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License Plate Scanners Also Taking Photos of Drivers and Passengers

By Sonia Roubini | ACLU | February 5, 2015

The Drug Enforcement Administration is using its license plate reader program not only to track drivers’ locations, but also to photograph these drivers and their passengers, according to newly disclosed records obtained by the ACLU via a Freedom of Information Act request.

One internal 2009 DEA communication stated clearly that the license plate program can provide “the requester” with images that “may include vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear), photos of visible vehicle occupants [redacted] and a front and rear overall view of the vehicle.” Clearly showing that occupant photos are not an occasional, accidental byproduct of the technology, but one that is intentionally being cultivated, a 2011 email states that the DEA’s system has the ability to store “up to 10 photos per vehicle transaction including 4 occupant photos.”

The DEA documents are just the latest indication that license plate scanners are not always focused just on license plates.

  • In December, theNewspaper.com reported that Vigilant Solutions, one of the main providers of ALPR technology, expanded the integration of facial recognition technology into its ALPR offerings. “The new Vigilant Mobile Companion app expands the benefits of license plate recognition and facial recognition technologies to all areas of the agency,” a Vigilant Solutions press release claimed. This software would not only allow law enforcement officials to photograph the occupants of a vehicle, but also to quickly and accurately identify individuals and enter them into the DEA’s database.
  • In 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that a network security engineer in San Leandro, California named Michael Katz-Lacabe had submitted a public records request in 2010 for photos of his license plate and any associated images in order to determine the breadth of the information that the ALPRs had collected on him. One of the images captured Katz-Lacabe stepping out of his car in his driveway with his two young daughters, and several other images taken by the ALPRs very clearly identified him. It’s important to remember that Katz-Lacabe was never suspected of any crime.
  • The Milwaukee Police Department’s policy on the use of ALPRs says that stored data can include a “contextual photo (e.g. a photo of the scanned vehicle and/or occupants).”
  • The Wall Street Journal’s article on the DEA’s license scanning program last week mentioned the DEA’s collection of visual images of drivers and passengers, confirming in its reporting that they “are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities.”

This aspect of license plate scanning technology has not received enough attention. ALPR manufacturers and law enforcement agencies have argued that images of license plates cannot be used to identify individuals, and thus do not infringe on our individual privacy. This argument is thin already, but it certainly doesn’t fly with regards to photographs of the driver or passengers inside of a vehicle — especially in the era of face recognition analytics. Law enforcement is already using license plates to identify and track people — photographs of car occupants only allow agencies to be even more sure of exactly who they are surveilling.

Some law enforcement agencies that employ ALPRs recognize that the technology should not be used to capture photos of vehicle occupants. We obtained an ALPR policy from Tiburon, California that speaks to our privacy concerns. The policy states that “cameras will be directed only to capture the rear of vehicles and not into any place where a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ might exist.” This means that the ALPRs “will not be able to ‘see’ or photograph vehicle occupants because the camera will only be photographing the rear of vehicles, it will not be able to create a record of its occupants.” Tiburon’s policy shows that there are precautionary measures that can be taken to (at least partially) avoid infringing on individual privacy. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that most law enforcement agencies are taking such measures.

Tracking movement and saving individuals’ photos is particularly worrisome if the DEA is targeting First Amendment-protected activity. As we stated in our blog post on the DEA’s plans to monitor gun shows, an automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. A photo of a car’s occupants, however, documents much more — and intensifies our concerns about the targeted use of this technology. We don’t want to see someone’s photo entered into a facial recognition database simply because a person’s presence at a gun show (or any other gathering) is considered suspicion of illegal activity.

The DEA has yet to release any policies that govern the use of license plate readers or the database of Americans’ locations that it creates. It is unclear if any court or process oversees or approves the use of this intelligence, or if other government agencies have access to the photographs. This all highlights the need for more light to be shed on this program and others like it.

February 6, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

French comedian convicted of ‘supporting terror’

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French humorist Dieudonné Mbala Mbala
Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – February 5, 2015

Paris – Popular French humorist Dieudonné Mbala Mbala has been convicted and fined 30,000 euros for “supporting terrorism speech” in a decision which many say exemplifies the often discriminatory and two-tiered nature of France’s legal system.

Following the recent terrorist attacks in France, Dieudonné, as he is widely known, posted on Facebook that “Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly” (I feel like Charlie Coulibaly), an apparent reworking of the global “Je suis Charlie” campaign. Coulibaly refers to Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist responsible for four deaths at a Kosher supermarket in Paris.

The court rejected Dieudonné’s claim that he is a satirist in the same vein as Charlie Hebdo, the French weekly which has sparked worldwide protests on multiple occasions by publishing sacrilegious pictures of Prophet Mohammed.

Both Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo defend their actions by saying they insult any and all religions, ethnicities and politicians, with plenty of evidence available on the Internet to support their claims.

While Charlie Hebdo has been exonerated for its previous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, as well as for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the neo-fascist National Front Party, Dieudonné has been repeatedly fined for remarks deemed to incite racial hatred and anti-Semitism, both of which are explicitly banned by French law. Dieudonné and his entourage have been taken to court some 80 times in recent years, and just this week Dieudonné was convicted and forced to pay a fine of 4,000 euros for calling current Prime Minster Manuel Valls a “Mussolini with half Down’s Syndrome”.

Many claim that the lack of a law to ban Islamophobic speeches or the insulting of Islam reflects a state-sanctioned double-standard, and there is little political support apparent to create such laws. That has led to widespread complaints from France’s Muslim community, estimated at 5 to 10 percent of the overall population.

Where Dieudonné and Charlie Hebdo differ greatly is in their favored target: For more than a decade Charlie Hebdo has been openly anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic, while Dieudonné is openly anti-Zionist. Many also believe that Dieudonné satirizes France’s politicians much more forcefully, as Charlie Hebdo’s editors have increased their ties to the conservative UMP party in recent years.

This helps explain Dieudonné’s vast popularity among the youth, Muslim and immigrant communities, as reflected by the hundreds of Dieudonné supporters present at the Palais de Justice in Paris.

“Dieudonné is the same as Charlie Hebdo, except that Dieudonné attacks our society’s ‘untouchables’,” said Enzo Columba, 23, outside Dieudonné’s trial. “In France, you can attack the Blacks, the Arabs, the Muslims, but not the ‘untouchables’, and that’s why Dieudonné is treated differently by the media and the law,’” said Columba.

“He is so popular because he is like us: He is the son of immigrants, he grew up around Paris, and, like so many French youth, he is anti-Zionist,” added Columba.

France has not released updated arrest totals for “supporting terrorism speech” since January 20, when 117 arrests were acknowledged. People have been accused, tried, convicted and sentenced to multi-year prison terms in just 3 days, causing widespread accusations of “hysteria” and “witch-hunts”.

Among the convicted have been alcoholics, homeless people and the mentally ill. Critics contend that the wave of arrests is intended to have a “chilling effect” on all criticism of the government’s policies, as well as to intimidate the Muslim community.

“I’m here to support the liberty of expression, like we had in the past,” said Madame Lamarque, an interested citizen who also awaited the verdict outside the courtroom.

“I think we are losing this freedom, and I don’t understand why,” said Lamarque. “I do not think Dieudonné has been treated like other humorists.”

France made global news this week when an 8-year-old boy was interrogated for 30 minutes by police for allegedly making remarks supporting terrorism. Ahmed, whose last name has not been released, could not even explain what “terrorism” was, and his teachers and school principal have been sharply criticized for involving the police.

“The manner in which this was handled and became so overblown is totally unbelievable,” the head of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, told Press TV.

“We cannot expose a child of 8 years to such a trauma,” said Laurent. “It’s the opposite of the mission of education: To care for and protect children, not to place them under the media’s glare and render them fodder for the public’s judgment.”

Ahmed is in the third grade in the southeastern city of Nice, an affluent region which is also a stronghold of the neo-fascist National Front party.

February 6, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

230 Egyptian Activists, Including Ahmed Douma, Get Life Sentences

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Leading Egyptian opposition campaigner Ahmed Douma
Al-Akhbar | February 4, 2015

An Egyptian court sentenced prominent activist Ahmed Douma along with 229 other anti-Mubarak activists to life in prison on Wednesday after the court held hearings for 269 people connected to “the cabinet headquarters events” of December 2011, judicial sources said.

Douma and 268 others were accused of staging “riots” outside central Cairo’s cabinet headquarters and assaulting policemen during a sit-in back in December 2011 against a decision by Egypt’s then-ruling military council to appoint as prime minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, who had served in this position under ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

In addition to “rioting,” the activists were accused of possessing white arms like knives, attacking police officers and armed forces, burning the al-Majmaa al-Alami and attacking other government buildings including the cabinet headquarters.

Thirty-nine other defendants, all minors, were sentenced to 10 years in prison. All 269 defendants were found guilty of taking part in clashes with security forces near Cairo’s Tahrir Square in December 2011, the sources said.

In April, Douma along with two other prominent activists, were sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay a 10,000 Egyptian pound (around $1,300) fine. The fine was raised on Wednesday to 17 million Egyptian pounds (around $2 million).

In December an Egyptian court dismissed charges against Mubarak for ordering security forces to kill protesters during the 2011 uprising.

That verdict, and others handed down to Mubarak-era figures, has led some to conclude that the old regime that existed before the uprising has been reestablished under a different name.

Wednesday’s ruling, which can be appealed, is the harshest court order delivered so far against non-Islamist activists, amid a government crackdown on dissent overseen by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Authorities banned the Muslim Brotherhood following Mursi’s ouster and launched a heavy crackdown on its members, leaving at least 1,400 dead and 15,000 jailed, including hundreds sentenced to death for allegedly taking part in deadly riots in August 2013.

Egypt was brought in November in front of the UN’s top human rights body for a litany of rights abuses, including its crackdown, mass arrests and unfair trials targeting Mursi supporters, journalists and activists, described as “unprecedented in recent history.”

Besides the heavy crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters, many of the leading secular activists behind the 2011 uprising have also found themselves on the wrong side of the new political leadership, getting locked up for taking part in peaceful demonstrations following the recent ban on unlicensed protests.

Critics accuse Sisi of taking Egypt back to authoritarian rule. Sisi says he is committed to democracy in Egypt, a strategic US ally with influence across the Arab world.

(Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar)

February 4, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Cops Are Scanning Social Media to Assign You a “Threat Rating”

By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | December 16, 2014

Police State, USA — Imagine the following scenario: You are on your way home from work, driving down the road, when you notice police lights in your rear view mirror. You are being pulled over.

As you sit there, on the shoulder, adrenaline rushing, simultaneously angry and nervous, the police officer, in his patrol car behind you, is sizing you up based on an algorithm that determines your “threat rating.”

Online activity, purchases, and “comments that could be construed as offensive,” all contribute to your threat score.

The officer enters your license plate into a mobile application on his laptop. In a matter of seconds, this application crawls over billions of records in commercial and public databases, including all available social media engagement, recent purchases and “any comments that could be construed as offensive.” The application then determines if your “threat rating” is green, yellow, or red.

Imagine that you are one of our informed and frequent readers and understand the importance of police accountability and are unafraid to voice your completely peaceful, yet strong opinion about police misconduct. Imagine that you left a comment on facebook this morning about a particular officer’s misconduct; imagine that it is this particular officer who just pulled you over.

Your rating just came back red.

Up until this point, you have never committed a crime, you have never been violent, you have never even so much as run a stop sign. However, this police officer now knows that you made a comment about him punching the (insert handcuffed and helpless victim example here) on facebook, and he literally sees red (your threat rating).

What happens next? Does a routine traffic stop for driving 10 miles over the speed limit morph into a situation in which you now have a Smith and Wesson M&P 9mm pistol with Streamlight TLR-2s laser site being aimed just above your left ear?

Do you receive multiple erroneous citations because this officer now has access to your personal life? Do you get cited where the officer would have otherwise let someone else go?

Or, maybe you are a cop or a judge, or the mayor, but this application confuses you with someone else and marks you as “red,” then what? What if you are driving someone else’s car?

The reality is, that any number of unimaginable things can and would happen next. And now, thanks to a particularly ominous product, by a company named Intrado, and the Orwellian nature of police in this country, those unimaginable situations are now a reality.

Intrado is one of many corporations thriving here in the US, from the creation and growth of the police industrial complex. The hypothetical “application” mentioned in the above scenario is a real product of Intrado, called Beware. Police departments nationwide have been purchasing and using this application since 2012.

Intrado is one of many companies who cater to the police state, giving police these ostensibly helpful tools which actually erode civil rights and leave a huge opening for corruption and abuse.

Private companies are currently, and have been acquiring large portions of your tax dollars from federal grants. These funds are in return being used to build and implement actual “Pre-crime” technologies.

No, not the psychic-based sci-fi pre-crime like in Minority Report, but actuary based mathematical and statistical assessments designed with the explicit goal to reduce future instances of criminality. This means that instead of sentencing people for crime already committed, sentences based on these risk assessments are instead sentencing people for crimes that they, or people like them, might commit.

In a society that claims justice to be blind, how does judging someone on what they might do fit in to the idea of freedom? The answer to that question is simple, it doesn’t.

Even if these “threat ratings” showed a statistical correlation to actually lower some instances of crime, which we have not seen, it’s not the right way to go about policing a people. Reason Magazine’s Peter Suderman sums this logic up quite eloquently:

By a roughly similar logic, we could lock up everyone—or even just everyone with the right risk profile, regardless of what crimes they have or have not already committed—from a high crime neighborhood, and call it a success when crime goes down.

The notion that this “surveillance grid” approach by police and their higher-ups, is for the safety of the people, is a total farce. It does little to nothing to protect society from a rogue criminal. What it does do, however, is protect the government by deeming large groups of people enemies of the state; regardless of whether or not the individuals in these arbitrary groups are peaceful or have committed a crime.

The bright side of this Orwellian nightmare of a total police state that locks us up for crimes we didn’t commit, is that it’s preventable. All we have to do is show this information to those who have yet to see the encroaching blue leviathan that is Orwell’s proverbial “boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

In fact we’ve already seen well informed communities stop their police departments from obtaining such equipment. The city council of Bellingham, Washington, recently rejected a proposed purchase of the Beware “threat rating” system.

Despsite the Bellingham police department receiving a $25,000 federal grant to cover most of the $36,000 annual cost of Beware, the citizens still said “nay.” At a mandatory hearing about the purchase from Intrado, Bellingham citizens discovered how Beware worked and opposed the purchase. … Full article

February 4, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

‘Game of Thrones’ statue stolen, pagans blame religious hate

RT | February 3, 2015

A still from a YouTube video by darrensutton sculptor.

A still from a YouTube video by sculptor Darren Sutton

The theft of a Celtic sea god sculpture from a mountainside in Northern Ireland must be labeled as a religious hate crime, a local pagan priest believes. The statue, made by a ‘Game of Thrones’ set creator, prompted a media stir after it was vandalized.

The six-foot statue of Manannán Mac Lir, a sea deity in Irish mythology, was stolen from Binevenagh Mountain near Limavady in County Derry in January and replaced with a crucifix bearing the words “you shall have no other gods before me.”

Now, pagan priest Patrick Carberry, the founder and sovereign of the Order of the Golden River, which is based out of Belfast, says the incident should be treated as a religious hate crime.

“If a pagan stole a statue from a Christian church and left a pagan one in its place it would make world news,” Carberry told the Londonderry Sentinel.

Police have not yet discarded considerations that there could be a religious element to the crime, according to local media reports.

The creator of the statue is John Sutton – the man behind the sets of the popular HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’. Sutton said he was “disturbed” by the “unreal” theft.

The $15,000 statue was made of stainless steel and fiberglass, which would make it very difficult to steal, according to Sutton. Several people would have needed to be part of the crime and it likely would have taken them several hours.

According to Carberry, Pagans represent a significant minority in Northern Ireland. “There is a large community in Belfast alone and there are large communities across Ireland…people are afraid to admit that they have these beliefs because they might lose their jobs.”

“Paganism is the original religion of this land. We worship many gods and goddesses. In Ireland we are associated with the Celtic gods. Manannán would fall into that category,” he added.

Meanwhile, many others have been outraged by the crime in the predominantly-Christian region, decrying the vandalism of what is considered to be both a work of art and a tourist attraction.

A local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Claire Sugden, on Sunday told Coleraine Times she was “disgusted” by the theft.

“It seems the reason for removing this statue was in God’s name which is shameful and indeed more disrespectful than their reasoning. Certainly I think God would have something to say about those who stole something which brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people,” Sugden said.

The MLA said that the statue of Manannán was “entirely appropriate in its setting” as it “framed and celebrated the natural beauty” of the place.

February 3, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Chile: Two Found Guilty in Horman Murder Case

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Weekly News Update on the Americas | February 2, 2015

Retired Chilean army colonel Pedro Espinoza and former Chilean air force intelligence agent Rafael González Berdugo have been convicted in the murder of US journalist Charles Horman and US graduate student Frank Teruggi during the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew leftist president Salvador Allende Gossens [see Update #1226].

Judge Jorge Zepeda sentenced Espinoza–formerly an officer in the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) who has been described as the right-hand man of DINA head Manuel Contreras—to seven years in prison for the two murders.

González Berdugo was sentenced to two years of police surveillance as an accomplice in Harmon’s murder.

Judge Zepeda ruled in the case on January 9 but the decision wasn’t announced until January 28.

Last summer the judge officially ruled that “US military intelligence services played a fundamental role in the murders” by supplying information to the Chilean military. (El Ciudadano (Chile) 1/31/15)

February 3, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Five Important Questions About DEA’s Vehicle Surveillance Program

By Rachel Levinson-Waldman | Just Security | January 30, 2015

With each week, we seem to learn about a new government location tracking program. This time, it’s the expanded use of license plate readers. According to the Wall Street Journal, relying on interviews with officials and documents obtained by the ACLU through a FOIA request, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been collecting hundreds of millions of records about cars traveling on U.S. roads. The uses for the data sound compelling: combating drug and weapons trafficking and finding suspects in serious crimes. But as usual, the devil is in the details, and plenty of important questions remain about those details.

First, who approved the program, and under what circumstances? We don’t know. The DEA is an arm of the Department of Justice, so presumably the Attorney General’s office has been involved, but details aren’t yet available. Also unknown is whether there has been any judicial oversight.

Second, are there any limitations on how the data can be used? This is also unknown. The emails obtained by the ACLU indicate that the main purpose of the program was to assist in seizures of cars, money, and other assets, often from people not charged with any crime, a program that has come under withering criticism. But the history of data collection programs is that information collected for one purpose quickly becomes attractive for other purposes. And the more information available (even for proper purposes), the more is available for misuse as well. Indeed, license plate information has been abused in the past, with peaceful protestors’ data shared with the FBI.

Third, how long can it be kept? The article reports that the DEA holds the data for three months, a significant drop from its previous two-year retention period. Much of this data is coming from readers set up by state and local law enforcement, though, and the retention periods for those jurisdictions are an inconsistent patchwork, with deletion times ranging from immediate (Ohio state patrol) to 90 days (Boston) to two years (Los Angeles County) to five years (New York City) to never (New York State Police). This is especially alarming given that a vanishingly small percentage of the millions of license plates scanned are actually connected to any crime or wrongdoing. At the same time, data collected by DEA reportedly goes back to state and local jurisdictions as well, setting up an endless loop of information with inadequate oversight. 

Fourth, where else does the data go? Some of it is sent to fusion centers, which are state- or regional-based hubs that centralize information for sharing among the federal government, states, and private partners. Originally established in the wake of 9/11, fusion centers have largely abandoned their focus on terrorism for want of credible threats; they have instead transformed into an “all threats” model. In the process, they have been roundly criticized for wasting money, contributing little to counterterrorism efforts, and endangering both civil liberties and Privacy Act protections. Maryland and Vermont are known to feed their plate data to fusion centers, and the numbers are likely higher, given fusion centers’ voracity for data.

Finally, which other federal agencies are using license plate readers? We know that the Department of Homeland Security is using them as part of their border enforcement. As of early 2009, nearly 100% of cars crossing the border were scanned with a license plate reader. And both DEA and DHS license plate readers can be coupled with cameras that provide pictures of the occupants of vehicles being scanned.

Of course, the DEA database is only the latest in a string of disclosures that, taken together, reveal a web of powerful surveillance capabilities. Late last year, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the U.S. Marshals Service is using a secretive technology that sweeps up information about thousands of innocent Americans’ cell phones in the process of searching for suspects. As with the license plate reader scheme, little is known about the specifics of this program.

And just last week, USA Today revealed that at least 50 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, have obtained radar devices that allow them to detect any human movements inside a house, even motion as minimal as breathing, from more than 50 feet away. In at least one case, the device was used without a warrant to case a home for the presence of a suspected parolee.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have already expressed concern about this technology, and it’s hard to see how its use without a warrant passes constitutional muster. As the Tenth Circuit observed in a recently published case weighing the use of the radar technology, the Supreme Court has already disapproved of the use of a thermal imaging device to capture details of life within a home. Perhaps even more salient, the Court earlier established that tracking technology (known as a beeper) cannot be used without a warrant to confirm a person’s presence inside a private home, if obtaining that information would otherwise require entry into the home. It’s a little mystifying that using a high-powered radar for the same purpose would be kosher.

Taken together, these stories suggest a zone of privacy that is narrowing so much as to be almost imperceptible. Separate from the question of how these technologies are actually being used, the breadth of surveillance capabilities they provide are staggering. You can be tracked on the streets; in your home; on your phone; and almost anywhere else. We seem to forever be caught in a kind of vicious cycle: it’s too early to criticize or critique technologies when they’ve just been introduced and there’s no record of misuse, but once they’ve been in place for even a year or two, they take on an air of inevitability. … Full article

Rachel Levinson-Waldman serves as Counsel to the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law.

February 2, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

When Climate Heretics Speak. . .

By Steven Hayward | PowerLine | January 25, 2015

. . . They usually mop the floor with the climatistas. That’s one reason why the climate campaign has resorted to rank conformism and outright bullying.

Matt Ridley offered his observations about the state of things in an article in the London Times a few days ago entitled “My Life as A Climate Lukewarmer.”

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.

This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.

I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.

Kind friends send me news almost weekly of whole blog posts devoted to nothing but analysing my intellectual and personal inadequacies, always in relation to my views on climate. Writing about climate change is a small part of my life but, to judge by some of the stuff that gets written about me, writing about me is a large part of the life of some of the more obsessive climate commentators. It’s all a bit strange.

There’s more; definitely worth reading the whole thing. … continue

February 2, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Group Promoting Peace and Love Labeled As Terrorists, Surveilled by DHS and Police

By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | February 1, 2015

Missoula, Montana – According to the Missoula Police Department, peace and love are extremist views, and promoting these ideas could be a possible sign of terrorist activity.

The police department received a Department of Homeland Security grant of $254,930 last week, to assist them in fighting the terrorist threat. That threat was apparently posed by “the Rainbow Family,” a large hippy gathering that promotes peace and love.

In the application documents where the agency requested the grant, the Rainbow Family was listed as an “extremist organization” that requires constant surveillance.

Police Chief Scott Hoffman said that the department needed a “mobile command unit” to deal with the Rainbow Family threat.

“It’s a mobile command unit. It’s just like a motor home with communications and computers and radios and things like that. I don’t know what the hazards of the Rainbow people are,” Hoffman said.

After the story went public, representatives from the police department have played damage control with the media, claiming that the operation is only to help with cleaning up and keeping the area safe.

When reporters with the Missoulian called the police department for a comment, they were told by Missoula Police Lt. Scott Brodie that the mobile command unit would be primarily for the clean up effort.

“When they have their gatherings, they historically have created a mess that needs to be cleaned up. The command center could just coordinate and speed things up, get it done faster. It’s a coordination tool is what it is,” Brodie said.

It becomes apparent how ridiculous the accusations of “extremism” are when doing some research into what the Rainbow Family stands for. They are a decentralized, loose-knit group of people who want to promote ideas of peace, freedom, equality, and love.

The group takes their name from the ancient Native American proverb that says “When the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the warriors of the rainbow.”

Back in 2013, the U.S. Forest Service spent over $500,000 in efforts to police the event and only made two arrests. Otherwise, there were no issues or problems at the event.

February 1, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Israeli False Flags and the Attack on Rev. Stephen Sizer

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | January 31, 2015

The counterfeit hoopla surrounding the Charlie Hebdo ‘free speech’ saga was further undermined this week when a prominent British vicar posted an article on Facebook linking Israel to the 9/11 attacks, for which he is now ‘under investigation.’

Stephen Sizer, a well-known reverend of Christ Church, Virginia Water, posted the Wikispooks article “9/11: Israel Did It” on Facebook and subsequently asked, “Is this [research] anti-Semitic?”

“It raises so many questions,” he added.

Sizer eventually removed the post under mounting pressure from his Diocese and Britain’s Jewish lobby, but affirmed his right to freedom of speech and inquiry.

“It is essential the public become convinced of what happened before and after 9/11,” Sizer told Jewish News Online. “Inevitably the truth will upset many people if it is shown by further investigation that the official explanations are shown to be deficient.” Suppressing discussion of Israel’s role in 9/11 will only “fuel suspicion,” the outspoken preacher stressed.

Sizer is barking up the right tree, hence the frenzied reaction from Zionists and those under their sway.

Mainstream outlets such as the BBC, The Telegraph, The Daily Mirror as well as a number of overt Zionist sources piled on the principled man of god by running identical smear stories about this manufactured ‘scandal.’ The articles in question emphasize that Sizer is ‘being investigated’ for the posting, as if it is a crime to promote an article that calls attention to Israeli false flag terrorism. The hit-pieces also prominently quote a spokesman from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a thuggish Zionist hate-gang who have attacked Sizer as an ‘anti-Semite’ on numerous occasions. But none of the articles or the Israeli fifth columnists they champion addresses the evidence of Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Israel’s fingerprints do indeed appear to be all over the events of 9/11. And judging by the Zionist state’s past behaviour, it should not come as a surprise to learn that 9/11 was in some way organized by Israel’s secret agencies who have on plenty of previous occasions executed false flag attacks aimed at framing their Arab/Muslim adversaries, thereby inducing adverse reactions towards their foes from the West.

A History of Deception

At the time, Israel’s founding fathers were some of the most brutal terrorists around. Two former Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, were leaders of Jewish terrorist militias which waged a merciless insurgency against the indigenous Arabs of Palestine as well as the British colonial administrators of the land in the 1940s. Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Benzion Netanyahu, was the personal secretary for Vladimir Jabotinsky, the brains behind the bellicose ‘Revisionist’ fold within the Zionist movement which formulated the ideological framework of the Zionist militant groups who eventually besieged Palestine, destroying more than 500 Arab villages and driving out a minimum of 750,000 Palestinians in a matter of two years, from 1946 to 1948.

In 1946, two years before Israel became a state, Irgun assailants carried out an attack on the King David Hotel which housed Britain’s administrative headquarters in the Mandate of Palestine. Jewish militants under the direction of Begin disguised themselves as Arabs and planted a number of bombs hidden in milk crates in the hotel’s basement, then detonated them causing a huge explosion which leveled a good chunk of the building. Ninety-one people were killed in the blast, including dozens of British personnel. “I’m glad to have been a terrorist for liberation,” said one Jewish Irgunist in a BBC documentary about the bombing. “We didn’t mind being called terrorists then,” another former Irgun militant confessed.

A competing Zionist terrorist faction, the Stern Gang (also known as Lehi), assassinated British soldiers as well as multiple foreign diplomats and mediators such as Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte. That group, originally headed by the Jewish supremacist Avraham Stern, even proposed a military alliance with Nazi Germany in 1941, viewing Britain as a greater roadblock to a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine than Hitler’s regime which was quite happy to expedite the re-settlement of Germany’s Jews to the Middle East.

Fast-forward to 1954 – Israel again initiates a false flag conspiracy in the region, this time in Egypt. A terrorist cell of Zionist mercenaries was discovered in Cairo and Alexandria after they tried and failed to detonate incendiary devices in British and American installations. The Israeli operatives were discovered after one of the conspirators prematurely discharged an incendiary device in his pocket, leading to his arrest and the capture of the whole cabal. The Israeli terrorists later confessed to Egyptian authorities that the provocation was planned, organized and directed by Tel Aviv. The operation was intended to stymie a burgeoning British-American-Egyptian rapport and derail ongoing negotiations between Egypt and Britain which would have seen the British relinquish control of the Suez Canal, much to Israel’s displeasure. It was later dubbed the “Lavon Affair.”

Analyst Richard H. Curtiss, writing in a 1992 article for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, observed that Israel had in the works an identical subterfuge against Jordan the same year, wherein Israeli intelligence “conceived a plan to attack British personnel seconded to King Hussein’s government in Jordan.” “The purpose,” Curtiss explained, “was to sour relations between Britain and Jordan [as well as turn] both Jordan and Britain [against] Egypt, which would be blamed for such attacks.” Curtiss cited a 1979 book, The Untold History of Israel, by Israeli journalists Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel which related the story.

The Lavon Affair was not the first, nor would it be the last Israeli covert operation aimed at framing Arabs for terrorism against the West. In 1967, during the Six Day War between Israel and several Arab states, the Israeli military attacked an American surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters. Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats besieged the vessel for hours, even shooting holes in the large American flag billowing in the wind. Having scoped out the ship hours beforehand, the Israelis were well aware it was American. As a result of Israel’s heinous attack, more than 200 American sailors were dead or wounded. The motive of the blitz was to sink the Liberty, thereby preventing it from relaying messages back to Washington which could have scuttled Israeli plans to seize land from Egypt and Syria during the six-day conflict. If the ship had been successfully destroyed, Israel would have most likely attributed the attack to its Arab foes. The Israelis later captured the Sinai and Golan Heights from Egypt and Syria respectively. Unfortunately for the Israelis, the Liberty did not sink and survivors revealed Israel’s hand behind the attack.

In his books By Way of Deception and The Other Side of Deception former Mossad katsa Victor Ostrovsky revealed a litany of Israeli covert operations. One clear example of Israeli chicanery that Ostrovsky exposed was a 1986 plot codenamed ‘Operation Trojan’ which saw Mossad agents plant a transponder device on Libyan soil that relayed false coded messages making it look like the Libyan government was coordinating terrorists from their embassies worldwide to attack American targets. Simultaneously a bomb explosion rocked a Berlin nightclub frequented by US military personnel, killing two US servicemen. The Mossad deception successfully coerced a hoodwinked US President Ronald Reagan into launching air strikes on Libya, who cited the fake ‘terrorist’ transmissions emanating from a Mossad device as proof of Libyan culpability in the nightclub attack.

The Israelis are also implicated in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. An investigative report on the World Socialist Web Site entitled “Questions mount in Kenya, Tanzania bombings” detailed US/Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks. The article, authored by Martin McLaughlin, cites reports from ABC News and Haaretz which affirmed that Israeli intelligence elements caused US officials to ignore warnings of an imminent attack against the embassies. US intelligence officials looked to their Israeli colleagues to diagnose the reliability of various warnings of looming danger, but the Israelis insisted they weren’t serious, resulting in no precautions being taken to defend against an assault.

“Four months worth of tips and alert signals that the Nairobi embassy was facing a potential disastrous explosives attack were sent to Washington,” wrote Warren Hough in a report for the American newspaper The Spotlight. “But nothing was done to protect this poorly shielded facility because, on the standard operating procedure inaugurated in the Reagan era, the FBI had to turn to the Israelis for a definite evaluation of these early warnings.”

“Ignore them, it’s just another false alarm,” Mossad told their counterparts in the CIA. The imprudent Israeli advice, Hough explained in the aforesaid article, “was the key factor in persuading the U.S. to let its guard down, resulting in the loss of life of at least 250 victims including 11 Americans.”

Israel didn’t seem to believe its own counsel. According to researcher Ralph Schoenman, the first soldiers at the scene of the crime in Kenya and Tanzania “were special units of the Israeli armed forces and high level agents of the Mossad” who quickly “took control” of the bombed out sites.

Israel’s penchant for coercing America to let its guard down indicates a more sinister fraud at work, beyond an equally damning ‘let it happen’ scenario.

September 11: Israel’s ‘Hanukkah Miracle’ & the Neocons’ ‘New Pearl Harbour’

Exploiting and outright manipulating fissures between the West and the Arab/Muslim world has been a key component of Israeli strategy from the outset. And it is this artificial divide, fostered by years of Zionist subterfuges and political scheming, that lies at the core of the agenda of those truly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the primordial affair which kick started the bogus ‘war on terror’ and endless American war-making in the Middle East.

In a September 2001 interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummat, Osama bin Laden denied responsibility for the attacks, articulating that the real architects of 9/11 are “persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.” The “civilization, nation, country, or ideology” bin Laden spoke of that prospered the most from 9/11 is undoubtedly Zionism as an ideology and Israel as a country. Israel’s pugnacious leaders made that fact abundantly clear in cavalier public statements made shortly after the disaster.

The 9/11 attacks were “good for Israel” and had the effect of “[shifting] American public opinion in our favour,” announced a jubilant Benjamin Netanyahu on two separate occasions following the attacks, as quoted in Haaretz and other Israeli papers. According to Israeli journalist Aluf Benn, Ariel Sharon and his top military-intelligence advisors had proclaimed 9/11 a ‘Hanukkah miracle’ of good fortune for Israel, “coming just as Israel was under increasing international pressure because of the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.” The assault on the Twin Towers “placed Israel firmly on the right side of the strategic map with the U.S., and put the Arab world at a disadvantage,” Benn wrote in Haaretz. “That’s the impression left by the speeches given by Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy and National Security Council chairman Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, at this week’s Herzliya conference on national security.”

“Since September 11, our leaders have been euphoric,” the former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon told France’s Le Monde newspaper. “With no more international pressures on Israel, they [the Israeli leadership] think, the way is open.” Ehuk Sprinzak, a founding Dean at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, reiterated the expressions of relief and delight amongst the Zionist leadership, telling the Israeli press that 9/11 was the “most important public relations act ever committed in our favour.” On the day of 9/11, Zionist commentator and Stratfor director George Friedman expressed the view that “[t]he big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel” because the attacks will foster a closer alliance between the US and Israel as well as lead America into “a massive covert and overt war against” the Muslim world. Even Israel’s former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, told a Canadian journalist that “one of the immediate results of 9/11 was clearly a very severe backlash of international approbation of Islam in general” and that Israel “obviously benefitted” from America’s response to the atrocity.

Years before 9/11, Zionists and neocons formed a number of think tanks to promote their militarist agenda in the Middle East. The most prominent one was called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and was headed by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, two of Israel’s staunchest supporters in the US. In a September 2000 report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the neocons pontificated about the need for a “New Pearl Harbour” to actualize their war plans against Middle Eastern regimes, particularly that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Four years earlier, in 1996, several prominent American neocons, notably Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, authored a strategy paper for an Israeli think tank called the ‘Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.’ In their paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” the cadre of pro-Israel evangelists essentially called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which was an “important Israeli strategic objective” from their perspective. The Clean Break authors stipulated that ousting Hussein was needed in order to ultimately weaken Syria, and they further expressed a desire to do away with the Iranian regime, Israel’s foremost military rival in the region.

In April 2002, PNAC neocons sought to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks to expedite their agenda of Iraq’s destruction, calling on President Bush in a written plea to “support Israel” in its “war on terrorism” by accelerating “plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Israeli citizens Perle, Feith and Wurmser effectively put their wet dreams of war into practice by entering senior policy-making positions in the US administration of George W. Bush, leading the drive for the war in Iraq alongside the Israeli fifth columnist Paul Wolfowitz who in turn was a high ranking Pentagon official under Bush. Researchers fingered Feith’s ‘Office of Special Plans’ in the Pentagon as the fountainhead of disinformation and propaganda about Iraq’s non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” a devious ploy also promoted in Neocon-Zionist literature throughout the 1990s.

And who devised the ‘war on terror’? Despite popular belief among leftists, that ominous philosophy’s birthplace was not in the dysfunctional brain of George W. Bush. Rather, it first emerged at the Jonathan Institute’s ‘Conference on International Terrorism’ held in 1979 in Jerusalem. That group was spearheaded by Israeli politicians of the Likudnik persuasion, principally Benjamin Netanyahu, who endeavored to export their propagandistic memes about ‘terrorism’ to the West, hoping Western governments would do Israel’s bidding in the region. The foundry of lies and untruths sponsored by Netanyahu and his neocon minions in Washington was ultimately calculated to delegitimize Arab/Muslim resistance to Israeli imperial expansion and aggression, hence the widespread dissemination via Zionist-owned media venues of the erroneous contention that ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a unique threat facing the West. In actual fact, the biggest perpetrators and patrons of terrorist violence in the world are the Zionists, the Americans and their allies.

Unsolved Mysteries and Unanswered Questions

Writing in his informative essay “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel,” Dr. Stephen Sniegoski asserts “the ‘war on terrorism’ was never intended to be a war to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. September 11 simply provided a pretext for government leaders to implement long-term policy plans.” Indeed, the ‘war on terror’ amounted to nothing less than a ‘war of terror’ against Israel’s opponents in the Middle East, with 9/11 serving as a very conveniently timed casus belli.

And what of Israel’s Mossad, that “ruthless and cunning” agency of terror that “has the capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act,” according to a group of US Army analysts? As the Army School of Advanced Military Studies acknowledged in the aforesaid study, Israel’s proclivity for ruthlessness and deception leads many to believe that 9/11 was yet another ‘false flag’ contrivance of the master manipulators in Tel Aviv.

What really happened on that fateful day?

There are many lingering questions about Israel’s role in the attacks. An oft-cited proof of Israeli involvement is the ‘five dancing Israelis’ incident, wherein a group of five individuals, later identified by ABC News, the Jewish Forward and FBI insiders as Mossad agents, were seen by witnesses video-taping the disaster from a New Jersey rooftop, and subsequently cheering, laughing and shouting with “joy and mockery” as 3000 innocents were suffocating in the burning Twin Towers.

The suspicious crew of Israelis were arrested on that day by the NYPD, and later questioned by the FBI about possible foreknowledge of the attacks. Considering they had shown up (with a video camera) in a very convenient spot at a very opportune time of the day, just as everything went down, and outwardly expressed signs of elation rather than fear and horror, it beggars belief to suggest they didn’t know exactly when, where and how the assaults on the Twin Towers would come to pass. In fact, FBI reports partially declassified in 2005 revealed that one of the arrested Israelis named Omer Marmari told authorities that he and his compatriots were acting in a celebratory manner because the attacks would help make the world “understand” Israel’s predicament vis-à-vis the Palestinians. “We’re Israelis. We’re not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem,” Israeli Sivan Kurzburg told the NYPD upon his arrest. While in custody, another of the five Israelis named Oded Ellner remarked: “the United States will [now] take steps to stop terrorism in the world.” How did any of them know for sure who did 9/11 before any investigation had been conducted or how the US’s response to the attacks would benefit their country? Did they not only know when and where the attacks would occur, but also who would be blamed for it and the consequent direction of US foreign policy? That’s way more information than a group of self-professed ‘furniture movers’ should be privy to. The five Israeli suspects were eventually deported back to Israel without charge. In an article about the incident, journalist Christopher Ketcham quoted an anonymous CIA insider close to the investigation into the five Israelis who said “the decision to close down the investigation into the Israelis came from the White House” and that “[i]t was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11.”

And what of those 200 Israelis that Fox News reported had been arrested shortly before and after 9/11, some of whom claimed to be ‘art students’ but were in actuality Mossad spies with expertise in eavesdropping and explosives? What of the mysterious ‘truck bomb’ or ‘explosive laden van’ which was reported to have been ‘packed with explosives’ as it approached the George Washington Bridge? Why were the identities of the apprehended suspects never revealed to the public? Was it because they were Israelis and not Arabs? Is it just a coincidence that the Mossad passed along a very vague and dubious ‘warning’ to the CIA a few months before the attacks, suggesting that 200 ‘Arab terrorists’ were present on American soil and were planning a ‘major operation’? And is it not amazingly conspicuous that the Mossad linked this ‘imminent attack’ of which they had no specific information to “Osama bin Laden and Iraq,” as the UK’s Telegraph reported?

What about the ‘mural van’ that police stopped between 6th and 7th on King Street near the World Trade Center on 9/11? Surely a van with a painting depicting a plane crashing into the Twin Towers that was rented to ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ according to a Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies (MTI) report is worthy of scrutiny. If the ‘ethnic Middle Easterners’ behind such an obvious display of foreknowledge were Arabs or Muslims, surely the Zionist-influenced mass media would have reported it, and surely the Zionist-influenced US government would have included it in official reports. But nary a mention of the incident can be found in media or government reports concerning the attacks.

How do we explain the mysterious acquisition of the entire World Trade Center complex by shady New York businessman Larry Silverstein six weeks before the attacks? The Jewish real estate magnate who weirdly “felt a compelling urge” to own the worthless, asbestos-laden Twin Towers happens to be a rabid Zionist with innumerable connections to Zionist lobbies, most notably the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) under whose auspices the Zionist neocons produced the “Clean Break” regime change manifesto. On top of that, Silverstein was a ‘personal friend’ of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, and had weekly conference calls with Netanyahu. Moreover, ‘Lucky Larry’ skipped out on a routine business meeting at the top of the North Tower (the first one hit) on 9/11, claiming a ‘miraculous’ intercession by his wife who insisted he attend a ‘doctor’s appointment’ instead. Silverstein’s business partner on the murky WTC deal, Frank Lowy, is likewise an ardent Zionist Jew who fought in Israel’s ‘war of ethnic cleansing’ and chairs multiple pro-Israel think tanks in Israel itself as well as in Australia where he acts as Tel Aviv’s pro-bono ambassador.

And what of the lack of any credible evidence tying Arabs or Muslims to the attacks? What about the ‘indestructible passport’ of alleged hijacker Satam al-Suqami which miraculously escaped the cabin of the exploded plane into the North Tower, falling hundreds of feet to the ground and emerging without so much as a blemish? Why even bring a passport on a domestic flight let alone a suicide mission? What of the plethora of other eyebrow-raising FBI ‘discoveries,’ such as the inexplicable Mohammed Atta luggage filled to the brim with incriminating ‘evidence’ including Atta’s ‘al-Qaeda plans,’ Arabic-language flight training devices/videos, a Koran, etc. It is the height of credulity to believe that this luggage, which a former FBI agent told Newsday amounted to the “Rosetta stone” of the investigation, conveniently did not get loaded onto the plane and fell right into the FBI’s lap. Does that not reek of a cheesy Hollywood stage-play for the gullible public’s consumption?

What about the markedly un-Islamic theatrics of the ‘19 martyrs for Allah’ who were witnessed cavorting with strippers, taking drugs and binge drinking in bars and clubs throughout Florida and Las Vegas months before the attacks? Why would dedicated ‘jihadists’ who we are told obsessively observed Islamic laws and edicts behave in this blasphemous way shortly before a ‘martyrdom operation’? Isn’t the obvious answer that these folks weren’t real Muslims and were just pretending to be in order to create a phony ‘evidence trail’ for an equally bogus ‘al-Qaeda plot’?

Has it ever been sufficiently explained why several of the named ‘9/11 hijackers’ turned up alive and well in the Middle East, protesting their innocence, as the BBC reported? Could the fact that their passports had been lost and/or stolen in the years preceding the attacks indicate a frame-up at work? Are the CIA and Mossad not experts at stealing identities of innocent people for use on covert ops? Doesn’t Mossad have a ‘special unit’ for crafting fake passports to be used on foreign missions?

Has there ever been a credible explanation as to why most of the ‘19 hijackers’ gained entry to America through a CIA ‘fast-tracking’ VISA program run out of a US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as J. Michael Springmann revealed?

Can we explain how America’s multi-billion dollar military, intelligence and defence apparatus, which consists of a dozen or so intelligence agencies and the most sophisticated defence and spy equipment and networks the world has ever seen, was astoundingly ‘asleep at the wheel’ and ‘unable to detect’ this plot and its rather clumsy progenitors? As the former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul mused with bewilderment, “a man living in a cave inside a mountain or a peasant’s hovel” was able to orchestrate 9/11 and thereby outfox the combined military might of America and its powerful allies? “I don’t believe it,” Gul retorted.

Has it ever been properly explained how shoddy pilots who never flew commercial aircraft in their lives were able to precision guide three planes into their targets without a hiccup? How could a plane enter the Pentagon’s highly-protected and watched airspace without fighter jets intercepting it? Is it not odd that whoever was at the controls of Flight 77, or whatever actually hit the Pentagon, decided to not dive into the roof of the building, which would have been a much safer and easier-to-hit target than the façade? Is it just a coincidence that the very side of the building which was hit had just been ‘recently renovated’ with blast-walls and other upgrades so that it could endure explosive impacts with minimal damage? Is it also mere happenstance that all of the Pentagon’s top brass including Donald Rumsfeld were on the opposite side of the building, safely out of harm’s way?

Can we explain how two giant skyscrapers can collapse to the ground at nearly free fall speed, hurling hundred-ton chunks of steel structure hundreds of feet horizontally, simply from the impact of planes and a few scattered fires? Has there ever been a sufficient explanation as to how gravity can pulverize into dust large portions of two 110-story buildings? How did WTC Building 7 – the 47-story high-rise that was not hit by a plane – collapse neatly and symmetrically like a controlled demolition into its own footprint at free fall speed? Does it not defy logic, common sense and even basic laws of physics that no explosives were involved in the gravity-defying collapses of these enormous structures?

These are merely a few of the hundreds of enduring questions that have haunted the US government and its apologists for years.

It is safe to say that satisfactory answers to these very valid and logical inquires will not be forthcoming. Truth cannot prevail so long as the Neocon-Zionist clique which usurped the Bush administration and instigated the calamitous ‘war of civilizations’ by way of monstrous lies and deceit is running the show in Washington and other epicenters of power that effectively dominate the world at the present time.

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Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist who has written extensively on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. He is the co-founder of Non-Aligned Media (http://nonalignedmedia.com) and author of Hidden History and Grand Deceptions. Readers can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog at http://martinezperspective.com.

Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez

February 1, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Eight-year-old summoned to French police station for “glorifying terrorism”, two hour interrogation

By Sylvain Mouillard – Libération – 28/1/2015

A school director has filed a complaint against the father of a fourth grader. He is also supposed to have inflicted “bullying” onto the schoolboy, according to the family lawyer.

January 8th, 2015, the day after the killing at Charlie Hebdo.  In a primary school in Nice, fourth grade pupils discuss the tragedy with their schoolteacher. “Are you Charlie?”, he asks them. Ahmed, aged 8, says no. Why not? “Because they caricatured the Prophet. I am with the terrorists.”  The teacher alerts the school headmaster, who decides to summon the boy, and then his parents, who reason with their offspring. But he does not stop there. On January 21st, the head of the school, which is located in the south of the city, lodged a complaint at the police station for “glorification of terrorism”, according to the lawyer for the family of the child, Mr Sefen Guez Guez.

Contacted Wednesday evening by Libération, the Minister of Education confirmed that a complaint had been filed against the father of the child, who is supposed to have made an “intrusion” into the school premises.  And that “an alert had been sent to child protection services.”

“From there, the judicial machine is launched,” Mr Guez Guez, the lawyer defending Ahmed, explains to Libération.

Summoned on Wednesday afternoon to the police station in Nice, as part of an unofficial hearing, the child remained there for almost two hours.

What next?

The lawyer related the events in a series of tweets, under the moniker “IbnSalah” .

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah Question from OPJ [police officer in the French Criminal Investigation Department]: “What does the word terrorism mean to you ? – I don’t know.” Ahmed. 8-year-old.

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah “Did you really say that the journalists deserved to die? – It’s not true, I never said that.”

“Placing a child of 8 years in an unofficial hearing, is telling of the current state of hysteria around this notion of glorifying terrorism. In these kind of cases, pedagogy is necessary”, considers Mr Guez Guez, furious. “We do not think of leaving it there, the headmaster’s attitude is unacceptable.”  He accuses him of inflicting “bullying” onto Ahmed by “putting him in the corner” and “depriving him of recreation.”

According to the lawyer, the child also recounted having endured this remark while he was playing in the sandbox: “Stop digging, you will not find a submachine gun to kill us all with.”  Ahmed, a diabetic, had even once been deprived of taking his insulin, according to the lawyer. Contacted by Libération, the prosecutor of Nice confirmed the existence of this unofficial hearing, but did not have any further comment to make.

“In the current context, the school principal decided to report what happened to the police”, Commissioner Marcel Authier explained to the AFP [French Press Agency], noting that it is was absolutely not  a judicial complaint. “The child and his father were summoned to try to understand how a boy of 8 years could be able to make such radical statements”, said the director for the department of public safety. “Obviously, the child does not understand what he said. We do not know where he found his declarations sentiment from”, he said. The primary school, closed, could not be reached on Wednesday evening.

~

Translated by Jenny Bright, Tlaxcala


“Glorifying terrorism”: French Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the measures taken by Nice Elementary school

Politicians react after the summoning of Ahmed, 8-years-old, to the police station for having affirmed his support for the perpetrators of the “Charlie Hebdo” attack.

LIBERATION with AFPJanuary 29, 2015

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem supports the administration of the Nice Elementary School where studies Ahmed, 8, summoned to the police station yesterday for “glorifying terrorism” . The staff “responded appropriately”, the Minister of Education said this Thursday. “I say it strongly, not only has this team done well to behave as such, but its monitoring work, educational as well as social, is a useful endeavour and I thank them for it”, the Minister has insisted from the Presidential Palace where she had met with teachers, educators and associations.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem also affirmed that “when the father [of the schoolboy] came into the school facility, he had […] a brutal attitude, he even repeatedly entered without authorisation into the school building while threatening school staff.  So it is for this precise reason and for that reason only that the school director filed a complaint against the father and not against the child.

A statement which the child’s lawyer, Me Sefen Guez Guez, again challenged on his Twitter account.

[Tweet] S. Ibn Salah @najatvb Nonsense. I signed a police report that testifies to the contrary. Go ahead slandering and defaming, but the truth will always emerge.  State lie.

On the right-wing scene as well, some were keen to show their full support for the school headmaster who made the complaint against the child, as for instance Christian Estrosi, UMP mayor of Nice, where the incident occurred, and Eric Ciotti (UMP).

[Tweet] Christian Estrosi Full support for the school headmaster who courageously denounced the facts. I await justice and firmness in front of parental responsibility.

[Tweet] Eric Ciotti I wonder about the collective hysteria merely because of the unofficial hearing of a child and of his parents after alarming declarations had been uttered.

[Tweet] Eric Ciotti Child heard at Nice, the police and teachers have perfectly reacted given the context, I fully support them.

More cautious, Chantal Jouanno (UDI) has wondered, in a message on Twitter, why “no one [has been] putting their trust in the principal and the police.”

[Tweet] Chantal Jouanno Child heard at Nice with his father. No one trusts the school headmaster and the police?

The communist deputy of the mayor of Paris, Ian Brossat, has not reacted on the substance of the case but to the declarations of some right-wing members.

[Tweet] Ian Brossat Those who rejoice at an 8-year-old being summoned by justice howl when their dear Sarkozy is in custody. #Go figure it out.

As for the National Islamophobia Observatory (OIC), he was indignant: “The National Observatory against Islamophobia is indignant about the treatment inflicted on Ahmed, a child of 8 years, summoned to a police station in Nice”, writes in a statement this authority attached to the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the representative body of Islam in France. “The fight against radicalisation should not lead to mass hysteria but must be inscribed within the Republican legal framework”, said the Observatory, which calls on the Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, “to ensure that such excesses do not happen again and to give priority to dialogue in similar cases.”

On Twitter, where the hashtag #Ahmed8 was used nearly 4000 times Thursday morning, users have already taken up the case, with irony , dismay , annoyance , humour , or to express their agreement with the decision of the school headmaster.

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Source: http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/29/enfant-convoque-au-commissariat-pour-apologie-du-terrorisme-la-droite-applaudit_1191086

Translated by Jenny Bright for Tlaxcala

February 1, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canada introduces new anti-terrorism laws

Press TV – January 31, 2015

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has introduced new anti-terror laws, which significantly expands the powers of the country’s spy agencies.

The proposed legislation announced on Friday would allow anyone suspected of being involved in a terror plot to be taken into custody for up to a week without any charges.

The law would make it a felony for any person to call for a terrorist attack, even without making any specific threat.

In addition, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), would receive additional powers to track and arrest suspects, including preventing Canadian citizens from traveling abroad for terror purposes by cancelling their plane or other travel reservations.

Furthermore, authorities will have the right to remove terror-related material posted on any Canadian website.

Harper said the new law is required as militants have declared war on Canada and it would be wrong to ignore their threats.

The proposed law still has to be approved by the country’s parliament. However, the legislation is likely to be adopted as Harper’s Conservative administration holds the majority of seats in the assembly.

The legislation has drawn criticism from a number of figures including, opposition leader Tom Mulcair, who expressed concern about oversight and abuses.

Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto, also voiced concern over the proposed law, saying it has a “potential” of suppressing expression.

Harper’s proposal comes in the wake two so-called terrorism-related attacks in the capital of Ottawa and in the city of Quebec last October.

On October 22, 2014, an armed assailant, identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, killed a soldier at the country’s national war memorial in the capital and then stormed the parliament before being shot dead by police.

In another incident just two days earlier, a radicalized Quebec man, identified as Martin Couture-Rouleau, was shot dead by police after he ran down two soldiers, killing one of them, with his vehicle near a military compound.

Related:

Canada monitors all internet downloads  January 28, 2015

Canada police allowed to search phones  December 12, 2014

January 31, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment