcement and tax collection is the anonymous shell corporation. These shell corporations have no physical place of business, use nominee officers and directors, and as a rule do no business in the place of incorporation. Their sole purpose is hiding where money is, who controls it, and where it is moving, from law enforcement and tax collectors. These shell companies should not be allowed remain anonymous.
States that offer corporations to individuals without insisting on information on beneficial ownership are undermining the efforts of law enforcement to prevent crime, recover stolen assets and collect tax. They are also putting the United States out of compliance with international standards for customer identification. From our perspective gathering basic information about ownership for government use is essential to protect national security and to limit financial crime and tax evasion.
Anti-money laundering compliance is dependent on 'know your customer .' Without that knowledge financial institutions cannot evaluate the legitimacy of a transaction. Knowing that one shell corporation is owned by another shell corporation is not helpful. Having the details of the "owner's" directors who are usually professional directors who work for a corporate service company in another jurisdiction is useless. Financial institutions need to know who is behind a company to judge whether the transactions they monitor are suspicious. They need to know whether the beneficial owner is on the OFAC list, the other sanctions lists is a politically exposed person.
The proposed legislation would end the all too frequent use of loopholes in State incorporation laws to hide money. Fist tap Bro. Makheru
WaPo | Not everyone in the public health community is convinced the new DARE is any better than the old DARE. A peer-reviewed study published last year found that the specific versions of the keepin’ it REAL curriculum used by DARE haven’t been tested for efficacy.
“The
systematic review revealed major shortfalls in the evidence basis for
the KiR D.A.R.E. programme,” that study’s authors conclude. "Without
empirical evidence, we cannot conclusively confirm or deny the
effectiveness of the programme. However, we can conclude that the
evidence basis for the D.A.R.E. version of KiR is weak, and that there
is substantial reason to believe that KiR D.A.R.E. may not be suited for
nationwide implementation."
There’s no doubt, however, that DARE
is currently making an effort to adopt more of an evidence-based
approach than in prior years, when the program’s practices were largely
driven by the belief that they were "pure as the driven snow." This
brings us back to the central irony of Jeff Sessions’s remarks on Tuesday, when he yearned for a return to the DARE of “the 1980s and the 1990s.”
Decades
of research are unequivocal: The DARE of yesteryear didn’t work, and it
may have actually made the drug problem worse. Instead of embracing
DARE’s new evidence-based practices, Sessions offered up a return to the
bad old days of drug policy, when decisions were driven by gut feeling
and political expediency.
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
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What day?
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