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Trudeau ignores threat of nuclear annihilation

By Yves Engler · August 6, 2019

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Justin Trudeau presents himself as “progressive” on foreign affairs. The Liberals claim to have brought Canada “back” after the disastrous Harper Conservatives. But their nuclear weapons policy demonstrates the emptiness of this rhetoric.

Reducing the chance nuclear weapons are used again should be a priority for any “progressive” government. But, powerful Canadian allies oppose nuclear arms controls so Trudeau’s government isn’t interested in the “international rules based order” needed to curb the existential threat nukes pose to humankind.

The Liberals have voted against UN nuclear disarmament efforts supported by most countries. At the behest of Washington, they voted against an important initiative designed to stigmatize and ultimately criminalize nuclear weapons. They refused to join 122 countries represented at the 2017 Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination.

Last month Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström hosted a high-level meeting to reinvigorate nuclear disarmament commitments made by states party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While most of the 16 countries were represented in Stockholm by their foreign ministers, Chrystia Freeland did not attend. Instead, the government dispatched Parliamentary Secretary for Consular Affairs Pamela Goldsmith-Jones.

Reducing or eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons isn’t mentioned in the Liberals 2017 defence policy statement (North Korean nukes receive one mention). Instead, Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy makes two dozen references to Canada’s commitment (“unwavering”) to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ghastly nuclear weapons are fundamental to NATO’s strategic planning. According to the official description, “nuclear weapons are a core component of the Alliance’s overall capabilities.”

Through NATO, Canada has effectively committed to fighting a nuclear war if any country breached its boundaries. Additionally, the alliance does not restrict its members from using nuclear weapons first. Canada participates in the NATO Nuclear Planning Group and contributes personnel and financial support to NATO’s Nuclear Policy Directorate.

While NATO maintains nuclear weapons in Turkey and various European countries, Canadian officials blame Russia for the arms control impasse and the recent demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned an entire class of nuclear weapons. In April Director General of International Security Policy at Global Affairs Canada, Cindy Termorshuizen said, “we call on Russia to return to compliance with the INF Treaty.” But, it’s not clear Russia violated one of the most significant nuclear accords ever signed. The Trump administration, on the other hand, began to develop new ground-launched intermediate-range missiles prohibited under the pact long before it formally withdrew from the INF. US military planners want to deploy intermediate-range missiles against China, which is not party to the INF.

In December Canada voted against a UN General Assembly resolution for “Strengthening Russian-United States Compliance with Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.”

At that vote Canada’s representative said Moscow’s position on the INF reflects its “aggressive actions in neighbouring countries and beyond.” But, it is Washington that broke its word in expanding NATO into Eastern Europe, withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2001 and established missile ‘defence’ systems near Russia. As part of NATO Canadian troops are stationed on Russia’s border in Latvia and Ukraine, which isn’t conducive to nuclear retrenchment.

A look elsewhere demonstrates the Liberals’ ambivalence to nuclear disarmament. They strengthened the Stephen Harper government’s agreement to export nuclear reactors to India, even though New Delhi has refused to sign the NPT (India developed atomic weapons with Canadian technology). The Trudeau government wouldn’t dare mention Israel’s 100+ nuclear bombs or endorse a nuclear free Middle East. While they’ve publicly stated their support for the Iran nuclear accord, they have not supported European efforts to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. (Or restarted diplomatic relations with Iran as promised.)

Despite some progressives claiming otherwise, Canada has never been an antinuclear country. In fact, if one were to rank the world’s 200 countries in order of their contribution to the nuclear arms race Canada would fall just behind the nine nuclear armed states. Among many examples of nuclear complicity, Canada spent tens of millions of dollars to help develop the first atomic bombs, CF-104 Starfighters stationed in Europe carried a nuclear weapon and various US nukes were stationed in Canada.

Still, governments from the 1970s through the 1990s expended some political capital on nuclear non-proliferation. While the follow-through was disappointing, Trudeau Père at least spoke about ”suffocating” the nuclear arms race.

His son, on the other hand, responded to a call to participate in a widely endorsed nuclear disarmament initiative by stating “there can be all sorts of people talking about nuclear disarmament, but if they do not actually have nuclear arms, it is sort of useless to have them around, talking.” Justin Trudeau also refused to congratulate Canadian campaigner Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, who accepted the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Justin Trudeau’s government does not even talk the talk, let alone walk the walk when it comes to ending the threat of nuclear annihilation.

As part of its 50th anniversary commemoration Black Rose Books – initially Our Generation Against Nuclear War – will host a conference on nuclear disarmament in Montréal on September 21, 2019.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

We’re All Enemies of the State: Draconian Laws, Precrime & the Surveillance State

By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Foundation | August 6, 2019

We’ve been down this road many times before.

If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security.

Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

It’s all part of the grand plan for total control.

The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings—red flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the same.

It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.

For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

Let that sink in a moment.

In a post-9/11 America, Trump’s promise bodes ill for whatever remnants of freedom we have left. With that promise, flippantly delivered without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach, the president has given the FBI the green light to violate Americans’ civil liberties in every which way.

This is how the Emergency State works, after all.

So what does the government’s carefully calibrated response to this current crisis mean for freedom as we know it? Compliance and control.

For starters, consider Trump’s embrace of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.

Be warned: these laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Seventeen states, plus the District of Columbia, now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally, especially when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

After all, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

According to the FBI’s latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers which will attempt to “predict” crimes and identify so-called criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

See how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat, including those who challenge its authority?

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Bars & Nightclubs Use A Secret Biometric Blacklist To Ban Customers

credit: PatronScan
MassPrivateI | June 4, 2019

Have you ever had too much to drink at a bar or nightclub and been asked to leave? Have you or your friends ever mouthed off to the staff or been hit on by a bartender? Have you ever Yelped or Tweeted about bad food or service?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you will be mortified to learn that Big Brother knows exactly who you are.

According to an article in OneZero, the service industry has been quietly using PatronScan to scan the IDs and faces of 500,000+ bargoers.

“PatronScan collected and retained information on over 10,000 patrons in Sacramento in a single day. Within a five month period, that added up to information on over 500,000 bargoers.”

PatronScan otherwise known as Servall Biometrics Inc. is first and foremost a biometrics company that makes its money collecting biometric data of service industry patrons.

Bars, nightclubs and pubs have used PatronScan to create a blacklist of 40,000+ customers. Who are, on average banned for 19 years from local establishments!

“Using PatronScan, our venues have placed over 40,000 people on our shared Banned Patron list.”

According to PatronScan’s Privacy Policy, the only way a person can be removed from their secret banned (blacklist) list is to contact the manager or head of security first; then and only then will PatronScan open up their own investigation.

PatronScan has such a cozy relationship with law enforcement that they warn customers, “their personal information may also be provided to us from a law enforcement agency.”

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and snugly, knowing your local bar or club could be working with law enforcement?

 Bars and nightclubs share blacklist of customers

According to OneZero,

“PatronScan logs where customers live, the household demographics for that area, how far each customer travelled to a bar, and how many different bars they had visited. OneZero readily shares the information it collects on patrons, both banned and not, at the request of police.”

Being banned from one bar in a city or town means you are banned (blacklisted) from other participating establishments.

“When you see the notification that a patron has been banned from another venue you get a clear picture as to what happened so you can keep your venue and your patrons safe.”

To make matters worse, law enforcement has also created a national database, masquerading as a non-profit that tracks every alcoholic purchase you have made.

The database is called the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association or “Place of Last Drink.”

“NLLEA President Justin Nordhorn, said the NLLEA received federal money to develop a nationwide database that will allow law enforcement officers to input information about where an intoxicated person was drinking before a crime, incident or alcohol-related crash.”

With PatronScan, police will know who you are and which bars or clubs you frequent. With the NLLEA they will know what you had to drink. How is that for Orwellian?

Service industry is being turned into min-surveillance centers

When is the last time you entered a restaurant, bar or nightclub and asked the manager about their surveillance cameras? When is the last time you asked a doorman or the manager about what they do with your personal information?

OneZero’s article warns,

“Many bars also have internal surveillance systems, which track customer trends and catalog granular data on purchasing habits. Those tools are growing increasingly sophisticated, with obvious benefits to venue owners and law enforcement.”

NBC 6 warned that letting bars scan your drivers license puts all your personal information at risk.

“With just a swipe of your ID, computers can pull your personal information from it giving it to the companies and facilities you visit, including your date of birth, address, height and weight.”

According to the ACLU, drivers licenses contain much more information than you are being told.

Drivers license barcodes, “contain your name, address, date of birth, hair color, eye color, height, weight, gender, license expiration date, organ donor status, driver’s license number, fingerprint, medical information, and driver classification code.” (To see a detailed list of what drivers license barcodes contain, click here.)

The privacy implications for allowing your ID to be scanned by a bar or nightclub are clearly not worth the risks.

As NBC 6 warned, “the security experts we spoke to recommend you ask security to write down your information or take a photo of your ID instead of swiping it.”

Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney with the ACLU of Northern California said, “When you create a confidential ban list, that’s an invitation for businesses to pretextually exclude people because of who they are.”

And that is the problem with companies like PatronScan, Suspect Technologies and law enforcement watchlists. Businesses and police do not need a reason to place someone on a banned list or watchlist and that should scare the hell out of everyone.

If Big Brother has its way — and it certainly appears like it does — Americans will soon find themselves living in a mirror-image of China where everything we do and everywhere we go is scrutinized.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

A.I. “RoboCops” Continue Rolling Out Across U.S. Collecting Biometrics and Creating Blacklists

By Nicholas West | Activist Post | August 6, 2019

The move toward using robots in law enforcement, private security, and even to scare away the homeless, has been a decade-long trend that is now becoming much more prevalent in everyday life.

“RoboCops” have now been launched coast to coast in 16 states. Last year, it was security robots deployed in New York City. As Aaron Kesel reported:

The robots are able to scan anyone walking on the sidewalks, record license plates, use infrared vision, and one of the scariest uses of this technology is the capability to detect cellphone serial numbers within a designated patrolling area.

Huntington Park, CA now has its own version that’s been added to the police force, the “HP RoboCop.” MassPrivateI sent out an alert a couple months ago that this particular model would be rolled out. At the time, we received the usual promotional statement from police advertising the many benefits that citizens would received.  This inspired Muckrock to file a records request from the HPPD to see what details might have been omitted from the original reporting. Last week, Muckrock received a cache of documents that they are now releasing to the public.

Muckrock highlights the added surveillance of the citizenry that they have the pleasure of funding with their own tax money to the tune of $8,000 per month, per robot, to operate. Once again the technology is being supplied by Knightscope, a leader in the field for supplying both governments and private security:

According to released marketing materials, HP RoboCop is a K5 model security robot produced by the Silicon Valley-based manufacturer Knightscope, Inc. […]

Interestingly enough, the HPPD goes further, and makes the claim that the K5 is a “fully autonomous security data machine” that can actually “differentiate between a harmless passer-by and potential criminal.”

As for how the K5 does that, the HPPD points to the robot’s many, many sensors, which are apparently capable of detecting faces, license plates, and even smartphones. Said faces, license plates, and smartphones can then be run against a “blacklist,” which would send an alert to the HPPD.

Here are some other bullet points that show the widespread applications for the new security robots:

Muckrock notes that the program is up for review after one year, which is about the only encouraging detail that is offered in Muckrock‘s extensive report.

The level of data collection, analytics and reporting smacks of yet more pre-crime efforts driven by artificial intelligence algorithms. As I’ve been reporting, these programs are coming under much greater scrutiny after other police departments have recorded failures across all three aforementioned parameters. The threat to privacy and overall liberty has become so grave that even the top university A.I. experts in the world have signed-off on a warning of “Technical Flaws” In Pre-Crime Police Systems. Other experts have said that A.I. police systems are “no better than a crystal ball” in predicting crime.

Now would be the time for residents of Huntington Park to get informed and begin asking serious questions about this new program during this one-year review period before more of their money is wasted on the pseudo-science of predictive policing.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Ministers Taken into Custody as India Scraps State’s Special Status

Sputnik – 05.08.2019

New Delhi – Former Chief Ministers of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are among several prominent leaders who have been reportedly taken into custody by the authorities.

The move came after the Indian parliament’s Upper House passed a Bill on Monday to split the State into two separate territories. Earlier, the Indian government had revoked the state’s special constitutional status under Article 370.

“Taking into consideration the current situation in Kashmir and strong security concerns, it has become imperative to take measures to prevent the law and order situation in Kashmir from deteriorating any further,” the Office of the Executive Magistrate in Srinagar said in an order addressed to Mehbooba Mufti.

On Sunday evening, both Mufti – the leader of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Omar Abdullah- Vice President of National Conference (NC) were placed under house arrest.

Mufti, the last serving Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir from 2016 to 2018, was taken from her home in the state capital of Srinagar to a nearby government guest house.
Revocation of Article 370

Article 370 provided Jammu and Kashmir with an autonomous constitution as well as key decision-making rights. But earlier in the day, the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said that the law was an impediment to the state’s growth, hampering the development of democracy and healthcare in the region, while fostering poverty and entrenching corruption in the state.

Relations between India and Pakistan have long been tense over competing claims to parts of the Kashmir region since the countries gained independence from Britain in 1947.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Give Guantanamo Back to Cuba

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | August 6, 2019

The U.S. Empire, which controls much of the world through hundreds of military bases in foreign countries, through foreign regimes run by domestic U.S. puppets, and through foreign dependency on U.S. foreign aid, got its start in 1898 during the Spanish American War. It was that war that enabled the Empire to acquire its imperialist domain in Cuba known as Guantanamo Bay, which is now the Empire’s premier international indefinite-detention prison, torture center, and kangaroo judicial system.

The late 1800s were a time of worldwide empires. Great Britain, France, Spain, and others were empires, possessing and oftentimes brutally controlling people in faraway colonies. Although the U.S. Constitution had called into existence a limited-government republic, by the time the latter part of the 19th century had arrived, many Americans had been swept up in the pro-empire fervor, owing largely to the Progressive movement, which was also influencing America toward embracing the worldwide move toward socialism and interventionism. The Progressive idea was that in order for the United States to become a great nation, it needed to become an empire, just like other empires.

In 1898, Cuba and other possessions of the Spanish Empire were fighting for their freedom and independence. Since this was a time in which U.S. officials were still following the Constitution’s declaration-of-war requirement, President William McKinley sought and secured a declaration of war against Spain, with the ostensible aim of helping the Spanish colonies win their freedom and independence.

It was a lie and a double cross of those who were fighting for their freedom and independence. In fact, the real aim was to replace the Spanish Empire by defeating it and taking possession and control over its colonies, with the aim of making America great by converting it into an empire.

Upon winning the war, the U.S. took control of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The Filipinos kept fighting, this time against the world’s newest empire, the United States. For a good account of that war and what it did to American values, see “America’s Other Original Sin” by Andrew J. Bacevich, which appeared this week in the American Conservative.

The Cubans, on the other hand, surrendered to U.S. power. As part of its victory, the new U.S. Empire forced Cuban officials to enter into a lease that granted the empire a perpetual lease of the 45-square-mile property known as Guantanamo Bay.

The lease provided for payment of $2,000 per year in gold coin. After President Franklin Roosevelt nationalized gold in the United States, in 1934 U.S. officials forced Cubans to accept a modification of the lease that enabled the Empire to pay Cuba $4,000 in U.S. paper money, an amount that, needless to say, has significantly decreased in value over the decades owing to the Empire’s inflationary financial policies.

The Cubans don’t cash the checks the Empire sends them because their position is that the lease isn’t valid anyway.

From a legal standpoint, the Cubans are right. Since the lease agreements for Gitmo were made under conditions of force, fraud, and duress, they have been null and void from their inception. Moreover, since the leases provide for no fixed expiration date, that also makes them null and void under the law.

Of course though, the law is irrelevant. All that matters is force. Since the U.S. Empire is much more powerful than the Spanish Empire was, there is absolutely nothing the Cubans can do to regain their property.

Beyond the illegality of the U.S. Empire’s control of Gitmo, Americans need to ask a critically important question: What business does the U.S. government have owning and operating an imperialist military outpost in a foreign country? America was founded as a limited-government republic, not an empire.

Moreover, the Progressives have been proven wrong in the assertion that the way to national greatness lies in empire. It’s the exact opposite. An empire weakens, corrupts, and ultimately destroys a nation, not only through the out-of-control spending and debt required to sustain it but also through the moral degradation that comes with forcibly controlling and brutalizing people in faraway lands.

After all, look at the stain of immorality that the U.S. national security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA — has brought to our nation because of Guantanamo Bay. How can a nation whose government establishes an indefinite detention prison, a torture center, and a kangaroo judicial system in an overseas imperialist outpost, with the express intention to avoid the Constitution and the Supreme Court, be considered a great nation? That’s the sort of thing that totalitarian nations, not great ones, do.

It’s time to dismantle the U.S. Empire and restore our founding principle of a limited-government republic to  the United States. A great place to start would be by giving Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba, followed by a termination of all foreign aid, a closure of all foreign military bases, and an end to regime-change operations around the world.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 3 Comments

Defrauding Americans for a Living

By Eve Mykytyn and Gilad Atzmon | August 6, 2019

Binary options fraud flourished in Israel for years before the industry was gradually outlawed by the Knesset which first made binary options illegal only for Israeli investors. Finally, in 2017 the Knesset managed to ban the sale of binary options altogether (with a three month grace period). The legislation followed superb  investigative reporting by The Times of Israel that began with a March 2016 article entitled “The Wolves of Tel Aviv.” At its peak, thousands of Israelis were employed by hundreds of Israeli companies engaged in the fraud.

Despite the fact that an Israeli industry was defrauding Americans and Europeans, the American and European press have remained quiet about it. The US media has barely reported on the FBI ‘s arrest  or the trial of Lee Elbaz, CEO of Yukom Communications Ltd, an Israeli company accused of defrauding American investors out of millions of dollars. Maybe it is too much for the American MSM to advertise that a state that is pumped with billions of dollars of American tax payers’ money gives little in return and ran an industry designed to separate Americans from their savings.

Apparently the Hebrew press also ignored the issue. Maybe this is because, after spring 2016, only  non Israelis were being defrauded. Perhaps the Israeli press was intimidated. After breaking the story, The Times of Israel was subjected to a ‘welter of legal and illegal threats’ and intimidation some of which were delivered by Israel’s most prestigious law firms no doubt paid for by the billions scammed.

The Times of Israel once again brought to our attention the trial of Lee Elbaz that is presently before a jury in Maryland.

The Times of Israel reports that In closing arguments on August 1, prosecutor L. Rush Atkinson described Elbaz as someone who lied to investors about their chances of making money and lied about their ability to withdraw money once they had deposited it. If an investor came to understand that he had been duped or wanted his money returned for whatever reason, his money was suddenly unavailable.

 A defense attorney said Elbaz did not condone the fraudulent tactics used by employees who worked under her supervision. Federal prosecutors alleged that far from being unaware of the fraud her employees were committing, Elbaz directed her sales agents to lie over the phone in addition to lying herself.

“In her own words, she was ‘a money-making machine.’ She was the center of a devastating fraud,” Atkinson said. “Her workers couldn’t remember a single client who withdrew the money they invested,” he added.

Elbaz’s defense attorney Barry Pollack displayed some pilpul* sophistry suggesting in his closing argument that being a “money-making machine” is not a crime.

Pollack is correct, some would even argue that making money is a mitzvah, yet making money by means of fraud is a crime even when the American press is too embarrassed to report about it.

Pollack argued that Elbaz had drawn that line at a place she thought was proper, based on a ‘legal opinion’ offered by David Bitton, lawyer for Yukom Communications. Bitton had opined that under Israeli law it is not illegal for a business to lie unless that lie is specifically about the product they are selling. Did Bitton affirm that lying for the cause is a kosher procedure, at least in Israel? You can sell products under fake name. You can fake your credential and even invent your past as long as you don’t lie about your  (non existent) product.

Asked by her attorney whether she thought it was wrong to use a fake name when interacting with investors, Elbaz replied: “No. I saw a legal opinion that it was allowed and I was asked by the broker to do it and also not to say we are from Israel; some people don’t like it [for anti-Semitic reasons].”

For those with short memories, this is the second time this month we’ve learned that Jews should be allowed to lie about their identity and even fake their passports because of anti-Semitism. ‘Explaining’ the fake Passport found in Jeffrey Epstein’s house his defense lawyer Marc Fernich wrote: “Some Jewish-Americans were informally advised at the time to carry identification bearing a non-Jewish name when traveling internationally in case of hijacking.”

“Did you know your employees used fake names?” prosecuting attorney Henry Van Dyck asked. “We were asked by our broker not to expose Israeli names, and anti-Semitic-wise we are Jewish, working with people who don’t like it.”

“Some names are difficult to pronounce,” she added, offering this as another reason that employees used what she referred to as stage names.

“Why did Austin Smith need a fake name?” asked Van Dyck. “What about Oren Montgomery?”

“It’s hard to pronounce,” she replied.

“Harder to pronounce than Bill Shneizer?” he asked, referring to the pseudonym used by an employee named Oren Montgomery.

Prosecutor Caitlin Cottingham said that far from being harmless lies, the fake names and locations Elbaz and other used were essential to the alleged scheme, and used for a simple reason. “They used fake names because they didn’t want to get caught,” she said.

Or maybe the Israeli employees were asked to hide their Jewish names, not because their clients were potentially ‘anti-Semitic’ but because this entire operation evokes bad memories of the wolves of Wall Street.

* Pilpul – a method of Talmudic disputation among rabbinical scholars regarding the interpretation of notions, actions, rules, principles and  Scriptures.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Deception | , | 3 Comments

PBS: Keeper of Official State Myths

By Bill Willers | Dissident Voice | August 5, 2019

A prime function of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is the reinforcement and perpetuation of the state’s explanations of events, however absurd and discredited. While cultural offerings on PBS are excellent and appreciated, divergence from official governmental narratives is not permitted. PBS is a foremost informational gatekeeper, a role enhanced by its insistence that it represents the best of investigative journalism.

American Experience:  “Oklahoma City”

The official stories of the Murrah office building and 9/11 are now enshrined in memorials, the purpose of which is to make a lie the truth.

— Paul Craig Roberts, “The Oklahoma City Bombing After 22 Years”, Global Research, April 20, 2017

Once ‘terrorism’ had been established as the enemy for society to fear, it was to become extended from a force thought of as foreign to one also to be found in the American “Homeland”. A horrifying and convincing example of “domestic terrorism”, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19,1995, was the event that would solidify this in the public mind and serve to justify increased police powers.

There is considerable evidence that the bombing of the Murrah Building was not as reported and likely involved elements of the government itself. The air force’s explosive’s expert, Brigadier General Benton Partin has presented “irrefutable” proof that the primary damage to the building came from powerful multiple charges positioned at key points on the third floor, not from Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a relatively weak explosive. Partin’s letter to a U.S. Senator puts this in summary.

Other explosives experts agree that the building was blown up from inside, and that there was evidence of official coverup. Nevertheless, the 2017 film “Oklahoma City” focuses on the history of neo-Nazi wrath over governmental clashes at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas, where U.S. citizens were killed. The film is tailored to convince viewers that right wing domestic terrorism was behind the Murrah bombing, period. But if explosives experts are correct, this must be false, as such militants would lack both technical skill and access to the building for such a sophisticated wiring job.

There are also myriad associated questions that have never been dealt with: e.g., the police officer convinced of governmental coverup who died under mysterious circumstances; indication the FBI knew of the plan well in advance; McVeigh’s claim to have been working with an FBI agent; surveillance tapes “lost” by the FBI reportedly showing a man with McVeigh exiting the truck just before the bombing; CIA involvement which would indicate foreign implication; the fact that engineers whose analysis of the Murrah bombing was to become official were also selected to analyze the 9/11/2001 destruction of the World Trade Center, and whose report was to become the basis for Nova’s 2002 “Why The Towers Fell”.

Decision makers at PBS chose to ignore all evidence not in conformity with the government’s preferred version of events and, two decades after the bombing, to solidify the apparently false history.

NOVA: “Why the Towers Fell” 

All the proffered evidence that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11, when subjected to critical scrutiny, appears to have been fabricated.

— David Ray Griffin, “Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?“, September 10, 2008

If, on 9/11/2001, journalists Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, reporting live, could discern the similarity of the collapses of the Twin Towers to intentional demolitions, one assumes the tens of thousands of engineers watching would also be having hunches. Still, there was apparently no concerted statement of the sort from that professional community in the months following. Indeed, it was from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) that a team of 22 was chosen by FEMA to explain to a shocked Nation, hungry for answers, why the Towers, as well as WTC7, fell as no steel-framed buildings had ever fallen. The resulting NOVA production, “Why The Towers Fell“, covered the team’s Building Performance Study and aired on PBS on April 30, 2002, just seven months after the attack.

The team was led by Gene Corley who, it happens, had also led the investigation of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, although his team’s finding there was not in accord with that of General Partin, the Air Force’s explosives expert (see above). In any event, “building performance” was the focus of both studies, without any consideration of the possibility that the buildings had been previously prepared for demolition, although there was evidence that such was the case.

While “Why The Towers Fell” can still be seen at dailymotion, only a transcript is available at the PBS website, this for good reason. Since its airing in 2002, a veritable army of engineers and researchers has rendered it more than merely inaccurate. One does not wish to disparage engineers in the video, for certainly pressure was intense to find a politically acceptable explanation for an anxious public. But evidence of the buildings having been prepared for demolition prior to 9/11 is by now overwhelming. Details of why this is so is not the point here, but good sources of information, for those interested, are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and virtually any of the books on the subject by David Ray Griffin.

What is glaring is the absolute silence of PBS to the accumulated mountain of evidence that the World Trade Center buildings had been carefully prepared for 9/11. In 2015, PBS showcased three Frontline presentations, all in accord with the official story, with this introduction: “Fifteen years ago, Al Qaeda operatives carried out the deadliest domestic terror attack in American history by hijacking four passenger airplanes and crashing two into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and another into a Pennsylvania field”. With a single concise sentence, and a decade and a half after the event, PBS is affirming what is most certainly a false account.

American Experience:  Roads to Memphis”

William Pepper, confidante of Martin Luther King, Jr. and King Family attorney, spent decades uncovering the truth about the assassination of King. In 2010, when PBS first aired Roads To Memphis, a fictional account about designated patsy James Earl Ray, Pepper had already published two books (1995 and 2003) revealing the plot to assassinate the good Reverend, a plot involving a complex of governmental, military and underworld players. It would be hard to find a more blatant example of official state television eclipsing truth than the multiple airings by PBS of Roads To Memphis.

Even the most superficial scan of the King assassination record quickly leads to Pepper’s publications and references to them. It is not possible to have missed them. The creators and disseminators of Roads To Memphis were therefore faced with two radically opposing narratives: Pepper’s detailed expose’ on the one hand, which they chose to disregard altogether, and on the other hand the Government’s story line, which Pepper had annihilated. A side-by-side comparison of the two accounts of the assassination leaves one in a state of shock. See here Pepper’s words from the introduction of the The Plot To Kill King, the last of his trilogy:

For me, this is a story rife with sadness, replete with massive accounts of personal and public deception and betrayal. Its revelations and experiences have produced in the writer a depression stemming from an unavoidable confrontation with the depths to which human beings, even those subject to professional codes of ethics, have fallen; ….. Far from being elated that the truth is now with us face-to-face, I feel consumed by a sadness that will be a lifelong emotional presence. One significant factor is facing the reality that one has misjudged the integrity and even the basic decency of individuals, some of whom have been friends or respected comrades over many years. It is a traumatic realization that the use of political assassinations has all too often been successful at removing uncontrollable leaders whose commitment to substantive change of their societies had threatened the ruling forces, and thereby become so intolerable that physical removal remained the only option.

Despite Pepper’s The Plot To Kill King having been published in 2016, PBS was still airing Roads To Memphis a year later.

FRONTLINE: “Putin’s Revenge”

The American propaganda campaign being waged against the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin has reached a stage of perverse perfection…… ‘Putin’s Revenge’ feature[s] so-called experts who outdo one another in stoking anti-Russian flames. PBS can never seem to find any expert who can make counter arguments.

— Margaret Kimberley, “Putin, Trump and Manafort“, OpEd News, November 3, 2017

Following World War 2, the U.S. was relatively unscathed, her manufacturing base for war materials was humming, stakeholders were intent on maintaining it, and a perceived enemy would justify its continuance. Russia; i.e., the Soviet Union (USSR), recently an ally, had an economic system antithetical to capitalism. The Red Scare was born, nurtured and perpetuated throughout a Cold War that was to last until 1989. But Russia had suffered Nazi invasion, and with a death toll of perhaps 20,000,000, had neither ability nor reason to threaten the U.S. in 1945. Looking back, it is unpleasant to contemplate the extent to which the Cold War was U.S. driven.

With media reinforcing the ‘Russia=Enemy!’ meme, transition into the “new” Cold War has gone smoothly, but Frontline’s “Putin’s Revenge” is a remarkable 2-hour distortion of the “Russiagate” fiasco. Centered on a claimed Russian “hacking” of 60,000 emails of the Democratic National Committee, allegedly to assist the Trump presidential campaign, it begins with the CIA’s John Brennan calling the hacking “tantamount to war”, and it never departs that focus.

As the commanding voice of narrator Will Lyman details Putin’s “lifetime of grievances” against American humiliations, the Russian’s face is shown in still shots chosen for sinister innuendo. Putin, viewers are told, “weaponized” information and sent hacked DNC emails to Wikileaks to expose Clinton’s undermining of the Sanders Campaign, thereby disuniting Democrats and aiding Trump. Along the way, there is deceptive reporting of a Russian “invasion” of Crimea, and suggestion of collusion between Putin and Trump. Commentary from governmental figures is reinforced by mainstream journalists from the NY Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, and Politico.

The two hours of “Putin’s Revenge” aired on October 25 and November 1, 2017 despite an organization of intelligence professionals having already disputed hacking claims in late 2016 and published their technical assessment by July, 2017 that the DNC emails, rather than hacked, had been downloaded; i.e., “leaked”, from within the DNC itself. It strains believability that Frontline’s researchers could have missed these. Moreover, Julian Assange had long insisted that neither Russia nor any other state party was Wikileak’s source of the DNC emails, as Frontline had to have known. Records indicate that the Clinton Campaign, aware that incriminating emails were about to be made public, conspired with the DNC and media to divert attention onto a fabricated “Russian hack”, for which there was never evidence.

Ever since the U.S. promised the Soviets in 1990 that NATO would not move “one inch to the east” of Germany, NATO military activity has expanded along Russia’s western border from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the expanse over which Napoleon and Hitler carried out their respective invasions. That is the geographic equivalent of Russian bases being placed along a U.S. border. Crimea is the site of Russia’s naval base on the Black Sea, where U.S. warships have been cruising in recent years, and the northeast quadrant of which is Russian coastline. Base and coastline had to be protected without delay. In response to NATO-driven regime-change in western Ukraine, a referendum for union with Russia (not covered in the Frontline piece) was held in Crimea. Russian blood and culture dominate in Crimea, and the referendum passed by a reported 95%, hence Russia’s annexation. Frontline’s depiction of an “invasion” is beyond merely simplistic and is illustrative of why Americans are so ignorant of world affairs.

American mainstream journalism is now a tapestry of lies of omission. PBS, however, is a standout in this area, because its prominent, “in depth” productions on Nova, American Experience and Frontline are considered widely to represent the best investigative journalism available. It is this reputation that places PBS above the networks in the public mind. As PBS has willfully avoided specific areas for exploration, and has excluded truths that a governmental power structure does not want aired, it has made itself a powerful tool in the rewriting of history.

Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at willers@uwosh.edu.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

It Doesn’t Matter At All That Oil is Priced in Dollars #43,656

By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | August 5, 2019

The New York Times ran a piece on China’s devaluation of its currency, which warned that the move could hurt China because commodities like oil, which are priced in dollars, will become more expensive for companies in China. While it is true that the devaluation will make imported goods more expensive, the fact that some are priced in dollars is irrelevant.

Suppose oil was priced in yen. Other things equal, the decision to devalue against the dollar would also mean that Chinese yuan is devalued against the yen. This would lead to the same increase in the price of oil as if oil were priced in dollars. The pricing in dollars is simply a convention, there is special importance to it in international trade.

The piece also raises the prospect that the drop in the value of the yuan, “could spur wealthy Chinese to take their money out of the country.” While it could have this effect, it may also have the opposite effect. Once the yuan has dropped in value the question is whether it is likely to fall further. This drop may lead many investors to believe that a further decline is unlikely, just as if the stock market fell by 20 percent, investors may come to believe that further decline is unlikely and therefore may be anxious to buy into the market.

It is also important to put the drop of the yuan in some context. The devaluation reduced the value of the yuan by less than 1.5 percent against the dollar. This is a large single day movement, but it is not that unusual for currencies to move around by this amount against each other even without government intervention. Also, a 1.5 percent reduction in the value of the yuan will not have large effects on the price in China of oil or other commodities.

August 6, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , | 1 Comment