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New questions in FBI Boston bombing witness killing

By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | May 14, 2014

Almost a year after an FBI agent shot and killed, under suspicious circumstances, a crucial witness in the Boston Marathon bombing case during a botched midnight interrogation in an Orlando apartment, serious questions are being raised about the FBI agent who fired seven shots into Chechen immigrant Ibragim Todashev last May 22.

Two investigations, one by the FBI itself and one by the Florida Attorney General’s office, exonerated the FBI in the shooting death, claiming the agent, never identified, had been acting in self-defense, when Todashev allegedly ran at him with a raised broom handle.

Now, in an excellent piece of investigative journalism, the Boston Globe has uncovered the identity of the agent, 41-year-old Aaron McFarlane, who joined the Bureau in 2008 after retiring on a $52,000 lifetime annual disability pension from a short stint as an officer in the Oakland Police Department.

Aside from the question of why someone who passed through the rigorous training program the FBI runs for its recruits at Quantico, VA would also qualify for a lucrative pension, it turns out that McFarlane also has a pretty checkered past at Oakland’s Police Department — a police department that has such an extraordinary record of corruption and brutality, that since 2012 it has been operated under the supervision of a federal court “compliance director,” whose job is to see that officers don’t brutalize residents or violate their civil rights.

McFarlane, the Boston Globe reported, did more than that as an Oakland cop. The paper reports that during his four years with the Oakland Police, he was the subject of two police brutality lawsuits and four internal affairs investigations. the paper found also that McFarlane, as a defense witness in a corruption trial, pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions from the prosecutor in that case, which involved officers.

The trial in question was the biggest corruption scandal in Oakland’s history. Filed in 2000, the case involved four police officers who called themselves the “Riders,” who were accused of beating and kidnapping people, making false arrests, planting evidence and falsifying police reports. The case ended up being short-circuited with no convictions under a settlement that had the city of Oakland paying damages of $10.9 million to some 119 victims of Oakland Police officer’s abuse and deceit, and with the whole department going into receivership.

According to the Globe’s report, the court transcript shows that when prosecutor David Hollister tried to ask McFarlane on the witness stand about a police report he had filed which appeared to have been falsified in order to “drum up a reason to arrest a man,” McFarlane pleaded the Fifth. Hollister told the Globe that the report in question “at first blush certainly appears to be criminal. I think on its face, Officer McFarlane should probably have some concerns about whether or not he violated Section 118.1 of the Penal Code in filing a false police report.”

Hollister also questioned McFarlane about another arrest he had made the same night of a man who suffered an unexplained head injury while being transported to jail. McFarlane said he “did not know” how the man in his charge was injured.

The city of Oakland also paid two settlements, for $22,500 and $10,000, in brutality cases brought against McFarlane and a fellow officer by two men who claimed they had been badly beaten by the two officers.

McFarlane’s record of apparent brutal behavior as a cop in Oakland is relevant to the Todashev case because it could explain why Todashev, who had agreed to talk with McFarlane in Todashev’s apartment, but later, according to Agent McFarlane, jumped up, ran to the front of the apartment, and then allegedly returned from the foyer brandishing a broomstick.

Unmentioned in the FBI’s story line of what happened, which was accepted at face value in the investigation conducted by the Orlando Florida State’s Attorney Jeffrey Ashton, was a bruise and a bloody contusion noted by the Orlando coroner on Todashev’s left cheek, right on the outside of the eye socket. The coroner said that injury was evidence of a “hard blow” to the head.

Was McFarlane, in that midnight interview, resorting to the behavior that got him in trouble in the Oakland Police Department?

As I wrote earlier, the pattern of bullets that McFarlane fired at Todashev — three to the upper middle of his back, one to the chest, two to the upper left arm and one into the top of the head, slightly to the rear of the crown, suggest not that he was shot in defense while charging at McFarlane and a Boston State Trooper also in the room, but that he was shot in the back multiple times while in the foyer attempting to flee the apartment — perhaps from a brutal beating.

As a police detective I showed the coroner’s report to pointed out, the bullets to the raised arm suggest that Todashev, hit three times in the back, may have realized he could not escape, and that he had turned, raising his left arm either defensively (he was a skilled martial arts expert and was right-handed), or along with his other arm in a sign of surrender. The last two shots had to have been the one to the chest, which blew out his aorta and would have been instantly fatal, and the shot to the head, which went straight through the center of the brain lodging in the cerebellum area — also a shot that would have been instantly fatal.

Neither Ashton nor the FBI are commenting on the Globe’s article. Ashton never did actually interview McFarlane or the other FBI agent who, inexplicably and in violation of FBI procedure, was not even in the apartment, but was outside during the entire interrogation, keeping a friend of Todashev’s from witnessing anything that was going on with his friend. Ashton instead had to rely on written answers about what happened provided by the FBI from the two men.

Hassan Shibly, a lawyer and executive director of the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) Florida office, said he has sent a letter today to the US Department of Justice, the FBI and the Florida State’s Attorney’s office, demanding to know “whether the extensive history of substantial allegations of police corruption, misconduct, abuse, and civil rights violations made against the FBI agent who shot and killed” Todashev were known to them, as well as “why the state and federal investigations failed to mention” that McFarlane “had a history of settlements and allegations against him regarding misconduct under color of law.”

Clearly if McFarlane resorted to the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying under oath about apparent falsification of evidence against a suspect he had arrested, and had been the subject of brutality suit settlements as a cop, it would raise grave questions about the integrity of his account of what happened late on May 21 in Todashev’s apartment, when he was being interrogated by McFarlane.

As Shibly writes in his letter (a copy of which was provided to TCBH!):

“How do we know that the officer and FBI agent did not engage in misconduct that ultimately led to the killing of IbragimTodashev?

“How credible and thorough are the DOJ and State Attorney’s investigations-which relied heavily on testimony given by individuals who may have engaged in police misconduct, civil rights abuses, and evidence falsification-particularly when the DOJ and State Attorney’s investigations make no mention of the questionable history of the officer and agent involved?

Shibly also asks the FBI to explain whether it simply did not know about McFarlane’s Fifth Amendment plea in a corruption case and about his violent history in the Oakland Police Department, in which case “how can the public trust that the FBI is doing a competent job when hiring agents on whom the liberty and security of our nation depends?” Alternatively, he asks, if the FBI did know McFarlane’s history and didn’t see a problem with hiring him, he asks, “How then can the public trust the liberty and security of our nation to an agency that allows individuals with questionable backgrounds into sensitive positions.”

It’s a good question. In a real democracy, there would be a Senate investigation into this case.

Certainly the death of Todashev, whom the FBI claims was the closest friend of the elder brother suspected of having masterminded the Boston bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a serious blow to the investigation of that case.

But there is a darker possibility: that Todashev was being pursued and pressured, and was ultimately killed by the FBI, because he had information about the elder Tsarnaev’s relationship with the FBI–information that at a minimum could have embarrassed the Bureau, or that might even have shown the FBI to have been involved in some kind of “sting” operation gone wrong in Boston. The FBI, after all, has had undercover agents or informants involved in some 40 purported “terror” plots that it has “disrupted” since September 11, 2001. Was the Boston bombing supposed to have been another?

Shibly notes that CAIR, which is conducting its own investigation of the Todashev shooting, had already been aware of McFarlane’s identity, and knew about his checkered history of brutality and possible corruption as an Oakland cop, but he says the organization “but did not publicly release any such information to avoid jeopardizing any possible government investigations.”

Elena Teyer, Todashev’s mother-in-law, believes that McFarlane, a relatively inexperienced FBI agent who was dispatched from the Boston office to follow and question Todashev in Florida, was selected for the job precisely because of his police record of brutality and corruption, which she says meant he was “on the hook in order to save his job” at the FBI.

She says further evidence that there was a plan to kill her son-in-law was that the Bureau arranged for the arrest by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), on a bogus charge of visa violation, of Todashev’s live-in girlfriend, visiting Russian college student Tatiana Gruzdeva a fews days prior to the killing, and that a second agent physically removed a witness from the area outside the apartment half an hour before the killing of Todashev. That witness, a Green Card-holding legal Chechen immigrant named Husain Taramov, was barred by the US from returning to the US after he returned to Russia for Todashev’s funeral. (With both Taramov and Gruzdeva, who was deported to Russia last fall,  removed permanently from the US, there were no witnesses for Ashton or the Justice Department to interview about the shooting except the agent who fired the shots and the Boston State Trooper who had been with him.)

Teyer, a Russian immigrant, US citizen, and retired veteran of the US Army, suggests the FBI wanted Todashev killed because he knew too much about Tsarnaev and his relationship with the “corrupted FBI.”

 

May 15, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

Is the Special Tribunal for Lebanon covering up the bribery of witnesses?

Al-Akhbar | May 15, 2014

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) does not miss an opportunity to undermine its credibility and damage its image. This behavior is not restricted to the public prosecutor’s office, but to the trial chamber itself, which is supposed to be keen on implementing justice and presenting a positive image of the tribunal to the public.

The latest development is a decision issued by the tribunal’s First Chamber, which is in charge of trying the defendants in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The decision stipulated concealing the amount of money that the public prosecutor’s office pays to witnesses under the rubric of “expenses.” On May 9, the tribunal issued a decision granting the prosecution’s office the right to conceal the amount from the defense teams.

The decision came after the defense team for Hussein Oneissi requested that the tribunal order the prosecution’s office to disclose information it has on whether two of the public prosecution’s witnesses or members of their families were paid money from the office itself, from the international investigation committee or from the Lebanese authorities. Oneissi’s defense team argued that the issue is relevant to its defense strategy since it casts doubt on the credibility of some of the witnesses the public prosecutor is going to present to the court. After deliberations, the court decided to keep the matter a secret and not force the public prosecutor to disclose the information.

According to the decision, the tribunal reviewed similar cases in other international courts whereby it became evident that courts cover the expenses and costs of witnesses living in the Netherlands. Besides, some international courts (and national ones, according to the STL’s First Chamber) have developed clear standards under which they pay the “expenses of the witnesses.” It added that some courts pay the witness a monthly stipend in lieu of their salary that they were receiving as compensation for moving to the Hague to testify. The amount is equivalent to the minimum wage that a United Nations employee earns in the country where the witness comes from. The tribunal pointed out that it reviewed the amounts that the prosecution’s office paid as expenses to the witnesses and found them “reasonable.” It added that the defense team did not present proof that the two witnesses received sums beyond what is deemed reasonable. Therefore there is no need to reveal how much was paid as expenses to them.

But neither the prosecution nor the tribunal were able to rule out whether the two witnesses or one of them or members of their families received money from parties other than the prosecution’s office. This will continue to be a point of contention in the future because of how deeply it affects the credibility of the witnesses’ testimonies, especially those that the public prosecution is going to present as witnesses to be relied on to convict the defendants even though their testimonies have changed from one stage of the investigation to another.

In another matter, the public prosecutor gave a bizarre excuse for not giving the defense team of one of the defendant’s documents it requested that include information on students at one of Lebanon’s universities between the years 2004-2005 in addition to information about specific individuals at the same university in 2006. The public prosecution’s office had received this information from the Lebanese authorities which never denied any of the former’s requests. The public prosecutor cited several reasons for turning down the defense team’s request including the claim that this information would enable the defense team to breach the confidentiality of one of its witnesses.

But the most bizarre and most laughable excuse is the public prosecutor’s claim, in his letter to the tribunal on May 9, 2014, that handing over this information to the defense team might “violate the privacy of these students.” Let’s remember that the public prosecution’s office had insisted on getting the Lebanese people’s telecom data, health records, university records, travel records, insurance records and market licenses and – as experience has shown – was unable to protect its records and prevent them from being leaked. This same office is now claiming to care for the privacy of Lebanese students in order to prevent the transfer of information about them to their own colleagues – the defense lawyers – at the tribunal.

May 15, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

‘Israel can’t erase the Nakba from history’

By Saeb Erekat | Ma’an | May 15, 2014

252851_345x230Today is the anniversary of what we Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, our catastrophe – although a single word cannot begin to explain it, and a single day cannot begin to commemorate it.

More than ever before, Israel needs come to terms with the horrors it has caused since 1948, by ending its subjugation of millions rather than intensifying its denial and trying to legitimize its persecution. Peace can only come through justice and reconciliation.

This day, in 1948, marks the forced exile of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands. Some were subjected to brutal massacres, many fled for fear of their lives. A few managed to stay in what would become Israel. All suffered. Sixty-six years later, all continue to suffer.

The Nakba is a story of fear and intimidation, of denial and persecution, a cruel, unending reality.

Today in occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian families are evicted from their homes due to claims that their property belonged to Jews before 1948, while being forbidden from returning to their pre-1948 homes in West Jerusalem.

In Gaza – one of the most densely populated areas in the world – 1.2 million refugees overlook the open areas of what is now southern Israel. In my own home town, Jericho, there are two refugee camps where thousands continue to live in miserable conditions. In 2014, Palestinian children died of starvation at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria.

Israel, which claims to be a democracy for all its citizens, continues to ban the villagers of Iqrit and Kufr Birem, two Christian villages in the Galilee, from returning to their lands, despite a ruling from the Israeli High Court of Justice on the matter.

This is not the only example of persecution within Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promotion of the “nationality bill,” determining Israel as the Jewish nation-state, is one more in a long line of discriminatory laws against a fifth of Israel’s own population, the original inhabitants of the land.

A list of laws make it not only acceptable, but legally admissible, to discriminate against Israel’s own citizens for belonging to a different ethnic-religious group.

Meanwhile, in the land which Israel has illegally occupied since 1967, settlers and soldiers use similar methods of intimidation and fear to force Palestinians from their homes.

The reality in the West Bank is no less than apartheid, and, in Gaza, out and out siege. Both within occupied Palestine and further afield, those who have been waiting 66 years, with their keys in hand, continue to wait.

Palestine has recognized Israel’s right to exist since 1988. We are not asking for Hebrew not to be an official language or Jewish holidays not to be official holidays. The character of Israel is not for us to define.

But we will not allow any Palestinian to be portrayed as the immigrant or intruder in his or her own land. We were here in 1948: We were here for centuries before that – Muslims, Christians and Jews – all Palestinians. The concept of an exclusively Jewish state naturally entails the denial of the Nakba. It tells us: “This is our land. You were on it illegally, temporarily, by mistake.” It is a way of asking us to deny the existence of our people and the horrors that befell them in 1948. No people should be asked to do that.

We will not be complicit in the notion that any ethnic-religious group should have dominance over any other. We will not accept the denial of basic human rights to which all are entitled.

Rather than accepting historical responsibility, rather than acknowledging a painful truth about the birth of Israel and addressing it, as a step toward peace, the Israeli government attempts to wipe the event from history.

In Israel, it is forbidden by law to even commemorate the Nakba. If you can erase the narrative, it is much easier to erase the people. This Israeli government, in particular, is taking extraordinary measures to achieve this. Is it any wonder that we have not managed to reach an agreement at this time?

Today, we remember those who have lost their lives, at the hands of their oppressors, in their quest for freedom and dignity. Despite this, we are ready to live side by side in peace with our Israeli neighbors. We hope Israelis, if not their current government, will move in that direction.

At this point we do not know what the future will look like in terms of a solution, or when it will come. What we know for certain is that we will remain.

Saeb Erekat is chief negotiator for the PLO.

May 15, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ethnic Russians Are People, Too

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | May 13, 2014

So what does the New York Times have against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians? While the newspaper has fallen over itself insisting on the “legitimacy” of the coup regime in Kiev, despite its collaboration with neo-Nazis who spearheaded the Feb. 22 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the Times editors can’t hurl enough insults at the ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the regime’s authority.

For weeks, the Times has called the eastern Ukrainian rebel leaders “self-declared” and ridiculed the idea that there was any significant backing for the rejection of the Kiev-appointed regional leaders; all the trouble was simply stirred up by Vladimir Putin. Now, however, the referenda in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk have demonstrated what even a Times reporter acknowledged was “substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas.”

But the Times editors still won’t give up their prejudices. For instance, Tuesday’s lead editorial begins: “If there were questions about the legitimacy of the separatist referendums in eastern Ukraine, the farcical names of the entities on which people were asked to vote — the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk or Luhansk — surely answered them.”

So, the votes – and the desires – of eastern Ukrainians shouldn’t matter because the Times disapproves of “the farcical names of the entities” that people voted for.

The Times then suggests that violence that marred the referenda was the fault of the rebels, not the Kiev regime’s National Guard, which includes the neo-Nazi militias that threw fire bombs at police during the Maidan protests in February and are now carrying out the most lethal attacks against protesters in cities in the east and south.

Of course, according to the Times’ narrative, these neo-Nazis from western Ukraine don’t exist, so the violence must be palmed off on others or be treated like the natural occurrence of a spring thunderstorm. In Tuesday’s editorial, the Times wrote: “But the gathering rumble of violence accompanying the votes is serious and is driving the Ukrainian crisis in a direction that before long no one — not President Vladimir Putin of Russia, not authorities in Kiev, not the West — will be able to control.”

However, even the Times’ own field reporter noted that the violence during the referenda on Sunday was provoked by those new National Guard forces that attacked some polling places. The Times’ editors must assume that most of the newspaper’s readers aren’t paying close attention to the details.

The other part of the Times’ Ukraine narrative is that Putin provoked the unrest in Ukraine so he could seize territory, although no less an authority on power politics than former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says that notion “isn’t possible,” adding that Putin simply was reacting to events that caught him off-guard as he was coming out of the Winter Olympics at Sochi.

Yet, the Times ignores this more realistic scenario – of a Western-pushed destabilization of the Yanukovych government that involved demands that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund and that spiraled into a violent “regime change” – and instead puts the blame on Putin, who – the Times says – must be told to get “his minions in southeastern Ukraine in line.”

Otherwise, the Times blusters “the European Union and the United States will impose sanctions that will cut Russia off for a long time from Western sources of technology, arms and finance.”

While the Times editorial accurately reflects the swaggering belligerence of Official Washington, the editors still refuse to see the Ukraine crisis in objective terms, in which both the western Ukrainians who favor closer ties with Europe and the eastern Ukrainians whose economy is dependent on trade with Russia have legitimate concerns.

The ethnic Russians in the east are not simply dupes who fall for clumsy propaganda and mindlessly follow the dictates of Vladimir Putin. They are human beings who have their own legitimate view of their political situation and who can make judgments about what course of action is best for their interests. As difficult as life in Ukraine is, it is sure to be worse once the IMF’s harsh austerity is imposed on the country’s population.

The Times and many others in the Western media insult these ethnic Russians with a disdainful treatment that treats them as lesser beings and assumes that only the pro-European Ukrainians in the west deserve respect for their opinions.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

May 14, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

The Government’s Antipathy Towards Transparency Has Made FOIA Lawsuits The Default Process

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | May 12, 2014

This is default mode for the Freedom of Information Act.

In a federal FOIA complaint, the ACLU and University of Arizona Professor Derek Bambauer and Associate Professor Jane Yakowitz Bambauer claim that the Department of Homeland Security has failed to respond to requests made in January and February for records that may “shed light on Border Patrol’s extensive but largely opaque interior enforcement operations.”

The professors seek “records related to U.S. Border Patrol’s interior enforcement operations in Tucson and Yuma Sectors, including relevant agency policies, stop data, and complaint records.”

The CBP (Border Patrol) operates far inland these days with the blessing of the DHS. To live in states bordering Mexico is to have your freedom to travel within the country needlessly interrupted by uniformed officers inquiring about your country of origin.

The CBP’s surveillance technology has also wandered much further inland, far past the so-called “Constitution-Free Zone” that extends 100 miles in from the country’s borders. Its drones, which are specifically to be used for border surveillance, have been loaned out to an assortment of federal agencies and local law enforcement.

The CBP has also become a deadlier force, responsible for 27 fatalities in the last three years. This number has increased dramatically, in part because CBP agents seemed to be looking for reasons to open fire — like standing directly in the path of escaping vehicles.

But this isn’t so much about the CBP as it is about the government’s betrayal of the ideals behind the Freedom of Information Act.

“We shouldn’t have to go as far as filing a lawsuit to get these records,” Professor Bambauer said in a statement. “This is public information about a matter of pressing public concern. We cannot allow DHS and Border Patrol to continue operating in our communities without being subject to public scrutiny.”

No, citizens shouldn’t have to file lawsuits just to get the government to turn over responsive records. And, yet, this has become the expected route to freeing information. Nearly every document handed out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been prompted by a lawsuit. The CBP drone documents mentioned above? Those are also tied to a FOIA lawsuit. Without the court’s prompting, it’s highly unlikely any of the documents the CBP “failed” to turn up during its first FOIA search would ever have been made public.

This is now the standard process for obtaining information from the government, whether at the federal level or below. There are many agencies that handle requests with few problems. But the agencies leaning towards the law enforcement/counterterrorism end of the spectrum are far from compliant. They resist, stall or simply ignore requests, pushing inquiring entities towards the courtroom.

This is completely wrong. A FOIA lawsuit is a remedy. Now, it’s just standard practice. And this goes far past simply unacceptable into sickening territory.

Government agencies are supposed to be accountable to the public that pays for everything they do. The FOIA law is simply a tool of accountability that can be wielded by any citizen. But these agencies have perverted the FOIA system so thoroughly that what was supposed to be a last resort (a lawsuit) is now just another step in the FOIA process.

The DOJ likely has no problem with the DHS, CBP and others blowing off FOIA requests until the judicial system orders them to turn over the requested info. After all, in its ridiculous argument for warrantless cellphone searches, it stated that if people felt the police shouldn’t have had access to their cellphone contents, they could always argue for suppression in court. This is the same mentality. Instead of respecting the limitations set by the Fourth Amendment, the DOJ suggests people should use a remedy (suppression) to hold cops accountable rather than expecting the police to police themselves and avoid violating citizens’ privacy and civil liberties.

These agencies know that not everyone has the time or money to battle for the release of documents, so their exposure is limited should they choose not to comply. It’s extremely hard for a nation’s citizens to hold its government accountable if the government is going to use the citizens’ own money against them.

ACLU, EPIC and the EFF have gone to court time and time again with no greater goal than getting government agencies to comply with a federal law. This ongoing subversion of the FOIA is completely unacceptable. This government is giving the public the finger, letting it know that it will only be accountable when forced to.

May 13, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rwanda: The Victims Who Weren’t Commemorated

By Andy Piascik | The Sri Lanka Guardian | May 10, 2014

A solemn ceremony was held in Rwanda last month to mark the 20thanniversary of the mass killings in that country in 1994. Corporate media from the United States and the rest of the world covered the event in some depth, underscoring the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands killed by the state and Hutu civilians. Dignitaries and politicians from around the world, including several from the United States, attended a commemorative event that included an emotional reenactment of the bloodletting.

Entirely uncommented on was the sickening spectacle of Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame overseeing the event. Kagame, a long-time servant of US business interests and a mass killer in his own right, set in motion fighting that culminated in the terrible events of 1994 by invading Rwanda from neighboring Uganda in 1990. A Tutsi, Kagame was one of the elite class that went into exile rather than live under a government of the majority Hutus. Information published by a wide spectrum of researchers, most notably from the United Nations, has determined that Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front killed tens of thousands of people from 1990-94 and several hundred thousand more during the period that has become known as the Rwandan Genocide. Because Kagame is supported by the United States, however, those crimes have been buried with the dead and no public ceremony has been held in the last 24 years to honor those killed by the RPF.

Kagame’s goal from the outset of his 1990 invasion was the overthrow of the government of Rwanda, and he continually violated ceasefire agreements to that end. In fact, it was the shooting down in April 1994 of a plane on which Rwandan dictator Juvenal Habyarimana was a passenger, with a preponderance of the evidence pointing to the RPF as the responsible party, that set in motion the 100 days of mass killings. Habyarimana was killed, as was fellow passenger Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi, and ten others.

Much has been made since of the Clinton administration and the international community’s failure to act. In reality, the US was proactive in preventing the UN and anyone else from taking measures that might have prevented much of the killing. Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Gali, for one, has put the entire blame for what happened in Rwanda in the 1990’s on the United States. And even though Kagame continues to claim, as he did in 1994, that his Tutsi ethnic group was targeted in a pre-planned act of the Rwandan government, he also successfully opposed international efforts that might have curtailed the bloodshed. Further puncturing Kagame’s claims is the fact that Rwanda and France, its primary international ally, supported international action to stop the killing. We can only surmise that the mass killing of Kagame’s fellow Tutsis was acceptable to him and the US so long as the end result was his complete victory in the fighting and ascension to power. In addition, it’s been well-documented that many of the Tutsis killed were killed not by Hutus or the Rwandan government but by Kagame’s forces because Kagame considered fellow Tutsis who had remained in Rwanda as untrustworthy or collaborators.

Researchers Christian Davenport and Allan Stam are among those who have investigated the events of 1994. Under the auspices of USAID’s International Criminal Tribune for Rwanda, Davenport and Stam, like many investigators from the West, began their project assuming that the Rwandan government and rampaging Hutu civilians were responsible for virtually all of the killing. As their investigation progressed, however, they discovered more and more evidence indicating the RPF was also responsible for a great deal of killing. When, during their investigation, they presented some of that evidence to a meeting that included high-ranking members of Kagame’s government and military, some in the audience became enraged and one military man cut off their presentation and ordered Davenport and Stam removed by force. Kagame subsequently barred them from ever returning to Rwanda. (see http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/what-really-happened-in-rwanda-3432/

More instructive for how the US was determined to spin the story of exclusive Hutu responsibility and Kagame as the savior of the day was USAID’s termination of Davenport and Stam’s research project and refusal to publish or in any way make known their findings. UN investigations that produced similar results were likewise suppressed by the United States. As with the wars that ravaged Yugoslavia in the 1990’s and their aftermath, to cite just one concurrent example, the West and the US in particular were determined that no findings that reflected the responsibility of anyone but the designated bad guys would see the light of day. In both instances, mass killings and other crimes committed by US clients Kagame, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, Alija Izetbgovic and Atif Dudakovic of Bosnia, the Kosovo Liberation Army and the United States itself were whitewashed. Crucial to the Rwandan story is the lie that April 1994 marks the beginning of the terrible events, as if Kagame’s 1990 invasion and the intervening deaths of many thousands never happened.

For its part, the US was looking to supplant France, its chief imperial rival in Central Africa, and increase corporate investment in the area, especially in the bordering Congo, one of the world’s most resource-rich nations. To that end, Kagame twice invaded the Congo not long after taking over  Rwanda, launching what Edward Herman has described as his second act of genocide. As with the invasion of Rwanda, the invasions of the Congo came with crucial US military training, armaments and diplomatic support.

Western plunder of the Congo dates to the 19th century and the murderous rule of Belgian King Leopold II, whose insatiable lust for wealth was responsible for the deaths of up to 15 million Congolese. Revolutionary forces finally achieved independence in 1960 but it took Congolese reactionaries and their Belgian and CIA helpers all of three months to overthrow and eventually murder Patrice Lumumba, the nation’s first elected Prime Minister. When US puppet Mobutu Sese Soko was put in power, all semblance of independence vanished as Western investors once again took control, and they made Mobutu a multibillionaire for his efforts on their behalf. By the time Kagame invaded the Congo the first time, Mobutu had fallen out of favor. His dictatorial ways had become an international embarrassment, plus the US didn’t like that he was keeping too much of the swag for himself. In addition, they had Kagame who, in his eagerness to be the US’s new client, was as pliant as Mobutu had ever been.

US support of Kagame’s invasions of the Congo has proven a remarkable success, as his wars of terror paved the way to a massive increase in American investments (and profits) in copper, cobalt, coltan and diamonds. During that time, the number of Congolese who have been killed in the fighting or died because of starvation, disease and other causes traced directly to Kagame’s invasions is perhaps ten times as many as died during the Rwandan Genocide, and the dying goes on and on right up to this moment. Yet Kagame has been hailed again and again by Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, George Bush II, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and other flacks for US imperialism as a hero and “the man who ended the Rwandan Genocide.”

The ruling class and their media stenographers have brought us through the looking class big-time: war is peace, lies are truth, and genocidists are liberators. They cannot entirely erase the truth, however, and information about what really happened in Rwanda as documented by Davenport, Stam and many others has become available. Kagame, meanwhile, is hard at work sending hit squads around the world to assassinate exiled opponents of his regime, his job of laying the groundwork for increased US corporate plunder done, and done very well. That is why he was allowed to oversee last month’s ceremony and why virtually nothing was said in the mainstream about those who died by his hand to make Central Africa safe for US imperialism. It will be up to those who live in a future world free of Empire to honor them in the manner they deserve.

Andy Piascik, a long-time activist and award-winning author, can be reached at andypiascik@yahoo.com

May 10, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Holocaust assignment unleashes Zionist’s rage

By Brandon Martinez | Press – TV | May 10, 2014

A California school district has come under fire from Zionist groups for giving students an assignment asking them to examine both sides of the “holocaust” story, draw their own conclusions based on the documentation provided as well as their own research and then write an essay about it.

The Rialto Unified School District near Los Angeles gave out the 18-page assignment to eighth grade students to encourage critical thinking, but the Zionists have unleashed their fury upon the school district’s administrators for daring to allow any debate on the sacred Shoah. Only one side of the holocaust story will be allowed to enter into the curriculum of learning institutions, says the Zionists.

The assignment’s introduction explained: “When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual historical event, but instead is a propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.” The assignment then instructs students to “read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based upon cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe the Holocaust was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth.”

According to the Zionist self-appointed arbiters of all historical truth, there is no “debate” about the realities of the holocaust because it is an event etched in stone that cannot be altered even slightly. This dogmatic approach to learning about history flies in the face of basic principles of logic, discernment and academic freedom.

The sycophantic dolt Chris Matthews addressed the controversy on his boring MSNBC show “Hardball,” bringing on a spokesman of the Zionist Simon Wiesenthal Center to feign outrage about the “monstrosity” of allowing students to decide for themselves what really happened in Germany’s concentration camps during the Second World War.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Simon Wiesenthal Center mouthpiece, told Matthews that the assignment “elevated hate with historic fact.” What one might discern from the rabbi’s incoherent statement is that historical facts are “hateful” in nature and even though they are true should be discarded or suppressed to avoid upsetting Jewish sensibilities.

Rabbi Cooper went on to assure MSNBC’s viewership that all of the eighth graders of the school district in question would be brow beaten into accepting the Zionist version of WW2. All 2,200 eighth grade students of Rialto, said the rabbi, will be forced to attend the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “Museum of Tolerance” to get a good dousing of “holocaust” propaganda sure to pacify any doubts that they may have gleaned from the assignment.

What the students won’t be told is that the “Museum of Tolerance” was caught peddling an out-and-out hoax in the 1990s. Revisionist researcher David Cole recently exposed how the museum had set up a display purporting to showcase the function of the dubious “gas vans” that Zionists claim were used by the Germans to kill Jews in Eastern Europe during the war.

A looped video was presented to impressionable and gullible observers showing a re-enactment of the alleged killing procedure of the mystical “gas vans.” In a video published on YouTube, Cole explains that the museum’s video display claimed to be a selected segment from a “documentary” but was actually lifted from a 1962 fictional Polish film called “The Ambulance,” directed by Janusz Morgenstern.

On the MSNBC show, Rabbi Cooper suggests that there are only two types of people who would doubt the holocaust: 1) people who would like a chance to “finish the job,” and 2) “sophisticated bigots” who are more comfortable not having to deal with the reality of what happened.

Irrespective of Cooper’s delusions, the fact is that most holocaust skeptics are normal citizens who have decided to approach the subject from a scientific standpoint, not an emotional or ideological one. Chemists and experts like Germar Rudolf and Fred Leuchter did not begin their inquiries into the gas chamber claims with preconceived judgments or notions — they went into their investigations believing fully the official stories about mass gassings. After extensively observing the facilities claimed to be the gas chambers, these two qualified analysts came out as disbelievers.

Pointing out that in 1990 the Auschwitz State Museum reduced the death total there from 4 to 1 million, and that the real death total at that camp is probably still much lower than the latter figure, is not an “anti-Semitic” gesture, it is an honest one. Likewise, observing that the Majdanek and Mauthausen camps that were once said by establishment sources to harbour the remains of 3.5 million murdered Jews but are now said to be the resting places of less than 100,000 Jews, is not an act of malice but one of accuracy.

Delineating that the wartime atrocity stories of “human soap” and “skin lampshades” supposedly manufactured from Jewish corpses are patently false is not “elevating hate,” it is actually decreasing hate against the German people.

Emphasizing the discernable pattern of Zionist propaganda dating back to the late 1800s showing the repetitive dissemination of Jewish persecution stories, oftentimes invoking the mystical “six million” number, is not an exercise in “racism” but rather empirical observation.

The cartoonish “evil Nazi” archetype was created by the winners of WW2 in order to facilitate the cover up of massive Allied war crimes and to accelerate the Zionist agenda to invade and colonize Palestine under a facade of victimhood. Nazi Germany was no more evil than the Allied powers, no more racist than Britain or America or Zionist Jews themselves, and no more murderous than the countries that won that war and the nation born out of that war: Zionist Israel.

Someone wise once said that the truth is the first victim of war. Governments keen to justify their actions in a time of conflict and conflagration will stoop to any level of deceit and use every underhanded trick in the book to malign their adversaries.

Governments tell falsehoods with impunity when the people fail to think critically about what they are being told and the agenda that may lie behind it.

If we are to ever fully be free, we must cast aside the myths of the past that are currently being used to mentally enslave the masses of the present.

May 10, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

USA insulting world’s intelligence

By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | May 10, 2014

“They must really think we’re stupid.” That is what people all over the world are saying about the American government and media’s portrayal of world events.

Several weeks ago, an interviewer said to Russian President Putin: “NATO claims the missile shield was not built against you but against Iran.” Putin broke out laughing. When the laughter finally subsided, Putin said: “You really make me laugh. God bless you because it’s almost time to finish the day… indeed it’s already time to go to sleep. At least I get home in good humor.”

No sane person could seriously assert that NATO’s missile shield circling Russia is intended to protect the West from Iran. Yet, that is exactly what NATO – the imperial American occupation army in Europe – tells the world. How stupid do they think we are?

Governments lie. Imperial governments construct vast empires of lies. But in the past, most official lies carried at least a thin veneer of plausibility. Today, the US government and its media echo chamber do not seem to care whether their lies are even slightly credible.

The Ukraine crisis has been a non-stop festival of American lies, each one more ridiculous than the last.

First they told us that the protestors against Ukraine’s legitimate president, Viktor Yanukovych, were heroes who love democracy and hate corruption. In fact, the protestors were an oversized rent-a-mob led by Nazi thugs and Zionist crime oligarchs, bought and paid for by the five billion dollars the US spent undermining Ukraine’s democracy.

Then they told us that the “heroic protestors” were being gunned down by Yanukovych’s forces. In fact, it was NATO’s Operation Gladio snipers who were doing the false-flag shootings.

They claimed that Yanukovych “fled” the presidency. In fact, he was overthrown by a typical CIA putsch while traveling; since he never stepped down, Yanukovych is still the legitimate, democratically-elected president of Ukraine.

They claimed that Putin was “intransigent” for refusing negotiations. In fact, the US insisted that Russia recognize the illegitimate Nazi putsch government in Kiev as a precondition for negotiations – which would have made negotiations moot.

They claimed that Putin was an aggressor in Crimea. The truth is that the people of Crimea voted by a 97% landslide to join the Russian Federation – as was their right under the principle of self-determination, a cornerstone of international law.

They claimed that the anti-Kiev protests in Eastern Ukraine are some kind of Russian plot. The reality is that the people of Eastern Ukraine are up in arms because they have no desire to be governed by an illegitimate regime of NATO terrorists, IMF austerity looters, Zionist crime oligarchs, and Nazi thugs.

They claimed that the anti-Kiev forces were forcing Jews to register themselves. In fact, the “Jews must register” leaflets were another Operation Gladio style false-flag provocation by NATO.

They claimed that last week’s Odessa Massacre was somehow Russia’s fault. In fact, NATO’s neo-Nazi thugs chased pro-Russia protestors into the Trade Unions Building, burned them to death, and strangled survivors trying to escape – the result, intentional or not, of another Operation Gladio false flag provocation.

Here is how the New York Times concealed the truth about the Odessa Massacre: “Violence also erupted Friday in the previously calmer port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, where dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”

As an English teacher at three major American universities, I always instructed students to begin sentences with a specific subject and verb that clearly express “who does what.” In this case, “NATO-backed Nazi thugs” are the who, and “chased pro-Russian protestors into a building and burned and strangled them to death” are the what.

Instead, the New York Times begins its sentence with an abstraction, “violence,” that just somehow “erupted.” We are told that “dozens of people died in a fire,” but we are not told who killed them, simply that the fire was “related to clashes.”

George Orwell, author of “Politics and the English Language,” must be rolling over in his grave.

Does anyone in the world really believe anything John Kerry and the US mainstream media are saying about Ukraine? Expressions like “credulous dupe” do not even begin to describe the type of person who would be taken in by such brazen falsehoods.

Fortunately, there are signs that the world is not as stupid as the American establishment thinks it is. The people of Eastern Ukraine are united in their refusal to kowtow to the criminals in Kiev, and much of the world supports them. At the end of the day, the most economically advanced and strategic part of Ukraine is likely to become a fervently anti-NATO, anti-New World Order bulwark.

US-NATO lies are failing in Ukraine just as they failed in Syria, where President Assad is expected to win re-election on June 3rd and preside over an ever-more-united, ever-more-peaceful nation. The turning point in Syria was the failure of the al-Ghouta false flag in August, which the US and its Zionist lobby unsuccessfully tried to blame on Assad. More recently, another false flag plot by Turkish leaders, who were scheming to attack their own country and blame it on Assad, was exposed.

As in Ukraine, the American narrative about Syria has completely collapsed. The US and its puppets always insisted that the Syrian opposition was peaceful, democratic, and committed to human rights, while Assad’s government was the source of all atrocities. But as the smoke clears, it has become apparent that Syria, like Ukraine, was destabilized by NATO and its Operation Gladio minions.

The trouble in Syria began in the same way as in Ukraine: A mob of NATO hirelings and their deluded followers was sent into the street to be shot at by Operation Gladio false-flag snipers. The shootings were falsely blamed on the government; civil war was incited; and NATO-backed thugs and extremists went to war against the legitimate government – all according to plan. This is what the CIA has been doing all over the world since it overthrew Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemala’s Guzman in 1954.

Today, more and more people around the world are waking up to the manipulations and deceptions of the mainstream US narrative. Yet rather than reining in their falsehoods – the sane response to today’s interconnected hyper-mediated world – our US-NATO imperial masters keep pumping up the lies till they explode.

They must really, REALLY think we’re stupid.

Then again, if they can convince us that 19 debauched pseudo-Muslims led by a terminal kidney patient in a cave in Afghanistan could outwit the world’s most advanced air defense systems and blow up three buildings with two planes, they have good reason to think we are stupid enough to believe almost anything.

May 10, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Bill Clinton and the Bogus Iran Threat

By Sheldon Richman | FFF | May 8, 2014

Tragically, President George H.W. Bush passed up a chance for a rapprochement with Iran because, after the Soviet Union imploded, the national-security apparatus needed a new threat to stave off budget cutters in Congress. Iran became the “manufactured crisis,” according to author Gareth Porter’s new book by that title.

Doubly tragic, Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, compounded the dangerous folly by hyping the bogus threat. Why? That might be a good question for progressives to ask possible presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who enjoys basking in her husband’s supposed presidential successes.

Porter writes,

That ramping up of pressure on Iran by the Clinton administration was still driven by the same bureaucratic incentives that had appeared at the end of the Cold War, but it shifted into overdrive because it was linked to support of the Israeli government’s drive to portray Iran as the great threat to peace in the world.

Clinton’s advisers saw the threat of nuclear proliferation as the path to beefing up the national-security apparatus. It was perfect for justifying new weapons systems and a continuing role as world policeman.

Moreover, the military focus on Iran, Porter adds, “dovetailed with the Clinton administration’s move to align its Iran policy with that of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.” Before assuming power, Clinton signaled his intention to be “more explicitly pro-Israel than the Bush administration had been.” To that end, he selected Martin Indyk as his campaign’s Middle East adviser. Indyk had been an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir; a researcher at the chief pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and cofounder of AIPAC’s spinoff think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Today, Indyk is President Obama’s chief envoy to the failed U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks.)

The Clinton administration implemented the “dual containment” policy against Iraq and Iran. But Porter reports that Robert Pelletreau, the Middle East policymaker in the State Department, acknowledges “that it was ‘pretty much accepted in Washington’ that the policy had originated in Israel.”

Was there a case against Iran to justify the policy? The administration charged Iran with abetting international terrorism, beefing up its armed forces, and seeking nuclear weapons. But was there evidence?

Porter’s book is a heavily documented brief showing that Iran never had a policy or took steps to acquire nuclear weapons. It sought a uranium-enrichment capability in order to produce fuel for its civilian nuclear program, but it did not seek weapons. Moreover, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa condemning nuclear weapons as a sin against Islam.

As for Iran’s military, the government sought to acquire medium-range missiles, but this was entirely consistent with its defense needs: Saddam Hussein of Iraq was a standing threat (he had launched an eight-year war complete with chemical attacks and missile strikes on Iran’s cities, including Tehran), and Israeli leaders often spoke of the need for a preemptive strike against the Islamic Republic, like the one staged in 1981 against Iraq’s nuclear-power reactor at Osirak.

And terrorism? “Reflecting both the hostility toward Iran within the national security bureaucracy and the influence of the Israeli line on its Iran policy, the Clinton administration also adopted the same a priori assumption that Iran was a threat to the issue of terrorism,” Porter writes. In other words, Clinton didn’t need evidence. Porter provides several examples of Iran being falsely blamed for terrorism committed by someone else. The pattern of blame without evidence persists.

Finally, why were Israel’s leadership and American supporters so determined to put Iran at the center of U.S. foreign policy, especially when Israel’s government had previously, if covertly, cooperated with the Shiite Islamic Republic on the grounds that both countries had a common enemy in Sunni extremism? Porter’s detailed and documented chapter on this aspect of the manufactured crisis concludes,

“The history of the origins and early development of Israel’s Iran nuclear scare and threat to attack Iran over its nuclear and missile programs highlights a pattern in which both the [Yitzhak] Rabin and [Benjamin] Netanyahu governments deliberately exaggerated the threat from Iran, in sharp contradiction with the Israeli intelligence assessment. The ruse served a variety of policy interests, most of which were related to the manipulation of US policy in the region.”

May 9, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Ex-Official: Netanyahu Fear-Mongering over Iran Nuclear Abilities

Al-Manar | May 9, 2014

An Israeli former official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fear-mongering over Iran’s nuclear program, warning that a strike on the Islamic Republish will lead to an all-out war.

Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam, who for a decade headed the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, said that Netanyahu is employing needless fear-mongering when it comes to Iran’s atomic aspirations, in order to further his own political aims, Israeli website Ynet reported on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Eilam does not believe that Tehran is even close to having a bomb, if that is even what it really aspires to.

“The main issues are still ahead of us, but it is definitely possible to be optimistic. I think we should give the diplomatic process a serious chance, alongside ongoing sanctions. And I’m not even sure that Iran would want the bomb – it could be enough for them to be a nuclear threshold state – so that it could become a regional power and intimidate its neighbors,” Eliam said.

“Besides, what good would bombing do? It would only unite the Iranian people behind its government, and provide it with an incentive to continue the project, with far more resources. Bombing would achieve the direct opposite of what we desired.”

Eilam was one of the central figures in the development of the Zionist entity’s nuclear and missile programs over the last half century.

May 9, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Sinking The Lusitania: An Act Of Mass Murder By The Banksters

By Gabriel Donohoe | Fools Crow’s Blog  | May 7, 2014

On this day 99 years ago, a German U-boat sunk the RMS Lusitania off the southern Irish coast with the loss of 1,195 lives, including 128 Americans. 94 children perished, 31 of them mere babies. This incident became the major catalyst for drawing a reluctant America into the European slaughter pens of World War 1.

But was the sinking of the Lusitania one of those unfortunate acts that occur randomly during war or was there a more sinister and deliberate hand at work?

In a disputed incident like this, one often gets to the truth of the matter by asking the question, “Cui bono?” “Who benefits?” After a detailed examination of the facts, one can only come to the conclusion that it was the banksters who benefitted, and grossly at that.

The RMS Lusitania was one of the world’s biggest ships and the pride of the Cunard Line at the time of her demise. “RMS” stands for “Royal Mail Steamer” which meant that the Lusitania was certified to carry the mail, earning her owners an annual fee of some £68,000.

At the time of her final voyage, leaving New York for Liverpool on May 1st, 1915, Europe was embroiled in war. Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom to be a war-zone and German U-boats were wreaking havoc on enemy shipping.  300,000 tons of Allied shipping were sunk every week and one out of every four steamers leaving Britain never returned. Britain was virtually cut off from her allies and her waters were fraught with danger.

In contravention of the rules of war at the time (the Hague Conventions and the Cruiser Rules) the RMS Lusitania was carrying a considerable amount of ammunition, explosives, and other war matériel for the armies of England and France. As G. Edward Griffin wrote in The Creature From Jekyll Island, “…she [The Lusitania] was virtually a floating ammunition depot.” This meant that she wouldn’t have the status of a non-military ship and could be fired upon without warning. It was widely known that the Lusitania was entered into the Admiralty fleet register as an armed auxiliary cruiser and was so listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships and in The Navy Annual.

They Germans knew that The Lusitania was carrying military supplies bound for Germany’s enemies on the Western Front. The German embassy in Washington even took the precaution of placing an advertisement in 50 U.S. newspapers warning civilians not to sail on the Lusitania. Due to the intervention of the State Department most of the notices were not published. However, the Des Moines Register carried the following advert which was placed beside an ad for the Lusitania…

“NOTICE!

“TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

“IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY

“Washington, D.C., April 22, 1915.”

In the early stages of the War, England and France had borrowed heavily from American investors and had selected J P Morgan, partner and front man for the Rothschilds, to act as sales agent for their bonds. Morgan was also selected as a purchase agent to buy war materials when the bond money was returned to the States. Morgan was in the happy position of receiving lucrative commissions in both directions, which, in the case of England and France amounted to some $30 million. That’s not counting commissions on hundreds of millions of dollars of business done with Russia, Italy, and Canada.

Furthermore, through holding companies, the House of Morgan directly owned many of the manufacturing firms receiving production contracts for military goods from England and France. (Undoubtedly these firms were the foundation of the ‘military-industrial complex’ later referred to by President Eisenhower.) Soon, J P Morgan became the largest consumer on earth, spending up to $10 million per day. Morgan was in the privileged position of being buyer, seller, and producer and amassing profits from all sides.

However, when the War began to go badly for England and France, Morgan found it impossible to get new buyers for the Allied war bonds. There was a real fear in Whitehall at the time that England was about to lose the war. If the Allies were to default, Morgan’s large commissions would come to an end and his investors would suffer gigantic losses (some $1.5 billion). On top of that, Morgan’s war production companies would go out of business. Something needed to be done urgently.

As the RMS Lusitania departed Pier 54 in New York on May 1st, 1915, Morgan surmised that if the cruiser were to be sunk by a German submarine, the resulting furore would certainly bring America into the War on the side of the Allies. Not only would Allied bonds be in great demand but Morgan’s war production companies would have to go into overdrive to outfit over four million American soldiers who would be mobilized for the European War.

lusitania map

Six days later, on the afternoon of Friday, May 7th, 1915, the Lusitania approached within 12 miles of the southern Irish coast. Winston Churchill, the Lord of the Admiralty, knew that German U-boats were operating in the area after three ships had been sunk in the previous 2 days. Not only did Churchill not come to the assistance of the Lusitania but he ordered her planned escort, the destroyer Juno, to return to Queenstown harbour. Earlier, the Lusitania had been ordered to reduce speed by shutting down one of her four boilers (ostensibly to save coal). She was a sitting duck and the entire Admiralty knew it.

At least one of Churchill’s officers, Commander Joseph Kenworthy, was disgusted at the cynicism of his superior. In his 1927 book, The Freedom of the Seas, he would write: “The Lusitania was sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn.”

At 2.10 in the afternoon of that fateful Friday, Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger of U-boat U-20 spotted the Lusitania and gave the order to fire one torpedo. The torpedo struck the Lusitania on the starboard bow, just beneath the wheelhouse. A few moments later, much to everyone’s surprise including the watching Germans, a second huge explosion took place within the hull and the ship began to founder rapidly. 18 minutes later, the Lusitania disappeared beneath the waves.

Irish rescuers sailed out from Cork, over 11 miles away, and plucked some 764 survivors from the cold waters.

Many researchers today believe that the second explosion was caused by some of the 600 tons of pyroxyline explosive, 6 million rounds of .303 bullets, 1248 cases on shrapnel shells, plus an unknown quantity of munitions that filled the holds on the lower deck.

Ever since, the British Government have endeavoured to keep the Lusitania’s cargo a secret. As late as the 1950s the Royal Navy used the wreck of the Lusitania for target practice by dropping depth charges in order to destroy any evidence that the ship breached Cruiser Rules of war or the Hague Conventions.

After the sinking, the British ordered an official enquiry under the direction of Lord Mersey. The Admiralty manipulated Lord Mersey to find the master of the Lusitania, Captain Turner, at fault for the disaster. Lord Mersey complied with the Admiralty’s wishes but, in a crisis of conscience, refused payment for his services and requested that henceforth he be “excused from administering His Majesty’s Justice.” Mersey’s only comment in later years was: “The Lusitania case was a damn dirty business.”

The sinking of the Lusitania was a major catalyst for America’s later entry into the World War. Total deaths from the War are estimated between 9 and 15 million souls; American casualties of dead and wounded were in excess of 300,000.

But the House of Morgan, House of Rothschild, and other banksters were thoroughly pleased at America’s entry into the War. It meant that they continued to benefit hugely from the wholesale slaughter and misery of millions of programmed human beings.

When one thinks of Pearl Harbour, Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, and other false flags it seems that some things never change. The lessons of history are quickly forgotten. The public has always been so utterly gullible and predictable.

But thanks to the Internet and social media, that is all now beginning to change…

May 8, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine deploys 15,000 troops to Russian border, NATO beefs up forces in E. Europe – Moscow

RT | May 8, 2014

Ukraine has deployed 15,000 troops on its border with Russia, while NATO continues beefing up its forces in Eastern Europe, Russian Defense Ministry stated as the military alliance and Pentagon accuse Moscow of keeping armed forces close to Ukraine.

“The 15,000-strong grouping of Ukrainian forces has been deployed in the border areas. Military conscription has resumed [in Ukraine],” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in a statement on Thursday. “At the same time NATO amasses its grouping of forces in Eastern Europe,” he stressed, adding that such actions are not contributing to the efforts to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine.

Antonov said Russia has pulled all its forces from its borders with its crisis-torn neighbor. He echoed President Vladimir Putin’s statement on Wednesday, when the Russian President assured OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swiss President Didier Burkhalter that Russian troops were relocated to ranges where they conduct regular drills.

However, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted on Thursday that there is no sign that Russian troops have actually been withdrawn from the Ukrainian border.

“I have very good vision but while we’ve noted Russia’s statement so far we haven’t seen any – any – indication of troops pulling back,” Rasmussen said on his Twitter. “If we saw visible signs of a meaningful pullback by Russia troops I’d be the first one to welcome it,” he added.

Earlier, the Pentagon said that it also saw no change in the Russian force position along the Ukrainian border.

“We have seen no change in the Russian force posture and we’ve long called on the Russians … to withdraw their troops” from along the border, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.

However, according to the Defense Ministry official, “there was traditionally no evidence supporting their positions, and especially American colleagues did not bother,” he said.

Antonov also urged official representatives of NATO and the Pentagon “to quit cynically deluding the international society concerning the real state of affairs on the Russian-Ukrainian border.”

He stressed that in the past two months Russia has contributed to about a dozen inspections, including emergency observation flights of Ukraine across the border region with Russia. The most recent flights took place on May 6, when an American-Norwegian group held its inspection along the borders with Kharkov and Lugansk regions, and on May 7, when the same group flew across the city of Bryansk.

“There was not noticed any undeclared military activities in these regions,” Antonov said. But despite that this fact was recorded “in the presence of Russian representatives in the official protocols”, in public “opposite propaganda cliché statements accusing Russia of violating its commitments were broadcast.”

The West has repeatedly accused Moscow of deploying armed forces close to the borders with Ukraine and demanded that they be pulled back. At the same time, NATO has lately increased its activity in the region near the borders of Russia. On May 5, NATO started its Spring Storm drills in Estonia. The 6,000-troop exercise is the biggest since 2003 when Spring Storm was first held.

On Wednesday NATO said it may permanently station additional troops in Eastern Europe as a defensive measure.

Russia views this recent build-up of NATO forces as a provocation and counter-productive in the struggle to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine.

May 8, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

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