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6 Execs from Pharma Co. who Lobbied for Illegal Pot, Arrested for Bribing Docs to Push Deadly Fentanyl

By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | December 10, 2016

Insys Therapeutics, the company who makes insane profits from a drug behind one of the worst overdose epidemics in the nation’s history, fentanyl, is in hot water — again.

According to Reuters, six former Insys Therapeutics Inc executives and managers were arrested on Thursday on charges that they engaged in a nationwide scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe a drug containing the opioid fentanyl, U.S. prosecutors said.

Along with the executives, Michael Baich, the former CEO, was also charged in an indictment filed in federal court in Boston this week.

They have all been brought up on charges of racketeering for their scheme.

“Patient safety is paramount, and prescriptions for these highly addictive drugs, especially fentanyl, which is among the most potent and addictive opioids, should be prescribed without the influence of corporate money,” Carmen M. Ortiz, the United States attorney in Massachusetts, said in a statement. “I hope that today’s charges send a clear message that we will continue to attack the opioid epidemic from all angles, whether it is corporate greed or street-level dealing.”

What makes this information so damning and hypocritical is that in September, the Free Thought Project helped to expose Insys Therapeutics for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep marijuana, a plant that has never killed anyone, illegal.

That’s right, in a glaring display of hypocrisy, the maker of the drug Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray, claims that marijuana is dangerous because it could hurt children. At least that was their public reasoning for shoving $500,000 towards a campaign opposing marijuana legalization in the US.

These people not only advocated that pot is dangerous, but they were bribing doctors to prescribe a drug responsible for one of the most deadly epidemics in the history of the United States — for entirely unnecessary reasons.

About 129 people died each day nationwide in 2014 from a drug overdose and more than half of those were opioid, heroin, or fentanyl related, according to the DEA.

Insys has every reason in the world to despise legal weed as multiple studies now show that it is a great alternative for pain relief versus the highly addictive and deadly opioids.

According to a study that looked at 17 states with medical cannabis laws in place, researchers “found that the use of prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative fell significantly, once a medical marijuana law was implemented.”

Prescriptions fell dramatically for opioid painkillers, with 1,826 fewer doses being prescribed per year by the typical physician in a medical cannabis state. Amazingly, the trend also applied to prescriptions for depression, seizure, nausea and anxiety.

Insys has other reasons to fear this beneficial plant as well — because they are making a synthetic version of it.

According to a September report by the Intercept, Insys is currently developing a product called the Dronabinol Oral Solution, a drug that uses a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to alleviate chemotherapy-caused nausea and vomiting. In an early filing related to the dronabinol drug, assessing market concerns and competition, Insys filed a disclosure statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating plainly that legal marijuana is a direct threat to their product line:

Legalization of marijuana or non-synthetic cannabinoids in the United States could significantly limit the commercial success of any dronabinol product candidate. … If marijuana or non-synthetic cannabinoids were legalized in the United States, the market for dronabinol product sales would likely be significantly reduced and our ability to generate revenue and our business prospects would be materially adversely affected.

It is apparent that the people at Insys are willing to go to extreme and unscrupulous lengths to maintain their market share — up to and including buying off doctors and politicians, as well as pushing a highly dangerous drug on people who may not need it.

According to the indictment of the executives, as reported by the NY Times, the six former employees, including the former chief executive, Michael L. Babich, and regional sales directors, offered bribes and kickbacks to pain doctors in various states in exchange for getting them to prescribe more of the company’s product, Subsys, a spray form of fentanyl. Subsys is supposed to be used only by cancer patients who are already on round-the-clock pain drugs.

The irony about the government’s choice to indict these Insys executives is that they are a small time company who has very little market share. If we compare Insys Therapeutics to the makers of OxyContin, for example, we can see a glaring difference as to how the two companies are treated by the government.

While Insys sits in court awaiting a much-deserved criminal indictment, the makers of OxyContin, the Sackler family, is rubbing elbows with the elite. 

As the DEA cracks down on fentanyl, the FDA announced last year that they approved the use of OxyContin, a similarly deadly drug, for use in children.

So, while the news of Insys getting busted for pushing their deadly drug on people who don’t need it is certainly worthy, the elite who make billions a year from peddling their deadly addictive drugs through pill mills across the US while fighting to keep cannabis illegal, remain quietly protected by the establishment and their immoral war on drugs.

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Former US Assistant Secretary of State confuses compliance with journalism

RT | December 11, 2016

A former State Department official claimed this week that RT’s staff are not legitimate news reporters. This is ostensibly because “real journalists” only work for compliant US media and not disruptive foreign competitors.

Around this time of year, there are a few constants. Leaves will fall, turkeys will be carved, and David J. Kramer will launch some kind of attack on RT.

A former George W. Bush apparatchik, Kramer now works for John McCain’s eponymous Institute for International Leadership. His trademark is anti-Russia vitriol. In fact, it often seems like he’s trying to outdo his boss, who can rarely complete a full week without condemning Moscow for something or other.

Last winter, the activist was campaigning for the US government to seize RT’s assets in America as compensation for Yukos, a former Russian oil company. This year, Kramer has decided that the network’s staff are not “real journalists.”

This is apparently because “real journalists” work for outlets like “Voice of America, Radio Liberty, the New York Times or the Washington Post.” That’s right, reporters at US state-funded media, whose publicly stated mission is to tell the news in a way that is “consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States,” are just swell, but RT staff and contributors can’t be mentioned in the same breath.

Presumably this is because RT doesn’t take the pronouncements of the State Department at face value, unlike virtually every other organization operating in the US media space. And this clearly unnerves a lot of people in the American elite who have managed to control media narratives for decades – such as back in 2003, when popular newspapers and broadcasters helped drum up support for the invasion of Iraq.

Furthermore, it’s rather astonishing how anybody could regard New York Times and Washington Post journalists as any more ‘real’ than those at RT, given both newspapers’ propensity for bending facts, often with terrible consequences. Indeed, mention of Iraq reminds us of the NYT’s insistence that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction”. Of course, WaPo also joined in the campaign, running more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the conflict.

As it happens, WaPo’s propensity for publishing “fake news” has been under the microscope in the past couple of weeks, due to the infamous “PropOrNot” splash over the Thanksgiving holiday. In this very dubious story, the paper helped to smear dozens of respected news organizations as agents of the Kremlin. And the backlash has been overwhelming. So much so that the original article currently has more corrections than a seven-year-old’s school homework.

That trail of corrections betrays the total absence of minimal journalistic standards, at least as applied to this article, the publication is ostensibly out to defend. Libeled outlets were not contacted for comment (by WaPo’s own admission). Information that is a matter of public record was not fact-checked (ditto). Absurd claims that RT originated and promoted fake news stories about the US election weren’t substantiated by a single example, even after RT’s insistence (spoiler alert: WaPo could not provide any examples because there are none).

Now the article opens with what essentially amounts to a soft retraction, and a rather hilarious admission that the Post “does not vouch for the validity” of the findings it nevertheless deemed fit to print.

The venerable New York Times isn’t blameless in the “fake news” myth-building either. Taking some of WaPo’s verbiage almost word for work, the Gray Lady also printed that “Many of those false reports originated from RT News.” To substantiate this libel, did it provide even a single example out of the “many” that are supposedly available? No, of course not. We’ve been in touch with the Times, and yes, they’re still looking. This is not a joke.

Yes, it is apparently entirely acceptable to publish fake news as long as they concern Russia or RT. Not just acceptable – this earns you a commendation from a former Assistant Secretary of State as being a “real journalist.”

Kramer’s essential thesis is that RT is attempting to undermine the credibility of the US government. This is done by “trying to become part of the dialogue, which usually occurs between journalists and press secretaries of the US government agencies.” And “trying to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the people that the government is not telling the truth.” So, in other words, this former official is upset because RT’s reporters ask the tough questions, which their convivial American colleagues – with some notable exceptions – mostly seem to be unwilling to broach.

One can almost imagine Kramer’s inner mantra: “A good journalist must always believe – and report – that the US government is always telling the truth! We have never ever had even a single example to the contrary!”

Instead, it can be assumed that he’d prefer a situation where Washington’s talking points are accepted at face value and left uncontested. And never mind the fact that this practice allowed the Bush administration to hoodwink the American people into a disastrous war in Iraq, not to mention dozens of other infamous international misadventures. That said, the fact that Kramer worked as an Assistant Secretary of State for that government probably makes him nostalgic for a time when the White House could easily dictate the agenda.

While Kramer’s logic is truly astounding, it does give an insight into the mindset of the American establishment when it comes to the media. In their worldview, “real journalists” don’t ask difficult questions, and do help officials spin the US-driven narrative of the day. However, reporters who try to hold them to account are not legitimate because they refuse to play the game.

But in this day and age, the audiences, in the US and elsewhere, have a different view.

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Has the US and Its Allies Used Covert Airdrops, Drones to Supply the Islamic State?

By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 10.12.2016

Is there a way the United States or one of the Islamic State’s admitted state sponsors could be airdropping supplies without triggering suspicion? How has modern airdrop technology and techniques evolved that might make this possible?

When asking these questions, they must first be understood in the context that:

(A.) According to Wikileaks, within the e-mails of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton it was acknowledged that the governments of two of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were providing material support to the Islamic State (IS);

(B.) That according to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) (PDF), the US and its allies sought to use a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria as a strategic asset against the Syrian government, precisely where the Islamic (Salafist) State (principality) eventually manifested itself and;

(C.) That the fighting capacity of the Islamic State is on such a large and sustained level, it can only be the result of immense and continuous state sponsorship, including a constant torrent of supplies by either ground or air (or both).

Within this context, we can already partially answer these questions with confirmed statements made by another of America’s closest allies in the region, and a long-time NATO member, Turkey.

It was a May 2016 Washington Times article titled, “Turkey offers joint ops with U.S. forces in Syria, wants Kurds cut out,” that quoted none other than the Turkish Foreign Minister himself admitting (emphasis added):

Joint operations between Washington and Ankara in Manbji, a well-known waypoint for Islamic State fighters, weapons and equipment coming from Turkey bound for Raqqa, would effectively open “a second front” in the ongoing fight to drive the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from Syria’s borders, [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] said.

And clearly, by simply looking at maps of the Syrian conflict over the past 5 years, the supply corridors used by the Islamic State, via Turkey, to resupply its region-wide warfare were significant until Kurdish fighters reduced them to one, now the epicenter of a questionable Turkish military incursion into northern Syria.

With the Islamic State’s ground routes hindered, is there another way the US or at the very least, admittedly its Islamic State-sponsoring allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar could deliver food, ammunition, weapons and even small vehicles to the militant group, still held up in Syria’s eastern city of Al Raqqa?

The answer is yes.

Modern American Airdrop Capabilities 

A system developed years ago for the United States military called Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS) allows cargo aircraft to release airdrops of supplies from as high as 25,000 feet and as far from a drop zone as 25-30 kilometers. A Global Positioning System (GPS) and an airborne guidance unit automate the drop’s trajectory to land within 100 meters of a predetermined drop zone. The system also makes it possible to release several drops at once and have them directed toward different drop zones.

The US military has already received this system and it has been in use for years. At least one Persian Gulf state has taken delivery of the system as well, the United Arab Emirates.

Defense Industry Daily would report that in 2013, the UAE would order the system for use with its C-130H and C-17 aircraft. The same report would note that the system is used by several other NATO allies.

The US has admittedly used this system to drop supplies to both Kurdish fighters and anti-government militants in Syria, including at least one instance where supply pallets ended up “accidentally” with the Islamic State.

In addition to airdrops made by large, manned cargo aircraft, the US has admittedly used drones to drop supplies across the region, the Guardian would admit.

The US Already Makes Airdrops to the Islamic State

The Washington Post in a 2014 article titled, “U.S. accidentally delivered weapons to the Islamic State by airdrop, militants say,” claims:

The Islamic State has released a new video in which it brags that it recovered weapons and supplies that the U.S. military intended to deliver to Kurdish fighters, who are locked in a fight with the militants over control of the Syrian border town of Kobane.

The Washington Post also admits (emphasis added):

The incident highlights the difficulty in making sure all airdrops are accurate, even with GPS-guided parachutes that the Air Force commonly uses. Airdrops of food and water to religious minorities trapped on mountain cliffs in northern Iraq in August hit the mark about 80 percent of the time, Pentagon officials said at the time.

This (and similar incidents) may represent an accident in which JPADS performed poorly. Or it could represent an intentional airdrop meant to resupply Islamic State terrorists with the Washington Post article attempting to explain away how GPS-guided airdrops could “accidentally” end up in enemy territory.

Reports from Qatari-based Al Jazeera claim the US has also dropped weapons to militants other than Kurdish fighters. In an article titled, “US drops weapons to rebels battling ISIL in Syria,” Al Jazeera claims:

The US has reportedly dropped weapons to rebel fighters in Syria as the UN Security Council considers dropping food and medicine by air to civilians.

It also claims that:

The weapons supplies were airdropped to rebels in Marea, a town in the northern province of Aleppo, on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

“Coalition airplanes dropped … ammunitions, light weapons and anti-tank weapons to rebels in Marea,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the SOHR head, said.

The Guardian would also admit to the US carrying out similar airdrops in Syria.

Knowingly Dropping Supplies into Terrorist-Held Territory 

And more recently, there has been a push to drop supplies into eastern Aleppo in an attempt to prolong the fighting and prevent the complete collapse of a militant presence there, specifically using JPADS, according to the Guardian.

Another Guardian article reveals that US drones have previously been used to make airdrops in the region and might be used again to create an “air bridge” to militant-held areas of Syria.

However, even most US and European sources have admitted to a heavy presence of Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise in the city, Jabhat Al Nusra, a designated foreign terrorist organization even according to the US State Department.

If the US would seriously consider airdropping supplies to Al Qaeda to prolong fighting and to continue confounding Syrian forces, why wouldn’t they also airdrop supplies to the Islamic State to do the same?

With the ability to drop supplies from as high as 25,000 feet and from as far away as 25-30 kilometers (and possibly even further as was envisioned by future designs), the US or its allies could appear to be resupplying what it calls “moderate rebels” on one part of the battlefield, while diverting a percentage of its drops into Al Qaeda or Islamic State territory. Drones could also be utilized to create “air bridges” harder to detect than those created using larger cargo aircraft.

With the Islamic State’s fighting capacity still potent both in Iraq and Syria, and with Kurdish fighters sealing off ground routes along the Syrian border, unless Turkey within its “buffer zone” is passing weapons onward to the Islamic State, what other means could this terrorist organization be using to resupply its regional war effort, if not by air?

For those seriously committed to defeating the Islamic State and other armed groups operating within Syrian territory, answering this question will bring peace and security one step closer.

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE CIA MOVES TO INVALIDATE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS BY BLAMING RUSSIAN HACKING

By The_Real_Fly | ZeroHedge | Dec 10, 2016

It’s happening. After careful analysis of all the media punditry and the ‘leaks’ coming out from the CIA, I can only conclude that there is a concerted effort taking place to invalidate the U.S. elections, in an effort to unseat Donald Trump. Last night the Washington Post reported a leak from inside the CIA, saying they had a report that showed evidence that Russia hacked the elections in order to elect Donald Trump. They’re being very specific about that point. Pay attention.

Source: Reuters

The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.

The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.

In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.

A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.

In response to the Washpo article, the Trump campaign issued the following statement.

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s representatives said in a statement attributed to the transition team. “The election ended a long time ago … It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”

Bob Baer, former CIA and current ‘Hunting Hitler’ shill, said in an interview today that if the evidence regarding Russia hacking the elections are true, then the only logical thing to do is to hold new elections.

‘If the evidence is there, I don’t see any other way than to vote again.’

Bear in mind, this is all in response to the Wikileaks revelations about the abject corruptness of both the DNC and the Hillary Clinton camp, via the Podesta emails. Instead of offering an explanation for their egregious actions, the elite cadre inside of the Clinton camp have instead gone on the offensive to blame the messenger. The media is running with this story with long strides, not only suggesting that Russia hacked the elections, but also saying Trump was — in fact — a ‘witting asset’ of Moscow. What’s next, an arrest order for Trump and his campaign staff for being covert Russian spies?

‘This nation was attacked by a cyber warfare operation.’

Whatever happened to the smug certainty that the elections wouldn’t be rigged? I suppose what Obama meant was they wouldn’t be rigged had Hillary won, yes?

Paul Joseph Watson offers some valuable insight, in regard to the naked hypocrisy of America’s ruling elite:

Russia interfered in the election! (no evidence).

LEFT FREAKS OUT.

Saudi Arabia provably bankrolled Clinton’s campaign

MEH

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

The CIA’s Absence of Conviction

By Craig Murray | December 11, 2016

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”
“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.

“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes “Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump.” Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a “credible source”? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook Suppresses Truth

By Craig Murray | December 11, 2016

So far 564 people believe they have shared on Facebook my article conclusively refuting the CIA’s invention of lies about Russia hacking the DNC, using the share button on this site. Another 78 have tried to share it from my Facebook page. The total amount of incoming traffic from these 650 people sharing? 22 people. Almost nobody can currently reach this site through Facebook, as the “came from” interface on my statcounter below shows. Nothing from Facebook. Facebook are actively colluding in preventing social media from contradicting the mainstream media lies about Russian involvement in the US election campaign.

Don’t believe me? If you think you shared the article on Facebook, phone one of your Facebook friends and ask if it appeared for them.

The only way to defeat this is to republish the article yourself. I waive any copyright. If you have access to a blog, copy and paste it there and post a link to that blog on Facebook. Or simply cut and paste my whole article and copy it to your Facebook page, in sections if required.

I am similarly ghost banned on Twitter. The work round to this, which plenty of people have found, is to create a new tweet yourself with a link to my site, rather than retweet one of my tweets. As with the Facebook share, if you do retweet you will be unaware it doesn’t work.

There are profound implications for society in the compliance of the major social media corporations with establishment demands to prevent social media from effectively challenging the mainstream media narrative – and I cannot think of a more classic example than this case. I do urge you to take action as described above, to show that the people will not stand for it.

December 11, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

LONDON CALLING: BBC bias during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

London Calling documentary

Two organisations emerged losers after the Scottish 2014 independence referendum. YES Scotland won praise after narrowly failing to overturn a thirty point deficit. The other loser was the BBC. The British State broadcaster sacrificed its reputation in return for a narrow win for the No campaign. London Calling captures the descent of the BBC during Scotland’s historic referendum period. A two year orgy of spin, deceit, manipulation and corruption has been packaged into a powerful seventy minute documentary exposé. Thought you could trust the BBC? Prepare to be shocked.

DVD fundraiser link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lo…

December 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

New Tempest Erupts over ‘Russian Hacking’… plus a suggestion for Donald Trump

By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | December 10, 2016

The Obama administration has ordered a full intelligence review into alleged efforts by Russian hackers to influence the outcome of the presidential election, with the president, according to media reports, requesting that a report on the matter to be completed before he leaves office on January 20.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz says he wants “to be clear” that this is not in any way an effort to undermine Trump’s legitimacy to hold office, only that there is a need to look at possible “malicious activity” carried out by the Russians.

“I think this is going to be a deep dive,” Schultz said, taking pains to clarify that the investigation will examine not only putative Russian manipulation of the most recent election, but also alleged tampering of the elections of 2012 and 2008.

I have a suggestion for Donald Trump. He probably won’t heed it, but I will offer it anyway: that immediately upon assuming office, he order the Office of Management and Budget to investigate how much tax money was squandered by the Obama administration in nearly six years of efforts to overthrow the government in Syria. Maybe Trump could order a ‘deep dive’ and ask the OMB to have the report completed within his first 60 days in office.

Many people, naturally, would see such a call as a retaliation for the investigation now being ordered by Obama–and certainly the media would report it that way–but the results of an investigation of this sort would be at least as beneficial, and probably a whole lot more interesting, than anything that might be turned up about Russians hacking into the computer systems of two thoroughly corrupt political parties.

We could find out, for instance, how much the US spent training and equipping Nour al-Din al-Zenki, the “moderate rebel” group which beheaded a 12-year-old Syrian child on video last July.

Yes, it would be nice if Trump were to order such an investigation… but I’m not going to hold my breath. In any event, we seem to be entering a new phase of anti-Russian propaganda in the media. The call for the intelligence review was made by an Obama administration official on Friday–the same day the Washington Post, in a report based almost solely on anonymous, unnamed “officials,” published allegations about a “secret CIA assessment” whose conclusion is that Russia sought to throw the election to Trump.

“The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter,” reports the Post.

Repeat: it wasn’t just a case of Russia trying to undermine faith in America’s wonderful, spectacular democracy where office is generally for sale to the highest bidder. No, it was Russia deliberately trying to put Trump into the White House, according to the Post–which is a short step away from accusing Trump of being a Russian agent.

There is also the claim that the Russians hacked into the files of both the Republican Party and the DNC, but that they (the Russians) deliberately sat on the material stolen from the Republicans, choosing instead only to release material embarrassing to the Democrats.

Could any of this be credible? Hard to say, but it seems the vote recount effort has fizzled out, and the new call for an investigation could be a “plan B” aimed either at getting Hillary in the White House or at least weakening Trump to the point where he will essentially be unable to govern or pursue his own independent foreign policy. That’s one way of looking at it anyway.

It also could be designed to create a schism within the Republican Party in the sense that many Republicans could end up finding themselves faced with the difficult choice of having to avow loyalty to their president or loyalty to America. As the Post puts it:

On the other hand, if Republicans downplay the issue, they risk giving a pass to an antagonistic foreign power whom significant majorities of Americans and members of Congress don’t trust and who, if the evidence is accurate, wields significant power to wage successful cyber warfare with the United States.

grahamTwo prominent Republicans in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have jumped on the bandwagon in support of a Senate probe into Russian hacking.

“I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia,” said Graham. “I think they’re one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay the price.”

It isn’t the US–a country that has been involved in one war or regime change after another for the last 25 years–that is “the most destabilizing influence on the world stage,” in Graham’s opinion; it is Russia.

Trump’s response has been to dismiss the allegations of Russian hacking, while also recalling lies of the past:

These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.

How all this will play out remains to be seen, but it looks like the political divisions in America are widening rather than narrowing…and it also looks like the propaganda war against Russia will continue to be used to the advantage of one side–beyond the November election and on into the new administration.

If the Russians thought sanity would prevail after the transition of power in January, they’re probably in for a disappointment.

December 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

BREAKING: The CIA Never Ever Lies

By David Swanson | War Is A Lie | December 10, 2016

At moments like these, when every good responsible and enlightened liberal is recognizing the need to destroy the world in order to save it, by getting World War III started with Russia before Trump can move in and damage anything, I believe it is important to remember a few facts that will strengthen our resolve:

The oligarch who owns the Washington Post has CIA contracts worth at least twice what he paid to buy the Washington Post, thus making the Washington Post the most reliable authority on the CIA we have ever, ever had.

When the CIA concludes things in secret that are reported to the Washington Post by anonymous sources the reliability of the conclusions is heightened exponentially.

Phrases like “individuals with connections to the Russian government” are simply shorthand for “Vladimir Putin” because the Washington Post has too much good taste to actually print that name.

Claims to know extremely difficult things to know, like the motivations of said individuals, are essentially fact, given what we know of the CIA’s near perfect record over the decades.

Getting this wrong, much less questioning something or asking to see any evidence, would endanger us all and threaten innocent children with having false statements made about them in a Russian accent.

The fact that the group of people producing our information is referred to as “the Intelligence Community” means it is intelligent and communal, while the fact that people within that community refused to go along with its claims or allow them to become a so-called national intelligence estimate means that there are traitors right in the heart of our holy warriors’ sanctuary.

If you doubt that the CIA is always, always right you need only focus your attention on the fact that there are Republicans questioning these claims, including Republicans who are terrible people, on top of which Donald Trump is a racist, sexist pig.

Good people are loyal Democrats, and when the Democrats did the thing that we now know was revealed by Putin in order to make Trump president (namely cheating its politically and morally superior candidate out of its nomination) that was done as a generous sacrifice for us and our children.

Claims made without public evidence have never turned out to be false or exaggerated in the slightest in the past, certainly not in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Vietnam, Nicaragua, or any other part of the earth.

When I looked into every past war and discovered that they were always preceded by lies, it was because I had secret psychic information that at some future date Vladimir would reward me. I should wait patiently for his payment and then report it to the CIA/Washington Post.

December 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Washington state sues Monsanto over ‘omnipresent and terrifically toxic material’

RT | December 9, 2016

PCB pollution is in “every waterway in the state,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said as he announced a lawsuit against Monsanto. It is the first time the agricultural biotech giant has ever been sued by a state.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, have been at the heart of multiple lawsuits brought against the multinational agrochemical corporation Monsanto by Seattle and Spokane, Washington, as well as cities in California and Oregon. However, this Thursday marked the first time a state government has sued the company over the potentially carcinogenic chemicals.

The lawsuit, which seeks monetary restitution for damages and cleanup caused by the use of PCBs, was filed in King County Superior Court. Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) and the state’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson jointly announced the lawsuit in a press conference, claiming that Monsanto knew for years that it was polluting bays, lakes and rivers when it used the chemicals in coolants, hydraulic fluids, paints and sealants, Associated Press reported.

A win for the state could potentially reap hundreds of millions of dollars from Monsanto as well as two subsidiaries, Solutia Inc. and Pharmacia LLC.

Monsanto quit using PCBs when Congress banned them in 1979, but many say the damage had already been done and the chemicals’ impact are still felt today. From 1935 to 1979, Monsanto was the only company to produce PCBs, described by Ferguson as “one of the most pervasive pollutants in history,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

Inslee called the chemicals “omnipresent and terrifically toxic,” adding that “one of the highest recorded [PCB concentrations] for any place on Earth” was in Washington’s southern resident orca population, according to the Post-Intelligencer.

The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies PCBs as a likely human carcinogen that also pose a risk of severe damage to the endocrine, immune, nervous and reproductive systems. Washington state’s Department of Health posted 13 different advisories against fish consumption due to risks of PCB pollution. Seattle’s Duwamish River is an EPA Superfund cleanup site, and one of its hazardous contaminants is PCB.

“Monsanto is responsible for producing a chemical that is so widespread in our environment that it appears virtually everywhere we look – in our waterways, in people and in fish – at levels that can impact our health,” Inslee said at the Thursday press conference, the Post-Intelligencer reported.

During the presser, Ferguson reportedly quoted from an internal Monsanto memo from 1937, which acknowledged lengthy exposure to PCB vapors having “systemic toxic effects.” Ferguson cited other records as well, charging that the corporation hid this sort of information from the public even though it knew of global PCB pollution in the 1960s.

Read more:

Monsanto’s ‘less-volatile’ dicamba herbicide receives quiet EPA approval

December 10, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism | , , | Leave a comment

Israel defends fake Lebanon military buildup map as Hezbollah’s ‘war crime illustration’

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RT | December 10, 2016

A “declassified” map of an alleged Hezbollah military buildup in southern Lebanon shared by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been exposed by Twitter users as a fake, forcing the IDF to admit the picture was just a “visual illustration” of the militant group’s “war crimes.”

The map titled “Declassified map of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in Lebanon” was posted on the official IDF Twitter account on Tuesday, highlighting 85 towns and villages in the southern part of the country.

Spots, showing civilian settlements were surrounded by numerous multicolored dots, labeled with names such as “weapon warehouse” or “rocket launcher” and other military facilities.

The tagline of the image said “Hezbollah’s hiding behind Lebanon’s civilians,” while the tweet’s caption was the simple and rather dramatic statement, “this is a war crime.”

Such a level of detail and awareness of alleged Hezbollah activities would be truly impressive, if the map had not turned out to be a fake. Some Twitter users pointed out that it was unlikely the image was a “declassified map,” since its history showed that it had been created using Google Maps via an IDF spokesperson account. The dots, marking the alleged “military buildup,” even featured a repetitive pattern.

IDF later said the map had been an “illustration,” and users simply misinterpreted it as a piece of declassified intelligence. The map’s title, tagline and caption were presumably “illustrative” too.

“The illustration reflects how Hezbollah has positioned its terrorist infrastructure within the civilian arena,” the spokesperson told The Times of Israel.

The map, despite its ”illustrative” nature, has been shown to almost every foreign diplomat visiting Israel, to demonstrate that while Hezbollah participates in the Syrian civil war, it continues preparations for conflict with Israel and hides among civilians located near the border, according to a Channel 2 report.

Israel has attacked targets allegedly linked to Hezbollah in neighboring countries, mainly in Syria. The most recent incident of this kind reportedly happened on Wednesday, when Israeli rockets hit the Mezzeh military airport near Damascus.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman commented on the issue at a meeting with European Union envoys in Israel Wednesday.

“We are first and foremost making efforts to maintain the security of our citizens and protect our sovereignty, and trying to prevent the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah,” Lieberman said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April also admitted multiple strikes on targets in Syria in order to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining “game-changing” weaponry.

December 9, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

To err is Human, to Intervene and Destroy is Policy

By Salman Rafi Sheikh | New Eastern Outlook | 09.12.2016

The nature of international politics is often considered to be such that it continuously defies clear and absolute judgement; however, notwithstanding the complexity of inter-state relations, very often we come across such instances where understanding of the policy of a state, or of an alliance, does not defy understanding and judgement. From the very beginning of the crisis, it has been absolutely clear that the US and its allies are pursuing a regime-change policy in Syria—a policy that not only is still valid but also continues to define their strategy. Materialization of this objective pits the US against Syria and its allies and engages both parties in war—and in war soldiers are killed. Therefore, the US clarification about striking Syrian soldiers due to the so-called “human error” is only an attempt on its part to mystify the actual nature of its objectives in Syria. Nothing else can better explain the strike that killed around 80 soldiers than the fundamental reason for the US’ military engagement in Syria i.e., execution of regime change policy in Syria.

While one strike in itself was, and always is, far from sufficient to achieve this objective, a strike, however, does convey to its targets and to those who observe it the objective being pursued. In this case, the immediate objective was to inflict heavy damage on the Syrian army and render it vulnerable to attacks by other, western supported, militant groups. The objective was, to an extent, achieved. This is evident from the developments taking place immediately after the US-led strike. A weakened Syrian army unit enabled an ISIS advance on a hill overlooking the air base, which was specifically targeted by the US-led coalition. While the objective of this co-ordinated operation was to quickly capture the base, it was thwarted by timely action on the part of Russian warplanes that were called in to hit ISIS positions.

Had the attack been successful, it might have caused massive destruction. ISIS had, prior to the attack by the coalition, repeatedly attacked and failed to capture the government-held air base, which is an isolated enclave deep in extremist-held territory. The government controls the air base and parts of Dayr az Zawr city, while ISIS controls the entire province by the same name. An ISIS advance in Dayr az Zawr would have, and would still, endanger the lives of tens of thousands of civilians living in government-held areas and force the Syrian army out of the territory.

What would have such a scenario implied for the over-all situation of Syria is not so difficult to grasp. While the US has now stated it “regrets” the bombing, it has not, in any way, apologized to Syria for this wanton act of mayhem, thus confirming its unchanged position vis-à-vis Syria, which continues to remain a clear cut target of the regime-change conspiracy—a policy that has been applied by NATO in many countries since the end of the Second World War. The most recent cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria confirm that this policy has remained unchanged.

The latest confirmation to the unabated continuation of this policy has come from one of the most important NATO allies, Turkey. On November 29, Turkey’s self-styled “caliph” said, reiterating NATO’s long held objective, that the Turkish military had launched its operations in Syria to end the rule of (the cruel) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

He further said, “Why did we enter? We do not have an eye on Syrian soil. The issue is to provide lands to their real owners. That is to say we are there for the establishment of justice. We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason.”

While this statement has come as a surprise to Russia, leading Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to say that they were hoping “our Turkish partners will provide us with some kind of explanation about this”, the move itself not only largely reflects the dual game Turkey is playing in Syria but also shows how the former fundamentally continues to adhere to NATO’s central objective in Syria, thus debunking the myth of Turkey’ estrangement with the US or the EU or the NATO itself.

The tacit continuity of co-operation between Turkey and the US is not limited to the perusal of identical objectives. On the contrary, it is co-operation on the ground that speaks volumes about Turkey’s actual position and policy vis-à-vis Syria. For instance, Turkey’s operation Euphrates Shield, which begun in August and which is supposedly aimed at rolling back ISIS from the Syrian region bordering Turkey, had actually begun, succeeded and territorially spread under the protection, assistance and advice provided by the US military. The US advisers assisted the operation from inside Turkey, while US warplanes conducted airstrikes alongside Turkish ones in support of the offensive. Could we still say that Turkey and the US were, or are, on a collision course since the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016?

This co-ordinated attack was followed, in September, by a welcome note by the NATO chief about Turkey’s enhanced role in Syria against “terrorism” and attacks of all kinds.

The continued co-operation between Turkey, which had initially officially sent troops to Syria to fight ISIS, and the US and Erdogan’s recent claim that they are in Syria to send Assad home unambiguously show the way this alliance is working in the region. With Turkey’s operation Euphrates Shield expanding into operation occupation, and with Turkey equally seeking to enlist US support to capture al-Bab, there remains hardly any room to doubt that the US and Turkey are seeking to achieve what the ISIS had earlier achieved, and then lost, in terms of capturing Syrian territory.

With ISIS being itself unable to withhold the Syrian offensive being backed the Russian forces and Iran backed militias, Turkey and the US, as also their Arab and Western allies, were left with no other choice but to directly intervene in Syria to deny the Syrian army the opportunity to have the whole of Syria under its control.

This being the case-scenario of Syria, the Pentagon’s clarification about the September strike being a result of “human error” is erroneous. What, on the contrary, perfectly corresponds with the US policy and objectives it is pursuing in Syria is not this clarification but the strike itself—something that, had it been successful, might have allowed IS to bring an entire province under its sole control and considerably damage the Syrian army.

What this scenario reveals is that the earlier policy of bringing regime change in Syria through proxy groups is now being replaced by a policy of direct intervention and gradual insertion of NATO in the conflict via Turkey. Conflict in Syria is therefore not ending, only its dynamics are changing from in-direct to direct intervention.

December 9, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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