Stingray Warrentless Wiretap by Chicago Police on Activists
The Chicago Police were listening to an activist’s phone call(s) to learn about their “movements” in the city.
QUESTIONS FOR JEREMY SCAHILL, AUTHOR OF “DIRTY WARS, The World is a Battlefield”
Australians for Reconciliation in Syria
Ford served as the Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006 under Ambassador John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte was a key figure in the covert U.S. program to arm the Nicaraguan contras and his support for vicious paramilitary units in El Salvador and Honduras earned him the nickname of “Mr. Death Squad.”
Another element of the dirty war against Syria has been the co-opting of NGOs to support the established narrative on the crisis in Syria. So, for example, Amnesty International from almost the beginning of the crisis focused on condemning the government of Syria based on the claims of activists who supported a violent insurgency and refused to report on the killings of civilians by armed gangs early in the crisis, a key aspect of the escalating violence. From Jan 2012 – Jan 2013, Amnesty International USA was headed by Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and author of “Smart Power”. Robert Ford reportedly gave the key note address at an Amnesty International General Meeting in Colorado in early 2012.
For the people of Syria and the wider region, America’s dirty war against their countries is much dirtier than you present it, and for the wars to be successfully pursued many in the administration, media, NGOs, academia, diplomatic corps must be complicit to some extent or other in order for there to be a very muted response to the wars.
Your book was published in 2013. Could you please explain why you have given no attention at all to the role of Robert Ford in Syria’s crisis? (He is not listed in the index at all.) There are two brief references to John Negroponte in your book, on pages 186 and 207. They are both relatively benign and forgettable, despite Negroponte’s being the US director of national intelligence and his earlier suspect diplomatic service in Honduras. One would expect him to figure largely in the US dirty war. Why is Negroponte almost invisible in your book?
There is also only a passing reference (on page 186) to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, someone known to have very close connections with the Bush family, something you mention in your book. In any serious discussion of the US dirty wars in the Middle East, one would expect much more attention given Prince Bandar. Like Negroponte, Prince Bandar has links to the dirty wars in Central America, since he arranged financial support for the Nicaraguan Contras. Bandar more recently has been an intelligence chief in Saudi Arabia and more recently an adviser to the King on ISIS. Prince Bandar is reported to have said to the head of M16 in 2001,“The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.”
Why do you give such a brief, innocuous mention to Prince Bandar in “Dirty Wars” when he has been so closely connected to US administrations and US dirty wars for decades?
How can your book, “Dirty Wars” contribute to a clean peace in the Middle East if major players and key aspects of the dirty wars are not exposed?
US ‘ridiculous’ line on Egypt? Jen Psaki caught on hot mic
RT | December 5, 2014
US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki has been caught on a hot mic calling one of her prepared statements about the acquittal of Egypt’s ex-leader Hosni Mubarak “ridiculous.”
During a press briefing on Monday, AP journalist Matt Lee asked Psaki to comment on an Egyptian court’s decision to acquit former President Hosni Mubarak of murder.
The State Department spokesperson attempted to dodge the question with a convoluted platitude.
“Generally, we continue to believe that upholding impartial standards of accountability will advance the political consensus on which Egypt’s long-term stability and economic growth depends,” she said on camera.
Reporters, including Lee, did not find that satisfying, but Psaki evaded their questions, saying she would not comment further.
“What does that mean?” a flummoxed voice can be heard asking.
“Wow. I don’t understand that at all,” the bemused Lee pushes. “What you said says nothing. It’s like saying ‘We support the right of people to breathe.’ That’s great, but if you can’t breathe.”
As the conference comes to an end and the lights dim, Psaki — seemingly unaware that her microphone is still on — suddenly goes off script.
“That Egypt line is ridiculous,” she can be heard saying, as Lee guffaws.
CNC reports that Lee also grilled State Department spokesperson Marie Harf on US reaction to the Mubarak trial the next day. Harf reportedly stuck to her talking points and refused to comment on the issue. When Matt Lee expressed frustration, she commiserated—kind of—saying, “I share your pain.”
The US, which supplies Egypt with over one billion dollars in aid annually, has largely steered clear of criticizing Egyptian policy. Mubarak’s acquittal last month prompted hundreds of demonstrators to take to Tahrir Square, the site of the 2011 revolution that led to his ousting. Mubarak had been charged with the killing of 239 protesters during the uprising against him.
In NYT’s Retelling of Eric Garner’s Death, the Officer’s Arm Has a Mind of Its Own
By Peter Hart | FAIR | December 4, 2014
A piece in the New York Times (12/3/14) about Eric Garner’s death included a weird description of the videotaped chokehold that killed him:
On the videos, Mr. Garner, a 350-pound man who was about to be arrested for illegally selling cigarettes, can be seen first complaining of harassment, then physically resisting arrest by several officers, including Officer Pantaleo, whose arm finds its way around the struggling man’s neck.
It’s debatable whether or not you’d refer to Garner as resisting; he’s certainly loudly protesting that he’d done nothing wrong, and he does not appear eager to put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed. But that “resistance” lasted a few seconds before he was choked.
The most bizarre part is the idea that police officer Daniel Pantaleo’s arm has a mind of its own. It “finds its way” around Garner’s neck?
Times reporters J. David Goodman and Michael Wilson presumably used the language they meant to use; just a few paragraphs later:
As the struggle continued, one of Officer Pantaleo’s arms moved around Mr. Garner’s neck.
Seemingly of its own accord!
And then later, readers are told that “the men toppled to the ground, but the arm around Mr. Garner’s neck did not appear to move.”
If only Pantaleo had been able to somehow control his own arm, Eric Garner would not have died.
Reckless Congress Declares War on Russia
By Ron Paul | December 4, 2014
Today the US House passed what I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.”
In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing.
These are the kinds of resolutions I have always watched closely in Congress, as what are billed as “harmless” statements of opinion often lead to sanctions and war. I remember in 1998 arguing strongly against the Iraq Liberation Act because, as I said at the time, I knew it would lead to war. I did not oppose the Act because I was an admirer of Saddam Hussein – just as now I am not an admirer of Putin or any foreign political leader – but rather because I knew then that another war against Iraq would not solve the problems and would probably make things worse. We all know what happened next.
That is why I can hardly believe they are getting away with it again, and this time with even higher stakes: provoking a war with Russia that could result in total destruction!
If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about how bad this resolution really is, let me just offer a few examples from the legislation itself:
The resolution (paragraph 3) accuses Russia of an invasion of Ukraine and condemns Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The statement is offered without any proof of such a thing. Surely with our sophisticated satellites that can read a license plate from space we should have video and pictures of this Russian invasion. None have been offered. As to Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, why isn’t it a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty for the US to participate in the overthrow of that country’s elected government as it did in February? We have all heard the tapes of State Department officials plotting with the US Ambassador in Ukraine to overthrow the government. We heard US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragging that the US spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. Why is that OK?
The resolution (paragraph 11) accuses the people in east Ukraine of holding “fraudulent and illegal elections” in November. Why is it that every time elections do not produce the results desired by the US government they are called “illegal” and “fraudulent”? Aren’t the people of eastern Ukraine allowed self-determination? Isn’t that a basic human right?
The resolution (paragraph 13) demands a withdrawal of Russia forces from Ukraine even though the US government has provided no evidence the Russian army was ever in Ukraine. This paragraph also urges the government in Kiev to resume military operations against the eastern regions seeking independence.
The resolution (paragraph 14) states with certainty that the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine was brought down by a missile “fired by Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.” This is simply incorrect, as the final report on the investigation of this tragedy will not even be released until next year and the preliminary report did not state that a missile brought down the plane. Neither did the preliminary report – conducted with the participation of all countries involved – assign blame to any side.
Paragraph 16 of the resolution condemns Russia for selling arms to the Assad government in Syria. It does not mention, of course, that those weapons are going to fight ISIS – which we claim is the enemy — while the US weapons supplied to the rebels in Syria have actually found their way into the hands of ISIS!
Paragraph 17 of the resolution condemns Russia for what the US claims are economic sanctions (“coercive economic measures”) against Ukraine. This even though the US has repeatedly hit Russia with economic sanctions and is considering even more!
The resolution (paragraph 22) states that Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia in 2008. This is simply untrue. Even the European Union – no friend of Russia – concluded in its investigation of the events in 2008 that it was Georgia that “started an unjustified war” against Russia not the other way around! How does Congress get away with such blatant falsehoods? Do Members not even bother to read these resolutions before voting?
In paragraph 34 the resolution begins to even become comical, condemning the Russians for what it claims are attacks on computer networks of the United States and “illicitly acquiring information” about the US government. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations about the level of US spying on the rest of the world, how can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?
Chillingly, the resolution singles out Russian state-funded media outlets for attack, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” The US government, of course, spends billions of dollars worldwide to finance and sponsor media outlets including Voice of America and RFE/RL, as well as to subsidize “independent” media in countless counties overseas. How long before alternative information sources like RT are banned in the United States? This legislation brings us closer to that unhappy day when the government decides the kind of programming we can and cannot consume – and calls such a violation “freedom.”
The resolution gives the green light (paragraph 45) to Ukrainian President Poroshenko to re-start his military assault on the independence-seeking eastern provinces, urging the “disarming of separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine.” Such a move will mean many more thousands of dead civilians.
To that end, the resolution directly involves the US government in the conflict by calling on the US president to “provide the government of Ukraine with lethal and non-lethal defense articles, services, and training required to effectively defend its territory and sovereignty.” This means US weapons in the hands of US-trained military forces engaged in a hot war on the border with Russia. Does that sound at all like a good idea?
There are too many more ridiculous and horrific statements in this legislation to completely discuss. Probably the single most troubling part of this resolution, however, is the statement that “military intervention” by the Russian Federation in Ukraine “poses a threat to international peace and security.” Such terminology is not an accident: this phrase is the poison pill planted in this legislation from which future, more aggressive resolutions will follow. After all, if we accept that Russia is posing a “threat” to international peace how can such a thing be ignored? These are the slippery slopes that lead to war.
This dangerous legislation passed today, December 4, with only ten (!) votes against! Only ten legislators are concerned over the use of blatant propaganda and falsehoods to push such reckless saber-rattling toward Russia.
Here are the Members who voted “NO” on this legislation. If you do not see your own Representative on this list call and ask why they are voting to bring us closer to war with Russia! If you do see your Representative on the below list, call and thank him or her for standing up to the warmongers.
Voting “NO” on H. Res. 758:
1) Justin Amash (R-MI)
2) John Duncan (R-TN)
3) Alan Grayson, (D-FL)
4) Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
5) Walter Jones (R-NC)
6) Thomas Massie (R-KY)
7) Jim McDermott (D-WA)
8 George Miller (D-CA)
9) Beto O’Rourke (D-TX)
10 Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Iran disputes veracity of US claims it launched air raids against ISIS in Iraq
Al-Akhbar | December 3, 2014
Iran has not launched any airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets in neighboring Iraq, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday, contradicting an earlier statement by the US.
“Iran has never been involved in any airstrikes against the Daesh (ISIS) targets in Iraq. Any cooperation in such strikes with America is also out of question for Iran,” the senior official said on condition of anonymity.
The US Pentagon had previously affirmed on Tuesday that Iranian fighter jets had bombed ISIS fighters in eastern Iraq in recent days, but that the strikes were not coordinated with US forces.
“We have indications that they did indeed fly airstrikes with F-4 Phantoms in the past several days,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told AFP.
His comments came after Al-Jazeera recently ran footage of what appeared to be an F-4 fighter, similar to those used by the Iranian air force, attacking targets in the eastern province of Diyala.
At a press conference earlier, Kirby said it was up to the Iraqi government to oversee and coordinate military flights by different countries and not US commanders.
“We are flying missions over Iraq. We coordinate with the Iraqi government as we conduct those. It’s up to the Iraqi government to deconflict that air space,” Kirby told reporters.
“Nothing has changed about our policy of not coordinating military activity with the Iranians.”
Iranian forces have reportedly been active on the ground in Iraq assisting militias and Baghdad government units. Iran also has provided Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft to Iraq amid speculation that the planes are flown by Iranian pilots.
Iran has close ties to the government in Baghdad, which has struggled to counter ISIS.
US fighters, bombers and surveillance aircraft fly daily missions over Iraq along with other coalition warplanes from European governments as well as Australia and Canada.
The US-led air war against ISIS began on August 8 in Iraq and was extended into Syria in September. However, it has so far failed to stave off ISIS advances.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
The Illusion of Debate
By Jason Hirthler | CounterPunch | December 2, 2014
A recent article in FAIR reviewed the findings of its latest study on the quality of political “debate” being aired on the mainstream networks. It studied the run-up to the military interventions in both Iraq and Syria. Perhaps the arbiters of the study intended to illustrate what we’ve learned since the fraudulent Iraq War of 2003. Well, it appears we’ve learned nothing.
FAIR spent hours painfully absorbing the misinformation peddled by such soporific Sunday shows as CNN’s State of the Union, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and ABC’s This Week, plus some of the more popular weekly political programming including ADHD-inducing CNN’s Situation Room, Fox News Channel’s Special Report, the venerable sedative PBS NewsHour, and MSNBC’s Hardball. You know the cast of characters: glib George Stephanopoulos, forthright Candy Crowly, harrowing Wolf Blitzer, and stentorian Chris Matthews. Images of their barking maws are seared into the national hippocampus.
Overall, 205 mostly government mouthpieces were invited to air their cleverly crafted talking points for public edification. Of them, a staggering sum of three voiced opposition to military action in Syria and Iraq. A mere 125 stated their support for aggressive action.
Confining its data to the Sunday shows, 89 guests were handsomely paid to educate our benighted couch-potato populace. One suggested not going to war. It stands to reason that considered legal arguments against these interventions got the short shrift, too.
The media consensus on Syria and Iraq isn’t an isolated instance of groupthink. Far from it. It conforms to a consistent pattern, one that has at its core a deliberate disregard for international law and efforts to strengthen transnational treaties and norms regarding military action. (Although transnational law regulating trade is highly favored, for obvious reasons.)
Here the New York Times uncritically repeats Israel casualty figures from the recent attack on Gaza. The journalist, Jodi Rudoren, gives equal legitimacy to sparsely defended claims from Tel Aviv and “painstakingly compiled research by the United Nations, and independent Palestinian human rights organizations in Gaza.” She adopts a baseless Israeli definition of “combatant”, ignoring broad international consensus that contradicts it. She dubiously conflates minors with adults, and under-reports the number of children killed. And so on. All in the service of the pro-Israel position of the paper.
In 2010 Israel assaulted an aid flotilla trying to relieve Palestinians under the Gaza blockade. Author and political analyst Anthony DiMaggio conducted Lexis Nexus searches that demonstrate how U.S. media and the NYT in particular scrupulously avoid the topic of international law when discussing Israeli actions. In one analysis of Times and Washington Post articles on Israel between May 31st and June 2nd, just five out of 48 articles referenced international law relating to either the flotilla raid or the blockade. DiMaggio dissects several of the methods by which Israel flaunts the United Nations Charter. He adds that Israel has violated more than 90 Security Council resolutions relating to its occupation. You don’t get this story in the American mainstream. But this is typical. U.S. media reflexively privileges the Israeli narrative over Arab points of view, and barely acknowledges the existence of dozens of United Nations resolutions condemning criminal actions by Israel.
It’s the same with Iran. For years now, Washington has been theatrically warning the world that Iran wants to build a bomb and menace the Middle East with it. That would be suicidal. It is common knowledge among American intelligence agencies, and any others that have been paying attention, that Iran’s foreign policy is deterrence. But this doesn’t stop the MSM from portraying Tehran as a hornet’s nest of frothing Islamists.
Kevin Young has done a telling survey of articles on nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. Some 40 editorials written by the Times and the Post were vetted. Precisely zero editorials acknowledged international legal implications of U.S. public threats and various subversions led by Israel, such as assassinating scientists and conducting cyber-attacks, both innovations on standard violations of sovereignty. However, 34 of the pieces “said or implied” that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon. Forget that 16 American intelligence agencies stated that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program. These papers of record prefer to trade in innuendo and hearsay, despite assessments to the contrary. More than 80% of the articles supported the crippling U.S. sanctions that are justified by the supposed merit of the bomb-building claim.
Prior to Young’s work, Edward Hermann and David Peterson looked at 276 articles on Iran’s nuclear program between 2003 and 2009. The number itself is staggering, more so when stacked against the number of articles written over the same period about Israel’s nuclear program: a mighty three.
This is interesting considering the posture of both countries in relation to international treaties. Israel freely stockpiles nuclear weapons and maintains a “policy of deliberate ambiguity” about its nuclear weapons capacities, despite frequent efforts by Arab states to persuade it to declare its arsenal (which is estimated by some to be in the hundreds). Also, it has yet to sign the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that has been signed by 190 nations worldwide. This intransigent stance has marooned the broadly embraced idea of working to establish a nuclear weapons free zone in the region.
Contrast Israel’s behavior with that of Iran itself, which has permitted extensive inspections of its nuclear facilities. The Times recently noted the country’s main nuclear facilities were “crawling with inspectors.” Iran is also a party to the NPT and is a full member of the IAEA. It continues to try to work toward a reasonable solution with the West despite debilitating sanctions levied on it by the United States. America has unduly pressured the IAEA to adopt additional protocols that would require prohibitively stringent demands on Iran, rendering the possibility of a negotiated solution comfortably remote from an American standpoint. (These additional demands reportedly include drone surveillance, tracking the origin and destination of every centrifuge produced anywhere in the country, and searches of the presidential palace. All of this passes without comment from our deeply objective journalist class.)
Coverage of Iraq is no different, particularly in advance of periodic illegal war of aggression against it. Former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Palestine Richard Falk and author Howard Friel conducted a survey in 2004 assessing the New York Times’ pre-war coverage of Iraq in 2003. In more than 70 articles on Iraq, the Times never mentioned “UN Charter” or “international law.” The study also found “No space was accorded to the broad array of international law and world-order arguments opposing the war.” But such arguments only exist outside of Western corridors of power in Washington, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv.
This isn’t debate. Real debate is pre-empted by internal bi-partisan consensus on some basic issues: maintain a giant garrison state, shrink the state everywhere else, preference corporations over populations, restrict civil liberties to secure status quo power structures. So when it comes to Iran, Iraq, Syria and the like, the question isn’t whether to go to war, but what kind of war to fight. Hawks want bombs. Doves want sanctions. Publicans want Marines. Dems want a proxy army of jihadis. They both want Academi mercenaries. (Obama hired out the gang formerly known as Blackwater to the CIA for a cool $250 million.) And when we’ve finished off ISIS, the question won’t be about an exit strategy, but whether to head west to Damascus or east to Tehran.
The question isn’t whether to cut aid to Israel given its serial criminality in Gaza and the West Bank, but how fast settlements can annex the Jordan Valley without attracting more international opprobrium. (International law, again, set aside.)
On the domestic front, the question isn’t whether to have single payer or private healthcare, but whether citizens should be forced to purchase private schemes or simply admonished to do so. The question isn’t whether or not to keep or strengthen New Deal entitlements, but how swiftly they can be eviscerated. The question isn’t whether or not to surveil the body politic, but where to store the data, and whether or not to harvest two-hop or three-hop metadata. The question isn’t whether or not to hold authors of torture programs accountable, but how much of the damning torture report to redact so as to leave them unprosecutable. The question isn’t whether or not to regulate Wall Street but, as slimy oil industry lawyer Bennett Holiday put it in Syriana, to create “the illusion of due diligence.”
All this is not to say the MSM isn’t aware of alternative viewpoints. It is, but it only acknowledges them when they can be used to justify a foregone conclusion. In the past year, the MSM has nearly become infatuated with international law. Friel has tracked the paper of record’s response to the Ukrainian fiasco. What did he find? When Russia annexed Crimea, the Times inveighed against the bloodless “invasion” as a gross violation of international law. Eight different editorials over the next few months hyperventilated about global security, castigating Russian President Vladimir Putin for his “illegal” violation and his “contempt for,” “flouting,” “blatant transgression,” and “breach” of international law. Calls were sounded to “protect” against such cynical disregard of global consensus. Western allies needed to busy themselves “reasserting international law” and exacting heavy penalties on Russia for “riding roughshod” over such sacred precepts as “Ukrainian sovereignty.”
Quite so, as Washington supports the toppling of democratically elected governments in Kiev and Tegucigalpa, sends drones to ride “roughshod” over Yemeni, Pakistani, Somali and other poorly defended borders; and deploys thousands of troops, advisors, and American-armed jihadis to patrol the sectarian abattoirs of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But better to exonerate ourselves on those counts and chalk it up to the fog of war. After all, we follow the law of exceptionalism, clearly defined by Richard Falk as, “Accountability for the weak and vulnerable, discretion for the strong and mighty.”
Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
Texas Cop Places Woman in Chokehold for Video Recording
UPDATE: Texas Cop Loses Job for Chokehold on Woman, 2nd Cop Disciplined for Ordering Footage Deleted
By Carlos Miller | PINAC | November 30, 2014
A Texas cop placed a woman in a chokehold because she was video recording some type of police activity in the parking lot of what appears to be a fast food restaurant after she refused to provide identification.
It started when Corpus Christi Sergeant J.E. Lockhart stormed up to Lanessa Espinosa, who was standing a good distance away from the investigation, accusing her of interfering – after a nearby cop from another agency accused her of being a “jailhouse lawyer.”
“There is a probable cause for us to be out here,” Lockhart said. “I want to know who you are, so I’m requesting your ID. You fail to ID, I’m going to take you into jail. And that’s law.”
“What’s my charge?
“You’re not being charged with anything.”
“Then I don’t have to show you my ID, sir.”
“You’re involved in an investigation. You want to interfere with an investigation, you’re going to jail for interfering with a police officer in performance of his investigation. Do you understand that? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”
Espinosa understood that Lockhart was out of line, so she said she was in fear for her safety and took a step back, which was when another cop placed her in a chokehold.
Espinosa turned the camera on herself as she was getting chokehold by the cop from the other agency, whose agency has not been determined because Corpus Christi runs into four counties and I haven’t been able to make the patch out.
That cop then turned her over to Lockhard, who handcuffed her.
Espinosa has not responded for comment from PINAC over the incident, but public records show she was not arrested.
UPDATE:
The video of a Texas woman getting placed in a chokehold and handcuffed for refusing to provide her identification ended up going viral where it was covered by a local television news station at the top of the news hour Monday night.
However, KIII-TV reporter Bill Churchwell finished the segment by providing misinformation about the law when it comes identifying yourself to police, informing viewers that citizens are required to identify themselves whether or not they have been lawfully arrested.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Texas Failure to Identify law makes it a crime for people to refuse to identify themselves if they have been lawfully arrested or if the person provides false information if they have been lawfully detained.
However, when news anchor Joe Gazin asked Churchwell about this law, the reporter stated the following:
“Well that is required whether you are a witness or involved in an incident, you are required to tell officers who you are,” Churchwell said.
Churchwell is most likely getting his information from police without bothering to look at the actual statute, which is a big mistake because we all know police are clueless about the laws they are supposed to enforce.
But that is the norm for mainstream media reporters who don’t want to risk questioning their local police department and therefore lose access to the daily information that enables them to report the news without putting in much effort.
However, it didn’t take long for a viewer to set the record straight on KIII-TV’s Facebook page about the law.
Blogger ExCop-LawStudent, a former Texas cop turned law student, also elaborated about the law on his blog.
In the video, a police officer with an unknown police department† claims that Lanessa Espinosa is a “jailhouse lawyer” because she actually knows what the law says. She pointed out that she did not have to identify herself unless she was “being charged.” At that point Corpus Christi Senior Officer‡ J.E. Lockhart comes up and demands ID and tells her that he will arrest her if she doesn’t provide ID.
The problem is that § 38.02, Texas Penal Code, does not authorize an arrest for failure to ID on a mere detention unless the person provides a fictitious name. We’ve covered that several times, here, here, here, here (also in Corpus), here, here, here, and here.
There are several things wrong with the video. First, the officer from the unknown department is choking Espinosa with an arm-bar choke hold. If you look at the video at 1:12, you’ll see the officer’s forearm cutting directly over Espinosa’s adam’s apple in the same manner that killed Eric Garner in New York. The arm-bar choke hold is almost universally viewed as deadly force, and completely inappropriate here when the crime is at best, a misdemeanor under the officer’s mistaken idea of the law.
Second, it is a false arrest. Even more so, it is an arrest because she is exercising her right not to provide identification when he knows (or should have known) that the arrest is unlawful, and that he intentionally denied her of her freedom when he knew (or should have known) that his conduct was unlawful. Folks, that the definition of Official Oppression, § 39.03, Texas Penal Code, and is a Class A misdemeanor.††
Some states have what are called “stop and identify” laws, which requires citizens to identify themselves if they have been detained, but Texas is not one of those states, which is why it only requires a citizen to identify themselves if they’ve been arrested.
There is no state where citizens are legally required to provide identification merely because a cop demands it unless the cop has detained you because he had a reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime.
That doesn’t mean cops won’t demand your identification because they do it all the time, many times under intimidating threats of arrest, which is why we must remain recording in these situations.
And if a cop tells you he has the right to ask you for your identification, tell him you have the right not to provide that identification. … Full article
Here are 10 things about 9/11 that deserve more attention – and 5 that deserve less
People need to know just how absurd the official story of the Shanksville “crash” is
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | October 2, 2014
Let’s face it: the 9/11 Truth Movement is all over the place. But that’s not surprising – nor necessarily bad.
When you have an official story that is so clearly false in so many ways, there are going to be a multitude of valid angles from which to examine and expose the deception. There are also going to be many directions the movement can take to advance the cause and to awaken the uninitiated.
But all these ways are not created equal. When you have many thoughtful and intelligent truthers, some not-so-intelligent and not-so-thoughtful truthers, and an undetermined number of outright disinformation agents, you’re bound to get a “diversity of opinion” that would make Cass Sunstein very happy indeed.
So how do we decide what is important and was is not? How do we know where our efforts are best directed? It’s clear that we must keep our focus on things that will advance the cause, which is to expose the lies of 9/11 and other false flag operations. To this end, there are clearly some areas of 9/11 research that deserve all the attention they get and more. Meanwhile, there are areas that are getting attention to the detriment of the cause. Below, I list the areas I feel deserve more attention and those that deserve less, or none, especially when it comes to awakening newcomers. I know that readers will have their own items that they feel should be included. Some will also want to contest the items on my two lists.
We need to be fighting this battle on a multitude of fronts because the movement as a whole has to expose all elements of the 9/11 lie. When you look at the entirety of the bogus official story, the case for inside job becomes overwhelming. For the movement as a whole, picking just one area to concentrate on is not the best approach. What convinced me was an accumulation of all the evidence. The twin towers, Building 7, the Pentagon, Shanksville, the military stand down, the absence of proof that any alleged hijackers boarded any planes, the bogus Bin Laden “confession” video. And so much more.
Of course, individuals and organizations can be extremely effective by specializing – Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth continues to be very valuable by focusing on the controlled demolition of the twin towers and Building 7. It is also doing a great job reaching out to the public and the media with the Rethink 9/11 campaign and other efforts in an effort to advance the cause.
And, no, it’s not as simple as saying let’s avoid obvious disinformation. Yes, overcoming disinformation is one of the greatest challenges we face, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease – or perceived disease. We’ll never be able to eradicate all the ideas we don’t like, especially if those ideas are being promulgated by fake truthers, because they’ll never get tired and go away. If we turn our attention away from our best evidence and instead spend all our time trying to crush bad ideas and attack those who may or may not sincerely believe them, we risk bringing more attention to those ideas than they really deserve. And the idea that if we don’t obliterate everything we think is disinfo then “we’ll look stupid to the world” is overstated, in my opinion.
We can’t destroy disinformation completely but we can expose the mechanisms that make it function and in doing so, marginalize it. And we can stay on message with the strongest and most undeniable evidence.
And there’s so much to choose from.
MORE ATTENTION SHOULD GO TO…
1. Shanksville and the self-burying plane: Without a doubt, the single major area of 9/11 study that has received the least attention is the impossible tale of Flight 93, which is supposed to have crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The plane, so the absurd story goes, is supposed to have crashed into the field and buried itself in the “soft” soil with the hole covering itself in. That’s right, the government claims (without a shred of proof offered to the world) that the plane ended up completely underground. They had to dig the whole thing up (except for the drivers license of one of the alleged hijackers, which was suitably singed and found above ground). It’s really more accurate to say that most people – at least 99 out of 100 – have no idea that this is what the official story says. How many have a clue, for example, that the scar in the field that was supposedly made by the wings penetrating the ground could be seen in aerial photographs taken by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1994? The only thing added on 9/11 was the nice round crater in the middle that represented the supposed impact of the hollow, aluminum fuselage. And people actually believe this…
2. Evidence that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon: The claim that annoys me more than any other is that we should ignore the Pentagon evidence because it is “too controversial” and “too divisive.” This is nonsense and plays right into the hands of the perpetrators. The only reason it appears controversial is because some misguided members of the Truth Movement, along with some real live disinfo agents, are trying to convince us that the part of the official story that says a plane crashed into the Pentagon – and plowed through three of its five rings – is actually true.
I get why disinfo agents would want us to ignore the overwhelming evidence that a plane crash was faked there, because a faked crash would positively implicate the Pentagon itself, but I have never understood why any sincere truther would do so. The justification given – that if it proves untrue later it will embarrass the movement – is paper thin. Some even use the demonstrably faked video images as proof that a real plane zipped along the lawn, parallel to the ground. They point to pictures of scraps of metal as proof of the crash (Look! There’s a piece painted with American Airlines colors!). They’ll even resort to claiming that the DNA evidence proved that a real plane crashed.
When did these people forget that this was an event designed to look like one thing (terrorist hijackings and crashing of commercial planes into specific targets) when it was actually another? The World Trade Center “attack” was supposed to create the impression that plane impacts caused so much damage that the buildings collapsed. But we know that the buildings were destroyed by explosives, not jet fuel and not plane impacts.
So why do we want to toss out the overwhelming evidence that the Pentagon event was not what it appeared to be? When you combine: the wreckage (or lack of it), the damage to the building (or lack of it), the absence of trenches dug in the lawn and building foundation by the engines; the two video views that are incompatible with each other; the withheld video from 85 other Pentagon cameras, the aviation evidence, the highly credible witnesses interviewed by CIT, the Flight Data Recorder (which, whether the data is fake or not still discounts the official story), and quite a lot more, you get a very clear picture that no airliner crashed into the Pentagon.
3. The absence of evidence that any “hijackers” ever boarded any planes: This is a hugely important area that needs a great deal more attention (It will be the subject of a future post). The fact is that there is not a shred of hard, verifiable evidence that any one of the 19 alleged hijackers ever boarded any of the four alleged 9/11 flights. Not one.
There is no video footage that proves any of them boarded. All we have is video showing Mohamed Atta and Abdul al-Omari in the Portland airport earlier that morning, and we have the five alleged hijackers of Flight 77 in Washington’s Dulles International Airport (with no time stamp or camera identification number that would authenticate the footage).
There are no witnesses that can positively place any of them on any of the planes. There are no authenticated flight manifests that place any of them on any planes. Nor are there any authenticated boarding passes. We can add to that the fact that several alleged hijackers turned up alive after 9/11 and that the 19 alleged hijackers’ identities have changed numerous times without an explanation being given for how the replacement names were arrived at.
4. Positive initiatives to advance the cause: it’s easy to dismiss some of the public awareness and legal efforts to punch holes in the official 9/11 lie, but I think we do so to our own detriment. Yes, we might think that one initiative or another may not succeed, but I believe we need to continue to hack away at the official story until we find a vulnerable point that will begin unravelling the public’s trust in that story. Certainly the worst thing we can do is nothing. To be sure, we have all been frustrated by the court failures of Ellen Mariani, April Gallop, and others. But there have also been hopeful signs, including video of the destruction of Building 7 is showing on a huge digital screen in New York City’s Times Square as we speak. We also have the rest of the Rethink 9/11 campaign; the High-Rise Safety Initiative; the recent documentaries September 11: The New Pearl Harbor by Massimo Mazzucco and The Anatomy of a Great Deception by David Hooper; Richard Gage’s appearance on C-Span and on Jesse Ventura’s Off the Grid, the opportunity afforded by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to focus opposition and reach the public, and many other developments. In fact, we should be thinking of new and creative ways every day to shine a light on 9/11.
The 9/11 Truth Movement appears to be revitalized and making progress. We even saw a mainstream newspaper, the Fresno Bee, publish an opinion piece calling for a new investigation into 9/11. We could be discouraged by the fact that 13 years have passed, but I think people are starting to notice that we’re still here and we’re not going anywhere.
5. The workings of disinformation: There is no question that the 9/11 Truth Movement has been under assault from agents, infiltrators, and shills since very early in its existence. It is also clear that this assault has had a damaging effect on the movement. As a result, it has become essential that we discuss and come to understand how disinformation works, how it is being used against us, and how best to react to it (and when not to react at all).
Disinformation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is:
“The dissemination of deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it; false information so supplied.”
DELIBERATELY false information.
So when someone who purports to be a 9/11 truther shares information that he or she knows to be false, this is disinformation. This does NOT mean that all incorrect information and poorly supported arguments are disinformation.
6. The connection between the Anthrax attacks and 9/11: This one is excellent timing considering the recent publication of Graeme MacQueen’s new book The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. MacQueen shows how the original official story of the anthrax attacks – that it was the same Muslim extremists who supposedly perpetrated 9/11 – had to be tossed when it became clear that al-Qaeda did not have the means to produce or acquire highly sophisticated and weaponized anthrax. MacQueen shows us the role the media played in raising the fear level of a biological attack (and specifically an anthrax attack) even before the first case was reported. He also explains how the targeting of Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy helped facilitate passage of the Patriot Act. MacQueen has done his part to reveal the depth of this deception, now it’s up to the rest of us to make sure everybody hears about it and understands its implications.
7. The links between 9/11 and the advancing police state: The intelligence apparatus of the United States (and those of other Western countries, including my native Canada), has grown massively since 9/11, and this is no accident. The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act and many other legal (and illegal) initiatives are steadily hacking away at the U.S. Constitution. And it’s all done under the guise of protecting the population against terrorists. The problem is that most of these supposed terrorists and their groups end up having ties to Western intelligence (and this was going on before 9/11: Try Googling operations Gladio and Northwoods). The war on terror is a deception that is designed to scare us into surrendering our freedom, our privacy, our safety, and our right to determine our own future.
We’ve seen recently how local police forces have been equipped with military equipment that they could not – under any reasonable conditions – ever need. But they are using it against the population. People are no longer to be served and protected, they are the enemy to be controlled.
It seems very clear that the infrastructure is being put in place for complete martial law. This includes FEMA camps and Fusion Centers and immigration checkpoints and Constitution free zones. Add to that, the erosion of the sovereignty of nations being orchestrated by a global elite through the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and other organizations, and you have a very disturbing picture of where our future is headed.
8. The links between 9/11 and past deceptions and false flags: 9/11 is not unique, except maybe in its scope and its audacity. Operations like the Kennedy and King assassinations, the London 7/7 bombings, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Operation Northwoods, Operation Gladio, MK-Ultra, Pearl Harbor, and a host of other events and programs fit into a historical context that includes 9/11 and recent events like the Boston Marathon bombing (which was a dress rehearsal for martial law). The more we educate the public about the history of false flag operations and other deceptions that trick us into supporting things we otherwise would not, the better chance we have of waking some people up and reaching a critical mass.
And a major part of this, of course, is looking at who was and is responsible for all of these events. Who benefited? Who had foreknowledge? Who picked the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 to be out of their office because his wife made an appointment for him with his dermatologist?
9. Why the “let it happen on purpose” position is untenable: Some people cling to the notion that incompetence was the reason for the “success” of the 9/11 operation. This is the position that the U.S. government itself would like us to take. But it holds no water at all.
Others are willing to believe that the government found out about a coming terrorist attack and decided to allow it to happen. This is known as the “let it happen on purpose” or LIHOP position. But the position that the evidence points to is that 9/11 was an inside job involving the U.S. government (and likely other governments). This is known as the “made it happen on purpose” or MIHOP position.
On a moral level, LIHOP and MIHOP amount to the same thing: mass murder for political gain. But the critical difference – and the reason we must expose the full spectrum of the lie – is that the LIHOP position allows the myth of the Muslim terrorist threat to stand. It accepts that real terrorists wanted to attack the United States (presumably for its “freedoms”) and that they remain a real threat. The truth, of course, is that the terrorist threat is manufactured and groups like al-Qaeda are really instruments of Western intelligence.
10. Eliminating language that supports the official story: We must carefully consider the words we use to describe what happened on 9/11 so that we don’t inadvertently reinforce the official story. This means we should never refer to “what hit the Pentagon” or “the terrorist attacks of 9/11” or “the plane that crashed in Shanksville” or “the 9/11 hijackers.” I know it means using “allegedly” and “supposedly” a lot, but it has to be done. As Barrie Zwicker says, each of these phrases carries the DNA of the 9/11official story.
AND LESS ATTENTION SHOULD GO TO…
1. Judy Wood and Directed Energy Weapons: I just don’t get it. With so much strong evidence available to the Truth Movement, I see no value in arguing about Judy Woods and her non-theory about directed energy weapons and dustified steel. Yes, she has raised some questions. And yes, she authored the glossiest textbook that has been produced about 9/11, but fighting about her won’t bring new and constructive attention to the movement or the effort to tell people that this event was an inside job. To Woods’ opponents, stop obsessing about her.
2. Nukes at the World Trade Center: Even mentioning this (or no planes) is going to get me into trouble with somebody. The nuclear position has been getting a lot of attention lately with the efforts of Jim Fetzer, Don Fox, Gordon Duff, and others to raise the profile of the issue and to take on established figures in the movement like Richard Gage of AE911Truth, Steven Jones, and Niels Harrit over their position that thermite (or nano-thermite) played an important, although not exclusive, role in destroying the three WTC towers. (It is important to note that AE does not claim that thermite destroyed the towers on its own; their position is that it was combined with explosives of some kind.) The proponents of the nuke position say they have already proven their case. Their opponents say there’s no evidence at all to support their claim.
I can’t see how this fight at this time can help us to advance our cause, particularly since AE911Truth has been making some real progress with its public outreach initiatives. Why would we want to work against those efforts when they seem to be bearing some fruit? There is just so much evidence that these buildings were blown up that I think our focus should be on bringing this truth the widest audience possible.
3. Excessive preoccupation with disinformation: This case has been made in the article already. And I mean “excessive” preoccupation. I’m not saying we ignore all disinformation, but I am saying that we have to try and reduce its power to dominate the agenda.
4. Excessive cynicism about the future of 9/11 Truth: it’s an uphill battle and it won’t be won in a year or two. And yes, the deck is stacked against us. But we have to see the positives in small victories and keep pushing forward. Telling each other that it’s hopeless and that we’re tired of making this argument or that argument is not going to help us achieve our goals. If you’re tired and fed up with fighting, take a break. Recharge the batteries. Don’t discourage others from the efforts they are making.
5. The incompetence defense: We have seen a lot of supposed 9/11 truthers like Abby Martin of Russia Today talk about the Aug. 6 memo “warning” the Bush administration about Bin Laden’s intention to attack the U.S. and all the other supposed warnings that an attack was coming. But all of this supports the lie that 9/11 was a real terrorist event that could have been prevented by a stronger and more alert defense. The incompetence theory is the worst thing that anyone who calls themself a truther should ever push. It reinforces the terrorist threat and justifies the continued war on terror.
New Black Panther Party Members Framed In Alleged Plot To Bomb St. Louis Arch, Kill Police
| If You Only News | November 28, 2014
As a figure of speech, it’s really unbelievable – racist white America is pulling out all the stops and all its old tricks to demonize dissent and the black community standing up for itself.
If only it truly was unbelievable that the collusion between government, the “just-us system” and the media is attempting to tip public opinion in its favor in the wake of its own corruption by villainizing the very people and community it wronged in the first place. If only. . .
Two members of the St. Louis chapter of the New Black Panther Party are being accused of plotting to blow up the Gateway Arch, kill prosecutor Robert McCulloch and Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, as well as vaguely stated, “harm police officers,” but I call bullsh*t.
And who alleges all these charges? “Sources.”
Chief Jackson said he “was warned about a plot,” but things were left very vague. He was “not given a lot of detail.”
Yep, that’s it. That’s all you get, folks. “Sources” say these two men were involved in a plot that will help the crooked police, the “just-us system” and the complicit media obliquely suggest that the black community is made up of nothing but “thuggish” violent brutes, so the murder of Michael Brown, the media blackouts when things get heavy, the lack of an indictment on Darren Wilson, the National Guard and police firing on protestors (and even their partners in crime, the media) – all of it is just and necessary. Right?
Brandon Baldwin and Olajuwon Davis were arrested Nov. 20 and have been indicted (unlike someone else we all know) on these trumped up charges after an alleged investigation tailing them “for months,” yet all the public is told in their quest to blow up the Gateway Arch and kill, kill, kill, is that they bought a couple guns allegedly with false information at a Cabela’s in Hazelwood, Missouri, and that they’d allegedly been “aggressively pursuing explosives.”
No mention of what the explosives allegedly were is provided by a majority of media covering the story, and when they are mentioned at all, it’s left vague, though one outlet did state the explosives were allegedly in the nature of pipe bombs. The charges attempt to sound legitimate through the repetition of them in the media, as well as the repetition of the explosives allegations being stated in “court documents,” but anyone who’s ever been through the court system knows that anything can be alleged by anyone and wind up in court documents; that hardly makes them fact by any stretch of the imagination. They are still, even there, merely allegations by “sources.”
And who are these likely sources? They are the very same police and system under the microscope for racism and corruption, under enormous public pressure by international protests in response to the murder of Michael Brown in broad daylight
Does it seem like a convenient conflict of interest?
“Sources” say Baldwin and Davis had explosives and plans, but all that’s been proven they really had were a couple small handguns, and considering the violence out there, who could blame them for wanting to secure a pistol for self-defense should it come down to it? Have we already forgotten that guns have been flying off the shelves in Ferguson and the greater St. Louis area in anticipation of the verdict?
Have we forgotten, already, the white woman who shot and killed herself by accident in her own car, yelling out, “We’re ready for Ferguson!”
Have we forgotten the threats made by the f*cking Klu Klux Klan that no law enforcement or government official has urged to stay home in order to de-escalate the situation, or at the very least, provide them one of those lovely “free speech zones” several miles away from the heart of the action, as the government is so prone to do for dissenters?
Buying a couple guns is nothing to paint such enormous charges against these two men for by any means.
Hmmm… why would local law enforcement paint such a smear campaign? Any guesses?
“Sources” also say these men were committing a straw purchase and allegedly buying the guns for someone else. So far, nothing has been shown to the public to corroborate that story – just more vague references to “court documents” — but let’s say for the sake of argument that’s true. There are numerous reasons why that might occur. It’s also something that is quite common. And, it’s a hell of a long shot from the bigger charges of intent to murder and blow up the Gateway Arch. Do you really think some pipe bombs could take down the Arch? How many people in the area have likely said out of anger and frustration, too, that they’d like to kill those two *ssholes? Venting is hardly equated to actual intent to murder.
Now let’s reflect for a moment, here, on the image versus the true history of the Black Panther Party.
The Panthers were formed out of necessity for self-defense and community insecurity
The organization was inspired by Robert F. Williams’ actions in North Carolina back in the late ‘50s, who formed the Black Armed Guard for the same reason: self-defense.
And just to state the obvious here, self-defense is not offensive violence that goes out and seeks confrontation, vengeance, retribution, etc. No, it minds its own business, but is simply prepared to protect itself when trouble and harm comes its way. Self-defense is preparation for self-preservation. That is all. It is actually peaceful in nature, as was Robert Williams and the Black Panther Party. It just assumes a posture of not hesitating to defend one’s self by any means necessary should one need to do so. You can watch a fabulous documentary on Robert Williams called “Negroes With Guns” below:
The Black Panthers did the same, in the spirit of the Black Armed Guard, and contrary to the public image of them fostered by white media as gun-toting killers with nary an emotion, the Panthers were actually peaceful; they just didn’t take any sh*t, and good for them.
The Panthers actually started several community service programs that were vital to the success and betterment of their community, such as free breakfasts for the community. That is what they really did. The guns were only there to protect themselves should they need it, because, just like today, young black men were continually being harassed and killed, especially by law enforcement.
While the media painted them as cold-blooded killers, the reality is that law enforcement and the government waged war on the Panthers and killed numerous members in cold blood, like Fred Hampton in Chicago – shot dead over and again as he lay asleep in his bed. Time has proven Hampton was murdered while he slept, by police, though at the time authorities tried to claim Hampton had shot first.
That is the true history of the Panthers, peaceful self-defense and community programs for the betterment of all while under the murderous sights of the police, constantly. Time has shown that it is the government and law enforcement that lies and kills, over and over again
Learn your history and you’d know all this; then maybe today’s current events would be clearer to you. People only sensationalized the Panthers as killers because they saw black people with guns and their white fear ran wild, but that would have never been white folks’ response had white culture not oppressed people of color for the last millennia. Karma comes around, baby. What was that old line about chickens Malcolm used to say?
And it is under that same peaceful moral code the New Black Panther Party formed. Think of where we’ve seen them recently. The only thing that likely comes to mind is their standing guard outside polling stations to ensure black folks feel secure enough to vote in this new age of Jim Crow voting laws and gerrymandering. Who can blame them? But even in those instances they have been painted as a violent menace attempting to intimidate white voters. America, you are too confused and full of sh*t for words, really.
It is reported that the New Black Panthers have responded with a statement on their Facebook page, but visiting their page, no such statement can be found. Nonetheless, the media reports their response as the following:
The allegations that the two men were in, ‘preparations to destroy the arch by blowing it up as a sign of white racial oppression as well as killing as many cops as they could during the impending unrest in Ferguson after the grand jury decision is announced’ we believe is TOTALLY UNFOUNDED, and is against the rules and regulations of the New Black Panther Party.
Just as the original Panthers believed, the New Black Panther Party does not endorse acts of violence, only self-defense.
Just take a moment to think critically about the media coverage and you can tell this is bullsh*t to muddy the waters and public mind. It’s an attempt to legitimize the heinous actions of authorities in Ferguson and defame Michael Brown and the black community
It’s the same old song and Yankee-Doodle dance, folks.
Media repeats over and again the charges against Baldwin and Davis, leaving those precious little nuggets of misinformation in your head to sway you against the New Black Panther Party and the black community, all while presenting literally no evidence despite authorities “trailing them for months.” Not one piece of evidence could be given to media to substantiate these charges? Really? That’s red flag number one.
Red flag number two is the discrepancy in the reporting that states Baldwin and Davis had been “vigorously seeking” explosive devices while other sources say they “had” explosive devices. Which is it? These claims of “explosive devices” are yet again the same old hat; fallback charges that are used against dissenters all the time. They try to paint this scene like the Weather Underground is coming back to blow us all to smithereens. They did this multiple times during the Occupy movement, and they did it in 2012 during the NATO protests. It’s hogwash to instill fear in the public and sway public opinion toward the side of authority. Wake up, folks! Such charges have been used against dissenters for simply being home-brewers of amateur beer.
Red flag number three is the exoticizing of Baldwin and Davis by the media in telling the public that Brandon Baldwin is also known as Brandon Muhammed, and Olajuwon Davis is also known as Olajuwon Ali, a.k.a., brothers Muhammed and Ali. This is an attempt to stir echoes of terrorism by making these two men sound like Muslim extremists. But again, it is the white American system that acts as extremists more so than the people trying to defend themselves against extremism. Demonizing the dissenter is an old tactic by the government, and well-documented if you know your history.
You should also be suspicious of the media’s coddling of the black folks they interview. They trot out a few black folks and call a little girl “darling” to endear themselves as if to suggest earnestness because they know they can’t show a bunch of white folks on camera saying they’re afraid of black folks. Racism has to be more subtle these days, after all.
Can you see how these things are orchestrated?
But let’s just say for a moment that these two fellas are just as guilty as they are being charged. That still does not mean that two defective members cannot be a part of any organization. Even if these guys are guilty of these bullsh*t charges (and I highly doubt they are), that is no reflection on the New Black Panther Party whatsoever. You cannot change history.
The Black Panthers, and the New Black Panthers, are peaceful organizations intent on helping their brothers and sisters of color through social programs and self-defense, should such an unfortunate situation arise that self-defense through physical action becomes necessary.
All of this is yet one more example of the government and authorities as a whole in this country attempting to stifle dissent against their own crooked, oppressive natures. Just watch the progression of news coverage shown in the links above through to the video below to see the picture clearly. It is one more reason why citizens of this country need to educate themselves enough to see all this clearly, and get angry enough to organize against it.
Baldwin and Davis are due in court for the charges Dec. 17.
9/11 researcher exposes failure of 2001 false flag ‘Anthrax attacks’
Review by Barrie Zwicker | Truth and Shadows | November 27, 2014
The “anthrax attacks” that followed on the heels of the “9/11 attacks” have receded into memory for most people, even including those of us who were extremely skeptical about alleged al-Qaeda biowarfare at the time.
Prof. Graeme MacQueen, in his latest book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, [1] sheds light on why most of us have all but forgotten the sensational “anthrax attacks.” They’ve been dropped down the memory hole as a touchstone to justify the “war on terror” because the “anthrax attacks” fraud fell apart.
In his tight (just 214 pages) but definitive account, MacQueen proves beyond doubt that the “anthrax attacks” were a false flag operation. Those who need to be persuaded need look no further than this overdue book.
The “anthrax attacks” were intended as a powerful evil twin of the 9/11 terror fraud. Taken together these ops were to be a one-two punch that would launch the “war on terror,” while simultaneously justifying the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan because allegedly Osama bin Laden directed 9/11 from a cave there. The invasion of Iraq because allegedly Iraq provided al-Qaeda with the anthrax.
But the wheels fell off of the anthrax wagon. MacQueen tracks the twists and turns of the official narrative to show how that happened.
This book, so long overdue, is also most contemporary. The “war on terror” now has been ramped up to the deadly and costly status of a permanent global “war,” a Manichean struggle between “the West” on one side and “the Islamic State” (IS) on the other. The “Islamic State” is a creation of “Western intelligence” serving the corporate militarists of “the West.”
MacQueen could not get deeply into this, since he had to keep his focus on the “anthrax attacks.” But the evidence obliged him to deal with 9/11 because they were twinned at the time. And he has the historical perspective that enables him to write:
… the documentary evidence […] when studied critically, raises serious questions not only about the FBI’s account of the anthrax attacks but also about the U.S. government’s account of what happened on September 11, 2001. Taken together, these sets of evidence erode the rationale for the Global War on Terror.
MacQueen is the founding director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he taught for 30 years. He’s a leader among the few academics who dare joust with the 800-pound Gorilla of Deception known as 9/11 – and its spinoffs. [2]
The 2001 Anthrax Deception shows how academically-sound evidence, marshaled in plain language in a rational framework, can be a counterforce against any deception.
And what a whack of deceptions MacQueen has to deal with. Take the intentions of the perpetrators, Cheney & Co. MacQueen invented the term the “Double Perpetrator hypothesis” to describe the intendedly clever deception.
The Double Perpetrator hypothesis had advantages over the simple al-Qaeda hypothesis. Spreading anthrax through mailed letters was a primitive and ineffective means of dispersing anthrax if the goal was multiple casualties. This crudity was reinforced by the text of the letters, with their misspellings and unidiomatic English. In the Double Perpetrator hypothesis these primitive elements could be laid at the feet of al-Qaeda, while the source of the sophisticated B. anthracis spores in the envelopes to the senators had to be a state, Iraq, which was known to have once possessed a stockpile of anthrax. A peculiar paradox was thus resolved.
Adding to the credibility of MacQueen’s Double Perpetrator hypothesis is the fact that the twinning effort had already been launched by George Bush. “…on the day of 9/11 there were plenty of allusions to the possibility of a state sponsor of the attacks,” MacQueen writes. “The formal warning to state sponsors occurred at 8:30 p.m. on September 11 with Mr. Bush’s words: ‘We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.’”
Then, addressing a joint session of the 107th Congress on September 20, Bush said: “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
MacQueen notes that “what Bush said formally, many others said crudely. Neoconservative Charles Krauthammer explained on September 28 that the war against terrorism was not about chasing Osama bin Laden or other terrorists. The war was about getting rid of regimes.”
This theme was echoed by columnist George Will. He wrote that the choice to be given to state sponsors of terrorism was “reform or extinction.” Both Krauthammer and Will “spoke openly about Iraq as a target.”
But it was not just columnists’ opinions that were part of what MacQueen calls “a grand plan, not an opportunistic foray.” He writes:
Already in their surprisingly timely book, Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, published in early October of 2001, Judith Miller and co-authors William Broad and Stephen Engelberg explained that Iraq might use a “surrogate, a terrorist group” to deliver a bioweapon to its target.
My wish is that MacQueen would be stating outright that Miller was clearly a CIA asset planted within the New York Times. She was subsequently disgraced when her 37-year career at the paper was terminated on November 9, 2005. This was, as I wrote in my book Towers of Deception, “six months after the Times found itself obliged to examine some of her work…” and found that 10 of 12 “flawed stories” on explosive issues had been written or co-written by Miller, including those infamously reporting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). All of her journalism, I suggested in my book, bear the “hallmarks [of] extreme dependence on official sources, especially within the national security state apparatus, a dearth of supporting evidence for numerous assertions, and an ideological through-line in perfect sync with that of the White House, just as her … through-line on alleged WMDs in Iraq matched that of the White House.”
It will not surprise anyone reading The 2001 Anthrax Deception who is knowledgeably critical of the grotesque output of mainstream media (MSM) on issues of war, peace and “intelligence” that much of MacQueen’s book, perhaps a third of it, is devoted to MSM lies and propaganda. Without the almost blanket collusion of “news” outlets, the likes of Bush and Cheney would have been revealed as pathetic emperors with no clothing.
But the wheels fell off Cheney & Co.’s wagon when it became too widely known that the weaponized anthrax could only have come from one of the 15 sophisticated labs in the USA making this deadly stuff.
This is when the perps had to switch gears, change the narrative. “Suddenly,” MacQueen writes, “the White House began retreating not only from the Iraq hypothesis but also from the al-Qaeda hypothesis. Ari Fleischer, making an about-face, said on October 26 that, in the words of the Washington Post, ‘a skilled microbiologist and a small sophisticated lab would be capable of producing’ the Daschle anthrax.” (Thomas Daschle was an influential anthrax-targeted U.S. senator.)
This in turn cleared the way for the Plan B “lone wolf” theory, the eventual frame-up of Bruce Ivins, his almost-certainly-not “suicide” and the subsequent dispatch down the memory hole of the entire botched “anthrax attacks” illusion.
It turned out not to be much of a loss for the Machiavellian perps, however, because Cheney & Co. could go head and launch war on Afghanistan and Iraq as they intended all along without the aid of this substance-abusing false flag op. The monster 9/11 deception was alone enough to do the heavy lifting there.
The general brainwashing was easily accomplished through a surplus of media-megaphoned lies, propaganda and spin. These greased the skids for the illegal and bloody aggressions of the USA and its “allies,” including in the case of Afghanistan, Canada.
Perhaps my favourite chapter is eight, in which the author traces the origin and uses of the term “the unthinkable.” Numerous quotes from establishment figures and media pundits show that their use of the term serves radical right wing ideological fear-mongering purposes.
“Why does this matter?” MacQueen asks. “It matters because ‘the unthinkable’ is an expression that functioned to help launch a new conflict framework, the Global War on Terror.”
Part of chapter eight is devoted to a “simple word study” of the language of the infamous document entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, released in the year 2000 by the extreme pro-military right wing Project for the New American Century. MacQueen notes that although the term “security” occurs 94 times in the document, the term “Security Council” does not occur at all. Nor does the term “international law.” Keyword counts count, even when they’re zero.
MacQueen’s admirable critique of language leads me to a shortcoming, in my estimation, of The 2001 Anthrax Deception. This may be minor compared to the book’s strengths, but still is worth mentioning.
The author should in my view have drawn more attention throughout the text to the multitudinous and ongoing abuses of language by the perpetrators and the MSM, particularly their abuse of the word “attack” (as applied to 9/11 or the anthrax situation). Any conceivable attack – the word clearly denotes an assault from outside – is severely at odds with “a domestic conspiracy,” as the book’s title has it. The conspiracy of this book unmistakably is an inside phenomenon. A feigned attack should never be called “an attack.” Period.
In fairness, MacQueen addresses the language issue at the outset, but only briefly and in part, and in my view mistakenly. At the end of the Introduction, under the sub-head “A Note on the Hijackers,” he explains:
The alleged hijackers of four planes on September 11, 2001 play an important role in the anthrax story and will be mentioned frequently. To avoid repeated use of the word “alleged” or annoyingly frequent scare quotes (“the hijackers’” I will capitalize the term: Hijackers.
This to me is an odd way to downplay the reality that the alleged hijackers never boarded any of the planes, as Elias Davidsson painstakingly proves in his book Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11: Counterfeiting Evidence.
In other words, for a book such as The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy to be as effective a counterforce against deception as it can be, the language bombs of the perpetrators must be defused before they can explode. Each. And. Every. One. Even within the pages of a dissenting academic activist’s book such as MacQueen’s.
The tools of word bomb dismantling include, besides a robust disquisition on the power of language, a plethora of synonyms such as alleged, supposed, claimed, asserted, made out to be, so-called, professed, purported, ostensible, putative, unproven, charged, declared, stated, contended, argued, maintained – and this is not a complete list.
Deployment of the many synonyms available plus quote marks would not, to me, be “annoyingly frequent” but rather refreshingly combative. They necessarily and importantly must be repeated. This is standard operating procedure required when de-fusing word bombs.
Notwithstanding my rant about language use, I fervently hope for more books from Graeme MacQueen. The world needs his assiduous research skills, his courageous tackling of the really big deceptions, his astute analyses and his clear thinking and writing. (Obviously, I don’t mean to attack him.
[1] From Clarity Press, Inc., Ste. 469, 3277 Roswell Rd. NE, Atlanta GA USA 30305, www.claritypress.com. Available in paper and as an e-book 978-0-9860731-3-7
[2] Graeme MacQueen makes a substantial contribution in Adnan Zuberi’s superb 2013 documentary 9/11 in the Academic Community. McQueen is the first person to be seen in a preview of the doc. The preview runs 3:15 and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzVKDdCa6s
US Pays PR Firm to Create Anti-Cuban Multimedia Content
teleSUR | November 27, 2014
The U.S. government has signed a US$1.4-million-contract with a public relations company to produce “TV and radio programs designed specifically for audiences in Cuba,” according to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting’s press release that Tracey Eaton cited in her blog Along the Malecon.
The Los Angeles-based company, Canyon Communications, is a public relations firm that specializes in writing “corporate histories.” Founded by Jeff Kline, the company was offered the no-bid contract because of what government officials said was its “unique profile.”
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), funded by the U.S. government through the presidentially appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors, runs Radio and Television Marti and has its headquarters in Miami, Florida.
In 2006, The New York Times revealed that OCB paid 10 journalists to work for Radio and TV Marti. The Miami Herald fired three of the journalists from El Nuevo Herald after learning they were receiving money from the Bush Administration.
The OCB’s interventions in Cuba have found their echo in more recent attempts by the U.S to use modern media to destabilize Cuba’s socialist system.
A scandal broke out in April when the U.S. was found to be engaged in “battle” with Cuba on the social media front. This latest onslaught was carried out under the guise of ZunZuneo, a social media platform targeted to Cuban users.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ZunZuneo was intended to spark dissent against the Cuban government. In USAID’s own words, the project was designed to “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”
ZunZuneo, set up with the help of high-tech contracting firms from Nicaragua and Costa Rica, eventually reached over 40,000 Cubans. The contractors, together with USAID, set up an equally elaborate scheme of front companies using Cayman Islands bank accounts to hide the venture from the Cuban government. New executive recruits were also not told about ZunZuneo’s ties to the U.S. government.
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From the Archives
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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