Glenn Greenwald
GuardianSat, 04 May 2013 14:06 UTC
© CNN screengrabFormer FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente, on CNN, discussing government's surveillance capabilities
The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.
Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's
Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically
disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.
On Wednesday night, Burnett
interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."
Chemi Shalev
HaaretzSat, 04 May 2013 19:17 UTC
© ReutersA man, wounded in what the government said was a chemical weapons attack, being treated at a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says Israel may have conducted 'false flag' operation. Describes its government as inept and Netanyahu as 'clueless.'
Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, believes that the chemical weapons used in
Syria may have been an Israeli "false flag" operation aimed at implicating
Bashar Assad's regime.
Wilkerson made his astounding assertion in an
interview on Current TV, the network once owned by former Vice President Al Gore and recently purchased by Al-Jazeera.
Wilkerson said that the evidence that it was
Assad's regime that had used the
chemical weapons was "flaky" and that it could very well have been the rebels or Israel who were the perpetrators. Asked why Israel would do such a thing, Wilkerson said: "I think we've got a basically geostrategically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."
© unknown
The lawyer who first drew up White House policy on lethal drone strikes has accused the
Obama administration of overusing them because of its reluctance to capture prisoners that would otherwise have to be sent to
Guantánamo Bay.
John Bellinger, who was responsible for drafting the legal framework for targeted drone killings while working for George W Bush after 9/11, said he believed their use had increased since because President Obama was unwilling to deal with the consequences of jailing suspected
al-Qaida members.
"This government has decided that instead of detaining members of al-Qaida [at Guantánamo] they are going to kill them," he told a conference at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Obama this week pledged to renew efforts to shut down the jail but has previously struggled to overcome congressional opposition, in part due to US disagreements over how to handle suspected terrorists and insurgents captured abroad.
An estimated 4,700 people have now been killed by some 300 US drone attacks in four countries, and the question of the programme's status under international and domestic law remains highly controversial.
Comment: Obama recently
vowed to close Guantánamo, telling reporters, "I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,". He didn't say that they would instead just kill all suspects with drones.
© Current TVCol. Lawrence Wilkerson
In what was a quite astounding statement, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell under George W. Bush, said that the
chemical weapons allegedly used in Syria could in fact be "an Israeli false flag operation."
During his interview with Cenk Uygur on Current TV (
now owned by Al Jazeera), Wilkerson said his unnamed sources in the intelligence community told him that the evidence supporting the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government was "really flaky."
"This could have been an Israeli false flag operation," Wilkerson said.
When Uygur asked why Israel would do such a thing and what the motivation would be, Wilkerson said, "I think we've got basically a geo-strategically, geo-political - if you will - inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."
"I think we saw really startling evidence of that in the fact that President Obama had to tell Bibi Netanyahu, 'Pick up the phone, you idiot and call Ankara [Turkey] and get yourself out of this strategic isolation you're in right now,'" Wilkerson said, referring to
the situation in March of this year.
Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into the Pine Eagle Charter School in this tiny rural community on Friday. Students were at home for an in-service day, so the gunmen headed into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire.
Someone figured out in a few seconds that the bullets were not drawing blood because they were blanks and the exercise was a drill, designed to test Pine Eagle's preparation for an assault by "active shooters" who were, in reality, members of the school staff. But those few seconds left everybody plenty scared.
Principal Cammie DeCastro said it became clear very quickly just how many of the school's 15 teachers would have survived. The answer: "Not many," she said.
Elementary teacher Morgan Gover, 31, said only two teachers would have lived to tell the tale. She admitted being scared, and also acknowledged she would have been among the casualties, having taken several fake direct hits from the shooters.
"I'll tell you, the whole situation was horrible," she said. "I got a couple in the front and a couple in the back."
Comment: It's heart-breaking to see how brainwashed ordinary Americans are that when something like this happens, they cow even deeper into submission and thank the government terrorists for traumatizing them.
It's all over but the crying.
© Oliver Weiken/EPA An Israeli jet takes off from an air force base outside Beersheva. Officials said warplanes bombed a convoy carrying missiles from Syria to Lebanon.
Israeli warplanes have bombed a convoy carrying missiles from Syria to Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, Israeli officials said.
The air strike, which is understood to have been carried out from Lebanese airspace, took place on Friday after the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security cabinet approved the attack in a secret meeting on Thursday night.
The target was a convoy carrying a shipment of advanced long-range ground-to-ground missiles to Hezbollah and not a Syrian chemical weapons facility, according to unnamed Israeli officials.
The attack was first reported in the US media on Friday, with
US officials claiming the Israelis had hit a building.The US president, Barack Obama, reiterated on Friday that he does not foresee deploying US forces on the ground in the Syrian civil war. But the
New York Times reported that US officials were on Friday considering military options, including carrying out their own air strikes.
The details of the Israeli strike remain vague but Netanyahu has repeatedly warned in recent weeks that Israel would be prepared to take military action if chemical weapons or other advanced arms were to reach Hezbollah from Syria.
Comment: Chemical weapon lies being used as an excuse by Israel to bomb any Syrian targets they choose to.
Uche Orieh
YouTubeFri, 19 Apr 2013 07:12 UTC
This was recorded before suspect # 2 was captured.
I smell a rat. Some of the reporting on this hasn't added up. The family and friends of these two suspects gave a different accounts of the people they actually are vs. the image that the Govt. and media portrayed.
Ask yourself this; if your image was plastered all over the TV and you're accused of a terrorist attack, what would you do? What
could you do? My thoughts on this...
Its been two weeks since the Boston marathon bombings and the smell of lies and corruption is pungent in the air. While the mainstream media has failed to do any sort of investigative journalism on the event (sans Ben Swann of Reality Check and Judge Napolitano of Freedom Watch) they have done a fine job of regurgitating and re-enforcing the same non-sense story that the FBI concocted. Even when that story changed, they changed their reporting to fit that story. How bogus!
Thanks to the internet and to our divine ability to
Think, people around the world have been probing, questioning and taking apart the official story since the day the news broke out. Of course, these people are the "conspiracy theorists" - always coming up with some crazy idea about the government being out to get them. But what happens when the crazy "conspiracies" have facts, evidence, eyewitness testimonials, motives and historical data that proves the involvement of government conducting terror attacks on its own citizens all the time?
Alex Seitz-Wald
Salon.comThu, 02 May 2013 06:55 UTC
© Salon
It's good to be Alex Jones. Matt Drudge, the conservative Web entrepreneur and news aggregator, proved prophetic when he predicted that 2013 would be "
the year of Alex Jones." The longtime conspiracy broadcaster is finally breaking into the mainstream consciousness after a buzzy interview with Piers Morgan and his Boston bombing conspiracy, and traffic to his websites has
never been higher. The conspiracy business is booming.
And make no mistake, it is a business. That's not to say that Jones isn't a believer - there are easier ways to make money - but Jones has built a multi-platform new media empire in his Austin, Texas, Free Speech Systems LLC that reaches millions of believers and
promises advertisers that it will "direct lucrative buyers to you from our daily audience of active enthusiasts." And all told, Jones is very likely raking in millions.
Jones didn't invent the business model, but he may have perfected it. He comes from a long line of what historian
Robert Goldberg calls "conspiracy entrepreneurs" that stretches back through at least the early Red Scare, and up through the John Birch Society, the JFK assassination and the Roswell incident to the Jones school of the New World Order. But while others merely got by on the sale of their books and tapes and lectures to a niche audience, Jones has industrialized conspiracy for a mass audience.
Alex Seitz-Wald
Salon.comSat, 04 May 2013 04:45 UTC
A gun activist is planning a massive march on D.C., with participants' rifles illegally slung over their shouldersLibertarian activist and radio host Adam Kokesh is hoping to get 1,000 people to march on Washington on July 4 - armed with loaded rifles. The plan, launched with
a Facebook group today, is to gather on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where gun laws are lax, and then march across the bridge with loaded rifles slung over their shoulders into the District, where openly carrying weapons is generally prohibited.
"This will be a non-violent event," the Facebook group warns, "unless the government chooses to make it violent." Already, over 200 people have said they'll attend the march. Here's the message:
On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.
Kokesh is a former Marine who was
discharged in 2007 after violating the military's code against engaging in political activity while in uniform. Kokesh was highly active in the antiwar movement after serving in Iraq, participating in numerous protests and getting arrested on occasion.
Comment: Adam Charles Kokesh, an interesting character. He has his own
Wikipedia page, where we read:
Kokesh was a corporal in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and is a veteran of the Iraq War. He is an outspoken opponent of the U.S. military intervention in Iraq and has received media attention related to anti-war protest activities. He is the son of Charles Kokesh, a Santa Fe venture capitalist, founder of a firm called Technology Funding, and owner of the Santa Fe Horse Park.
He brought home a pistol from Iraq in 2004 in violation of military rules, which prevented his return for a second Iraq tour.
In no time at all, he became a fairly high-profile media personality on the alternative news circuit, an outspoken anti-war activist, 9/11 Truther, Ron Paul supporter, etc, etc.
Remember PATCONThe following information is gleaned from the outstanding documentary about the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing,
A Noble Lie.
Short for 'PATRIOT CONSPIRACY' - Patcon was an undercover FBI operation launched around 1991. Modelled after COINTELPRO, which officially ended in 1971 (yeah right!), the idea was to infiltrate every militia group, every neo-nazi group, in fact - every single group that was in any way critical of the government - by placing a combination of paid informants and sheep-dipped agents inside all of these groups.
By the time this counter-insurgency program was active, they had sent young Tmothy McVeigh to Camp Grafton for explosives training in preparation for his role in the Oklahoma City Bombing. More than that, however, they created a 'terror cell' with other ATF and FBI informants and named it the Ayran Republican Army, members of which McVeigh hung around with in Elohim City in Oklahoma.
This is what McVeigh was doing during the few months for which there is 'no record' prior to the OKC bombing. Besides explosives training, this quiet, obedient soldier developed a 'legend' for himself so that by the time he resurfaced in Oklahoma, he is playing the role of 'raving anti-government activist'. In short, McVeigh was 'sheep-dipped'. He never 'left the army'. There are no discharge papers because he wasn't 'discharged'. He was selected for Special Ops. McVeigh was even
accidentally filmed at Camp Grafton in North Dakota during
this time.
Why he agreed to speedy execution remains somewhat mysterious for now, but the fact that he was visited repeatedly by notorious mind control hypnotist and CIA shrink Louis Jolyon West (of MK-Ultra and Sirhan Sirhan fame), coupled with his rigid obedience to the government he believed he was serving, meant that he was 'a good soldier' to the very end.
Just something to keep in mind.
Comment: Obama recently vowed to close Guantánamo, telling reporters, "I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,". He didn't say that they would instead just kill all suspects with drones.