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Watchdog groups slam Ferguson police ‘harassment’ of reporters

RT | August 20, 2014

As tensions continue to simmer following nine days of street protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where a teenager was shot dead by a police officer, two watchdog groups have slammed the heavy-handed police tactics.

To compound the physical and mental strain of reporting on the weeks-long protests in Ferguson, where the public is desperate for justice after a white police officer shot black teenager Michael Brown to death, journalists themselves are finding themselves the target of police tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bang grenades.

However, Robert Mahoney, Deputy Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said the police tactics would not prevent reporters from doing their jobs.

“Ferguson is an international story and journalists are going to cover it. They have a right to do so without fearing for their safety or liberty,” Mahoney said. “The harassment and detention of reporters must stop. From senior commanders on down, the word must go out to security forces to let journalists do their job.”

CPJ also released a guide for journalists on how to stay safe while covering events in Ferguson.

Jasmine Heiss, an observer with Amnesty International, expressed concern over reports that journalists were being tear-gassed while performing their jobs.

“Just last night I’ve heard several journalists and community say that either gas was thrown at them while they were reporting, or, in the case of the community members that gas was thrown into residential neighborhoods while they were walking,” Heiss told RT.

“Increasingly repressive tactics [are] being used to curtail free speech,” she added.

Six journalists were detained by police while covering the protests on Monday and early Tuesday, compelling the American Society of News Editors to describe the incidences as a “top-down effort to restrict the fundamental First Amendment rights of the public and the press.”

According to CNN, 11 journalists have been arrested in the course of the protests, which have thrown a glaring spotlight on US race relations, not to mention military-style police equipment and tactics now being deployed on the streets of America.

Police were caught on video firing a tear gas canister that exploded directly in front of an Al Jazeera America crew, causing the reporters to discard their camera equipment and flee the fumes.

In another heated encounter, a police officer is actually caught on video telling journalists, “I’m going to f***ing kill you!”

Meanwhile, social media accounts have exploded with real-time proof of the “severe press intimidation,” as the Huffington Post described the heavy-handed tactics, where Ferguson police fired at journalists with rubber bullets and flash bang grenades, in some cases preventing media from leaving their vehicles for fear of being targeted.

German reporter Ansgar Graw and his colleague Frank Hermann were detained by police for taking photos of a burned-out gas station, close to the spot where Michael Brown was killed.

“I tried to take some pictures at a spot where before I think were taken several thousand photos of the same spot, and some police officers tried to shoot me and my colleague from Germany…but it was on Monday at 2 o’clock, it was perfect…there was no threat, no tensions were in the air,” he told RT.

The journalist said the police told them they could photograph, but they had to continue walking otherwise they would be arrested. Despite complying with the police orders, Graw said they were still detained.

August 20, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

County officials refuse to pay medical bills for toddler burned by SWAT grenade

RT | August 18, 2014

Officials in Georgia’s Habersham County are refusing to pay for the mounting medical expenses of a toddler seriously injured by a flash grenade after a failed SWAT team raid earlier this year.

Bounkham ‘Bou Bou’ Phonesavanh was just 19 months old when a Habersham SWAT team initiated a no-knock warrant at his family’s home at around 3 a.m. on May 28. Bou Bou was asleep in his crib at the time, surrounded by his family and three sisters. The toddler was severely injured when SWAT team officers broke through the house’s door and threw a flashbang grenade that ultimately landed in the Bou Bou’s crib.

When the stun grenade went off, it caused severe burns on the child and opened a gash in his chest. As a result, Bou Bou lost the ability to breathe on his own and was left in a medically induced coma for days after the incident. His extensive recovery necessitated stays in two hospitals before he finally went home in July.

Now, Habersham County officials are sticking by their decision to ignore the family’s plight, the family’s attorney, Muwali Davis, told WSB-TV.

Habersham County’s attorney responded with a statement saying that the Board of County Commissioners will not pay given it is supposedly illegal to do so.

“The question before the board was whether it is legally permitted to pay these expenses. After consideration of this question following advice of counsel, the board of commissioners has concluded that it would be in violation of the law for it to do so.”

The family now says an independent investigation showed law enforcement used suspect information to attain a search warrant.

As RT reported previously, the SWAT conducted the raid as part of an effort to apprehend Wanis Thometheva, believed to be selling methamphetamine. Police said that their records indicated the suspect could be armed, and that a confidential informant had successfully purchased drugs from him earlier in the day. At the time of the raid, however, Thometheva was not at the home, and was eventually arrested elsewhere.

Additionally, an unnamed public official told the Washington Post that the reported drug deal was worth only $50.

Habersham County’s sheriff previously said the confidential informant who bought drugs at the home told police that he did not believe any children lived at the house.

Bou Bou’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, said that was unlikely if they had valid information on their suspect.

“If they had an informant in that house, they knew there were kids,” Phonesavanh told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the incident. “They say there were no toys. There is plenty of stuff. Their shoes were laying all over.”

In June, the family called for a federal investigation into the conduct of the SWAT team.

The Phonesavanh family said it was not involved with drugs at all, and was only staying with Thometheva, the homeowner’s son, because their Wisconsin home was damaged in a fire. They moved back to Wisconsin once Bou Bou’s health improved. Supporters have planned a fundraiser this month for the family.

An official investigation into the incident is ongoing, according to WSB-TV.

August 18, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ferguson cops beat innocent man, then charged him with bleeding on their uniforms

RT | August 15, 2014

The officer-involved shooting death of teenager Michael Brown this week and the subsequent protests across the United States have rekindled interest in another case of alleged excessive force blamed on the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department.

Nearly four years to the day before Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson opened fire and killed Brown, 18, a complaint filed in federal court accused the same law enforcement agency of violating the civil rights of a man who says he was badly beaten after being wrongly arrested, then later charged with “destruction of property” for bleeding on the uniforms of the cops alleged to have injured him.

On Friday, Michael Daly of The Daily Beast recounted the case of Henry Davis, an African-American welder who tried to sue the City of Ferguson after an autumn 2009 altercation with the same police department currently making headlines for the high-profile killing of Brown.

Davis, Daly recalled, was arrested on September 20, 2009 when a Ferguson cop mistook him for a man with the same first and last name wanted on an outstanding warrant. Davis was brought to the Police Department headquarters and told to spend the night in the same one-bed cell occupied by another individual. When he objected and asked for a sleeping mat of his own, his attorneys wrote, the officers got violent.

Officer John Beaird, the complaint reads, “called other officers to the area outside the cell and told the other officers that Plaintiff was being belligerent and failing to comply with his orders.” Five cops were soon in the area and, according to the suit, Officer Michael White charged Davis, grabbed him and then slammed him into a wall.

“A female police officer got on Plaintiff’s back and handcuffed Plaintiff with Plaintiff’s arms behind his back and lying on his stomach,” the complaint continues. “Just before Plaintiff was picked up to his feet, Defendant White rushed in the cell a second time and kicked Plaintiff in the head while Plaintiff was lying on the floor and handcuffed with his arms behind his back.”

“He ran in and kicked me in the head,” Davis recalled, according to The Daily Beast. “I almost passed out at that point… Paramedics came… They said it was too much blood, I had to go to the hospital.”

The detainee didn’t get help there, however, because he refused treatment unless the hospital staff would first photograph his injuries.

“I wanted a witness and proof of what they done to me,” Davis said, according to the website.

Instead, he was taken back to the jail, where he remained for several days until he could post $1,500 bond related to four counts of “property damage.” In a signed complaint, Daly wrote, Officer Beaird said David bled on his own uniform and those of three others officers.

When the issue was ultimately brought up during legal proceedings pertaining to the civil suit filed by Davis, Officers Christopher Pillarick, Beaird and White all denied getting blood on their outfits, the Beast reported.

“The contradictions between the complaint and the depositions apparently are what prompted the prosecutor to drop the ‘property damage’ allegation,” Daly wrote this week. “The prosecutor also dropped a felony charge of assault on an officer that had been lodged more than a year after the incident and shortly after Davis filed his civil suit.”

That same suit compelled the Ferguson Police Department to produce surveillance camera footage from the alleged altercation, but the cops failed to properly save the clip, James Schottel, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told Daly this week. Furthermore, the attorney explained that his efforts to obtain the use-of-force history for the officers involved proved futile when he became aware that reports involving non-fatal altercations were absent from all officers’ personnel files, per departmental policy.

“On Friday, police finally identified the officer as Darren Wilson, who is said to have no disciplinary record, as such records are kept in Ferguson,” Daly wrote this week. “We already know that he started out at a time when it was accepted for a Ferguson cop to charge somebody with property damage for bleeding on his uniform and later saying there was no blood on him at all.”

According to court papers obtained by RT, Magistrate Judge Nannette A. Baker ruled late last year in favor the city, halting Davis’ efforts to sue the city for multiple alleged violations of his civil rights. His attorneys filed a notice of appeal in March, and the case is currently slated to be considered later this year by the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Appellant presented a submissible case of excessive force and Missouri state law assault and battery and respectfully requests this Honorable Court to reverse the district court’s judgment of dismissal of Appellant’s excessive force and Missouri state law assault and battery claims against Appellees Michael White, John Beaird and Kim Tihen,” the appeal reads in part. “Appellant presented a submissible case of municipal liability and requests this Honorable Court to reverse the district court’s judgment of dismissal of Appellant’s municipal liability claim against Appellee City of Ferguson, Missouri.”

When The Daily Beast caught up this week with Schottel, Davis’ attorney, he told them that rumors of the Ferguson Police Department firing multiple shots at Brown last week didn’t surprise him.

“I said I already know about Ferguson, nothing new can faze me about Ferguson,” he told the website.

August 15, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Ukraine committing economic suicide by thinking to stop gas transit’

RT | August 11, 2014

The Bulgarian government is under enormous pressure from the US to cancel the South Stream project, and so Bulgaria is the place to watch now, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity think tank, told RT.

On August 8, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced that Kiev had prepared a list of 172 Russian citizens and 65 companies, predominantly Russian, to put under sanctions for “sponsoring terrorism, supporting the annexation of Crimea, and violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” Proposed sanctions include asset freezes, bans on certain enterprises, bans on privatizing state property, refusing to issue licenses, and a complete or partial ban on gas transit and air flights through its territory. Ukraine’s parliament will vote on the final measures on August 12.

RT: Kiev is expected to vote on the sanctions on August 12. Do you think they’ll go through?

Daniel McAdams: I think given the bellicose nature of Prime Minister Yatsenuk and the reckless manner in which he is governing I would certainly expect them to. What Ukraine is doing is committing economic suicide, and the US itself demanding that the EU applies its own sanctions is demanding that the Europeans commit economic suicide. So it makes no sens,e but I suspect it would probably go through in a short term. Remember that Ukraine is spending 6 million dollars a day on its war against the people in the east of that country. This money is borrowed money, the money it expects to make up for not allowing transfer of gas. They are also expecting the IMF, i.e. the American taxpayers, to pony up.

RT: Who do you think will be hardest hit, should Ukraine impose these sanctions?

DM: I find it ironic that the most bellicose of nations, and I’m thinking particularly of Poland and its Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski… he is the one who is taking the most pleasure in sticking it to Russia, the average Pole is going to have an awfully bitter winter this year, thanks to Sikorski. Poland has around 90 percent of its gas from Russia, so they will be cut off. The Baltic States are also heavily dependent, they are also particularly bellicose against Russia, so they are cutting their own noses to spite their faces.

RT: Ukraine has already lost Russia’s gas. Is the threat to prevent Europe from getting supplies as well, an act of desperation or a carefully planned move?

DM: You have seen Ukraine escalating the situation continuously from the beginning of this government in Kiev and there has been no one to tell them to put the brakes on. However, what are you seeing now in West European media? I think the panic has started to set in. When Russia first announced sanctions on the food items, there was a panic. The Europeans said: “This is not fair, this is playing politics” just after the day they followed the US demand to apply sanctions. The publisher of the huge German economic journal, Handelsblatt, with a very powerful column, yesterday criticized the German government for its sanctions. You saw on Monday an article in the BBC highlighting all of the companies: Scottish fish exporters, Irish cheese makers who are going to take enormous economic hits in these tit-for-tat sanctions. Energy is not different, the only person that will do it well is ironically the US vice-president ‘s son, Joe Biden’s son, who you know is on the board of one of the largest Ukrainian energy companies, who are selling their line to the Ukrainians to make up for all of this by fracking and other alternative sources, which is just a joke.

RT: Do you think this move could speed up the construction of the currently-frozen South Stream?

DM: On one hand, it’s in its interest [Bulgaria] without question to continue with the South Stream and to have as good relations as it can because it gets almost all of its energy from Russia. However, I can imagine there is enormous pressure from the US. One can only imagine the pressure to cancel the South Stream project. So Bulgaria is the place to watch now.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ron Paul: US ‘hiding truth’ on downed Malaysian Flight MH17

By Robert Bridge | RT | August 10, 2014

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process.

In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe.

“The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a Buk anti-aircraft missile,” Paul said on his news website on Thursday.

Paul’s comments are in sharp contrast to the echo chamber of one-sided opinion inside Western mainstream media, which has almost unanimously blamed anti-Kiev militia for bringing down the commercial airline. Incredibly, in many cases Washington had nothing to show as evidence to incriminate Russian rebels aside from references to social media.

“We’ve seen that there were heavy weapons moved from Russia to Ukraine, that they have moved into the hands of separatist leaders,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “And according to social media reports, those weapons include the SA-11 [Buk missile] system.”

In another instance, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters “the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful rocket launchers to the separatist forces in Ukraine, and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russia to attack Ukrainian military positions.” When veteran AP reporter Matthew Lee asked for proof, he was to be disappointed.

“I can’t get into the sources and methods behind it,” Harf responded. “I can’t tell you what the information is based on.” Lee said the allegations made by the State Department on Ukraine have fallen far short of “definitive proof.”

Just days after US intelligence officials admitted they had no conclusive evidence to prove Russia was behind the downing of the airliner, Kiev published satellite images as ‘proof’ it didn’t deploy anti-aircraft batteries around the MH17 crash site. However, these images have altered time-stamps and are from the days after the MH17 tragedy, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed, fully discrediting the Ukrainian claims.

In yet another yet-to-be explained event, Russian military detected a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet approaching the MH17 Boeing on the day of the catastrophe. No acceptable explanation has ever been given by Kiev as to why this fighter aircraft was so close to the doomed passenger jet moments before it was brought down.

“[We] would like to get an explanation as to why the military jet was flying along a civil aviation corridor at almost the same time and at the same level as a passenger plane,” Russian Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov demanded days after the crash.

Paul has slammed the United States government for its failure to provide a single grain of evidence to solve the mystery of the Malaysian airliner despite its arsenal of surveillance technologies at its disposal.

“It’s hard to believe that the US, with all of its spy satellites available for monitoring everything in Ukraine, that precise proof of who did what and when is not available,” the two-time presidential candidate said.

“Too bad we can’t count on our government to just tell us the truth and show us the evidence,” Paul added. “I’m convinced that it knows a lot more than it’s telling us.”

Although no sufficient evidence has been presented to prove that the anti-Kiev militia was responsible for the downing of the international flight, such an inconvenient oversight has not stopped the United States and Europe from slapping economic sanctions and travel bans against Russia.

Moscow hit back, saying it would place a ban on agricultural imports from the United States and the European Union. Russia’s tit-for-tat ban will certainly be felt, as food and agricultural imports from the US amounted to $1.3 billion last year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. In 2013, meanwhile, the EU’s agricultural exports to Russia totaled 11.8 billion euros ($15.8 billion).

After the crash, Ron Paul was one of a few voices calling for calm as US officials were pointing fingers without a shred of evidence to support their claims. Paul has not been afraid to say the painfully obvious things the US media, for any number of reasons, cannot find the courage to articulate.

“They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych,” Paul said. “Without US-sponsored ‘regime change,’ it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.”

Paul also found it outrageous that Western media, parroting the government line, has reported that the Malaysian flight must have been downed by “Russian-backed separatists,” because the BUK missile that reportedly brought down the aircraft was Russian made.

“They will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons,” he emphasized.

August 10, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

US refuses to recognize UN court jurisdiction on Argentina’s debt

RT | August 9, 2014

Washington has refused to allow the UN International Court of Justice (IJC) to hear Argentina’s claims that US court decisions on the country’s debt have violated Argentina’s sovereignty.

“We do not view the ICJ as an appropriate venue for addressing Argentina’s debt issues, and we continue to urge Argentina to engage with its creditors to resolve remaining issues with bondholders,” the US State Department told Reuters in an email.

The State Department sent an email with the same content to one of Argentina’s leading newspapers, the Clarin.

Argentina complained against Washington’s decisions on its debt to the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday.

But according to existing norms, Buenos Aires needs Washington to voluntarily accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction for the proceedings to begin.

The US withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction back in 1986 after the UN court ruled that America’s covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law.

Since then, Washington accepts International Court of Justice jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis.

On Friday, US District Judge Thomas Griesa, who oversees Argentina’s legal battle with hedge funds, threatened that a contempt of court order may be implemented.

Griesa said it will be put forward if Argentina continues to “falsely” insist that it has made a required debt payment on restructured sovereign bonds.

The warning caused confusion, as the judge didn’t specify who will face the punishment – Argentina or its lawyers.

It will be quite difficult to sanction the Argentinean state, as US federal law largely protects the assets of foreign governments held in the US, said Michael Ramsey, a professor of international law at the University of San Diego.

“You can’t put Argentina in jail, so I’m not sure what he’d have in mind besides monetary sanctions,” Ramsey said.

Later on Friday, Argentina’s economy ministry issued another statement, accusing the US judge of “clear partiality in favor of the vulture funds.”

“Judge Griesa continues contradicting himself and the facts by saying that Argentina did not pay,” the statement said.

Previously, Argentina announced the restructuring of 93 percent of its 2001 debt, but creditors holding the other seven percent of the bonds demanded full payment and initiated a legal battle.

A New York court ruled that Argentina had to pay $1.33 billion to the hedge funds, blocking the transfer of $590 million that Buenos Aires forwarded in order to cover its restructured debt.

The judge said Argentina had to start talks with the lenders that didn’t approve the debt restructuring and negotiate to postpone the payment with those who did agree.

With lenders unable to receive payment, international regulators and rating agencies announced Argentina’s ‘selective’ default.

August 9, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US missile cruiser enters Black Sea again ‘to promote peace’

RT | August 7, 2014

US missile cruiser Vella Gulf has entered the Black Sea in what the American Navy described as a move to “to promote peace and stability in the region.” Moscow has considered any such acts as “offensive.”

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) entered the Black Sea on Wednesday as part of the effort to “strengthen the collective security of NATO allies and partners in the region,” according to a statement by the US 6th Fleet.

“The US Navy’s forward presence in Europe allows us to work with our allies and partners to develop and improve ready maritime forces capable of maintaining regional security,” the statement reads.

The multi-mission cruiser Vella Gulf is 173 meters long, carries up to 400 crewmembers aboard and can achieve a speed of over 30 knots. The vessel’s weapons include SM-2 surface-to-air missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, torpedoes, Phalanx Close-in Weapons Systems for self-defense against aircraft and missiles, and five-inch, rapid fire guns.

It’s not the first time this year that Vella Gulf is sent on a mission in the Black Sea. It was moored in the port of Constanta, Romania from late May till mid-June.

In July, the US missile cruiser spent a week in the Black Sea, joining six other vessels for NATO’s naval drills.

The vessel can’t stay in the area for long and has to come and go instead, as the Montreux Convention, a US-authorized treaty from 1936, bars outside countries from keeping warships in the Black Sea for more than 21 days.

Despite the limits set by the convention, NATO has managed to increase its presence in the region in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis by constantly rotating warships there. Moscow has never approved of what it sees as the military alliance’s muscle-flexing in its backyard.

Vladimir Putin has promised Russia will respond to NATO’s expansion towards its borders.

“No matter what our Western counterparts tell us, we can see what’s going on,” Putin said at an emergency Security Council meeting in late July. “As it stands, NATO is blatantly building up its forces in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea areas. Its operational and combat training activities are gaining in scale.”

Putin stated that NATO’s military build-up near Russia’s border is not just for defense, but is an “offensive weapon” and an “element of the US offensive system deployed outside the mainland.”

Earlier, Russia responded to NATO’s military drill in the Black sea by launching its own war games in the region on the same day.

As part of the NATO build-up at the Russian border, the alliances warships have also intensified patrols in the Baltic Sea, and jet fighters have likewise stepped up their air patrols.

Thousands of NATO troops held exercises in Latvia in June.

In July, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove, reportedly, came up with the idea of stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support, if needed, a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia.

August 7, 2014 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Michigan community rebels against huge expansion, militarization of police

RT | August 5, 2014

After acquiring some military hardware, one local Michigan police chief’s plan to also add more than 30 non-certified officers to the force has residents in Barry Township clamoring for an investigation – and, in some cases, his job.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the township’s police chief Victor Pierce is under fire for what some in the area characterize as increased use of force by law enforcement, as well as for a proposal that would add more officers than are necessary to keep track of a population of 3,900.

Pierce is looking to add 34 individuals to the police reserve force in Barry Township – a significant increase over the four full-time officers currently employed. What’s more, these reserve officers are not certified – the department has already been warned that the officers need training and should only be deployed for special events.

“They’re not from around here,” Tony Crosariol, a biochemist who moved to the area seeking a peaceful life, said to the Free Press. “These reserve officers are not our friends, they are not our neighbors, their kids don’t play sports with my kids.”

Plans to expand the reserve force so much come on top of the fact that the police department is in possession of two armored personnel carriers and two Humvees, which arrived in the area courtesy of the US Department of Defense.

The debate over police behavior as well as the reserve force gained momentum in May after local resident Jack Nadwornik was confronted by a trio of officers who claimed he resisted arrest. Nadwornik was caught urinating outside a bar that had closed down for the evening, and suffered broken hand and was kneed in the back by police before being taken to jail and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Nadwornik and another witness said police claims about his behavior were not true.

The incident has galvanized critics who say police are using unnecessary force, and that their behavior stems from Pierce’s aggressive attitude towards law enforcement’s role in the community. Many have called for him to be fired or resign, but he has defended his position by citing events like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and threats of terrorism. He said he’s not trying to form “any kind of military machine or mind-set,” and that he’s simply looking to prevent tragedies from occurring in the future.

Despite the criticism, Pierce’s proposals have split the community, with some coming out in support of his plans and defending the police under his watch.

“I think Victor is doing a fine job,” said Delores Mohn, a retired schoolteacher who now works as a church secretary, to the Free Press. “He wants to do what’s right. Every citizen needs to know the laws, and if they are caught, they have to pay the price. I’m very grateful for them and have enormous respect for these officers.”

The situation in Barry Township isn’t the only example of local residents expressing concern over potentially aggressive police departments. As RT reported late last year, police in Salinas, California, came under intense scrutiny after acquiring a heavily armored military vehicle for its SWAT team. Designed for use in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, the truck is capable of surviving minefield explosions and rifle fire, leading many to wonder why it was being deployed in their city. Police Chief Kelly McMillin acknowledged concerns but insisted the vehicle would only be used to protect officers and enhance civilian safety.

August 5, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

California and Ukraine National Guard gear up for military collaboration in 2015

RT | August 2, 2014

In the latest step by Washington to increase the pressure on Russia’s border with Ukraine, the Obama administration has informed Congress that the US will train and arm the Ukrainian National Guard next year, the Pentagon said.

“The Defense Department and State Department have notified Congress of our intent to use $19 million in global security contingency fund authority to train and equip four companies and one tactical headquarters of the Ukrainian National Guard as part of their efforts to build their capacity for internal defense,” Reuters quoted Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby as saying Friday.

The joint military training would take place at a facility inside Ukraine that is capable of hosting multilateral exercises, Kirby said. The advisors would be provided by US Army Europe and by the California National Guard, he added.

Also Friday, the United States pledged about $8 million in new aid to bolster the Ukrainian Border Guard Service.

The plan requires Congressional approval, but judging by the level of anti-Russian rhetoric coming from US legislators, this is expected to be forthcoming.

The California National Guard’s military partnership with the Ukraine military has existed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

California partnered with Ukraine in 1993 to assist the country develop its military capacity, with the two sides participating in numerous military exercises over the years, including Operation Peace Shield and Operation Sea Breeze, which has particularly irked Moscow since the exercise is occasionally held in Crimea, the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The California-Ukraine partnership is expected to transition to Operation Saber Guardian – a multinational exercise involving 12 nations, including Ukraine.

It may come as a surprise to many American taxpayers that the US National Guard has nearly two dozen state partnerships with foreign countries, most of which were once part of the Soviet Union.

According to the Embassy of the United States in Ukraine, “the California–Ukraine partnership directly supports both the goals of the US Ambassador to Ukraine and Commander, US European Command.” However, the embassy provides no further details as to exactly what those specific “goals” may be.

Bad timing for California National Guardsmen?

Although the Pentagon spokesperson failed to mention Washington’s worsening diplomatic relations with Russia over the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, the announcement comes on the heels of a string of anti-Russian actions, which include a series of sanctions that target Russian businesses and banks.

The marked deterioration in Russia-US relations began late last year after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich signaled his preference for forging economic ties with Russia – which was prepared to provide a loan bailout to Kiev, something the IMF had been hoping to do – as opposed to the so-called EU association agreement.

This decision, which proved to be politically fateful for Yanukovich, triggered a harsh response from Western governments and politicians, some of whom, including Republican presidential candidate John McCain, appeared in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev to agitate Ukrainians against Russia.

The level of Western meddling in Ukrainian politics became startlingly clear in January when assistant US Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland was recorded in telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, where the two officials are heard discussing their preferences as to whom should take over power in the country.

The icing on the cake came when Nuland was heard to bluntly declare, “F**k the EU” with regards to the European bloc’s opinion in the matter.

The latest setback in Russia-US relations came with the July 17 downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. Western countries, following in the footsteps of the United States, have been quick to cast blame on Russia for the incident, saying it has supplied the rebels with missiles.

Moscow has emphatically rejected the accusations, while at the same time presenting Kiev with a series of questions concerning the crash, including about why Ukrainian air traffic controllers allowed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 “to deviate from the regular route to the north, toward ‘the anti-terrorist operation zone.’”

August 2, 2014 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The CIA Does Las Vegas

By Bill Blunden | CounterPunch | August 1, 2014

One evening over drinks in Ethiopia, during his tour as a CIA officer back in the 1960s, John Stockwell expressed reservations about covert operations to a senior fellow officer named Larry Devlin. Stockwell worried that the CIA was infiltrating governments and corrupting leaders to no useful end. Devlin, well-known in spy circles for his work in the Congo, berated Stockwell[i]:

“You’re trying to think like the people in the NSC back in Washington who have the big picture, who know what’s going on in the world, who have all the secret information, and the experience to digest it. If they decide we should have someone in Bujumbura, Burundi, and that person should be you, then you should do your job, and wait until you have more experience, and you work your way up to that point, then you will understand national security, and you can make the big decisions. Now, get to work, and stop, you know, this philosophizing.”

It’s a compelling argument: trust me, I know secrets. In fact it’s the same sort of argument that a federal informant named Hector Xavier Monsegur used to convince an activist named Jeremy Hammond to break into a whole slew of servers belonging to foreign governments[ii]. Monsegur assured Hammond: “Trust me, everything I do serves a purpose.” Hammond didn’t realize that he was actually part of an elaborate intelligence campaign being run by the FBI. Pimped out to other American three-letter agencies as it were.

Trust Me: I’m an Insider

John Stockwell was patient. He stayed on with the CIA and rose through the ranks, ultimately garnering enough clout to sit in on subcommittee meetings of the National Security Council. What he witnessed shocked him. Stockwell saw fat old men like senior ambassador Ed Mulcahy who fell asleep[iii] and petty officials like Henry Kissinger who got into embarrassing spats when someone else sat in their chair.[iv] All the while decisions were made that would kill people.

Quelle surprise! There were no wise men making difficult decisions based on dire threats to national security. Merely bureaucrats in search of enemies whose covert programs created more problems than they solved.

There’s a lesson in this story that resonates very strongly. A security clearance is by no means a guarantee of honesty or integrity. The secrets that spies guard don’t necessarily justify covert programs. Rather the veil of the government’s classification system is often leveraged to marginalize the public, to exclude people from policy making, and conceal questionable activity that would lead to widespread condemnation and social unrest if it came to light.

Past decades offer an endless trail of evidence: Operation Gladio, Operation Mockingbird, Project MKUltra, Operation Wheeler/Wallowa, Watergate, Operation CHAOS, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, P2OG (the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group), Iran-Contra, etc.

Cryptome’s John Young describes how this dynamic literally unwinds democracy[v]:

“Those with access to secret information cannot honestly partake in public discourse due to the requirement to lie and dissimulate about what is secret information. They can only speak to one another never in public. Similarly those without access to secret information cannot fully debate the issues which affect the nation, including alleged threats promulgated by secret keepers who are forbidden by law to disclose what they know.”

The Parade of Lies

In light of Ed Snowden’s revelations, and the remarkably flat-footed response of our political leaders, society is witnessing a crisis of trust. Time after time we’ve been lied to by ostensibly credible government officials. Not little white lies, but big scandalous ones. Lies that bring into question the pluralistic assumptions about American democracy and suggest the existence of what political analysts from Turkey would call a “Deep State[vi].”

For instance, both former NSA director Keith Alexander and House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers claimed that NSA mass interception was instrumental in disrupting over 50 terror plots, a claim that dissolved quickly upon closer scrutiny[vii].

Or contemplate an unnamed NSA spokesman who vehemently told the Washington Post that the NSA was not engaged in economic espionage[viii], only to be contradicted by leaked top-secret documents which described how the NSA broke into networks run by the Chinese telecom giant Huawei and made off with the company’s crown jewels (i.e. product source code).

When President Obama scored some air time with Charlie Rose, in soothing tones he calmly explained to viewers that the NSA doesn’t monitor American citizens without a warrant. It’s surprising that POTUS, a man with a background in constitutional law no less, would be unaware of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This legal provision contains a loophole that allows just this sort of warrantless monitoring to transpire[ix]. Never mind Executive Order 12333, which is arguable an even greater threat[x].

More recently, consider Dianne Feinstein’s claim back in March that the CIA had been monitoring a network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee. John Brennan, the CIA director, told her that she was full of it and sanctimoniously replied “when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong[xi].”

Well guess what? It turns out Brennan was on the losing side of that bet. An internal investigation showed that CIA officers had indeed been watching the Senate Committee[xii]. Stop and pause for a moment. This disclosure is a serious warning sign. What, pray tell, do you think happens to the whole notion of checks and balances when the executive branch spies on the other two branches? Do you suppose there are implications for the balance of power?

Damage Control

Faced with this ever expanding dearth of credibility, spies have worked diligently to maintain the appearance of integrity. Specifically, industry conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON have regularly catered to the needs of U.S. Intelligence by serving as platform for the Deep State and its talking points: that Cyberwar is imminent[xiii], that cybercrime represents an existential threat[xiv], and that mass interception is perfectly normal and perfectly healthy[xv].

“If the tariff of security is paid, it will be paid in the coin of privacy. [xvi]”

In these hacker venues high-profile members of the intelligence community like Cofer Black[xvii], Shawn Henry[xviii], Keith Alexander[xix], and Dan Greer[xx] are positioned front and center in keynote slots, as if they were glamorous Hollywood celebrities. While those who value their civil liberties might opine that they should more aptly be treated like pariahs[xxi].

“Time Out” Posturing

One would hope that the gravity of Ed Snowden’s documents would have some impact. Indeed, Jeff Moss, the organizer who currently runs DEF CON and who originally founded Black Hat (and, by the way, currently sits on the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council[xxii]), did attempt to make a symbolic gesture of protest in the summer of 2013. He gently requested that feds call a “time-out” and not attend DEF CON[xxiii].

To grasp the nature of this public relations maneuver is to realize that roughly 70 percent of the intelligence budget is channeled to private sector companies[xxiv]. As Glenn Greenwald observed during the 2014 Polk Award ceremony, as far as the national security state is concerned there is little distinction between the private and public sector[xxv]. Anyone who has peered into the rack space of the data broker industry knows that the NSA is an appendage on a much larger corporate apparatus[xxvi].

So asking federal employees to stay away really doesn’t change much because the driving force behind the surveillance state, the defense industry and its hi-tech offshoots, will swarm Vegas in great numbers as they normally do. Twelve months after Moss calls his halfhearted “time-out,” Black Hat rolls out the red carpet for the Deep State[xxvii], (while the government threatens to clamp down on attendance to conferences by foreign nationals[xxviii]). This is all very telling.

Bill Blunden is an independent investigator whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including The Rootkit Arsenal , and Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-Industrial Complex. Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs.

Notes

[i] John Stockwell, THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA: part I, lecture given in October, 1987,

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_1.html

[ii] Mark Mazzetti, “F.B.I. Informant Is Tied to Cyberattacks Abroad,” New York Times, April 23, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/world/fbi-informant-is-tied-to-cyberattacks-abroad.html

[iii] John Stockwell, THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA: part I, lecture given in October, 1987,

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_1.html

[iv] John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order, South End Press, July 1, 1999.

[v] John Young, “Wall Street Journal Secrecy,” Cryptome, August 22, 2014, http://cryptome.org/0002/wsj-secrecy.htm

[vi] Peter Dale Scott, “The Deep State and the Wall Street Overworld”, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, March 10, 2014, http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/4090

[vii] Cindy Cohn and Nadia Kayyali, “The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, June 2, 2013, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible

[viii] Barton Gellman and Ellen Nakashima, “, U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show” Washington Post, August 30, 2013

[ix] Nadia Kayyali, “The Way the NSA Uses Section 702 is Deeply Troubling. Here’s Why,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 7, 2014, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/way-nsa-uses-section-702-deeply-troubling-heres-why

[x] John Napier Tye, “Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans,” Washington Post, July 18, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html

[xi] Mark Mazzetti And Jonathan Weisman, “Conflict Erupts in Public Rebuke on C.I.A. Inquiry,” New York Times, March 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/us/cia-accused-of-illegally-searching-computers-used-by-senate-committee.html

[xii]Mark Mazzetti, “C.I.A. Admits Penetrating Senate Intelligence Computers,” New York Times, July 31, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-interrogation-report.html

[xiii] Molly Mulrain, “Former CIA Official: ‘Cyber Will Be Key Component of Any Future Conflict’”, ExecutiveBiz, August 4, 2011, http://blog.executivebiz.com/2011/08/former-cia-official-cyber-will-be-a-key-component-of-any-future-conflict/

[xiv] Gerry Smith, “Cyber-Crimes Pose ‘Existential’ Threat, FBI Warns,” Huffington Post, January 12, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/cyber-threats_n_1202026.html

[xv] “U.S. Cyber Command Head General Alexander To Keynote Black Hat USA 2013,” Dark Reading, May 14, 2013, http://www.darkreading.com/risk/us-cyber-command-head-general-alexander-to-keynote-black-hat-usa-2013/d/d-id/1139741

[xvi] Daniel E. Geer, “Cybersecurity and National Policy,” Harvard Law School National Security Journal, Volume 1 – April 7, 2010, http://harvardnsj.org/2011/01/cybersecurity-and-national-policy/

[xvii] https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-11/bh-us-11-archives.html#Black

[xviii] https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-us-12/speakers/Shawn-Henry.html

[xix] Jim Finkle, “Defcon 2012 Conference: Hackers To Meet With U.S. Spy Agency Chief,” Reuters, July 20, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/defcon-2012_n_1691246.html

[xx] Spencer Ackerman, “NSA keeps low profile at hacker conventions despite past appearances,” Guardian, July 31, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/nsa-hacker-conventions-recruit-def-con-black-hat/print

[xxi] George Smith, “Computer Security for the 1 Percent Day,” Escape From WhiteManistan, May 19, 2014, http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/?p=18011

[xxii] http://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-advisory-council-members

[xxiii] Dan Goodin, “For first time ever, feds asked to sit out DefCon hacker conference,” Ars Technica, July 11, 2013, http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/07/for-first-time-ever-feds-asked-to-sit-out-defcon-hacker-conference/

[xxiv] Tim Shorrock, “Put the Spies Back Under One Roof,” New York Times, June 17, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/opinion/put-the-spies-back-under-one-roof.html

[xxv] “”We Won’t Succumb to Threats”: Journalists Return to U.S. for First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying,” Democracy Now! April 14, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/14/we_wont_succumb_to_threats_journalists#

[xxvi] “Inside the Web’s $156 Billion Invisible Industry,” Motherboard, December 18, 2013, http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/inside-the-webs-156-billion-invisible-industry

[xxvii] Spencer Ackerman, “NSA keeps low profile at hacker conventions despite past appearances,” Guardian, July 31, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/nsa-hacker-conventions-recruit-def-con-black-hat/print

[xxviii] Andrea Shalal and Jim Finkle, “U.S. may act to keep Chinese hackers out of Def Con hacker event,” Reuters, May 24, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/us-cybercrime-usa-china-idUSBREA4N07D20140524

August 1, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI forensic lab misconduct could affect 2,600 convictions, 45 death row cases

RT | July 30, 2014

Nearly every criminal case the FBI and US Justice Department has reviewed during a major investigation that began in 2012 regarding an FBI lab unit has involved flawed forensic testimony, The Washington Post reported.

The review – originally spurred by a Post report in 2012 over flawed forensic testimony by Federal Bureau of Investigation lab technicians that may have led to convictions of hundreds of innocent people – was cut short last August when its findings “troubled the bureau,” according to the Post. The review was ordered by the Justice Department (DOJ) to resume this month, government officials said.

Most of the defendants in cases that involved possibly-botched testimony over microscopic hair matches were never told that their case was part of the review, which includes 2,600 convictions and 45 death-row cases from the 1980s and 1990s. In these cases, the FBI’s hair and fiber unit claimed it found a match to crime-scene samples prior to the age of DNA testing of hair.

The FBI reviewed around 160 cases before halting the investigation 11 months ago, officials said. The probe resumed once the DOJ inspector general lambasted the FBI for the delay in this investigation and another involving the same forensic unit.

A DOJ spokesman said that by last August, reviews were completed and notifications offered for defendants in 23 cases, including 14 death-row cases, that FBI examiners “exceeded the limits of science” when linking hair to crime-scene evidence.

Yet the FBI restarted the review given concerns that forensic errors applied to the “vast majority” of cases. This restart caused major delays in the investigation, leading to objections by the DOJ in January. The FBI and DOJ standoff was finally resolved this month.

“I don’t know whether history is repeating itself, but clearly the [latest] report doesn’t give anyone a sense of confidence that the work of the examiners whose conduct was first publicly questioned in 1997 was reviewed as diligently and promptly as it needed to be,” said Michael R. Bromwich, DOJ inspector general from 1994 to 1999.

“Now we are left 18 years [later] with a very unhappy, unsatisfying and disquieting situation, which is far harder to remedy than if the problems had been addressed promptly,” he added.

The reviews resumed this month under original terms based on an order by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, officials said.

The delay came, in part, “from a vigorous debate that occurred within the FBI and DOJ about the appropriate scientific standards we should apply when reviewing FBI lab examiner testimony — many years after the fact,” the FBI said. “Working closely with DOJ, we have resolved those issues and are moving forward with the transcript review for the remaining cases.”

Emily Pierce, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said: “The Department of Justice never signed off on the FBI’s decision to change the way they reviewed the hair analysis. We are pleased that the review has resumed and that notification letters will be going out in the next few weeks.”

Since 2012, the review has addressed only about 10 percent of the 2,600 convictions under suspicion, and maybe two-thirds of questioned death-row sentences.

The DOJ will notify defendants about misconduct in two more death-row cases and in 134 non-capital cases over the next month. The department will also complete evaluations of 98 other cases by early October, including 14 more death-row cases.

In question is a 10-member FBI unit that testified in cases across the nation that involved murder, rape, and various other violent felonies.

Though the FBI has said since the 1970s that hair evidence cannot be used as positive identification, agents still often testified to the near-certainty of matches, according to the Post. Ultimately, there is no accepted research regarding how often hair from different people can appear as the same. Today, the FBI uses visual hair comparison protocols to rule out a potential suspect as a source of hair found at a crime scene before using more accurate DNA testing.

The review highlights a hesitance among courts and law enforcement to address systemic faults of forensic testimony and methods from bygone eras.

“I see this as a tip-of-the-iceberg problem,” said Erin Murphy, an expert on modern scientific evidence who teaches at New York University.

“It’s not as though this is one bad apple or even that this is one bad-apple discipline,” she said. “There is a long list of disciplines that have exhibited problems, where if you opened up cases you’d see the same kinds of overstated claims and unfounded statements.”

July 31, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty lapsing: Cui bono?

RT | July 30, 2014

The US has accused Moscow of violating a 1987 INF Treaty banning short and medium range ballistic and cruise missiles. Experts speculate whether Washington is nudging Moscow to pull out of a treaty to create a new ‘nuke bogey’ and offer aegis to the EU.

Washington says Russia has tested a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile thus breaching the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the US and the Soviet Union nearly 30 years ago, banning all ground-based nuclear-capable missiles with range from 500 to 5,500 kilometers, the New York Times cited.

READ MORE: US claims on nuclear missiles treaty unfounded, Russia has questions too

Though no Western media outlet has mentioned the name of the missile, there are probably only two candidates for the role of the “peace breaker.”

The first is Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh (Frontier) ICBN “ABM-killer” complex. According to a top military official, it was tested several times at distances ranging from 2,000 km to 5,700 km, RBC Daily reports.

However, Rubezh is technically out of suspicion, according to member of the Academy of Sciences, Aleksey Arbatov, as under the treaty the ballistic missile’s range is estimated as the maximum range it was tested at.

The second candidate for the role is the R-500, a cruise missile which can be used with ground-based 9K720 Iskander launcher. Its range is a delicate issue, said Arbatov as cited by RBC Daily. Though it has an officially announced range below 500 kilometers, its exact characteristics remain top-secret and could be argued.

According to military experts, the R-500 is a modification of the old Soviet 3M10 Granat with an estimated range of 2,600 km that was initially designed for submarine launch. All land-based Granat missiles were destroyed under the INP Treaty. However, the treaty did not apply to naval missiles.

Earlier the US already complained about suspected Russian treaty violations, presumably about the R-500 and its land-based tests that reportedly had to be conducted due to lack of funding. Moscow’s explanations did not satisfy Washington, noted Arbatov adding that such decisions and arguments are usually discussed during the meeting of working groups – while now the issue has reached the presidential level.

At the same time Russian Air Force possesses a unique X-101 cruise missile – that could be adopted for surface launch – with some reports indicating its maximum range to be over 5,500 kilometers, in which case this missile would not fall under conditions of the INF Treaty either.

Timing is everything?

The situation in the world has greatly changed over the years and today Moscow and Washington remain the world’s only capitals that imposed restrictions on themselves in this regard. In the meantime Russia has several nuclear states in proximity to its borders that already have such medium-range missiles (China, India, Pakistan and probably Iran and North Korea) that can potentially strike Russian territory, whereas the US has no such neighbors.

The New York Times broke to the world on Monday that President Barack Obama sent a letter to Vladimir Putin, in which Russia is accused of testing a surface-to-surface cruise missile with an excessive range.

The first tests of those missiles were conducted back in 2008, the report suggests, and it took the Obama administration 3 years to conclude that they were a compliance concern. But the question of possible treaty violation was raised by the State Department’s arms control officials only in 2013.

When reports of Russia’s ground-based tests re-emerged in January 2014, the US administration wasn’t ready to comment on the issue or draw any conclusions and media attention to the issue at that particular time.

The US is obviously trying to force Russia out of the INF Treaty to have a pretext for further augmentation of its military presence in Europe, expert of the Institute of International Security Problems, Valery Fenenko shared with RIA news agency.

“A lukewarm conflict between Russia and the US has been drawing on since 2007. In my opinion, Americans are pushing Russia to step out of the treaty,” Fenenko opined.

He believes that the accusations of the INF Treaty violation is a part of American strategy of spreading anti-ballistic missile defense shield in Europe.

“Some American and Russian analysts expected Russia to respond to the imposed sanctions with threatening rhetoric towards the EU, and an obvious and harsh step of quitting the INF Treaty but that never happened,” explained Fenenko, adding that now Washington wants to fulfill the aim in a different manner.

“If Russia re-deploys medium and short range missiles that would be a direct threat to EU member states, both Eastern and Western European countries,” the expert concluded.

Fenenko specifically stressed that both Russia and the US never stopped development of such missiles because the INF Treaty does not prohibit this.

“Americans are in a much easier situation in this regard. They have allies France and the UK that haven’t signed the INF Treaty. These countries have cruise missile projects of their own that could be easily be transformed into surface-to-surface missiles,” Fenenko said.

Russia could try to impose a moratorium on the Treaty until France and UK sign the document, “but there is no chance they would sign, so that would be the end of the treaty,” Fenenko concluded.

Washington uses the alleged INF Treaty violation to boost global tensions in the background of the Ukrainian crisis and sanctions imposed on Russia, Andrey Koshkin told RT, military political analyst at Plekhanov Academy in Moscow.

“This is interconnected with the crisis situation being created by the Americans themselves,” estimated Koshkin, adding that Washington is launching a political assault on Moscow from every direction “to hype up the tensions.”

“They try to blame Russia every morning, every evening, every night – this is a salvo of accusations. They try to get western public accustomed to blaming Russia,” Willy Wimmer, the former State Secretary of the German Ministry of Defense, told RT.

July 31, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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