Puppet MastersS


Sherlock

The JFK Assassination and 9/11: the Designated Suspects in Both Cases

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I wish to summarize again the first striking similarity between 11/22/63 and of 9/11/01: the dubious detective work on those two days. Less than fifteen minutes after the President's assassination, the height and weight of Kennedy's alleged killer was posted.1 Before the last of the hijacked planes crashed on 9/11, the FBI told Richard Clarke that they had a list of alleged hijackers.2

In the case of Oswald, within fifteen minutes of the assassination and long before Oswald was picked up in the Texas Theater, Inspector Sawyer of the Dallas police put out on the police radio network, and possibly other networks, a description of the killer - "About 30, 5'10", 165 pounds."3 As noted, this height and weight exactly matched the measurements attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald in Oswald's FBI file, and also in CIA documents about him.4

The announced height and weight were however different from Oswald's actual measurements, as recorded by the Dallas police after his arrest: 5'9 1/2", 131 pounds.5 More importantly, there is no credible source for the posted measurements from any witness in Dallas. (The witness said to have spotted him, Howard Brennan, failed to identify Oswald in a line-up.)6 This leaves the possibility that the measurements were taken from existing files on Oswald, rather than from any observations in Dallas on November 22. If so, someone with access to those files may have already designated Oswald as the culprit, before there was any evidence to connect him to the crime.

A similar situation pertains to the alleged hijackers on 9/11. For example, shortly afterwards men in Saudi Arabia complained that "the hijackers' 'personal details'" released by the FBI -- "including name, place, date of birth and occupation -- matched their own."7 One of them, Saeed al-Ghamdi, claimed further that an alleged photograph shown on CNN (of an alleged Flight 93 hijacker with the same name) was in fact a photograph of himself. He speculated "that CNN had probably got the picture from the Flight Safety flying school he attended in Florida."8

Syringe

Opium and the CIA: Can the U.S. triumph in the drug-addicted Afghanistan War?

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Afghanistan, CIA heroin factory
Alfred McCoy's important new article deserves to mobilize Congress for a serious revaluation of America's ill-considered military venture in Afghanistan. The answer to the question he poses in his title - "Can Anyone Pacify the World's Number One Narco-State? - is amply shown by his impressive essay to be a resounding "No!" . . . not until there is fundamental change in the goals and strategies both of Washington and of Kabul.

He amply documents that
  • the Afghan state of Hamid Karzai is a corrupt narco-state, to which Afghans are forced to pay bribes each year $2.5 billion, a quarter of the nation's economy;
  • the Afghan economy is a narco-economy: in 2007 Afghanistan produced 8,200 tons of opium, a remarkable 53% of the country's GDP and 93% of global heroin supply.
  • military options for dealing with the problem are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive: McCoy argues that the best hope lies in reconstructing the Afghan countryside until food crops become a viable alternative to opium, a process that could take ten or fifteen years, or longer. (I shall argue later for an interim solution: licensing Afghanistan with the International Narcotics Board to sell its opium legally.)
Perhaps McCoy's most telling argument is that in Colombia cocaine at its peak represented only about 3 percent of the national economy, yet both the FARC guerillas and the right-wing death squads, both amply funded by drugs, still continue to flourish in that country. To simply eradicate drugs, without first preparing for a substitute Afghan agriculture, would impose intolerable strains on an already ravaged rural society whose only significant income flow at this time derives from opium. One has only to look at the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, after a draconian Taliban-led reduction in Afghan drug production (from 4600 tons to 185 tons) left the country a hollow shell.

TV

Best of the Web: Crashes of Convenience: Michael Hastings

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Michael Hastings was that rarest of breeds: a mainstream reporter who wasn't afraid to rail against the system, kick back against the establishment, and bite the hand that feeds him. On the morning of June 18, 2013, he died in a fiery car crash. But now details are emerging that he was on the verge of breaking an important new story about the CIA, and believed he was being investigated by the FBI. Now even a former counter-terrorism czar is admitting Hastings' car may have been cyber-hijacked. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we explore the strange details surrounding the untimely death of Michael Hastings.


Show notes and MP3

Comment: It's safe to say that the FBI had a file open on Hastings long before the day of his 'crash'. So his email to colleagues and friends shortly before his death suggests that 'the FBI', or whoever it was, was actually hounding him towards his death, not just 'investigating' him.


Dollar

Shocking things Wall Street financiers say off the record about their bloated, corrupt industry

SOTT psychopaths rule our world
© SOTT.net
"A particularly troubling and consistent finding throughout the survey is that Wall Street's future leaders - the young professionals who will one day assume control of the trillions of dollars that the industry manages - have lost their moral compass, accept corporate wrongdoing as a necessary evil and fear reporting this misconduct."

In a shocking new survey commissioned by the Labaton Sucharow law firm, Wall Street insiders say that breaking the law, screwing your clients and covering up crimes is a way of life on Wall Street. The shock is not that cheating is going on.

We all know that.

The shock is that these financiers would actually admit it on a survey. This should tell us that the Wall Street culture is so brazenly corrupt, so confident of not getting caught, so certain that a passive public won't fight back that those surveyed didn't even bother to lie about the fact that they were living, breathing sociopaths.

Here are some of the key findings of this sample of 250 traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers, hedge fund professionals, financial analysts, investment advisors, asset managers and stock brokers.

Vader

Political Prisoner in America: Aafia Siddiqui - victim of injustice

shame on america
She's one of thousands of US political prisoners. She's well known. She committed no crimes. She's been brutalized in captivity. Mercy isn't in America's vocabulary. Rogue states operate that way.

Washington's by far the worst. It reportedly agreed to Pakistan's extradition terms. Both sides will swap prisoners.

Previous articles discussed her 2003 abduction, detention, torture, false charges, prosecution, and conviction. More on that below.

On July 20, the Pakistan Observer headlined "US agrees on Aafia's Siddiqui's extradition," saying:

"In a major breakthrough, the US has offered Pakistan to sign prisoner swap agreement for the extradition of Dr Aafia Siddiqi, after which the Pakistani scientist will be allowed to serve the remaining part of her imprisonment in homeland."

Pakistan foreign office spokesman Uman Hameed said terms include other prisoner swaps.

Comment:

The Siddiqui Case: A New Turn as Lawyers Release Explosive, Secretly Recorded Tape
Subtle Propaganda And The War For Your Mind


Pirates

Flashback "They Fled Away Like Gangsters": Murder & Greed in Baghdad

A US attorney is bringing suit in a Federal court against a private foreign-based "security" company for needlessly and brutally killing two Iraqi women back in 2007. This case is directly connected to the lucrative business of "promoting democracy" and "security". Hank Albarelli follows the trail of the U.S. funds going to certain NGOs to "bring stability" to Iraq and exposes the stupefying international web of connections between these groups and the mercenaries whose numbers increase as the juicy privatization business proliferates.
"The contractors don't seem to care about the people they kill. It's just a part of their business. These kinds of incidents occur on a regular basis, but no one seems to be concerned." ~ Paul Wolf, Attorney
It is nearly two hours past noon, a sunny, warm day on October 9, 2007. The creaky old Oldsmobile, containing a driver and three people returning home from church, is lumbering along at about 15 miles per hour. As it begins to cross a busy intersection in the bustling Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, several rounds of copper-jacketed 5.56mm rounds tear into its windshield sending glass everywhere.
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The car in which two Armenian women were killed by private security contractors employed by Unity Resources Group, an Australian-run security company.

Light Saber

Dr Cornel West: Obama is a global criminal

"President Obama Has Very Little Moral Authority"


Monkey Wrench

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich admits earlier claim NSA spying 'prevented five terror attacks in Germany' is completely bogus

NSA building
© Charles Dharapak/Associated PressThe National Security Agency (NSA) building at Fort Meade, Md.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is backing off his earlier assertion that the Obama administration's NSA monitoring of Internet accounts had prevented five terror attacks in Germany, raising questions about other claims concerning the value of the massive monitoring programs revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Friedrich had made the assertion about the number of attacks that the NSA programs - which scoop up records from cellphone and Internet accounts - had helped to avert after a brief visit to the United States last week. But on Tuesday, he told a German parliamentary panel, "It is relatively difficult to count the number of terror attacks that didn't occur." And on Wednesday, he was publically referring to just two foiled attacks, at least one and possibly both of which appeared to have little to do with the NSA's surveillance programs.

The questions about the programs' value in thwarting attacks in Germany come as some members of the U.S. Congress have told Obama officials that the programs exceeded what Congress authorized when it passed laws that the administration is arguing allowed the collection of vast amounts of information on cellphone and Internet email accounts.

Bomb

Flashback British MP: Lockerbie 'evidence' against Libyans was planted by CIA

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Crucial evidence against two Libyans for the Lockerbie bombing was planted by the CIA, it was claimed in the Commons yesterday.

A fragment of circuit board alleged to have been part of the bomb's timing mechanism is the sole item of physical evidence linking the two Libyans to the December 1988 bombing. But Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, declared: "I have come to suspect that the timing device in question was not that of Pan Am 103 but a different timing device that the CIA had picked up from the Libyans ... I have been driven to the conclusion that the device was a CIA plant."

Mr Dalyell, a long-standing critic of US and British government insistence that Libya was behind the attack, said an analysis of the fragment had shown it had been exposed to a temperature of 4,000deg C. But a Swiss police specialist had cast doubt on this, saying the explosion would have lasted only a fraction of a second in outside air temperatures of about minus 40C.

War Whore

Lockerbie patsy's prison transfer cost Libya £400m 'air defence system'

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© Stefan Rousseau/PATony Blair with Muammar Gaddafi in May 2007.
Document emerges from 2008 showing agreement 'ready for signature' as soon as purchase of air defence system concluded

An email has emerged suggesting a connection between the prisoner transfer deal negotiated between Libya and the last Labour government, which ultimately paved the way for the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and a £400m arms deal.

The document, which shows that Sir Vincent Fean, the then British ambassador to Libya, wrote to Tony Blair in June 2008 saying that the prisoner transfer agreement was "ready for signature in London" as soon as Libya went ahead with the purchase of an air defence system, was obtained by the Sunday Telegraph.

Blair was no longer prime minister at the time, but Fean mentioned the two issues in a 1,300-word briefing for Blair before a visit to Tripoli where he was meeting Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator.

The prisoner transfer agreement was eventually signed in November 2008. It did not directly trigger the release of Megrahi, but it enabled the Scottish government to release him on compassionate grounds in August 2009 because he was suffering from terminal cancer. The arms deal was never concluded.

Comment: Wow, so the Brits exchanged al-Megrahi, in all probability a patsy for the real culprits behind the Lockerbie Bombing - the CIA - in exchange for an 'air defence system' that cost over half a billion euros... which just three years later obviously failed pretty spectacularly as Libya was carpet-bombed with hardly any capability of defending itself against NATO airpower.

Duplicitous, murderous bastards.