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Thatcher Wanted to Infest Peru With Coca-Eating Moths: New Docs

teleSUR | December 30, 2016

Margaret Thatcher wanted to eradicate cocaine in Peru with moths, according to newly-released documents, which also reveal the then-British government’s top-secret strategy in combating acid house parties and soccer hooligans.

Her peer in the Labour Party, Lord Victor Rothschild, suggested in 1989 that to tackle drug production in Peru, “One might think of aerial sprays, with or without the connivance of the government concerned; and various other methods of introduction, covert as well as overt.”

The moth, Eloria noyesi, is known for its exclusive diet of the coca plant. “While virtually everyone agrees that those who take cocaine or crack, in the various ways available, should be punished, everyone, I think, agrees that it is the ‘drug baron’ who must be mercilessly ‘put down,’” Rothschild also added.

Thatcher found the “most intriguing idea” to be “characteristically brilliant” and an “ingenious solution,” she responded in a letter released Friday by the National Archives in Kew.

However, the plan was never executed because it lacked cooperation from the Peruvian government.

Other declassified documents describe plans to allow law enforcement to attack anti-nuclear “demonstrators or terrorists” and “as a last resort, open fire to prevent a perceived threat of sabotage not only to nuclear warheads but also to the submarine.”

Multiple documents also detail moves against soccer hooligans with the aim of “excluding troublemakers from football grounds,” who represent “a serious blemish on our society” that are “destroying the game as family entertainment.”

Another signature fight from Thatcher revealed in the documents is her war on Acid House parties, the 1980s’ underground equivalent of raves. Private correspondence claims her uncle was “very disturbed” by the parties and that police had a “feeling of collective anger and helplessness” when they were unable to shutdown the raves.

January 1, 2017 Posted by | Environmentalism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia Attacks Vermont?

By Stephen Lendman | January 1, 2017

Sound absurd? It is, part of intense Russia bashing, a political and economic assault, risking something more serious.

On New Year’s eve, the neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post published an updated version of its previous fake news story.

The earlier version claimed Russian hackers penetrated the US electric grid – a Big Lie. The new version says it hacked a Vermont utility, citing the usual unnamed US sources – another Big Lie.

WaPo : “(T)he discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. And it raises fears in the US government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.”

Fact: As usual, when it comes to bashing Russia, claims aren’t backed by verifiable evidence, just fear-mongering hyperbole – media scoundrels like WaPo repeating it without due diligence checking for veracity.

Russia poses no threat to any country – not to America, its electricity grid, Vermont or any other state, city or federal operation.

Claiming it was fake news like all other anti-Russia accusations, not a shred of evidence supporting them.

Claiming “(a) code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility” was willful deception.

Cybersecurity specialists said the code wasn’t Russian. It was an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool. On Friday, Burlington Electric said the malware code was detected during a single laptop scan not connected to its power grid.

A company statement said “(w)e took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding.”

“Our team is working with federal officials to trace this malware and prevent any other attempts to infiltrate utility systems. We have briefed state officials and will support the investigation fully.”

Blaming Russia for hyped incidents is the usual knee-jerk response, part of longstanding bashing, ongoing now to pressure Trump against normalizing ties, including cooperating with Putin in combating terrorism.

A report on the Vermont incident by cybersecurity firm Wordfence said alleged originating IP addresses provided by US agencies “don’t appear to provide any association with Russia.” They’re “probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors.”

Vermonters can relax. So can Americans in the other 49 states. The Russians aren’t coming. No Russian cyber or other attacks loom.

Claims otherwise are fabricated for political reasons – not legitimate ones.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

January 1, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Skeptical Climate Scientists Coming In From the Cold

By James Varney | RealClearInvestigations | December 31, 2016

In the world of climate science, the skeptics are coming in from the cold.

Researchers who see global warming as something less than a planet-ending calamity believe the incoming Trump administration may allow their views to be developed and heard. This didn’t happen under the Obama administration, which denied that a debate even existed. Now, some scientists say, a more inclusive approach – and the billions of federal dollars that might support it – could be in the offing.

“Here’s to hoping the Age of Trump will herald the demise of climate change dogma, and acceptance of a broader range of perspectives in climate science and our policy options,” Georgia Tech scientist Judith Curry wrote this month at her popular Climate Etc. blog.

William Happer, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is similarly optimistic. “I think we’re making progress,” Happer said. “I see reassuring signs.”

Despite harsh criticism of their contrarian views, a few scientists like Happer and Curry have pointed to evidence that global warming is less pronounced than predicted. They have also argued that this slighter warming would bring positive developments along with problems. For the first time in years, skeptics believe they can find a path out of the wilderness into which they’ve been cast by the “scientific consensus.” As much as they desire a more open-minded reception by their colleagues, they are hoping even more that the spigot of government research funding – which dwarfs all other sources – will trickle their way.

President-elect Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax,” has chosen for key cabinet posts men whom the global warming establishment considers lapdogs of the oil and gas industry: former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run the Energy Department; Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma to run the Environmental Protection Agency; and Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

But while general policy may be set at the cabinet level, significant and concrete changes would likely be spelled out below those three – among the very bureaucrats the Trump transition team might have had in mind when, in a move some saw as intimidation, it sent a questionnaire to the Energy Department this month (later disavowed) trying to determine who worked on global warming.

It isn’t certain that federal employees working in various environmental or energy sector-related agencies would willingly implement rollbacks of regulations, let alone a redirection of scientific climate research, but the latter prospect heartens the skeptical scientists. They cite an adage: You only get answers to the questions you ask.

“In reality, it’s the government, not the scientists, that asks the questions,” said David Wojick, a longtime government consultant who has closely tracked climate research spending since 1992. If a federal agency wants models that focus on potential sea-level rise, for example, it can order them up. But it can also shift the focus to how warming might boost crop yields or improve drought resistance.

While it could take months for such expanded fields of research to emerge, a wider look at the possibilities excites some scientists. Happer, for one, feels emboldened in ways he rarely has throughout his career because, for many years, he knew his iconoclastic climate conclusions would hurt his professional prospects.

When asked if he would voice dissent on climate change if he were a younger, less established physicist, he said: “Oh, no, definitely not. I held my tongue for a long time because friends told me I would not be elected to the National Academy of Sciences if I didn’t toe the alarmists’ company line.”

That sharp disagreements are real in the field may come as a shock to many people, who are regularly informed that climate science is settled and those who question this orthodoxy are akin to Holocaust deniers. Nevertheless, new organizations like the CO2 Coalition, founded in 2015, suggest the debate is more evenly matched intellectually than is commonly portrayed. In addition to Happer, the CO2 Coalition’s initial members include scholars with ties to world-class institutions like MIT, Harvard and Rockefeller University. The coalition also features members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorology Society, along with policy experts from the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute and Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

With such voices joining in, the debate over global warming might shift. Until now, it’s normally portrayed as enlightened scholars vs. anti-science simpletons. A more open debate could shift the discussion to one about global warming’s extent and root causes.

Should a scientific and research funding realignment occur, it could do more than shatter what some see as an orthodoxy stifling free inquiry. Bjorn Lomborg, who has spent years analyzing potential solutions to global warming, believes that a more expansive outlook toward research is necessary because too much government funding has become expensive and ineffective corporate welfare. Although not a natural scientist, the social scientist Lomborg considers climate change real but not cataclysmic.

“Maybe now we’ll have a smarter conversation about what actually works,” Lomborg told RealClearInvestigations. “What has been proposed costs a fortune and does very little. With more space opening up, we can invest more into research and development into green energy. We don’t need subsidies to build something. They’ve been throwing a lot of money at projects that supposedly will cut carbon emissions but actually accomplish very little. That’s not a good idea. The funding should go to universities and research institutions; you don’t need to give it to companies to do it.”

Such new opportunities might, in theory, calm a field tossed by acrimony and signal a détente in climate science. Yet most experts are skeptical that a kumbaya moment is at hand. The mutual bitterness instilled over the years, the research money at stake, and the bristling hostility toward Trump’s appointees could actually exacerbate tensions.

“I think that the vast ‘middle’ will want and seek a more collegial atmosphere,” Georgia Tech’s Curry told RealClearInvestigations. “But there will be some hardcore people (particularly on the alarmed side) whose professional reputation, funding, media exposure, influence etc. depends on cranking up the alarm.”

Michael E. Mann, another climate change veteran, is also doubtful about a rapprochement. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and author of the “hockey stick” graph, which claims a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century, believes ardently that global warming is a dire threat. He concluded a Washington Post op-ed this month with this foreboding thought: “The fate of the planet hangs in the balance.” Mann acknowledges a brutal war of words has engulfed climate science. But in an e-mail exchange with RealClearInvestigations, he blamed opponents led by “the Koch brothers” for the polarization.

Mann did hint, however, there may be some room for discussion.

“In that poisonous environment it is difficult to have the important, more nuanced and worthy debate about what to do about the problem,” he wrote. “There are Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bob Inglis and George Shultz trying to create space for that discussion, and that gives me hope. But given that Donald Trump is appointing so many outright climate deniers to key posts in this administration, I must confess that I – and many of my fellow scientists – are rather concerned.”

Neither side of the debate has been immune from harsh and sinister attacks. Happer said he stepped down from the active faculty at Princeton in part “to deal with all this craziness.” Happer and Mann, like several other climate scientists, have gotten death threats. They provided RealClearInvestigations with some of the e-mails and voice messages they have received.

“You are an educated Nazi and should hang from the neck,” a critic wrote Happer in October 2014.

“You and your colleagues who have promoted this scandal ought to be shot, quartered and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families,” one e-mailed Mann in Dec. 2009.

Similar threats have bedeviled scientists and writers across the climate research spectrum, from Patrick Michaels, a self-described “lukewarmer” who dealt with death threats at the University of Virginia before moving to the Cato Institute, to Rajendra Pachauri, who protested anonymous death threats while heading the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Putting such ugliness aside, some experts doubt that the science will improve even if the Trump administration asks new research questions and funding spreads to myriad proposals. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who has long questioned climate change orthodoxy, is skeptical that a sunnier outlook is upon us.

“I actually doubt that,” he said. Even if some of the roughly $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars currently spent on climate research across 13 different federal agencies now shifts to scientists less invested in the calamitous narrative, Lindzen believes groupthink has so corrupted the field that funding should be sharply curtailed rather than redirected.

“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up,” he said. “Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”

The field is cluttered with entrenched figures who must toe the established line, he said, pointing to a recent congressional report that found the Obama administration got a top Department of Energy scientist fired and generally intimidated the staff to conform with its politicized position on climate change.

“Remember this was a tiny field, a backwater, and then suddenly you increased the funding to billions and everyone got into it,” Lindzen said. “Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science.”

January 1, 2017 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

20 Years Ago Today: Clinton’s Response to California’s Legalization of Medical Marijuana

By Fred Gardner | CounterPunch | December 30, 2016

On December 30, 1996, 20 years ago today, less than two months after Bill Clinton was returned to the White House and California voters passed Proposition 215, CNN broadcast a press conference at which Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, flanked by Attorney General Janet Reno and Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, reiterated the Clinton Administration’s opposition to the medical use of marijuana. Alan Leshner of the National Institute of Drug Abuse was there, too.

The key visual element was a large chart on an easel to the speakers’ right. The heading read “Dr. Tod Mikuriya’s, (215 Medical Advisor) Medical Uses of Marijuana:” (sic content and punctuation). Twenty-six conditions were listed in two columns of 13. One of the conditions was misspelled — “Migranes.” Another, “Writer’s Cramp,” simply does not appear in the extensive list of conditions Mikuriya had advised Cannabis Buyers Clubs to be tracking.

(Fake news is hardly news at all.)

The day after the press conference, med student Mark Tanaka and I drove up the hairpin curves to interview Dr. Mikuriya at his house in the Berkeley Hills. Flashback 20 years to an account in the Anderson Valley Advertiser of Mikuriya’s response:

Mikuriya, a 63-year-old psychiatrist, calls the McCaffrey chart “a crude dirty trick —the kind of disinformation the U.S. military put out during the Vietnam War. Only in this case the ‘enemy’ is the people of California.”

As Shalala gazed Vannalike at the chart and nodded agreement, McCaffrey told the media, “This isn’t medicine, this is a Cheech and Chong show.” The drug czar warned that the use of marijuana violated federal law and would lead to reprisals, including the loss of prescription-writing privileges for any doctor who recommended it to patients. Reno said that prosecutors would focus on doctors who were “egregious” in recommending marijuana.

Mikuriya felt directly threatened. In a New Year’s Day interview at his home in the rain-drenched Berkeley hills, he analyzed the set-up. “As doctors become more fearful, I’ll obviously get more and more patients who are using cannabis or are considering it. Will that make it seem that there’s something ‘egregious’ about my practice?”

Tod Mikuriya, MD, is a graduate of Reed College and the Temple University School of Medicine. He practices psychiatry in Oakland. (His office is in the grand old Claremont Hotel.) He has been studying the effects of marijuana since 1966, when he directed the first-ever National Institute of Mental Health research project on the forbidden herb. He is considered a leading authority on the pre-prohibition medical literature. In recent years Mikuriya has served as medical advisor to Cannabis Buyers Clubs in San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Marin County, and has interviewed several hundred members.

After Proposition 215 won at the polls in November, Mikuriya prepared what he calls “a protocol for buyers clubs,” asking staffers to collect data on efficacy and dosage from as many members as possible. The Oakland club and several others immediately adopted Mikuriya’s protocol. It lists 62 conditions which Mikuriya figures people may now be treating with marijuana. “If the data from these people is not properly compiled,” Mikuriya warns, “a historic opportunity will have been lost.”

Mikuriya says he sent a copy of his proposed buyers club protocol to McCaffrey in mid-November, hoping that the Clinton Administration would view the election results as a sign to rethink its prohibitive approach to medical marijuana use. “What’s saddest and most ominous,” Mikuriya said, “is that the Director of the Drug Control Office and the Attorney General are not willing to challenge this new law on the basis of what it says. They could have chosen a condition that they consider to be in some gray area—say, insomnia, or colitis—and questioned the appropriateness of marijuana as a treatment. But instead they chose to make up some ludicrous falsehoods. I suppose I should take it as a sign that they understand the weakness of their position.”

Mikuriya has retained Gordon Brownell, a St. Helena attorney who likens his client’s situation to the plight of Richard Jewell after the FBI revealed that he was suspected of planting a bomb at a park near the Olympics last summer. “In that case the government had a defense of sorts,” Brownell observes, “in that Jewell actually was a suspect, and the Atlanta Journal found out and printed it. But in this case we have a chart created at the White House for the apparent purpose of misleading the public and shaming a physician.”

Where It Came From

The chart was prepared for McCaffrey by an aide in the Office of Drug Control Policy named David Des Roches. No jokes, please, he’s heard them all. Des Roches his source was a version of Mikuriya’s “Marijuana Medical Handbook,” available on the Internet. The 10-page document includes “every use in recorded history of marijuana for medical purposes,” Des Roches said in a Jan. 3 phone interview with your correspondent

Des Roches defends the identification of Mikuriya as “215 Medical Advisor” because, as advisor to the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, Mikuriya has had a working relationship with Dennis Peron, the initiative’s primary organizer. “Back here in Washington,” Des Roches explained, “we see Prop 215 and the Cannabis Buyers Club as one and the same, the link being Mr. Peron.”

Des Roches is a West Point graduate who spent nine years as an Army officer before taking early retirement. His title in the Drug Czar’s office is “Special Assistant for Strategy;” his informal role is “the Internet specialist.” Des Roches says he culled conditions from Mikuriya’s “Handbook” with an eye towards “showing how ludicrous some of them were.” Of the reference to “writer’s cramp,” Des Roches adds “I had to show that one to General McCaffrey because nobody believed it.”

Des Roches’s chart transforms the voice and tense in which Mikuriya’s “Handbook” was drafted. For example, Des Roches’s entry “Recalling ‘forgotten memories’” is shortened from Mikuriya’s “John Stuart Mill suggested using cannabis for the recall of forgotten memories.”

Des Roches’s “Corn Removal” derives from Mikuriya’s “Concentrated cannabis resin is topical anesthetic. Applied directly to a nerve, the electrical impulses are inhibited. It was mentioned as used on dental cares for treatment of pain. Prior to removal from the market it was combined with salicyclic acid, a proteotic agent, and collodion to keep it in place for callus removal on feet.”

Upon learning the origins of McCaffrey’s chart, Mikuriya said, “There was nothing in that document to suggest that I was recommending marijuana as a treatment for any given condition. The effect, and probably the intent, was to hold me up to ridicule before the whole country. The whole world.” Mikuriya has drafted a letter to McCaffrey demanding an apology. “I want my name cleared at a press conference as widely covered as the original press conference,” Mikuriya asserts. “And I want to hear an apology from Director McCaffrey himself.”

Attorney Brownell commented, “When Pierre Salinger said it was friendly fire that brought down TWA flight 800, the federal government and all the pundits reminded everyone that the Internet was a notorious source of misinformation. Now they take something off the Internet, change it, and use it to humiliate a physician who has actually spent years studying the literature and collecting data on this subject. It’s outrageous.”

San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan expressed extreme disappointment over the Clinton Administration’s strategy. “It’s as if Dan Lungren had designed their response,” Hallinan said Jan. 4. “Apparently they want to make buyers clubs illegal, period.” On Monday, Jan. 13 Hallinan plans to announce protocols developed by the city Health Department under which buyers clubs can operate legally in this city “in the interests of harm reduction.”

Dennis Peron’s line on the McCaffrey press conference: “Good publicity for Cheech and Chong. On Jan. 8 the founder and maitre ‘d of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club returns to Superior Court to argue that the passage of Proposition 215 changes the law under which his Market Street establishment was ordered closed back in early August, and that he should be allowed to reopen forthwith. Judge David Garcia will have read the briefs from each side and will rule from the bench after hearing some more from Peron’s attorney, J. David Nick, and a lawyer from Attorney General Lungren’s staff. Ever the optimist, Peron has announced plans to begin registering members Jan. 15, and to reopen the club under a new name, “The Phoenix,” on Jan. 20.

PS December 30, 2016: In a classic example of liberal “triangulation,” Clinton’s DOJ filed civil suit to close down six Bay Area dispensaries, including Dennis Peron’s San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club and Jeff Jones’s Oakland Club. If only Clinton had said “The people of California have sent the government a message, they want  to  allow the medical use of marijuana. We’ll be watching closely to see what impact this new approach might have on public health and safety…’ the Democrats would not have lost the White House in 2000 —or 2016.  But they were and are in thrall to Big PHARMA.

Fred Gardner is the managing editor of O’Shaughnessy’s. He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com

December 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Democrats’ year-end moves seem like revenge on Trump for winning – Russian FM spokeswoman

Democrats’ year-end moves seem like revenge on Trump for winning – Russian FM spokeswoman

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova © Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik
RT | December 31, 2016

The new punitive measures imposed on Russia by the outgoing US administration seem to be an attempt to take revenge on Republican Donald Trump for winning the presidency, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has noted.

“The outgoing administration isn’t giving up on its attempts to worsen bilateral relations, not understanding that they can’t get any worse,” Zakharova said in an interview with RIA-Novosti.

“Honestly, there is a feeling that the Democratic team is just trying to take revenge on Trump for his victory, making plainly absurd decisions a month before his inauguration,” she said.

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman cited the Obama administration’s plans to supply MANPADS to Syrian militants, which Washington still see as a tool to remove Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, as an example of such “absurd decisions.”

Earlier in December, Congress added a provision to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that will allow the US to send shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to rebel factions in Syria, where Russia is providing air support for the government forces fighting terrorist groups.

The Democratic camp’s claims that Trump was “Russia’s candidate” and received support from the Kremlin are just “elements in the information war,” Zakharova said, while stressing “they aren’t true.”

When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump established themselves as the main contenders for the White House, “it became clear that one of the candidates was building her campaign on anti-Russian rhetoric,” she said.

“There were no pro-Russian candidates, but one Russophobic candidate,” with Clinton and the Democrats making the “demonization of Russia” one of main focal points of their foreign policy, the spokeswoman explained.

“Of course, it would be impossible [for Moscow] to rejoice over the victory of a person who proclaimed the downfall of Russia as her main foreign policy goal. But even in this scenario, Clinton’s win would have been perceived as a choice of the American people,” Zakharova said.

The Foreign Ministry representative expressed the belief that “all preconditions are in place” for relations between Russia and the US to be restored.

Russia is ready to work with “any team” in the White House, as Moscow understands the necessity of resolving the deadlock that occurred under the Obama administration, she said.

“We are waiting for the new administration to arrive at the White House, and then we will be ready to work with them,” Zakharova stressed.

Trump’s inauguration as America’s 45th president is scheduled for January 20, 2017.

On Thursday, the Obama administration levied a new round of sanctions on Moscow, saying they were being imposed because of what it called “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election.”

As a result, 35 Russian diplomats were expelled from the US, and nine Russian entities, including the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) and the FSB (Federal Security Service), were added to Washington’s blacklist. In addition, two Russian diplomatic leisure compounds in New York and Maryland were closed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow will not respond in kind to the new US restrictions and will instead “make further moves to restore Russian-American relations based on the policies that the administration of President-elect Donald Trump adopts.”

Following the announcement of the latest measures, Zakharova said she hoped that the new sanctions would be “the last weird and unwise decision” of the outgoing American administration aimed at spoiling Russian-American relations.

Read more:

96 Russians forced to leave US over diplomat expulsion – FM spokeswoman

Zakharova: ‘Obama team are foreign policy losers, humiliate Americans with anti-Russia sanctions’

‘White House sanctioning own children now?’ Moscow blasts CNN’s ‘false’ US school closure report

December 31, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s report on alleged Russian hacks fails to satisfy critics

Press TV – December 31, 2016

A report issued by American intelligence services, which claims Russia was behind hacks of the 2016 US presidential election, has failed to satisfy critics who say the Obama administration has no proof Moscow tried to interfere in the vote.

In a joint analysis issued on Thursday, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided technical details about the tools and cyber infrastructure they said Russian civilian and military intelligence services used for the hack attack, code named Grizzly Steppe.

The document said the cyberattack was carried out to “compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the US election, as well as a range of US government, political, and private sector entities.”

But the critics have turned down the 13-page report, saying it is far from the “proof” that they have called for.

“What they released doesn’t add anything to the discussion [about attribution],” said Rob Lee, founder of the critical infrastructure cybersecurity company Dragos.

Security experts say the technical data provided by the agencies is a very basic footprint pointing to Russian intruders, but it often turns out to be a “false positive”.

“What they released is what we would consider to be the lowest form of indicators of compromise,” Lee said.

According to security experts, the technical indicators the US agencies have released in the report are very weak, and it doesn’t achieve what the government says is the purpose of the document.

“Said more simply: the written portion of the report has little to nothing to do with the intended purpose or the technical data released,” Lee said in a blog post.

Some intelligence experts, however, have pointed out that the report’s sketchy attribution is most likely intentional, and its purpose is preventative, not persuasive.

“That [the DHS/FBI report] doesn’t engage with the question of attribution seems, to me, to be quite deliberate,” said Matt Tait, founder of the United Kingdom-based security consultancy Capital Alpha Security.

“Its purpose is to act as a measure against Russia — by adding a US stamp of approval to private sector information, and making life harder for [Russia] by exposing some of their malware — not to persuade the public that the DNC hack was by Russia,” he stated.

“I suspect that this document will go into more detail about what the US knows about Russian interference in the 2016 election, although even this I suspect won’t satisfy skeptics,” Tait said.

President-elect Donald trump has denied that Russia was involved in the cyber interference, and the Obama administration has been under pressure to provide evidence.

Moscow has rejected the US accusations as “unfounded,” and vowed to retaliate.

The White House said in a statement on Thursday that there was the consensus from the US Intelligence Community that Russia’s intervention in the US election via cyberhacking as “unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

Republican Senator John McCain on Thursday called Russia’s alleged cyberattacks against political organizations an “act of war.”

McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing for next week on foreign cyberattacks targeting the US, which will also focus on Russian hacking.

December 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Historic Moment for Iran and Russia

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By Eric Walberg | American Herald Tribune | December 31, 2016

On January 1, 1988, just a year and a half before he passed away on June 3, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini made a historic move, reaching out the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, in a gesture of anti-imperialist solidarity, despite the long hiatus in relations with communist Russia. This was at a time of war against Iraq and continued subversion of Iran by the US and Israel.

Ayatollah Khomeini made other prescient gestures in his short and difficult decade as the leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran; in the first place, the transfer of the Israeli embassy to Palestinian representatives, the canceling of recognition of Israel, and the inauguration of al-Quds Day as an annual international holiday on the last Friday of Ramadan. He met with Fidel Castro and other third world leaders, encouraging solidarity against the imperialist foe.

The unprecedented visit of the Iranian delegation to Moscow was a sincere offer of support to the faltering Soviet leader, who had rejected the atheism of the Soviet past. It contrasts with the treatment of the supposedly friendly US to Russia, which was at the same time conspiring to subvert the Soviet Union, even as Gorbachev was sincerely reaching out to the hawkish Reagan, offering a generous plan of world nuclear disarmament. The Ayatollah’s warning not to trust the West was being brought home to Gorbachev graphically as the last Soviet troops were retreating into Uzbekistan in 1988. Despite the unilateral withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the US was continuing to arm the insurgents, killing those doomed soldiers as they crossed the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge, built in 1982. Imperialism takes no prisoners.

Iran played no part in the US-backed ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s that brought the collapse of the Soviet Union. Iranian leaders knew that nothing good would come from working in alliance with America.

The Ayatollah knew this well, and was alarmed at the naiveté of Gorbachev. The Ayatollah warned in his letter that the western world was an “illusory heaven”, that appeared seductive. But the truth lies elsewhere. “If you hope, at this juncture, to cut the economic Gordian knots of socialism and communism by appealing to the center of western capitalism, you will, far from remedying any ill of your society, commit a mistake which those to come will have to erase. For, if Marxism has come to a deadlock in its social and economic policies, capitalism has also bogged down, in this as well as in other respects though in a different form.”

Gorbachev was offended and objected. “This invitation is an interference in the internal issue of a country. Because every country is free for selecting its school of thought.” He took the Ayatollah’s sincere advice as interference, rather than friendly concern. “Imam Khomeini invited us to Islam; do we have to invite him to our school of thought?”

History has proved the fears that the Ayatollah expressed justified. Gorbachev was standing on the edge of the abyss. Sadly, he scoffed at the ability of the Ayatollah to see the danger and to want to help him. But it was too late by then. Gorbachev had lost control, thinking he was handing power to the people, not recognizing that such a wish was an illusion. The disaster of the collapse of the Soviet Union will reverberate for generations to come, as the Ayatollah predicted.

Gorbachev was operating on a different wavelength when he received the letter from the Ayatollah, trying to cozy up to Israel and the US, again, naively thinking goodwill gestures would be reciprocated. He opened the doors to the emigration of Soviet Jews in 1988 and prepared to renew full diplomatic relations with Israel. At the same time Gorbachev promised Arafat during a state visit that year that the Soviet Union would recognize an independent Palestinian state if proclaimed, naively hoping that Israel would show gratitude for his generosity by negotiating a genuine peace with the Palestinians. Arafat declared independence in November 1988 and got Soviet recognition the next year, but it was not much consolation. Israel was busy setting up consular offices in Moscow and elsewhere, issuing eventually a million visas to Soviet Jews to come to Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews got instant Israeli citizenship and emigrated, many of them settling illegally in the Occupied Territories, nominally part of a Soviet-recognized Palestinian state. By the end of 1991 when full diplomatic relations with Israel were restored, over 325,000 Soviet Jews had emigrated. Gorbachev’s hope to bring a quick peace to the Middle East were dashed as he was ousted from power, leaving the PLO abandoned and Israel stronger than ever. Just as the Zionists had hoodwinked Stalin into recognizing Israel, they once again hoodwinked a Soviet leader into re-recognizing it. Instead of increasing Soviet/Russian influence by this dual recognition, all influence was lost, the Palestinians were hurt by the Soviet betrayal, while the Israelis welcomed a million new Jewish immigrants.

Gorbachev’s trust was betrayed by both the US and Israel; the Soviet Union collapsed as Soviet Jews fled to the illusory western heaven. The world logically expected a new era free of the threat of war, a peace dividend that would improve the lot of people everywhere, ensuring that the material imperative behind war was eliminated. But the triumph of empire has never led to an end to empire, and strengthening empire has never led to improving the lot of the periphery.

This was clear in the centuries of imperialism, where the periphery was impoverished at the expense of the center. There was no reason to believe a new Great Game of empire could be any different, even Bush I’s postmodern variant, with the US firmly in control. Indeed, the impoverishment of all who are not part of the center/periphery elite has only accelerated.

Today, the US continues to work with the Saudis to destabilize the Iran-Iraq ‘Shia arc’ replaying the endgame against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, this time with clandestine operations being carried out by the US, Saudis and Israelis—all jealous of Iran’s increasing influence in the Middle East.

US support for Islamists continues to haunt the region, notably Syria and Iraq, even as US power ebbs. Following the uprisings in the Arab world in early 2011, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev suggested that the revolts in the Arab world were sparked by outside forces scheming to undermine Russia. “I won’t call any names but a whole range of countries, even those we have friendly relations with, have nevertheless been involved in terrorism in the [Russian] Caucasus.”

In the ideological vacuum created by the collapse of communism, two Russian ideologies have arisen—Atlantism and Eurasianism, both with roots in the nineteenth century, the latter, a geopolitical reaction to the decadence of the West, articulated persuasively by Nikolai Trubetskoi and Lev Gumilev in the mid-1920s and today by Alexander Dugin. Russia and Iran are already playing key roles in establishing this new reality, building on the first step taken by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988. The world’s problems will only be solved based on a new geopolitical reality with Russia and Iran at its heart, the kernel of truth in the Ayatollah’s historic gesture in 1988.

December 31, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hypocrisy Over Alleged Russian ‘Hacking’

By Michael Brenner | Consortium News | December 30, 2016

The psychodrama over the alleged but unsubstantiated Russian hacking of Democratic emails to influence the U.S. presidential election has yet to reach its climax. Already, though, it has earned nomination as the most surreal and passionate work of fiction of the Twenty-first Century.

In all the excitement, it is easy to lose perspective. Perhaps the biggest piece of the untold story is the United States government’s pioneering role in electronic surveillance and hacking. We seem to have forgotten that the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency eavesdropped on heads of state in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, Venezuela – and, at last count, several score other capitals. Also, the United Nations Secretary General, the President of the European Union Commission, the European Central Bank and God knows whom else.

This was not coincidental. It was part of a calculated strategy approved by two successive Presidents to monitor all electronic communications around the globe. Author James Bamford and other knowledgeable experts have provided us with a detailed history of the program.

Yet, the U.S. — as presented to us by the mainstream media and most commentators reflecting Official Washington –is portrayed as the innocent among the main protagonists. The plot line represents America as the victim of unprovoked cyber aggression by the Russians and, in other circumstances, the Chinese – these attacks coming out of the blue, an aggressive blow in an assumed contest for global dominance between the powers.

Is any of this true? Frankly, we haven’t even seen the proof. But let’s assume that there is an element of truth to it (leaving apart the nonsense about a Kremlin plot to manipulate and then destroy American democracy).

On the Offensive

Let us recall that it was the United States that launched the first cyber attacks – some years ago by the NSA. This history is detailed in the Snowden documents whose authenticity never has been questioned. We succeeded in trespassing on the computer networks of several Chinese government agencies and individuals. We boasted about our success in intra-governmental communications. Those occurred at a time when related documents now in the public realm revealed the NSA’s ambition to tap into every electronic communications network in the world and laid out a program for achieving that goal.

Simultaneously, the United States was launching offensive assaults on Iran. The targets there included not just their nuclear research facilities but also critical centers for the oil and gas industry. These are acts of war. Yet there was never a mandate from any international body for doing so, nor a casus belli. We did it in collaboration with the Israelis because we made the unilateral judgment that aggression was in our national interest. Now we are outraged that others are doing what we have done. This is rank hypocrisy. It also is not very bright. For the initial actions made the casual assumptions that the U.S. would always have an advantage; therefore, the setting of norms and rules was unnecessary and undesirable. The same logic operated in regard to drones and targeted assassinations.

Conditions now have changed and now the U.S. is vulnerable to attack. The option of negotiating international rules of the road and perhaps formal regulations is slipping away. We will have to live with the chaotic mess that we have created.

Whatever thinking the NSA did on the subject (and perhaps other agencies) bears an uncanny resemblance to Air Force General Curtis LeMay’s attitude toward nuclear strategy: An emphasis on offense because it played to our advantage; defense only in the form of “massive retaliation” which – for Lemay – was the strategic cover for massive first strike; and a conviction that this was an unavoidable zero-sum game played for the highest stakes. In other words, cowboy strategy. And it is cowboy strategic thinking that has ruled in the NSA.

Cyber Army

The most revealing article on this appeared in WIRED in July 2014 by James Bamford. Army General Keith Alexander, who was NSA director from 2005 to 2014, revealed the full scope of his ambition. Here are some of the article’s more noteworthy quotes: “For years, U.S. General Keith Alexander has been amassing a secret cyber army. Now it’s ready to attack. … Alexander’s forces are formidable – thousands of NSA spies, plus 14,000 cyber troops. … Endgame hunts for hidden security weaknesses that are ripe for exploitation.”

Plans included a “launch on warning” doctrine calling for a massive cyber-retaliation against anyone who launched a strategic attack on sensitive U.S. computers. Its code name was “MonsterMind.” But preparations for the Great Cyber War evidently left no time to keep track of smaller attacks (such as the alleged hacking of Democratic emails) or else its radar was badly defective.

[Also see THE INTERCEPT of Oct. 10, 2014, “Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany” by Peter Maass and Laura Poitras.]

Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. mbren@pitt.edu

December 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Kerry’s speech violates int’l law, Palestinian rights

Palestine Information Center – December 30, 2016

45885848LONDON – The Palestinian Return Center (PRC) slammed on Thursday a speech by the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, saying his comments pose a danger for Palestinians’ rights, particularly the right of return.

According to PRC, the call of Kerry to resettle refugees in countries other than their homes is unacceptable and is a flagrant violation of the international law.

On the basis of its committed position in defending the rights of Palestinian refugees and as an organization in special consultative status with the UN ECOSOC, PRC confirmed that breaching the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees is against international law, UN resolutions, and the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, which all grant the right of return.

PRC added that ignoring the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees will indeed make attempts to achieve peace fail.

It noted that any discussions or negotiations should be based on and comply with international law. The right of return is well enshrined in international law.

PRC further stated that the reference of Kerry to the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ plight is a new recognition of their suffering, adding that the only way to end it is to allow them to return to their native homes and villages.

On Wednesday, Kerry delivered a lengthy speech as part of his so-called “comprehensive peace vision.”

December 30, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Socio-Political Analysis of the Racism Charge against Outing of Racism

By Denis Rancourt | Dissident Voice | December 29, 2016

When one is critical of the human-rights violations of the state of Israel, there follows a vehement charge of “antisemitism”. When one supports institutional measures to counter systemic racism, there follows a charge of “reverse racism”. And when a white person is critical of a black person’s apparent support for systemic racism, there again follows a charge of “racism”.

In all these examples, a charge of racism is levied in response to words used to criticize actual physical racism occurring on a spectrum from outright violations of personal safety to exclusion from status and resources.

The reason that such fallacious responses have sting is because there is a strong cultural taboo that racist language is as nefarious as violent physical racism itself. In present middle-class Western society, there is a pathological extreme intolerance against any expression that has cognitive similarity to racist expression.

The said taboo is not as present in the working-class because the economically stressed classes live a high degree of physical and status discrimination themselves. This discrimination is a higher priority to them than identity-tied system-ideology maintenance via personal investments in language policing.

The said taboo is poison because it precludes needed frank discussions and arguments about actual physical racism and hierarchical dominance. It also contributes to creating a class divide between those manipulated to adopt the identity politics of language purity and those who have less to gain from self-censorship and who “fucking need to speak”.

Thus, the taboo against racist and racist-sounding language is of great utility in enforcing an excessively totalitarian social hierarchy. Therefore, the said taboo is systemically promoted and enforced by major institutional instruments, including universities and the legal system.

In a healthy democratic society, free discussion between individuals and classes reigns and shapes a sustainable distribution of power and status. In a defective society, totalitarian encroachment is enabled by class divisions and by suppression of free expression. And there can be runaway encroachment when there are feedback pathologies such as when criticism of racism itself is reflexively tainted with the stigma of racism, or when social-media comments lead to terminations of employment, and so on. Excessive and widespread correctness policing is a recipe for disaster.

In that limited sense, the Trump and Brexit phenomena may well be expressions of natural societal repair mechanisms against runaway totalitarianism, rather than causal factors towards “fascism”. The said phenomena may be “indicators” of totalitarian encroachment by being indicators of responses against totalitarian encroachment (loss of democracy, globalization).

If so, the more the establishment bosses attempt to impose and leverage class-based containment against free expression and free political participation, the greater the danger of large future negative consequences for society as a whole.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.

December 30, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow blasts CNN’s ‘false’ US school closure report

RT | December 30, 2016

The CNN is spreading ‘false information’ by reporting that Russia closed the Anglo-American School of Moscow in retaliation to a new set of US sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“It’s a lie. It appears the White House has completely lost its mind and is now coming up with sanctions against their own children,” Zakharova commented on the report on her Facebook page.

“The CNN broadcaster and other Western media have again distributed false information citing official US sources,” the spokeswoman added.

The Anglo-American School of Moscow has also denied media speculation, with director Ian Forster writing on Facebook that the “school is planning to open as scheduled following the New Year’s break.”

Earlier, CNN cited an unnamed US official who claimed that the Russian authorities ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, attended by children from the US, UK, and Canadian embassy staffs, and a US Embassy vacation house in Serebryany Bor.

The report was quickly picked up by other Western media outlets, which came up with juicy, Star Wars-style headlines for their stories, including “Russia Strikes Back: Moscow Closes US School in Response to Obama Sanctions,” from ABC, and “Putin fires back by closing American school and embassy vacation home in Moscow…” from the Daily Mail.

The CNN source called the move a direct retaliation to the closure of two Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York, which US President Barack Obama announced on Thursday as part of a set of new sanctions against Russian.

According to Obama, the countermeasures were introduced in response to what he called “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election.”

Thirty-five Russian diplomats have been expelled from the US, and nine Russian entities, including the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) and the FSB (Federal Security Service), added to Washington’s blacklist.

The facilities in Maryland and New York, located in the coastal area, were used by Russian Embassy staff for recreational purposes. Many diplomats and their families who went there to celebrate New Year’s were forced to leave after the announcement of the sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow will not respond in kind to the US restrictions.

“We won’t cause problems for American diplomats. We’re not going to expel anybody. We won’t forbid their families and kids from using familiar vacation spots during the New Year holidays,” he said.

“Moreover, I invite the children of all American diplomats with accreditation in Russia to New Year’s and Christmas festivities in the Kremlin,” Putin added.

Though the Russian leader expressed regret that President Obama is concluding his term “in such a way,” he added: “I still wish him and his family a Happy New Year.
“I also wish President-elect Donald Trump and the entire American people a Happy New Year!”

According to Putin, Russia will “take further moves on restoring Russian-American relations based on the policies that the administration of President-elect Donald Trump adopts.

READ MORE:

US expels 35 Russian diplomats, closes 2 compounds

Putin: Russia will not expel anyone in response to US sanctions

December 30, 2016 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Whatever Happened to the First Amendment? KPFA’s “Fake News” Pitch and the Ministry of Truth

By Daniel Borgstrom | CounterPunch | December 30, 2016

Pacifica’s radio station in Berkeley, KPFA 94.1 fm, has been airing a pitch to listeners which contains the line: “There’s a lot of fake news, propaganda and misinformation emanating from phony media outlets.” The reader of this pitch is the station’s General Manager, Quincy McCoy, who goes on to assure listeners that KPFA is a news source that can be trusted. This pitch is played several times daily as part of a post-fund drive effort to remind listeners to please fulfil their pledges.

That line about “fake news” and “phony media outlets” is truly a strange thing to hear from KPFA. The “fake news” meme comes from the corporate media which has even offered a list of hundreds of offending websites. On Thanksgiving Day the Washington Post came out with a front page article titled: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”

The Post’s “experts” were primarily the “PropOrNot” team, who identified and named two hundred websites that, according to PropOrNot, “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” The targeted sites included not only left-wing, but also right-wing and libertarian websites. Writers and editors of these sites are often guests on the various KPFA shows; many are persons who speak at KPFA sponsored speaking events. These websites are, like KPFA, part of the alternative media which offers information that we don’t get from the corporate media.

So who are the “expert” investigators of the PropOrNot team, and what are their qualifications? Nobody seems to know anything about them, other than that they’re an anonymous group with a name that’s quite a tongue twister and a website that apparently cannot be traced to anybody. In effect, it’s a website that makes unsubstantiated claims.

Nevertheless, for a few days PropOrNot was echoed by the NYT, CNN, NPR and many other mainstream media outlets. Fortunately, it was soon discredited by investigative journalists writing for the websites it attacked. Among the most devastating take-downs of PropOrNot was one by Glenn Greenwald on the Intercept website.

Nor was The New Yorker much impressed with PropOrNot. The magazine dismissed it saying, “its methodology is a mess.”

So PropOrNot was exposed as a hoax, a glaring example of a real fake news website. However, it was a hoax that served the interests of the establishment, and many mainstream news outlets have continued the campaign against alleged “fake news.” Congress has taken up the issue and written a provision into the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which will create a “Global  Engagement  Center” to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter … propaganda and disinformation”.

On December 23rd, President Obama signed it into law, a Christmas present for the next president — a MINISTRY OF TRUTH for Donald Trump to play with.

And now, as the New Year approaches, KPFA’s station manager is still making that same pitch to KPFA listeners, echoing the establishment’s campaign. The full recording reads:

“Fear, anxiety, and confusion grips a lot of folks in today’s dark post-election world. There’s a lot of fake news, propaganda and misinformation emanating from phony media outlets.  If you’re searching for truth, unfiltered news, in-depth public affairs programming, you can count on one independent radio station to do what it’s been doing for 67 years, staying vigilant as always, 94.1 FM, KPFA”

The manager’s message reflects the panic, the confusion, and the uncritical conformity which is rife among many liberals and progressives today. Such feelings are quite understandable.  However, lashing out at alternative media outlets plays into the agenda of the neoliberal establishment and also undermines KPFA’s credibility. Some of the station’s listeners have written to the manager, reminding him that the main source of disinformation is the corporate media, the ones who have promoted that PropOrNot blacklist.

Best to stay off of that bandwagon. KPFA should be defending the First Amendment rights of all alternative media outlets.

December 30, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

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