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Saudi prince defects: 'Brutality, oppression as govt scared of Arab revolts'


RT.com
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 14:40 UTC
Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud
© RT.comPrince Khalid Bin Farhan Al-Saud

Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most.

"Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens," Human Rights Watch begins the country's profile on its website.

Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia and human rights groups willing to function legally have to go no further than investigating things like corruption or inadequate services. Campaigning for political freedoms is outlawed.

One of such groups, which failed to get its license from the government, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was cited by AFP as saying the kingdom was holding around 30,000 political prisoners.

Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Farhan Al-Saud, who spoke to RT from Dusseldorf, Germany, confirmed reports of increased prosecution of anti-government activists and said that it's exactly what forced him to defect from his family. He accused the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent and explained how the Saudi mechanism for suppression functioned.

"There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the prosecutor's office are accountable to the Interior Ministry. This ministry's officials investigate 'crimes' (they call them crimes), related to freedom of speech. So they fabricate evidence, don't allow people to have attorneys", the prince told RT Arabic. "Even if a court rules to release such a 'criminal', the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even though there is a court order to release him. There have even been killings! Killings! And as for the external opposition, Saudi intelligence forces find these people abroad! There is no safety inside or outside the country."
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Question

On my own: Vladimir Putin walks alone through the streets of St Petersburg

Neela Debnath
The Independent, UK
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 10:21 UTC

Russian President Vladimir Putin cut a lonely figure today after he was spotted wandering by himself through the streets of St Petersburg.

The Russian leader was seen pensively walking through the city following the funeral of his Judo instructor Anatoly Rakhlin. Putin marched on wearing a moody look and avoiding eye contact, while his aides and security rushed to catch up with him.

Putin is known to be a master in the dojo when it comes to Judo and it is clear that the death of Rakhlin has affected him deeply. Rakhlin had reportedly been battling a long illness and considered himself to be a second father to the President.

Putin's behaviour today contrasts sharply with the more macho persona he usually likes to portray in the media. He is known for his outlandish displays of prowess, from piano playing to bear hunting there is nothing that is beyond him.

Most recently Putin was seen delving into the depths below to inspect the ruins of Russian sailing frigate which sunk in 1869.
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Dollar

Banks Sue to Prevent Foreclosure Relief for Homeowners

Elizabeth Warmerdam
Courthouse News Service
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:19 UTC
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Three banks sued Richmond, Calif., challenging a city plan to use eminent domain to seize houses with underwater mortgages and refinance them at deep discounts for the owners, who would keep them rather than lose them to foreclosure.

Wells Fargo Bank and Deutsche Bank sued Richmond in one federal lawsuit, and The Bank of New York Mellon sued the city in a separate, similar complaint.

The banks claim the city's homeowner-rescue plan will cost the banks and their investors tens of millions of dollars.

Wells Fargo Bank and Deutsche Bank, in their capacities as trustees for hundreds of mortgage securities trusts, sued Richmond and Mortgage Resolutions Partners (MRP) to try to stop the City Council from implementing its "elaborate profit-driven scheme."

The Bank of New York Mellon, also as a trustee, sued Richmond, MRP, and Gordian Sword, a Delaware LLC.
"Following a scheme devised by a mortgage investment firm that stands to profit handsomely from the deal, the City of Richmond has made clear that it imminently plans to seize residential mortgages - mortgages that are current on their payments - at deep discounts and then refinance the properties at reduced loan values," Bank of New York Mellon says in its complaint. "The borrowers would retain their homes with a lower debt load. The city and the investment firm each would receive certain fees generated by the refinancing transactions, and then the firm and its investors would profit from reselling federally guaranteed loans.

"And the trusts and their investors, including pension funds and other institutional investors, who held current, performing loans that had financed the purchase of the homes in the City would be left holding the bag, losing tens of millions of dollars in loan principal."
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Handcuffs

George Galloway in bid to raise funds for film about former PM, 'The Killing of Tony Blair'

Nick Renaud-Komiya
The Independent
Sun, 11 Aug 2013 00:00 UTC
The film project is, Galloway hopes, the first step in a campaign to get Blair tried for war crimes in an international court.
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The outspoken politician George Galloway will turn his hand to film making following an announcement that he intends to produce a feature-length documentary entitled The Killing of Tony Blair.
The Respect MP for Bradford West is appealing to the public to help finance the project through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

The film project is, Galloway hopes, the first step in a campaign to get Blair, the former Labour Prime Minister, tried for war crimes in an international court.

The 58-year-old has acknowledged that the film's title was chosen for "shock value", but in response to claims it is in bad taste he said that Blair's was a "shocking story".

The title, Galloway said, refers to three types of "killing" which he pins on Blair's shoulders.
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Nuke

"Nuclear Guinea Pigs": Deadly experiments and contaminated reality

Greg Guma
Global Research
Sun, 11 Aug 2013 17:00 UTC
Nuclear Bomb
© Global Research
Half a century ago, on the spurious grounds that extreme sacrifices were required in the battle to prevent a communist takeover of the world, the US government decided to use the citizens of Nevada as nuclear guinea pigs.

Although atomic testing was pursued there for several years in the 1950s, notification would have alarmed area residents. As a result, they weren't even advised to go indoors. Yet, according to declassified documents, some scientists studying the genetic effects of radiation at the time were already concerned about the health risks of fallout. For most of those committed to the US nuclear program, the need to keep this type of research secret was a no-brainer.

After all, if the public realized that the technology used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to experiments at home, early nuclear research - not to mention weapons deployment - might have met stronger opposition. The government badly wanted its nukes, and the scientists yearned to unlock the secrets of human mutation. Thus, an unholy alliance was struck.

US citizens, and the thousands of soldiers who took dangerous doses of radiation as part of other studies, haven't been the only victims of science run amuck. Between 1964 and 1968, for example, at least a dozen covert tests of nerve and chemical agents were carried out on servicemen in the Pacific Ocean, then concealed and denied for more than 20 years. Crews were used to gauge how quickly various poisons could be detected, how rapidly they would disperse, and the effectiveness of protective gear and decontamination procedures.
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Airplane

War 'OF' drugs, not 'ON' drugs: U.S. Air Force flies cocaine from Costa Rica to Miami

Jaime Lopez
Costa Rica Star
Sat, 10 Aug 2013 23:20 UTC
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Source: Wikimedia Commons
A curious cargo airlift operation recently took place at the Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport (LIR), in the northern province of Guanacaste. According to a news report by Alvaro Sanchez from online news daily CRHoy, nearly 24 tons of cocaine were loaded onto a United States Air Force transport aircraft. The destination of the controversial payload? Miami, a city that once held the infamous title of "Cocaine Capital of the World."

The public affairs office of the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish) in Costa Rica explained to CRHoy that the 23 tons and 780 kilograms of powder cocaine hydrochloride were the result of two years of interdiction work by the National Coast Guard Service, the OIJ, the Border Police, and Fuerza Publica (the national police force in Costa Rica). This does not include seizures made by the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy as part of the Joint Patrol Agreement between Costa Rica and the U.S.
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Bad Guys

US remains 'uninterested' as Kurds massacred by Syria's militant opposition

Patrick Henningsen
RT
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 13:56 UTC
Syrian-Kurdish refugee family
© AFP Photo / Safin HamedA Syrian-Kurdish refugee family sits in their tent at a refugee camp
Reports this week of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria massacring Kurds in the northern Syria is a disturbing development, but not nearly as disturbing as the strategic silence on the issue by the US and European government-media complex.

According to reports from the village of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border on Monday, jihadist terror brigades massacred some 450 residents, including 330 women and elderly, along with 120 youths and elderly near the Turkish border.

For nearly a year now, this Saudi and Qatari-financed armed opposition, known as Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat Al-Nusra, has been enabled by its benefactors to run rampant in and around Syria. Because of the US and Britain's cozy relationship with both their gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, very little, if any, condemnation has come from the political ring leaders of the Syrian reformation project based in Washington and London. The same goes for the Western media, who do not want to run any news that might further expose their political leaders' own shaky history with Syria since the conflict began.

Any US congressional hearings or British parliamentary inquiries into the matter might just reveal too much information about the illegal flow of arms, or the presence of CIA, MI6, Mossad agents, along with any other undeclared special forces currently involved in operations around the conflict zone there. Given the current political climate, any such revelations would be a political disaster, especially for Washington.
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Gear

Distracting "Cold War revisited" shenanigans: Obama calls for 'pause' in US-Russia ties


RIA Novosti
Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:51 UTC
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© REUTERS/ Jason ReedUS President Barack Obama addresses a news conference at the White House in Washington, August 9, 2013
President Barack Obama on Friday called for "a pause" in US relations with Russia, even as both countries stressed that cooperation is crucial to their mutual interests and to the world despite sharp differences on a broad range of issues.

"It is probably appropriate for us to take a pause, reassess where it is that Russia is going, what our core interests are, and calibrate the relationship so that we're doing things that are good for the United States and, hopefully, good for Russia as well," Obama told a White House news conference Friday.

The comments came two days after the White House announced it had canceled Obama's planned summit next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing lack of prospects for progress in the bilateral agenda as well as Moscow's harboring of accused US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
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Sherlock

On the strange death of Michael Hastings: Was the reporter car-hacked or bombed?

Gar Smith
The Berkeley Daily Planet
Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:41 UTC
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© UnknownFirst responders at crash scene where reporter Michael Hastings died
In the early hours of June 18, Michael Hastings was found dead in the flaming wreckage of his car. The 33-year-old journalist was, perhaps, best known for the 2010 Rolling Stone cover story that ended the career of Army General Stanley McChystal.

According to initial press reports, Hastings was driving south on Los Angeles' North Highland Avenue when he "apparently lost control of [his car] near Melrose Avenue and crashed into palm trees in the median about 4:20 a.m."

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was unusually eager to announce that there had been no evidence of "foul play" surrounding the reporter's death. Typically, police departments withhold such judgments until after there has been an investigation -- including a coroner's report and toxicology tests, which can take days, if not weeks.

Those who knew and worked with Michael Hastings are questioning the "official story."

According to Hastings' friend, Staff Sgt. Joe Biggs, Army brass had threatened Hastings after his reporting lead to General McChrystal's resignation. "He had been told, 'If we don't like what you write, we will hunt you down and kill you," Biggs said. "For him to say something like that -- those are his own words -- that's pretty intense."
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MIB

NSA Data used by IRS, DEA, etc. prosecute Americans


XRepublicTV
Sat, 10 Aug 2013 00:00 UTC
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