Puppet MastersS


Stormtrooper

The rise of the military's secret military

They're called Special Operation Forces - and they're everywhere

navy seals
Navy SEALS: the TV show
"Dude, I don't need to play these stupid games. I know what you're trying to do." With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.

More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013? Basic stuff.

And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the feeling that Special Operations Command didn't want me to know what its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos - the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote locales around the world - were doing.

Then, at the last moment, just before my filing deadline, Special Operations Command got back to me with an answer so incongruous, confusing, and contradictory that I was glad I had given up on SOCOM and tried to figure things out for myself.

Comment: Read also:

U.S. Special Forces getting constellation of mini surveillance satellites to hunt down 'people considered to be dangerous'
JSoc: Obama's secret assassins


Coffee

Glenn Greenwald: 4 points about the 1971 FBI COINTELPRO files break-in

the burglary
The New York Times this morning has an extraordinary 13-minute video from a team of reporters including the independent journalist Jonathan Franklin, and an accompanying article by Mark Mazzetti, about the heroic anti-war activists who broke into an FBI field office in 1971 and took all of the documents they could get their hands on, and then sent those documents to newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post.

Some of those documents exposed J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO program, aimed at quashing internal political dissent through surveillance, infiltration and other tactics. Those revelations ultimately led to the creation of the Church Committee in the mid-1970s and various reforms. The background on the Church Committee's COINTELPRO findings and the "burglary" operation which exposed it is here.

With the statute of limitations elapsed on their "crimes", ones the FBI could never solve, the courageous perpetrators have now unveiled themselves. The NYT story is based on a new book by Post reporter Betsy Medsger and the forthcoming documentary 1971 (of which my journalistic partner, Laura Poitras, is an Exective Producer). There are four crucial points to note:

Comment: This practice of spying on and squashing dissent through infiltration of opposition has of course not stopped, but only expanded and refined. These methods of social control are bound to be applied in any pivotal organization, institution and social movement. Laura Knight-Jadzyck writes in 'Secret History of the World':
Usually, when we think of COINTELPRO, we think of the most well known and typical activities which include sending anonymous or fictitious letters designed to start rumors, among other things, publishing false defamatory or threatening information, forging signatures on fake documents, introducing disruptive and subversive members into organizations to destroy them from within, and so on. Blackmailing insiders in any group to force them to spread false rumors, or to foment factionalism was also common.

What a lot of people don't keep in mind is the fact that COINTELPRO also concentrated on creating bogus organizations. These bogus groups could serve many functions which might include attacking and/or disrupting bona fide groups, or even just simply creating a diversion with clever propaganda in order to attract members away so as to involve them with time-wasting activity designed to prevent them from doing anything useful. COINTELPRO was also famous for instigation of hostile actions through third parties. According to investigators, these FBI programs were noteworthy because all documents relating to them were stamped "do not file". This meant that they were never filed in the system, and for all intents and purposes, did not exist. This cover was blown after activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971. The possibility of finding evidence for any of it, after that event, is about zero.
See also:
'Burglars' revealed: Sixties activists who stole FBI COINTELPRO files
COINTELPRO: Information Warfare
COINTELPRO, Provacateurs and Disinfo Agents: The U.S. Government's war on the American People
How COINTELPRO really works and destroys social movements: Open letter from former Tea Partier to Occupy Wall Street protesters


Bad Guys

Israel has experimented on its own people: Compensation for IDF soldiers used in anthrax experiment

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In an agreement reached with the Defense Ministry, the latter will pay 21 million NIS to a fund assisting IDF soldiers who were used in an anthrax experiment during their service. Each of the 716 participants in the voluntary experiment will be awarded 27,000 NIS as per the agreement reached and accepted by a district court.

The Omer 2 program refers to IDF experimentation fifteen years ago as the nation was concerned with threats of missiles armed with anthrax warheads. Hundreds of soldiers from different units took part in the program. The case has been in the district court for six years until the agreement was reached.

Many of the participants in Omer 2 feel that military used them as it wished and then forgot about them.

Gingerbread

Chris Christie investigated over use of Sandy funds

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© APGovernor Chris Christie is under fire from two fronts.
The governor of the US state of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is being investigated over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds.

Federal officials are looking into whether Mr Christie misused some of those funds to produce tourism adverts.

Advertising agency Sigma Group lost out to MWW for a campaign proclaiming the state was "stronger than the storm".

Mr Christie is also being sued over claims his office created gridlock on a bridge as part of a political vendetta.

Mr Christie, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate, is being audited by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to determine if Sandy funds were misappropriated to finance an advertising campaign during an election year.

Comment: The trouble with Chris Christie by Chris Hedges


Eye 1

War criminals gather to honor war criminal - Masters of Genocidaire


The United Nations General Assembly condemned the 1982 Massacre at Sabra and Shatilla as "genocide." So what the world is witnessing now are innumerable government leaders, politicians, pundits, professors, intellectuals, media figures and the State of Israel pay formal tribute to a genocidaire--one who has committed genocide. Obviously, in their opinion the slogan "Never again!" does not apply to protect the Palestinians.

Sharon
© UnknownAriel Sharon
War Criminal
Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence

Bad Guys

Prince Bandar's fingerprints: Russia may hit back at KSA for Volgogard attacks

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© UnknownRussian President Vladimir Putin
Russian intelligence has now reportedly obtained solid proof that Saudi Arabia was directly involved in the twin terror attacks on the city of Volgograd.

The attacks killed more than 32 people and injured over 100 others. Most of the victims were civilians.

According to an informed Russian official source, reported by the Fars News Agency, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has informed President Vladimir Putin of the Saudi link to the Volgograd massacre.

This will come as no surprise to Putin. The Russian leader was warned by the Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan during a heated four-hour private meeting back in July that Wahhabi-sponsored terrorists based in the North Caucasus region of Russia would be targeting the Sochi Winter Olympics.


Comment: Indeed, Prince Bandar stirring the pot, again and again.


Arrow Down

The trouble with Chris Christie by Chris Hedges

Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot. He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth.

- Chris Hedges in his latest article: The Trouble with Chris Christie
Gov. Chris Christie
© AP/Mel EvansNew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie poses in his office at the Statehouse in Trenton in 2013.

Chris Christie is bad news. I have been saying this for a while now, and published my first post about it back in late July in the piece: Chris Christie Calls Libertarianism a "Dangerous Thought."

There is no doubt in my mind that Christie is a egomaniac with fascist tendencies, coupled with a temperament and consciousness that craves power for the sake of power itself, as well as to stoke his own sense of self-importance.

On that note, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and courageous, American patriot, Chris Hedges, has written an excellent expose of Christie.

I have highlighted some excerpts below.

Bad Guys

Supreme court is set to review Obama's most egregious abuse of executive power

Senate building
© unknown
On Monday, the Supreme Court reviews President Obama's most egregious abuse of executive power to date: the assertion that he decides when the Senate is in session.

In case you missed the controversy two years ago, President Obama made three "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) without the constitutionally required advice and consent of the Senate. Unfortunately for him, the Senate was not in recess.

Recess appointments alone aren't the problem. The Constitution allows the president to keep the government running by filling "vacancies that may happen during a Recess of the Senate." But it would certainly be unconstitutional if the president made "recess" appointments during a Senate lunch break or over the weekend. In the case of Obama's NLRB appointments, the Senate had a session the previous day and another was planned for two days later.

President Obama avoided those inconvenient facts by declaring that, in his opinion, the Senate wasn't really in session.

Bad Guys

UK: Female MP abused boy in care

A FORMER female MP was involved in a paedophile network at the heart of government, police have been told.

Andrew Ash
© HULLANGRY: Andrew Ash (pictured at 14) claims he was abused by two MPs in London in the 1980s

She is alleged to have forced a boy in care to perform a "vile" sex act at one of a series of drug-fuelled parties in Westminster in the Eighties where boys and girls as young as 13 were allegedly abused.

Last night her alleged victim told the Sunday Express: "I want justice."

Andrew Ash, now 45, said he has given Scotland Yard the name of the former MP. We cannot name her for legal reasons.

Mr Ash claims he was frequently ferried down to London from the North of England, where he was in care, to take part in sex parties.

He says they were organised by a paedophile ring involving David Smith, Jimmy Savile's former chauffeur who killed himself last year before he was due to stand trial for sex offences.

He said: "It wasn't just politicians, there were also a number of celebrities, including Jimmy Savile, who seemed to have a lot of good links to MPs and powerful businessmen.

"There was usually drugs like cocaine and speed available as well as bottles of champagne."

Of his encounter with the female MP, he said: "She was extremely drunk and was laughing as she did it.

Sherlock

UK Lib Dems: Mass surveillance by security services should be reviewed

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© Martin Argles for the GuardianTim Farron, above, will submit the motion on surveillance to the Liberal Democrats' spring party conference. Photograph:
Party's motion, in wake of Snowden whistleblowing, covers agencies' accountability, data collection and bill of rights

Judicial oversight of state surveillance and a regular release of the number of data requests made by the security services should be among the issues examined by a government "commission of experts" into all the recent allegations raised by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Liberal Democrats are to propose.

They will also call for the commission to review the effectiveness of all legislation surrounding the security services, including the system of parliamentary accountability. They envisage the commission as being modelled on Barack Obama's privacy and civil liberties oversight board, a five-strong body of legal, industry and security experts appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress. The board has been advising Obama on his imminent response to Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor.

The comprehensive response is being submitted in a motion to the Lib Dem spring conference by the party's president, Tim Farron, and home affairs select committee chairman, Julian Huppert. Such high-profile support suggests it is almost certain to be passed.

The terms of the motion have been discussed with Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem home affairs minister Norman Baker, and represent the most substantive sign that the Snowden revelations may yet prompt a political response in the UK similar to the one under way in the US and continental Europe.

A spokesman for Clegg said: "The motion is very much in line with Nick's thinking and he agrees with its principles."