Why the Secrecy on the Mh17 Investigation?
By JAMES O’NEIL | CounterPunch | December 19, 2014
On 17 July 2014 Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine.
Although the precise circumstances were at that point unknown the western media were quick to blame Ukrainian “rebels”. The means by which MH17 was destroyed, the media alleged, was a surface to air BUK missile supplied to the “rebels” by Russia. For a host of reasons it was almost certainly not a BUK missile that caused the crash. The stage was set however, for a demonization of Russia in general as the alleged supplier of the missile, and President Vladimir Putin in particular. The relentless propaganda enforcing this view has continued unabated to this day, although the evidential foundation for the allegations remains at best remote.
The Russians produced an initial denial of involvement. Four days after the tragedy however, as anti-Russian hysteria was escalating to extreme levels, the Russian military held a press presentation. The fact of this presentation was barely reported in the western media. The content, more importantly, was either ignored or misrepresented.
The Russians disclosed, inter alia, their radar and satellite data. These data showed that MH17 had been diverted from its scheduled route so that it flew directly over the war zone in eastern Ukraine. They asked for an explanation but one has never been forthcoming. These data also showed that MH17 had been shadowed during its last minutes by two SU25 fighter jets, a model flown by the Ukrainian air force. Again the Russians asked why this had happened.
The main response was a claim that the SU25 could not fly above 10,000 metres. Not only is this untrue, as an examination of military resources readily demonstrates, but the Wikipedia entry on the SU25 had been altered days before the shoot down to claim that the SU25’s operating ceiling was only 7000 metres. Again the western media ignored this obvious alarm bell.
The Russians further disclosed that at the precise time of the shoot down an American spy satellite was directly overhead the scene and would have recorded the sequence of events. The Russians invited the Americans to share these data with the official investigation that had been launched, but to date the Americans have failed to do so. Again, the western media are singularly incurious as to the reason for this lack of cooperation.
Under IATA Rules, the parties responsible for the investigation would be the Malaysians, as owners of the plane and home country of the airline, and the Ukrainians over whose territory the atrocity occurred. It was the Dutch however, who took the lead role, citing two facts: the plane had departed from Amsterdam; and they had suffered the largest number of their nationals as victims. The Malaysians were initially excluded from the inquiry for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained. They were finally invited to join the Joint Inquiry on 2 December 2014.
Instead, the initial inquiry group consisted of Ukraine, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium. The Australians suffered the third largest loss of life but had no standing to be one of the investigatory nations, and certainly less of a claim than the Malaysians. The Australian Prime Minister and some other politicians had been at the forefront of making extreme allegations against Russia and President Putin. Why Belgium was included remains a mystery.
On 8 August 2014 these four investigating nations signed an agreement that the results of the investigation would not be published unless all four countries agreed. This gave one of the prime suspects in the atrocity, Ukraine, an effective veto over any investigations result that attributed blame to them. This is an astonishing situation and probably without precedent in modern air crash investigations.
More significantly however, is that the existence of this secret agreement was not announced by the Australian government, nor to the best of my knowledge has any report about the existence of the agreement or its extraordinary terms, been published in any mainstream publication.
The Dutch magazine Elsevier, under Dutch Freedom of Information laws, sought a copy of the agreement. On 19 November they announced that the request had been refused on the grounds that it “could endanger the relations with other countries involved.”
An Australian citizen (name redacted) wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development (Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss) seeking a copy of the agreement. By letter dated 15 October 2014 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) replied on behalf of the Minister, refusing the requester a copy of the agreement as its contents were “classified.”
The present writer wrote to DFAT on 21 August 2014 seeking a copy of the agreement of 8 August 2014 under the Freedom of Information Act. The department declaimed responsibility and said that they had passed my request on to the Attorney-General’s Department. This was odd, but even odder was advice from the Attorney General that my request had been passed in turn to the Australian Federal Police who were the responsible body.
This must be the first time in Australian history since 1901 that negotiations and agreements between sovereign nations had been conducted on Australia’s behalf by the Federal Police.
On 2 December 2014 the Australian Federal Police finally gave their decision on the FOI request. It was declined on the basis that disclosure of the document (which they acknowledged existed) under section 33 would, or could reasonably be expected to, cause damage to:
(i) the security of the Commonwealth; or
(ii) the defence of the Commonwealth; or
(iii) the international relations of the Commonwealth.
The refusal also relied upon section 37(1)(a) of the Act which exempts a document if it could reasonably be said to prejudice the conduct of an investigation.
Thirdly, the Federal Police relied upon section 37(1) (c) where disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of a person.
The fourth ground of refusal was under section 37(2)(b) which exempts disclosure where it might reasonably be expected to prejudice an investigation by disclosing methods of investigation or detection of unlawful activity.
In the circumstances of this case it is very difficult to see how any of those provisions would apply. The agreement, it should be remembered, is to give any one of the four investigating countries a veto over publication of the results. A final report would be entitled to withhold details of the investigation that would truly prejudice matters of national security.
An investigation of a crash of an aeroplane is however, carried out under IATA Rules and its procedures are well established and well documented. Whose life or safety might be endangered by releasing the agreement is unspecified.
One is left with the conclusion that 33 (iii) is the real ground and the “international relations” referred to are the difficulty Australia and other nations have got themselves into by prematurely blaming Russia when all of the emerging evidence points squarely at Ukraine.
Given the existence of this agreement it is difficult to see how anyone can have any confidence in whatever final report is published by the Dutch. The preliminary report was careful not to apportion blame or even state the cause of the crash other than to say that the plane was hit a by a large number of “high velocity objects” which were undefined.
Another major question is why have the mainstream media kept up a barrage of misinformation up to and including the recent G20 debacle, when they know, or ought to know that the investigation is a sham?
It is also difficult to see how the continued demonization of Russia and Mr Putin for manifestly geo-political reasons (and the probable reasons for the shoot down in the first place) represents any form of justice for the families of the 298 victims and in particular the 37 who were Australian citizens or residents.
It is clear that the Government’s professed support for Security Council Resolution 2116 (2014) for a “full, thorough, and independent international investigation into the incident in accordance with international civil aviation guidelines” is no more than window dressing for a much wider geopolitical agenda.
James O’Neill is a former academic who has practiced as a barrister for the past 30 years. He has a special interest in international human rights issues. He may be contacted at j.oneill@bigpond.net.au
Claims that Aleppo’s Synagogues have been destroyed are false
By Dr. Franklin Lamb | Intifada | December 18, 2014
Given the massive destruction in large parts of Aleppo, Syria’s former economic juggernaut near the Turkish border, including in the city’s Medina souk and Industrial zone, claims of even more dire damage to Syrian heritage sites would perhaps be understandable. Even if not backed up with probative material evidence and sometimes made for political purposes by opponents of Syria’s government.
In the wake of the continuing conflict, questions from some quarters have repeatedly surfaced regarding the status of the 5th- or 6th- century Byzantium period, Great Synagogue of Aleppo. Known locally as Joab’s Synagogue or Al-Bandara Synagogue, lore has it that the building’s foundation was laid by King David’s general, Yoav, whom Jewish tradition holds captured Aleppo. Maimonides, in his letter to the rabbis of Lunel, speaks of Aleppo as being the only community in Syria where Torah learning survived.
The Times of Israel reported on 10/16/2012 that “Aleppo, once a trading center for Muslims, Armenians and Syrian Christians, was also home to one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities with its Great Synagogue which is now destroyed.” One of the US based anti-Arab Zionist organizations, the notorious Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims that the synagogue was bombed by the Syrian army, with similar false reports being circulated via politically motivated internet conspiracy theories.
Another writer for the Jewish Times lamented: “While we continue to hear of the damage inflicted on Aleppo, it is almost unfathomable what is happening to its treasure trove of Jewish antiquity and Synagogues within its borders.” Claims have been made that Syrian government barrel bombs destroyed the cultural heritage site nearly two years ago.
These accusations and statements are patently false.
Susan Harris wrote in November of 2012 about massive damage in Syria to Jewish heritage sites, including in Aleppo, but without offering specific data, the author implied a frenzy of antisemitism. “Not only are the antiquities of Islam being destroyed, but a site of great interest to Jews sits in the eye of a hurricane swept in by the Arab Spring. For hundreds of years the Great Synagogue of Aleppo was the home to the Aleppo Codex, written around 930 CE.” And that it was caught up in “A labyrinth of medieval Jewish structures recently set ablaze, and the last fragile structural remnants of earlier civilizations crumbling into ash heaps under the weight of prolonged violence.” This statement is also false. The Codex has not been burned.
Articles and alarmist propaganda on the subject of Aleppo’s synagogues have appeared with titles like: “What’s left of Jewish Heritage in Syria”, “Who will save the remains of Syria’s ancient synagogues?” (JTA ), “Jewish Aleppo, Lost Forever The Syrian diaspora in Israel watches its once-vibrant ancestral home fall to ruin in the country’s civil war” (Joseph Dana, 8/22/2012). They are all misleading.
There have however been thefts of Syrian cultural artifacts; most of them have been done by agents of Israel. During a 10-year period in the 1980s, a collection of Jewish objects were stolen and smuggled out of Syria to Turkey by then-Chief Rabbi Avraham Hamra. The collection included nine ancient Bible manuscripts, known as the Ketarim, each between 700 and 900 years old. In addition, there were 40 Torah scrolls and 32 decorative boxes in which the Sephardic Torah scrolls were held. Israel offered a bizarre rationale that the thefts of antiquities belonging to Syria were “necessary because official requests for permission to take them out of Syria were denied”. Were this excuse to be accepted our global heritage in Syria and elsewhere would likely soon disappear.
Another theft of Syrian cultural heritage is The Aleppo Codex, believed to be the oldest manuscript containing the entire Hebrew Bible. It was stolen from the Great Synagogue of Allepo according to locals by the Mossad and in 1957 it was smuggled out of Aleppo to Israel, where it was presented in 1958 to President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and today it is housed in the Ben-Zvi Institute. The Aleppo Codex, part of Syria’s cultural heritage, is considered by some experts to be the most authoritative, accurate source document, both for the Biblical text and for the vocalization and cantillation. Some scholars claim it has greater religious and scholarly import than any other manuscript of the Bible. Unbeknownst to the thieves, 295 of the original 487 leaves of the Codex remain in Aleppo near the grand synagogue protected by a Syrian gentleman who was a volunteer caretaker and groundskeeper of sorts for many years. Apparently when the thieves pried open the vault underneath the basilica’s basement floor they failed to notice a cloth wrapping underneath what they stole or that the Codex had been divided for apparent study. The people of Syria and all who value cultural heritage await the return of the looted Codex from its thieves.
For over a week earlier this month, with the much-appreciated assistance of security personnel, this observer moved around Aleppo visiting endangered archaeological sites in order to chronicle some of them as part of a two-year research project across this cradle of civilization. Field visits and testimony of neighbors near Aleppo’s 11 synagogues present probative evidence that while they, as with many sites in Aleppo and elsewhere, are currently endangered, as of mid-December 2014 these places of worship, which are a valued part of Syria’s cultural heritage, are locked and secured. They do not exhibit signs of vandalism and are being watched over by authorities and by Syrian citizens in their respective neighborhoods.
With respect to the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, although situated in the district of the current front-line separating rebel from government forces, it has not been destroyed and as of 12/16/2014 shows no signs of damage. This may be partly due to the fact that both sides have been widely criticized for endangering Syria’s heritage and, with the exception of Da’ish (IS), appear to be taking greater care these days in selecting “military targets.” Another reason may be because the Great Synagogue is located on a side street of little apparent strategic import that has experienced no armed conflict. As recently as two decades ago it was in use until Aleppo’s remaining Jews left and as with other Jewish sites in Aleppo and across Syria, including cemeteries, schools, and communal properties, are now under government protection.
Rather than destroy Jewish heritage in Syria her government and people have preserved and repaired them when necessary. As of mid-December 2014 only 13 Jews remain in Aleppo according to Rabbi Avraham Hamra with nine men and eight women, all over sixty years of age. One of the last to depart Aleppo was Dr. Haim Cohen, a general practitioner who lived down the street from the Samoual Synagogue, which this observer visited on 12/11/2014. Dr. Cohen used to frequent a shop across from the entrance to the Samoual Synagogue, which I also visited and according to the shop owner who has been in the same location for 47 years and whose main work these days includes the mending of piles of military uniforms there has been no damage to synagogues in the Governorate and certainly not to the Great Synagogue of Aleppo.
In February of 2011, coincidentally the month before of the beginning of the current Syrian crisis, President Assad signed an executive order to repair the Al-Raqi Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Damascus by the end of the month as the renovation of 10 other synagogues in Syria’s major cities continued. On 12/11/2014 this observer photographed some randomly selected Aleppo synagogues, including the one in the Samoual district, and found them locked and saw no signs of desecration. Rather, normal citizens exhibit protective attitudes toward these heritage sites and even tend to keep the outside areas cleared of leaves and trash. Government workers also perform daily trash pickups along streets where the synagogues are located. Officials advised this observer that Syria sees the rebuilding of Jewish Damascus and repairs to synagogues across Syria in the context of preserving the secularism of Syria and its cultural heritage of which Jews were historically an important part.
Two months before the President signed the executive order to repair synagogues, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, discussed the Jewish synagogues and cemeteries in Syria and he reported that he received a “very positive response from Assad.” Syrian Jews centered mainly in Brooklyn NY whose numbers are estimated at 85,000, maintain close ties with Syria. Some of them visit their birthplaces and conduct regular business relations in the country often experiencing criticism and pressure from the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine.
In November 1989, the Syrian government facilitated the emigration of 500 single Jewish women, who greatly outnumbered eligible Jewish men in Aleppo. During the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference Syria agreed to ease restriction on its Jewish population. As a result, Syria lifted many restrictions on its Jewish community, and allowed Jews to leave on condition that they not emigrate to Israel. Beginning on the Passover Holiday of 1992, more than 4,000 remaining members of the Aleppo and Damascus Jewish community were granted exit permits and within a few months, thousands more left for the United States, France or Turkey. Approximately 300 remained in Syria, most of them elderly all choosing to stay in the culture their families had lived in for many generations.
With the dawning of the 21st century, there was only a small, largely elderly community left in Aleppo. Jews were still officially banned from politics and government employment, and did not have military service obligations. Jews were also the only minority to have their religion mentioned on their passports and identification cards. Though some were occasionally subjected to harassment by Palestinian protesters during violence in occupied Palestine, the Syrian government took measures to protect them.
The government protected Jewish primary schools for religious studies, and Hebrew was allowed to be taught (today Hebrew is one of the languages SANA, the Syrian news agency presents its news item in). Every two or three months, a rabbi from Istanbul visited Aleppo to oversee the preparation of kosher meat, which most residents froze and used until his next visit. The community gradually shrank. From 2000 to 2010, 41 Syrian Jews left for occupied Palestine, and its numbers further dwindled as members of the largely elderly community died.
In 2001, Rabbi Huder Shahada Kabariti estimated that there were still 200 Jews in the country, of whom 150 lived in Damascus, 30 in Aleppo, and 20 in Qamashli. In 2003, the Jewish population was estimated to be fewer than 100. In 2005, the U.S. State Department estimated the Jewish population at 80 in its annual International Religious Freedom Report. In May 2012, one year into the Syrian civil war, it was reported that only 22 Jews still lived in Syria, all of them elderly and living in Damascus, in a building adjoining the city’s only functioning synagogue. This report was not accurate. As of December 2014, approximately 15 Jews remain in Aleppo according to Rabbi Avraham Hamra with nine men and eight women, all over sixty years of age.
Innocent Man Raided, Tased, Beaten, & Shot By a Corrupt SWAT Team who Lied to Get the Raid
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | December 18, 2014
Houston, TX — A completely innocent man was shot, tasered, brutally beaten, and had stun grenades thrown at him by vicious and incompetent SWAT officers. Then, those same officers tried to cover up their mistake by charging the victim, Chad Chadwick, with six criminal offenses including felony assault on a police officer.
This incident happened in 2011, but it has taken Chadwick three years and his entire life savings, to finally beat the charges that he was falsely accused of. Last month, a jury found Chad Chadwick not guilty of interfering with police. With tears in their eyes members of the jury offered the exonerated defendant comforting hugs, according to My Fox Houston.
“They tried to make me a convict. It broke me financially, bankrupted me. I used my life savings, not to mention, I lost my kids,” said Chadwick.
Chadwick had been drinking and went to sleep in his bathtub on the night of September 27, 2011, when police were given a tip from a friend of Chadwick’s who said they were concerned with his emotional well-being. So naturally the police responded by mobilizing a heavily militarized SWAT team.
“They came in did what they did, figured out that they messed up and now they are doing everything they can to cover it up. They treated a normal American citizen like an animal. It’s not right,” Chadwick said in an interview with FOX 26.
The SWAT team lied to the judge to get the warrant by telling the judge that Chadwick had hostages. “
They told a judge I had hostages. They lied to a judge and told him I had hostages in my apartment and they needed to enter,” said Chadwick.
When SWAT broke down his door without identifying themselves, they launched a stun grenade into his bathroom, according to Chadwick.
“While I had my hands up naked in the shower they shot me with a 40 millimeter non-lethal round,” said Chadwick.
Another stun grenade was fired.
“I turned away, the explosion went off, I opened my eyes the lights are out and here comes a shield with four or five guys behind it. They pinned me against the wall and proceeded to beat the crap out of me,” said Chadwick.
That’s when SWAT officers shot Chadwick at point blank range with a taser in the back of his head.
“They claimed I drew down with a shampoo bottle and a body wash bottle,” said Chadwick.
Tased, shot and with multiple SWAT officers smashing him into a corner with a shield, a brutal beating ensued.
“They grabbed me by my one hand that was out of the shower and grabbed me by my testicles slammed me on my face on the floor and proceeded to beat me more,” said Chadwick.
Chadwick was then hauled off to Ft. Bend County Jail with a fractured nose, bruised ribs and what’s proven to be permanent hearing loss. He was kept in an isolation cell for two full days. Remember, Chadwick has never broken a law; he had committed no crime.
“Instead of apologizing to this man and asking let us see what we can do to help you to make you whole again, they concocted criminal charges against this man, one after another, after another,” said activist Quanell X, who believes the prosecution of Chadwick was designed to fend off civil liability.
The SWAT team that took Chadwick into custody and testified against him was comprised of officers from Missouri City, Sugar Land, Stafford and the Ft. Bend County Sheriff’s Department. To this date, none of them have faced any disciplinary action.
According to FOX 26, Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy declined to comment on camera, but did say he stands by his decision to prosecute Chadwick, despite the multiple no-bills and not guilty verdict. Asked how much the case cost taxpayers, Healy said “I wasn’t keeping a tally.”
Chadwick is now pursuing a civil suit against the police agencies involved and they will most assuredly know how much money that will cost the taxpayers.
Ron Paul cautious on Obama’s Cuba intentions
By Ron Paul | December 17, 2014
President Obama today took a bold and surprising step toward ending the futile 50 year US embargo of Cuba. The president announced he would begin normalizing relations, including upgrading the diplomatic mission in Havana to embassy status. The president also said he was taking steps to increase travel, commerce, and the flow of information between the US and Cuba.
President Obama said that the half-century US embargo of Cuba was an “outdated approach” that “failed to advance our interests.” He rightly noted that decades of US sanctions have “had little effect.”
He noted, as I have often pointed out, that the US has had economic and diplomatic relations with communist China for 35 years and has even established productive relations with a Vietnam, where the US fought a brutal war just over four decades ago.
I was delighted to see the president make such a dramatic foreign policy move that will result in more freedom and liberty for Americans. I have always believed that the US embargo of Cuba was primarily an anti-American policy, as the US government has no business telling Americans with whom they can trade or visit. Of course the average Cuban suffered greatly under the inhuman US embargo of their country, and I hope this policy shift may result in better lives for them as well.
What is particularly encouraging about this move is that the 50 year freeze in US/Cuba relations was thawed by a simple telephone call between President Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro. I have opposed the isolationist policies of sanctions and embargoes and have encouraged US presidents to simply use diplomacy – even a simple telephone call – to clear up differences. There is a lesson in this for similarly tense US relations with Iran, Russia, Syria, and others.
I am optimistic about this policy shift by the US government but I am also very cautious.
Permitting travel to and trade with Cuba is a step in the right direction, but if the US government uses this opening to increase its meddling in internal Cuban affairs it will be one step forward and one step back. We have recently read of yet another hare-brained scheme by the US Agency for International Development to foment regime change in Cuba, this time by co-opting Cuban musicians. Before that, the US was funneling money to NGOs to create a phony Twitter program that was supposed to overthrow the Cuban government. Improving relations should not be seen as a Trojan horse to infiltrate more regime change NGOs into Cuba.
Some neoconservatives are applauding this policy shift for that very reason. Max Boot, a well-known neocon war advocate, praised Obama’s Cuba shift in Commentary Magazine today. His reasoning was very different than ours, however. Without shame or embarrassment, Boot thought the opening would provide excellent cover for increased US subversion activities inside Cuba – under the cover of “human rights” advocacy. He wrote:
The restoration of diplomatic relations will, in any case, deliver some benefits to the U.S. by allowing us to beef up the staff of the American interests section in Havana, thus increasing our ability to (at least in theory) subvert the regime through the promotion of human rights.
President Obama also seemed to suggest that the US would continue meddling in internal Cuban affairs, stating that the United States “will continue to support the civil society” in Cuba. That likely means a deal to allow US NGOs in to Cuba to work toward regime change.
I have a better suggestion if the US truly wants Cuba to become a free and prosperous country: the US government should completely remove all restrictions on US citizens and then step aside. American tourists, businessmen, students, and scholars can do far more to promote real American values than bureaucrats, government-funded NGOs, and US-funded propaganda broadcasts.
A better future for the United States and Cuba simply requires our government opening the door and getting the heck out of the way!
Would You Buy An Obamamobile From This Man?
By Howard Wait | Black Agenda Report | December 17, 2014
Consider the prospect of buying a car at a certain price, but not knowing what the costs for gasoline, oil changes, tires or other repairs would cost until after you made a purchase. Parking this Obamabile might cost $5 per hour, maybe $500; who knows? Maybe that defective air bag or gas pedal is covered under the warranty: maybe it isn’t. That doesn’t seem right, or legal, does it?
That’s basically what people are doing when they purchase individual health insurance, especially Affordable Care Act Insurance. For those inclined to read all the fine print on dozens of health insurance plans, familiarize themselves with arcane terms like split deductibles, coinsurance and balance-billing and then review the provider lists and drug formularies for ailments they may not even have yet, there is a chance, but no guarantee, they could select the least-worst plan available.
What if you contract cancer, or HIV, and the drug formularies and specialists you need aren’t included? What if the provider lists and formularies are complete fabrications? Well, they probably are, at least in the managed care plans surveyed by HHS Inspector General:
“We found that slightly more than half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees. Notably, 35 percent could not be found at the location listed by the plan, and another 8 percent were at the location but said that they were not participating in the plan. An additional 8 percent were not accepting new patients.”
With all the money flowing into the coffers of managed care companies, they can’t be bothered to update their provider lists? There should be a law, but there isn’t. If you bought a useless health plan, blame yo’self. Caveat emptor.
The idea that individual patients are capable of sifting through all the contingencies of hundreds of insurance plans, devised by teams of industry professionals intent on fleecing them, to arrive at an optimal choice that will promote better healthcare through market competition is a wonderful fantasy for those who stand to profit from this scheme, but it’s not reality. The truth is that only 11% of people surveyed are capable of understanding the terms and costs of a single health insurance plan, when the plan is sitting in front of them on a table.
Carnegie-Mellon’s George Lowenstein surveyed 202 employer-based policy holders and asked them to compute costs of a 4-day hospital stay. They can’t. Funny thing is, he can’t either:
“I have a PhD in economics and I’ve spent a bunch of time giving insurance companies feedback about policies, and I still find them difficult to understand,” Loewenstein said. Just 14% of white people and 30% of people with a bachelor’s or greater are “proficient” in health literacy, says health.gov.”
Clearly people cannot effectively understand and manage health costs, despite all the PR blather otherwise, in a system designed not to. We’re not managing health costs, we’re being managed. The hyper-vigilance required to navigate the minefield of financial hazards we are continually defending against is itself a health hazard and dealing with a con artist when you’re deathly sick is the last thing your doctor would advise.
What we do know is bad enough. Let’s remember the census reports in 2011 that the median wage earner in the US earns just $26,965. Half earn LESS. For anyone inclined to dismiss it as just a few poor people, please check your privilege at the door. A cursory review of silver plans available for Cook County on Healthcare.gov has seven silver level plans from Blue Cross. After the ACA subsidy, the premiums range from $245 to $416 for a single, 45 year-old person who smokes and earns $26,965 before taxes. That’s $2,940 to $4,992 annually before health care or BHC®. The “subsidy” is $76.28 per month. Ha ha.
“The truth is that only 11% of people surveyed are capable of understanding the terms and costs of a single health insurance plan, when the plan is sitting in front of them on a table.”
Here we should note the idiocy of “cost-sharing reduction” which in this example is negligible. In the 200%-250% FPL tier above “poverty” level, it would increase actuarial value of his silver plan from 70% to 73%, and isn’t worth discussing here. It may help people just over the Medicaid cutoff more, but they’re in such dire straits, they may not care either.
Let’s deduct about $5,000 for various taxes, $4,000 for premiums, and maybe $8,000 for rent (in lousy neighborhood in a middle tier city) and our patient has $9,965 left, for food and transportation and clothing and utilities and… medical costs. The deductibles on these plans average $3,821 before the insurance company kicks in a dime. Goodbye food, clothing and transportation. More likely, goodbye health care.
Realistically, the person with about $191 per week for all those expenses will “chose” food and bus fare and lights. After all, these things are essential to his health. The chances he will spend $100 on medication, $50 on a specialist visit, $500 on an MRI or $900 to visit an emergency room are vanishingly small. After the deductible is paid, which will be never, health care is free! Let’s hope that pain in his side isn’t appendicitis! The Commonwealth Fund Health Care Affordability Tracking Survey spells it out:
“Having health insurance doesn’t guarantee that Americans with lower incomes can afford needed care… Two of five adults with private insurance who had high deductibles relative to their income said they had delayed needed care because of the deductible.”
That means missed prescriptions, medical appointments skipped, or just not seeing a doctor in the first place. Most likely the other three-fifths didn’t need health care at the time, which tends to skew the results more favorably than the reality of needing health care actually is.
With catastrophic junk plans like this, healthy people are in a lot of trouble if they need health care. Their best scenario is getting hit by a truck and not caring that total costs for them, although bankrupting, will be capped – sort of – if they can stay awake long enough to insist that no out-of-network anesthesiologists at their in-network hospital work on them.
Chronic care patients are another story. They need medical care every month without which their lives are endangered. Like Medicare’s famously crappy “donut hole” that left elders on the hook for 100% of prescription costs each August, the ACA’s donut hole starts over every year at January 1st in the form of a huge deductible for which “some costs may not apply” and will be ruinous for chronic patients and beyond the reach of many, depending on actual costs for their illnesses.
Has anyone looked lately at the cost of cancer drugs? Or the huge spike in generics like humalog for diabetics? How many sick, low-income people can come up with $3,000 out-of-pocket on January 1st? Oh yeah, we already know: “A majority, or 64%, of Americans don’t have enough cash on hand to handle a $1,000 emergency expense.”
After they finish their health insurance literacy class, they can attend the financial literacy class offered by their credit card company. Deadbeats.
We’ve heard endlessly how many people have enrolled in “coverage.” The ad campaigns blare “are you covered?” At the modest rate of 2.4 physicians per 1,000 patients (Cuba has 6.7 per 1,000), we need 38,400 new doctors to treat 16 million new patients, or 120,000 for 50 million uninsured. Never mind that no one asked where the doctors were coming from. For a bunch of corporate and government types swooning over data and metrics, they’re doing a lousy job of collecting data on anything that counts for actual patients. You know, basic stuff, like: what percentage of policy holders receive any cash benefit after premiums and out-of-pocket costs that run about $12,400? What percentage of chronic care patients can afford their prescriptions? How much health care is provided to typical policy holders, not just the sickest tier, for all the money they spend? And what about the sickest? Or, maybe: are health outcomes any better for all this? At what cost?
Obamacare is the leading edge, the template for future health insurance for the rest of you. HDHP’s—High Deductible Health Plans—with skinny networks, overpriced medicines and more tricks and traps than a Halloween funhouse. The woefully misnamed Affordable Care Act is designed to deliver $8,000 per year to insurance companies and $5,000 per year to medical providers before it delivers a dime to patients. That’s $208,000,000,000, give or take a few bucks, per year to the medical complex. And it’s working exactly as planned.
Howard Wait writes to unveil the reality behind the cultural trance that permeates American life. He lives in Chicago.
Elie Wiesel: Conscience of Mankind and Saintly Humanitarian or Liar, Hypocrite, and Terrorist?
By John Taylor • Unz Review • December 18, 2014
Elie Wiesel presents himself as a humanitarian whose personal narrative gives him special license to sermonize about tolerance and non-violence. Wiesel: “Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” More Wiesel: “Never again becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children.”
Yet Wiesel, the putative guardian of the weak and the innocent, is in conflict with Wiesel, the Zionist and shameless apologist for Israel’s on going ethnic cleansing campaign and serial butchery in Lebanon and Gaza. “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.” In the Middle East Wiesel has made his choice and it is to champion the powerful against their victims and to defend the occupier against the dispossessed.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Wiesel claimed to be sensitive to the plight of the Palestinians “but whose methods I deplore when they lead to violence. Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.” Wiesel denounced Palestinian terrorism but conveniently ignored his own membership in a Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, which he joined in Paris in 1947 as a translator, journalist and propagandist.
Obviously Wiesel knew the Irgun was a terrorist group when he became a member. Its European HQ fled Rome for Paris after an Irgun cell blew up the British embassy there. Furthermore by the time Wiesel joined the organization, it had established a reputation for bombing and shooting scores of innocent Arabs in Palestine. In the 1930s the Irgun planted deadly bombs in Arab marketplaces, most notably in Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They also blew up buses and trains. By the mid-1940s the Irgun put the British colonial government in its sights. In 1946 the terrorist group killed 91 people in a Christmas bombing of the King David Hotel. They also kidnapped, tortured and hanged two British Army sergeants. And in an outrage which occurred after Wiesel joined the Irgun, the group killed some 254 unarmed Palestinian civilians at Deir Yassin in order to terrorize Palestine’s Christian and Muslim population and encourage their flight.
Despite working for a terrorist organization that was instrumental in driving the Palestinians from their homes during Israel’s so called War of Independence, Wiesel quite dishonestly asserted in a New York Times op-ed that “Incited by their leaders, 600,000 Palestinians left the country convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would be able to return home.” Not only did Wiesel know the truth about the Palestinian Nakba from his work for the Irgun, but when his piece appeared in the Times in 2001 Israeli historians like Benny Morris had already entirely debunked the myth of voluntary Palestinian flight. Further, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s autobiography revealed David Ben-Gurion’s order to drive out the Palestinians:
“While the fighting was still in progress, we had to grapple with a troublesome problem…the fate of the civilian population of Lod and Ramle, numbering some 50,000… We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question: ‘What is to be done with the population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said, ‘Drive them out!’… The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force…”
Lying about Israeli ethnic cleansing was not enough. Wiesel, ever the propagandist, even tried to discredit the Palestinian struggle against Zionism by conflating indigenous Arab resistance with Nazism. Wiesel wrote in his autobiography, All Rivers Flow to the Sea, “gangs loyal to the grand mufti, the pro-Hitler Haj Amin el-Husseini, former ally and protégé of Himmler, attacked Jewish villages and convoys.” Of course Wiesel said nothing about Avraham Stern, leader of an Irgun splinter group, the Lehi, who actually sought an alliance with the Nazis against Great Britain during World War II.
Wiesel has said “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil” and “When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant”. Nevertheless in the face of the Palestinian struggle to end years of Israeli occupation, land theft and brutality, Wiesel, when he isn’t blaming Zionism’s victims, is either silent or indifferent: “…whenever Israeli police or soldiers react excessively to violence from Palestinian soldiers or civilians. I rarely answer.” And concerning the IDF facilitated massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon: “I don’t think we should even comment…” What ever happened to Wiesel’s signature commonplace “I swore never to be silent…”?
During this past summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza, Wiesel accused the Palestinians of using children as human shields, saying in a full page ad in the New York Times, “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.” Truth is, of course, the Israelis have not given up child sacrifice if it is Arab children doing the dying. And Israel’s exculpatory explanation that ‘the Arabs forced us to murder their kids’ has been used for a long time, for example to shield Israel from international criticism during bombing campaigns against Egypt in the early1970s and repeatedly in Lebanon.
As for Wiesel’s human shields accusation itself, western media reporting from inside Gaza during operation Protective Edge in August have pretty much discredited him. Were the four cousins playing soccer on the beach killed by Israeli naval gunfire human shields? What about the young children hit with a smart bomb while feeding the family ducks? Human shields too? And the 500 or so other dead children? Considering Israeli willingness to hit any target in Gaza from UN schools to water treatment plants to hospitals, why would Hamas bother to use kids as shields? The presence of civilians hasn’t deterred Israeli attacks in Gaza or elsewhere; good examples being the shelling of the UN compound at Qana in Lebanon and the bombing of Bahr el-Baqar primary school in Egypt
If Wiesel had a scintilla of humanity he would be honest enough to admit that Israel is killing children in Gaza because the Palestinians have chosen to resist Israeli ethnocide of which the long term siege of Gaza is an integral and essential part.
Wiesel has written repeatedly to defend Israeli government policy in Jerusalem. In 2001 Wiesel stated, “As for Jerusalem, would it not be better to resolve all other pending questions first and defer until a later time decisions about the fate of the holiest of cities?” More recently, in a 2010 letter to President Obama, Wiesel asking him not to “pressure” the Israelis to make concessions to the Palestinians in Jerusalem. Wiesel’s intent is clear: To buy time for the Israelis to finish their campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem. Wiesel, clearly a man not afraid to lie, even went so far as to claim,”… contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims ARE allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city” to which Jerusalem resident and former MK Yossi Sarid replied, “Not only may an Arab not build “anywhere,” but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown out onto the street with his family and property…”
Wiesel states that Jerusalem “belongs to the Jewish people.” He asserts an exclusive Jewish claim to the city saying Jerusalem “is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture—and not a single time in the Koran,” as if this should somehow minimize Muslim veneration and attachment to the city. And he says nothing about the importance of Jerusalem to Christianity or that the place name appears 140 times in the New Testament. Wiesel may be right when he declared “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” But one may doubt he delivered the aphorism with self-criticism in mind.
Wiesel may also claim that “For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics,” but he knows better. The Israeli politicians who vastly expanded Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries after the 1967 war did so with politics and demographics in mind. And Wiesel himself is chairman of the advisory board of the settler run outfit Elad, whose current project is to drive Palestinians out of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan by fair means or foul.
Wiesel has been called a “contemptible poseur and windbag” and the “resident clown of the Holocaust circus.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to label him the personification of Nazi genocide in service of Zionism. And Zionism is the longest systematic violation of human rights in recent history. The ever so quotable Wiesel may proclaim “One person of integrity can make a difference,” but that person is not Elie Wiesel.
Israeli Role in Syrian Conflict Brought Into the Open
By Nicola Nasser | The Peoples Voice | December 18, 2014
Overtly, the Israeli superpower of the Middle East has been keen to posture as having no role whatsoever in the four-year old devastating conflict in Syria, where all major regional and international powers are politically and militarily deeply involved and settling scores by Syrian blood.
In his geopolitical weekly analysis, entitled “The Islamic State Reshapes the Middle East,” on November 25 Stratfor’s George Friedman raised eyebrows when he reviewed the effects which the terrorist group had on all regional powers, but seemed unaware of the existence of the Israeli regional superpower.
It was an instructive omission that says a lot about the no more discreet role Israel is playing to maintain what the Israeli commentator Amos Harel described as the “stable instability” in Syria and the region, from the Israeli perspective of course.
Friedman in fact was reflecting a similar official omission by the US administration. When President Barak Obama appealed for a “broad international coalition” to fight the Islamic State (IS), Israel — the strongest military power in the region and the well – positioned logistically to fight it — was not asked to join. The Obama administration explained later that Israel’s contribution would reflect negatively on the Arab partners in the coalition.
“Highlighting Israel’s contributions could be problematic in terms of complicating efforts to enlist Muslim allies” in the coalition, said Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at AIPAC’s arm, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Covertly however Israel is a key player in prolonging the depleting war on Syria and the major beneficiary of neutralizing the military of the only immediate Arab neighbor that has so far eluded yielding to the terms dictated by the U.S. – backed Israeli regional force majeure for making peace with the Hebrew state.
Several recent developments however have brought the Israeli role into the open.
First the latest bombing of Syrian targets near the Damascus international civilian airport on December 7 was the seventh major unprovoked air strike of its kind since 2011 and the fifth in the past 18 months on Syrian defenses. Syrian Scientific research centers, missile depots, air defense sites, radar and electronic monitoring stations and the Republican Guards were targeted by Israel.
Facilitating the Israeli mission and complementing it, the terrorist organizations operating in the country tried several times to hit the same targets. They succeeded in killing several military pilots and experts whom Israeli intelligence services would have paid dearly to hunt down.
Foreign Policy on last June 14 quoted a report by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki – moon as saying that the “battle – hardened Syrian rebels … once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria,” describing the arrangement as a “gentleman’s agreement.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in February this year visited this “military field hospital” and shook hands with some of the more than 1000 rebels treated in Israeli hospitals, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
Foreign Policy quoted also Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as saying that Israel was supplying the rebel – controlled Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and “insurgents.” Yaari ignored the reports about the Israeli intelligence services to those “insurgents.”
Israel facilitates war on UNDOF
Second, the latest quarterly report by the UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on December 1 confirmed what eight previous similar reports had stated about the “interaction … across the (Syrian – Israeli) ceasefire line” between the IOF and the “armed members of the (Syrian) opposition,” in the words of Ki-moon’s report to the Council on December 4.
Third, Ki-moon in his report confirmed that the UNDOF “was forced to relocate its troops” to the Israeli side of the ceasefire line, leaving the Syrian side a safe haven zone for the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, which the UNSC had designated a “terrorist group.”
UNDOF’s commander Lieutenant General Iqbal Singh Singha told the UNSC on October 9 that his troops were “under fire, been abducted, hijacked, had weapons snatched and offices vandalized.” Australia was the latest among the troop contributing countries to pull out its forces from UNDOF.
UNDOF and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) operate in the buffer zone of about 80 km long and between 0.5 to 10 km wide, forming an area of 235 km². The zone borders the Lebanon Blue Line to the north and forms a border of less than 1 km with Jordan to the south. It straddles the Purple Line which separates the Israeli – occupied Golan Heights from Syria. The west Israeli side of this line is known as “Alpha”, and the east Syrian side as “Bravo.”
Speaking at the U.S. military base Fort Dix on Monday, President Obama warned those who “threaten America” that they “will have no safe haven,” but that is exactly what Israel is providing them.
Israeli “interaction” has practically helped the UNDOF “to relocate” from Bravo to Alpha and to hand Bravo as a safe haven over to an al-Nusra Front – led coalition of terrorist groups.
Al-Nusra Front is officially the al – Qaeda affiliate in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Committee on Foreign relations on this December 9 that his administration considers the IS to be a branch of al – Qaeda operating under a different name. Both terrorist groups were one under the name of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and only recently separated. Whoever accommodates either one is in fact courting the other.
“The 1,200-strong UN force is now mostly huddled inside Camp Ziouani, a drab base just inside the Israeli – controlled side of the Golan Heights. Its patrols along the de facto border have all but ceased,” the Associated Press reported on last September 18.
Israeli air force and artillery intervened several times to protect the al-Nusra Front’s “safe haven” against fire power from Syria, which is still committed to its ceasefire agreement of 1974 with Israel. Last September for example, Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet that was bombing the Front’s positions, only three weeks after shooting down a Syrian drone over the area.
Israel is not violating the Syrian sovereignty only, but violating also the UN – sponsored ceasefire agreement and the UNSC anti-terror resolutions. More important, Israel is in fact undermining the UNDOF mandate on the Israeli – occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
This situation could only be interpreted as an Israeli premeditated war by proxy on the UN presence on the Golan Heights.
“Israel is the most interested in having (UN) peacekeepers evacuated from the occupied Golan so as to be left without international monitoring,” Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, Bashar al- Jaafari, told reporters on September 17.
The UNSC seems helpless or uninterested in defending the UNDOF mandate on the Golan against Israeli violations, which risk the collapse of the 1974 ceasefire arrangements.
Syrian Foreign Ministry was on record to condemn these violations as a “declaration of war,” asserting that Syria reserves its right to retaliate “at the right moment and the right place.” Obviously a regional outbreak is at stake here without the UN presence as a buffer.
Upgrading unanimously Israel’s status from a “major non – NATO ally” to a “major strategic partner” of the United States by the U.S. Congress on December 3 could explain the UNSC inaction.
The undeclared understanding between the Syrian government and the U.S. – led coalition against the self – declared “Islamic State” (IS) not to target the latter’s forces seems to have left this mission to Israel who could not join the coalition publicly for subjective as well as objective reasons.
The AP on September 18 did not hesitate to announce that the “collapse of UN peacekeeping mission on Golan Heights marks new era on Israel – Syria front.” Aron Heller, the writer of the AP report, quoted the former Israeli military liaison officer with UNDOF, Stephane Cohen, as saying: “Their mandate is just not relevant anymore.” Heller concluded that this situation “endangers” the “status quo,” which indeed has become a status quo ante.
Israeli strategic gains
The emerging fait accompli seems very convenient to Israel, creating positive strategic benefits for the Hebrew state and arming it with a pretext not to withdraw the IOF from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian territories.
In an analysis paper published by The Saban Center at Brookings in November 2012, Itamar Rabinovich wrote that, “Clearly, the uncertainty in Syria has put the question of the Golan Heights on hold indefinitely. It may be a long time until Israel can readdress the prospect of giving the Golan back to Damascus.”
Moreover, according to Rabinovich, “the Syrian conflict has the potential to bring the damaged Israeli – Turkish relationship closer to normalcy … they can find common ground in seeking to foster a stable post – Assad government in Syria.”
The hostile Turkish insistence on toppling the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, the concentration of the IS and other rebel forces in the north of the country and in central, eastern and southern Syria are diverting the potential and focus of the Syrian Arab Army northward and inward, away from the western front with the Israeli occupying power on the Golan Heights.
The protracted war on the Syrian government is depleting its army in manpower and materially. Rebuilding the Syrian army and the devastated Syrian infrastructure will preoccupy the country for a long time to come and defuse any military threat to Israel for an extended time span.
On the Palestinian front, the rise of the IS has made fighting it the top U.S. priority in the Middle East, which led Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to several U.S. administrations on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, to warn in Foreign Policy early in September that the rise of the IS would pose “a serious setback to Palestinian hopes of statehood.”
The expected fallback internally of the post – war Syria would “hopefully” relieve Israel of the Syrian historical support for the Palestinian anti – Israeli occupation movements, at least temporarily.
Netanyahu on Sunday opened a cabinet meeting by explicitly using the IS as a pretext to evade the prerequisites of making peace. Israel “stands … as a solitary island against the waves of Islamic extremism washing over the entire Middle East,” he said, adding: “To force upon us” a timeframe for a withdrawal from the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories, as proposed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UN Security Council, “will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this.”
Israel is also capitalising on the war on the IS to misleadingly portray it as identical with the Palestinian “Islamic” resistance movements because of their Islamic credentials. “When it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas,” Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly on September 29.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories (nassernicola@ymail.com).
Interview: Mexico Gov’t Claims on Disappeared Students Exposed
teleSUR | December 16, 2014
Explosive allegations were published in Proceso, one of Mexico’s leading news weeklies, this past Sunday, revealing strong evidence pointing to direct participation by federal authorities in the presumed killings of dozens of education students from the drug war-torn state of Guerrero.
The investigation also revealed that Mexican federal, state and municipal authorities were tracking the exact movements of the students on the same night of the massacre in question this past September 26 and that according to the government’s own documents, and in at least five clear instances, key testimony obtained by officials to sustain their version of the events was actually induced via illegal interrogation techniques that amounted to torture, which included electric shocks to testicles and extreme beatings.
The investigation’s revelations are not only a stark contrast with what has been officially maintained by the Peña Nieto administration, but also contradict most of what most mainstream news has reported from Mexico and beyond.
The Official Version
The official version of what happened on September 26, the night of the disappearance , largely emanates from a press conference that has by now become widely known and has even served as a reference point for a nation-wide movement that has been ongoing since soon after the presumed massacre occurred. That is because the Attorney General leading the press conference, Jesus Murillo Karam, mentioned that he was “tired” at the end of the hour-long conference. The #YaMeCanse Twitter hashtag arose almost as soon as the conference itself ended, and has actually served as the battle-cry for a nation-wide movement that has attracted international support and attention, including a day of protests which featured over 200 actions across the globe and cross-border protests, as previously reported by teleSUR English.
During the press conference, and reiterated through a variety of official accounts since that time, authorities have claimed that Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife ordered local municipal police to attack several buses of the “normalistas” (students training to become teachers) on several occasions. The attacks wound up killing at least three people and disappearing 43 students. The Guerreros Unidos (Warriors United) drug gang was then given the 43 kidnapped students which went on to brutally assassinate, dismember, torture and burn the victims to death, again, according to official accounts, but disputed by the parents.
The ex-Mayor and his wife have since been detained in connection to the presumed massacre. Acting on a tip from the couple’s landlord in Itzapalapa, the “imperial couple,” as local media dubbed them, were considered by federal officials to be the main culprits behind the crime. The official allegation was that the couple acted in cahoots with a gang that had long suspected, close ties to the Mayor and his wife.
State Version Undermined
The investigation, which was penned by acclaimed Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez and the University of California at Berkeley-based journalist Steve Fisher, blows the lid off of official accounting in a number of ways, in alleging that: federal, state and local officials closely tracked, monitored and were quite aware of the whereabouts of both the killed, disappeared and presumably murdered education students; key testimonies obtained by officials were garnered through illegal torture techniques; federal police and soldiers from the military were present at the scene of the killings; the government has deliberately withheld this information in an attempt to maintain their own official accounting of the events in question.
The allegations also come during a time in which the government’s version of the events was already being questioned by other sources. A research team headed by a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, argued that the government claims that the Guerreros Unidos gang incinerated to death all 43 students lacked any “scientific explanation.”
In an extended interview via a three-way telephone call with the authors of the investigation with teleSUR English, Anabel Hernandez and Steve Fisher discussed and detailed their findings.
Journalists Discuss Disturbing Findings
The ever-passionate and expressive Hernandez is no stranger to explosive investigations and allegations, so much so that her home was raided by official authorities late last year. The award-winning and internationally acclaimed journalist has also been subjected to harrowing threatening acts, such as having found animal body parts at the doorstep of her home. In her latest investigation, however, Hernandez made the case that her co-authored findings starkly revealed that governmental responsibility for the presumed massacre is much higher than what has been previously admitted.
“The point is that we know that the federal police were there, we know that they knew when the students [were] abducted and we know that many of the testimonies that the PGR [Mexico’s Attorney General’s office] were obtained and acquired through torture techniques. But in Mexico, evidence obtained through torture is illegal,” Hernandez told teleSUR.
In contrast to the official version, which maintains that the federal government was unaware of the massacre, Hernandez and Fisher allege that federal police and military soldiers directly participated in the presumed massacre itself and were one of three levels of government closely monitoring the students whereabouts throughout the night of the presumed massacre.
According to Hernandez and Fisher’s accounting of the unedited Guerrero state report they obtained, which was drawn up for the Interior Ministry (SEGOB) and obtained by the magazine about a month and a half ago, students were monitored as soon as they left their school grounds at 5:59pm. Both federal and state police were monitoring the students while they traveled from the Chilpancingo-based Control, Computational and Communications Center (C4).
The article goes into further detail, noting that at 8pm, the federal and state police arrived to the highway where the students were fielding donations; at 9:21pm, a federal police chief – Luis Antonio Dorantes – was advised of the student’s arrival; and at 9:40pm the C4 center reported the first gunshots.
The report was also based on 12 videos recorded by surviving students on their cell phones, whereby one now publicly released video has audio clearly noting a surviving student yelling in distress: “The police are now coming, the federales are staying and they are going to want to screw us over!”
In sum, various levels of government were much more aware of the students and more present at key points throughout the evening in question, than what has been previously admitted.
Hernandez made it clear to teleSUR, however, that their investigation didn’t reveal whether or not the United Warriors gang were involved with the massacre. Fisher elaborated on this point: “We cannot say whether or not Guerreros Unidos was ultimately involved with this, or not, but we can say that the evidence we have acquired was that they were tortured [before their testimonies were given]. It is thus suspect that they could actually get proper testimonies considering the fact that they were tortured brutally, including electric shocks to testicles and extreme beatings.”
Hernandez added that other telltale signs of torture were uncovered in their investigation, including bruised ribs, blackened eyes and black-and-blue marks on the neck. Such findings were especially damning, Hernandez pointed out, considering that, “the attorney general’s version was based solely on testimony by presumed drug traffickers.”
Fisher spoke to this point, telling teleSUR that, “I would say that in any case where there is torture involved, it brings into question the entire investigation. It would be interesting to know why the PGR would base this very important investigation on, according to their own documents, information obtained through people that were brutally beaten and tortured.”
Hernandez and Fisher wrote that the Peña Nieto administration has withheld the information they reported on.
Soon after the disappearance of the education students, the Guerrero Attorney General’s office requested that the Mexican Federal Police, their investigation notes, hand over extensive documentation related to the potential participation of federal police agents, including the exact registries of when agents clocked in and out while on the job the night of the attack. However, the investigation added that since the Peña Nieto administration took over the investigation this past October 4, the requested documentation was never handed over to the Guerrero office.
“It is clear that the PGR has been manipulating the case, that the federal government has been manipulating the case, and that now, the official version of the case has been shown to not be trustworthy,” Hernandez passionately asserted during the extensive interview, adding that in subsequent conversations with government officials, none of their allegations were officially denied to either of the reporters.
Investigation Points to a Number of Implications
Considering the many contradictions between the investigation and official accounts , many questions can be asked. Since Mexican officials have long claimed that Warriors United was the group which took custody of the students from local police authorities who had initially detained them, have there been any false arrests among the 74-some people that have been rounded up since September 26?
The accused leader of Warriors United, Sidronio Casarrubias, is among the many detained, which include an array of local law enforcement officials. Casarrubias has since revealed to officials the kind of relationship he had with Abarca while he was mayor, but it is not clear whether or not he was among the five people tortured in Herandez and Fisher’s account.
“Warriors United has sewn a web of complicity with several mayors and above all with security officials,” Murillo previously told the press. “In Iguala, the complicity was between the authorities, the local police and the Warriors United,” Murillo added.
If there is one official acknowledgment which Hernandez and Fisher do not dispute, it is the systematic relationship that exists between drug cartels and the Mexican state. It is that very relationship which has served as a spark plug to a nation that has undertaken a significant amount of resistance since September 26.
Nation-wide Movement Continues to Wage Protest
The revelations by Herandez and Fisher come at a time that the nation’s ire was already raised to a feverish boiling point. In one of the largest countries and economies of Latin America. Mexico has witnessed near daily and nation-wide actions of resistance.
Since the disappearance of the “normalistas” on September 26, the country has been brimming with mass marches, candle-light vigils, university-campus and labor-union-led strikes, occupations of official and university buildings, riot police-led arrests of demonstrators, property destruction of official buildings, sit-ins, panels ruminating over the ills of narco-state violence and international bridge closings.
Most recently, at least 22 people were injured this past Sunday during protests in Chilpancingo, Guerrero which featured police opening fire on demonstrators. TeleSUR English reported that three parents of the forcibly disappeared, a journalist, a student from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a member of an education union were among those injured.
The violent law enforcement response to the protests, specifically that of Sunday’s occurrences, prompted the National Human rights Commission to demand that authorities conduct themselves within the law.
The disappearance clearly served as the catalyst for the movement’s inception, much of the country has long been weary of the systematic problem of disappearances and the eerie official impunity which has often surrounded them. Nothing less than some 22,000 disappearances, over the course of the last three years alone, account for official estimates. Other analysts estimate the actual total as being higher than that.
Mass Graves Point to Narco-State Crimes
The disappearances of the normalistas are emblematic of a long-running problem in Mexico: thousands upon thousands of cases of disappearances, many of whose investigations were found ‘inconclusive’ and long ago closed, exist throughout the country. Some estimates range as high as 24,000 disappearances having occurred since 2011 alone, the overwhelming amount of which were “unsolved” and/or “closed” cases.
In another case of official law enforcement involvement in a crime, 22 alleged kidnappers were summarily executed by Mexican soldiers in Tlatlaya in June 2014. A federal judge recently charged three soldiers with murder and four others with abuse of authority and other charges in relation to the massacre.
At least a dozen mass grave sites have been discovered since the time of the Ayatzinapa disappearances. Meanwhile, movement activists and organizers alike have alleged that many more mass grave sites exist than what has been officially acknowledged.
Regardless of the actual total of mass grave sites, their undisputed existence still point to a problem more familiar to locals and residents of the area: Guerrero is not only a drug war-torn state, but a complex nexus of corruption and corroboration between local, regional and state authorities and their allies in street gangs and powerful drug cartels. Even federal officials have since admitted that the disappeared students pointed to a larger, narco-state reality.
While the troubles of living under a narco-state is one which local residents of Guerrero have long been familiar, in the wake of what seemingly is a never-ending case of the disappearances of the Guerrero students, it has now become a reality with which the whole nation of Mexico, and well beyond, are becoming familiar with as well.
But now, in light of the explosive allegations revealed by Hernandez and Fisher, it will become yet a more complex reality with which the nation will have to come to grips and to which the government may have to provide yet more answers during tiring press conferences.
Educators, Holocaust group join Sept. 11 museum in ‘teaching’ children official 9/11 lies
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | May 15, 2014
The 9/11 official story is rooted in deception, distortion, and misdirection. Now all of its lies have been dressed up and put on display in an expensive federally funded monument for paying customers.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is more of a walk-in indoctrination center than a tribute to the victims of 9/11. It’s a piece of propaganda made of glass and steel that plays on emotions and on the sincere desire of people to honor those who sacrificed their lives in this false flag event.
The Memorial and Museum’s web site not only reiterates all the same lies, but it even explains a framework that educators will be using to indoctrinate children so they can grow up to be believers in the war on terror and the need for more wars and greater and greater security and surveillance. Even as the mainstream media turn their attention to misrepresenting other events, the museum and accompanying “lesson plans” for school children will continue to do their work.
On the site, we learn that: “The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has partnered with the New York City Department of Education and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education to develop a robust set of 9/11 lessons for K-12 classrooms.”
The New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education (created by the State of New Jersey) is involved in creating lessons that teach children that Muslims are the bad guys and that they attacked America? Oh wait, I forgot – they are making it clear that it’s not all Muslims, just the “extreme” ones. These lessons are directed at all age groups, and the content will be used within a wide array of subjects and courses.
Through its exhibits, the museum purports to tell the story of what happened on September 11, 2001 – that 19 Muslim extremists led by Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people by hijacking four airliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. We will even be shown photographs of the 19 alleged hijackers” (although I guarantee they won’t use the word “alleged”), which will be interesting since several of those turned out to be alive after 9/11, and no proof has been presented that establishes that any of the 19 ever boarded any of the planes.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has produced brochures in the same style as the official ones that teams of volunteers pass out to visitors to the museum, which it calls “an elaborate, taxpayer-funded, public relations campaign to forever cement the fantastic claims of the official conspiracy theory into the history books.”
I wish I’d written that.
In a fundraising email, AE describes what it wants to do in response to this PR campaign: “This historical revisionism needs to be countered with an all-out effort of the truth of 9/11. By printing thousands of educational flyers and distributing them via teams of AE911Truth volunteers at the memorial grounds entry, we can inform the public as to why the 9/11 Memorial Museum is largely a fraud.”
Muslim Americans have been the victims of increased bigotry and hate since they were tagged as the perpetrators of 9/11 more than 12-and-a-half years ago. Now, Muslim- and Arab-American groups fear this will happen all over again as a result of a seven-minute video called “The Rise of al-Qaeda” that is shown as one of the exhibits.
The film, they charge, perpetuates the myth that Muslims were responsible for 9/11, using terms like “Islamists” and “jihad” in the presentation. They say it fails to offer any nuance that would help people to understand that blaming Muslims in general for what happened is unjust and inaccurate. Based on the protest in New York in 2010 over the plan to open a Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, their concerns appear justified.
“The Rise of al-Qaeda” is even being protested by the Memorial’s own Interfaith Advisory Committee, which reacted with alarm when it was allowed to watch the short film last year. The committee’s only Imam resigned in protest in March. As quoted in the New York Times, Sheikh Mostafa Elazabawy, the imam of Masjid Manhattan, wrote in a letter to the museum’s director: “Unsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim believers near the site.”
The museum responded with some unintentional self-parody when they stated that they are standing by the film because it has been vetted by scholars of Islam and terrorism. What a relief to hear that scholars of the very lies that 9/11 represents are on the job, making sure the film sends the “proper” message.
A coalition of groups, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), wants changes to the video so that it is made clear that the extremist Muslims who it agrees carried out 9/11 are not portrayed as being representative of the more than 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.
In a letter to museum president Joe Daniels and director Alice Greenwald, the coalition raised concerns about the video, which neither they nor the media have been allowed to see. The letter states:
“We have learned that you have been aware, since at least June 2013, that viewers have found this video confusing and possibly inflammatory. The museum’s own interfaith religious advisory group has repeatedly asked that this video be edited, with their concerns being dismissed.”
According to their testimony, the video:
- Deploys haphazard and academically controversial terminology, in particular “Islamic” and “Islamist”, to generalize, unnecessarily, about al-Qaeda’s acts of terrorism.
- Does not properly contextualize al-Qaeda as a small organization in comparison to the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.
- Uses stereotypical, accented English for speakers of Arabic in translation.
- May give some viewers, especially those not familiar with the subtleties of the terminology being used, the impression that Islam, as a religion, is responsible for September 11.
I completely support the Muslim- and Arab-American groups in their protest of the stereotyping that it appears that the film contains. But I’m concerned about the fact that the big lie – that any kind of Muslims pulled off 9/11 – is being accepted by these groups. I think they concede too much when they accept the premise that an extremist Muslim group called al-Qaeda was actually behind the alleged terrorist attacks when the evidence shows that this is just a smokescreen to disguise the real culprits and to hide their real motives.
The truth of the matter is that Muslims were not responsible for 9/11 – period. The evidence simply isn’t there to show otherwise. By putting the focus on the idea that Muslims as a whole are not violent and that al-Qaeda is not representative of what Islam is all about just falls into the trap set by the actual perpetrators.
Of course, that’s easy for me to say: I’m not a Muslim and I have not been victimized in the way that they have since 9/11. For them to argue that the official story is false would be very tricky and would certainly result in more hostility coming their way. And, of course, they may genuinely believe the official story. After all, Muslim Americans are subject to the same disinformation and propaganda that everyone else is.
The real purpose of the museum
A tour around the web site of the Memorial and Museum offers a good summary of the language of the 9/11 official story and its accompanying talking points. On the page “9/11 FAQ,” we get all the key elements of the story fed to us by the 9/11 Commission, NIST, and other official agencies. But they get the year of the London bombings wrong (it was 2005, not 2007), they offer the lie that al-Qaeda took responsibility for several terrorist attacks including 9/11 (the “confession” video features an Osama bin Laden “double” and contains serious inconsistencies).
The Memorial and Museum’s announced mission is to honor the victims and to “educate” future generations. It will not succeed in doing either, however. In fact, by perpetuating the 9/11 lie, it does exactly the opposite. The only way to meaningfully honor the victims is by telling the truth about what happened. And no one in officialdom is willing to do that more than a dozen years after the fact.
The memorial’s web site is full of “information” about the artifacts contained within its walls (actual twin WTC girders, an exposed portion of the “slurry wall” that keeps the site from being flooded, an actual staircase that was used to escape one of the towers). But the most disturbing thing the site addresses is the museum’s effort to direct its propaganda at children who have no choice in the matter. I wonder what kind of mark a student will get if they write an essay questioning whether the official story is true?
On the surface, the site has some useful and positive things to suggest: including pointing out how destructive it can be to “compare the suffering of one person to another” or to “assign blame to an entire group.”
Sounds good, but what is suggested is that parents and educators focus on the heroic efforts of both victims and rescuers on 9/11, because 9/11 is “actually thousands of individual stories.” That’s true: everyone who was in New York, and particularly those who had a connection to the World Trade Center site in some way experienced the event in their own way. Some were true heroes, risking and even giving their lives to help others. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid with their lives.
But there is a bigger picture. And they don’t want you to look at that. They want you to stick to the emotion of the event, the stories, the courage, and the loss. Don’t look at whether the official explanation of the event fits with the evidence. Don’t “disrespect the victims” by questioning anything you’ve been told.
By the way, victims’ family members and recovery workers don’t have to pay the $24 adult entrance fee to the museum, while firefighters, the group that has paid a more terrible price than just about any other, gets a discount. That’s right, a discount.
Police Union Caught Putting GPS On Rival Politician’s Car And Framing Him For DUI
By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | December 14, 2014
Costa Mesa, California – This week, two former police officers were arrested and charged with felonies after a plot to frame a local politician failed miserably.
Private investigators and former police officers Chris Lanzillo and Scott Impola now face felony charges of illegal use of a tracking device, false imprisonment by deceit, conspiracy to commit a crime and falsely reporting a crime.
The two were not acting independently but were actually hired by Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir of Upland, a law-firm, which at the time represented over 120 police unions across California.
According to prosecutors, local Councilmen Jim Righeimer, Stephen Mensinger and Gary Monahan were targeted by police unions because they had a number of political disagreements, specifically in regards to police budgets.
A lawsuit that was later filed by Righeimer and Mensinger, claimed that the private detectives, working on behalf of the local police unions and their partner law firm, planted a GPS device on Righeimer’s car and attempted to have him wrongfully arrested for driving under the influence.
The incident occurred on August 22 of 2012, when Righeimer left a council meeting and met with Monahan at a nearby bar. The two talked about business and drank a few non-alcoholic beverages and then returned home. However, as soon as Righeimer got home, police knocked on the door and told him that a caller tipped them off that he had driven home drunk. He was then detained by police until they determined that he was not under the influence of alcohol.
Righeimer says that the two men tracked his car with the GPS and followed him, then called 911 to report that he had been drinking when they saw him leaving a bar.
The Costa Mesa Police Officers Association and many police unions throughout the country are known to stalk political opponents in a program known as “candidate research.” In this program, police unions hire private detectives to dig up dirt on politicians so that information can later be used as blackmail. This tactic is employed on political enemies, as well as political allies.
“What kind of world do we live in when the people we give guns and badges to hire private investigators to surveil public officials?” Righeimer said in a statement.
Romania agreed to host CIA ‘black sites’ to be accepted into NATO – ex spy chief
RT | December 14, 2014
Romania allowed the CIA to use a number of sites on its territory, a former head of the country’s intelligence confessed. He added that Bucharest’s bid to join NATO at the time prevented it from asking the US about the purposes of the sites.
The sites in question were called “transit centers” and Romania was unaware of whether they were used for detention, Ioan Talpes, who headed Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service from 2000 to 2004, told the daily Adevarul in a video interview posted online on Saturday.
“The Romanian side was not interested in what the Americans were doing, purposely to show them that they could trust us,” said Talpes.
AFP cited the interview, in which Talpes specifically stressed that at the time the decision was made, Bucharest was waiting to join NATO.
The ex-spy chief said talks on “sites that the Romanians would place at the disposal of CIA representatives” began after September 11, 2001.
“What is certain is that we were not aware of the presence of detainees,” Talpes insisted in the interview.
The US Senate report on torture, published earlier this week, revealed among other things that 119 people were captured and held in CIA detention sites hosted by other countries.
Although none of the countries were specifically named in the heavily redacted document, the list of those assumed to be mentioned includes Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand and Afghanistan.
Romania’s president at the time, Ion Iliescu, denied earlier this week any knowledge of the so-called “black sites” in the country, AFP reports.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta said questions about the sites should be addressed to the Foreign Ministry, which hasn’t as yet commented on the issue.
Poland earlier confirmed that it housed a facility that was used to interrogate Al-Qaeda suspects between 2002 and 2003.
In July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Poland violated an international treaty to protect human rights by hosting secret CIA prisons.
ECHR also ordered Warsaw to pay €230,000 to two former secret facility detainees. Poland is appealing the decision.
The ruling, meanwhile, could serve as a precedent for other European states alleged to have hosted CIA prisons. Romania and Lithuania have similar cases filed against them with the ECHR.
READ MORE:
CIA torture far exceeded waterboarding, brought suspects ‘to point of death’
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Confronting the Threat of Ethnic Bioweapons
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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