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MI5 Paying British Muslims ‘Decent Money’ to Spy on Mosques

Sputnik – 21.09.2015

Britain’s intelligence agency is paying Muslims to spy on people living in their own community to try and avert terrorist attacks from homegrown Islamist extremists, the Guardian has revealed.

An anonymous source told the newspaper that MI5 is employing people across the UK in Muslim communities on temporary contracts to gather intelligence on specific targets attending the same mosque. The source also stated that they knew of one Muslim informant who had been paid £2,000 by the security services to spy on a specific mosque for six weeks.

“It’s been driven by the [intelligence] agencies, it’s a network of human resources across the country engaged to effectively spy on specific targets. It’s decent money.”

But MI5’s method of paying money to Muslims to spy on people in their own communities has come under criticism. Salman Farsi, spokesman for the UK’s largest mosque in East London suggested that the offer of money could corrupt the intelligence:

“If there’s money on the table, where’s the scrutiny or the oversight to ensure whether someone has not just come up with some fabricated information? Money can corrupt.”

Following the terror attack in London in 2007, the government spent millions on its ‘Prevent’ program to counter radicalization — but eight years later it has been accused of failing to prevent terrorism and radicalization, instead alienating Muslim communities in the UK further.

According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission: “The Prevent regime of attempting to stop young Muslims from being radicalized is not working and is simply alienating Muslims in Britain by serving as a cover for intelligence gathering on the community.”

But with around 650 young men, women and children who have fled the UK to join ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria and 3,000 radicalized terrorists being monitored by the MI5 — it appears that the British government’s approach to preventing terror isn’t working — and could be the reason behind this new push for for more powers.

The UK government and intelligence agency MI5, however, appear to agree on one thing — big Internet and social media companies should do more to help the authorities by reporting suspect users and sharing swathes of encrypted data with intelligence officers.

In what seems to be another round in the public relations exercise pushing for more support for the government’s Communications Data Bill or Snooper’s Charter, as it is also known, the head of the MI5 told British media that Internet and social media companies should inform the authorities if any users are a cause for concern.

“Some of the social media companies operate arrangements for their own purposes under their codes of practice which cause them to close accounts.”

Andrew Parker also wants the companies to pass on those account details to the intelligence agencies.

The Snooper’s Charter, would grant police and intelligence services more power to intercept and monitor almost every channel of terrorist communication online and offline. It could also force Internet companies to hand over users’ private data.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May is seeking support from Internet and telecoms companies for the controversial surveillance bill, whilst the head of MI5 publicly calls for more powers to monitor potential threats amid revelations his officers are paying Muslim informants ‘decent money’ to spy on their own mosques.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , | Leave a comment

Guantanamo prisoner tells of release trauma in first meeting with lawyer

Reprieve | September 21, 2015

A Guantanamo prisoner released to his native Morocco has spoken of the terror he felt at the way he was treated by US authorities on his flight home.

Younous Chekkouri — released from Guantanamo last week having been held in the US prison for more than a decade without charge or trial – was blindfolded, forced to wear ear-defenders, and had his arms shackled to his legs during the ten hour flight to Morocco. In a testimony given today to his local lawyer in Casablanca, where he remains detained, Younous described how the flight replicated the total sight and sound deprivation he experienced when he was first rendered to Guantanamo.

Lawyers for Younous at international human rights NGO Reprieve, have raised concerns about his ongoing detention in Morocco and the effect that the behaviour of the US authorities, during his transfer, would have had on his fragile mental state.

In 2010, Younous was cleared for release from Guantanamo – a process involving unanimous agreement by six US federal agencies including the CIA, FBI and Departments of State and Defense. He has never faced a trial or been charged with a crime.

Cori Crider, attorney for Younous and strategic director at Reprieve, said: “Younous was tortured and brutally mistreated for years during his Guantanamo ordeal. As if this weren’t enough for a man the US government would later declare should never have been imprisoned in the first place, he then spent the flight back to Morocco blindfolded and with his arms shackled to his legs. We are very concerned for Younous’ health during his ongoing detention in Morocco and urge the authorities to release him as soon as possible.”

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Native American 2nd grader kicked out of class for traditional Mohawk haircut

RT | September 21, 2015

It was a banner week for kicking children out of class. Along with Ahmed Mohamed and his homemade clock, a Native American student in Utah was told to lop off his Mohawk or leave school… until tribal leaders were forced to step in.

kobe-thumbJakobe ‘Kobe’ Sanden entered his second-grade classroom rocking a ‘hawk, not because it looked cool but because of his Native American roots. But the 7-year-old was kicked out of class because the “distracting” hairstyle was a potential violation of Arrowhead Elementary School’s dress code.

His mother, Teyawwna Sanden, was shocked when Susan Harrah, the principal of the Santa Clara school, called her to say she needed to pick up Kobe and get his hair cut.

“We had the students that weren’t used to it,” Harrah told KSTU. “They had called that out. So the teacher brought the student to my attention.”

The school’s online handbook stipulates only that “hair color should be within the spectrum of color that hair grows naturally.” The school district’s dress code goes further, stating: “Students have the responsibility to avoid grooming that causes a distraction or disruption, interrupting school decorum and adversely affecting the educational process.” It also notes that “Extremes in body piercings, hair styles and hair colors may be considered a distraction or disruption.”

Mrs. Sanden expressed her frustration with the school’s reaction on Facebook.

“So f’n irritated right now,” she wrote. “I get a call from the boys’ school and she said Kobe’s not allowed to have a Mohawk … that’s it’s school policy. WTH! Really? It’s hair!”

Kobe’s father, Gary Sanden, was traveling on business, but reached out to the Washington County School District’s superintendent of primary education.

“I was sympathetic to what they were saying ‒ that it was not conducive to learning,” he told the Washington Post. “But I couldn’t understand how it could be a distraction to the kids.”

The superintendent told Mr. Sanden to obtain letters from tribal leaders supporting the family’s claim that the hairstyle is part of their heritage.

“That’s like calling up the governor of our state,” he said. “But I called and got the letter. My wife did too.”

Mr. Sanden is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, which is based out of New York. Mrs. Sanden belongs to the Kaibab Band of Paiutes Indians.

“It is common for Seneca boys to wear a Mohawk because after years of discrimination and oppression, they are proud to share who they are,” Seneca Nation Tribal Councilor William Canella wrote. “It’s disappointing that your school does not view diversity in a positive manner, and it is our hope that Jakobe does not suffer from any discrimination by the school administration or faculty as a result of his hair cut.”

Canella told Native News Online that it was “ironic” that he had to step in to address such a situation at a school named Arrowhead. The Utah school is near several Indian reservations, including the Shivwits Band of Paiutes, which is less than 10 miles from the school, and the Kaibab Paiutes near the Utah-Arizona border.

Harrah told the Salt Lake Tribune that she felt the school had handled the hairstyle hubbub with aplomb, though she was surprised by the attention it received because “It took about a half hour of my time.”

“If there’s any kind of a hairstyle that is a distraction, then we have to tell the parents that we’ve got a problem,” she said. “There’s a protocol that we go through, and I felt like it was handled efficiently and that we respected their culture.”

BwVOrmqCYAAuaKjMr. Sanden disagreed, however, noting that Kobe had to sit by himself in Harrah’s office for part of the day.

“That’s the sad part of the whole situation,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. “To ostracize him like that ‒ that’s stuff from the ’50s.”

“It could have been handled 10 different ways,” he added.

Kobe’s removal from class happened less than three weeks after Malachi Wilson, a 5-year-old member of the Navajo Nation, was sent home on his first day of kindergarten at F.J. Young Elementary in Seminole, Texas because his long hair violated that district’s dress policy. The school required Malachi’s mother, April Wilson, to obtain documentation proving her son’s indigenous heritage, Indian Country Today reported.

In Louisiana last August, a Rastafarian teenager was suspended for three weeks from South Plaquemines High School for his dreadlocked hairstyle. The unnamed student claimed that not cutting his hair was a religious mandate, and his mother presented a letter from the 1st Church of Rastafar I explaining the religious significance of not cutting one’s dreadlocks. He eventually received an exemption from the school.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Anonymous general who predicts anti-Corbyn mutiny should be named by GCHQ – SAS veteran

RT | September 21, 2015

A former SAS soldier has blasted the anonymous British Army general who predicted a military coup if Jeremy Corbyn is elected prime minister. He said the comments threaten democracy and that the military has no excuses for declining to investigate.

Ben Griffin, who served in the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now a member of anti-war group Veterans for Peace UK, told RT the general’s comments published in the Sunday Times are an affront to democracy.

“Why is this General cowering behind a reporter?” he said.

“He should go public with his statement. He is threatening the democratic will of the British people and he exposes the lie that the armed forces exist to protect our freedoms.”

After calls for an investigation began, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is reported to have told the Independent newspaper it would not launch a leak investigation due to there being too many generals to investigate.

There are around one hundred generals currently serving in the British Army.

Asked if this excuse was feasible, Griffin pointed out that the government had something of a monopoly on surveillance.

“GCHQ could tell the MoD today which general it was,” he said, referring to the government’s world-leading signals intelligence agency.

“GCHQ collect the metadata of all phone calls and emails so they will have a record of which generals have been in touch with the journo who wrote the story,” he added.

The general in question, who is said to have served in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, told the Sunday Times a Corbyn general election victory in 2020 would precipitate “mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.”

“Feelings are running very high within the armed forces,” the individual said. “You would see a major break in convention with senior generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over vitally important policy decisions such as Trident, pulling out of NATO and any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.”

He appeared to pledge a military rebellion, with the army directly intervening in democracy.

“The Army just wouldn’t stand for it,” the general claimed.

“The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardize the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that.

“You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.”

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Zionist-Manufactured Arabian Displacement

By Dr. Elias Akleh | Media With Conscience | September 14, 2015

The world in general, and Europe in specific, are finally confronted with the results of the Zionist made Middle Eastern catastrophes, starting with the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) up to the present Syrian refugee crisis, that are parts and parcels of the Zionist colonial dream of creating “Greater Israel” extending from the river Nile in Egypt to Euphrates in Iraq, with Jerusalem as the capital of the Judaic New World Order. Zionists are seeking Jewish order out of Arab chaos.

Millions of Middle Eastern Arab refugees have been forcibly and savagely evacuated from their countries, made refugees, and maliciously driven out of the region towards Europe through the Mediterranean onto death-fated vessels and under the mercy of brutal human traffickers. Many end at the bottom of the sea, while many others end up in so-called humanitarian concentration camps with obscure futures in foreign lands with foreign languages and foreign cultures.

This refugee crisis is a military imposed Zionist-Jewish-made Arabian displacement from their own homeland, schemed a long time ago since the first Zionist Congress in 1897, whose graduated execution had started with the 1948 illegal establishment of colonial Israeli state in Palestine, and has been going on until this very day.

Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, wrote in his diaries in 1898 that “the Palestinians would be spirited across the border” out of the country. The Zionist David Ben-Gurion, who became the first Israeli prime minister, stated in a letter to his son: “We must expel Arabs and take their place.” He also has the cruel statement of “the old will die and the young will forget.”

Armed, financed, and politically supported and protected by the Zionist occupied successive American Administrations, the terrorist Israeli state waged aggressive wars against all its Arab neighbors. Despite all its superior military powers, the weakness and the division of Arab states, and the American and UN support and protection, Israel was not able to sustain its superiority and hegemony on the land due to some Palestinian freedom fighters such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Lebanese Hezbollah liberation movement. The Israeli army became exhausted and demoralized, and Israeli society became tired and wary of successive endless wars.

If Israel could not overcome a few resistance factions how could it, then, defeat well trained armies of other Arab countries; specifically Iraqi and Syrian armies? So, Zionist leaders sought to get the American army fight these wars in proxy for Israel.

Zionist 911 attack against Americans succeeded in spreading Islamophobia and pushing the US to start its endless wars in the Middle East. Iraq was the first victim and global terrorism was the justification. The US destroyed and devastated the country, uprooting in the process about 6,000,000 Iraqis, who sought refuge in some neighboring countries as well as in Europe.

Syria was next in line. Under the guise of Arab Spring and people’s struggle to attain democracy, mercenaries from virtually all over the world were recruited, trained and armed by Israel, US, UK, France, and Germany, and financed by Saudi and Qatari money, were shipped mainly through Turkey, and some through Jordan, into Syria to topple the government and to destroy the country.

Despite the hundreds of thousands of terrorist mercenaries and their use of the latest American made weapons, and chemical weapons, the Syrian Assad regime stood steadfast due to the army’s and people’s support to the regime, and also due to outside support from Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia.

As each terrorist group gets defeated by the Syrian army, a new terrorist group is invented. While recruiting, arming and supporting these terrorists, the anti-Syrian alliance; US, NATO, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan to little extent, pretend to fight these terrorists and claim that this fight would take long years as if these terrorists are part of a regular army backed by a strong economic government.

Claiming to be Moslems, although they don’t have the faintest idea what Islam really is, these terrorist groups are fighting a Judaic Talmudist style war; “kill men, women, children and even cattle, destroy their homes, burn their cities, and don’t leave any alive” as ordered by Jewish god, their prophets and their rabbis. ISIS has been doing just that.

This brutal war had created so far 11,000,000 displaced Syrian refugees. This is the largest forced civilian displacement in the whole world since 1945. With their homes destroyed, their cities bombed into ruins, their businesses looted and burned, and many of their family members savagely slain and theatrically beheaded, 4,000,000 Syrians left the country seeking refuge away from the brutality of war. A few went to still-politically divided Lebanon. Two million went to Jordan where they were isolated into unsanitary refugee camps in the remote desert with meager food rations while many Jordanian officials are depositing most of the allotted financial aid into their pockets or foreign banks. Yet other refugees went to Turkey, where they were covertly encouraged by human traffickers to migrate into the more “humanitarian and wealthier” European countries.

Except for casual media mention of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, the waves of these displaced refugees went ignored in the media until the picture of Aylan Kurdi washed on the shore was published followed by the discovery of 71 suffocated refugee bodies in an abandoned truck on an Austrian highway.

Suddenly the media jumped on the issue and declared the existence of a humanitarian “immigration” crisis. Distorting the facts and avoiding the real issue this Zionist controlled media called the refugees “immigrants” or “political asylum seekers” rather than forced displaced refugees. They called on European countries to do their humanitarian duty of accepting and integrating these “immigrants” into their own societies. They heralded German Chancellor, Angela Merkel’s humanitarian gesture of accepting 500 thousand Syrian immigrants every year, and encourage other European leaders to follow her suit. Unfortunate for Merkel, her seemingly humanitarian gesture would not, and could not mask her country’s role in arming terrorist Israel and ISIS. Germany is the third largest weapon exporter to the Middle East.

Notably, and astonishingly one may think, there are many European Jewish organizations, who are exhibiting their alleged humanitarian duty by urging European governments to accept Syrian refugees. They have also been organizing alleged Jewish humanitarian groups to help the Syrian refugees, although they are, as these Jews claim, anti-Semites. This seemingly Jewish humanitarian gesture, in my opinion, is a Zionist double edge cutting sword. On one edge it cuts the Arab majority vis-à-vis Jews in the Middle East, reducing the effect of what the Israelis call “the demographic bomb” by evacuating from the region as many indigenous Arab inhabitants as possible; millions of Arabs in this particular case. On the other edge it cuts the integrity and racial and cultural cohesiveness of European nations. Integrating large numbers of Arabs into Europe would definitely dilute its identity and cultural values.

Finding themselves in a foreign country with foreign language and culture, Middle Eastern refugees would tend to aggregate into their own separate communities (little Syrian towns) in order to feel safe and to preserve their own identity and culture. Such aggregation is a noticeable phenomenon in American coastal states; little China Town, Korea Town, Little Italy and the like. Besides the economic burden on their host countries, their existence would create unavoidable segregation, discrimination, racism, favoritism, exploitation, clash of cultures and ideologies, Islamophobia, homophobia, and crimes.

Many have called on the Arab World, especially the oil rich Gulf States, whose princes and leaders are among the richest people on the globe, to own and absorb the Syrian refugees. After all, these refugees are Arab and the majority are Moslems, and would be integrated harmoniously into similar Arab and Moslem countries. Unfortunately, being virtually occupied by the existent American military bases, these rich Gulf States are in reality part of the problem and could not be part of the solution. Saudi Arabia has lately revealed its Zionist color when it’s former Saudi general and ambassador to the U.S.; Anwar Eshki, who is a close adviser to King Salman, gave an interview to Israel’s Channel 10 news praising Netanyahu and admiring his courage, and stating that Saudi Arabia and Israel are facing one common enemy; Iran. He has been meeting with Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General; Dore Gold.

The Arab League, whose declared job is to maintain Arab unity and solve their problems, had been, actually, created to do just the opposite. The Arab League has never succeeded in solving any of the Arab issues, and had kept the Arab states divided. The League’s decisions are mainly anti-Arab. Amr Mousa, the previous Secretary-General, gave the green light to NATO forces to bomb and destroy Libya killing between 30 -50 thousand citizens, and the displacement of 3,000,000 more into the neighboring countries. The League also has formed an anti-Yemen coalition that is destroying Yemen and killing its citizens. Keep in mind that such coalition was paid for and enforced by Saudi Arabia.

Nabil Elaraby, the present Secretary-General of the Arab League, had made the decision to cancel Syrian membership in the League, had approved shipping arms to the anti-Syrian terrorist groups, and had blamed Syrian Assad for creating the refugee crisis. He declared that there is no formal decision to deal with the refugees. Let’s remember that Syria did not wait for any League’s formal decision to take in Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iraqi refugees during the last few decades.

The apparent well-known cause of this displaced refugee crisis is ignored by the Zionist controlled Western media and political puppets. The Zionist American administration, its European crony governments, and the Gulf rich puppets had created mercenary Salafist Wahhabi terrorist groups; Al-Qaeda, Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra, ISIS, IS and other factions, and released them onto Syria to disintegrate its government and to destroy the whole country. In an effort to prolong this destructive war as long as possible, the American and British helicopters routinely drop weapons, drugs and money to these terrorist groups. American fighter planes and drones, Israeli fighter planes, and lately joined by Turkish fighter planes are bombing Syrian forces under the pretense of bombing IS terrorists.

Yet these terrorist supporting leaders, and Zionist controlled media, have the audacity to ignore their satanic role in this war and to recommend their own colonial solution. They are diverting the blame unto the democratically elected Syrian Assad regime, and are using the refugee tragedy to justify and encourage further “military intervention” in the Middle East that would accomplish the Zionist dream; aggravating the tragedy rather than solving it. Zionist puppet British Prime Minister David Cameron, for one example, accused Assad of “butchering his own people”, called for Assad’s assassination, and for carpet bombing of Damascus.

Sadly, the Western political leaders are infected with the Zionist war mongering madness, while the masses lack the proper financed organization to deny them the decision to wage wars

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government

By Adam Johnson | FAIR | September 20, 2015

FAIR has noted before how America’s well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration’s “hands-off” approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict. This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the “finger pointing” over Obama’s “failed” Syria policy, and a Vox “explainer” of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn’t just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so.

First, let’s establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA’s official annual budget.

In addition to the CIA’s efforts, there is a much more scrutinized and far more publicized program by the Department of Defense to train “moderate rebels,” of which only a few dozen actually saw battle. The Pentagon program, which began earlier this year and is charged with fighting ISIS (rather than Syrian government forces), is separate from the covert CIA operation. It has, by all accounts, been an abysmal failure.

One thing the DoD’s rebel training program hasn’t been a failure at, however, is helping credulous reporters rewrite history by treating the Pentagon program as the only US effort to train Syrian rebels–now or in the past. As the US’s strategy in Syria is publicly debated, the CIA’s years-long program has vanished from many popular accounts, giving the average reader the impression the US has sat idly by while foreign actors, Iranian and Russian, have interfered in the internal matters of Syria. While the White House, Congress and the Pentagon can’t legally acknowledge the CIA training program, because it’s still technically classified, there’s little reason why our media need to entertain a similar charade.

Let’s start with Peter Baker’s New York Times piece from September 17 and some of its improbable claims:

Finger-Pointing, but Few Answers, After a Syria Solution Fails

By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting.

Notice the sleight-of-hand. There may only be “four or five American-trained fighters… fighting” expressly against ISIS, but there is no doubt thousands more American-trained fighters are fighting in Syria. The DoD’s statement is manifestly false, but because the New York Times is simply quoting “the military”—which, again, cannot not legally acknowledge the CIA program—it is left entirely unchallenged. This is the worst type of “officials say” journalism. The premise, while ostensibly critical of US foreign policy, is actually helping advance its larger goal of rewriting US involvement in the Syrian civil war. A four-year-long deliberate strategy of backing anti-Assad forces–which has helped fuel the bloody civil war and paved the way for the rise of ISIS–is reduced to a cheesy “bumbling bureaucrat” narrative.

Baker went on:

But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that “this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program,” Mr. Earnest said. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong.”

In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment. The I-told-you-so argument, of course, assumes that the idea of training rebels itself was flawed and not that it was started too late and executed ineffectively, as critics maintain.

The sleight-of-hand continues: The article presents the training of rebels as a “way to combat the Islamic State,” but repeatedly speaks in general of training Syrian rebels as something “Obama always had been a skeptic of”–which flies in the face of the fact that he did so, to the tune of $1 billion a year over four years, with 10,000 rebels trained.

But the piece goes on to make clear that when it’s talking about “training Syrian rebels,” it’s referring not only to the anti-ISIS program but to efforts to overthrow Syria’s government as well:

The idea of bolstering Syrian rebels was debated from the early days of the civil war, which started in 2011. Mrs. Clinton, along with David H. Petraeus, then the CIA director, and Leon E. Panetta, then the Defense secretary, supported arming opposition forces, but the president worried about deep entanglement in someone else’s war after the bloody experience in Iraq.

In 2014, however, after the Islamic State had swept through parts of Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama reversed course and initiated a $500 million program to train and arm rebels who had been vetted and were told to fight the Islamic State, not Mr. Assad’s government.

This is outright false. These two paragraphs, while cleverly parsed, give the reader the impression Obama parted with the CIA and Mrs. Clinton on arming opposition forces, only to “reverse course” in 2014. But the president never “reversed course,” because he did exactly what Panetta, Petraeus and Clinton urged him to do: He armed the opposition. Once again, the Pentagon’s Keystone Kop plan is being passed off by journalists who should know better as the beginning and end of American involvement in the Syrian rebellion. Nowhere in this report is the CIA’s plan mentioned at all.

The whitewashing would get even worse:

Some Syrian rebels who asked for American arms in 2011 and 2012 eventually gave up and allied themselves with more radical groups, analysts said, leaving fewer fighters who were friendly to the United States.

But the US did get arms to Syrian rebels in 2012. In fact, Baker’s own publication reported this fact in 2012 (6/21/12):

CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition

Indeed, according to a rather detailed New York Times infographic from 2013 (3/23/13), shipments began, at the latest, in January 2012:

An Arms Pipeline to the Syrian Rebels: New York Times

Note that this map accompanied an article headlined “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA.”

The CIA’s program, when discussing a fraught foreign policy issue like Syria, is simply thrown down the memory hole. How can the public have an honest conversation about what the US should or shouldn’t do in Syria next when the most respected newspaper in the US can’t honestly acknowledge what we have done thus far?

The New York Times wouldn’t be alone. Comcast-funded Vox would also ignore the CIA rebel training program in its almost 4,000-word overview of the Syrian civil war. Again, the Pentagon’s program would be the sole focus in regards to funding rebels, along with reports of Gulf states doing so as well. But the CIA funding, training and arming thousands of rebels since at least 2012? Nowhere to be found. Not mentioned or alluded to once.

Reuters and the Washington Post’s reports on the US’s Syrian strategy revamp, while they didn’t fudge history as bad as the Times and Vox, also ignored any attempts by the CIA to back Syrian opposition rebels. This crucial piece of history is routinely omitted from mainstream public discourse.

As the military build-up and posturing in Syria between Russia and the United States escalates, policy makers and influencers on this side of the Atlantic are urgently trying to portray the West’s involvement in Syria as either nonexistent or marked by good-faith incompetence. By whitewashing the West’s clandestine involvement in Syria, the media not only portrays Russia as the sole contributor to hostilities, it absolves Europe and the United States of their own guilt in helping create a refugee crisis and fuel a civil war that has devastated so many for so long.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Scientist leading effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO ‘paid himself & his wife $1.5 million from govt climate grants for part-time work’

Climate Depot | September 20, 2015

Leader of 20 scientist effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO revealed as ‘Climate Profiteer’! ‘From 2012-2014, the Leader of RICO 20 climate scientists paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work.

George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla ( jshukla@gmu.edu) a Lead Author with the UN IPCC, reportedly lavishly profits off the global warming industry while accusing climate skeptics of deceiving the public. Shukla is leader of 20 scientists who are demanding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges be used against skeptics for disagreeing with their view on climate change.

Shukla reportedly moved his government grants through a ‘non-profit’. The group “pays Shukla and wife Anne $500,000 per year for part-time work,” Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. revealed.

“The $350,000-$400,000 per year paid leader of the RICO20 from his ‘non-profit’ was presumably on top of his $250,000 per year academic salary,” Pielke wrote. “That totals to $750,000 per year to the leader of the RICO20 from public money for climate work and going after skeptics. Good work if you can get it,” Pielke Jr. added.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

UK Labour leader to unveil rail nationalization plan

Press TV – September 20, 2015

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is set to announce his plan for the full renationalization of the railways as his first major policy, reports say.

Corbyn will make the announcement at the Labour conference in Brighton next week, the Guardian says.

He will put forward plans for this to be one of the first acts of any Labour government led by him in 2020, meaning a third of the railways would be in public hands by the end of his first parliament in 2025, the report added.

Corbyn is not likely to have any difficulty getting the proposal through party conference which has voted for rail renationalization many times.

The Labour chief’s policies include spending more on public services like schools and hospitals, scrapping nuclear weapons, renationalizing industries like the railways, according to reports.

Since 1983, he has been member of parliament for the London constituency of Islington North. He is also a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition.

During his three decades in parliament, Corbyn has spent much of his time championing causes such as the Stop the War coalition, campaigning against the private finance initiative and supporting peace efforts in the Middle East.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

The Plot Against Harold Wilson

Army plots against British PMs are not new

By Jonathon Cook | The Blog From Nazareth | September 20, 2015

There has been some debate about the significance of a warning issued this weekend through Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times by a British general that the army would “mutiny” and use “whatever means possible, fair or foul” should the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ever get near 10 Downing Street.

Owen Jones has wondered whether this is tantamount to a threat of a coup by the military. I think it would be foolhardy indeed to read it as anything else.

None of us should be surprised either. We have been here before. In the late 1960s and early 1970s serving British generals, former generals, members of the royal family and the British security services regularly spoke in such terms to each other – and even occasionally on prime-time television.

More than that, when they believed their privileges were under serious threat, as they did during Harold Wilson’s various governments of that period, they actively plotted for “regime change”, or a military takeover.

In what became a self-serving vicious spiral, the establishment’s fears were further stoked by the stream of black propaganda being fed to the British media by MI5, Britain’s version of the FBI. It painted Wilson’s government and the trade union movement as overrun with Communists trying to bring down the UK. One can imagine a Corbyn government will receive no better treatment from the UK media than Wilson’s did.

Like Corbyn today, Wilson was seen in the 60s and 70s as a major threat to the entrenched privileges of British elites.

There is a wealth of evidence for all this, though perhaps unsurprisingly many sources, including Wikipedia, casually dismiss these accounts as “conspiracy theories” – the ultimate way to shut down scrutiny.

But the evidence was so compelling even the BBC, hardly a risk-taking broadcaster at the best of times, girded its loins back in 2006 to make a documentary called “The Plot Against Harold Wilson”. In fact, as the 90-minute film makes clear by interviewing many of those directly involved, there was not one plot but many against Wilson.

It probably all seemed like old, slightly quaint history to the BBC nine years ago. Now it sounds frighteningly relevant again.

Here is a fascinating line from one plotter, Sir General Walter Walker, at about 1hr 2 mins in. Speaking in the early 1970s, he says on film:

If you plot to destroy this present system, what are you doing? You are committing a form of treason. I have taken an oath of allegiance to my Queen and I am not prepared to see that oath interfered with.

For me at least, that puts the ludicrous current debate about Corbyn refusing to sing the national anthem in an even more sinister light. It also makes me wonder how the armed forces read the recent comment from the prime minister, David Cameron, that Corbyn poses a “threat to national security”.

Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s cousin, a mentor to Prince Charles, and the chief of the defence staff at the time, became a figurehead for this group (45.30) and even approached the Queen Mother to seek her blessing for a military takeover. Walker says Mountbatten told him: “If you want help from me, will you let me know?”

David Stirling, the founder of Britain’s most elite military unit, the SAS, also confirmed to journalists that a coup against Wilson was seriously being considered (1.03). He contemplated bumping off trade union leaders to foment so much anger among workers that the military would be forced to move in to restore order.

Soon, the army, members of the royal family and the intelligence services were all considering how they might launch a military coup to stop a Communist takeover (the one that had been created in MI5’s lurid imagination). Brian Crozier, a former intelligence officer who supported a coup, says there was a “widespread attitude” in favour of it among the military (1.05)

It culminated in a show of force by the armed forces, which briefly took over Heathrow airport (1.06) without warning or coordination with Wilson’s government. Marcia Williams, Wilson’s secretary, called it a “dress rehearsal”. Wilson resigned unexpectedly soon afterwards, apparently as the pressures started to get to him.

As the BBC concludes:

The actions of Lord Mountbatten and senior military and intelligence officers undermined democracy and brought this country to the brink of a coup. Yet no one has been held accountable, there has been no proper inquiry.

Such an inquiry might have served at least as a small deterrent for those, like the general who approached the Sunday Times, who are thinking once again in terms of a coup.

September 21, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

British General Threatens ‘Mutiny’ Against Corbyn Leadership

Sputnik | 20.09.2015

An unnamed senior general in the British military threatened that a government headed by new Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn would face a “mutiny” from the military.

The general said that Corbyn could face “mass resignations at all levels” if he were to become prime minister. The statement is tied to Corbyn’s views on funding the British military’s Trident submarines or leave NATO.

“The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that,” the general told the Sunday Times.

According to the Guardian, previous attempts by the military to destabilize the British government took place in the 1960s and 1970s against Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

The Labour party’s new shadow Foreign Secretary previously said that the party would not back a withdrawal from NATO or scrapping the Trident program.

The fate of aircraft carriers is less clear, however, as the Guardian noted because there are members of the military who question their usefulness in modern warfare.

September 20, 2015 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Aid for Syria crisis victims still not enough: UN

Press TV – September 20, 2015

The United Nations says despite a surge in the international community’s humanitarian aid to help those affected by the conflict in Syria, the sum hardly keeps up with the rising needs of the afflicted people.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien made the remark on Saturday while on a tour of the Zaatari camp, which is Jordan’s largest facility for Syrian refugees.

When asked about the aid shortage, O’Brien said that “need has risen so much that even though we are securing record amounts of funding, record amounts of political will and support, nonetheless the (funding) gap has widened,” because of protracted conflicts in the region, such as those in Syria, South Sudan and Yemen.

Meanwhile, Hovig Etyemezian, the director of the UN-run Zaatari refugee camp, said the international community “hasn’t woken up yet to the need to assist Jordan” to address the refugee crisis.

For 2015, aid agencies requested over USD 7.4 billion, both for refugees and those internally displaced by the crisis in Syria. However, the agencies have received only USD 2.8 billion so far, according the UN refugee agency.

Refugee aid programs in host countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq were reportedly just 41 percent funded as of September.

Germany’s donation

In a separate development on Sunday, German Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Muller announced that Berlin would donate USD 22.6 million to the World Food Program (WFP) to supply Syrian refugees with food.

“This means that around 500,000 Syrian refugees in the region can be supplied with food for three months,” Muller told the German Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

In late July, the WFP slashed by half its food assistance for Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon due to a funding crisis.

The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has reportedly claimed more than 240,000 lives up until now.

September 20, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iceland Counters US Military Claims of ‘Russian Flights’

Sputnik | 20.09.2015

Iceland’s foreign ministry countered US defense department claims that Russia has increased activity around the country and that it is interested in “military cooperation.”

The US government attempted to convince Iceland to accept a higher US military presence over what it called increased Russian military flights in the region, Icelandic media reported.

Iceland’s foreign ministry released figures showing that Russian military flights anywhere near the country’s airspace have actually decreased more than five times compared to 2007. None of the flights breached Icelandic airspace.

“The Russians have long done transit flights where they pass close by Iceland, but they’ve recently made several circumnavigation flights,” US deputy defense secretary Bob Work told DefenseNews earlier in September.

However, the US military’s claims do not match up with Iceland’s own figures, which show that Russia only made two flights anywhere near the country’s airspace in 2015.

“Iceland is interested in increasing military cooperation,” Work added.

Iceland’s foreign minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson countered, saying that interest in NATO air defenses in Iceland is coming entirely from the side of the US.

The US has recently increased its military involvement in Northern Europe, citing what deputy defense secretary Bob Work called “a resurgent Russia.”

September 20, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment