Venezuela Sentences US Mercenaries to 20 Years in Prison
teleSUR | August 8, 2020
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab Friday reported that the two former U.S. military officers Luke Denmnan and Airan Berry, who participated in the failed invasion attempt in Venezuela, were sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Denmnan and Berry tried to force their way into Venezuela along with 50 other citizens of the Caribbean country to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
“The U.S. former military officers confessed to the crimes of conspiracy, association, illicit trafficking of war weapons and terrorism,” Saab tweeted.
These crimes appear in Venezuela’s Penal Code, and for them, the mercenaries were sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“The former U.S. soldiers, who admitted their responsibility in the events, were accused by the prosecutors in the case of serious crimes,” Saab explained.
The U.S. Silvercorp former members were detained in the second attempt of an attack against the Venezuelan coast.
At least eight people died and half a hundred more were arrested during the search and capture of the mercenaries.
Last May, Venezuela’s justice system ordered preventive detention for 40 people due to their involvement in the failed invasion attempt.
The Pharmaceutical Narrative is Failing
By Bretigne Shaffer – LewRockwell.com – August 7, 2020
So now we don’t have to listen to what those doctors said in front of the US Supreme Court, because it turns out that one of them has some whacky beliefs about sex with demons causing reproductive disorders. What a relief.
I’m not going to pretend that the things Dr. Stella Immanuel has said don’t sound just a little crazy to me. They do. But I’ve been observing this game long enough to have a pretty good idea of how this works:
Someone says something that contradicts the dominant narrative (in this case, the narrative about medical science), and the machine that supports that narrative goes into overdrive to discredit them, with whatever information they can dig up–as long as it doesn’t involve discussing the actual substance of what the person has said.
I understand that for some people, maybe even for a great many, that is the end of the conversation. So for everyone who is satisfied with the “fringe doctors promoting hydroxychloroquine also believe demon sex causes fybroids” narrative–please, stop here. Your ride is over, and you may go on believing that this group of doctors and other professionals has been thoroughly discredited by these statements.
For everyone else, if you are at all interested in why such a coordinated effort has been launched to silence and discredit this group, why–even before the sex demon stuff was uncovered–videos of the group’s press conference were quickly yanked from YouTube, and why their own website was taken down without warning by its host, SquareSpace, (their new website can now be found here) then please keep reading.
WHAT THE AMERICA’S FRONTLINE DOCTORS GROUP SAID:
What follows is a brief summary of the key points made by the group America’s Frontline Doctors at their press conference last week. I will not comment on the validity of their claims, however founder Dr. Simone Gold has provided support for much of what the group said, in a white paper that can be found here.
1. They believe that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for Covid-19.
This is the claim made by several of the speakers, including Dr. Immanuel, based on their own clinical experience, as well as on multiple published studies. Many of those studies are listed here, and here.
2. State licensing boards are using their power to forcibly prevent people from having access to this drug.
According to Dr. Gold, many states have empowered their pharmacists to not honor prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine to be used in treating Covid-19. This, she says, is unprecedented: “It has never happened that a state has threatened a doctor for prescribing a universally accepted safe generic cheap drug off-label.”
Meanwhile, says Gold, the drug is available over the counter in many other countries, including Iran and Indonesia, where it can be found “in the vitamin section”.
3. There is a coordinated campaign to discredit and suppress information about the drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for Covid-19:
“If it seems like there is an orchestrated attack going on against hydroxychloroquine,” said Dr. James Todaro, “it’s because there is.”
Dr. Todaro is speaking from experience. He was the co-author of a March 13 white paper arguing for the use of hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19. The paper was made public on Google Docs, received a lot of attention, and was then removed–without warning–by Google. (It has since been put back up.)
4. The World Health Organization (the authority upon which YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has said she bases her company’s policy on “misinformation”) halted its trials of hydroxychloroquine based on a blatantly fraudulent study that relied on data that it appears never even existed. The WHO later resumed trials after independent investigators discovered the problems and the study’s authors retracted it.
5. We should be able to have a free and open discussion about this.
Dr. Dr. Joseph Lapado from UCLA, sums it up:
We’ve been using (hydroxychloroquine) for a long time. But all of a sudden it’s been escalated to this area of looking like some poisonous drug. That just doesn’t make sense… At the very least, we can live in a world where there are differences of opinion about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but still allow more data to come, still allow physicians who feel they have expertise with it to use that medication, and still, you know, talk and learn and get better at helping people with Covid-19.
WHY THE ALL-OUT MEDIA ASSAULT ON THE FRONTLINE DOCTORS?:
The influence that the pharmaceutical industry wields over media outlets is no secret. As of 2018, an estimated 70% of all news advertising in the US came from pharmaceutical companies. I have written elsewhere about how “reporting” on medical issues can be difficult to distinguish from outright marketing for drug companies.
Social-media platforms are not immune to this influence, whether it comes via advertising dollars; “partnerships” such as that between the CDC Foundation and MailChimp (which like many other platforms, has an explicit policy of censoring content about vaccines that does not align with the positions of the CDC and the WHO); direct investment, such as that of Google’s parent company Alphabet; or indeed at the behest of politicians such as Congressman Adam Schiff, who last year wrote to the CEOs of Amazon, Facebook and Google, requesting that those companies censor information and products that did not conform to the officially sanctioned position on vaccines. All three complied.
So it should come as small surprise that both Google and YouTube have now taken to removing content supportive of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that is no longer covered by patent, and can be made and sold by any generic producer, for a fraction of the price that Gilead, for example, might charge for its still-patented Remdesivir. Twitter and Facebook have likewise removed posts about the drug, most notably–and with no visible sense of irony–removing posts of the video in which the Frontline Doctors speak out about widespread media censorship of the topic. (You can now see those videos on Bitchute.)
One need not have an opinion on the merits of the drug hydroxychloroquine in order to recognize that something very odd is happening here. Something that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with free and open inquiry or honest scientific discourse.
Many argue that the politicization of this drug is founded in a desire to unseat President Trump, that the opposition to it is primarily because it was endorsed by Trump, and if it is deemed to be a failure (or even better, dangerous to patients) it will be a powerful strike against the president. That may well be part of what has motivated this. But there is another motivation, having to do with the desire to push a more expensive medication onto the market, and to push a new vaccine on the world’s population.
More broadly, it has to do with the narrative that those in the business of selling drugs demand we believe: that we are all in desperate need of their products (but only the ones still under patent) if we are to be healthy–or indeed, if we are to survive at all.
If it turns out that this “new” virus is easily treatable, with hydroxychloroquine or anything else, then the industry’s dreams go up in smoke. If hydroxychloroquine turns out to be a safe and effective way of treating Covid-19 (as multiple studies and the experience in many other countries outside of the US indicate it may be) then there is much less reason for anyone to receive a vaccine for it, let alone the entire world’s population. Likewise, there is no pressing need to develop a new, more expensive treatment.
But even more than that: If it turns out that hydroxychloroquine is after all a safe and effective treatment for Covid-19, then this whole episode – the silencing of dissenting voices, the “fact-checking” on social media, the campaigns against “misinformation” – will be revealed in plain sight, for what it has always been: Nothing more than a well-funded marketing campaign and damage-control effort on behalf of the industry that wants you to believe that you need to use its expensive products in order to go on living.
So when a group of doctors took to the steps of the US Supreme Court and told the world how they were having success using a cheap anti-malarial that had been in use for 65 years to treat the most deadly contagion of our generation, it was a massive blow to the narrative upon which the pharmaceutical purveyors’ success depends. And over the next few days, as viewers engaged in a race with the censors, quickly downloading videos before they were removed, to post them on other platforms… it became clear that the censors and the gatekeepers had lost control of the conversation.
This is not only about hydroxychloroquine. Every time media outlets or social-media platforms engage in outright censorship of content, in a way that happens to benefit pharmaceutical companies, both parties lose just a little more credibility. The actions we are witnessing now are not the actions of an industry confident in the value of what it provides to the world. They are the actions of a desperate, threatened creature. They are the actions of an entity that is not strengthened by the truth, but weakened by it. That is what these (increasingly obvious) acts of censorship tell us. What we are witnessing are the pangs of a lumbering, wounded, behemoth.
Australia: Willing Pawn in US Struggle with China
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 07.08.2020
Upon reading Australia’s new defense strategy, one might think its authors believe they are surrounded by nations invaded and destroyed by China with Australia next in line.
News headlines declare, “Australia’s new defence strategy unveils a significant strategic shift in foreign policy to meet new threats from China,” “China the unspoken threat at centre of new defence strategy,” and “Australia to buy ship-killing missiles and shift focus to Indo-Pacific” to “to protect overseas forces, allies and the mainland against rising threats including China.”
The “threat” of China – the articles and the new defense strategy argue – requires Australia to spend billions on weapons bought from the United States and to depend more heavily on the US for Australia’s protection.
Yet in the same breath, Australia’s media openly admits that up until now, Australia’s military has spent much of its time contributing to America’s many and still-ongoing wars of aggression around the globe from Libya and Syria to Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently, Washington has recruited Australia to help bolster its presence in the Strait of Hormuz in an effort to menace Iran as well.
In one of the above mentioned articles it’s admitted that:
For decades Australia has been quick to send troops, naval vessels and planes to help the United States wage wars on distant shores.
Despite all but admitting the US – not China – is engaged in a global campaign of armed aggression and that Australia is a willing accomplice – Australia’s new defense strategy points the finger at China as the ultimate global threat.
A likely explanation for this contradictory worldview among Australian policymakers is the possibility that deep-pocketed lobbyists from Washington still hold more sway over Australia’s political levers than Australian businesses and certainly the Australian public – and plan to collectively squeeze Australia for billions in arms sales for missiles and other weapon systems pointed at what is otherwise Australia’s largest and most important economic partner – China.
Not only does this fill up the coffers of corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others, but Australia’s apparently hostile posture toward China will most certainly taint relations between the two nations, creating further conflict, and requiring continued and increased weapon sales well into the future.
Should any conflict erupt between the US and China, Australia will find itself a much closer target than the US – a sacrificial pawn of sorts that will bear the full brunt and consequences of any potential US-Chinese hostilities.
Well-Timed “Cyber Attacks” Help Sell an Otherwise Unappealing Defense Strategy
The new defense strategy – long in the works – was unveiled only after a healthy dose of recent and mysterious “cyber attacks” Australian security agencies attributed with no evidence to China.
Again – the irony here is that the US has by far demonstrated itself to be as much a threat in cyberspace as it is to sovereign nations and their physical territory, and much more so than China.
Regarding Australia specifically, a 2013 Guardian article titled, “NSA considered spying on Australians ‘unilaterally’, leaked paper reveals,” would note that a:
The US National Security Agency has considered spying on Australian citizens without the knowledge or consent of the Australian intelligence organisations it partners with, according to a draft 2005 NSA directive kept secret from other countries.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been revealed to have compromised communications worldwide, hacked the phones of national leaders both friend and foe, infiltrated and created backdoors in Western-manufactured high tech hardware, and carried out offensive cyber attacks against nations around the globe.
There is also a growing body of evidence that suggests many attacks attributed to nations like Russia and China – like the one recently carried out against Australia – were either fabricated entirely, or in fact carried out by actors in the US itself.
But what better way is there to sell the otherwise unpopular idea of Australia buying billions of dollars of weapons from America and poisoning relations with China than to cite an alleged act of aggression from China that is nearly impossible to attribute one way or the other? The Western media’s clout has in the past and continues to be much more persuasive than fact or common sense in the short-term.
Other analysts have pointed out Australia’s new defense policy is out of touch with reality. It will also do much more to undermine Australia’s national security than underwrite it.
While it is sensible for nations to ensure they have a credible deterrence against all forms of aggression regardless of the nation of origin, Australia’s defense posture has it facing a nation clearly more interested in economics than conquest, and facing away from a nation not only openly and repeatedly carrying out aggression worldwide, but one increasingly turning on its own allies for not exhibiting enough zeal against its many and multiplying enemies.
While Australia commits billions to buying American weapons and buying into Washington’s continued and growing confrontation with China – in the end – Australia will need to pick between fading with the US economically or finally accepting China’s rise regionally and globally and Australia’s role as a partner with China rather than part of America’s “primacy” over it.
Again – the irony here is of course that the most likely threat to Australia’s national security will not be from a rising China eager to do business with Australia, but a scorned Washington seeking increasingly aggressive means to force Australia back into its traditional role of buttressing US primacy.
Popular Resistance: Armed Syrian Arab Tribes Able to Defeat US-SDF Alliance, Ex-Diplomat Reveals
Sputnik – 07.08.2020
Earlier this week, a group of Syrian Arab tribes representatives broke into the local headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the cities of Deir ez-Zor, Diban, and Al-Hawaij in the eastern Deir ez-Zor Province.
Seyed Hadi Afgahi, an Iranian expert on the Middle East, and ex-diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, believes that Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) units play a destructive role in terms of Syria’s security and stability, but there are certain forces that can break them for good.
“After Daesh had been defeated, the Americans created an alternative force to destroy Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is a mixture of Arabs and Kurds, and plays a destructive role in terms of Syria’s stability and security. The Americans armed them and used them as a proxy to take control of oil in Eastern Syria. In fact, the United States is plundering Syrian oil reserves through these forces. That is why a popular resistance is being formed in Syria, similar to the one in Iraq in 2003, whose armed guerrillas repeatedly dealt a serious blow to the American military contingent in Iraq, forcing Barack Obama to conclude an agreement. This is exactly the way of forming a popular resistance among Arab tribes that is gradually gaining strength in Syria,” he said.
“Moreover, some of the Arab tribes elders’ sons in the area of Deir ez-Zor and in the east of Al-Hasakah have left their previous military units and returned to their homes, where they are already forming people’s armed resistance backed by the Syrian government. They are expanding their groups and attacking US forces,” he added.
“This is one of the ways to counter US presence in Syria, because currently the Syrian army is not strong enough to resist and is unable to strike, therefore the best way is to opt for popular resistance that can ‘strike and smash’”, the former diplomat concluded.
Afgahi’s comments come days after representatives of Syrian Arab tribes stormed several SDF headquarters in the cities of Deir ez-Zor, Diban, and Al-Hawaij in the eastern Deir ez-Zor Province. The armed tribesmen also detained SDF militants present in the buildings at that moment.
The storming of the SDF headquarters in the province happened after representatives of the tribes protested against arbitrary actions by militant groups supported by the US. The demonstration was held against a recent surge in killings of elders and sheikhs of the local tribes by the SDF militants. The protesters demanded that the group hand over those responsible for the killings.
The SDF and other Kurdish groups currently control most of Syria’s oil-rich east with the support of US troops, who have been tasked with “keeping” the local crude fields since October 2019 from alleged attempts by Daesh militants to seize them. The Syrian government has repeatedly slammed the presence of a US military contingent in the country as illegal since they didn’t receive a mandate either from Damascus or the UN.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki 75 Years On, Washington Still Playing Terror Card
Strategic Culture Foundation | August 7, 2020
Seventy-five years ago this week the world crossed an infernal threshold, with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan by the United States. Humankind had gained the technological capability for inflicting mass, instantaneous annihilation.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with over 200,000 lives – 90 per cent of whom were civilians – was not a military act to end the Second World War, as the official American narrative would have us believe. It was a political act to begin the Cold War, deliberately carried out by American leaders to assert U.S. hegemony against the Soviet Union and all others. It was an act of fiendish, premeditated mass murder – genocide – with the political objective of instilling terror against all perceived adversaries of American ambitions for global dominance.
Many historians, including respected American scholars, have verified that the atomic bombing of Japan had nothing to do with swiftly ending the Pacific War and “saving U.S. lives”. It was simply an act of unspeakable barbarism for political aims to do with winning the anticipated Cold War. The bombs were dropped just as the Soviet Red Army entered the Korean Peninsula to augment the fight against Japanese imperial forces, as was previously agreed by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta conference of war-time allies back in February 1945. However, by the time of August 1945, Washington and London had moved considerably to adopt a more hostile position against Moscow, with a view to challenging the Soviet Union for spheres of influence in the postwar world.
There is no doubt that the indiscriminate mass murder of Japanese civilians with a new weapon of unprecedented savagery was carried out as a demonstration of psychopathic power by the United States. It was to be the ultimate warning. In short, it was a supreme act of terrorism. The earlier British-American aerial bombing of German cities and the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo inflicted more accumulated deaths, but the instantaneous destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki introduced a new terror lever, one that spelt total annihilation with single bombs.
By 1949, Washington’s terror monopoly lost its ace value when the Soviet Union developed its own atomic weapon. For over seven decades, the world has lived under the shadow of nuclear catastrophe, sometimes coming perilously close, as in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Today, the U.S. and Russia each possess an estimated 6,000 nuclear weapons – accounting for over 90 per cent of the world’s total arsenal. Existing stockpiles are much reduced in number compared with past decades. Nevertheless, each one of these contemporary devices has an explosive power many times that of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is inconceivable that human life and the planet as we know it would survive a nuclear war. For that onerous reason, and to avoid “mutually assured destruction”, Washington and Moscow had cooperated historically to draw up several arms control treaties. But over the past two decades, the U.S. side has revoked treaty after treaty. The Trump administration is threatening to scrap the last remaining one, the New START accord which is due to expire in February next year unless it is renewed, which Washington seems ambiguous about. A policy of calculated ambiguity, it may be averred.
There can be little doubt that the Cold War is back with a vengeance as far as the American government and its propagandist corporate news media are concerned. In recent years and indeed weeks, the vilification and smears heaped upon both Russia and China have intensified to a frenzy. The week-in, week-out paranoia and hostility emanating from Washington towards Moscow and Beijing is on par with the unhinged red-baiting ravings of the McCarthyite era in the 1950s. The return of Cold War mindset in Washington is a concomitant of political and economic crises besetting American power as its presumed global empire lurches towards collapse.
In this context, the remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki takes on an altogether more urgent purpose. It has to be recognized that Washington used nuclear annihilation as a terror weapon and it continues to play the same nefarious tactic to this day. There has never been an official apology out of Washington for the monstrous crime it committed in August 1945 because the American rulers have always wanted to maintain the “right” to terrorize others. The current warmongering out of Washington towards Russia and China amid baseless, provocative accusations, as well as military force build-up in sensitive regions, against the backdrop of unfettered arms development, all can only mean one thing: Washington is trying to use the terror card to subjugate others while running the diabolical risk of inciting a nuclear war.
The world should know that American politicians and their media boosters are collectively acting as a madman. American power ultimately relies on coercive terror. But Russia and China will not tolerate such psychopathic conduct, and, thankfully, have the defensive means to counter-threat. The American pretense of virtue is finally being exposed for the ugly reality that lies beneath.
Twitter labels RT & Sputnik but NOT BBC, NPR & VOA as it launches blitz on state media staff & govt officials
RT | August 6, 2020
Twitter has declared war on certain state-affiliated media entities, announcing accounts belonging to senior staff will be labeled and their tweets won’t be amplified or recommended. The BBC and US state-funded media are exempt.
The microblogging platform announced it will label accounts belonging to key government officials in countries on the UN Security Council, as well as accounts belonging to state-linked media outlets, their editors-in-chief and senior staff.
In a Thursday blog post, it warned it will no longer show tweets from state-linked media accounts on the home screen, notifications, or search.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Twitter left a sizable loophole for the US and friendly nations, explaining that “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, will not be labeled.”
“We believe this is an important step so that when people see an account discussing geopolitical issues from another country, they have context on its national affiliation and are better informed about who they represent,” Twitter explained in the post, adding that it would not be labeling government officials’ personal accounts – just those associated with their offices.
Betraying a shockingly dim understanding of American media, Twitter explained that “unlike independent media, state-affiliated media frequently use their news coverage as a means to advance a political agenda.”
Perhaps attempting to fend off discrimination lawsuits, they added that the move had come after consultation with “a number of expert groups, including members of the Digital and Human Rights Advisory Group in Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council.”
That group includes notoriously censor-happy entities like the Anti-Defamation League, the Dangerous Speech Project, and Feminist Frequency.
Clicking on the new labels takes the viewer to a page explaining the policy, which hints it “will be expanded to include additional countries in the future.” The page refers to them as “election labels,” suggesting the policy is a response to ongoing baseless claims that Russian social media manipulation was responsible for President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. With the November election less than 100 days away, social media platforms are scrambling to censor non-approved views, especially those they can link to un-American activities.
A Twitter spokesman declined to provide a full list of entities to be censored to Reuters, but mentioned RT, Sputnik, and Xinhua News by name. Facebook recently adopted a similar policy, complete with double standard for US and friendly state-controlled media organizations.
Newspapers: Fusion Centers Have Secretly Created A National Citizen Spying Program
MassPrivateI | August 6, 2020
What has the public learned about Fusion Centers since the recent BlueLeaks hack was released over a month ago? Not a lot.
The Feds have done a great job of keeping the public from finding out what DHS Fusion/Intelligence Centers are really doing. In a country founded on freedom, we find federal and local law enforcement scrambling to keep the true function of Fusion Centers hidden from the public.
By piecing together news articles from Maine and Texas papers, a disturbing picture begins to unfold of warrantless surveillance of Americans.
The first proof that Fusion Centers were being used to spy on everyday citizens and activists can be found in a Maine Press Herald article from mid-July.
“A cache of internal police documents stolen from a secretive Maine State Police intelligence unit has provided the first substantial glimpse into how it collects and shares information about crime suspects and political activists and, in rare cases, keep tabs on domestic extremists, gang members and anti-government groups.”
The article goes into greater detail describing how local police use Fusion Centers to track down low-level offenders and ID people from social media or video footage.
“Police agencies commonly contact the Maine center with requests for help identifying a person depicted in a photo, sometimes captured from a surveillance camera. Other pictures are taken directly by law enforcement, or appear to be pulled from Facebook or other social media sites.”
Maine police even went so far as to ask the Fusion Center to identify a passenger in a car who refused to identify himself, and did not consent to having his photograph taken or his fingerprints scanned.
Another article in the Maine Press Herald which predated BlueLeaks, revealed that Fusion Centers refuse to acknowledge that they are secretly scanning everyone’s faces and spying on their cellphones.
“Despite evidence that the Maine State Police has worked for years with federal agencies to develop its use of digital surveillance technology, the agency now uses that law to refuse to answer any questions about such efforts, or even acknowledge that they exist.”
A third Maine Press Herald article revealed that Fusion Centers are secretly collecting a massive database of license plate numbers, the names and addresses of legal gun owners, and monitoring political activist groups and collecting members names and addresses.
The Austin Chronicle revealed that Fusion Centers have used secret informants to create a national “Suspicious Activity” network.
“In early June, an intelligence center operated by the Austin Police Department was hacked, along with many others like it across the country. Known as BlueLeaks, the collection of leaked documents from the hack contains over 10 gigs of material taken from the Austin center. They reveal a secret citizen spying program that’s active in the Austin area and across the country.”
The article reveals how Fusion Centers have created a vast network of secret “Threat Liaison Officers” (TLOs).
“Documents examined by the Chronicle show that each TLO must sign a nondisclosure agreement with ARIC, including those not working in law enforcement, essentially creating secret citizen officers.”
Secret citizen spies or TLOs could be someone you least expect. TLOs could be anyone: “private security officers with local hotels, malls, large venues, and local semiconductor companies. Government employees in “education,” “code enforcement,” and “public works” also contribute to ARIC as FOUO TLOs.
According to the article, TLOs could be teachers, trash collectors, ministers, priests, rabbi’s or even counselors.
Basically DHS has succeeded in creating a network of secret government spies masquerading as everyday people.
A TLOs job is to report people for doing mundane things like asking questions, taking pictures or being observant of one’s surroundings. TLOs are also reporting people for “suspicious” social media posts, whatever that means.
“According to one FOUO TLO’s report, an individual was seen taking photos of Zach Scott’s Topfer Theatre on Sept. 22, 2016. The report includes five different pictures of a young person using a camera on a tripod to photograph the theatre from across the street.”
To make it easier to report Americans for doing mundane things, Fusion Centers have provided TLOs with a checklist.
“The leaked documents include submission forms TLOs use to make their reports. At the top of the forms are boxes to check indicating the type of activity being reported. These include the aforementioned “School Threat,” but also Eliciting Information, Observation/Surveillance, and Suspicious/Odd Facebook Post. The TLO report spreadsheet contains 128 reports of school threats. But the category most reported by far was Expressed or Implied Threat, with more than a thousand entries.”
To say that this is reminiscent of China, the USSR or East Germany is an understatement. As the Chronicle warned, ‘worrisome examples of suspicious activity have led to increased scrutiny’ which means the Feds and local police could be secretly monitoring innocent Americans without out any public scrutiny.
If you thought DHS’s “If You See Something, Say Something” was a failure guess again. DHS has managed to justify creating 78 Fusion Centers whose sole purpose, it seems, is to spy on innocent Americans and track their daily movements.
US Senators Reportedly Threaten German Port Operator With ‘Financial Destruction’ Over Nord Stream 2
Sputnik – 06.08.2020
The Nord Stream 2 project is set to carry up to 55 billion cubic meters (1.942 trillion cubic feet) of gas per year from Russia to Germany, passing through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden.
US Senator Ted Cruz together with Senators Tom Cotton and Ron Johnson have threatened the management of Mukran Port in Germany, involved in the Nord Stream 2 project with “financial destruction”, if they continue their work on the venture.
In a three-page letter, obtained by Handelsblatt newspaper, the lawmakers called on Sassnitz GmbH, which operates the port, to discontinue logistical support for the project.
“If you continue to provide goods, services, and support for the Nord Stream 2 project, you will destroy the future financial survival of your company”, the letter read.
Sassnitz is where a ship called Rossini is docked for several weeks now which reportedly serves as a base to some 140 workers who work on the pipeline, including nationals of Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. According to reports, these workers are shipped daily to the Mukran port, the logistical headquarters of the construction of Nord Stream 2’s segment in the Baltic Sea.
The €9.5 billion, 1,230-kilometre (or 715-mile) long pipeline was hit with sanctions by the United States back in December 2019 under the US’ 2020 National Defence Authorisation Act, which caused the Swiss pipelay company Allseas to quit the project with just 100 miles of the pipeline left to put down. Russia is now completing the pipeline on its own.
While Washington cited security concerns for its sanctions, both Russia and Germany, which are involved in the project, stressed that it is an example of unfair competition that runs counter to international law.
Failing upward? After botched Venezuelan regime-change, Elliott Abrams picked as Iran rep
RT | August 6, 2020
The US is putting Iran on regime-change notice, appointing Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abrams as Special Representative for Iran in addition to his duties as Special Representative for Venezuela, a State Department release shows.
Abrams, who oversaw a series of failed coups in Venezuela both in the past year and during the botched 2002 coup against then-President Hugo Chavez, will take over from Brian Hook, who has “decided to step down,” according to a press release from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo lauded Hook’s efforts in the statement, declaring he had “achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime.” The outgoing official oversaw the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, leveling sanction upon sanction against the Islamic Republic after withdrawing the US from the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018. Hook praised his own record to the New York Times on Thursday, declaring that “by almost every metric, the regime and its terrorist proxies are weaker than three and a half years ago.”
“We have been very successful,” he said.
Tensions between the two countries nearly spiraled into war in January after a US airstrike killed Quds Force leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, provoking a barrage of missiles from Iran targeting two coalition bases in Iraq. The US has also flooded the Persian Gulf with military assets and placed bounties on Iranian ships and other military assets.
Abrams has been a ubiquitous presence in the US’ regime-change efforts in Latin America, helping to replace left-leaning governments with right-wing dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala and attempting similar makeovers in Nicaragua and Venezuela. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to two minor criminal counts regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the CIA illegally funneled weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. However, he was subsequently pardoned by then-President George HW Bush and went on to continue undermining democratically-elected governments under George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
The promotion comes ahead of a hotly-anticipated UN Security Council vote on extending the arms embargo on Iran. If the measure does not pass, the US has threatened to trigger “snapback” sanctions agreed upon as part of the 2015 nuclear deal – despite having pulled out of the deal years ago and therefore lacking an ability to enforce its provisions as a “participating nation.”
Voting Fraud Is Real: The Electoral System Is Vulnerable
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 6, 2020
The United States national election is now only three months away and it should be expected that the out-and-out lies emanating from both parties will increase geometrically as the polling date nears. One of the more interesting claims regarding the election itself is the White House assertion that large scale voting by mail will permit fraud, so much so that the result of the voting will be unreliable or challenged. To be sure, it is not as if voter fraud is unknown in the United States. The victory of John F. Kennedy 1960 presidential election has often been credited to all the graveyards in Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago voting to swing Illinois into the Democratic camp.
The Democrats are insisting that voting by mail is perfectly safe and reliable, witness the use of absentee ballots for many years. The assertions by Democratic Party-affiliated voting officials in several states and also from friends on the federal level have been played in the media to confirm that fraud in elections has been insignificant recently. That may be true, up until now.
The Democrats, of course, have an agenda. For reasons that are not altogether clear, they believe that voting by mail would benefit them primarily, so they are pushing hard for their supporters to register in their respective states and cast their ballots at the local mail box. Nevertheless, there should be some skepticism whenever a major American political party wants something. In this case, the Democrats are likely assuming that people at lower income levels who will most likely vote for them cannot be bothered to register and vote if it requires actually going somewhere to do it. They have spoken of “expansion of voting,” presumably to their benefit. The mail is a much easier option.
A Fox News host has rejected the impelling logic behind the mail option, saying “Can’t we just have this one moment to vote for one candidate every four years, and show up and put a ballot in without licking an envelope or pressing on a stamp? If you can shop for food, if you can buy liquor, you can vote once every four years.”
The fundamental problem with the arguments coming from both sides is that there is no national system in the United States for registering and voting. Elections are run at state level and the individual states have their own procedures. The actual ballots also differ from voting district to voting district. To determine what safeguards are actually built into the system is difficult as how electoral offices actually function is considered sensitive information by many, precisely because it might reveal vulnerabilities in the process.
To determine how one might actually vote illegally, I reviewed the process required for registering and voting by mail in my own state of Virginia. In Virginia one can both register and vote without any human contact at all. The registration process can be accomplished by filling out an online form, which is linked here. Note particularly the following: the form requires one to check the box indicating U.S. citizenship. It then asks for name and address as well as social security number, date of birth and whether one has a criminal record or is otherwise disqualified to vote. You then have to sign and date the document and mail it off. Within ten days, you should receive a voter’s registration card for Virginia which you can present if you vote in person, though even that is not required.
But also note the following: no documents have to be presented to support the application, which means that all the information can be false. You can even opt out of providing a social security number by indicating that you have never been issued one, even though the form indicates that you must have one to be registered, and you can also submit a temporary address by claiming you are “homeless.” Even date of birth information is useless as the form does not ask where you were born, which is how birth records are filed by state and local governments. Ultimately, it is only the social security number that validates the document and that is what also appears on the Voter’s ID Card, but even that can be false or completely fabricated, as many illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. have discovered.
In a state like Virginia, the actual mail-in ballot requires your signature and that of a witness, who can be anyone. That is also true in six other states. Thirty-one states only require your own signature while only three states require that the document be notarized, a good safeguard since it requires the voter to actually produce some documentation. Seven states require your additional signature on the ballot envelope and two states require that a photocopy of the voter ID accompany the ballot. In other words, the safeguards in the system vary from state to state but in most cases, fraud would be relatively easy.
And then there is the issue of how the election commissions in the states will be overwhelmed by tens of thousands of mail-in ballots that they might be receiving in November. That overload would minimize whatever manual checking of names, addresses and social security numbers might otherwise take place. Jim Bovard has speculated how “The American political system may be on the eve of its worst legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Early warning signals indicate that many states could suffer catastrophic failures in counting votes in November… Because of the pandemic, many states are switching primarily to mail-in voting even though experiences with recent primaries were a disaster. In New York City, officials are still struggling to count mail-in ballots from the June primary. Up to 20% of ballots ‘were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes,’ the Washington Post noted, thanks largely to missing postmarks or signatures. In Wisconsin, more than 20,000 ‘primary ballots were thrown out because voters missed at least one line on the form, rendering them invalid.’ Some states are mailing ballots to all the names on the voting lists, providing thousands of dead people the chance to vote from the grave.”
Add into the witch’s cauldron the continued use of easily hacked antiquated voting machines as well as confusing ballots in many districts, and the question of whether an election can even be run with expectations of a credible result becomes paramount. President Trump has several times claimed that the expected surge in mail-in voting could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.” Trump is often wrong when he speaks or tweets spontaneously, but this time he just might be right.
US State Department ‘Russian disinformation’ report aims to stop normalisation of relations, discredit alternative media – embassy
RT | August 6, 2020
Russia’s embassy in Washington believes apparatchiks at the State Department have put together a hysterical report on “Russian propaganda” to prevent politicians improving relations.
The Russian diplomats say the dispatch on the “Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem.” is an attempt to obstruct Moscow’s proposals to resume cooperation in key areas. They also claim the communique is obviously geared to discredit alternatives to the mainstream press, which generally toes the US establishment line. It’s also notable that the publication coincides with a request for $138 million in 2021 to spend on “countering” Russian media.
“(The) report is an attempt to silence Russian official proposals to resume cooperation in key areas on which the security of the entire world depends,” the embassy wrote on its Facebook account. “The US State Department is not very fond of the existence of alternative sources of information. Serious resources are employed to discredit them. Any voice that contradicts Washington is dubbed ‘disinformation’ in the service of the ‘Kremlin’ and Russian intelligence.”
Parts of the document are absurd, the Russian diplomats noted. For example, the authors classified far-right opposition LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the private radio station Govorit Moskva as “Official Government Communications.” The officials also cite Russian media with state funding, with headlines from Sputnik, RIA Novosti, RT and others presented as examples of ‘disinformation.’
“If this serves as the pinnacle of the entire structure, so carefully built by our American colleagues, then it seemingly looks like a house of cards,” the commentary reads. “Russian and foreign media outlets that dare to criticize the United States should bear in mind that they can and almost certainly will become the subject of thorough scrutiny. Their accounts in American social media are at risk of being suspended with no explanation.”
In its Special Report Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem, the GEC claims that Russia is a key threat in terms of disinformation and propaganda. According to the document, this “ecosystem” involves official government channels, state-run mass media, proxy-resources, and social network. The Russian authorities, as follows from the report, are responsible for the development of such tactics and platforms as part of their approach to the use of information as a weapon.
Russia repeatedly denied Western media allegations that it indulges in misinformation. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the recent allegations that Russia and China were propagating misinformation about the coronavirus infection were yet another manifestation of the West’s Russophobia and Sinophobia. The US State Department has requested $138 million in 2021 to “counter disinformation and propaganda from Russia.”
The US already has a government-controlled foreign broadcasting arm, the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which operates the Voice of America and Radio Liberty/Free Europe, and their various branches. The operation is entirely funded from the US budget, with its current expenses amounting to around $800 million annually, according to Voice of America. This is more than two and a half times what Russia spends on RT.
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From the Archives
The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- Ukraine expands minority rights under EU pressure – but Russians remain excluded
- Albania takes anti-riot crackdown cue from France
- The interest of the House of Rothschild in Ukraine
- Pentagon fires top military planner
- Three tankers hit mines on unauthorized Hormuz route: IRGC Navy
- Iran is (probably) collecting tolls, and why Asia stopped buying oil from the US
- Regional security runs through Tehran
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
