Anger has swirled around the globe over revelations that Pegasus spyware created by Israeli software firm NSO Group has been used by governments to wiretap journalists and public figures. However, the fury is mild when compared to claims Beijing compelled Huawei to put a “backdoor” into its phones, which has never been proven.
Earlier this week, a group of news outlets including the Washington Post and Forbidden Stories, along with human rights group Amnesty International, revealed disturbing findings: governments around the globe have been buying up Pegasus spyware from NSO Group and using it to spy on journalists, public figures, and even other world leaders.
50,000 Phones Targeted
Thousands of phone numbers are on the list, with some of the biggest names including French President Emmanuel Macron and Moroccan journalists Omar Radi, both allegedly wiretapped by Morocco, and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly wiretapped by his native Saudi Arabia prior to being killed by a Saudi hit squad at the Saudi consulate in October 2019.
In all, 180 journalists were targeted in 20 countries, including Kazakhstan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Morocco, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, Egypt, Algeria, Togo, Turkey, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. They also targeted at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials, including high-level officials like cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military officers, according to The Washington Post.
Also on the list were 10 prime ministers, three presidents, and one king, including Iraqi President Barham Salih, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the prime ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco, and seven former heads of government from Lebanon, Uganda, and Belgium, and several other countries.
Shalev Hulio, NSO’s chief executive and co-founder, has cast the story as flimsy, but said the company is “investigating every allegation … and if we find that it is true, we will take strong action.”
“NSO Group’s technologies have helped prevent terror attacks, gun violence, car explosions and suicide bombings. NSO Group is on a lifesaving mission and the company will faithfully execute this mission undeterred, despite any and all continued attempts to discredit it on false grounds,” the company told the US Public Broadcasting Service.
On Wednesday, the firm put out a press release saying “enough is enough,” announcing it would cease responding to media inquiries about what it called a “vicious and slanderous campaign.”
“NSO is a technology company. We do not operate the system, nor do we have access to the data of our customers, yet they are obligated to provide us with such information under investigations,” the company added.
The Israeli government has confirmed it “approves the export of cyber products exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counterterrorism, under end use /end user certificates provided by the acquiring government. In cases where exported items are used in violation of export licenses or end use certificates, appropriate measures are taken.”
However, it denied having any knowledge of the use of Pegasus to spy on other targets, and noted to the Post that “Israel does not have access to the information gathered by NSO’s clients.”
That said, a former senior US national security official who has worked closely with the Israeli security services also told the outlet “It’s crazy to think that NSO wouldn’t share sensitive national security information with the government of Israel. That doesn’t mean they’re a front for the Israeli security agencies, but governments around the world assume that NSO is working with Israel.”
How Have Nations Reacted?
Representatives from many of the nations implicated in the investigation have unanimously denied the reports they spied on journalists, dissidents, and world figures, insisting their governments are based on the rule of law. However, it’s notable that not all of the countries where journalists were targeted have been asked for comment, with France, Spain, and the UK being notable exceptions.
Asked by The Hindu, a White House spokesperson said on Wednesday that “The United States condemns the harassment or extrajudicial surveillance of journalists, human rights activists, or other perceived regime critics.”
However, despite the admission by NSO that it sells such software and by Israel that it, at the very least, approved of each sale, and in light of comments by foreign intelligence officials that Israel likely materially benefitted from the affair by gleaning information from the group, it seems that a bigger scandal would be expected. But not a single government has demanded punishment for either NSO or Israel, or decried even the possibility that Israel helped countries wiretap people not suspected of criminal actions, or raised fears that a country’s government likely got ahold of classified information from them via illegal means.
There have been no calls for sanctions against Israel or NSO or any senior figures at NSO, or prosecutions, or frankly even acknowledgements that the affair is even happening outside of dry-mouthed condemnations. In fact, the only calls for sanctions have been by journalists themselves, such as the Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abuminah.
The reactions – and lack thereof – stand in stark comparison to how Chinese tech giant Huawei has been treated.
Huawei Crucified Without Evidence
Shenzhen-based Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of both telecommunications equipment and smartphones and a major supplier of 5G internet service. The company was started in 1987 by Ren Zhangfei, a former Chinese military engineer, although he owns less than 2% of its shares, which are owned by Huawei employees.
The US has claimed for years that Ren’s military experience and membership in the Communist Party of China make Huawei a security liability, but in 2018 a more concerted effort began aimed at forcing US military and government agencies from using products by Huawei and another Chinese phone maker, ZTE, claiming that the CPC had forced Huawei to insert a secret “back door” into its phones and networks, enabling the Chinese government to spy on users if so desired.
The company and the Chinese government have both denied that such a backdoor does or even could exist or that they would pursue one if it were possible.
“If they believe there’s a backdoor, they should offer evidence to prove it,” Huawei chairman Liang Hua challenged US intelligence in January 2019. At the time, Washington said it didn’t need to, citing Huawei’s alleged proximity to the Chinese government as sufficient proof.
However, as the US began hounding allies in Germany and the “Five Eyes” nations to drop Huawei’s technologies, it did begin providing them with evidence to support its claims – evidence London, Berlin, and Paris all said wasn’t very convincing. Still, within months each of them had either rejected bids by Huawei or suddenly found new evidence to justify falling into line with US demands.
The firm was placed on a US blacklist in 2019, requiring Americans to obtain a special license from the US Department of Commerce before doing business with Huawei, effectively banning Americans from buying Huawei’s phones, and several nations have now sanctioned Huawei as well. The company’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was also arrested in Canada in connection with charges in a US court that aren’t related to the espionage allegations but which are widely seen as further persecution of the company.
The sanctions had their effect, too: in March, a first-quarter earnings report showed its sales down 16.5% year-on, part of a trend that caused it to sell its Honor smartphone marquee last year.
Legacy of Israeli Spying on Allies
In September 2019, Politico reported that US government officials had concluded Israel was responsible for placing cell phone surveillance devices called “Stingrays” around Washington, DC, and had even used them to spy on White House communications. A former senior official used as a source for the article said the devices were likely intended to spy specifically on then-US President Donald Trump, a known lover of his iPhone.
Then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report, saying, “Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period.”
However, the claims go back much further. In 1985, US intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested, charged, and later convicted of espionage after he passed classified US Navy documents to Israel, including dirt on Israel’s Arab neighbors, for $1,500 a month.

Jonathan Pollard, U.S. Navy ID picture
Israel also spied on then-US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014 and 2015 during negotiations for what became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to reports by Der Spiegel and the Wall Street Journal.
In 2017, Le Monde revealed that Israel’s Mossad had penetrated the French intelligence directorate in what it called Operation Ratafia, with the goal of developing close relationships with fellow spies “to the point of crossing the line of turning them into double agents.”
None of these brought calls for sanctions, either, revealing how politically motivated the attacks on Huawei and other Chinese tech firms really are. Why does the West continue to tolerate the Israeli government spying on them and their citizens?
July 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | China, France, Human rights, Israel, United States |
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A police officer checks a woman’s self-certified note for being out near the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2020. © THOMAS COEX / AFP
President Macron’s announcement that citizens must adhere to a Covid-19 vaccination schedule, or pay for nose-swab tests every 2-3 days to live any semblance of a normal life, is the final nail in the coffin of civil liberties.
In the dead of summer, just a couple of days before the July 14 Bastille Day national holiday, when many French citizens had tuned out and left the big cities for some respite from a long stretch of sanitary restrictions – including months of curfews – French President Emmanuel Macron took advantage of the lull to drop a bomb on their lives that few were expecting.
From July 21, a health pass including a government QR code will be necessary for those over the age of 12 to access bars, restaurants, cinemas, gyms, swimming pools, museums, shopping centers, and any other venues capable of holding at least 50 people. Employees of these venues are included, if they want to keep their jobs.
The government will issue people a QR code to activate the pass by only two means: pricey PCR or antigenic nose-swab tests that Macron says will have to be paid out of pocket starting in October, or a full course of two jabs of the Covid-19 vaccination, which he also said will be the subject of a new round of third doses, starting in September.
What’s particularly stunning is that there is little recognition of acquired immunity – as though our immune systems are virtually useless. There is no way for someone who has recovered from Covid-19 to obtain a QR code as the result of a blood test proving the presence of adequate post-infection antibodies conferring immunity. The government considers their naturally acquired protection invalid and wants those who already have proven antibodies to take at least one dose of the vaccine.
The system does allow those who have a QR code from a positive Covid-19 PCR test up to six months old to obtain the health pass, after which they are then expected to take the shot as well – all this despite ample research indicating lasting immunity in previously infected individuals.
By shoehorning everyone into just two government-defined camps – compliant vaccinated individuals who will be allowed to live normally, and the unvaccinated non-compliant who will be denied access, despite the fact that both are capable of catching and transmitting the disease – it feels like the public health crisis is being used to implement a new dystopian system that permits tracking of everyone who wants to participate in everyday life.
And, as of September 15, healthcare workers who aren’t fully vaccinated “won’t be able to work and won’t be paid,” according to health minister Olivier Veran.
So much for France’s motto of “Liberty, equality, fraternity.” Liberty no longer exists when the government decides with a flash of a QR code generated at its whim whether you can live normally or not.
And while Macron was adamant about maintaining solidarity and equality among citizens by not singling out either the most vulnerable fatsos or the elderly for restrictions at the height of the pandemic – choosing instead to lock down the entire country – he now has no qualms about treating Covid victims with natural immunity, and those who simply don’t think that vaccination is the right decision for them, as second-class citizens who can rot at home with no access to daily life.
Fraternity? Pitting the vaccinated against the anti-vaccinated – with Macron treating the former as the ‘good’ citizens and the other as the ‘bad’ in his official narrative – has been adopted far too easily and uncritically by many. These people fail to see that vaccination status is a false dichotomy that effectively herds every single citizen into a single camp: those with a QR code issued and mandated by the government. It just so happens that those who refuse the QR code have to be unvaccinated by definition. Therefore, anyone who is resistant to the implementation of this new government tracking system should oppose any attempt to divide society by personal medical decisions and support individual choice of all – including the unvaccinated.
This destruction of fundamental freedoms is all the more striking at a time when Covid deaths and hospitalizations are incredibly low. First this crisis was about saving the hospitals, then it was about saving lives, then it became about reducing cases, and now that sound you hear are the goalposts being dragged again to make it all about preventing some potential future event.
It all seems like a system is now being implemented that will last well beyond Covid-19. If that thought doesn’t wake up the French, who last hit the streets en masse for months on end to protest a rise of a few cents in the price of gas, then it’s because the government they so distrusted has now successfully managed to co-opt and neutralize them.
Now is the time to take a stand against this continuing erosion of our freedoms. But how many French are even still awake?
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com
July 14, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, France, Human rights |
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On Friday last, the historic city of Tours in France opened its annual fair. It’s normally a very big deal. This year is even more special as the fair celebrates its centenary. However, organisers and traders were shocked on Friday, when hardly anyone turned up.
Attendees and staff were told that they would need a “sanitary pass” to attend. To get a pass, a visitor or worker needed to show proof of vaccination or take a PCR test at the entrance. Throughout Friday, the fair was a ghost town and only 4 per cent of the staff had shown up.
Panic ensued. Traders, having spent thousands of euros for their pitches started screaming bloody murder. Others started buying and selling products among themselves. It was grim. Punters were walking away in their thousands. No-one wanted anything to do with the PCR tests piled high at the entrances.
At the 11th hour, the city backed down and all restrictions were lifted. The traders had been bombarding the local authority all day with texts and emails, threatening retribution if the sanitary pass wasn’t kicked to the kerb.
The city blinked and the fair was mobbed over the rest of the weekend. The PCR tests are still rotting at the entrances. The people of Tours stood up.
Vive La France! That’s the way it’s done. That’s people power. The French never let you down. Let it be a lesson to the businesses of the UK and Ireland.
We are sick to the back teeth of this scamdemic. We want our lives back. We want to frequent shops, theaters, cafés, cinemas, bars and restaurants again. We’ll fill your tills.
Just remember, whether we have been jabbed or not is none of your business. Same goes for face muzzles. The ball is now firmly in your court. I can’t wait to see you again.
July 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | COVID-19 Vaccine, France, Human rights |
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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has rejected a case brought by the widow and daughter of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat requesting it reopen an investigation into his 2004 death.
After unsuccessful lawsuits in French courts, Suha and Zahwa Arafat filed a criminal complaint to the ECHR in 2017 claiming the former Palestinian Authority (PA), PLO and Fatah president had been the victim of premeditated murder.
However, in a ruling issued yesterday, the ECHR said there had been no infringement of the right to a fair hearing and the complaint was “manifestly ill-founded”.
The court unanimously declared the complaint inadmissible, according to the Guardian.
Three judges said that after reviewing the case, “at all stages of the proceedings, the applicants, assisted by their lawyers, had been able to exercise their rights effectively”.
“Judges did not appear to have reached arbitrary conclusions based on the facts before them and their interpretation of the evidence in the file or the applicable law had not been unreasonable,” they added.
In 2015, French judges closed an investigation into claims Arafat was murdered, without bringing any charges. The French court of appeal upheld the dismissal of the case, leading the former leader’s family to take their case to the ECHR.
The couple married secretly in Tunisia in 1990, when Suha was 27 and Arafat 61. Their daughter Zahwa was born five years later.
On 11 November 2004, Arafat died in France, under highly suspicious circumstances, at the age of 75. Until now, doctors have been unable to determine the exact cause of his death.
The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly insisted that Israel is behind his death, claims Tel Aviv denies.
July 2, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | ECHR, France, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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France’s junior defense minister Genevieve Darrieussecq has denied her country engaged in a “state cover-up” to conceal the extent of the impact of nuclear tests conducted by the country in the Pacific between 1966 and 1996.
Speaking following the conclusion of a two-day roundtable meeting, Darrieussecq declared that “there was no state cover-up,” rejecting allegations France sought to conceal the extent of the fallout from the nuclear tests, and ruling out any official apology.
The event had been arranged by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to confront the legacy of the 193 nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in the Pacific Ocean, between 1966 and 1996. The sites remain inaccessible to this day and only 63 civilians have received compensation for being exposed to radiation from the tests.
Earlier this year, after examining thousands of declassified documents about the nuclear tests, an investigation by media outlet Disclose claimed that “French authorities have concealed the true impact of nuclear testing.”
Macron personally attended the meeting on Thursday but he did not issue a public statement about the event or the allegations around France’s actions.
Edouard Fritch, the president of French Polynesia, expressed disappointment at the reluctance of Paris officials to make amends for the nuclear tests or to acknowledge the full scale of the impact. “We felt that the president of the republic had a real desire to turn this painful page for all of us, with the resources that will need to be put in place in the future, so that Polynesians can rebuild the faith that we have always had in France,” Fritch said, after the two-day event.
Previously, France has accepted that the tests did have some “impact,” with then-president Francois Hollande recognizing the effect it had on the health of residents and the regional environment. However, he defended the decision to conduct the tests, claiming “France would not have nuclear weapons and therefore would not have a nuclear deterrent” without them.
July 2, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | France, Polynesia |
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The Council of Europe’s human rights body has stated that it is “extremely concerned” about the treatment of prisoners in French jails and police stations, warning that people in custody have been “deliberately beaten.”
In a report released on Thursday, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) stated that it is “extremely concerned about the material conditions of detention” in France after conducting periodic visits to the country in December 2019.
While the fact-finding mission did not expressly accuse France of mistreating prisoners, it highlighted reports of people in custody being “deliberately beaten,” as well as racism and homophobia and threats of violence with weapons.
The CPT’s investigation raised alarm at overcrowding in French cells, highlighting how occupancy rates in some prisons exceed 200%, with the visit finding 1,500 prisoners sleeping on mattresses on the floor. The situation led authorities to call for “urgent measures” to be implemented, including providing a bed and at least 4 m² of living space for each prisoner.
The human rights body reported additional concerns about the effect confinement has on the mental health of those placed in solitary confinement, as well as the treatment of those suffering from psychiatric disorders. The CPT described the process of transferring individuals with mental health issues to hospital as “unacceptable,” forcing them to be escorted in “shackles.”
Indictment of French execs for supporting African dictatorships exposes Paris’ hypocrisy & double-dealingThe French government responded to the report by claiming that the conditions have been improved following the 2019 inspection, stating that the prison population has been reduced since March 2020 due to the Covid outbreak.
A second report is expected to be released following a visit to detention facilities in Strasbourg in July 2020, addressing the state of the health measures that were put in place by authorities to protect prisoners during the global pandemic.
June 24, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | France, Human rights |
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PARIS – France will create a government agency to monitor “disinformation” coming from abroad, the head of the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security said on Wednesday.
Stephane Bouillon assured lawmakers that the agency would be tasked with flagging online threats coming from abroad, rather than gathering intelligence, correcting information or establishing truth.
“There are countries, organizations that are hostile to France … that exaggerate and spread disinformation … That’s something to work on,” Bouillon said in parliament.
The agency will employ 40 to 60 people who will trawl through open sources online for clues on disinformation that could set off an “information pandemic.”
The agency will be tested during the German legislative elections in September and an independence referendum in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in December.
June 3, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | France |
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Russia’s energy giant Novatek said on Wednesday it has inked 20-year agreements with the shareholders of its Arctic LNG 2 project on the sale and purchase of the entire volume of liquified natural gas.
The LNG sales from the plant’s first liquefaction train are planned to commence in 2023, according to the company.
The agreements “provide for LNG supplies from Arctic LNG 2 on FOB Murmansk and FOB Kamchatka basis with pricing formulas linked to international oil and gas benchmarks. The LNG offtake volumes are set in proportion to the respective participants’ ownership stakes in the project,” Novatek said.
The company’s chairman of the management board, Leonid Mikhelson, said that “The long-term offtake agreements between Arctic LNG 2 and its participants ensure the future revenue stream from LNG sales and de-risks the project. This represents one of the most important milestones in attracting the project’s external financing that will be completed in 2021.”
Mikhelson said earlier that the Arctic LNG 2 plant is 39% complete and will be launched as planned.
Arctic LNG 2 envisages constructing three LNG liquefaction trains of 6.6 million tons per annum each, as well as cumulative gas condensate production capacity of 1.6 million tons per annum. The total LNG capacity of the three liquefaction trains will be 19.8 million tons. The first train of Arctic LNG 2 is 53% ready and is scheduled to start operations in two years.
Novatek owns the majority stake (60%) in the project, with minority stakes held by foreign companies. The list of foreign investors includes French oil and gas company Total (10%), Chinese firms CNPC (10%) and CNOOC (10%), and the Japanese consortium of Mitsui and JOGMEC (10%).
April 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics | China, France, Japan, Russia |
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The 25th Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the OPCW was held in the Hague on 20-22 April. During this session, France presented a draft resolution, which provides for the suspension of the rights and privileges of Syria in the organisation due to the alleged violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by Damascus. Members of the organisation adopted the resolution by a majority vote.
“At the 25th conference of the participating States that ended in The Hague, an anti-Syrian resolution on the deprivation of Syria of its rights and privileges was adopted. This means that Damascus is deprived of the right to vote at sessions of the highest governing body, the conference; it cannot be elected to the executive board of the organization, and also to any of its other subsidiary bodies, the Syrians will be denied access to posts in the technical secretariat,” Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said.
He noted that this was the first such precedent on The Hague site when a state party was declared a persistent violator of the CWC and sanctions were applied against it.
“And this is done by falsifying facts, massive propaganda, blackmail and twisting arms of some countries to ensure the necessary voting results on the relevant documents. To our great regret, this is what the OPCW is turning into. All this is done by the efforts of the United States, France, the United Kingdom and others. countries that do not cease to nurture plans to remove the government of Bashar Assad, which they hate, from the political arena,” the permanent representative emphasized.
Opponents of official Damascus, by their actions to advance geopolitical interests, are destroying the OPCW and leading it to collapse, he added.
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception | France, Israel, OPCW, Russia, Syria, UK, United States |
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Europe can’t soft-pedal a sanitary techno-dictatorship while claiming to protect people from abuse by AI. Pick a lane, hypocrites.
The EU is proposing to regulate AI and facial recognition in the interest of privacy, while pushing ahead with an intrusive scheme that would strongarm citizens into disclosing private medical data through digital certificates.
This week, when logging into the French government’s TousAntiCovid smartphone application – a one-stop shop for everything Covid-19 related, including the latest statistics, news and self-certification forms to be out and about after the 7pm curfew – French citizens discovered a new feature had been quietly added: “My wallet: Your test certificates will be available here,” it reads.
The addition is detailed in the app as an “experiment in progress, only on some flights to Corsica” via Air France and Air Corsica – both of which are controlled in part by the French government through a 29% stake in Air France-KLM, making the state the company’s single largest shareholder.
“To digitize your test certificates and always have them at hand, it’s simple: once the result of your test is available, you will receive a text message with a link and instructions to follow,” according to the new feature. A button below the message can be clicked to activate the user’s camera and scan the QR code of a Covid-19 PCR test.
In an interview earlier this month with CBS News, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “we are building a European certificate to facilitate the travels after these restrictions between the different European countries with testing and vaccination. And the idea indeed is altogether to offer that to the American citizen when they decided to vaccinate or with a PCR test being negative.”
The royal ‘we’ is a reference to the European Union, which has also claimed to be working on a bloc-wide certificate. Hypocritical EU officials also introduced a proposal this week to regulate facial recognition and other artificial intelligence, lest any such technology risk violating personal privacy – kind of like the EU is working on doing with its scheme to have people disclose private medical information to anyone demanding it, under the guise of sanitary nanny statism.
The beta test that has just creeped up on the French government’s anti-Covid app for use on the airline it controls is a little toe dipped into the water of a potentially massive, privacy-breaching tsunami.
At what point do people start to rebel, to send the government the message that state intrusion into the most intimate aspects of their personal life – in this case their medical history – has gone too far? When the government asks for vaccination and antibody certificates to be uploaded? When it expands the program beyond use by Air France to other airlines? When it goes beyond air travel to everyday venues? When a hacker breaches the system and accesses sensitive information? When health insurers start demanding QR codes to Covid-19 related testing in order to reassess the cost of people’s premiums?
French people are known for taking to the streets at the slightest provocation. The now defunct Yellow Vest movement, a casualty of Covid-19 era mass gathering bans, initially ignited over a mere gas tax increase. The creeping sanitary authoritarianism evidenced by the recent Covid app update isn’t as alarming to people as a gas tax because it’s being soft-pedalled, introduced too incrementally to provoke a backlash. No one really cares right now if you need a negative PCR test scanned into your phone to board a plane to Corsica, except the relatively few people going there. And that’s not enough to raise a ruckus.
But the government is deliberately calling it an ‘experiment in progress’ for a reason. It obviously isn’t going to end there. Macron said as much to CBS News. He’s also creating a false dichotomy. Macron is suggesting that the certificates – which he has previously said would be optional (unless you want to leave the house, I guess) – would allow the virus to be controlled, while lifting domestic restrictions and allowing international tourism to resume. The alternative is to be forced to maintain restrictions.
But look, the restrictions will end when we, the people, say they will. And far too many citizens have yet to wake up to that fact.
The insecurity of governments regarding their capacity to contend with a virus, or terrorism, or any other perceived threat, isn’t our personal problem. And it certainly shouldn’t be a reason to invade people’s private lives without a court ordered warrant.
Demanding that everyone provide a Covid test as proof of sanitary ‘innocence’ is radically dystopian. If people want to be vaccinated, that’s their choice. If they don’t, then that’s their choice, too. They may choose to take their chances on catching Covid, and developing natural immunity.
The schizophrenic EU and its member states, like France, which constantly claim that personal privacy is a non-negotiable core value, need to pick a lane. Is Europe going to be a technology-enabled sanitary dictatorship? Or are you going to protect us from creeping fascism? Pick one. Because you can’t have both.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com
April 23, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, France, Human rights |
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Syria has been stripped of most of its rights at the global chemical weapons watchdog for alleged breaches. The OPCW stands accused of suppressing facts reported by its own inspectors in Syria for political purposes.
The vote to penalize Syria took place on Wednesday at the conference of the states that are parties to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Syria was punished for allegedly violating the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), of which the OCPW is the guardian, based on reports by the special Investigation and Identification Team (IIT).
The penalties were imposed at the proposal of France and backed by Western nations who helped pass it overwhelmingly by 87 to 15, with 34 abstentions out of 136 countries taking part.
The mechanism was created last year and was authorized to name perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks. It has on several occasions accused Syria of CWC infractions. Damascus sees the IIT as a “propaganda tool” used by countries seeking to topple its government, and says its reports cannot be considered scientific, as a Syrian representative said at the conference prior to the vote.
The concern is shared by some other countries, including Russia and China. The Chinese representative reminded on Wednesday that the IIT has remarkably less rigorous standards for collecting evidence than the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) did. The JIM was tasked with investigating incidents of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria before the ITT.
“The IIT, instead of conducting on-site investigations, gave credence to samples provided by the so-called ‘non-government organizations,’ heeded the opinions of the so-called ‘external experts’ and interviewed the so-called ‘witnesses in third countries’,” Ambassador Jian Tan said, stressing that the work of the IIT went beyond the mandate under the CWC and couldn’t guarantee impartiality of the results.
Skepticism about the IIT and the OPCW in general has been growing among member states since 2019, when the organization was accused of covering up evidence discovered by its own inspectors after an incident in the Damascus suburb of Douma, which happened in April 2018. The US, the UK and France swiftly responded to the highly-publicized incident with retaliatory missile attacks against Syria.
The watchdog’s final report in 2019 all but accused Damascus of dropping chlorine gas canisters on the area as part of its effort to capture it from jihadist forces. But several whistleblowers came up after the report’s release with documents and testimonies indicating a different scenario.
They said the evidence collected by a JIM mission on the ground pointed to possible staging of the scene to blame the Syrian army. The OPCW allegedly suppressed the contradictory evidence and brought in external experts, who helped it arrive at the conclusions favorable to the three countries, which launched the strikes at Syria.
The OPCW leadership responded to the allegations by painting the whistleblowers as rogue elements disgruntled at the organization and ignoring calls for a rigorous scientific examination of how the final report on Douma was penned. Western governments and media treat their testimonies as a conspiracy theory peddled by Russia.
However this attempt to brush aside the dissenting voices seems to be hurting OPCW’s credibility. Earlier this month, members of the UN Security Council held an informal meeting to discuss the issue, and during the events India for the first time openly criticized the watchdog’s recent Syria reporting issued under the IIT mechanism.
As an OPCW state party, India expects the organization to conduct “impartial, credible and objective investigation into any use of chemical weapons,” in line with the convention principles, Indian envoy K. Nagaraj Naidu said. “The current report falls short of these expectations”.
The report in question details three alleged chemical weapons attacks in the town of Ltamenah in March 2017, which the IIT attributed to the Syrian Air Force. It updates an earlier version explaining OPCW’s findings, which was released last year and which New Delhi didn’t publicly comment on.
India was among the countries that voted against the creation of the IIT, citing its concerns over ‘mandate creep’. It abstained in July 2020, when the OPCW Executive Council voted to condemn Syria for IIT-reported use of chemical weapons.
Syria joined the OPCW in 2013 and declared massive stockpiles of chemical weapons, which were subsequently destroyed. The move was taken after Washington said it was considering military action against Syria after an alleged chemical weapons attack. The OPCW received the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Syria into the CWC fold.
April 21, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | France, OPCW, Syria, UK, United States |
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As discussed in part two of this series, the war in Vietnam did not start on its official date, November 1st, 1955, but rather 1945 when American clandestine operations were launched in Vietnam to “prepare the ground”.
- Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy and was a former Col. in the U.S. Air Force, goes over in his book “The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy,” how the CIA was used to instigate psy-ops and paramilitary (terrorist) activities in Vietnam to create the pretext required for an open declaration of war and for the entry of the U.S. military into a twenty-year-long meat grinder.
This was a strategy reserved not just for Vietnam, but had become the general U.S. foreign policy in all regions that were considered threats to the Cold War Grand Strategy, as seen under the directorship of the Dulles brothers (See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series).
Any country that was observed to hold views that were not aligned with U.S. foreign policy could not simply be invaded in most scenarios, but rather, the ground would need to be prepared to create the justification for a direct military invasion.
This is one of the roles of the CIA which abides by the motto “fake it till you make it.”
Don’t have an actual ‘enemy’ to fight and justify your meddling into another country’s affairs? Not a problem. Just split your paramilitary team into “good guys” and “bad guys” and have them pretend fight. Go village to village repeating this action-drama and you will see how quickly the word will spread that there are “dangerous extremists” in the area that exist in “great numbers.”
Prouty described this paramilitary activity, which is called “Fun and Games,” and how this tactic was also used in the Philippines, resulting in the election of Ramon Magsaysay who was declared a hero against a non-existing enemy. In fact, the Filipino elite units that were trained by the CIA during this period were then brought into Vietnam to enact the very same tactic.
Prouty writes:
“I have been to such training programs at U.S. military bases where identical tactics are taught to Americans as well as foreigners. It is all the same… these are the same tactics that were exploited by CIA superagent Edward G. Lansdale [the man in charge of the CIA Saigon Military Mission] and his men in the Philippines and Indochina.
This is an example of the intelligence service’s ‘Fun and Games.’ Actually, it is as old as history; but lately it has been refined, out of necessity, into a major tool of clandestine warfare.
Lest anyone think that this is an isolated case, be assured that it was not. Such ‘mock battles’ and ‘mock attacks on native villages’ were staged countless times in Indochina for the benefit of, or the operation of, visiting dignitaries, such as John McCone when he first visited Vietnam as the Kennedy appointed director of central intelligence [after Kennedy fired Allen Dulles].”
What Prouty is stating here, is that the mock battles that occurred for these dignitaries were CIA trained agents “play-acting” as the Vietcong… to make it appear that the Vietcong were not only numerous but extremely hostile.
If even dignitaries can be fooled by such things unfolding before their own eyes, is it really a wonder that a western audience watching or reading about these affairs going on in the world through its mainstream media interpreter could possibly differentiate between “reality” vs a “staged reality”?
Not only were the lines between military and paramilitary operations becoming blurred, but as Prouty states in his book, the highest ranking officers who were operating and overseeing the Vietnam situation were all CIA operatives, not only within the U.S. military but including the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge.
Prouty writes:
“U.S. Ambassador Lodge – had since 1945 been one of the most important agents of the OSS and later the CIA in the Far East. His orders came from that agency.”
Prouty goes further to state in his book that Lodge was brought into the role as Ambassador on August 26th, 1963 specifically to remove Ngo Dinh Diem President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), who was seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict at that point.
Ngo Dinh Diem was killed two months after Lodge’s arrival in Vietnam, on November 1st, 1963. Twenty one days later John F. Kennedy who was in the process of pulling out American troops from Vietnam, was assassinated. The Vietnam War continued for 12 years more, with the Americans having nothing to show for it. And in 1976, the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh city.
A “Legacy of Ashes”
The militarization of government began to return power to the corporate elite, as captains of industry and finance moved into key government posts. The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.
Eisenhower wished to establish U.S. supremacy while avoiding another large-scale shooting war as well as the imperial burdens that had bankrupted Great Britain (to which the U.S. now did its bidding under NSC-75). By leveraging the U.S. military’s near monopoly on nuclear firepower, the president hoped to make war an unthinkable proposition for all American adversaries.
The problem with Eisenhower’s strategy was that by keeping Washington in a constant state of high alert, he empowered the most militant voices in his administration. Eisenhower had made the grave error of choosing Foster Dulles as one of his close if not closest advisers, and thus whether he liked it or not, Allen Dulles – I doubt Eisenhower ever had a free moment from the poisoned honey that was constantly being dripped into his ear.
The line between CIA and military became increasingly blurred, as military officers were assigned to intelligence agency missions, and then sent back to their military posts as “ardent disciples of Allen Dulles,” in the words of Prouty, who served as a liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA between 1955 and 1963.
Approaching the end of his presidency, in May 1960, President Eisenhower had planned to culminate a “Crusade for Peace” with the ultimate summit conference with USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Paris. It was Eisenhower’s clear attempt to finally push forward an initiative that was his own and which did not receive its “blessing” by Foster. If Eisenhower were to succeed in this, it would move to dissolve the Cold War Grand Strategy and remove the justification for a military industrial complex.
In preparation for the summit, the White House had directed all overflight activity over communist territory to cease until further notice. Yet on May 1st, 1960, a high flying U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers left Pakistan on a straight-line overflight of the Soviet Union en route to Bodo, Norway, contrary to the Eisenhower orders.
The U-2 crash landed in Sverdlovsk, Russia. Amongst the possessions found in the plane, were of all things, identification of Powers being a CIA agent, something highly suspect for an intelligence officer to be carrying during a supposed covert mission.
The incident was enough to cancel the peace summit, and the “Crusade for Peace” was bludgeoned in its cradle.
Rumours abounded quickly thereafter that it was the Soviets who shot down the plane, however, it was Allen Dulles himself, who gave testimony before a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U-2 spy plane had not been shot down but had descended because of “engine trouble.” (1) This important statement by Dulles was largely ignored by the press.
Later, Eisenhower confirmed in his memoirs that the spy plane had not been shot down by the Soviets and had indeed lost engine power and crash-landed in Russia.
Prouty suspected that the “engine failure” may have been induced by a pre-planned shortage of auxiliary hydrogen fuel and that Powers’ identification items were likely planted in his parachute pack. With only a certain amount of fuel and a straight line trajectory, it would have been easy to calculate exactly where Powers would be forced to make a landing.
Prouty suspected that the CIA had intentionally provoked the incident in order to ruin the peace conference and ensure the continued reign of Dulles dogmatism.
Interestingly, the man who was in charge of the Cuban exile program, Richard Bissell (deputy director of plans for the CIA), was the same man who ran the U-2 program and who, according to Prouty ostensibly sent the Powers flight over the Soviet Union on May 1st, 1960.
Richard Bissell, who was most certainly acting upon the orders of Dulles, was among the three (Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA and Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA) who were fired by Kennedy as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or more aptly put for their act of treason.
On Jan. 5th, 1961, during a meeting of the National Security Council, a frustrated and worn down President Eisenhower, put on public record just weeks before Kennedy was to assume office, that the CIA under Dulles, had robbed him of his place in history as a peacemaker and left nothing but “a legacy of ashes for his successor.”
All Eisenhower had left of his own was his farewell address, which he made on Jan. 17th, 1961, where he famously warned the American people of what had been festering during his eight-year presidential term:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
A Phoenix Rising
Eisenhower may have left a legacy of ashes for his predecessor, but out of those ashes would emerge a force that would come to directly challenge the rule of the “power elite”. (2)
In April 1954, Kennedy stood up on the Senate floor to challenge the Eisenhower administration’s support for the doomed French imperial war in Vietnam, foreseeing that this would not be a short-lived war. (3)
In July 1957, Kennedy once more took a strong stand against French colonialism, this time France’s bloody war against Algeria’s independence movement, which again found the Eisenhower administration on the wrong side of history. Rising on the Senate floor, two days before America’s own Independence Day, Kennedy declared:
“The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile – it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism. Thus, the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.” (4)
In September 1960, the annual United Nations General Assembly was being held in New York. Castro and a fifty member delegation were among the attendees and had made a splash in the headlines when he decided to stay at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem after the midtown Shelburne Hotel demanded a $20,000 security deposit. He made an even bigger splash in the headlines when he made a speech at this hotel, discussing the issue of equality in the United States while in Harlem, one of the poorest boroughs in the country.
Kennedy would visit this very same hotel a short while later, and also made a speech:
“Behind the fact of Castro coming to this hotel, [and] Khrushchev… there is another great traveler in the world, and that is the travel of a world revolution, a world in turmoil… We should be glad [that Castro and Khrushchev] came to the United States. We should not fear the twentieth century, for the worldwide revolution which we see all around us is part of the original American Revolution.” (5)
What did Kennedy mean by this? The American Revolution was fought for freedom, freedom from the rule of monarchy and imperialism in favour of national sovereignty. What Kennedy was stating, was that this was the very oppression that the rest of the world wished to shake the yoke off, and that the United States had an opportunity to be a leader in the cause for the independence of all nations.
On June 30th, 1960, marking the independence of the Republic of Congo from the colonial rule of Belgium, Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese Prime Minister gave a speech that has become famous for its outspoken criticism of colonialism. Lumumba spoke of his people’s struggle against “the humiliating bondage that was forced upon us… [years that were] filled with tears, fire and blood,” and concluded vowing “We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.”
Shortly after, Lumumba also made clear, “We want no part of the Cold War… We want Africa to remain African with a policy of neutralism.” (6)
As a result, Lumumba was labeled a communist for his refusal to be a Cold War satellite for the western sphere. Rather, Lumumba was part of the Pan-African movement that was led by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah (who later Kennedy would also work with), which sought national sovereignty and an end to colonialism in Africa.
Lumumba “would remain a grave danger,” Dulles said at an NSC meeting on September 21, 1960, “as long as he was not yet disposed of.” (7) Three days later, Dulles made it clear that he wanted Lumumba permanently removed, cabling the CIA’s Leopoldville station, “We wish give [sic] every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility resuming governmental position.” (8)
Lumumba was assassinated on Jan. 17th, 1961, just three days before Kennedy’s inauguration, during the fog of the transition period between presidents, when the CIA is most free to tie its loose ends, confident that they will not be reprimanded by a new administration that wants to avoid scandal on its first days in office.
Kennedy, who clearly meant to put a stop to the Murder Inc. that Dulles had created and was running, would declare to the world in his inaugural address on Jan. 20th, 1961, “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
And so Kennedy’s battle with the Leviathan had begun.
La Resistance
Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, Kennedy was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.
The Bay of Pigs set-up would occur three months later. Prouty compares the Bay of Pigs incident to that of the Crusade for Peace, both events were orchestrated by the CIA to ruin the U.S. president’s ability to form a peaceful dialogue with Khrushchev and decrease Cold War tensions. Both presidents’ took onus for the events respectively, despite the responsibility resting with the CIA. However, Eisenhower and Kennedy understood, if they did not take onus, it would be a public declaration that they did not have any control over their government agencies and military.
Further, the Bay of Pigs operation was in fact meant to fail. It was meant to stir up a public outcry for a direct military invasion of Cuba. On public record is a meeting (or more aptly described as an intervention) with CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell, Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, and Navy Chief Admiral Burke basically trying to strong arm President Kennedy into approving a direct military attack on Cuba. Admiral Burke had already taken the liberty of positioning two battalions of Marines on Navy destroyers off the coast of Cuba “anticipating that U.S. forces might be ordered into Cuba to salvage a botched invasion.” (9) (This incident is what inspired the Frankenheimer movie “Seven Days in May.”)
Kennedy stood his ground.
“They were sure I’d give in to them,” Kennedy later told Special Assistant to the President Dave Powers. “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well they had me figured all wrong.” (10)
Incredibly, not only did the young president stand his ground against the Washington war hawks just three months into his presidential term, but he also launched the Cuba Study Group which found the CIA to be responsible for the fiasco, leading to the humiliating forced resignation of Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell. (For more on this refer to my report.)
Unfortunately, it would not be that easy to dethrone Dulles, who continued to act as head of the CIA, and key members of the intelligence community such as Helms and Angleton regularly bypassed McCone and briefed Dulles directly. (11) But Kennedy was also serious about seeing it all the way through, and vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
* * *
There is another rather significant incident that had occurred just days after the Bay of Pigs, and which has largely been overshadowed by the Cuban fiasco.
From April 21-26th, 1961, the Algiers putsch or Generals’ putsch, was a failed coup d’état intended to force President de Gaulle (1959-1969) not to abandon the colonial French Algeria. The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré had started with the anti-colonial National Liberation Front (FLN).
On January 26th, 1961, just three months before the attempted coup d’état, Dulles sent a report to Kennedy on the French situation that seemed to be hinting that de Gaulle would no longer be around, “A pre-revolutionary atmosphere reigns in France… The Army and the Air Force are staunchly opposed to de Gaulle…At least 80 percent of the officers are violently against him. They haven’t forgotten that in 1958, he had given his word of honor that he would never abandon Algeria. He is now reneging on his promise, and they hate him for that. de Gaulle surely won’t last if he tries to let go of Algeria. Everything will probably be over for him by the end of the year—he will be either deposed or assassinated.” (12)
The attempted coup was led by Maurice Challe, whom de Gaulle had reason to conclude was working with the support of U.S. intelligence, and Élysée officials began spreading this word to the press, which reported the CIA as a “reactionary state-within-a-state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control. (13)
Shortly before Challe’s resignation from the French military, he had served as NATO commander in chief and had developed close relations with a number of high-ranking U.S. officers stationed in the military alliance’s Fontainebleau headquarters. (14)
In August 1962 the OAS (Secret Army Organization) made an assassination attempt against de Gaulle, believing he had betrayed France by giving up Algeria to Algerian nationalists. This would be the most notorious assassination attempt on de Gaulle (who would remarkably survive over thirty assassination attempts while President of France) when a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the president’s car, which managed to escape the ambush despite all four tires being shot out.
After the failed coup d’état, de Gaulle launched a purge of his security forces and ousted General Paul Grossin, the chief of SDECE (the French secret service). Grossin was closely aligned with the CIA, and had told Frank Wisner over lunch that the return of de Gaulle to power was equivalent to the Communists taking over in Paris. (15)
In 1967, after a five-year enquête by the French Intelligence Bureau, it released its findings concerning the 1962 assassination attempt on de Gaulle. The report found that the 1962 assassination plot could be traced back to the NATO Brussels headquarters, and the remnants of the old Nazi intelligence apparatus. The report also found that Permindex had transferred $200,000 into an OAS bank account to finance the project.
As a result of the de Gaulle exposé, Permindex was forced to shut down its public operations in Western Europe and relocated its headquarters from Bern, Switzerland to Johannesburg, South Africa, it also had/has a base in Montreal, Canada where its founder Maj. Gen. Louis M. Bloomfield (former OSS) proudly had his name amongst its board members until the damning de Gaulle report. The relevance of this to Kennedy will be discussed shortly.
As a result of the SDECE’s ongoing investigation, de Gaulle made a vehement denunciation of the Anglo-American violation of the Atlantic Charter, followed by France’s withdrawal from the NATO military command in 1966. France would not return to NATO until April 2009 at the Strasbourg-Kehl Summit.
In addition to all of this, on Jan. 14th, 1963, de Gaulle declared at a press conference that he had vetoed British entry into the Common Market. This would be the first move towards France and West Germany’s formation of the European Monetary System, which excluded Great Britain, likely due to its imperialist tendencies and its infamous sin City of London.
Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson telegrammed West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer directly, appealing to him to try to persuade de Gaulle to back track on the veto, stating “if anyone can affect Gen. de Gaulle’s decision, you are surely that person.”
Little did Acheson know that Adenauer was just days away from singing the Franco-German Treaty of Jan 22nd, 1963 (also known as the ÉlyséeTreaty), which had enormous implications. Franco-German relations, which had long been dominated by centuries of rivalry, had now agreed that their fates were aligned. (This close relationship was continued to a climactic point in the late 1970s, with the formation of the EMS, and France and West Germany’s willingness in 1977 to work with OPEC countries trading oil for nuclear technology, which was sabotaged by the U.S.-Britain alliance. For more on this refer to my paper.)
The Élysée Treaty was a clear denunciation of the Anglo-American forceful overseeing that had overtaken Western Europe since the end of WWII.
On June 28th, 1961, Kennedy wrote NSAM #55. This document changed the responsibility of defense during the Cold War from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would have (if seen through) drastically changed the course of the war in Vietnam. It would also have effectively removed the CIA from Cold War operations and limited the CIA to its sole lawful responsibility, the coordination of intelligence.
The same year that de Gaulle and Adenauer were forming a pact to exclude Britain from the Commons Market, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 on June 4, 1963, effectively bypassing the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on controlling U.S. currency for the first time since the private central bank was created in 1913. This executive order authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue silver backed notes and “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury”.
By Oct 11th, 1963, NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy (16), was released and outlined a policy decision “to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963” and further stated that “It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965.” The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY ’65.
With the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, likely ordained by the CIA, on Nov. 2nd, 1963 and Kennedy just a few weeks later on Nov. 22nd, 1963, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 on Nov. 26th, 1963 to begin the reversal of Kennedy’s policy under #263. And on March 17th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.
The Vietnam War would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy’s death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans, and 30 years if you count American covert action in Vietnam.
The Last Days of Kennedy
By Germany supporting de Gaulle’s exposure of the international assassination ring, his adamant opposition to western imperialism and the role of NATO, and with a young Kennedy building his own resistance against the Federal Reserve and the imperialist war of Vietnam, it was clear that the power elite were in big trouble.
There is a lot of spurious effort to try to ridicule anyone who challenges the Warren Commission’s official report as nothing but fringe conspiracy theory. And that we should not find it highly suspect that Allen Dulles, of all people, was a member of this commission. The reader should keep in mind that much of this frothing opposition stems from the very agency that perpetrated crime after crime on the American people, as well as abroad. When has the CIA ever admitted guilt, unless caught red-handed? Even after the Church committee hearings, when the CIA was found guilty of planning out foreign assassinations, they claimed that they had failed in every single plot or that someone had beaten them to the punch.
The American people need to realise that the CIA is not a respectable agency; we are not dealing with honorable men. It is a rogue force that believes that the ends justify the means, that they are the hands of the king so to speak, above government and above law. Those at the top such as Allen Dulles were just as adamant as Churchill about protecting the interests of the power elite, or as Churchill termed it, the “High Cabal.”
Interestingly, on Dec. 22nd, 1963, just one month after Kennedy’s assassination, Harry Truman published a scathing critique of the CIA in The Washington Post, even going so far as to state “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position [as a] free and open society, and I feel that we need to correct it.” (17)
The timing of this is everything.
As Prouty has stated, anyone with a little bit of free time during an afternoon could discover for themselves that the Warren Commission was an embarrassingly incompetent hodge-podge, that conducted itself as if it were a done deal that Oswald killed Kennedy and was disinterested in hearing anything contrary to that narrative.
Not only did the record of Oswald’s interrogation at the Dallas Police Department go up in smoke, likely because he was making the inconvenient claim that he was a “patsy,” but his nitrate test which proved that he never shot a rifle the day of Nov. 22nd, 1963, was kept secret for 10 months and was only revealed in the final report, (18) which inexplicably did not change the report’s conclusion that Oswald shot Kennedy.
During Garrison’s trial on the Kennedy assassination (1967-1969) he subpoenaed the Zapruder film that had been locked up in some vault owned by Life magazine (whose founder Henry Luce was known to work closely with the CIA (19)). This was the first time in more than five years that the Zapruder film was made public. It turns out the FBI’s copy that was sent to the Warren Commission had two critical frames reversed to create a false impression that the rifle shot was from behind.
When Garrison got a hold of the original film it was discovered that the head shot had actually come from the front. In fact, what the whole film showed was that the President had been shot from multiple angles meaning there was more than one gunman.
This was not the only piece of evidence to be tampered with, and includes Kennedy’s autopsy reports.
There is also the matter of the original autopsy papers being destroyed by the chief autopsy physician, James Humes, to which he even testified to during the Warren Commission, apparently nobody bothered to ask why…
In addition, Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney at the time who was charging Clay Shaw as a member of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, besides uncovering his ties to David Ferrie who was found dead in his apartment days before he was scheduled to testify, also made a case that the New Orleans International Trade Mart (to which Clay Shaw was director), the U.S. subsidiary of Permindex, was linked to Kennedy’s murder.
Garrison did a remarkable job with the odds he was up against, and for the number of witnesses that turned up dead before the trial…
This Permindex link would not look so damning if we did not have the French intelligence SDECE report, but we do. And recall, in that report Permindex was caught transferring $200,000 directly to the bankroll of the OAS which attempted the 1962 assassination on de Gaulle.
Thus, Permindex’s implication in an international assassination ring is not up for debate. In addition, the CIA was found heavily involved in these assassination attempts against de Gaulle, thus we should not simply dismiss the possibility that Permindex was indeed a CIA front for an international hit crew.
In fact, among the strange and murderous characters who converged on Dallas in Nov. 1963 was a notorious French OAS commando named Jean Souetre, who was connected to the plots against President de Gaulle. Souetre was arrested in Dallas after the Kennedy assassination and expelled to Mexico. (20)
Col. Clay Shaw was an OSS officer during WWII, which provides a direct link to his knowing Allen Dulles, and thus we come around full circle.
After returning from Kennedy’s Nov. 24th funeral in Washington, de Gaulle and his information minister Alain Peyrefitte had a candid discussion that was recorded in Peyrefitte’s memoire “C’était de Gaulle,” the great General was quoted saying:
““What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me… His story is the same as mine. … It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS [Secret Army Organization] story. The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.
…Security forces are all the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.
America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”
April 3, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Africa, CIA, France, JFK Assassination, United States |
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