By
Ekow Mensah
Professor
John Evans Atta Mills was then a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Law
Faculty.
He had gone to town with one of his close friends.
His friend saw his house boy on the streets and
alerted Professor Mills.
Professor Mills beckoned the house boy to come
closer.
When the house boy came closer to the car,
Professor Mills asked calmly “are the shoes you are wearing not mine?”
The house boy embarrassingly looked down at the
shoes he was wearing as if he was seeing them for the first time.
“Yes Sir,
they are yours but I am very sorry” he said.
Professor Mills just said “Please remove them
for me” and the house boy complied.
Several weeks later, the friend visited
Professor Mills and found the house boy still at work.
In shock he turned to Professor Mills and asked
“why is this boy still here”
Professor Mills told his friend that making the
house boy walk barefoot back to campus was humiliating enough and that he has
learnt his lesson.
Friends testify that the house boy eventually
became one of the most loyal friends of Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
Editorial
VANDERPUYE MUST GO
The
Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) Alfred Oko Vanderpuye
needs to be shown the exit for a number of reasons.
Since becoming Chief Executive he has
deliberately been promoting ethnicity in much the same way as the opponents of
Nkruamah did.
What is the substantial difference between what
the Tokyo Joe Boys of the 1950s and early 60s said and Alfred Vanderpuye’s justification
for changing the name Ohene Djan Sports Stadium to Accra Sports Stadium.
Vanderpuye has played the tribal card and in the
process embarrassed the Government and the President.
He has also insulted a national heroine and done
damage to the memory of Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
The Insight has no hesitation in recommending
that Mr Vanderpuye must be given the sack. Period!
TROUBLE AHEAD
The Economic Intelligences Unit (EIU) is
predicting trouble after the determination of the election petition before the
Supreme Court.
In its July 2013 report, the EIU said the court
case “will keep political tension high”.
It said
“ As the forecast period progresses and the election dispute is dealt with, the
management of the rapidly developing oil and gas sector, as well as Ghana’s
other abundant natural resources, will be an important factor in assessing the
prospects for political stability.
“ The current feeling, among many Ghanaians that
they have not benefited from the resources boom, especially as inflation erodes
earnings could grow into a situation where people take to the streets and unrest develops.
“Labour unrest
has grown in recent months, which seems likely to be a further distraction for
policy makers and a source of political tension “the report said.
The report claimed that some politician may
attempt to take advantage of this situation for purely partisan political gain.
Ghana’s security services have said that they
are ready to prevent the country from sliding down the path to mayhem.
The Inspector- General of Police,, Mohammed Alhassan says
he can deploy enough men and
women to prevent trouble.
The GM
genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide
By
Andrew Malone
When
Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves
after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling
dispatch reveals, it’s even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock
and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and
neighbours prepared their father’s body for cremation on a blazing bonfire
built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and
Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son
and daughter would have a better life under India’s economic boom, they now
face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they
will be the lowest of the low.
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and
father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of
his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years’
earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had
writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on – they knew from experience that
any intervention was pointless – as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out
in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his
simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped
making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of
Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the
family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to
find her husband dead. ‘He was a loving and caring man,’ she said, weeping
quietly.
‘But he couldn’t take any more. The mental
anguish was too much. We have lost everything.’
Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course,
famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been
blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers,
had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from
farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he
borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he
was left with spiralling debts – and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000
farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India
as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by
campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the
issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end
its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the
Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by
condemning ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in
India, stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM
lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops
have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should
embrace ‘the future’ and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I
travelled to the ‘suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing – and has
profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to
allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of
nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of
Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than
1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow,
agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide – a pricey substance they were
promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM
crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to
local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty,
alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the
horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey
through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.
In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had
committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have
taken over farms from their dead husbands – only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her
crops failed – two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became
too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the
care of relatives. ‘He cries when he thinks of his mother,’ said the dead
woman’s aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they
had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of
traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100
grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional
seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had
promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would
be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM
seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in
promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of
the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new
bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new
seed creations.
In return for allowing
western companies access to the second most populated country in the world,
with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary
Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic
revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have
boomed, the farmers’ lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have
doubled in two years – up to 17 million acres – many famers have found there is
a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof
‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds
require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many
GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling
debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money
lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have
faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could
struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could
still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s
because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they
have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce
viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each
year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between
life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer
who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours
squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family
had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged
to buy BT Cotton, a genetically modified plant created by Monsanto.
‘We are ruined now,’ said the dead man’s 38-year-old
wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had
become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and
swallowed insecticide.’
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed
to hospital along rutted farm roads. ‘He cried out that he had taken the
insecticide and he was sorry,’ she said, as her family and neighbours crowded
into her home to pay their respects. ‘He was dead by the time they got to
hospital.’
Asked if the dead man was a ‘drunkard’ or suffered
from other ‘social problems’, as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet,
dignified gathering erupted in anger. ‘No! No!’ one of the dead man’s brothers
exclaimed. ‘Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his
taxes.
‘He was strangled by these magic seeds. They
sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do.
We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing
us. Please tell the world what is happening here.’
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a
‘factor in this tragedy’. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled
in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the
recent crisis, such as ‘untimely rain’ or drought, and pointed out that
suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the
majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds - no doubt encouraged to
do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra,
I encountered three ‘independent’ surveyors scouring villages for information
about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more
expensive – and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed
is ‘only double’ the price of ‘official’ non-GM seed – but admitted that the
difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by ‘unscrupulous’
merchants, who often also sell ‘fake’ GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation
to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form
of assistance. ‘We just want to escape from our problems,’ one said. ‘We just
want help to stop any more of us dying.’
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of
the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan
Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of
GM.
India’s farmers are also starting to fight back.
As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one
state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant
costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who
was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. ‘I told him
that we can survive,’ his widow said, her children still by her side as
darkness fell. ‘I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better
to die.’
But the debt does not die with her husband:
unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the
children’s schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen
begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic
country.
Cruelly, it’s the young who are suffering most
from the ‘GM Genocide’ - the very generation supposed to be lifted
out of a life of hardship and misery by these ‘magic seeds’.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of
the genetically modified future is murderously high.
POWER PLAY IN DCE APPOINTMENTS
Local Gov't Minister, Kwasi Oppong Fosu |
Two
internal audit reports in August and October 2012 about the activities within
the Akontombra District Assembly (Western Region) contain startling revelations
about corruption, maladministration under the watch of the incumbent District
Chief Executive, Mr. Peter Nkuah. In spite of these and other very serious
allegations and complaints, the President insists that Mr. Nkuah is his man for
DCE for the District.
According
to the audit reports signed by Mr. Zakaria Farouk (Senior Internal Auditor) in
2012 “withdrawals totaling GHC 76,860.00 were made without any supporting
payment vouchers in breach of the provisions of the financial regulations.
In spite of specific regulations about the use of monies
from the Consolidated Fund, GHC 47,500 was illegally transferred from the
District Development Facility Sub-Consolidated Fund Account to the Assembly’s
Internally Generated where monies were dissipated on petty contracts, awarded
to friends some of whom were not even accredited contractors.
Other strange actions under the watch of the DCE include
Expenditure without approval (Jan-June 2012) amounting to GHC4,601.80;
withdrawals without Payment Vouchers totaling GHC 76,860.00, and Expenditure
without Warrant amounting to GHC 55,879.50.
As if these were not enough, six caterers under the School
Feeding Programme, were given cheques for a period that they did not cook,
instead of returning the cheques to the Programme. After asking them to cash
the cheques, the District collected most of the monies from the caterers, with
the excuse that they were being returned to government chest. No one knows what
happened to those cash which totaled . According to our information, the
schools in which the caterers were supposed to provide food were Akpafu D/A
Primary School, Aprutu Anglican Primary School, Kojokrom D/A Primary School,
Wurur D/A Primary School, Nkwadum D/A Primary School and Krobomanshia D/A
Primary School. The total amount involved was GH¢26, 531. Although this case
was contained in a petition with copies to, among other people, the Minister of
Local Government and the President’s Chief of Staff, nothing was done to pursue
the matter.
They also accuse the DCE of falsely informing government in
2012 that the Akontombra town roads had been resurfaced although this was not
the case. Fed with this misinformation, the government included the Akontombra
town roads as having been refurbished in the 2012 “Better Ghana Agenda” booklet.
Strangely,
the Presidency appears to have so much confidence in this DCE that three
government appointees to the Assembly, who have expressed concern about the
malfeasance of the DCE have been sacked by the President. One of the
appointees, having recently been elected as Presiding member, took out an
injunction to quash his dismissal.
This
sort of power-play has been replicated in many parts of the county. In several
parts of the country, the President’s nominees for District Chief Executives
and Municipal Chief Executives have been met with opposition, mainly from NDC
functionaries but also (in some cases), community leaders, including
chiefs, who have expressed bewilderment
and hostility at the nominations.
This
is because, for many of these people in the districts, the performance of some
of the DCE’s, most of whom have already served four terms under Professor
Mills, have been abysmal. The complaints are not homogeneous. They range from charges of corruption,
nepotism, arrogance, to incompetence, maladministration.
The
communities are therefore taken aback that the President and his local
government advisors have closed their ears to these local concerns with the
explanation that those who are opposing the nominations are doing so out of
sheer envy and mischief.
In
the Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam (AEE) District in the Central Region it was reported
that the Deputy Minister of Local
Government and Rural Development, Baba Jamal had to threaten Government
appointees to the Assembly with dismissal if they did not confirm the nominated
DCE for the area, Peter Light Koomson.
In
Assin North Municipal Assembly, the President sacked most of the Government
appointees to the assembly when they refused to back the incumbent MCE. At the voting, 15 “machomen” were deployed to
intimidate the voters.
The
chiefs of the Agortime-Ziope District in the Volta Region Have also
opposed the re-nomination of Michael
Komla Adzaho as the District Chief Executive (DCE). According to them, Mr.
Adzaho failed to to anything to improve social conditions in the area during
his first tenure as DCE.
In
the the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District, the Assemblymen rejected the
President’s nominee for the DCE post when the . He had 27 out of 45 votes of
the assembly members present.
In Upper Denkyira West, assembly members rejected, Mr Ackah Yankey, in
spite of the President revoking the appointments of its six nominees to the
assembly.
Again,
in the Biakoye District (Volta Region), Gambaga (Northern Region), Kasena
Nankana West District, Asante Akim and the West Mamprusi
District the people protested against the re-nomination of the incumbent DCEs
on grounds of corruption, although the President claimed satisfaction with the
caliber of those DCEs.
These acts of intimidation and bullying against dissenting
District Assembly members have caused dissatisfaction against the President and
Regional NDC Executives who insist on imposing DCEs who are considered
unacceptable.
The question that needs to be asked is why the government
could have fallen out with its own nominees just because they are trying to
expose corruption in their local areas.
RACIST LYNCHING
Trayvon Martin |
By David Hoffman
On May 10, 2012, my article about the
murder of Trayvon Martin, entitled An American
Lynching, appeared on the pages of Pravda.Ru. I
concluded this article by saying:
"Sadly, given the sordid, racist history of Florida, and
indeed many towns, cities and states throughout America, the outcome of the
[George] Zimmerman trial is probably preordained. An all-white jury will
blame Martin for having the 'audacity' to be an African-American teenager
wearing a hoodie and walking through a gated community.
These jurors, on the other hand, will view Zimmerman as the
faithful 'community' watchdog, the personification of America's frustration
with crime, the man doing the job that the 'authorities' are unwilling, or
unable, to do.
And Trayvon Martin's name will be added to the ever-growing list
of African-Americans who, both as crime victims and as wrongfully convicted
innocents, were lynched by America's intransigently racist legal system."
I hate to say I told you so.
Make no mistake about it: if a rich, white, unarmed teenager
had been gunned down in a similar manner in a predominantly African-American
neighborhood, the shooter, acting in self-defense or not, would be on his/her
way to prison this very moment.
Naturally what these jurors forgot, or chose to ignore, is that
Trayvon Martin had as much right to defend himself as George Zimmerman.
He was in an unfamiliar neighborhood being followed by someone he did not know,
a disturbing scenario for any young person. And, unlike Zimmerman, he was
not carrying a gun.
Zimmerman, on the other hand, was carrying a gun. And this
gun gave him the incentive to instigate a situation he could have easily
avoided. And when he started to get his butt kicked, he used it.
Now, thanks to a jury in Sanford, Florida, African-American
children can be gunned down by vigilantes for nothing more than walking through
the "wrong" neighborhood, and wannabe Zimmermans can intentionally
instigate fights, shoot their opponents if they start losing, then successfully
holler "self-defense."
What the Zimmerman verdict does confirm is several axioms I have
proffered in Pravda.Ruarticles over the years:
(1) The American legal system "labors harder to rationalize injustice than
it does to produce justice" (quoted from A Tale of Two Academics,
Part II (June 18, 2009); (2) The American legal system incessantly
ignores, and in many cases even rewards, criminals whose crimes promote the
corrupt goals of the system, and punishes those who possess the courage to
expose these crimes; (3) The American legal system is nothing more than a means
for the rich and powerful to impose their will on the poor and powerless and
disguise it as "law"; (4) Evil is the primary motivating force in
human nature, and America's legal system provides the outlet for people to
exercise this evil under the pretense of doing "justice."
So forget the overpaid, talking heads, forget all the legal
"analysis," forget all the talk designed to dupe you into believing
there is a method to the legal system's madness. The reality is that evil
motivated those Sanford, Florida jurors, and, thanks to them, a murderer walks
free.
But this is not surprising in a milieu where CIA murderers also
walk free with the blessing of the United States "Justice"
Department, where torturers teach at prestigious law schools and serve as
federal judges, and where the most lawless people are often those sworn to
uphold the law.
Throughout the years, many people have asked me why I abandoned my
law practice, particularly since it is often a gateway to fame, fortune, and
political power. The answer is simple: I could not destroy my
soul. I sat in too many courtrooms and watched smirking all-white juries
deny compensation to African-Americans who suffered horrendous incidents of
police brutality and other injustices; I saw a City Attorney laughing and
celebrating when a federal magistrate denied any financial compensation to an
African-American man who had spent over five years in prison for a crime he
didn't commit; I watched innocent people plead guilty to crimes they did not
commit because they faced the prospect of being punished more severely if they
chose to go to trial; and I watched attorneys delay trials time and again in
the hope that ill and suffering people would become so sick or financially
destitute that they would settle for less money than they were entitled to.
And I recalled the words of one of my law professors:
"If you're ever conflicted between being an attorney and being a human
being, remember you were a human being first."
I have no doubt that many attorneys entered, and are entering, the
legal profession the way I did: naive and believing the system is about
truth and justice. But those "David vs. Goliath" cases so
prominently featured on television and movie screens, where idealistic,
inexperienced young attorneys triumph over venal corporate interests and
high-priced adversaries, are more myth than reality.
I wish I could profess that some psychic insight led me to
accurately predict the outcome of the Zimmerman trial. But the truth is
the ugliness of America's legal system and American racism made that outcome a
certainty.
So a word to the wise: Don't ever believe, not even for a
second, that America's legal system is designed to promote truth and
justice. Don't ever enter into a legal battle thinking that anyone
(including the judges) is concerned about fundamental fairness or even the most
rudimentary concepts of right and wrong. Don't ever believe that logic
and sagacity are the foundations for legal "opinions" or jury
verdicts. Don't ever believe that "nobody is above the
law."
But, most importantly, don't ever believe that anyone in the
system has a conscience.
Instead, accept the fact that politics, judicial bias, and/or the
income, race, and/or gender of the defendant(s) or the victim(s) determine the
outcome of most cases. Accept the fact that whatever common sense dictates to
be the right thing to do, the system will do the opposite. Accept the
fact that the system is obtusely and incurably racist. Accept the fact
that the system is nothing more than a tool created by the rich and powerful to
protect the interests of the rich and powerful.
If you believe otherwise, you will be doomed to many years of
disappointment and misery, unless, of course, some Neighborhood Watch
"captain" decides to kill you first.
A few weeks ago, a majority of justices on the United States
Supreme Court, an institution that, under Chief "Justice" John
Roberts, has become the ultimate testament to the legal system's corruption,
hypocrisy, racism, obtuseness, and bias, struck down a key provision of the
Voting Rights Act-a law that, just a few decades ago, numerous civil rights
activists were beaten, jailed, and murdered for supporting. The court's
reasoning: "America has changed."
Tell that to the family of Trayvon Martin.
NSA spying never catches Israelis - Why not?
Jullian Assange (L), Edward Snowden (R) |
By
Jim W. Dean
Intelligence
analysis ALWAYS follows a dual track of analyzing what you can see...and what
you can't. The massive coverage on the recent Snowden revelations has basically
all been theater as most had already been revealed and/or was known about by
every Intel agency on the planet.
Two old platitudes come to mind...'Crying Crocodile Tears', and Shakespeare's “Me thinks she doth protest too much”. When you cut through all the smoke and mirrors, the essence is very simple.
Snowden,
like Assange...despite the huge amount of classified material with all the
embarrassing things that involved so many countries, neither of them seemed to
know anything about the massive Israeli espionage that is carried out all over
the world.
For example, the field reports from Afghanistan and Iraq involved
Israelis being picked up as contractors doing very nasty things, and yes, doing
them even to American troops. None of that stuff made its way into the leakers
shocking release pile. We have people who wrote some of those reports, and they
were major headlines.
My verdict? No leaker who has had access to the mother-load of
dirty Intel laundry on numerous selected countries, and who never releases any
on Israel, is for real. They are an operator. Why? Because busting open the
Israeli espionage cover-up is the story of a lifetime.
On one side you have a loyal faction of modern Intel professionals
trying to monitor and block Israeli penetrations. And then there is the rogue
bunch assisting the bad guys for all the rewards offered, not so much by the
Israelis themselves but their substantial political helpers.
This battle has been going on for a long time and there is a huge
amount of material available even in the declassified files. If you want to
find out more, all you have to do is scratch the dirt. It is the espionage
scandal of our time and these phony leakers have contributed nothing.
Veterans Today burned Assange in the fall of 2011, with Ziggy Brzezinski helping through his big PBS interview where he spilled the beans about the Assange information being released having been 'seeded.' He gave our initial claims a lot more exposure.
Veterans Today burned Assange in the fall of 2011, with Ziggy Brzezinski helping through his big PBS interview where he spilled the beans about the Assange information being released having been 'seeded.' He gave our initial claims a lot more exposure.
So that really leaves only one plausible explanation for 'missing'
the Israeli espionage angle. Remember I said it would be impossible for a
really connected leaker not to know about it. And if Assange and Snowden were
really these altruistic goody goodies who cry about the public's right to know
how they are being abused by government spying on them, then why would they
give the Zionists a free pass for doing it to all of us?
Press TV readers would know why...because these guys are on an
Israeli string. This is simply Intel 101. When everybody is getting embarrassed
by leaks except for that one special group, there is no suspect number
two.
The
Europeans are crying wolf as part of the charade, also. They all have been
doing similar communications intercept spying on their own people...and more
than a few of them in conjunction with the US under sharing arrangements.
The beginning of this came from the alleged 911 hijackers. They
had spent time in various European states and moved around different legal
jurisdictions as the most normal tactic of that era for avoiding close
monitoring by counter-intelligence services.
Communications Intel people did not want to get caught being
responsible for missing another major attack, so it was open city on collecting
everything they could by whatever means available. The NSA name for it was
Total Awareness. This sometimes would include having other jurisdictions do
things that were illegal for you to do in your own country.
For example, years ago Canada intercept sites could collect
material on Americans, and we on them, and both could testify that they were
not collecting communications domestically and be telling the truth
technically. But they were never asked about whether there was a sharing
arrangement with anyone. This is part of the theater of Congressional
hearings...what does not get asked.
The Israelis have a huge appetite for intercept information and
they used their Jewish Lobby political muscle to get their contractors inside
many of their friendly country counterintelligence operations, especially
communications. In the US, Michael Chertoff literally hardwired them with full
promotion and protection from Bush and Cheney.
Remember this is the crowd, along with Rudy Giuliani, who were
going to make Bernie Kerik Homeland Security Director after being a high school
dropout and detective third class. He was nothing more than a sock puppet for
his handlers who would have been running the show.
What kind of leaders would use a tragedy like 911 to put a totally
incompetent person in charge of the biggest conglomeration of Intel and law
enforcement in history? Many were suspicious that they wanted to make sure that
911 would never be unraveled as to who was really behind it here in the US.
Bernie would have been perfect for that. He has been out of jail a month
now.
So
what we have had going on is a cruel betrayal, not only here in America but in
many countries. The War on Terror has been used by elites as an excuse to get a
vice grip control over their populations, profiling them on a scale formerly
only dreamed about.
Why would this be necessary? The only real answer is a looming
fear of publics finding out what their governments had really done to them, the
extent of the corruption and how thoroughly they had been pillaged.
People learning that their countries had been stolen, that would
make them dangerous. They would all turn against those responsible. The only
defense for the elites then would be to quickly round up all those of a certain
profile, those who had the leadership skills, the knowledge, and the network
strength to fight back.
The data mining ability available to governments now is absolutely
incredible. They can find out just about anything about anybody...but not on
the Israelis, of course. Think about it. With these new tools we should have
been able to decimate Israel's espionage networks here...political, military,
financial, media, academia and the think tanks.
How many Israeli Intel networks have the Western
countries broken up since 911? The answer is zero. The Zionists have
compromised these Western nations in a variety of ways, with the primary tool
being political espionage as that is the pathway you use to get your people
deeply embedded in all the important spots.
They spend ten, twenty years, even
longer grooming their people to have them ready when the time is right to slip
them into sensitive positions. Even our Justice Department has been
compromised, as loyal people have gone everywhere to initiate prosecutions only
to be told that it was just impossible for “protected entities”.
Assange, and now Snowden, are just side
shows...burning up the public attention time clock that could have been much
better spent going after the really dangerous threats. You cannot involve the
Israelis in anything and have any security. The two are mutually exclusive.
The professional Intel people all know this, but get
overruled by the civilian leadership where that fix is in. To call these
countries democracies is an embarrassment to the word. These are conquered
countries where people were sold the story about the tooth fairy and who are
now struggling to outgrow their childish beliefs as their make believe world
comes down around their ears.
All of these countries, their elite class, deem their own
people to be their number one threat. And the Israeli Lobby operators are stuck
to the elites like glue, promising to protect them when the dark times
come...that they will be OK if they are with the right group.
Dear readers, we are not on their 'right group' list. We are
on the expendable, potential threat one. Even War on Terror veterans found
themselves on it, yet many are still refusing to let go of their Teddy Bears
and face up to what has to be done.
You can shoot me as the bad news messenger if you want, but
that won't save you. Saving ourselves is going to require some very clear
thinking, determination, and building street armies like the Egyptians just
did.
When we can put 50 million people into the streets and bring
the military over with us, it will be a new Independence day. And the first
order of business would be to clean up 911, and not let those responsible walk
among us.
Susan Rice's Snowden
Blunder
By Robert
N. Tracci
Former United Nations ambassador Susan Rice
started her new job as national-security adviser a few weeks ago. Questions
about Rice’s honesty when serving as UN ambassador, focusing on her role in
explaining the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, occasioned
spirited public and congressional debate. Although appointment as
national-security adviser is not subject to congressional approval, credibility
is essential to the effective discharge of that position. Yet Rice’s recent
assertions regarding the impact of Edward Snowden’s unauthorized disclosures of
highly classified national-security information and her failure to correct
these remarks present new questions about her judgment and fitness for her new
post.
In an interview on June 29, Rice dismissed claims
that Edward Snowden’s disclosure of highly classified national-security
programs damaged U.S. diplomatic interests or the standing of President Obama:
I don't think the diplomatic consequences, at least as they are foreseeable
now, are that significant . . . I think the Snowden thing is obviously
something that we will get through, as we've gotten through all the issues like
this in the past. While the harm to President Obama’s political standing
attributable to Snowden’s disclosures is debatable, the serious injury to the
defense, national security and diplomatic interests of the United States is
beyond dispute.
Snowden is much more than a
"twenty-nine-year-old [sic] hacker." Given the unparalleled nature of
his disclosures, Rice's statement that Snowden's conduct is equivalent to all
the issues like this in the past is demonstrably false. Rice’s apparent effort
to minimize the harm caused by Snowden’s criminal misconduct is at odds with
the public record and reflects a strain of denialism that raises questions
about her capacity to elevate national-security policy above short-term
political convenience. Her assessments not only openly conflict with statements
by other administration officials about the nature and impact of Snowden’s
misconduct, they threaten to undermine the ability of the United States to
fully hold Snowden legally accountable for his so-called gross criminal
misconduct.
Some contend with no obvious sarcasm that
Snowden’s conduct has not damaged the national security or defense of the
United States. But disclosure of these programs unarguably compromised
intelligence sources and methods and alerted the enemy to their existence. The
public now knows that these programs thwarted several terrorist attacks against
American and overseas targets; terrorists now know how to better conceal their
intentions from U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement authorities. Moreover,
assertions that Snowden has not caused serious injury to the defense of the
United States are contradicted by current and former senior Pentagon and
intelligence officials, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, former CIA directors Michael Hayden and James Woolsey, and
former attorney general Michael Mukasey. Threats of legal action against
technology firms alleged to have complied with lawful metadata requests are
likely to chill future cooperation, all to the detriment of the defense of the
United States.
The conduct and statements of foreign governments
in the wake of these disclosures further belie Rice’s claims that Snowden has
not significantly damaged U.S. diplomatic interests. Since Snowden’s leaks of
classified information were first published, China and Russia have determined
that it is in their national interest not to facilitate his extradition. During
this intervening period, Snowden has disclosed information concerning alleged
intelligence operations against computer networks in the People’s Republic of
China, alleged monitoring of Russian government offices and personnel, and
purported efforts to intercept communications at diplomatic missions of the
European Union and friendly governments.
Revelations concerning alleged U.S. cyber
operations in the PRC occurred while Mr.
Snowden remained in Hong Kong and
overshadowed a June 10รข€“11 U.S.-China summit meeting at which President Obama
protested China-sponsored, cyber-enabled theft of U.S. intellectual property
and private data crucial to U.S. economic competitiveness. Russia has attempted
to exploit disclosures to undermine the diplomatic standing of the United
States and continues to harbor him.
According to the New York Times, the diplomatic
fallout from Snowden's disclosures has hurt President Obama's standing in
Europe and raised basic questions of trust among nations that have been on
friendly terms for generations. European Union president Martin Schulz demanded
a formal explanation of alleged activities and claimed the United States was
treating the EU as an enemy. France threatened to halt trade talks considered
vital to U.S. economic interests. The U.S. ambassador was summoned by the
German foreign ministry to explain new disclosures in a prominent German
newspaper, and Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to directly express her
concern to President Obama. Secretary of State Kerry spent most of Monday
attempting to calm skeptical European governments while President Obama
reassured allies.
How any public official, particularly the
individual now serving as national-security adviser, can blithely dismiss and
continue to ignore the far-reaching national security and diplomatic
repercussions of the Snowden thing defies credulity. Furthermore, trivializing
the extent of Snowden’s injury to the United States may undermine the ability
of federal prosecutors to effectively present their case against Snowden on
behalf of the country he has betrayed.
Snowden’s advocates claim he was informed by
altruism and had no reasonable belief that unauthorized disclosures could be
used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign
nation. If he stands trial for his actions, the injury to the United States and
the degree to which it could reasonably have been foreseen will comprise the
gravamen of the government's case against him under a key national-security
statute. As a result, official comments crafted to downplay the political
repercussions of Snowden’s disclosures will be seized upon by Snowden’s defense
team at any future trial. This alone should be sufficient to compel government
officials, including Rice, to speak with clarity and objectivity about the
serious injury Snowden’s disclosures have caused to the national security and
defense of the United States.
Rice has been on the job for a few days. She is
not off to a good start. Rice can help restore trust in her judgment and affirm
respect for the position she now holds by correcting her recent comments about the
Snowden thing. In the days and weeks to come, she and other public officials
must resist short-term political pressure to minimize the serious harm
attributable to the illegal disclosures. Instead, they must speak clearly and
candidly about the harm Snowden has caused. If they do not, they may negate a
vital deterrent against unauthorized disclosures of national-security
information and deprive the American people the justice we deserve in the
Snowden case.
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