George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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msfreeh
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Downtown L.A. is now driest since rain records started in 1877


http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Julian Assange: Swedish judge rules to uphold arrest warrant

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/j ... rrant-live" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-na ... -behavior/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Frightening People into Silence
, July 17, 2014


“Chilling” is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them. Classic examples of “chilling” occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S. Army soldiers, in business suits with badges displayed or in full uniform, showed up at anti-war rallies and proceeded to photograph and tape record protesters. When an umbrella group of protesters sued the government, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling that the protesters lacked standing – meaning, because they could not show that they were actually harmed, they could not invoke the federal courts for redress.

Yet, they were harmed, and the government knew it. Years after he died, longtime FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover was quoted boasting of the success of this program. The harm existed in the pause or second thoughts that protesters gave to their contemplated behavior because they knew the feds would be in their faces – figuratively and literally. The government’s goal, and its limited success, was to deter dissent without actually interfering with it. Even the government recognized that physical interference with and legal prosecutions of pure speech are prohibited by the First Amendment. Eventually, when this was exposed as part of a huge government plot to stifle dissent, known as COINTELPRO, the government stopped doing it.

Until now.

Now, the government fears the verbal slings and arrows of dissenters, even as the means for promulgating one’s criticisms of the government in general and of President Obama in particular have been refined and enhanced far beyond those available to the critics of the government in the 1970s.

So, what has the Obama administration done to stifle, or chill, the words of its detractors? For starters, it has subpoenaed the emails and home telephone records of journalists who have either challenged it or exposed its dark secrets. Among those journalists are James Risen of The New York Times and my colleague and friend James Rosen of Fox News. This is more personal than the NSA spying on everyone, because a subpoena is an announcement that a specific person’s words or effects have been targeted by the government, and that person continues to remain in the government’s crosshairs until it decides to let go.

This necessitates hiring legal counsel and paying legal fees. Yet, the targeting of Risen and Rosen was not because the feds alleged that they broke the law – there were no such allegations. Rather, the feds wanted to see their sources and their means of acquiring information. What journalist could perform his work with the feds watching? The reason we have a First Amendment is to assure that no journalist would need to endure that.

Two weeks ago, a notorious pot stirrer in Norfolk, Neb., built a mock outhouse, put it on a truck and drove the truck with permission in a local Fourth of July parade. In front of the outhouse, he placed a mannequin that he claimed looked like himself, and on the outhouse, he posted a sign that stated: “Obama Presidential Library.”

Some thought this was crude, and some thought it was funny; yet it is fully protected speech. It is protected because satire and opinion about public figures are absolutely protected, as well as is all criticism of the government. Yet, the Department of Justice has sent a team to investigate this event because a local official called it racist. Such an allegation by a public official and such a federal investigation are chilling. The reason we have a First Amendment is to ensure that the government stays out of investigating speech.

And just last week, Attorney General Eric Holder, while in London, opined that much of the criticism of Obama is based on race – meaning that if Obama were fully white, his critics would be silent. This is highly inflammatory, grossly misleading, patently without evidential support and, yet again, chilling. Tagging someone as a racist is the political equivalent of applying paint that won’t come off. Were the Democrats who criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice racists? Is it appropriate for government officials to frighten people into silence by giving them pause before they speak, during which they basically ask themselves whether the criticism they are about to hurl is worth the pain the government will soon inflict in retaliation?

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to permit, encourage and even foment open, wide, robust debate about the policies and personnel of the government. That amendment presumes that individuals – not the government – will decide what language to read and hear. Because of that amendment, the marketplace of ideas – not the government – will determine which criticisms will sink in and sting and which will fall by the wayside and be forgotten.

Surely, government officials can use words to defend themselves; in fact, one would hope they would. Yet, when the people fear exercising their expressive liberties because of how the governmental targets they criticize might use the power of the government to stifle them, we are no longer free.

Expressing ideas, no matter how bold or brazen, is the personal exercise of a natural right that the government in a free society is powerless to touch, directly or indirectly. Yet, when the government succeeds in diminishing public discourse so that it only contains words and ideas of which the government approves, it will have succeeded in establishing tyranny. This tyranny – if it comes – will not come about overnight. It will begin in baby steps and triumph before we know it.

Yet we do know that it already has begun.

msfreeh
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see link for full story


http://archive.lohud.com/article/201006 ... ollow-case" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Prosecutors concede FBI agent might have destroyed evidence in Sleepy Hollow case
10:01 PM, Jun. 11, 2010


WHITE PLAINS — Federal prosecutors said at a hearing Friday that it's likely an FBI agent destroyed evidence in the criminal civil rights case against a Sleepy Hollow detective.

The agent, Catherine Pena, also has been replaced as the lead agent in the case, prosecutors said.

Lawyers for indicted Detective Jose Quinoy have asked the judge to dismiss all charges against him because of allegations that Pena swapped in a blank disc for one that contained recordings secretly made by another Sleepy Hollow detective who was cooperating with federal investigators. ...

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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http://www.mediachannel.org/marsha-blac ... -district/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Media Channel


Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): Why One Congresswoman Wants To Block Fast, Cheap Internet In Her District
July 16, 2014

By David Sirota via IBT

A senior congressional Republican this week introduced legislation that would bar the federal government from using its powers to help community-owned Internet service providers compete with private telecommunications companies.

The move comes just as a Chattanooga-based, community-owned Internet provider that delivers some of the fastest connections in the nation, EPB, is girding for an expansion plan that would take on major telecommunications firms far beyond its home region.

In many states, major providers of high-speed Internet connections have successfully lobbied state lawmakers to deliver legislation that bars community-owned ISPs from expanding beyond their home territories. The Federal Communications Commission has the authority to intervene and preempt such state laws to enable smaller Internet providers to compete with larger national firms.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee as an amendment to an annual spending bill, would strip the FCC of this power.

Blackburn’s top campaign donors include private telecommunications firms that do not want to have to compete with publicly owned ISPs. Her state is home to EPB, a taxpayer-owned power company in Chattanooga that also provides local residents some of the fastest Internet speeds in the world at market-competitive rates. EPB is now aiming to expand its services beyond Chattanooga.

However, to go forward with its expansion plan, EPB needs the FCC to enter the fray, applying its authority to preempt a Tennessee law backed by the private telecom industry that restricts the utility’s ability to move into new regions. According to data from the Center for Public Integrity, Tennessee is one of 20 states with such laws on its books.

The chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, has recently voiced support for using his agency’s preemption authority to override state laws preventing community-owned ISPs from competing with private telecoms. That stance represents a break from his past: Wheeler previously worked as a lobbyist representing the cable industry, the principal channel for broadband Internet service.

Last month, Wheeler met with Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke and a day later published a statement on the FCC’s website declaring “that it is in the best interests of consumers and competition that the FCC exercises its power to preempt state laws that ban or restrict competition from community broadband.”

If passed by Congress, Blackburn’s amendment could effectively strip the FCC of its preemption power, at least for the year that the underlying annual appropriations measure is in force. That would halt EPB’s expansion proposal, and send a larger message to other community-owned utilities that they may not get federal relief from state statutes.

Such an outcome would be a big win for the private telecom industry, which might explain Blackburn’s central role in the fight. According to campaign finance data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, two of Blackburn’s largest career donors are employees and PACs affiliated with AT&T and Comcast. Those are two of EPB’s private-sector competitors in Chattanooga. Blackburn has also taken $56,000 from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the lobby for the big telecoms.

Comcast has described community-owned Internet service providers as a waste of taxpayer money while seeking to limit their expansion. A spokesperson told International Business Times, “Comcast operates in 39 states and has 130,000 employees across the country. It is important for our customers, our employees and our shareholders that we participate in the political process. The majority of our PAC contributions are to the senators and members who represent our employees and customers.”

AT&T did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

As the Chattanooga Times Free Press noted a few years back, “EPB offers faster Internet speeds for the money, and shows equal pep in both uploading and downloading content, with Comcast and AT&T trailing on quickness.” The New York Times notes that “for less than $70 a month, consumers enjoy an ultra-high-speed fiber-optic connection that transfers data at one gigabit per second” — a rate “that is 50 times the average speed for homes in the rest of the country.”

That success has been so rapid that the private telecom industry has abandoned the business lobby’s traditional arguments. Whereas corporations typically argue that the private sector has inherent and obvious advantages over the public sector, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that telecom firms have gone to court insisting “that EPB, as a public entity, would have an edge when competing against private companies, which would be at a disadvantage when facing an entity owned by taxpayers.” Similarly, whereas corporations typically push for government to stay out of the marketplace, private telecom firms have pushed for state legislatures to use government power to intervene in the marketplace by prohibiting community-owned utilities from competing for Internet customers.

Blackburn defends her bill to preserve those state laws by presenting it as a measure to protect local sovereignty.

“We don’t need unelected federal agency bureaucrats in Washington telling our states what they can and can’t do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars in private enterprises,” Blackburn said Tuesday during a congressional debate about her amendment. “We should be careful and deliberate in how we allow public entry into our vibrant communications marketplace. … This is an issue that should be left to our states.”

The consumer watchdog group Free Press has made the opposite argument. Citing data from the public-private partnership Connected Tennessee, the organization reports that “constituents back in Hickman County in the center of Blackburn’s Tennessee district struggle to get fast and affordable Internet services (as) only 38 percent of Hickman residents have access to broadband services, far below the Tennessee statewide average of 58 percent.” The group argues that if the FCC preempts the 20 state laws limiting municipal broadband, it would help address some of those access shortfalls through entities like EPB.

EPB’s much-vaunted move into Internet services began in 2008 after utility officials realized cost-saving smart-grid infrastructure for energy transmission could also serve as a conduit for super-fast broadband speeds. Like corporations, the utility issued bonds to raise resources to invest in building out its broadband capacity. Similarly, just as many private corporations ended up receiving federal stimulus dollars, so too did EPB, which put those monies into the broadband network.

Earlier this year, EPB executives told the Washington Post that their telecom services have become “a great profit center” — an assertion that appears to be confirmed by a 2012 Standard & Poor’s credit upgrade notice pointing out that the utility “is now covering all costs from telephone, video and Internet revenue, as well as providing significant financial benefit to the electric system.”

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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Organization that assassinated President Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
created. 1993 1st World Trade Center bombing, Oklahoma City bombing
911, Omargh bombing, Mumbai attack has a short list.


http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/local/2 ... /13318203/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

New FBI Headquarters shortlist: 2 Md. & 1 Va.
1:22 p.m. EDT July 29, 2014
Possible FBI HQ locations



WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- Two sites in Prince George's County and one in Fairfax County are on the shortlist for the new FBI Headquarters.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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2. reads

http://globalresearch.ca/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

“Support MH17 Truth”: OSCE Monitors Identify “Shrapnel and Machine Gun-Like Holes” indicating Shelling. No Evidence of a Missile Attack. Shot Down by a Military Aircraft? By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 31, 2014
su25

The OSCE confirms the existence of “machine gun like holes”, without acknowledging that these cannot be caused by a missile. Were these small holes caused by a GSh-302 firing gun (rpm 3000) operated by an Su-25.
Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile” By Peter Haisenko, July 30, 2014
Malaysia MH17

A typical SU 25 jet is equipped with a double-barreled 30-mm gun, a 250 round magazine of anti-tank & splinter-explosive shells. The MH17 cockpit was fired at from both sides: entry & exit holes are found on the same fragment of it’s cockpit segment

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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Obama’s FBI to hire firm to rate ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ stories about the agency

Officials mum on need for and use of such info

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... en/?page=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


- Sunday, August 3, 2014

The FBI is hiring a contractor to grade news stories about the agency as “positive” “neutral” or “negative,” but the agency won’t say why officials need the information or what they plan to do with it.

FBI officials wouldn’t even reveal how they will go about assigning the grades, which were laid out in a recent contract solicitation. The contract tells potential bidders to “use their judgment” in scoring news coverage as part of a new “daily news briefing” service the agency is seeking as part of a contract that could last up to five years.

PHOTOS: Obama's biggest White House 'fails'

The move is reminiscent of a similar effort the Obama administration made to grade media coverage of its response to the BP oil spill. A separate defense contract rating reporters’ work was scrapped in 2009.

In a statement of work, the agency says its public affairs office needs a contractor to help monitor “breaking news, editorials, long-form journalism projects and the larger public conversation about law enforcement.”

But the lack of clear public methods and goals raises “troubling questions,” said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

“You would certainly worry this could affect access,” he said. “It might affect the way they’re going to approach your questions, whether they’re going to be extra careful not to make news if you’re on the ‘bad list.’”

Mr. Kennedy also pointed out that journalism can be nuanced and complicated, raising questions about what sort of guidance the agency provides to contractors to fit stories into positive, neutral or negative boxes.

“If you’re rigorously fair about it and you’re getting the FBI’s point of view out there, they would probably write that as a negative story, but it strikes me as neutral,” he said.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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msfreeh wrote:Obama’s FBI to hire firm to rate ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ stories about the agency

Officials mum on need for and use of such info

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... en/?page=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


- Sunday, August 3, 2014

The FBI is hiring a contractor to grade news stories about the agency as “positive” “neutral” or “negative,” but the agency won’t say why officials need the information or what they plan to do with it.

FBI officials wouldn’t even reveal how they will go about assigning the grades, which were laid out in a recent contract solicitation. The contract tells potential bidders to “use their judgment” in scoring news coverage as part of a new “daily news briefing” service the agency is seeking as part of a contract that could last up to five years.

PHOTOS: Obama's biggest White House 'fails'

The move is reminiscent of a similar effort the Obama administration made to grade media coverage of its response to the BP oil spill. A separate defense contract rating reporters’ work was scrapped in 2009.

In a statement of work, the agency says its public affairs office needs a contractor to help monitor “breaking news, editorials, long-form journalism projects and the larger public conversation about law enforcement.”

But the lack of clear public methods and goals raises “troubling questions,” said Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University.

“You would certainly worry this could affect access,” he said. “It might affect the way they’re going to approach your questions, whether they’re going to be extra careful not to make news if you’re on the ‘bad list.’”

Mr. Kennedy also pointed out that journalism can be nuanced and complicated, raising questions about what sort of guidance the agency provides to contractors to fit stories into positive, neutral or negative boxes.

“If you’re rigorously fair about it and you’re getting the FBI’s point of view out there, they would probably write that as a negative story, but it strikes me as neutral,” he said.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/02/bob- ... t-program/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Brother of Murder Victim Seeks Details of FBI's u2018Sensitive Informant Program'

By Bob McCarty

February 1, 2013

Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue filed a motion Monday asking a federal judge to determine whether he is entitled to limited discovery into the FBI’s u201CSensitive Informant Program.u201D

Trentadue Motion for Discovery 1-28-13 Click to download copy of motion (pdf).

In his motion, Trentadue described the program as one used by the bureau “to recruit and/or place informants on the staffs of members of the United States Congress and perhaps even federal judges, in the national media, within other federal agencies as well as the White House, on defense teams in high-profile federal and/or state criminal prosecutions, inside state and local law enforcement agencies, and even among the clergy of organized religions.”

Trentadue’s interest in the program stems from questions that have surfaced during his ongoing investigation into the death of Kenneth Trentadue, his brother who died in 1995 under suspicious circumstances while in custody at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, months after the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Kenneth-Trentadue_Pic Click to learn more at http://KennethTrentadue.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

With his latest legal maneuver, Trentadue hopes to convince Judge Clark Waddoups to compel the FBI to provide all documentation outlining what he describes in the motion as an “unlawful and unconstitutional domestic spying program.”

The maneuver comes almost four weeks after the FBI answered a federal court complaint Trentadue filed under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain copies of the manual the FBI uses to recruit and place u201Csensitive informants.u201D Citing national security concerns as the basis for their response, FBI officials answered that complaint by saying they u201Ccan neither confirm nor deny the allegations [of the Complaint] regarding its confidential informant program.u201D

Shown below, Trentadue’s definition of a “sensitive informant” is, perhaps, the most interesting aspect of his motion:

“…the term ‘Sensitive Informant’ is defined as anyone acting, directly or indirectly and with or without any compensation, on behalf of the FBI as a member of, person associated with or otherwise a participant in or observer of the activity or activities of an entity, organization, group, governmental agency or unit, association of organizations or individuals, public official, member of Congress, judge, cleric and/or religious or political organization AND who does not disclose or reveal to such entity, organization, group, governmental agency or unit, association of organizations or individuals, public official, member of Congress, judge, cleric and/or religious or political organization his or her FBI affiliation.

“A Sensitive Informant is, in other words, some one who is acting, directly or indirectly, on behalf of the FBI as an undisclosed participant in or observer of the activity or activities of an entity, organization, group, governmental agency or unit, association of organizations or individuals, public official, member of Congress, judge, cleric and/or religious or political organization.

“The term ‘Sensitive Informant’ likewise includes what the FBI's current terminology refers to as a ‘Confidential Human Source’ including any and all sub-categories of Confidential Human Sources such as, but not limited to, what the FBI refers to as a ‘Privileged Confidential Human Source,’ who is someone reporting confidential information to the FBI in violation of a privilege such as an attorney reporting his client's confidential communications, a physician reporting upon his patient's medical or mental condition, a cleric informing on a member of his or her church or other religious organization, etc.

In his motion, Trentadue requested the judge order FBI officials to answer 11 critical questions about the scope of their “Sensitive Informant Program” prior to a yet-to-be-scheduled hearing during which, according to Trentadue, FBI officials have said they will file a motion for summary judgment to prevent him access to the information he seeks.

Looking only for numbers of Sensitive Informants and not for specific names from the FBI, Trentadue’s questions target the time frame, “since January 1, 1995.” In short, he wants to know whether or not the agency has had Sensitive Informants inside a variety of government and non-governmental organizations.

Among the government organizations mentioned in his queries were the state and federal court systems, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, federal agencies other than the FBI, federal prosecutors’ offices, and law enforcement agencies at the municipal, county and state levels.

Among non-governmental agencies, he listed management positions inside news organizations, including but not limited to, the following: Associated Press, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, PBS, Reuters or Scripps-Howard; Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and/or Washington Post; The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, The New American, Newsweek, TIME and/or U.S. News & World Report.

Curiously, he also asked whether the FBI has had a Sensitive Informant(s) who was a cleric or member of the clergy in any religious organization.

Though I doubt the FBI will answer Trentadue’s questions, I’m convinced the attorney will continue fighting until he learns the whole truth about his brother’s death and, perhaps, about the Oklahoma City Bombing, too.

Untold Stories of the OKC Bombing Click to read other posts in my series, “Untold Stories of the OKC Bombing.”

To appreciate the full scope and breadth of Trentadue’s latest effort, I suggest you read the motion. It’s one of more than two-dozen posts I've published in my series, Untold Stories of the Oklahoma City Bombing. Included in the series are more than a dozen posts about Trentadue’s pursuit of the truth.

If you don't have time to peruse it all, simply read my Sept. 11, 2012, post, One-Hour Video Will Chill You, or watch the video below.

msfreeh
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http://counterpunch.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

August 06, 2014
Targeting the Future Generations
In Gaza, We Have Lost So Many That We Love
by Dr. MONA EL-FARRA

It’s been three days since Israel’s deadly attack on my cousin’s home and I still haven’t been able to go to Khan Younis to mourn with my surviving family. The Israeli bombing is ongoing and it’s difficult and very dangerous to travel 18 miles from where I’m living and working in Gaza City. Today Israel announced a ceasefire and I wanted to go to Khan Younis. But we have learned we cannot trust these ceasefires and one of my cousins called and begged, “Please don’t come, no where is safe, and you don’t need to take the risk.”

There is no safe place in Gaza. I’ve said it many times before in writing, in interviews, because it is the frightening reality for us. Many families have been erased and everyone in Gaza is wondering when it will be their turn. Between 60 to 65 families have been wiped out completely. My family is no different from any other in the Gaza Strip. Part of my family has been erased. We are always wondering, “Who will be next?”

Here is the story of my family, just one among many stories in Gaza:

At 2:30a.m. on Friday, August 1, my family received a first “warning” bomb on the roof of their house while they slept. They jumped up, woke the children, and told everyone to run outside. The family lived in a four-story apartment building. Three to four minutes after the first bomb, a second larger bomb hit the building. Part of the family was outside running into the street, but part of the family was still in the building when the second Israeli bomb hit.

My cousin’s son Emad was trying to bring the children together to move them to a safer place when a third rocket hit them in the street and killed them all where they stood. There were body parts everywhere, most of them children. This series of attacks killed nine members of my family:

Abed Almalek Abed Al Salam El-Farra, 64 years

Osamah Abed Almalek El-Farra, 34 years

Awatef A’ez Eldeen El-Farra, 29 years

Emad El-Farra, 28 years

Mohamad Mahmoud El-Farra, 12 years

Nadeen Mahmoud El-Farra, 9 years

Yara Abed Al Salam El-Farra, 8 years

http://counterpunch.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Abed Al Rahaman El-Farra, 8 years

Lujain Basem El-Farra, 4 years

Also, ten more people were injured in this bombing, among them one family member, Afaf, who was pregnant and miscarried her baby.

The night my relatives were killed was one of the worst nights throughout Gaza. No one could sleep because the bombing was everywhere. At 4 a.m. I opened Facebook and saw that a post about Abed Almalek and some of his children and grandchildren being killed. I immediately called my cousin Mahmoud in Khan Younis and when he answered the phone, he was weeping. Mahmoud...
CONTINUE READING

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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see link for full story


http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/08/ ... -fbis.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Second contractor protests FBI’s no-bid, $500 million deal with Motorola

August 8, 2014 Updated 19 hours ago


WASHINGTON — The Harris Corp. has become the second contractor to formally protest the FBI’s plans to award a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Motorola Solutions Inc., calling the bureau’s proposal to forgo competitive bidding “factually unsound, legally unwarranted and wholly unnecessary.”

The FBI gave other vendors only a couple of weeks’ notice late last month that it planned to hand the contract to Illinois-based Motorola Solutions, the company that dominates the nation’s emergency communications market, mainly to upgrade the 30-year-old two-way radio network used by thousands of bureau agents.

Many FBI agents still use radios that operate in conventional analog mode, requiring twice as much bandwidth than is permitted under a 2008 mandate from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which regulates federal emergency communications.

But in a filing with the Government Accountability Office, lawyers for Florida-based Harris took strong issue with the FBI’s assertion that proprietary features in the existing Motorola system would preclude interaction with products of other manufacturers.

“Harris’ infrastructure and portable radio equipment can work with legacy Motorola equipment until such legacy equipment is replaced,” they wrote. Indeed, the FBI already owns two Harris “cores,” or controllers, that have connected with Motorola equipment for years, they said.

It was Harris, Motorola’s biggest rival in the domestic market, that installed infrastructure under a contract to upgrade two-way radios for multiple departments in the nation’s capital in 2007. Hence, Harris lawyers wrote, if the FBI seeks to justify a “follow-on” contract, it selected the wrong company.

On its face, Harris said, the FBI proposal also must be scrapped because it seeks to allow 11 other agencies within the Justice and Homeland Security departments to buy up to about $170 million in Motorola equipment off of the contract over the next five years. Harris said that proposal “renders improper any sole-source award to Motorola,” because those agencies are already using Harris equipment.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Motorola spokesman Tom McMahon said it’s company policy not to comment on pending procurements.

Harris’ protest also took issue with the FBI’s assertions that two of its procurement officials spoke with other vendors at a trade show and concluded that none could overcome the proprietary barriers of Motorola’s legacy equipment, noting there was no visit to Harris’ booth.

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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A couple of read as about the power of the men who run Exxon Mobil
with a bonus tweet from Charles Darwin


1st read
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/08/08/exxo ... lack-bite/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Exxon drilling Russian Arctic shows oil sanctions lack bite
Posted on August 8, 2014 at 11:41 am by Bloomberg in Arctic, Crude oil, Europe, General, Offshore
Vladimir Putin, Russia's president. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

By Stephen Bierman and Eduard Gismatullin
Bloomberg News

Sanctions, what sanctions?

Exxon Mobil Corp. will start drilling a $700 million well in the Arctic Ocean tomorrow, Russia’s government said, showing that for all the talk of action against Vladimir Putin’s oil industry, the largest U.S. energy company is undeterred.

As Russia’s relations with Europe and the U.S. deteriorated to the lowest point since the Cold war over the conflict in Ukraine, the European Union imposed a third round of sanctions last week, restricting the export of equipment used for offshore oil production. That doesn’t affect Exxon’s plans because the contract to hire the rig was signed before the measures were announced.

Developing the Arctic is vital for Russia, where energy provides half the state’s revenue, to maintain oil production near a post-Soviet high of more than 10 million barrels a day. For Exxon, where output fell to a five-year low in the second quarter, a discovery would offer a vital new source of crude.

“The well is very important, it’s probably one of the most interesting wells in the global oil industry for many years,” James Henderson, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said in a phone interview.

After more than two years’ planning Exxon and its partner OAO Rosneft, Russia’s state oil producer, will start drilling the Universitetskaya prospect tomorrow, the Kremlin said in a statement Friday. Putin will give the signal to start Russia’s northernmost well accompanied by Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin, who’s subject to U.S. sanctions himself, and Exxon Mobil Russia head Glenn Waller.

Neither Exxon nor Rosneft press service immediately responded to requests for confirmation.

Universitetskaya is the first of as many as 40 offshore wells Rosneft plans by 2018 to test the potential of the unexplored the Arctic Ocean. The geological structure targeted by the drilling is roughly the size of the city of Moscow and may contain as many as 9 billion barrels of oil, according to a presentation on Rosneft’s website.

“It is an anomaly in the current situation and just how long major western companies, such as Exxon, can carry on doing this, is anybody’s guess,” said John Lough, a London-based associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based foreign policy research group. “They are light sanctions at the moment in terms of the energy industry.”

Exxon isn’t the only western oil company involved. BP Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest oil company by value, has an interest through it’s 20 percent stake in Rosneft.

The West Alpha rig, leased by Exxon from Bermuda-based Seadrill Ltd., is currently in Kara Sea about 72 miles off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Drilling will take about 70 days, a period that should be sufficient to assess the reserves of any discovery, Rosneft’s head of offshore, Zeljko Runje, said on a call with analysts last week. The area is relatively free of icebergs, meaning work is ready to start, he said.

Longer-term, the sanctions announced last week may start to slow the development of the Arctic shelf, said Edward Chow, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Sanctions were not designed to stop this, but overall the project is bound to slow down as would all long-term, high-risk projects of this sort until how sanctions are enforced and their duration are clear,” he said.


2nd read


if link fails google Murchison Kennedy assassination



http://www.google.com/#q=Murchison+Kenn ... assination" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




bonus tweet








We are now past 400 ppm co2 in the air




350.org is an international environmental organization encouraging citizens to action with the belief that publicizing the increasing levels of carbon dioxide will pressure world leaders to address climate change and to reduce levels from more than 385 parts per million to 350 parts per million. It was founded by author Bill McKibben with the goal of building a global grassroots movement to raise awareness about anthropogenic climate change, to confront climate change denial, and to cut emissions of carbon dioxide[1][2] in order to slow the rate of global warming. 350.org takes its name from the research of Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientist James E. Hansen, who posited in a 2007 paper that 350 parts-per-million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere is a safe upper limit to avoid a climate tipping point.[3][4]

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

you are only as high as the people you hang out with


August 11, 2014 Huffpost Religion
Edition: U.S.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/1 ... lp00000592" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;




Image for Pastor Kicked Out Of Church Network He Helped To Start


Megapastor Mark Driscoll's Books Pulled From Major Christian Store In Wake Of Scandal
Religion News Service | By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Posted: 08/11/2014 5:08 pm EDT Updated

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

In 1999 Assistant Attorney General Eric " I am a African American" Holder refused a request by the Martin Luther King family
to reopen the King Assassination Investigation just because new evidence showed FBI agents had assassinated Dr King. see

MLK's Family Feels Vindicated - CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mlks-family ... indicated/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Dec 8, 1999 - MLK's Family Feels Vindicated .... Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder says the report is almost complete and could be ...

also see



http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... lk/372258/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In 1991 future FBI Director Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller agreed to coverup the the largest banking scandal in American Banking history the BCCI Banking scandal. see


FBI Director Mueller was at center of alleged BCCI coverup in 1991
http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=4304" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
May 26, 2009 - Both Mr. Terwilliger and Mr. Mueller were senior Justice Department officials when BCCI got away. Mr. Terwilliger was Deputy Attorney General ...
How Doj Cover-Up of FBI Murders Enabled 9/11 Attacks
books.google.com/books?isbn=0932438814
Rodey Stich - 2012
Schumer stated “There is possibly a cover-up or conspiracy,” saying the failure to ... Mueller Cover-Up In BCCI Scandal A Wall Street Journal editorial (May 31, ...
DOJ-Judicial Crimes Against the People: - Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=0932438946
Captain Rodney Stich - 2014 - ‎History
Schumer stated “There is possibly a cover-up or conspiracy,” saying the failure to ... Mueller Cover-Up In BCCI Scandal A Wall Street Journal editorial (May 31, ...
Terrorism and Deadliest Enabling Scandals of 21st Century
books.google.com/books?isbn=0932438830
Rodney Stich
Other Areas of Cover-up by Mueller Mueller was involved in the prosecution of ... in the BCCI bank scandal, which was more of a cover-up, than prosecution.



Anybody see the CEO's of Goldman Sachs or Bank of America go to prison?
Nah!

In other news

Two Former Utah Attorney Generals Arrested in Bank of America Scandal
posted by Alex Ferreras on August 13, 2014 in Scams. Bookmark the permalink.

http://www.loansafe.org/two-former-utah ... ca-scandal" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Two former Utah Attorney Generals, John Swallow and Mark Shurtleff were arrested and criminally charged in July for corruption and bribery charges. Their arrests came after a lengthy criminal investigation by the FBI and Utah Department of Public Safety investigative probe which revealed amongst other crimes a conspiracy between the two men with Bank of America that may have harmed thousands of Utah homeowners seeking loan modification by purposely derailing a major foreclosure lawsuit.

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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see link to see how deep the taxpayer funded DEA. agents penetrated your wallet


http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/ ... nt-Lawsuit" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Lawsuit: DEA informant improperly supervised, killed Albuquerque man


First Posted: August 13, 2014 - 11:10 am
Last Updated: August 13, 2014 - 11:13 a




ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A new lawsuit says a man accused of gunning down another man in Albuquerque's South Valley last year was an active U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informer who was improperly supervised.

The Albuquerque Journal reports (http://goo.gl/djxdSq" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) the family of Jason Estrada recently filed a $50 million lawsuit against the agency.

Thirty-one-year-old Edward Quintana has been charged with killing Estrada. He also is charged with criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13.

Albuquerque police say Estrada was killed when he confronted Quintana over the sexual assaults of a child.

The lawsuit claims Quintana previously was debriefed by agents and became a "confidential source" despite his criminal background.

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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/l ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

Post by msfreeh »

couple of reads
let god sort out the truth


1st read


Alfred Clark Ellington was born in Magazine on Sept. 10, 1923, to Lee and Annie Ellington. His earthly life ended in Dallas on Aug. 10, 2014. Throughout his life, he served his country, his church and his family with integrity. He was a retired special agent for the FBI. He spent several years in the northeast before joining the Dallas office in 1957 for the majority of his career. As an accounting and fingerprint expert, his knowledge was a major factor in embezzlements in the banking industry. Although involved in many of the high-profile cases during his tenure with the Bureau, he was a humble man who did not seek the attention of others for his efforts, quietly working behind the scenes to secure results. Alfred was a World War II veteran, serving his country in the Air Force, stationed in Guam. Shortly after the war, he married Gladene Freeman in 1946. He graduated from Southeastern University, attending night school while working as a clerk for the FBI in Washington, DC. After retirement, he enjoyed restoring antique furniture and woodworking for others. He loved his home and church, a faithful family man. He joined Lake Highlands Baptist Church in 1957 and served as a deacon and high school Sunday school teacher for many years.



2nd read


see link for full article

http://www.whokilledjfk.net/malcolm_wallace.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MALCOLM WALLACE

WALLACE FINGERPRINT


A. Nathan Darby's Affidavit

The following sworn affidavit was given by fingerprint expert A. Nathan Darby this past spring.

Those following recent developments in the JFK case will recall that Darby, who holds certification by the Internal Association for Identification, concluded that previously unidentified fingerprints taken from cartons on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963, were those of Malcolm E. "Mac" Wallace, a convicted killer with ties to Lyndon Johnson. (See Fair Play #23, July-August 1998.)

Darby's identification was made "blindly" --- that is, without his knowing the identity of Wallace, or of the implications of naming him. After making the ID and learning all that was involved, however, Mr. Darby stuck to his conclusions.

Thanks to Walt Brown and JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly for a copy of this affidavit.

9 March 1998

THE STATE OF TEXAS

Affidavit

County of Travis

1. My name is A. Nathan Darby. I am a resident of Austin , Texas , and I am fully competent to make this affidavit.

2. I have been active in law enforcement for many years, starting with the Texas Department of public Safety as a State Trooper in 1938. I then served with the Austin , Texas Police Department from October 1940, and including my military service, I was with the Austin Police Department until my retirement in August 1979. During that period of service, I rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. I am presently an expert in fingerprint identification, and I hold the designation of Certified Latent Fingerprint Examiner (#78-468), which is issued by the Internal Association for Identification, pursuant to the attached Exhibit DAN #1.

3. I first became interested in fingerprint work in 1942. My direct work in fingerprint identification began soon after, during my military service. I joined the U.S. Army in October 1943 and graduated from Officer Candidate School as a lieutenant in February 1945. I was immediately put in charge of preparing a fingerprint identification system for the Philippine Commonwealth. For my work of setting up their Central Fingerprint Bureau, I was awarded the Philippine Military Merit Medal, the Philippine Commonwealth's highest non-combat award for foreign military personnel. The United States Army also awarded me the Army Commendation Medal. This achievement was further recognized in the 1946 textbook, Lectures in Fingerprints by Fred C. Luchico, then Chief of the Identification Division with the Department of Justice, where he states that I "provided a modern, current, and complete fingerprint file for the Philippine Commonwealth." By 1946 I had risen to the rank of Captain. When my tour of Duty was completed in the Philippines , I returned to the Austin Police Department in November 1946.

4. On 1 January 1948 I was promoted to sergeant and assigned to the Identification Section of the Austin Police Department. On 7 July 1953 I was promoted to lieutenant. In 1956, I was made supervisor of the four employees of Identification and Criminal Records Section of the Austin Police Department. At this time I handled the classification of 176,000 cards and expanded the section to fourteen employees, training and supervising all personnel. In 1970, I worked on advanced record-keeping with the Kodak Miracode system and developed the fingerprint and photograph coding method for the system. During this time I also served on the board of directors of the Texas Division of the International Association for Identification. I hold an Advanced Certificate in Law Enforcement and an Instructor Certificate from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. I have been a member of the Texas Division of the International Association for Identification since November, 1946.

5. Since 1949, I have testified in numerous cases in the State and Federal Courts about fingerprint identification. This testimony included the preparation of latent charts as exhibits. There was never a mistrial or appeal based on my testimony. Attached is Exhibit DAN#2. This exhibit shows the opinions of two District Judges, Travis County , Texas regarding my testimony experience.

have testified in numerous cases in the State and Federal Courts about fingerprint identification. This testimony included the preparation of latent charts as exhibits. There was never a mistrial or appeal based on my testimony. Attached is Exhibit DAN#2. This exhibit shows the opinions of two District Judges, Travis County , Texas regarding my testimony experience.

...

6. Fingerprints are an important part of law enforcement because no two prints are alike. Although no person has been able to calculate the likelihood of a mismatch with statistical certainty, the courts accept the admissibility of evidence from fingerprints. Human fingerprints are from unique ridges, which are useful for gripping and holding. An inked fingerprint is the reproduction of the ridges of the finger. An inked fingerprint is provided by putting black ink on the finger and then placing the finger on a suitable contrasting background surface, such as white paper. A latent fingerprint is the production of ridges when the finger has been placed on a surface. The ridges of the finger leave a residue, body fluids, and chemicals on the surface touched. The latent prints are recovered and compared to the inked prints.

For an expert to identify a latent print with an inked print, matching formations must be found on both prints. The ridge lines between the matched formation are then counted. This ridge count must be the same count for both the latent and the ink print. There is no fixed documented limit on how many matching points must be made. The identifying marks on the Ink print and the latent print are then marked and numbered. A conclusion and identification is then made based on the location of the characters on the prints, their formation, and the ridge count between them.

7. Recently I received a photocopy of an inked print along with a photocopy of a latent print from [ Texas researcher]. After careful and extended examination of the inked print photocopy and the latent print photocopy given to me, I have their identifying characteristics marked and numbered. The inked print is Exhibit DAN #3, and the latent Print is Exhibit DAN #4.

8. In addition to exhibit DAN#3 and exhibit DAN#4, [researcher] gave me a photocopy of a standard form fingerprint card. This is exhibit DAN#5. Exhibit DAN#5 is from an unknown source and has fingerprints of an unknown person to me. The space#10 on exhibit DAN#5 is the same inked print as DAN#3. Space #10 on exhibit DAN#5 is the space used for the left little finger. There are other indications that the print in space #10 on Exhibit DAN#5 is the left little finger.

9. Based on my comparison, I conclude that the unknown person to me who produced the inked fingerprint Exhibit DAN#3 produced the latent print Exhibit DAN#4, and produced the print in space #10 on exhibit DAN #5.

/s/ A. Nathan Darby

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 12 day of March, 1998.

/s/ [not easily read]

Notary Public for Texas

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WALLACE FINGERPRINT 1


JFK Breakthrough?

Text by John Kelin; photograph Copyright © 1998 by Mike Blackwell

A Texas-based assassination research group has publicly named a man believed to have left a previously unidentified fingerprint on a box making up the so-called "sniper's nest" on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

At a May 29 press conference in Dallas, researcher and author Walt Brown said that the fingerprints belong to Malcolm E. "Mac" Wallace, a convicted killer with ties to Lyndon Baines Johnson. The fingerprints have been officially unidentified since President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.


Walt Brown presenting fingerprint data; Malcom Wallace (inset)

Brown presented data showing a 14-point match between Wallace's fingerprint card, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the previously unidentified print, a copy of which was kept in the National Archives. The match was made by A. Nathan Darby, an expert with certification by the International Association of Identifiers.

The Texas researchers forwarded their findings to the Dallas Police Department, who passed it on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Copies have also gone to Assassination Records Review Board, the federal panel created to oversee the identification and release of records relating to the JFK assassination.


DPD print (left) matched by Darby to unidentified print from TSBD (right)

Malcolm Wallace, convicted in a 1951 murder and suspected in others, has been linked to the 1961 death of U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator Henry Marshall. Marshall was reportedly close to connecting Lyndon Johnson to fraudulent activities involving businessman and convicted swindler Billy Sol Estes.

Estes alleged in 1984 that LBJ ordered the killings of Marshall, President Kennedy, and half a dozen others, and that Wallace carried them out. A grand jury decided that same year that Henry Marshall was murdered as a result of a conspiracy involving then-Vice President Johnson, his aide Clifton Carter, and Wallace. No charges were possible since all three men were by then deceased.

Wallace was killed in a single car automobile accident in January 1971.

Barr McClellan, a Houston attorney and part of the Texas research team, told Fair Play that he began to focus on Wallace during his work as attorney-partner with Ed Clark, whom he described as an Austin power broker and one of those behind the assassination. "John Cofer, Wallace's attorney from the start, was our partner specializing in criminal cases," McClellan said. "From that position of insight, I knew Wallace played a key role in the assassination."

In the petition filed with the ARRB, McClellan wrote: "My direct involvement with Clark as his law partner and sole attorney occurred when he sought an additional payoff for the assassination." Negotiations for the payoff, McClellan told Fair Play, were "in May 1974 in a secret meeting with two members of the Railroad Commission."

The Wallace fingerprint match by Darby has been disputed by Glen Sample, who represents California-based researchers whose investigation parallels the Texas research. While Sample says the California group still believes Wallace "was one of the shooters" of President Kennedy, they do not believe his fingerprints are those from the TSBD box.

In support of this, Sample offers fingerprint experts of his own. "Both of our experts are working police I.D. officers," he wrote on his web page. "They go to court on a regular basis, testifying as expert witnesses. They said that the print was CLEARLY not a match. But what about the 14 points? They said that it is NOT uncommon to have a set of prints that have many matching points, but when they find points that DO NOT match, these negate the matching points." Sample characterized this finding by his experts as "bad news."

Walt Brown countered by saying that Sample's experts "were local i.d. bureau guys from San Bernadino, and not in the category of either Nathan Darby or the people that it was hoped would examine the originals within the law enforcement communities charged with the proper investigation."

The California researchers, nevertheless, call Wallace "the key figure in the Kennedy assassination." They quote sources who say that in addition to being a Dealey Plaza gunman, Wallace also recruited Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby into the plot. The Californians' work, entirely separate from that of the Texas group, resulted in a 1995 book called The Men on the Sixth Floor, by Sample and Mark Collum.

Darby is a Certified Latent Print Examiner with many years experience. He affirmed in a notarized affidavit that he found 14 matches between a National Archives "unknown" print, taken from what the Warren Commission designated Box A in the Texas School Book Depository, and a fingerprint card submitted "blindly" for comparison, which bore the fingerprints of Malcolm Wallace. That card was obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety in July of 1996.

The findings of the Texas group were given to the Assassination Records Review Board last spring. In a cover letter dated May 28, attorney McClellan told the Board that "this hard evidence establishes a conspiracy was behind the assassination and suggests important new areas for your review." An accompanying eight page petition cites the Wallace fingerprint match; 1984 Texas grand jury action linking Wallace, LBJ, and Carter to Henry Marshall's death; McClellan's personal knowledge of the case; and other evidence in support of the Texas group's allegations.

Left unanswered by the Wallace revelations are details such as Lee Oswald's true role, the placement of other Dealey Plaza shooters, and the identity of who financed the assassination.

There are suggestions that Wallace had ties to the world of Intelligence. The Texas researchers are formally urging the Review Board to highlight areas for further investigation, including disclosure of Wallace's employment records, and records of investigations of Wallace by the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Department of Defense.





WALLACE FINGERPRINT 2


Mac Wallace Update

The following statement was received by Fair Play in late March. It was sent to us by Barr McClellan, the Houston

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http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/08/20/70602.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wednesday, August 20, 2014Last Update: 1:59 PM PT

National Security Cited in Bid to Thwart Watchlist Case



SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Justice Department urged a federal judge to deny a Malaysian woman's request for reconsideration of constitutional claims related to her being placed on terror watchlists, citing potential harm to national security.
Rahinah Ibrahim, a former graduate student at Stanford University, has been fighting her placement on various terror watchlists since discovering she was on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list in 2005.
The Justice Department eventually admitted that a mistake by an FBI agent that landed her on a terrorist database and the no-fly list, and got her booted out of the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge William Alsup rebuked the government for its handling of Ibrahim's case and ordered all agencies to remove her from their terror databases and watchlists.
But Alsup stopped short of finding in Ibrahim's favor on her constitutional claims that included First Amendment, substantive due process and equal protection infringements.
She has since asked the judge to reconsider twice, most recently last week when she alleged that a newly discovered document from 2013 entitled "March 2013 Watchlisting Guidelines" prove that prove that broken rules - and not a mistake by an FBI agent - got her watchlisted and kicked out of the United States.
In a response filed Wednesday, the Justice Department said Ibrahim's "proof" came from an Internet article and urged Alsup to leave the issue alone.
"Leave should be denied because there is no ground for the court to consider these Internet postings, or the purported document referenced," the DOJ filing states. "The court previously held that all post-2009 updated terrorist screening procedures are privileged and excluded from the record in this case. Nothing in the materials cited by plaintiff reflects that a government official has confirmed the authenticity of the document attached to plaintiff's motion, which she appears to have obtained from an Internet website. In the absence of such an authorized acknowledgement, the third-party Internet postings cited by plaintiff fail to present any 'new material facts' under the district court's local rules that would warrant reconsideration. The content of any post-2009 terrorism watchlisting policies or procedures (even if plaintiff's document was such a document) remains privileged, is excluded from the case, and thus cannot be considered on the merits or fees. As a result, there would be no basis on which the court could properly consider the contents of the document in reconsidering its previous orders."

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After Climate Meeting, Scientists Still Aren’t Sure That Florida’s Governor Is ‘Climate Literate’

by Katie Valentine Posted on August 21, 2014 at 4:48 pm

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... cientists/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Florida State University environmental science professor Jeffrey Chanton gives a presentation to Florida Gov. Rick Scott on climate change on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014 in Tallahassee, Fla.

Florida State University environmental science professor Jeffrey Chanton gives a presentation to Florida Gov. Rick Scott on climate change on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014 in Tallahassee, Fla.

CREDIT: AP Photos/Brendan Farrington

Five climate scientists gave Florida Gov. Rick Scott the rundown on climate change and how its affecting Florida and the rest of the globe on Tuesday.

But so far, it’s not certain how much Gov. Scott took out of the meeting. The governor, who’s running for re-election this year, didn’t ask any questions about the scientists’ presentations during the 30-minute meeting, and the scientists say he took up the first 10 or so minutes of the meeting making small talk — asking them what they taught at their respective universities and where they were from.

“We didn’t have that kind of discussion where there’s this important give and take that’s associated with actually, from my experience, absorbing the information,” Ben Kirtman professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami, told ThinkProgress. “I don’t honestly believe the governor is climate literate, and I don’t think he is particularly interested in becoming climate literate.”

David Hastings, professor of marine science and chemistry at Eckerd College, told ThinkProgress that he thought the governor’s decision to take up “almost half” the meeting with small talk showed that he wasn’t truly interested in the meeting.

“If we were talking about things that he was sincerely interested in, that small talk would have been very short,” he said.

msfreeh
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Re: George Orwell shake hands with Charles Darwin

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Weekend Edition August 22-24, 2014
Are We Not Savages Too?
The Beheading of James Foley
by GARRY LEECH

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/22/ ... mes-foley/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Without question, the beheading of US journalist James Foley was an inexcusable and savage act of violence by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The killing of non-combatants should always be condemned. But there is a clear discrepancy in the response of both the Western media and the general public with regard to the killing of Western civilians compared to Islamic civilians. The number of Western civilians killed by Islamic militants pales in comparison to the number of non-combatants that have died at the hands of the US and its military allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. And yet, the outrage at the killing of these innocent Muslims, many of who are women and children, is virtually non-existent in the West.

According to several studies, more than 1,000 Afghan civilians were killed by the US military in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom. The number of non-combatants killed by coalition forces surpassed 3,000 by the end of the third year of the occupation. The killing of civilians by the US military continued thereafter with drone strikes accounting for most of the deaths in recent years. According to the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, some 2,400 people were killed by US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during the first five years of Barack Obama’s presidency. The study claims that as many as 951 of these deaths were civilians and that almost 200 of the victims were children.

These numbers are corroborated by another study conducted by the Columbia Law School which reports that approximately 600 people were killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan in 2011. According to the report, as many as 155 of those killed were civilians. Together, these two reports suggest that 30 to 40 percent of people killed by US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are civilians. This percentage corresponds with that reported in a study headed by public health expert Amy Hagopian of the University of Washington. Hagopian’s comprehensive study of civilian deaths during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-2011) reveals that Baghdad was at the epicenter of the violence for much of that period and that 35 percent of those killed in that city by US coalition forces were civilians.

Some may argue that civilian deaths are inevitable in a war and that militants, not civilians, are the intended target of US operations. In accordance with such arguments we use terms such as “collateral damage” to eradicate the human factor and to justify the deaths of these innocents. But the rate of so-called collateral damage is extremely high if, as these studies suggest, 30 to 40 percent of those killed in US military operations over the past 13 years have been civilians. This means that when the US military plans an operation it can assume that approximately one out of every three people it kills will be a civilian. It is difficult to dismiss such a high rate of civilian deaths over such an extended period of time as merely accidental; clearly, military commanders are authorizing operations with the full knowledge that a significant number of civilians will be killed by US forces.

President Obama addressed the issue of civilian casualties earlier this year when he stated that “we can take targeted strikes, understanding that anytime you take a military strike there are risks involved. What I’ve tried to do is to tighten the process so much and limit the risks of civilian casualties so much that we have the least fallout from those actions.” There are two troubling aspects to Obama’s statement. Firstly, the “risks involved” are not borne by Americans, they are almost 100 percent assumed unwillingly by civilians on the ground when operations involve drone strikes or aerial bombing, which have constituted the majority of US operations in recent years. And secondly, Obama’s use of the word “fallout” suggests that his primary motivation for reducing the number of innocents killed is the avoidance of bad press that might result from military actions rather than saving human lives.

But the conscious killing of civilians by the US military cannot always be easily dismissed with such Orwellian doublespeak as “collateral damage,” there have been many cases in Iraq and Afghanistan where there was no question regarding the intention of US troops to murder civilians. In his book, Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, Jim Frederick describes the 2006 extrajudicial execution of an Iraqi family of four—a father, Leech_Capitalism_Cover-191x300mother and two daughters. According to Army Specialist Paul Cortez, his unit was on patrol south of Baghdad when Army Specialist James Barker suggested that they find an Iraqi woman to rape. “We’ve all killed Hadjis, but I’ve been here twice and I still never @#$%&%! one of these &!@$#%$,” Barker stated.

Having chosen their target, the soldiers entered the house and locked three members of the Janabis family in the bedroom with Private First Class Steven Green standing guard over them. Meanwhile, Cortez took the 14-year-old daughter Abeer into the living room and began raping her. According to Frederick’s account:

In the bedroom, Green was losing control of his prisoners. The woman made a run for the door. Green shot her once in the back and she fell to the floor. The man became unhinged. Green turned his own AK on him and pulled the trigger. It jammed. Panicking, as the man advanced on him, Green switched to his shotgun. The first shot blasted the top of the man’s head off. Then Green turned to the little girl, who was running for a corner. This time the AK worked. He raised the rifle and shot Hadeel in the back of the head. She fell to the ground. …

As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, “They’re all dead. I killed them all.” Cortez held Abeer down and Green raped her. Then Cortez pushed a pillow over her face, still pinning her arms with his knees. Green grabbed the AK, pointed the gun at the pillow, and fired one shot, killing Abeer.

There is a term that US presidents love to use in their efforts to assume the moral high ground in international affairs. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have used it repeatedly in reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. That term is “the civilized world.” It is used to portray us Westerners as sophisticated and “civilized” and Islamic militants as barbaric “savages.” As with the term collateral damage, it is used to appease our conscience with regard to the brutal acts of violence that we repeatedly inflict on innocent people. After all, if we represent the civilized world then we must stand for all that is good. And if we stand for all that is good, then any innocent women and children that die from our actions must merely be unfortunate victims of a tragic occurrence. While we may be comforted by such rhetoric and self-agrandization, I doubt our self-serving attitude provides much solace to a Pakistani mother who has watched her child get blown to pieces by a missile fired from one of our drones.

Every form of colonialism throughout history has given birth to a violent resistance movement. And it should not be surprising that the current imperialist model in the form of capitalist globalization has also spurred a violent response. There were no extremist groups in Iraq before the US invasion. It was the US invasion and occupation that opened the door to al-Qaeda’s entry into Iraq as part of the broader insurgency that rose up to liberate the country from its foreign occupiers. And it was this insurgency that gave birth to ISIS. Therefore, it could be argued that our widespread killing of civilians in Iraq helped to create a fertile recruiting environment for extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and contributed to the emergence of ISIS.

There is no question that the beheading of James Foley was a barbaric and savage act. But was Foley’s death any more barbaric and savage than the rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer? Is it any more tragic than the deaths of the many other Iraqi and Afghan civilians who have been summarily executed by US troops? Is it any more heartbreaking than the killing of thousands of civilians in aerial bombardments ordered by US military commanders fully aware that the targeting of residential areas would result in the deaths of many innocents?

The lack of graphic video footage of the killing of innocent people by our bombs and missiles does not make these deaths any less brutal or horrific. So while we must condemn the tragic and gruesome killing of James Foley, we also need to take a good look in the mirror and reflect on our own complicity in the slaughter of innocent civilians. Perhaps then we will realize that we are not so civilized after all.

Garry Leech is an independent journalist and author of numerous books including Capitalism: A Structural Genocide (Zed Books, 2012); Beyond Bogota: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia (Beacon Press, 2009);

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http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/mother-te ... ays-study/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Mother Teresa Was No Saint Says Study
October 3, 2013.


Mother Teresa Was No Saint Says Study

Internationally revered Catholic nun Mother Teresa and her legacy are the subjects of a new study released by University of Ottawa researcher Carole Sénéchal Serge, and University of Montreal researchers Larivée and Genevieve Chenard. The study authors found that Mother Teresa was the farthest thing from a saint. Instead, the study authors say, she was a cruel woman who believed that there was glory in the suffering of the sick. She made people with grave illnesses sicker by denying them medication and forcing them to writhe in pain while she squirreled away “enormous sums of money” that could have been used to help them.

The authors cite Mother Teresa as saying “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.” They say this opinion informed how she cared for the sick and dying, causing huge amounts of pain and loss of dignity among her charges.

The study also suggests that she failed to provide for her patients’ basic medical needs and in some cases, starved them of food and medications. They also point out that she received care in a regular modern hospital when she herself fell sick, and that she misused millions of dollars in aid money that should have gone to care for the patients in her homes for the dying.

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EXCLUSIVE: FBI agents to guard UK airports against jihadi fanatics
Express.co.uk-Aug 24, 2014
DOZENS of FBI agents are to be posted at UK airports amid fears that Britain's anti-terrorism efforts are failing to keep track of

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/502667 ... i-fanatics" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Empty nests of the North: “Massive chick deaths” in seabird colonies; climate, oceanic changes blamed




http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ ... -the-north" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


By Cheryl Katz
Environmental Health News
Part 3 of Winged Warnings
Published in conjunction with National Geographic


August 27, 2014

FLATEY ISLAND, Iceland – When the days grew long, seabirds flocked to this hamlet on the edge of the Arctic to rear their chicks under the midnight sun. “Kria,” shrieked the terns, calling summer up from the slumbering ground. Black cliffs were transformed into snowbanks of white kittiwakes. Puffins whirred between land and sea. Murres plied the shoreline, fulmars patrolled the skies. Everywhere sounded their vibrant chorus.

These days, a scatter of stubborn holdovers streaks the sky and paddles the bay, but the legions are gone. The chicks have perished, their bereft parents have returned to sea.

Half of Iceland’s seabirds nest on this low-lying volcanic outcropping and its neighboring islands in the deep west coast gash called Breidafjordur Bay. Flatey Island used to be covered with chicks snuggled inside rocky hillside burrows, under tall meadow grass, in nests strewn across headlands and shores.
Ragnar Olafsson
Ornithologist Sverrir Thorstensson bands a seabird on Klofningur Island in Breidafjordur Bay.

“There were thousands! You could hear them,” says Olina Jonsdottir, who has lived on this island with her husband, Hafsteinn Gudmundsson, nearly 50 years. She looks out her living room window, past the sheep grazing on knuckles of grass-covered lava, past the black basalt beach, to the few birds drifting over the water beyond. “You can’t do that anymore. Now there are so few.”
Cheryl Katz
An European shag on Klofningur Island.

Iceland, circled by the food-rich currents of Atlantic, Arctic and polar waters, is the Serengeti for seabirds. Its rocky coast, hillocky fields and jutting seacliffs are breeding grounds for 23 species, hosting an indispensible share of Atlantic puffins, black murres, great skuas, northern fulmars, razorbills, black-legged kittiwakes and more.

But the nests have gone empty in the past few years, and colonies throughout the North Atlantic are shrinking.

The suspected culprits are many: The leading candidates are the profound changes underway in the world’s oceans – their climate, their chemistry, their food webs, their loads of pollutants.

Warming oceans and earlier thaws are driving away the seabirds’ prey, unleashing deadly, unseasonal storms and knocking tight breeding schedules off-kilter. Mounting carbon dioxide absorption and melting glaciers are acidifying and diluting the aquatic balance, jeopardizing marine life and creatures that depend on it for food.

Alarmed scientists have returned from fieldwork throughout the North Atlantic with sobering descriptions of massive chick die-offs and colonies abandoned with eggs still in the nests.

“Mass mortality of kittiwakes is evident,” said Freydis Vigfusdottir, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Exeter in Cornwall, England. “You can see in the late summer lots of ‘chick pancakes’ in the nest.”
Cheryl Katz
These cliffs on Breidafjordur Bay's Hafnarey Island used to be covered with kittiwakes.

And in the Arctic tern colonies she’s studied, “there are just dead chicks everywhere,” she said. “Not only do you have to provide your field assistants with food and shelter, but also some psychological help after many, many days of collecting dead chicks.”

Total breeding failure

On Flatey Island, the once-prolific terns haven’t produced viable chicks in more than a decade. More than half of the region’s black-legged kittiwake nests vanished over 15 years.

“There are just dead chicks everywhere. Not only do you have to provide your field assistants with food and shelter, but also some psychological help after many, many days of collecting dead chicks.” –Freydis Vigfusdottir, University of Exeter And on the Westman Islands off Iceland’s south coast – home to the world’s largest Atlantic puffin colony – breeding has been a “total failure” since 2005, according to the South Iceland Nature Center. The impacts are being felt throughout the country, where these clown-faced birds have been both a legally-hunted delicacy and a national mascot. “Puffin watch” – news on how things are going in the burrows each summer – is as popular here as “volcano watch.”

Similar trends are reported in Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Norway and across the circumpolar north – the principal nursery for Northern Hemisphere marine birds. Most of the biome’s species, the 2013 Arctic Biodiversity Assessment finds, are in decline.

Whole populations haven’t collapsed – at least not yet. These hardy seafarers are long-lived, and millions of them still sail the North Atlantic. Normally, seabirds can withstand a few bad breeding seasons. However, reproductive failures have been going on for so long now that scientists say it’s just a matter of time before the adults, too, are gone.

Now researchers are struggling to comprehend the catastrophic breeding failure and its implications for an ecosystem that is fundamental to the planet’s health.
Cheryl Katz
Aevar Petersen logs data while Ragnar Olafsson holds an Arctic tern chick on Flatey Island.

The seabirds’ plight “is a huge concern … not just in the North Atlantic but also globally,” Vigfusdottir said. The cold waters of the North Atlantic are a major driving force for the Earth’s weather and among the most productive fisheries in the world, so the birds’ problems could indicate trouble for the region’s major industry and the global food supply.

The suspected culprits of empty nests are many: The leading candidates are the profound changes underway in the world’s oceans – their climate, their chemistry, their food webs, their loads of pollutants.These same problems also are now being noted in wading birds like redshank, shorebirds like red knot, and other waterfowl in the northern United States, United Kingdom and elsewhere.

“What is happening in Iceland, we see happening in so many other areas in the North Atlantic. And the fact that we’re seeing them over such a wide area points to a common factor … and that is climate change,” said Aevar Petersen, a retired Icelandic Institute of Natural History ornithologist.

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see link for full story

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=38003" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It wasn’t just Turkey, Qatar, and the Saudi king. They had to have American accomplices. Who were they?

That’s what I want to know.

The really fascinating question, as far as I’m concerned, is who was really behind the Syrian false flag operation? Yes, the Turks, the Qataris, the Saudis – the usual suspects – did the dirty work, but what I want to know is who inside the administration was pushing back so strenuously against the Pentagon’s opposition to a strike – and keeping the intelligence away from the White House until the joint chiefs confronted him with it? Who "doctored" those Israeli intercepts? Who almost lied us into war – again – that time?





Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels

The Red Line and the Rat Line

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​* Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’

The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware

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http://pr.aljazeera.com/post/9232456674 ... al-jazeera" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



July 20, 2014

Secret world of FBI informants exposed in Al Jazeera documentary


Washington, D.C. — 20th July 2014

Shady characters recruited by the FBI to spy on Muslims in the United States are revealed in a new documentary. Informants, by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, premieres internationally today, Sunday, July 20.

The film explores the methods and motivations of FBI informants who are on the front line of the bureau’s counterterrorism activities. The informants profiled by Al Jazeera admit they spied for money, not for country.

“It had nothing to do with ‘my country, ’tis of thee,’ it had to do with, I wanted to be in on the big game and to be paid top dollar for it,” says FBI informant Craig Monteilh.

Another FBI informant, Elie Assaad, tells Al Jazeera how he was often sent in to clean up the botched work of other informants. “I never lost a case all these years, even sometimes when they have already ongoing cases where they feel they’re going to lose it and they bring me to jump in and put it back on track,” Assaad says.

With extraordinary access to FBI agents and their informants, as well as undercover recordings, Al Jazeera’s documentary raises questions about whether the men targeted in sting operations would have acted at all were it not for the paid informants working on the cases.

“It literally boils down into, if you cannot find terrorists within the Muslim community, make terrorists. Create the terrorists,” Yassir Fazaga, a Southern California imam targeted by the FBI, tells Al Jazeera.

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