TRUCKERS MAKE HISTORY IN CANADA Just a short video.
Israeli Convoy Prepping — Join us
Imagine that. They are following Canadians for a change. February 9th, 2022. If the citizens of Isreal ever find out the truth, the whole truth about what their government has been doing to them for years, ever since they day they were born. Their would be a revolution in Israel like their government has never seen. They even experimented on children. Jewish children. They radiated them as a science experiment. The Israeli government did everything imaginable, to have the story wiped out. As a matter of fact they Israeli government has tried to wipe out all history that would wake them up to reality. Their government did sell them all out to Pfizer now didn’t they? Their own government, turned the entire country in a massive lab and guess, who all the guinea pigs are? Every citizen of Israel. And they trust their government. WHY? Israeli’s have been indoctrinated and lied to for years. They have been isolated from the truth. Any truth that might be out there has been wiped out. The government make bloody sure of that. They even managed to get the people of Israel to help them do it. Oh yes I know what they have done and how they do it. Long, Long story on that one. It has only been happening, for what, 70 years. Maybe even longer. Yes now that I think about it, longer much longer. They have been taught to hate with a passion. The government has done that to them all. It starts from the day they are born. Maybe finding out their own government is trying to kill off as many as they can, might wake them up. I will not hold my breath on that one.
A few things about, what I said above. Took me a bit to find that in the archives. I thought it might be important. History always is.
Zionists Poisoned/Radiated 100,000 Sefardi Jewish Children
Way, way, down at the bottom you will find that story. Of course you have to climb down the bean stalk, to find the truth. So how many are brave enough to climb down that bean stalk? History is something that should never be hidden for people. Over 8 years ago this came out. It was kept hidden for a very long time. How many people actually know is a mystery. A study from the early 1950s found X-ray treatment effective in almost all cases of ringworm.
The documented dosages given to the Israeli children were similar to (if not less than) that administered to children treated for ringworm at New York University Hospital between 1940 and 1959.Oh Ya, the US did it too. The US paid Israel to experiment on Jewish children. In fact, the treatment in Israel was the same that was used elsewhere in the world. Oh my. How many know that? Oh well better late then never. It reminds me of all the MK Ultra experiments. They were not isolated to the US either.
That of course was a lie they were told. That is not how you treat ringworm. Any farmer with a single brain cell could tell you that. I advise keeping a copy of everything on that page in a file somewhere. I do. You should too. All this history just might vanish. It is like the Never Ending Story when the Nothingness takes over. It is just like that. It has been that way for a very long time. Things just vanish. Censorship is not a new thing. It has been going on for as far back as I can remember. It existed during the world wars. So my parents and grandparents told me. They were alive and well during those times. They wanted me to know the truth, not the lies the main stream media, told them, others and you. Imagine that, nothing has changed in all those years. They have always used the press, to lie for them. How shocking. Anyone ever notice the similarity between what happened to the Aboriginals getting small pox and Jewish people getting typhus. Bedbugs and lice. Do you know WHY? Germ warfare, is pretty old you know. Long story there too. Just scratching my head????? You will too.
Convoy to DC – Live With Grassroots Organizers February 3rd, 2022.
The facebook one will be taken down. they are making things vanish. Not new of course. youtubeis also starting to censor. Never keep all your eggs in one basket. To everyone one out there rescue the videos before they vanish. The Nothingness is about to take over again. They did that with Anti War stuff too. Very old this vanishing act of theirs is. Very Old indeed.
Check out the comment section. There is a lot of information there. Like the Alaskan convoy for example. It also has links to all the other posts on the convoys.
They went after a very old man as well. That link is in the comments, in the above link. Look for OTTAWA POLICE – BULLY TACTICS – CRIMINAL SENIOR ABUSE
Freedom Convoy Preemptive SOS Press Conference Feb7 2022
CALGARY POLICE OFFICER STANDS UP
CALLS OUT TRUDEAU
A major Thank You to all the people, who left comments. Keep them coming. You find things, I don’t. If we work together we might get it all.
There was more then one of these in that convoy. If I see any military being used to harm any civilian of their own country they can be charged with Treason. Remember that. Now if I saw this with Freedom flags and or F*Trudeau flags on them, then and then only will I know, you are doing the job, you were sworn to do. Remember your oath boys and girls. Tax payers pay your wages. You work for the civilians not the tyranical governments. You serve the people of your country. It is your duty above all duties to protect the citizens of your country. To other wise is to become a criminal, a traitor and in some cases, could make you a murderer. So lets not go there. Protect the people, not the government, who has been using you a cannon fodder for years on end. Used to steal oil and resources from other countries, is all you have done. They used you all. They create poverty on purpose so poor people join the military. If you die they do not care. They never have. History tells us that. They are the many of the same people behind the fake pandemic.
Yes poverty is created on purpose, by governments. Look at how many have become homeless due to this fake pandemic. Just another way to recruit cannon fodder for their new up coming wars. Oh yes they want more wars. All based on lies of course. Nothing new there. I see it coming. So as they say dress for succes not mass murder. One would think, after all these years everyone o the planet would have figured that out.
The UN loves wars. WHO loves fake pandemics. Get with the program people. The UN wants to become the world government. They already have a good head start. I have been watching it all unfold for years. Long Long story. Don’t have time to go into that one. Why do you think some countries are kept in poverty. So they can steal their resources. Oh and imagine the Military world wide, have helped do just that. Then there are the paid Rebels, paid for, with drug money, no less, that pretend to liberate their country. OH the opium, is really good for that one. They were not even from those countries, they were imported from other countries. History is a wonderful thing. They have pulled that stunt so many time over the years I can even remember, how many times anymore. Then of course, they get the press to lie for them. How funny it was one day, when I found a truck, in Syria with California license plates on it. On a main stream media news story. Gee how did that get there I wonder. Oh fake news. I am guessing, the entire thing was cooked up in California by someone. Oops, forgot to take off the plate boys and girls. Just little things, some of us notice.
I find it appalling that those who presented all the information on the dangers of Vaccines were only given 5 minutes. To explain the dangers takes a lot longer then that. They do the same thing to those who want to present facts on the dangers of vaccines, in the US as well. There is a mountain of information that vacines are dangerous. 5 minutes is certainly not enough time, to go through all of the dangers.
WHO is nothing more then a vaccine pusher. They are not to be trusted on any level, when it comes to the safety of vaccines. Their agenda has harmed more children then one can even comprehend. They do everything imaginable to censor those, who say anything against vaccines. The WHO should not be advising anyone on Vaccines. One of the problems was with the Bill Gates Polio Vaccines It crippled almost 500,000 children in India. Who in their right mind would trust them for any advise or recommendations? I will add a link to that story below.
I became extremely concerned when I found out, the US gives the Hep B vaccine, to new born babies. New born babies, will not go out having sexual relations or do IV drugs.. Anyone who gives that vaccine to a new born, should be jailed as far as I am concerned.
That is insanity. Hep B vaccines, have also killed new born babies.
There is more on this at the link below That is where the video below comes from. If the video vanishes from youtube the transcripts of their presentations, are at the link below as well. These days a massive amount of videos have been taken down by youtube. The Censorship of the truth is become all to obvious. I advise downloading the video and uploading it at other sites, that do not Censor the truth.
The Board of Health: 1. Requested Health Canada to explore avenues to reduce the spread and dissemination of misinformation and false claims about vaccines. 2. Requested the World Health Organization to consider global recommendations, similar to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, regulating direct and indirect advertising, promotion, and sponsorship by anti-vaccine groups and anti-vaccine messages in print, audio, video, and online advertisements. 3. Requested the following health professional organizations to educate their members on how to address vaccine hesitancy in their practices and promote vaccines: the Ontario Medical Association, the Canadian Medical Association, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Ontario Pharmacists Association, the Association of Ontario Midwives, the Ontario Chiropractic Association, and the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. 4. Directed that the report (March 28, 2019) from the Medical Officer of Health be forwarded to Health Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Public Health Ontario, Ad Standards, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the Canadian Marketing Association, the Association of Canadian Advertisers, the Ontario Public Health Association, the Association of Local Public Health Agencies, the Council of Ontario Medical Officers of Health, the Ontario Medical Association, the Canadian Medical Association, the Ontario Nurses’ Association, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Ontario Pharmacists Association, the Association of Ontario Midwives, the Ontario Chiropractic Association, and the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. 5. Requested the Medical Officer of Health to report to the Board of Health at its meeting on September 23, 2019 with Toronto Public Health’s strategy to address vaccine hesitancy which should include the following: a. Investigating the potential to restrict misleading advertising regarding vaccinations on City-owned land and infrastructure; b. Consulting with Health Canada regarding their ability to use additional regulations under their legislative authority to restrict misleading advertising regarding vaccinations; c. Additional actions to ensure that the public has the necessary information to make informed decisions about the importance of vaccinations for the health of all members of our community, including consideration of a public education campaign; and d. Assistance the Medical Officer of Health can provide to health care providers to ensure that they can support families in making informed vaccination decisions.
Decision Advice and Other Information
Dr. Vinita Dubey, Associate Medical Officer of Health, Toronto Public Health, gave a presentation on Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy.
Origin
(March 28, 2019) Report from the Medical Officer of Health
Summary
Vaccine hesitancy is the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines. It is a growing concern internationally and has been identified as a top ten threat to global health by the World Health Organization. In Canada, an estimated 20 percent of parents are vaccine hesitant and are unsure about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Social media and the internet play a significant role in spreading misinformation about vaccines and have contributed greatly to vaccine hesitancy. Technology companies such as Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Google have acknowledged the detrimental role that these platforms have played in spreading misinformation about vaccines, and have taken some action to address this issue. Clear and truthful messages supporting vaccines and the importance of immunization in protecting health are critical to combatting vaccine hesitancy. This report provides a number of recommended actions to help address this growing concern and the role the federal government, as well as international, national, and provincial organizations can play to support these efforts.
(April 5, 2019) Submission from Cindy Campbell (HL.New.HL4.03.01) (April 7, 2019) E-mail from Charlene Blake (HL.New.HL4.03.02) (April 8, 2019) E-mail from Nicole Corrado (HL.New.HL4.03.03) (April 8, 2019) Submission from Janet McNeill (HL.New.HL4.03.04)
Speakers
Rosemary Frei Safia Ibrahim Janet McNeill Skylar Hill-Jackson Joel Sussmann
Motions
1 – Motion to Amend Item moved by Councillor Joe Cressy (Carried) That the Board of Health: 1. Request the Medical Officer of Health to report to the Board of Health at its meeting on September 23, 2019 with Toronto Public Health’s strategy to address vaccine hesitancy which should include the following: a. Investigating the potential to restrict misleading advertising regarding vaccinations on City-owned land and infrastructure; b. Consulting with Health Canada regarding their ability to use additional regulations under their legislative authority to restrict misleading advertising regarding vaccinations; c. Additional actions to ensure that the public has the necessary information to make informed decisions about the importance of vaccinations for the health of all members of our community, including consideration of a public education campaign; and d. Assistance the Medical Officer of Health can provide to health care providers to ensure that they can support families in making informed vaccination decisions. Vote (Amend Item) Apr-08-2019 Result: Carried Majority Required Yes: 10 Joe Cressy (Chair), Stephanie Donaldson, Cynthia Lai, Ida Li Preti, Jennifer McKelvie, Kate Mulligan, Gord Perks, Peter Wong, Soo Wong, Kristyn Wong-Tam No: 0 Absent: 3 Ashna Bowry, Angela Jonsson, Mike Layton 2 – Motion to Adopt Item as Amended moved by Councillor Joe Cressy (Carried)
Vote (Adopt Item as Amended) Apr-08-2019 Result: Carried Majority Required Yes: 10 Joe Cressy (Chair), Stephanie Donaldson, Cynthia Lai, Ida Li Preti, Jennifer McKelvie, Kate Mulligan, Gord Perks, Peter Wong, Soo Wong, Kristyn Wong-Tam No: 0 Absent: 3 Ashna Bowry, Angela Jonsson, Mike Layton
This is just one of the side effects. You really need to look at all the others. You will need to look up many in a dictionary to find out what many of them mean. I went through all the side effects. That took a very long time. There are 400 after all. What you don’t know can kill your or your child or make them extremely ill. That takes a lot longer then 5 minutes that takes hours. Even Doctors do not read the inserts. Ask them if they have. Make them show you the inserts before vaccination, of you or your child. Call it a massive survey. They don’t know. You need to know. Always ask about the side effects of any drug they prescribe to you. Most do not know, all the side effects of them either. They just believe everything the drug companies, tell them about them. Drug companies lie of course.
Vasculitis is caused by a few vaccines. (The flu ones being some of them. These ones can cause blood clots– Afluria, Engerix-B, Fluarix, Fluzone, Havrix, MMR-II, Recombivax, Twinrix)
Vasculitis Also known as: angiitis, arteritis •
OVERVIEW • SYMPTOMS • DIAGNOSIS • TREATMENT Symptoms The signs and symptoms of vasculitis vary greatly based on the type of condition and they often result from reduced blood flow Some of the generally noted symptoms include:
• Fever
• Headache
• Fatigue
• Weight loss
• Aches and pains in the body
• Night sweating
• Rashes in the affected part
• Problems related to nerves such as numbness in the affected part Causes The exact cause for vasculitis is not known but the following factors are said to influence the onset of the condition:
• Genetic makeup of the patient • Immune system disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus
• Certain infections, for example, hepatitis B and C
• Cancers of the blood
• Reactions to certain drugs
• Smoking Prevention
• Not all types of vasculitis can be prevented, for example, vasculitis resulting from autoimmune diseases.
• Vasculitis resulting from infections or allergies can be prevented by avoiding the contact with allergen. Complications
• ****Formation of blood clots which affects blood flow*******
• Aneurysm or weakening and bulging of the blood vessels
• Organ and tissue damage from reduced or restricted blood flow
Well if you made it through all of the 400 side effects, you now know that vaccines have a lot of things wrong with them.
This how the WHO works. They have done the fake pandemic before. The vaccines for that one caused many to be left damaged permanently as well. Again, why would anyone in their right mind trust them? Bill Gates and drug companies fund them. No conflict of interest there is there. This too take a few hours to get through. That 5 minute thing is a absolute irresponsible. All they get to present is a extremely tiny amount, of information that needs to be presented.
Gardasil has harmed many children. Some have died as well.
This to takes a few hours to get through. Gardasil even causes Cancer among those, who survived the vaccination in the first place. If it doesn’t kill or damage the kids, they get Cancer latter on in life. That is a long term side effects the drug companies failed to tell people. Also the lack of long term studies contributed to that. They just keep rushing vaccines through. All for profits of course. Those who are damaged by vaccines also give drug companies more profits as those who are damaged will need more drugs to help the one their vaccines damage. A win win for drug companies. Oh the money they make.
The Experimental Vaccines for Covid will alter your DNA among other things. They are rushing them through, at the risk to everyone’s health. They have not even Isolated the so called virus. So they cannot say they are even vaccinating against Covid. I will add links to all of that below as well.
Here you find links to the fact the virus has not been Isolated.
A number of Government have no information all they have proof of the Corna virus Isolation. A few people used Freedom of Information. Governments have no proof. Seems this is another fake pandemic to make some very rich. There is enough evidence they have lied to the world.
The PCR tests were not now or ever meant to test for a Virus. There is some important information that goes back to the 1980’s when it was used to diagnose HIV. Those who tested positive were given AZT a chemo drug. That is what killed them not AID’S, but is looked like they died from AIDS. There were about 70 reason a person could test positive. Be sure to check out Alive and Well site. Check the testing. Then they came up with new tests which were just as pathetic, as the PCR tests. They are now doing the same thing with Covid. You cannot test for something that has not been Isolated.
Now if that all takes you 5 minutes to get through that would be just amazing.
What you don’t know can kill you or harm you permanently. That by the way is just the tip of the iceberg. If you don’t take the time to read it all personal problem. If you wish to take the new vaccines be my guest. They are not testing them properly and never have tested any vaccine properly.
Add to all of that Glyphoste has been found in a number of vaccines. That is from Roundup, GMO fed animals. They use live tissue from those animals or birds to make vaccines. If that is in them then what else is in them? Viruses form from said animals perhaps. Antibiotic resistant bacteria maybe.
No one in Health Canada or any other Government tests for such things.
Maybe many of the so called viruses they talk about come form the vaccines them selves, like the Polio now does. Bird Flu and swine flu come to mind.
Think about it for a while. Drug companies do anything for profits. Making people sick would be one of them. More profits for them. Vaccines are just another drug. They are not special. They like many drugs cause harm.
You juege for your self and stop listening to the main stream media. They have been telling you lies about vaccines for years. In the US drug companies pull advertising dollars and that can be millions of dollars if they say anything against drugs or vaccines. Governments around the world can be bribed or just daft enough to follow the US drug cartel agenda. They are all given false information about vaccines and many drugs. A drug is a drug and a vaccine is a drug.
on October 4, 2020 at 8:43 pm
Comments Off on Legal Action against Covid PCR Tests, Crimes Against Humanity
Tags: Covid 19, Law, legal action, pandemic, PCR tests
Shame on Victoria Police for abusing their State of Emergency powers and the mainstream media for REFUSING to hold them accountable.
Protest clash with police at Malbourne anti lockdown freedom day rally
Australia: Arrests made during anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne
Freedom Day protesters gather in Sydney in solidarity with Vic anti-lockdown protesters
Well the Police were not social distancing either.
Australian lockdown protesters clash with police in Melbourne
The Police started the problems. Everything was fine until they decided to start arresting people.
Anti-Lockdown Protest in Australia Turns Violent
Melbourne No Freedom Day, Police state Demonstration Day
A new study from medical researchers at UCLA and Stanford University found the chances of contracting or dying from coronavirus are much lower than previously thought. One America’s Pearson Sharp has the details.
Estimation of Individual Probabilities of COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death From A County-level Contact of Unknown infection Status
It’s Sep 8, 2020 A study from UCLA & Stanford indicates you have a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying from covid19
The Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 articulates the Australian Human Rights Commission role and responsibilities. It gives effect to Australia’s obligations under the following:
This is appalling. Billions of us have said many things. And if we want to stand up for our rights then, that is what we do. We have the right to be free.
Hello World Australians need our help.
Anyone have any brilliant ideas?
This could be everyone, on the planet, if we don’t all stand up for our freedoms.
Are there no world leaders who can stand against this kind of tyranny?
Oh right many of them are doing the very same thing.
This is what insanity looks like.
The Police should be ashamed of themselves. Talk about going after, extremely petty garbage.
They are now stalking people online as well. Only abusive people do things like that.
So the police are now abusive stalkers.
Maybe they and Andrews should be flushing themselves down the toilet.
They all should feel small enough, to fit in right nice.
And what did this offending post that warranted this heavy-handed raid say? What was its treasonous message? Simply: “Anyone from Ballarat please join us in our fight for freedom and human rights!”
Maybe everyone should open their windows and scream those exact same words.
Lets say, how about at Midnight, when the witching hour hits, as this is nothing more then a witch hunt. It would echo through the streets right nice. Just a thought. Everything sounds better at night. We are still allowed to think, are we not? Or is that right gone too?
Australia should be ashamed & appalled by this video of police handcuffing a pregnant woman for posting an anti-lockdown message
Video included They also have a number of other reports of things going on down under. At lease someone out there, is taking notice of what is happening. A few others also took note She made it around the world.
They want to steal their children. Some one at WHO thought that was a great idea. I remember him saying just that. Take the kids or whoever from their homes. What a sick thing to say. Is Andrews and company really daft enough to follow that lead? The fellow from WHO should be fired of course. I did have a video of that one, but of course, like many things, was removed. If anyone has that, please do put it in the commemt section.
Australia: Authorities Give Themselves Power to Remove Children From Parents to Ensure COVID Compliance
Not sure how long this will be there for. Odds are good Youtube will remove it, like they have many other videos. That censorship is a big thing now. They have to hide the truth.
Can’t dare let anyone insight, freedom seekers. Obviously Andrews is a bit off and should be in a psychiatric hospital. Mentally ill people, make rash mistakes you know.
MASKS MAKE PEOPLE STUPIDER
I found a nice little article that’s quite serious about it’s title– that wearing a mask induces stupidity. I would add that the longer people are wearing masks, the worse the effect is. It’s cumulative.
Wear a mask while having sex, Canada’s top doctor suggests
Dr Theresa Tam advises WHO She is just a tad bit nuts too. This is just so daft. I can’t believe anyone, would say anything so stupid. I bet she wears a mask like all the time. See Australia, Canada has daft people too. Please never take her advise. But if you need to giggle this is the report to check out. To funny. Ignore the fake numbers and enjoy the show.,
This is very informative, although the lady, who is talking about Communism, is not the entire target we have to watch out for. Most of this has the Drug companies, WHO, Bill Gates and friends, who are behind it. Did China help yes. There is a really big puzzle here.
The profiteers are behind it. Check all the links under Recent Posts, for all of the information. The PCR tests are just a tool, they use to con people. It is not meant to test for viruses. The tests are useless and has been proven, before this so called Covid came along.
Do take a listen, it is worth taking the time to watch.
I have been sent a massive amount of information on 5G and Wireless, and how it has and will damage peoples health. So that will be up after, I sort through it all. There sure it a lot of it.
The science is out there that Wireless causes many health problems. If anyone has any studies on things like that, add the links in the comments.
If you links to other recent protests, again add the links to the comments.
Now for Laws.
Just because any government, makes a law, does not mean it is a good law? It does not mean it is true justice. When they give themselves, dictator powers, that is a sign of a problem. Those Laws are not to protect you, they are to control you. Those laws are a violation, of your human rights.
If it takes away your rights, it is a bad law.
If you are forced, to put something into your body, you do not want , it is a violation of your health freedom.
If you are forced, to put any radioactive materials, into your body, would that be a violation of your rights?
If you are force, to inject toxic materials into your body, is that a violation of your rights? Absolutely.
It is wrong on every level. Remember those, who make the laws work for you.
Many hold shares, in drug companies?
Many get money at election time, from drug companies, tech companies and many others that make money on this so called virus.. I call that bribery.
Have any of them, been offered a million dollar or more a year job, after they leave Government? That to, is bribery you know. Give us what we want and you get that job.
That one is all to common. They don’t have to hide their money off shore or in a Swiss bank account, the money is in, the job they will get. That happens all to often.
They make money, by forcing bad/unjust, laws on you and get that dream job that pays millions a year.
What would happen, if everyone deleted all the tracking apps? Would they notice? For sure they would notice. Is there a way to remove GPS off your phone?
How much is it costing you to be tracked, everywhere you go?
You are the one paying, so they can track you.
You are also helping to make tech companies make a fortune.
You help them get richer. Over the years you have been lulled into this.
Or should I say conned.
If you don’t have your Cell Phone with you, they can’t track, everywhere you go. I don’t know, maybe turn it off and leave it a drawer somewhere. Leave it in your garbage bin maybe. Without those Cell Phones, they cannot track you. Cell Phones are one of their main tools, they use against people.
You are also paying for the vaccines, they want to force on you, Via your tax dollars.
You are paying to get arrested or fined, if you don’t comply Via your tax dollars.
You are paying for the idiots/fanatics, making all the new Laws, Via you tax dollars.
You pay for Everything, they do to you, Via your tax dollars.
They are using your money, to torture you.
Yes what they are doing to everyone world wide is torture. It is Brain Washing. It is killing people. People are not dieing, form the so called virus, but from all the side effects of what they are doing.
They use to say tech, would make our lives easier.
Is tech making your life easier or is it helping to remove your rights and freedoms?
5G will give them even, more power over you.
Tech, as we know it today is killing people and making many very sick.
Yes it sure is making things easier.
By the way in case anyone missed it, your Cell Phone can kill you.
It emits radiation. You know what Radiation is Right?
Everything that is wireless, emits Radiation.
Just a reminder
From the The University of Melbourne
“The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation: what we know, what we need to find out, and what you can do now” Presented by Dr Devra Davis,
Check your phone to see how much Radiation it emits.
Thanks to William. He left two other videos in the comments as well.
Please share all of this with your friends, families or anyone for that matter.
I do this with the sole purpose, of sharing the truth they want to hide.
The censorship, is outrageous.
For all I know when you click on a link it may have been removed. That has happened many many times I have noticed.
They are stealing our freedom of speech too.
Social media, is playing a large roll in that.
People, Doctors included have been silenced.
They have even been demonized or lost their jobs.
That is Standard Operating Procedure.
That has been done, many times over the years, on many fronts.
So if they are portrayed in that light, they were probably telling the truth. That is a very old technique.
The other technique is FEAR. The have used that one a point of ridiculousness. Instill mass fear and add a lot of lies. Brainwash the masses into submission.
The main stream media, helps with all of that on a massive scale. They actually had people, afraid of flushing, their bloody toilets. People were taking their pets to the vet, to have them, put down out of fear the animals might spread the so called virus and the list goes on and on. All propaganda to promote their agenda. All FEAR mongering and all lies.
The actual cause of death in the cases investigated was pneumonia, but in about 50% of the cases venous thrombosis in the legs was also present, which can lead to fatal pulmonary embolism. In some cases, the kidneys and heart muscle were also affected. Professor Püschel therefore recommends the preventive administration of blood-thinning medication in cases of serious Covid disease.
Regarding thromboses and pulmonary embolisms, Professor Püschel emphasized – as other experts have done before – that a “lockdown” with quarantine at home is “exactly the wrong measure”, as the lack of exercise additionally promotes thromboses. US specialists have also warned of this risk, after unexpected thromboses occurred even in Covid-negative persons.
——————–
In the case of the vaccine from the University of Oxford, all six rhesus monkeys fell ill with Covid19 in animal experiments despite being vaccinated and were equally infectious as the unvaccinated monkeys. Nevertheless, the vaccine was continued into the test phase with humans. The project leader explained, however, that the corona virus had already become so rare in the population that the clinical trial was 50% unlikely to yield a result.
In the case of Moderna‘s novel RNA vaccine, which was unusually tested directly in humans, 20% of the participants in the high-dose group had a “severe side effect“, although Moderna only allowed very healthy people to participate in the trial.
One of the Moderna participants was then presented and interviewed as a “hero” by CNN. However, it was agreed not to mention that the participant fainted after the vaccination and became “as sick as never before in his life“. Several experts also criticized that Moderna had not sufficiently disclosed its clinical data.
——————————
The Swedish government has apologised for the inadequate protection of nursing patients and announced an investigation. Many media tried to portray this as an alleged “failure of the no-lockdown strategy”, even though nursing homes need targeted protection and do not benefit from a social lockdown.
Incidentally, however, even overall mortality in Sweden remained below the strong seasonal flu epidemics of the last thirty years.
———————-
Operations: According to an article in the British Journal of Surgery, around 28 million operations were cancelled or postponed worldwide during 12 weeks because of corona measures, including many cancer operations.
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AstraZeneca is preparing to produce two billion doses of the still untested Oxford vaccine.
—————————————-
I have to insert a couple of things here.
AstraZeneca connection to Bill Gates
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed $750 million towards the manufacturing and distribution a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University.)
The Oxford University vaccine is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees and is known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.
What could possibly go wrong?
US billionaires saw a $434 billion increase in wealth through “Corona”.
————————
New York’s largest hospital association has announced an investigation into the use of invasive ventilators. In April it became known that US clinics receive high premiums if they admit Covid-19 patients and connect them to ventilators, although experts warned long ago of the dangers of invasive ventilation. A New York nurse spoke of a “mass murder“.
————————————————————————————-
Corona COVID-19 mortality rate to be very low, around 0.01%, and much lower than the WHO’s (World Health Organization) claimed mortality rate of 3.4%:
For the rest and there is much more. Be sure to check it out.
Bill Gates and WHO are not to be trusted it seems.
Look Under Challenges for the story.
Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in the African Region However, if a population is seriously under-immunized, the excreted vaccine-virus begins circulating among susceptible children in the community.
If the virus is able to circulate for a prolonged period of time uninterrupted, it can mutate and over time can become virulent.
This is known as a circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV).
They also left out how many children, become paralyzed or die from the vaccines.
Some where in all that mess, they say there have not seen the wild Polio virus since 2016. That was on another page.
The virus they are chasing is from the Vaccine. WHO is not telling the whole truth by any stretch of the imagination. At least they admit the vaccine, causes more polio.
If there is an outbreak due to the vaccine, they rush in with a Team and give the kids 2 or 3 more vaccines and the Cycle continues. A great way to make even more money for the phama companies.
Of course they also do that with a lot of vaccines. They are called booster shots.
The vaccines do not work. Some of them also spread like the Polio vaccine does.
Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5.
Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017.
In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously.
In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program.
The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines.
By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.
Gates-funded Program to Begin Tests on Biometric ID Vaccination Records in Africa
The biometric digital identity platform Trust Stamp, which claims to “evolve as you evolve,” is to be introduced in “low-income, remote communities” in West Africa as part of a partnership between the Bill Gates-supported GAVI vaccine alliance and Mastercard.
I was asked by someone if I could do a page just for Photos and Stories about the damages to lake Ontario, due to the flooding.
In the comments you cannot upload pictures but if you use the address from the address bar you can.
Faceblook for example if you click on the picture in a comment and new window will come up for the picture. Just copy and paste the http link, from the address bar, into the comment section below and the pictures will come up.
There are a few Rules. Be sure to read them. Those rules are to protect everyone as much as possible.
Rules to abide by
If you want to leave a comment and do not want others to read it All comments are monitored by the admins. So if you have questions. Ask If you have any ideas. State them.
There are two choices state I want this publish or I don’t want this published Put either one at the first of your comment. The world will see those comments, if you want them Published,
If you have a before and after picture of damages
Tell a bit about them.
The date the photo was taken
Where the location of the photos were taken. City, Town, State or Province The actual address is not needed,.
Do not use pictures with children in them.
Do not post pictures, unless you have taken them. Others might be offended, if you you used someone else’s photos. If someone wants to tell their story photo’s and all it is up to each individual to do that.
If you don’t have a before picture, Explain as best you can, how it use to look.
If you have News stories, Videos add them as well. There are many out there. To many for the Admins to look for. All help is appreciated.
Alli McCracken, a peace activist with CODEPINK, shows former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a pair of handcuffs during a protest at a Senate hearing on Thursday. If there was justice in this world, argue human rights activist, Kissinger would be in prison for his role in perpetrating war crimes as opposed to sitting before the Senate Armed Services Committee to offer his assessment of world affairs. (Photo: Courtesy of CODEPINK)
A very angry Senator John McCain denounced CODEPINK activists as “low-life scum” for holding up signs reading “Arrest Kissinger for War Crimes” and dangling handcuffs next to Henry Kissinger’s head during a Senate hearing on January 29. McCain called the demonstration “disgraceful, outrageous and despicable,” accused the protesters of “physically intimidating” Kissinger and apologized profusely to his friend for this “deeply troubling incident.”
But if Senator McCain was really concerned about physical intimidation, perhaps he should have conjured up the memory of the gentle Chilean singer/songwriter Victor Jara. After Kissinger facilitated the September 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende that brought the ruthless Augusto Pinochet to power, Victor Jara and 5,000 others were rounded up in Chile’s National Stadium. Jara’s hands were smashed and his nails torn off; the sadistic guards then ordered him to play his guitar. Jara was later found dumped on the street, his dead body riddled with gunshot wounds and signs of torture.
Despite warnings by senior US officials that thousands of Chileans were being tortured and slaughtered, then Secretary of State Kissinger told Pinochet, “You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”
Rather than calling peaceful protesters “despicable”, perhaps Senator McCain should have used that term to describe Kissinger’s role in the brutal 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which took place just hours after Kissinger and President Ford visited Indonesia. They had given the Indonesian strongman the US green light—and the weapons—for an invasion that led to a 25-year occupation in which over 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed or starved to death. The UN’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) stated that U.S. “political and military support were fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation” of East Timor.
If McCain could stomach it, he could have read the report by the UN Commission on Human Rights describing the horrific consequences of that invasion. It includes gang rape of female detainees following periods of prolonged sexual torture; placing women in tanks of water for prolonged periods, including submerging their heads, before being raped; the use of snakes to instill terror during sexual torture; and the mutilation of women’s sexual organs, including insertion of batteries into vaginas and burning nipples and genitals with cigarettes. Talk about physical intimidation, Senator McCain!
You might think that McCain, who suffered tremendously in Vietnam, might be more sensitive to Kissinger’s role in prolonging that war. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger, along with President Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos—killing perhaps one million during this period. He was gave the order for the secret bombing of Cambodia. Kissinger is on tape saying, “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything about it. It’s an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”
Senator McCain could have taken the easy route by simply reading the meticulously researched book by the late writer Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Writing as a prosecutor before an international court of law, Hitchens skewers Kissinger for ordering or sanctioning the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of “unfriendly” politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists and clerics who got in his way. He holds Kissinger responsible for war crimes that range from the deliberate mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina, to collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, and the incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor.
McCain could have also perused the warrant issued by French Judge Roger Le Loire to have Kissinger appear before his court. When the French served Kissinger with summons in 2001 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, Kissinger fled the country. More indictments followed from Spain, Argentina, Uruguay—even a civil suit in Washington DC.
The late Christopher Hitchens was disgusted by the way Henry Kissinger was treated as a respected statesman. He would have been appalled by Senator McCain’s obsequious attitude. “Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded,” Hitchens said. “No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers.”
Rather than fawning on him, Hitchens suggested, “why don’t you arrest him?”
Hitchens’ words were lost on Senator McCain, who preferred fawning to accountability. That’s where CODEPINK comes in. If we can’t get Kissinger before a court of law, at least we can show—with words and banners—that there are Americans who remember, Americans who empathize with the man’s many victims, Americans who have a conscience.
While McCain called us disgraceful, what is really disgraceful is the Senate calling in a tired old war criminal to testify about “Global Challenges and the U.S. National Security Strategy.” After horribly tragic failed wars, not just in Vietnam but over the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s time for the US leaders like John McCain to bring in fresh faces and fresh ideas. We owe it to the next generation that will be cleaning up the bloody legacy left behind by Kissinger for years to come. Source
The US government has covered up many things over the years.
Like the USS Liberty. 9/11 and well many other things.
I won’t go into them right now. But it is well known they have covered up many things over the years.
This however reaches, deep into the hearts and lives of everyone the world over.
This was published on October 2, 2014
Citizens the world over watch this.
The US could have cut funding to terrorist groups but instead prevented all information from going public.
The Question everyone must ask, is why was all the extremely valuable information kept hidden?
My only thought is is that the US government does not want the wars to end.
Why the cover up?
With all the information that was provided to the US government, many men,
women and children, would still be alive and well today.
That includes many Military personnel, from many different countries.
Many of the people who were injured and maimed, would be whole today.
This is a rather long interview, but is definitely worth watching.
Everyone in the world should listen to what Scott has to say.
He certainly is telling the truth.
Published on Oct 2, 2014
Discussion of the book SHELL GAME A Military Whistleblowing Report to the U.S. Congress Exposing the Betrayal and Cover-Up by the U.S. Government of the Union Bank of Switzerland-Terrorist Threat Finance Connection to Booz Allen Hamilton and U.S. Central Command
By 2LT Scott Bennett 11th Psychological Operations Battalion (retired)
Part of the reason behind Eric Holder’s immediate retirement.
BACKGROUND OF SPEAKER:
Scott Bennett is a U.S. Army Special Operations Officer (11th Psychological Operations Battalion, Civil Affairs-Psychological Operations Command), and a global psychological warfare-counterterrorism analyst, formerly with defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
He received a Direct Commission as an Officer, held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI) security clearance, and worked in the highest levels of international counterterrorism in Washington DC and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. He has worked at U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Central Command, the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism, and other government agencies. He served in the G.W. Bush Administration from 2003 to 2008, and was a Social Science Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His writings and lectures seek to enhance global awareness and understanding of modern psychological warfare, the international intelligence.
My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in an exclusive article for Haaretz, calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.
By Desmond Tutu
Published 21:56 14.08.14
The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.
If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.
A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens … as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.
I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”
Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.
I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
“I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.
Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.
Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.
We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.
It is a movement that is gathering pace.
Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.
We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.
We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled “terrorist” were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.
We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.
The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.
Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.
But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.
At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.
The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.
Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of “normalcy” in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.
Those who contribute to Israel’s temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.
Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.
Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel’s policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.
The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.
I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.
But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.
No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.
Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.
Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.
The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.
The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.
My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.
It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state’s policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.
People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.
Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.
Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.
He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.Source
Now before you decide, what you would like to do,
read and listen to all of the following information, then go from there.
The Historical Perspective of the 2014 Gaza Massacre
By Ilan Pappé
August 23, 2014
People in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine feel disappointed at the lack of any significant international reaction to the carnage and destruction the Israeli assault has so far left behind it in the Strip. The inability, or unwillingness, to act seems to be first and foremost an acceptance of the Israeli narrative and argumentation for the crisis in Gaza. Israel has developed a very clear narrative about the present carnage in Gaza.
It is a tragedy caused by an unprovoked Hamas missile attack on the Jewish State, to which Israel had to react in self-defence. While mainstream western media, academia and politicians may have reservations about the proportionality of the force used by Israel, they accept the gist of this argument. This Israeli narrative is totally rejected in the world of cyber activism and alternative media. There it seems the condemnation of the Israeli action as a war crime is widespread and consensual.
The main difference between the two analyses from above and from below is the willingness of activists to study deeper and in a more profound way the ideological and historical context of the present Israeli action in Gaza. This tendency should be enhanced even further and this piece is just a modest attempt to contribute towards this direction.
Ad Hoc Slaughter?
An historical evaluation and contextualization of the present Israeli assault on Gaza and that of the previous three ones since 2006 expose clearly the Israeli genocidal policy there. An incremental policy of massive killing that is less a product of a callous intention as it is the inevitable outcome of Israel’s overall strategy towards Palestine in general and the areas it occupied in 1967, in particular.
This context should be insisted upon, since the Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine.
The Israeli strategy of branding its brutal policies as an ad hoc response to this or that Palestinian action is as old as the Zionist presence in Palestine itself. It was used repeatedly as a justification for implementing the Zionist vision of a future Palestine that has in it very few, if any, native Palestinians. The means for achieving this goal changed with the years, but the formula has remained the same: whatever the Zionist vision of a Jewish State might be, it can only materialize without any significant number of Palestinians in it. And nowadays the vision is of an Israel stretching over almost the whole of historic Palestine where millions of Palestinians still live.
This vision ran into trouble once territorial greed led Israel to try and keep the West Bank and the Gaza Strip within its rule and control ever since June 1967. Israel searched for a way to keep the territories it occupied that year without incorporating their population into its rights-bearing citizenry. All the while it participated in a ‘peace process’ charade to cover up or buy time for its unilateral colonization policies on the ground.
With the decades, Israel differentiated between areas it wished to control directly and those it would manage indirectly, with the aim in the long run of downsizing the Palestinian population to a minimum with, among other means, ethnic cleansing and economic and geographic strangulation. Thus the West Bank was in effect divided into a ‘Jewish’ and a ‘Palestinian’ zones – a reality most Israelis can live with provided the Palestinian Bantustans are content with their incarceration within these mega prisons. The geopolitical location of the West Bank creates the impression in Israel, at least, that it is possible to achieve this without anticipating a third uprising or too much international condemnation.
The Gaza Strip, due to its unique geopolitical location, did not lend itself that easily to such a strategy. Ever since 1994, and even more so when Ariel Sharon came to power as prime minister in the early 2000s, the strategy there was to ghettoize Gaza and somehow hope that the people there — 1.8 million as of today — would be dropped into eternal oblivion.
But the Ghetto proved to be rebellious and unwilling to live under conditions of strangulation, isolation, starvation and economic collapse. There was no way it would be annexed to Egypt, neither in 1948 nor in 2014. In 1948, Israel pushed into the Gaza area (before it became a strip) hundreds of thousands of refugees it expelled from the northern Naqab and southern coast who, so they hoped, would move even farther away from Palestine.
For a while after 1967, it wanted to keep as a township which provided unskilled labour but without any human and civil rights. When the occupied people resisted the continued oppression in two intifadas, the West Bank was bisected into small Bantustans encircled by Jewish colonies, but it did not work in the too small and too dense Gaza Strip. The Israelis were unable to ‘West Bank’ the Strip, so to speak. So they cordoned it as a Ghetto and when it resisted the army was allowed to use its most formidable and lethal weapons to crash it. The inevitable result of an accumulative reaction of this kind was genocidal.
Incremental Genocide
The killing of three Israeli teenagers, two of them minors, abducted in the occupied West Bank in June, which was mainly a reprisal for killings of Palestinian children in May, provided the pretext first and foremost for destroying the delicate unity Hamas and Fatah have formed in that month. A unity that followed a decision by the Palestinian Authority to forsake the ‘peace process’ and appeal to international organizations to judge Israel according to a human and civil rights’ yardstick. Both developments were viewed as alarming in Israel.
The pretext determined the timing – but the viciousness of the assault was the outcome of Israel’s inability to formulate a clear policy towards the Strip it created in 1948. The only clear feature of that policy is the deep conviction that wiping out the Hamas from the Gaza Strip would domicile the Ghetto there.
Since 1994, even before the rise of Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip, the very particular geopolitical location of the Strip made it clear that any collective punitive action, such as the one inflicted now, could only be an operation of massive killings and destruction. In other words: an incremental genocide.
This recognition never inhibited the generals who give the orders to bomb the people from the air, the sea and the ground. Downsizing the number of Palestinians all over historic Palestine is still the Zionist vision; an ideal that requires the dehumanisation of the Palestinians. In Gaza, this attitude and vision takes its most inhuman form.
The particular timing of this wave is determined, as in the past, by additional considerations. The domestic social unrest of 2011 is still simmering and for a while there was a public demand to cut military expenditures and move money from the inflated ‘defence’ budget to social services. The army branded this possibility as suicidal. There is nothing like a military operation to stifle any voices calling on the government to cut its military expenses.
Typical hallmarks of the previous stages in this incremental genocide reappear in this wave as well. As in the first operation against Gaza, ‘First Rains’ in 2006, and those which followed in 2009, ‘Cast Lead’, and 2012, ‘Pillar of Smoke’, one can witness again consensual Israeli Jewish support for the massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip, without one significant voice of dissent. The Academia, as always, becomes part of the machinery. Various universities offered the state its student bodies to help and battle for the Israeli narrative in the cyberspace and alternative media.
The Israeli media, as well, toed loyally the government’s line, showing no pictures of the human catastrophe Israel has wreaked and informing its public that this time, ‘the world understands us and is behind us’. That statement is valid to a point as the political elites in the West continue to provide the old immunity to the Jewish state. The recent appeal by Western governments to the prosecutor in the international court of Justice in The Hague not to look into Israel’s crimes in Gaza is a case in point. Wide sections of the Western media followed suit and justified by and large Israel’s actions.
This distorted coverage is also fed by a sense among Western journalist that what happens in Gaza pales in comparison to the atrocities in Iraq and Syria. Comparisons like this are usually provided without a wider historical perspective. A longer view on the history of the Palestinians would be a much more appropriate way to evaluate their suffering vis-à-vis the carnage elsewhere.
Conclusion: Confronting Double-Standards
But not only historical view is needed for a better understanding of the massacre in Gaza. A dialectical approach that identifies the connection between Israel’s immunity and the horrific developments elsewhere is required as well. The dehumanization in Iraq and Syria is widespread and terrifying, as it is in Gaza. But there is one crucial difference between these cases and the Israeli brutality: the former are condemned as barbarous and inhuman worldwide, while those committed by Israel are still publicly licensed and approved by the president of the United States, the leaders of the EU and Israel’s other friends in the world.
The only chance for a successful struggle against Zionism in Palestine is the one based on a human and civil rights agenda that does not differentiate between one violation and the other and yet identifies clearly the victim and the victimizers. Those who commit atrocities in the Arab world against oppressed minorities and helpless communities, as well as the Israelis who commit these crimes against the Palestinian people, should all be judged by the same moral and ethical standards. They are all war criminals, though in the case of Palestine they have been at work longer than anyone else. It does not really matter what the religious identity is of the people who commit the atrocities or in the name of which religion they purport to speak. Whether they call themselves jihadists, Judaists or Zionists, they should be treated in the same way.
A world that would stop employing double standards in its dealings with Israel is a world that could be far more effective in its response to war crimes elsewhere in the world. Cessation of the incremental genocide in Gaza and the restitution of the basic human and civil rights of Palestinians wherever they are, including the right of return, is the only way to open a new vista for a productive international intervention in the Middle East as a whole.
Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian at the University of Exeter, UK.His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007) and The Idea of Israel (2014). Source
Let us not forget that no main stream media would touch this story.
Dec 16, 2013
Abby Martin speaks with Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies, about the flooding of Gaza, and the effects of the ongoing blockade that has come to characterize the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Dec 2, 2012
Miko Peled was born in Jersusalem into a famous and influential Israeli Zionist family. His father was a famous General in the Israeli Army, of which Miko also served his time. When Miko’s niece was killed by Palestinian suicide bombers, you may have expected the family to put Palestinians at fault, but surprisingly they blamed the state of Israel, and their violent torturing and persecution for driving people to such sadness that they would take their own lives.
Through his father’s deep knowledge of the Israeli war of terror, together with his own research, Miko Peled ruins the myths surrounding the Israel and Palestine situation, and delivers a truth so damning that many Jews and Israel supporters will not be able to bear it. He reveals facts such as the original expelled Jews are not the ones returning, and they are not their descendants either, covers the double standards regarding the right of return, which doesn’t apply to Palestinians, and dispels the myth that there has been a conflict for ages by producing proof that it was peaceful up until 1947 when Israel launched their illegal attacks.
Miko is just one of the many modern day Jews against Zionism and the state of Israel, and with the information he delivers in this astounding talk, it is not difficult to see why more and more Jews are rejecting Zionism and calling for the dismantling of Israel. It is a true eye-opener for anyone who has for too long been blinded by the fake misinformation given by the mainstream media, and the truths come straight from the heartland where he has spent many years documenting the real story.
Nothing has changed for the Palestinians. life just gets worse for them.
Each day is a more horrific, then the day before.
This is what Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is talking about.
This campaign is gathering real pace. Russell Brand has recorded this video backing our campaign, and the companies we’re targeting are starting to reach out to the Avaaz team and ask for meetings. Avaazers in the UK are campaigning to end arms sales to Israel as the government there initiates a review. And shockingly, even the US government cancelled a shipment of hellfire missiles to Israel!
The pressure is working – so let’s keep it up! If you haven’t yet, sign the petition here. Or click here to keep sending messages to our target companies. Let’s make sure they don’t think they can ride this out. And if you have a local campaign you could start to ensure that your town, or university, or community divests from the repression of Palestinians, start your own campaign here.
There are also other things you can do or petitions you can sign
So if you are writing to either the UN or your own government you will also want to talk about the Deaths of those in Eastern Ukraine. The new Gaza, is what I call it.
Killing people into submission, is the most extreme war crime, any of us could ever imagine.
Don’t just sit there and read. Do something about it.
Let your voice be heard.
The two worst offenders on earth, are The US and Israel.
To remain silent makes one as guilty, as those perpetrators, who kill, or support the killing of innocent people.
Understanding Ukraine in 15 Minutes
By Mike Whitney
Structural Changes in the Global Economy are often preceded by Great Crises and War
August 23, 2014 The world today is going through an overlap of a whole series of cyclical crises. The most serious of them is a technological crisis which is associated with changes in the wavelengths of economic development. We’re living in a period when the economy is changing its structure. The economic structure that has been driving economic growth for the last 30 years has exhausted itself. We need to make a transition to a new system of technologies. This kind of transition, unfortunately, has always come about through war. That’s how it was in the ’30s when the Great Depression gave way to an arms race and then the Second War World War. That’s how it was during the Cold War when an arms race in space gave rise to complex information and communication technologies which became the basis of a technological structure that has been driving the world’s economy for the last 30 years. Today we are faced with a similar crisis. The world is shifting to a new technological system.
Putin pushes Free Trade Zone to ease transition to New Global Economy
The new system is humanitarian in nature and thus could avoid a war because the main carriers of growth on this wavelength are humanitarian technologies. These include health care and pharmaceutical industries which are based in biotechnology. They also include communication technologies based on nanotechnology which is making a breakthrough today. And they involve cognitive technologies that define a new sum of human knowledge. If, as President Putin has been consistently putting forward, we were able to agree to a mutual program for development, a general development zone with a preferential trade regime from Lisbon to Vladivostok, if we were to agree with Brussels to create a common economic space, a common area of development, we could find a sufficient number of breakthrough projects, from health to repelling space threats, to fulfill our scientific and technical potential and creating a steady demand from the state. which would give a boost to the new technological system.
3 Washington sees War in Europe as best way to Preserve its Hegemony
However, America has taken its usual path. To maintain their world dominance they are provoking another war in Europe. A war is always good for America. They even call the Second World War which killed 50 million people in Europe and Russia, a good war. It was good for America because the US emerged from this war as the world’s leading power. The Cold War which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union was also good for them. Now the US again wants to maintain its leadership at the expense of Europe. US leadership is being threatened by a rapidly rising China. The world today is shifting to yet another cycle, this time political. This cycle lasts centuries and is associated with the global institutions of regulatory economics
We are now moving from the American cycle of capital accumulation to an Asian cycle. This is another crisis that is challenging US hegemony. To maintain their leading position in the face of competition with a rising China and other Asian countries Americans are starting a war in Europe. They want to weaken Europe, break up Russia, and subjugate the entire Eurasian continent. That is, instead of a development zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which is proposed by President Putin, the US wants to start a chaotic war on this territory, embroil all Europe in a war, devalue to European capital, write off its public debt, under the burden of which the US is already falling apart, write off what they owe to Europe and Russia, subjugate our economic space and establish control over resources of the giant Eurasian continent. They believe that this is the only way they can maintain their hegemony and beat China.
Unfortunately the American geopolitics that we see playing out is exactly like the 19th century. They think in terms of the geopolitical struggles of the British Empire: divide and conquer. Pit nations against others, embroil them in conflict, and start a world war. Americans, unfortunately, continue this old British policy to solve their problems. Russia has been chosen as a victim of this policy while the Ukrainian people are the weapon of choice, and cannon fodder in a new world war.
First the Americans decided to target Ukraine to separate it from Russia. This tactic came from Bismarck. This anti-Russian tradition aimed to embroil Russia in conflict in order to take over the whole Eurasian space. The strategy was first put forth by Bismark, then picked up by the British,, and then finally by the leading american political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who said on many occasions that Russia cannot be a superpower without Ukraine and that embroiling Russia with Ukraine will benefit America and the West.
For the past 20 years Americans have been grooming Ukraine Nazism aimed at Russia. As you know they hosted remnants of Bandera the Second World War. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian Nazis were brought to America and have been carefully cultivated and nurtured during the whole post war period. This wave of immigrants descended on Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea of an eastern partnership was used as bait. It was first expressed by the Poles, and then picked up by the Americans. The essence of the eastern partnership, of which Georgia became the first victim. Now Ukraine has become one and soon Moldova will be one, to sever ties with Russia. As you know we are building the Customs Union, and a common economic space with Belarus and Kazakhstan which will soon be joined by Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. Ukraine has been our long term partner. Ukraine is still in the ratification stage of the agreement with Russia which no one in Ukraine has cancelled yet. Ukraine is important to us as part of our economic space and for our centuries long ties and cooperation. Our scientific and industrial complex was created as a whole, therefore, Ukraine’s participation in European integration is quite natural and vital. The eastern partnership was created to prevent Ukraine’s participation in the Eurasian integration project. The meaning of the eastern partnership is to create an association with the European union. What is the association that was signed by Poroshenko with the European leaders? It is the transformation of Ukraine into a colony. By signing the agreement with the association, Ukraine loses its sovereignty. It transfers control of its trade, customs, technical and financial regulation, and public procurement to Brussels.
4 The Ukrainian Nazi junta is an instrument of U.S. policy
Ukraine ceases to be a sovereign state in its economy and politics. It is clearly stated in the agreement that Ukraine is a junior partner in the European union. Ukraine must follow a common defense and foreign policy of the EU. Ukraine is obliged to participate in the resolution of regional conflicts under the leadership of the EU. Thus Poroshenko is making Ukraine a colony of the EU and pulling Ukraine into war with Russia as cannon fodder with the intention of igniting a war in Europe. The purpose of the association agreement is to allow the European countries to govern Ukraine in the settlement of regional conflicts. What is happening in Donbass is a regional armed conflict. The goal of American politics is to create as many victims as possible. The Ukrainian Nazi junta is an instrument of this policy. They are carrying out mindless atrocities and crimes bombing cities killing civilians, women and children, and forcing them to leave their homes, only to provoke Russia and then draw the whole of Europe into a war. This is Poroshenk’s mission. This is why Poroshenko is rejecting any peace negotiations and blocking all peace treaties. He interprets any statement by Washington about de-escalation of the conflict as an order to escalate it. All peace talks which have taken place on the international level have brought a new round of violence.
We must understand that we are dealing with a Nazi state which is dead set on a war with Russia and has declared general conscription. The entire male population between 18 and 55 has been put under arms. Those who refuse will get 15 years in jail. This Nazi criminal power makes criminals of the entire Ukrainian population.
5 Washington is plunging Europe into War for its own Interests
We have calculated the the European economy will lose about 1 trillion Euros for sanctions which are imposed on them by the Americans. This is a huge sum. The Europeans are already bearing the losses. There’s already a drop in sales to Russia. Germany is losing about 200 billion euros. Our most rabid friends from the Baltic states will suffer the worst losses. The loss to Estonia will be more than its GDP. The loss to Latvia will be about half its GDP. But that isn’t stopping them. European politicians are going along with the Americans without questioning what they are doing. They are harming themselves by provoking Nazism and war. I have already said that Russia and Ukraine are the victims of this war which is being fomented by the Americans. But Europe is also a victim because the war aims to target European welfare and to destabilize Europe. Americans expect the European capital and brain drain to America will continue. That’s why they are setting all of Europe on fire. It’s very strange that European leaders are going along with them.
6 Germany is still Occupied Territory
We should not just hope that European leaders (will develop an independent policy) we must work with European leaders from a new generation who are free from the American diktat. The fact that anti Soviet political elite had been formed during the post Cold War years in Europe. Then they very quickly became anti Russian. Despite the dramatically expanded economic ties and huge mutual economic interests between Europe and Russia, the Russophobia is based on anti Sovietism and still remains in the minds of many European politicians. It will take a new generation of pragmatic European politicians to understand their own national interests. What we see today is politicians who are acting against their national interests. This is largely due to the fact that Germany, which is the engine of European growth, is still an occupied country. American troops are still in Germany, and every German chancellor still gives an oath of allegiance to the Americans to follow in the footsteps of their policy. This generation of European politicians has failed to throw off the yoke of American occupation.
7 Nazism is on the Rise
Although the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore, they maniacally continue to follow Washington, in NATO expansion and capture new territories under their control. Despite the fact that they are already “allergic” to the new eastern European members of the EU. The European Union is already bursting at the seams, but this does not stop them from continuing their aggressive expansion into post Soviet territory. The new generation, I hope, will be more pragmatic. The last elections in the European parliament show that not everyone is fooled by this pro American anti Russia propaganda and by the constant stream of lies that are coming down on the European people. Traditional European parties lost in recent elections in the euro parliament. The more we speak the truth, the greater the reaction will be, because what’s happening in Ukraine is the revival of Nazism. Europe remembers the signs of the revival of fascism from the lessons of the Second World War.We need to awaken this historical memory so that they see in the Ukrainian Nazis, who are now in power in Kiev, the followers of Bandera, Shukhevych, and other Nazi collaborators. The ideology of the current Ukrainian authorities, has its roots in the ideology of Hitlers accomplices who shot Jews at Babi Yar, burned Ukrainians and Belarusians and annihilated everyone without ethnic distinction. This Nazism is rising today. Europeans must recognize their own death in this terrible confrontation.
I hope if we continue to spread the truth, we will be able to save Europe from the threat of war. Source
Two missing Amish sisters turned up safe Thursday evening, about 24 hours after they were apparently abducted from their family’s roadside farm stand in northern New York, authorities said.
St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain said the girls turned up cold and wet but unharmed at a home in Richville, about 20 kilometres from where they disappeared in the rural town of Oswegatchie.
The girls were dropped off and knocked on the door, asking for help getting home. A neighbour who visited the Miller family after hearing word of the girls’ return said she spoke with one of their brothers, who said they were well and being checked out.
There were no details immediately available on what happened to the girls or if there are suspects in their disappearance.
Police say girls disappeared from roadside stand in Oswegatchie, NY., 190 km south of Ottawa
Aug 14, 2014
Searchers scoured a patch of far northern New York on Thursday for two Amish girls who were apparently abducted from their family’s roadside farm stand, a hunt hampered by the lack of photos of the girls for authorities to circulate among a frightened community.
The sisters, 7-year-old Delila Miller and 12-year-old Fannie Miller, vanished around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday after a white car pulled up to the farm stand near Oswegatchie, a community of about 4,000 people that’s 190 kilometres south of Ottawa and 240 kilometres northwest of the capital, Albany.
Both were wearing dark blue dresses with blue aprons and black bonnets.
The poster for the missing girls indicates Fannie Miller is cross-eyed, while Delila Miller has a round scar on her forehead and she is missing her front teeth. Both girls have brown hair and brown eyes.
Because the Amish tend to shun modern technology, police have no photographs of the girls.
He also noted that English isn’t the girls’ first language and that anyone who talks with them may notice a Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.
The vehicle has been described as a small, white, four-door sedan.
Girls could be in Canada
Divers plumbed the nearby St. Lawrence River to rule out the possibility the girls were in the water, Wells said at an afternoon news briefing.
Helicopters and search teams on foot tried to make sure they weren’t near the family home, and investigators were talking with nearby registered sex offenders.
“We will aggressively pursue this case as a worst-case scenario,” Wells said. Authorities are pursuing “numerous leads,” he said.
Ottawa police and Ontario Provincial Police said they have received the Amber Alert. An OPP spokesman said the girls could have been kidnapped and taken into Canada.
The girls are among the youngest of Mose and Barb Miller’s 13 children, who range in age from one to 21 years, neighbour Dot Simmons said.
The girls routinely took on the chore of selling the fruits, vegetables, jams and other products of the farm, Simmons said. On Wednesday, the entire family had gone to the barn as usual for evening milking.
But, Simmons said, “The girls were always on watch if someone stopped to buy vegetables.”
When the family noticed the girls hadn’t returned, they quickly checked the cornfield, she said, knowing it was unlikely they would have wandered off. That’s when police were notified, and an Amber Alert was sent out.
This is not a photo of either Fannie Miller or Delila Miller, but rather what they were wearing when the sisters disappeared on Aug. 13, 2014. (Photo courtesy of National Center for Missing & Exploited Children)
We must recognize the atrocities being committed in Gaza as Genocide. Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is clear:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any [emphasis added]of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part [emphasis added], a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
There is little argument and ample evidence that Israel’s actions against the people of Gaza in particular, and Palestine as whole, constitute the term genocide. Israel’s onslaught on Gaza over the years and the indiscriminate killings (Article 2a) and the terrorization of children, the young and the old (mental harm) with the constant bombardment, bulldozers, and drones (Article 2b), the media has been apt at hiding the horrific effects of the blockade – the deliberate infliction of condition of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part (Article 2c).
Sir, at every turn, genocide has been ignored only to be acknowledged after the fact. As Secretary General of the United Nations, you are obliged to put a stop to the ongoing genocide and punish the perpetrators. If the call to duty, the voice of conscience, and the voices of the signatories to this petition is not heeded, then it is incumbent upon you to resign from your post.
“When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.”
Go HEREto sign the Petition to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Then we also have this one directed at the US
With the toll in Gaza surpassing 1,500 deaths, 8,200 wounded, and 180,300 civilians displaced, we are devastated– but more determined than ever to keep pressure on the US to end its unconditional support for Israel.
How can the US purport to be a fair mediator when we are sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to one side of the conflict? A report by Amnesty International shows that just between January and May of this year, the US has sent $62 million worth of munitions to Israel, including nearly $27 million for “rocket launchers”, $9.3 million in “parts of guided missiles” and nearly $762,000 for “bombs, grenades and munitions of war”.
This is atrocious. We should be using that money for diplomacy and rebuilding the lives of Palestinians that have been shattered from decades of violence. The people of Gaza are in desperate need of clean water, healthcare, food, building materials for their homes, and other basic necessities. But unless the blockade of Gaza is lifted, access to these crucial items will continue to be restricted by Israel. You can help bymaking a direct donation to Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) today.
“There isn’t a single family in Gaza which hasn’t been touched by direct loss,” said Pernille Ironside, the head of the Unicef office in Gaza. “The impact that has on the ability of children to cope cannot be overstated.”
Anyone who supports Genocide/War Crimes should never be a leader or any part of any government of any country. They are criminals. The worse kind. Mass Murder is a crime.
Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that the Arabs had gotten the better of the Israelis in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and after years of conflict, all that was left of Israel was the Gaza strip. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39348.htm
Unity between Fatah and Hamas is currently stronger than it has been for many years. As Elders, we believe this is one of the most encouraging developments in recent years and welcome it warmly. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39352.htm
Israel Flagged as Top Spy Threat to U.S. – Snowden/NSA Document
Lest we all forget this was done to an innocent child.
So as a reminder of just how low anyone can go this is the lowest.
Not one main stream media would touch this story.
Hundreds of us asked. Why was it, they would not respond to a unscrupulous thing like this?
So in the end we bloggers got the word out.
So in your wanderings if you see another child being used for this purpose take screen shots share with like minded people so you have loads of witnesses and after a week or two be sure to get the word out one way or the other.
Man from Newfoundland wants Prime Minister Charged for Advocating Genocide against The Palestinians! Makes one proud to be a Canadian!! ‘Lose our reputation’ City man wants prime minister charged with advocating for genocide Andrew Abbass didn’t quite know what to expect when he walked in the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s Corner Brook headquarters on Monday morning. Abbass was there to file a complaint. Nothing unusual there for the police force, but the focus of his complaint was a little out of the ordinary. Abbass is seeking to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird charged with advocating for genocide. “They accepted it and filed the case,” he said shortly after leaving the RNC. His complaint, which also alleges creation and dissemination of propaganda, breach of public trust and uttering threats, stem from comments Harper and Baird have made about the ongoing Israeli conflict. “In painting Hamas and the people of Gaza as a terrorist organization they’re basically sanctioning the killing of civilians,” said Abbass. He’s put together a document that outlines the reasons for the requested charges that can be found via a link in an online petition athttp://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/rcmp-arrestharperandbaird4hatespeech-under-criminalcodesections318and319? – See more at: http://www.thetorontopost.net/2014/07/man-from-newfoundland-wants-prime.html#sthash.DxPMyc5I.dpuf
Newfoundland Man Wants Prime Minister Charged For Advocating Genocide Against Palestinians! Makes One Proud To Be A Canadian!
Yes, the cruel and inhuman attacks by the psychotic Israelis continues against the innocent people of Gaza. As of this point, the reported number of innocent people that have been murdered by these monsters now exceeds the number that were killed in Operation Cast Lead some 4 years ago. Now with the psychotic and insane Israeli leadership saying they will “escalate” the brutal assault on Gaza, the number of dead will increase significantly…. We are indeed watching the possible extermination of some 1.8 million people in what is properly called the largest open air concentration camp that has ever existed!What has truly disgusted me over the last few weeks has been how the insane Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, and his equally psychotic Foreign Minister, John Baird, were some of the first suck ups around the world to show their allegiance to the criminal state of Israel by supporting this onslaught against Gaza right from its launch….It has been shocking to watch as these two criminals and in fact the entire Federal Government here in Canada has given its undying support for genocide against a very innocent people… It has made me disgusted to call myself a Canadian…
But luckily there are other Canadians out there that are not blinded by the lies of our government or our own Jew spew media…. For according to this article, from the Toronto Post online news service, at http://www.torontopost.net, it appears that a brave and honest man from Newfoundland has launched a petition, and filed charges against the criminal Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, for his advocating genocide against the Palestinian people. I want to present the link to that article and the online petition that EVERYONE can sign, especially those living here in Canada, right here, and I do have my usual thoughts and comments to follow:
NTS Notes: This act of courage by Andrew Abbass does truly warm my own heart and shows that not all Canadians are fooled by the lies that we are indeed subjected to about the Gaza Strip.
It is so shocking that these two criminals, Baird and Harper, continue to parrot their full support for Israel, considering that the lame excuse for Israel’s slaughter of innocent people, namely the “3 Israeli youths” that the Israelis have falsely claimed to have been murdered by Hamas has fallen apart. All the evidence now shows that Hamas had NOTHING to do with these deaths, and I am again smelling a rat and again am stating that these “murders” were conducted by the Israeli Mossad itself to anger the Israelis to the point that they would support their government’s genocidal attack on innocent people. I know for a fact that Harper and his homosexual Foreign Minister, Baird, are well aware of the new evidence, and yet these two monsters are still supporting cold blooded murder?
I do want everyone from around the world, and especially ALL Canadians that see this article to sign this important petition.. I again will present the link to that petition rightHERE The peoples’ voices must be heard and the people of Gaza do indeed need our support…
People residing in the besieged Gaza Strip are facing a crippling humanitarian crisis due to Israel’s merciless strikes on the blockaded enclave, Press TV reports.
According to the report, the blockaded area is now facing a life-threatening situation due to lack of crucial supplies including food, fuel, medicine and medical equipment.
“We are standing here for hours now for bread. We lost our homes and are staying with our relatives. This queue is endless,” a Gazan woman told Press TV.
Life is getting harder for Palestinians not only because of the recent offensive but also due to the ongoing crippling siege there.
“We have been here for more than six hours now just searching for food. It’s just not available. Neither is fuel, electricity or water,” a Gazan man said.
Despite having a fertile soil, Gazan farmers cannot access their farms, resulting in the shortage of fruits and vegetables. Moreover, there are concerns over the availability of other goods like flour due to the Israeli siege.
“There is no availability of goods in the market. Farmers can’t go to their farms and harvest fruits and vegetables because they fear they may get attacked,” another Gazan man said.
Israeli warplanes have been pounding numerous sites in the Gaza Strip since July 8, demolishing houses and burying families under the rubble. Israeli forces also began a ground offensive against the impoverished Palestinian land on July 17.
So far, more than 1,364 people have been killed and thousands others injured by the Israeli regime’s offensive against the coastal sliver despite pressure from the international community.
Gaza has been blockaded by the Israeli regime since June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.
The apartheid regime of Israel denies about 1.8 million people in Gaza their basic rights. Source
(Note:CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)
RCMP are warning the public about an internet scam that has resurfaced in the Lake Louise area.
The “scareware” scam involves a virus that is picked up while victims are surfing the internet. The victim’s computer is then locked onto a screen telling the user that Canadian law has been violated.
Victims are told to pay a fine of $150 using an electronic payment system to unlock their computers.
Sgt. Jeff Campbell said a local resident came to the Lake Louise detachment early Saturday morning to report the problem. The victim had been downloading music when the malware locked the computer screen.
Campbell says file sharing web sites are often sources of malware.
The scammers use sophisticated graphics, including the RCMP logo, to make the site look official.
Police say if you have been locked out of your computer, it’s an indicator that your system may be infected with malware and you will need to take steps to address the problem. Sgt. Campbell says it may be possible to make the computer temporarily functional by restoring system settings.
Tips from the RCMP to protect yourself
Never click on a pop-up that claims your computer has a virus
Update your anti-virus software often and scan your computer for viruses regularly
Don’t click on links or attachments in e-mails sent to you by someone you don’t know or that seem suspicious
Turn on your browser’s pop-up blocking feature
Never download anti-virus software from a pop-up or link sent in an e-mail
If you have received a scareware message, please contact your local police office online and the Canadian Anti Fraud Centre (1-888-495-8501) to report it. Source
This type of thing could be implemented world wide. Be sure to share with your friends so they do not get scammed.
The link below is part 1 It cover much of what happened from the beginning of this disaster. I thought it best to start a new post as the other was so long.
There is a total of 47 missing. They are still looking for the remains of 5 who died.
Lawsuit filed in U.S. court over Quebec rail disaster first of many, says lawyer
By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press July 23, 2013
MONTREAL — Victims of the Quebec railway disaster have launched further legal action against companies linked to the derailment that obliterated their town — and one lawyer insists the multimillion-dollar cascade has only begun.
The family of a Lac-Megantic man killed in the fiery crash filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Monday in a U.S. court against rail and petroleum firms connected to the oil-filled tankers that slammed into the town.
Their lawyer, Peter Flowers, told The Canadian Press he expects to present many additional, individual lawsuits like this one before the end of the week.
“We expect 15 to 20 at least over the next couple of days,” Flowers, of Chicago-based Meyers & Flowers, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
“We’ll be asking for millions of dollars for every one of these folks.”
Word of the looming lawsuits surfaced as Lac-Megantic’s mayor announced Tuesday that her municipality has threatened to sue the railway operator at the centre of the derailment — Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Inc. — for $4 million.
Colette Roy-Laroche alleges that MMA has failed to cover the costs of the post-disaster cleanup, forcing the town to write the cheques itself.
Companies connected to the derailment may also face another hurdle in the future: a motion presented last week in a Quebec court seeking permission to file a class-action lawsuit over the crash.
The derailment in the town of 6,000 set off several massive blasts, wiped out part of the downtown core and is presumed to have killed 47 people.
On Wednesday alone, Flowers expects to set in motion as many as five additional wrongful-death lawsuits at the Cook County courthouse in Illinois.
His first suit, launched Monday, was initiated by the family of Jean-Guy Veilleux, who was killed in the runaway-train disaster. The Quebec coroner’s office publicly identified Veilleux, 32, on Tuesday as one of the victims.
Plaintiff Annick Roy is seeking damages from 10 defendants, including MMA, its major stockholder Rail World Inc., top rail executive Edward Burkhardt and several American petroleum companies. Roy is identified as the administrator of Veilleux’s estate as well as the guardian of the estate belonging to their daughter, who is a minor.
“On July 6, 2013, plaintiff’s decedent Jean-Guy Veilleux was present in downtown Lac-Megantic near the site of the derailment and was consumed by the fire and explosion,” reads the court document, filed in the Cook County courthouse.
The suit pegs the overall damages sought at more than $200,000, but Flowers maintains this is just a base amount and insists the eventual target sum will be far higher.
“All I can say is it will be millions of dollars,” he said. “This is a horrible tragedy.”
Calls placed Tuesday to most of the defendants listed in the lawsuit were not immediately returned.
The suit, which calls for a trial by jury, alleges that the railway and petroleum companies named had a duty to operate their businesses in a “safe manner and to take reasonable measures to avoid exposing the public to the dangers associated with the transport of crude oil to refineries.”
Roy also alleges in the suit that the defendants were negligent for transporting crude oil in the flawed DOT-111 tanker cars, which have been known to rupture during derailments. The document highlights how there has been a considerable increase in oil-by-rail transport in recent years.
Flaws in the DOT-111 tanker have been noted as far back as a 1991 safety study.
“There’s been problems with these tankers and how they protect what’s inside of them — for years,” Flowers said.
“There’s been demands made for years that these companies redesign these tankers to make them safe and they haven’t done that and, as a result of that, I think they are absolutely involved in the responsibility for what happened here.”
Other defendants named in the lawsuit include firms in the U.S. petroleum industry: World Fuel Services Corp., Western Petroleum Company, Petroleum Transport Solutions, Dakota Plains Transloading, Dakota Petroleum Transport Solutions, Dakota Plains Marketing and DPSTS.
Burkhardt, president of Illinois-based Rail World and chairman of MMA, was the only individual listed in the suit.
The document notes Burkhardt’s work as president, CEO and chairman of Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation. It alleges that the company reduced crew sizes under his leadership as a means to cut costs — a measure that also allegedly increased the accident rate.
The lawsuit mentions how Wisconsin Central was involved in a 1996 fuel-filled tanker derailment in Weyauwega, Wis., while Burkhardt was at the head of the company. The subsequent explosions from the crash forced more than 1,700 people from their homes.
The document also cites a 2009 derailment of tankers filled with highly flammable ethanol in Cherry Valley, Ill., a crash that involved a different company.
In 2011, the family affected by the Cherry Valley derailment received a $36.2-million settlement from Canadian National Railway. One member of the family was killed, another lost her baby and two others suffered burns in the incident.
Flowers said the Cherry Valley agreement, part of which was reached before trial, is “representative of what is considered fair and reasonable in the United States for things like this that happen.”
Back in Lac-Megantic, the mayor said MMA has not yet paid any of the workers it hired to clean up the crude oil that leaked from the dozens of tanker cars.
Roy-Laroche said the town has had to pay MMA’s suppliers $4 million after some workers threatened to walk off the job.
She urged the company to start assuming its responsibilities.
‘It strikes me it’s not asking a lot, given the circumstances,” she said.
“We’re asking MMA to behave like a proper corporate citizen.”
Paul McCartney paid tribute to victims of the Lac-Megantic tragedy Tuesday night, offering free concert tickets and dedicating a song to survivors at a concert.
Luci Tremblay said 1,000 tickets had been set aside for Lac-Megantic residents, with about 900 taking up the offer. About 10 buses were also donated in the Lac-Megantic area to bring them to the show.
———-
The promoter also collected $65,000 in donations at a Bruno Mars concert on July 8, and set that to the town to help out. For the rest of the story go HERE
The Canadian Transportation Agency announced late Friday that it would extend MM&A’s certificate of operation until Oct. 1. A decision earlier in the week to suspend its right to operate was reversed because the federal regulator determined that the railway had sufficient liability insurance to operate in the short-term. For the entire story go HERE
Dismiss Pickton lawsuit against Crown prosecutors, says B.C. Pickton victims’ families allege Crown failed to warn women
CBC Report Jul 5, 2013
Serial killer Robert Pickton was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder, but is suspected of killing dozen of women who went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (Vancouver Police Department)
The B.C. government says it can’t be sued over the Crown prosecutor’s decision to stay attempted murder charges against Robert Pickton in 1998 — four years before the remains of dozens of women were found on the serial killer’s farm.
The families of four women whose remains or DNA were found on Pickton’s property filed a lawsuit in May targeting the provincial and federal governments, the City of Vancouver, Pickton’s siblings and Pickton himself.
The provincial government has filed an application in B.C.Supreme Court asking that the allegations targeting B.C.’s criminal justice branch be removed from the statements of claim.
The lawsuits allege, among other things, that prosecutors were negligent when they decided not to put Pickton on trial for attempted murder in early 1998. The lawsuits also claim the Crown should have warned sex workers in Vancouver about Pickton in light of the attempted murder charge.
But the B.C. government’s notices of application say Crown lawyers are immune from most claims of negligence, unless there is clear evidence of “deliberate and malicious” conduct.
“The notice of civil claim in this case includes no pleading of malice on the part of the Crown counsel involved,” says one of four notices filed with the court last week.
“This is clearly not a claim of malicious prosecution. It is therefore plain and obvious that it has no reasonable chance of success.”
The notices also argue Crown prosecutors don’t have a duty to warn the public.
Attempted murder charges stayed
In March 1997, Pickton and a sex worker became entangled in a violent confrontation at his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C., leaving the woman with injuries so severe she died on the operating table before she was revived.
The sex worker, whose name remains covered by a publication ban, had a set of handcuffs locked on one of her wrists — the key to which was later found in Pickton’s pocket.
Days before Pickton was set to stand trial, a Crown prosecutor decided not to go ahead. Crown counsel Randi Connor told a public inquiry last year that she believed the sex worker’s drug use meant she wasn’t in a condition to testify.
Between January 1998, when the charges against Pickton were stayed, and his arrest in February 2002, 19 women disappeared and were later connected to Pickton’s farm.
Also after Pickton’s arrest in 2002, forensic investigators found the DNA of three missing women on evidence they seized from the 1997 attack, including clothing and a condom package.
Families allege police botch up
The lawsuits involve the daughters and sons of Dianne Rock, Sarah de Vries, Cynthia Feliks and Yvonne Boen.
The statements of claim allege the Vancouver police and the RCMP botched their respective investigations into missing sex workers from the Downtown Eastside and failed to warn women in the neighbourhood that a serial killer was likely at work.
Boen’s and Feliks’ children also allege they were harmed by the insensitive manner in which they were informed of their mothers’ deaths.
Pickton was eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.
When Pickton lost his appeals for those convictions, charges related to the murders of 20 other women, including Rock, de Vries and Feliks, were stayed by the Crown. Boen is among six women whose remains or DNA were found on the Pickton property, but for which no charges were ever laid.
The statements of claim contain allegations that haven’t been tested in court.
None of the defendants have filed statements of defence, and the province’s recent notice of application makes no mention of any of the other allegations in the families’ lawsuits. Source
The revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.
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Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.
The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.
Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.
This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.
We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:
Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
So far as I post this
Signatures so far
548,137 as of
11:52 am EST 4/7/13
Update
Signatures so far
552,250
9:19am EST 5/7/13
Go HERE to send your letter off to your Members of Congress.
Be sure to pass this on. The more who send off this letter the better.
There are also Protests across the US today, July 4 2013
There are a few others in other countries as well.
“Activists Protest Government Surveillance, NSA on July 4, 2013: Restore the Fourth Amendment”>Activists Protest Government Surveillance, NSA on July 4, 2013
Very few of the Main Stream media in the US have reported this Protest which took place in many places across the US.
Seems there was almost a total Black out of these protests.
ABC showed a small Segment.
Google Search
This is a sad day for the American people. A “Media Blackout”, does say a lot about, how the Citizens of the US are kept in the dark however.
Look for US media reports on this event. If you find very few, don’t be surprised. A Media Blackout is an indicator, of how the American public is manipulated and the truth is kept from them.Absolutely shameful.So what else is the US main stream media keeping from Americans?Then we have this loss of Freedom
Once demonstrations wrapped up organizers posted a message on Reddit, saying “It’s isn’t over!” – calling for an as yet unspecified Step 2 of the protest. They said details will be made public on Monday.
Clapper lied to Congress
March 12, 2013- Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asks questions in Senate Intelligence Committee on warrantless geolocation surveillance and National Security Agency tracking.
At the end of this video James Clapper states, they do not collect information/data on millions of Americans. That of course is blatant lie, as we now know. Making a statement as such, under oath is a crime.
If you lie to Congress, it is a felony and you can/should go to prison for it.
On March 12 when Sen Ron Wyden questioned Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was testifying in the Senate under oath, the senator, like any good lawyer, knew exactly what he was asking and chose his words carefully.
“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Wyden asked. He didn’t ask whether the NSA is reading our emails or listening to our phone calls. He used the all-inclusive “any type of data at all” and he was questioning the chief intelligence officer of the United States — and man who is perfectly aware of the breadth and nuance that attaches to the term “data.” Clapper doesn’t need a staff member to tutor him on the meaning of metadata — that is, to explain that this too is a form of data.
In a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, Clapper now claims that when he denied the NSA is collecting data on million of Americans, “my answer focused on the collection of the content of communications.”
He could have said: “I gave an answer to a question I hadn’t been asked.”
He now says: “My response was clearly erroneous — for which I apologize.”
To call it erroneous is to imply that he made a mistake rather than that he was intentionally deceptive. That admission would be a confession to breaking the law. At this point, Clapper seems to think he can brush aside accusations that he committed perjury.
Several senators are clearly unimpressed by Clapper’s explanation.
“It now appears clear that the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, lied under oath to Congress and the American people,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) tweeted.
“Perjury is a serious crime … [and] Clapper should resign immediately,” he said.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that Clapper had broken the law, comparing him to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who has been charged with espionage.
“Mr. Clapper lied in Congress in defiance of the law in the name of security,” Paul said on CNN last month. “Mr. Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy. So, I think there will be a judgment, because both of them broke the law, and history will have to determine.”
Wyden, who knew about the NSA programs when he pressed Clapper on them, said that Clapper was preventing Congress from conducting oversight.
“This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions,” Wyden said in a statement last month.
He also attempted to come up with and excuse as to why no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq.
In 2003, Clapper, was head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL
October 29, 2003
The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq’s illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.
The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ”unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq.
”I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse,” General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.
He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said ”the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there ”may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.
But other American intelligence officials said General Clapper’s theory was among those being pursued in Iraq by David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is leading the American effort to uncover the weapons cited by the Bush administration as the major reason for going to war against Iraq.
General Clapper’s comments came as the Central Intelligence Agency prepared to defend its prewar assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and that it sought to reconstitute its nuclear program. The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, has written a letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence saying the agency will be ready to provide an assessment by late November.
In the letter, the contents of which were described by several intelligence officials on Tuesday, Mr. Tenet proposed that a team headed by John McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, provide a briefing for the committee after Nov. 20, when the agency’s internal review is expected to be completed.
General Clapper’s agency is responsible for interpreting satellite photographs and other imagery. He declined to answer a question about whether he believed that illicit Iraqi weapons material might have been smuggled into any other country. Source
One may now think, he was anything, but truthful, in his assessment.
Something to ponder on for a while.
As we all well know, the war in Iraq was based on lies.
It’s been a few hundred years since the Third Amendment was written to keep King George from quartering British troops in American homes, but a lawsuit just filed in Nevada suggests it’s as relevant as ever.
The framers of the Constitution ratified the Third Amendment to ensure citizens would never again have to accommodate soldiers, but a few centuries later it’s become more-or-less an antiquated law that’s rarely referenced in federal court. That changed recently when a family from Henderson, Nevada accused the local police department of constitutional violations after officers of the law allegedly took residence in two neighborhood homes.
According to a legal filing first obtained by Courthouse News Service, a handful of Henderson Police Department officers and the city itself are being sued for an array of charges — including Third Amendment violations — over an incident that mirrors the making of the American Revolution.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say police officers demanded they be allowed to occupy two homes owned by their clients on the city’s Eveningside Avenue in 2011 in order to conduct an investigation involving a neighbor’s residence. When the owners refused to comply with the request, they were reportedly arrested for obstruction and brought to jail.
Police were investigating an incident at 363 Eveningside Avenue that July when Officer Christopher Worley called up the occupant of a neighboring property, Anthony Mitchell, and said he’d need to use his house in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ over the neighbor’s residence. Mitchell reportedly made it clear that he did not want to get involved in the probe and told Worley he would not be able to offer assistance. According to the lawsuit, Officer David Cawthorn, Sgt. Michael Waller and Worley all then “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.”
“It was determined to move to 367 Eveningside and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested,” the report determined.
Moments later, the officers “arrayed themselves in front of plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s house and prepared to execute their plan,” after which they “loudly commanded” they be let inside. Seconds later, Mitchell’s door was knocked down with a metal battering ram and the police entered his home.
“As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor,” the suit alleges.
As the police moved into the home, Mitchell was reportedly called an “asshole” by the cops, ordered to crawl on the floor and then shot several times with non-lethal ‘pepperball rounds’ from close range. He was then arrested for obstructing an officer while the cops combed through his house without permission, but not before they also opened fire at the plaintiff’s dog, prompting it to howl “in fear and pain.”
At the same time, officers approached Anthony’s parents down the block at 362 Eveningside and asked father Michael Mitchell if he’d accompany them back to a local ‘command center’ to assist with negotiating the surrender of the neighbor suspected of domestic violence. When he got there, though, he became concerned that the cops had tricked him into leaving so they could try to gain access to yet another home. Michael Mitchell then tried to head back home, but when he left the command center he was arrested, handcuffed and placed in the back of a cop car.
Attorney for the family say there was no reasonable grounds to detain Michael Mitchell, nor probable cause to suspect him of committing any crime. That didn’t keep officers from holding both him and his son Anthony for nine hours, however, before they were ultimately released after posting bond.
All criminal counts against the Mitchells were later dismissed with prejudiced, but the family has now lobbed charges of their own. Their attorney is asking for a trial by jury to hear the case and ideally award his clients punitive damages for violations of the Third, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, assault and battery, conspiracy, defamation, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, negligence and emotional distress. Source
Shocking new revelations come as activists prepare to sue the U.S. military for unlawful spying
By Sarah Lazare
Anti-war activists who were infiltrated and spied on by the military for years have now been placed on the domestic terrorist list, they announced Monday. The shocking revelation comes as the activists prepare to sue the U.S. military for unlawful spying.”The fact that a peaceful activist such as myself is on this domestic terrorist list should be cause for concern for other people in the US,” declared Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We’ve seen an increase in the buildup of a mass surveillance state under the Obama and Bush Administrations.”The discovery is the latest development in a stunning saga that exposes vast post-9/11 spying networks in which military, police, and federal agencies appear to be in cahoots.Documents declassified in 2009 reveal that military informant John Towery, going by the name ‘John Jacob,’ spent over two years infiltrating and spying on Olympia, Washington anti-war and social justice groups, including Port Militarization Resistance, Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Towery admitted to the spying and revealed that he shared information with not only the military, but also the police and federal agencies. He claimed that he was not the only spy.
The activists, who blast the snooping as a violation of their First and Fourth Amendment rights, levied a lawsuit against the military in 2009.
“The spying resulted in plaintiffs and others being targeted for repeated harassment, preemptive and false arrest, excessive use of force, and malicious prosecution,” reads a statement by the plaintiffs.
The Obama Administration attempted to throw out the litigation, but in December 2012 the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the case could continue.
When the plaintiffs were preparing their deposition for the courts two weeks ago, they were shocked to discover that several Olympia anti-war activists were listed on the domestic terrorist list, including at least two plaintiffs in the case.
The revelations prompted them to amend their lawsuit to include charges that the nonviolent activists were unlawfully targeted as domestic terrorists.
“The breadth and intensity of the spying by U.S. Army officials and other law enforcement agents is staggering,” said Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild attorney who filed the lawsuit in 2009. “If nonviolent protest is now labeled and treated as terrorism, then democracy and the First Amendment are in critical danger.”
Plaintiffs say this case takes on a new revelevance as vast NSA dragnet spying sparks widespread outrage.
“I think that there is a huge potential for the case to set precedent,” declared plaintiff Julianne Panagacos. “This could have a big impact on how the U.S. military and police are able to work together.”
Well they are not alone seems the EU is not pleased with US spying either.
June 30 2013
The president of the European parliament has demanded an explanation from US authorities over the latest revelation that EU diplomatic missions in Washington, New York and Brussels were under electronic surveillance from the NSA.
“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.”
“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations,” he added.
EU commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding, said the Union has contacted the US authorities in Washington and Brussels about a report in Der Spiegel magazine.
“We have immediately been in contact with the US authorities in Washington DC and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports,” she said in a statement. “They have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us.”
“Partners do not spy on each other,” Reding, suggesting that talks for a free trade agreement between the EU and the US should be halted until Washington provides explanations.
“We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators,” she said.
Reding’s stance was backed by the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee head, Elmar Brok.
“The spying has taken on dimensions that I would never have thought possible from a democratic state,” he told Der Spiegel. “How should we still negotiate if we must fear that our negotiating position is being listened to beforehand?”
Germany and France want answers
Meanwhile, Germany’s justice minister also called for an immediate explanation from the United States saying the news that Washington bugged European Union offices was “reminiscent of the Cold War.”
“It must ultimately be immediately and extensively explained by the American side whether media reports about completely disproportionate tapping measures by the US in the EU are accurate or not,” Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.
It was also revealed on Sunday that the extent of NSA’s spying on Germany was bigger that previously thought as the US combed through half a billion German phone calls, emails and text messages every month.
France also wants Washington to clarify their intentions after the news that the NSA put EU offices under electronic surveillance.
“France has today asked the American authorities for an explanation,” Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, said in a statement. “These acts, if confirmed, would be completely unacceptable.”
“We expect the American authorities to answer the legitimate concerns raised by these press revelations as quickly as possible,” he added.
A spokesman for the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence had no comment on the Der Spiegel story, Reuters reported.
Der Spiegel, quoting from a September 2010 “top secret” US National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, reported on Saturday the NSA was eavesdropping on the EU’s internal computer networks in Washington, as well as at the 28-member bloc UN office in New York.
The German magazine also reported that five years ago, the NSA also targeted telecommunications at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, home to the European Council, where all EU member states have their offices.
Snowden, 30, fled the US for Hong Kong in May, just weeks before The Guardian and Washington Post published details he provided about a top-secret US government surveillance program that accumulated internet and telephone traffic both at home and abroad.
The whistleblower is presently in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where it is believed he is attempting to gain political asylum in Ecuador.
Lode Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian parliament, believes that the main purpose of the US surveillance program was “economic spying” on the EU.
“At the moment, the EU is negotiating a new free trade agreement with the United States,” the former deputy speaker noted. “Well, [now the US can gather] what their opponent is already discussing internally of strategy. That is one of the possibilities.”
Vanoost also believes that part of the reason for the spying was due to the decline in US economic strength.
“On the economic level, [the US] is losing ground everywhere,” he said. “Look at what the BRIC countries are doing. The EU is having stronger ties with Russia, with Africa, with Latin America. And the US doesn’t seem to get its economic priorities imposed as it used to. So what I see is a big risk for economic spying.”
He added that there is “too much at stake” for there to be a total breakdown in US-EU bilateral relations, however, “behind closed doors there will be some very tough words” exchanged between EU and American officials. Source
Much of that information gathered, is also in the hands of privatized entities. To make it even more discussing. Some of those private companies are not even American, but are from other countries. So privately owned, foreign companies, have your information.
DID YOU KNOW?: Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA
Two Israeli companies, Narus and Verint, working for NSA
By doing so, this would imply, companies like Facebook and Google don’t have to explicitly provide the NSA with access to their servers because major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as AT&T and Verizon already allows the U.S. signals intelligence agency to eavesdrop on all of their data anyway.
Klein, an engineer, discovered the “secret room” at AT&T central office in San Francisco, through which the NSA actively “*vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T” through the wiretapping rooms, emphasizing that “much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic.”
Narus’ product, the Semantic Traffic Analyzer, is a software application that runs on standard IBM or Dell servers using the Linux operating system. It’s renowned within certain circles for its ability to inspect traffic in real time on high-bandwidth pipes, identifying packets of interest as they race by at up to 10 Gbps.
“*Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California company, said. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”
With a telecom wiretap the NSA only needs companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple to passively participate while the agency to intercepts, stores, and analyzes their communication data. The indirect nature of the agreement would provide tech giants with plausible deniability.
And having a foreign contractor bug the telecom grid would mean that the NSA gained access to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the U.S. without technically doing it themselves.
This would provide the NSA, whose official mission is to spy on foreign communications, with plausible deniability regarding domestic snooping.
In 2007 a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200 (i.e. Israel’s NSA) told Forbes that the technology of Comverse (i.e. the company that owns Verint) is based on Unit 8200 technology.
One of the founders of Verint, Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, is a former Israeli intelligence officer.
A co-founder and former chairmen of Narus, Ori Cohen, told Fortune in 2001 that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence.
In 2011 another former chief of Unit 8200 acknowledged to the Israeli paper Haartez that high-tech firms around the world employ both Unit 8200 equipment and its veteran personnel.
“Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years… Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
The NSA began eavesdropping on the international communications of Americans after President Bush secretly authorized the practice in 2002 — without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying — to search for evidence of terrorist activity.
As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.
Last year the ACLU published this infographic, which is the best way to visualize what bugging the telecommunications grid provides the NSA:
http://www.bollyn.com/ June 13, 2013At the center of the NSA scandal is a gang of Israeli high-tech criminals which is connected to the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. These connections underline the involvement of the same Israeli criminals to both 9-11 and the NSA’s secret program to collect and store our personal information and conversations, which came about mainly as a consequence of 9-11.Two Israeli companies, Narus and Verint, are involved in the National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandal in which copies of our phone calls and email data are sent to secret rooms at NSA buildings across the country. These Israeli companies are closely connected to Unit 8200, the electronic espionage unit of the Israeli military. (Narus was acquired by Boeing in 2010.)
The founder and former chairman of Verint is wanted by the FBI for a long list of crimes. He is veteran Israeli intelligence officer.
Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, the former head of Comverse, the parent company of Verint, is a wanted criminal who has fled U.S. justice to Africa and probably subsequently to Israel. It is important to note that Kobi Alexander and Comverse were closely connected to Odigo, the Israeli messaging system that was used to warn Israelis to stay away from the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Furthermore, the NSA has used Israeli encryption software from RSA Security, Inc. since 2006, which means that Israelis hold the encryption keys to the entire NSA computer network. The Israelis obviously have easy access to everything at the NSA.
The following video clip is of James Bamford discussing the two Israeli companies, Narus and Verint, who are involved in the massive collection of our telephone and Internet data. Bamford was on “Democracy Now!” on October 14, 2008, discussing the role of these Israeli companies, who are closely tied to Israeli intelligence.
To have access to personal phone calls and emails allows Israeli intelligence to blackmail and control people, like General David Petraeus, who was forced to resign from his position as director of the C.I.A. after an extra-marital affair was revealed by unknown agents who had access to his personal email.
Bamford wrote an article entitled “Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA” for Wired.com in April 2012 in which he discussed the Israeli companies and the criminals who ran them:
In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network.
According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment.
What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.
In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”
Several of the top people involved in these Israeli wiretapping companies are if fact criminals who are currently wanted for serious crimes committed in the United States, as Bamford explains in the 2012 article:
Like Narus, Verint was founded in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according to the Jerusalem Post. Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the company’s sales literature, lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications.”
In a rare and candid admission to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
Equally troubling is the issue of corruption. Kobi Alexander, the founder and former chairman of Verint, is now a fugitive, wanted by the FBI on nearly three dozen charges of fraud, theft, lying, bribery, money laundering and other crimes. And two of his top associates at Comverse, Chief Financial Officer David Kreinberg and former General Counsel William F. Sorin, were also indicted in the scheme and later pleaded guilty, with both serving time in prison and paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties.
When asked about these contractors, the NSA declined to “verify the allegations made.”
Kobi Alexander is also closely connected to the 9-11 criminal atrocity. Alexander and Comverse are connected to the Israeli Odigo messaging company through which warnings were sent to the Israelis who were expected to be at work at the World Trade Center on 9-11. As I explained in an article entitled “Why was Kobi Alexander Allowed to Flee? The Israeli Fugitive, Odigo, and the Forewarning of 9/11“ in August 2006:
The case of the Israeli criminal Kobi Alexander is like the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.” While Alexander’s crimes, through which he became immensely wealthy, are now evident, they are but a very small piece of a much larger Zionist criminal network – connected to the 9/11 terror attacks – which remains hidden beneath the surface.
Alexander, former head of the Israel-based Comverse Technology, was, until his crimes were discovered, one of the highest paid executives in the United States.
In the year 2000, for example, he reportedly earned some $102.5 million, with $93 million coming from the “exercise of options.” We now know that most of Alexander’s money was made through the fraudulent “exercise of options.”
Comverse Technology, the U.S.-based “parent company” of an older and much bigger Israel-based company with the same name, is the owner of the Verint, Ulticom, Starhome, Mercom and Startel companies. The key positions in these companies are all held by Israeli nationals.
Alexander, was recently allowed to flee the United States after he and two other former Comverse executives were charged with securities, mail and wire fraud by U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York. A warrant has been issued for his arrest…
While Alexander is obviously connected with Israel’s military intelligence apparatus and George Soros through the mutually owned investment fund ComSor, what is not widely reported is his company’s close links with Odigo, the Israeli-run instant messaging company that received – and conveyed – urgent warning messages about the imminent terror attacks on the World Trade Center, several hours before the first plane hit…
Shortly after 9-11, Odigo was completely taken over by Comverse Technology, which had been part owner of Odigo since early 2000, if not earlier. Shortly after 9/11, five executives from Comverse were reported to have profited by more than $267 million from “insider trading.”
Avner Ronen, the “founder” of Odigo, was Vice President of Business Development of Comverse Technology in October 2005. This indicates that Ronen and Alexander, both Israeli military officers with computer backgrounds, have been close business partners since early 2000. Source
Is it a good thing that, Snowden and others have blown the whistle?
The main questions we should all ask:
Do we all have the right to know that. our privacy has been illegally invaded by our own country or any foreign country?
Do we want our personal phone calls, e-mails etc in the hand of anyone let alone a private for profit company.
Would we want our information used to blackmail us or it could be used for identity theft, among other things?
Do you think anyone, who is against war should be deemed a is a terrorist?
Questions to ponder.
Added July 1 2013
US bugged dozens of foreign embassies
The US has been spying on dozens of foreign embassies and missions belonging to its rivals and allies in America to keep tabs on disagreements between them, new documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed.
Elaborate means were used to install bugs and gather intelligence.
One document mentioned in the Guardian report on the leaks lists 38 foreign embassies and mission in US and describes them as “targets” under surveillance.
Targets in the September 2010 document included not only US rivals, but also American allies, such as EU mission in New York and its embassy in Washington, along with the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India, Turkey and Middle Eastern countries. But the UK and Germany, along with some other European states were not mentioned.
US intelligence used a number of creative spying techniques, including bugging electronic communications equipment and tapping into cables to collect transmissions with specialized antennae.
One of the eavesdropping methods was codenamed “Dropmire” and involved putting a bug in an encrypted fax machine used at the EU embassy in Washington, DC, the Guardian quoted a 2007 document as saying. The fax machine was used to send cables to foreign affairs ministries in EU.
The US spied in order to gain insight into policy disagreements on global issues and other splits between member states, the leaked document revealed.
Codenames: ‘Perdido’, ‘Blackfoot’, ‘Wabash’ and ‘Powell’
US spy operations on dozens of foreign embassies and mission in US had a range of creative codenames.
An operation carried out in the EU mission at the UN and was called ‘Perdido’. It collected intelligence through implants or bugs that were placed inside electronic devices, along with targeted computers inside the mission copying everything saved on its hard drives.
The EU delegation on K Street in Washington was hit with three spy operations that targeted the embassy’s 90 staff. Two of them used electronic implants and the third used antennas to collect transmissions.
Codename ‘Blackfoot’ was used in an operation against the French mission to the UN and the name ‘Wabash’ referred to bugging the French embassy in Washington.
The Italian embassy in Washington was also targeted and codenamed as both ‘Bruneau’ and ‘Hemlock’.
Spying on the Greek UN mission was named ‘Powell’ and the operation against its embassy was known as ‘Klondyke’, documents revealed.
The operations are described as “close access domestic collection” and it remains unclear whether NSA solely carried its operations or in combination with FBI or CIA.
The new leak comes as European nations are already angry by what Snowden has revealed.
France and Germany have demanded the US account for leaked reports of massive-scale US spying on the EU. French President Francois Hollande called for an end to surveillance, while Germany said such “Cold War-style behavior” was “unacceptable.”
German publication Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had bugged EU offices in Brussels, New York and Washington.
Following the release of the report, the president of the EU parliament demanded an explanation from Washington, stressing that if the allegations were true there would be a significant backlash on US-EU relations.
Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and ex-staff member of a private contractor working for the NSA, disclosed secret documents revealing US surveillance programs and British secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) sharing its intelligence with NSA, as part of the Tempora data collection project.
Snowden left the US for Hong Kong in May and currently remains in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport while Ecuador reviews his asylum request.
The US has charged Snowden with espionage and is trying to extradite him. Source
Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.
According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.
In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children’s chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south.
The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard’s motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States’ fundamental First Amendment rights.
“The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights,” ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday.
Upon exiting the courtroom Olson seemed to be in disbelief.
“Oh my gosh,” he said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Tosdal, who exited the courtroom shortly after his client, seemed equally bewildered.
“I’ve never heard that before, that a court can prohibit an argument of First Amendment rights,” said Tosdal.
Olson, who worked as a former staffer for a US Senator from Washington state, was said to involve himself in political activism in tandem with the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
On October 3, 2011, Olson first appeared outside of a Bank of America branch in San Diego, along with a homemade sign. Eight days later Olson and his partner, Stephen Daniels, during preparations for National Bank Transfer Day, the two were confronted by Darell Freeman, the Vice President of Bank of America’s Global Corporate Security.
A former police officer, Freeman accused Olson and Daniels of “running a business outside of the bank,” evidently in reference to the National Bank Transfer Day activities, which was a consumer activism initiative that sought to promote Americans to switch from commercial banks, like Bank of America, to not-for-profit credit unions.
At the time, Bank of America’s debit card fees were among one of the triggers that led Occupy Wall Street members to promote the transfer day.
“It was just an empty threat,” says Olson of Freeman’s accusations. “He was trying to scare me away. To be honest, it did at first. I even called my bank and they said he couldn’t do anything like that.”
Olson continued to protest outside of Bank of America. In February 2012, he came across a box of chalk at a local pharmacy and decided to begin leaving his mark with written statements.
“I thought it was a perfect way to get my message out there. Much better than handing out leaflets or holding a sign,” says Olson.
Over the course of the next six months Olson visited the Bank of America branch a few days per week, leaving behind scribbled slogans such as “Stop big banks” and “Stop Bank Blight.com.”
According to Olson, who spoke with local broadcaster KGTV, one Bank of America branch claimed it had cost $6,000 to clean up the chalk writing.
Public records obtained by the Reader show that Freeman continued to pressure members of San Diego’s Gang Unit on behalf of Bank of America until the matter was forwarded to the City Attorney’s office.
On April 15, Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard contacted Freeman with a response on his persistent queries.
“I wanted to let you know that we will be filing 13 counts of vandalism as a result of the incidents you reported,” said Hazard.
Arguments for Olson’s case are set to be heard Wednesday morning, following jury selection. Source
Just when you think, the US cannot get any more ridiculous, then it already is, something like this comes along. The chalk washes off with water. Think about it.
It is the same chalk millions of children use. So are Judges going to imprison little children for their chalk drawings as well?
Unbelievable.
Words cannot describe my thoughts on this. This is beyond imagination.
Chalk Bandits. The new American enemy.
Every American should send a Chalk message to this Judge.
Chalk it up to a good idea.
How much will it cost taxpayer to keep this Chalk Bandit in jail for 13 years?
What an absolute waste of court time and tax dollars.
That money should be used for anything, but this. Education comes to mind.
A girl aged ten was told by police that she could be arrested for causing criminal damage – over a game of hopscotch.
Lilly-May Allen was playing with a friend on a grid she had chalked on the pavement in front of her home when a marked police van pulled up.
An officer warned the girls that using chalk on the pavement was criminal damage and they could be arrested for it, before driving off.
But the girls did not understand what they had done wrong and Lilly-May is now reluctant to play outside, according to her father. For the rest go HERE Got to love some of the comments at the bottom however.
Bank of America protester acquitted of vandalism
July 1 2013
A San Diego, California man has been acquitted of vandalism charges after being threatened with 13 years in prison for scrawling anti-bank slogans on a sidewalk with chalk.
A jury deliberated for less than five hours on Monday before deciding to acquit 40-year-old Jeff Olson on the 13 counts of vandalism he was charged with after protesting Bank of America using children’s chalk, Reuters reported.
Under California guidelines, Olson could have been sentenced to 13 years in prison and asked to pay $13,000 in fines if convicted. When he spoke out against the absurdity of the possibility last week, Judge Howard Shore issued a gag-order to ensure Olson and others wouldn’t discuss their case further.
“Judge Shore has issued a gag order prohibiting all counsel and parties from commenting or expressing opinions on the case upon penalty of criminal contempt. All I am permitted to say is that I disagree,” Olson said over the weekend in an email to RT.
Olson previously told reporters, “My chalk drawings are clearly free speech and protected by the First Amendment,” and said after his victory on Monday that the dozen jurors apparently agreed.
“The jury sent a strong message that freedom of speech is alive in San Diego,” he told reporters outside of the courthouse.
“I’m really relieved,” Olson added to U-T San Diego. “It’s been an incredibly stressful situation. It feels really good to know that the people of San Diego as represented by the jury are on my side.”
Olson’s supposed crimes consisted of using washable chalk to write messages such as “No Thanks, Big Banks” and “Shame on Bank of America” on the sidewalks outside of branches in the San Diego area throughout 2012 after the Occupy Wall Street movement first began gaining momentum. He told San Diego 6 News last week that he was being prosecuted in part because City Attorney Jan Goldsmith has received campaign contributions from at least two big name financial institutions and, “If I had drawn a little girl’s hopscotch squares on the street, we wouldn’t be here today.”
“His purpose was not malicious. His purpose was to inform,” defense attorney Tom Tosdal told CNS News of Olson.
Former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan has pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge for helping put juvenile defendants behind bars in exchange for bribes. For the rest go HERE
Recent
The Two Samoyed’s Stella and Murphy have been returned to their owner as of June 24, 2013, Some good news for a change.
Calling the Police immediately, would also be a good call to make. If the two in question did steal the animals they should be charged with theft. Anytime you think your dog may have been stolen contact Police and report it. Even if you think your dog is just missing, it does not hurt to let Police know. They are always out and about and may see your pet.
Severe flooding has forced around 1,000 Siksika people from their homes on the Alberta reserve, a large portion of which hugs a stretch of the Bow River about 100 kilometres east of Calgary. The disaster has been unfolding there since Friday, when the river poured over its banks and covered some areas with over a metre of floodwater.
“How are we going to recover from all of this is what went through my thoughts,” Chief Rabbit Carrier told CBC News on Sunday.
“There’s a sense of hopelessness… as a leader you have to overcome that and put emotions aside and start working toward the recovery.”
Chief Rabbit Carrier said the community is still in a state of emergency. The reserve’s recreation centre has been turned into a shelter where a list of items — baby formula, diapers, towels, blankets and non-perishable food — are in high demand. The phone in the centre’s main office rings constantly.
“We’ve been very fortunate that we have not lost anybody,” Chief Rabbit Carrier said.
In the lobby, a group of volunteers hoping to rescue animals trapped in the flood gets organized. They’ve already saved several animals, but plenty of barn animals and pets alike have perished. “If it has a pulse, we’ll save it,” one volunteer said.
The city warned residents, along with their pets, to stay away from the South Saskatchewan River as it prepared for an influx of water not seen in more than 100 years.
States of emergency have been issued for some Manitoba communities as levels of local rivers rise as a result of heavy rain and floodwaters from Alberta.
The Pas along with the Opaskwayak Cree Nation and the Rural Municipality of Kelsey were under a state of emergency on Monday because the levels of the Saskatchewan and Carrot rivers continue to increase.
Meanwhile, at least three other Manitoba municipalities have declared states of emergency as they deal with flash flooding caused by heavy rainfall over the weekend.
Notable names in the colossal leak of offshore financial records include, from left, banking family scion Élie de Rothschild, Imee Marcos of the Philippine political dynasty and millionaire former playboy Gunther Sachs, who married Brigitte Bardot. (CP/Reuters/Getty)
A glimpse at an enormous trove of leaked records about secret companies and accounts is being opened to the public in hope it will shed light on the murky world of offshore finance.
The information, contained in a new online database released Friday night, has the names of more than 100,000 offshore entities — mainly companies and trusts set up in locales such as the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands — and the people associated with them.
CBC News has had exclusive Canadian access to the data for months and has determined that it names at least 550 Canadians. Media outlets worldwide have been reporting on the information leak since it came to light in early April, with far-reaching global repercussions.
The online names database was released late Friday night by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and contains a basic subset of the 260 gigabytes of leaked tax-haven files that the Washington-based group obtained and shared with global news organizations, including the CBC.
The web-based database of names from the leaked tax-haven records maps out links between people and secret offshore entities. (ICIJ)“What we’re doing for the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, and other offshore havens is what’s routinely done in many countries around the world — making the control and ownership of companies a matter of public record,” said Michael Hudson, a senior editor at the journalism consortium.
“This is about transparency and accountability. There is a growing consensus that no one should be able to own a company secretly. No one should be able to hide in the shadows behind a company or trusts.”
The newly released database shows the names and, where available, the shareholders and directors of offshore companies, and visually maps out links between them.
For example, a search of “Ghermezian” finds the name of Alberta businessman David Ghermezian, president of the West Edmonton Mall, and links him to a British Virgin Islands-registered company called Regal Mega Malls Development Corp . and a group of Chinese, Taiwanese and Canadian entrepreneurs.
Ghermezian has told CBC News his offshore company was a legal joint venture to develop a mega-shopping centre in China, but the project fizzled.
The names database does not contain the much vaster cache of potentially confidential information from the offshore data leak, such as bank account numbers, passport data, telephone numbers, financial transactions and emails.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said it hopes people will browse the names and tip off reporters to new revelations about people and companies doing business offshore.
“ICIJ believes many of the best stories may come from crowd-sourcing, when readers explore the database,” the organization said in a press release.
Offshore companies not necessarily illegal
Under Canadian law, it is not illegal to create an offshore company or trust as long as it is properly declared for tax purposes. There are a variety of reasons for setting one up, though all offshore entities typically enjoy strict secrecy under the laws of the jurisdictions in which they’re based.
“We’re not saying that everyone in the database has done something wrong,” Hudson said. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, however, you shouldn’t have anything to fear from this disclosure.”
CBC News has reported that the leaked files show that a Canadian senator and her husband, one of the country’s most prominent class-action lawyers, were beneficiaries of a confidential offshore trust in the Cook Islands that was used to make investments via Bermuda.
High-profile figures, from Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan to an officially bankrupt Swedish real-estate mogul to European banking dynast Élie de Rothschild, have used offshore accounts to hide wealth.
However, the leaked data also discloses dozens of cases of crooks, money-launderers and even democratically elected officials using the secrecy afforded by tax havens.
As CBC News reported recently, for example, the data shows how Russian criminals used offshore companies set up and administered by a Canadian firm in the Caribbean to launder part of a $230-million heist of the Russian treasury.
Other media outlets have found that the current or past leaders of countries such as Azerbaijan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia and Colombia have ties to offshore companies, sometimes in cases that would present serious conflicts of interest.
“A lot of people will be panicked to wonder if their names are on that sort of list and what it’s going to mean for them,” said Raymond Baker, president of Global Financial Integrity, a U.S. non-profit that campaigns to stop illicit movements of money.
“Right now there are millions and millions of entities around the world, shell companies where we don’t know who owns those entities. This is ridiculous. If we want to curtail the flow of illicit money, step one is knowing who owns the businesses that we are dealing with,” he said.
Tax probes underway
While journalists have their hands on the full set of leaked offshore records, so do national tax agencies. Britain, Australia and the United States announced last month that they’ve launched what could be the biggest ever international investigation into tax cheats using the data. Britain said it obtained the leaked files in late 2010.
Canada was offered the data by confidential sources for a price sometime before last December, but rejected it due to the Canada Revenue Agency’s policy at the time of not paying for such information. The federal government overturned that policy in its recent budget, which ushered in a plan to pay tipsters up to 15 per cent where the CRA recovers more than $100,000 from someone using offshore accounts to dodge their tax obligations.
Hudson said the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is hoping people will use its new database to find leads on other potential abuse of tax havens.
“It’s not a panacea. It’s not going to tell you everything. But it’s a tool,” he said.
“It’s a starting place for research for average citizens, for journalists, for government officials to start seeing connections and start documenting who’s out there and who’s using offshore.”
If you have more information on this story, or other investigative tips to pass on, please emailinvestigations@cbc.ca.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that exercises authority over the security of the traveling public in the United States
The TSA was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, sponsored by Don Young in the United States House of Representative and Ernest Hollings in the Senate, passed by the 107th U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. Originally part of the United States Department of Transportation, the TSA was moved to the Department of Homeland Security on March 9, 2003. Source
There seems to be a lot of problems associated with this organization. Abuse of power being the worst. This is a rather long story. The facts are frightening to say the least.
To anyone who is going to fly, be warned it may be a very disturbing, humiliating, experience.
The scanners to begin with may be dangerous. Seems they have not been well tested as to side affects.
Scientists Cast Doubt on TSA Tests of Full-Body Scanners
by Michael Grabell
ProPublica, May 16, 2011
The Transportation Security Administration says its full-body X-ray scanners are safe and that radiation from a scan is equivalent to what’s received in about two minutes of flying. The company that makes them says it’s safer than eating a banana.
But some scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer say the evidence made public to support those claims is unreliable. And in a new letter sent to White House science adviser John Holdren, they question why the TSA won’t make the scanners available for independent testing by outside scientists.
The machines, which are designed to reveal objects hidden under clothing, have the potential to close a significant security gap for the TSA because metal detectors can’t find explosives or ceramic knives, which can be just as sharp as the box cutters that hijackers used on 9/11.
They are also important for TSA’s public relations battle over the alternative, the “enhanced pat-down,” which has bred an epidemic of viral videos: A 6-year-old girl is touched from head to toe. A former Miss USA says she was violated. A software programmer warns a screener, “If you touch my junk, I’m going to have you arrested.”
After the underwear bomber tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day 2009, the TSA ramped up deployment of full-body scanners and plans to have them at nearly every security line by 2014.
There are two types of body scanners. Millimeter wave machines emit a radio frequency similar to cellphones. Backscatters work like a fast-moving X-ray. In the latter, the rays bounce off the skin and create a fuzzy white image of the passenger’s body. Because the beam doesn’t go through the body, most of its radiation is received by the skin.
According to the agency and many radiation experts, the dose is so low, even for children or cancer patients, that someone would have to pass through the machines more than a thousand times before approaching the annual limit set by radiation safety organizations.
But the letter to the White House science adviser, signed by five professors at University of California, San Francisco, and at Arizona State University, points out several flaws in the tests. Studies published in scientific journals in the last few months have also cast doubt on the radiation dose and the machines’ ability to find explosives.
A number of scientists, including some who believe the radiation is trivial, say more testing should be done given the government’s plans to put millions of passengers through the machines. And they have been disturbed by the TSA’s reluctance to do so.
“There’s no real data on these machines, and in fact, the best guess of the dose is much, much higher than certainly what the public thinks,” said John Sedat, a professor emeritus in biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF and the primary author of the letter.
The same group stirred controversy last year when it sent a letter to Holdren arguing that while the overall dose to the body may be low, the TSA hadn’t quantified the dose to the skin. Last fall, FDA and TSA officials released a study that estimated the dose to the skin to be twice the dose to the body, though still extremely low.
In the most recent letter sent to Holdren on April 28, the professors note that the Johns Hopkins lab didn’t test an actual airport machine. Instead, the tests were done on a model built by the manufacturer, Rapiscan, and configured to resemble a system previously tested by the TSA.
The researchers’ names have been kept secret, and the report on the tests is so “heavily redacted” that “there is no way to repeat any of these measurements,” they wrote.
The physics and medical professors also took issue with the device used to measure the radiation. Although the device, known as an ion chamber, is commonly used to test medical equipment, they argue that the detector gets overwhelmed by the amount of radiation the backscatter deposits in a short time and might not provide accurate readings.
Helen Worth, a spokeswoman for the Johns Hopkins lab, referred questions to the TSA.
Part of the trouble is that there is no ideal device for measuring the radiation dose given by backscatter X-rays, said David Brenner, director of the Columbia University Center for Radiological Research. The machines emit a pencil beam that rapidly moves across and up and down the body, he said.
“We are one of the oldest and biggest radiological research centers in the country, and we find this to be a very hard technical problem,” said Brenner, who was not involved with the letter.
Another issue is that there is a lot of uncertainty with the model used to estimate cancer risk from radiation exposure to the skin, said Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a UCSF radiologist who also was not involved in the letter.
Smith-Bindman, who has testified before Congress about excessive radiation from medical scans, studied the TSA reports and said she wasn’t concerned about the airport X-rays.
The risks are “truly trivial,” she wrote in an article for the Archives of Internal Medicine. A passenger would have to undergo 50 airport scans to reach the level of a dental X-ray, 1,000 for a chest X-ray, and 4,000 for a mammogram.
Though imperfect, the available models predict that the backscatters would lead to only six cancers over the course of a lifetime among the approximately 100 million people who fly every year, Smith-Bindman concluded.
“There’s really unnecessary fear related to these scans,” she said. “What I’m not as comfortable with is that there has not been access to these machines. They are not being tested on the same regulatory basis that we see on medical equipment.”
After her article was published, Smith-Bindman was contacted by a TSA public affairs officer. During the conversation, she suggested that she or other outside scientists be allowed to test the machine. The official was shocked by the suggestion and said such access could tip off people who want to avoid detection, Smith-Bindman said.
“It was not appreciating that there’s legitimate scientific questions that have to be balanced against the security questions,” she said.
The TSA did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about why it wouldn’t allow outside testing. But at a congressional hearing in March, Robin Kane, assistant administrator for security technology, said doing so would expose a lot of sensitive information the agency wouldn’t normally share publicly. The machines had already been tested several times, he said, and if set up securely, the agency would allow more testing.
The available information leaves scientists with little to work with. Peter Rez, the Arizona State physics professor who signed the letter to Holdren, has tried to calculate the radiation by examining the handful of backscatter images that have been released publicly.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group, sued the Department of Homeland Security, TSA’s parent agency, in federal court seeking release of 2,000 backscatter images used in testing. But it has not been successful.
The few images that have been made public do not reveal faces or detailed private features. The TSA says the images Rez used are out of date, but Rez says the current image on TSA’s website is unusable.
Using the earlier images, Rez concluded in the Radiation Protection Dosimetry journal that it was highly unlikely the machines could have produced such high-quality images with doses of radiation as low as those described by TSA. He estimated the dose, while still very small, is 45 times higher than the results measured by Johns Hopkins.
Applying Rez’s numbers, Brenner wrote a paper for the journal Radiology, estimating that 100 additional cancers would develop for every 1 billion scans.
For Rez, the real danger occurs if the machine stops in the middle of a scan, allowing the beam to focus on a tiny area for several seconds. Given that the backscatter works with a wheel rotating at a high speed, and that the agency plans to use the scanners continuously 365 days a year, mechanical failures are likely, he said.
The TSA says that the scanners have safety systems, such as automatic shutoffs and emergency stop buttons, that will kill the beam in the event of any problem that could result in abnormal radiation. How those fail-safe systems work isn’t entirely clear.
When Johns Hopkins researchers visited the Rapiscan facility, the automatic termination appeared to work. But the full results of the shutoff tests are redacted.
What’s more, the test system didn’t have an emergency stop button. Source
The question you must ask yourself: Are they telling the truth, when they say the scanners are safe? They of course show you, in all your glorious nakedness. That in of itself is humiliating on it’s own.
Now we must move on to how this so called Security works.
The beginning starts here:
TSA Worker Crimes
This is a rather long list of crimes perpetrated by the Employees of TSA,
Assault, harassment, theft, trying to buy sex, possessing child porn, rape, Statutory Rape, drugs, drugs smuggling, handguns in luggage, domestic violence, grand larceny, sexually abusing two young girls, federal extortion, bribery charges, Running Prostitution Ring, cooking meth, taking bribes, Child Molestation,
To name a few: These are the the type of people who work for the TSA.
Go HERE to read about the crimes of TSA Employees, mentioned above.
Now that you know, what type of people are hired, we can move on to the next step in our journey to enlightenment.
TSA agent forces elderly woman to empty colostomy bag
Rosemary Fecteau, an 87 year old widow from Hershey, Pennsylvania, plans to sue the TSA for forcing her to empty her colostomy bag during a pat-down.
Fecteau, who has had a colostomy bag since a mosh pit injury two years ago, is claiming that the TSA agent humiliated her in front of hundreds of passengers waiting in the security line at the Orlando International Airport yesterday. According to Fecteau, she was selected for a pat-down when the full body scanner detected her colostomy bag. Fecteau, through her lawyer, claims that she told the TSA agent that it was a colostomy bag, but the agent had “never heard of that before.” After patting down the bag, the TSA agent stated that “something feels very strange in there” and requested that Fecteau empty the contents on the inspection table nearby. Fecteau claims when she protested, the TSA agent threatened her with arrest and a $10,000 fine. Fecteau, crying and trembling, emptied her colostomy bag on the table to jeers and laughter from passengers in the security line. The TSA agent scolded Fecteau. “Why didn’t you tell me the bag was full of your crap?”
Fecteau was allowed to board the plane after the incident. A TSA spokesperson who was not aware of this specific incident, said that it appeared the TSA agent involved “acted appropriately”. Source
A TSA spokesperson who was not aware of this specific incident, said that it appeared the TSA agent involved “acted appropriately”.
I be to differ. The agent in question was cruel to and elderly woman. She was absolutely humiliated, beyond anything imaginable. He orders her to empty the bag then goes on to give her Shit for dumping shit out. Excuse the language but this type of behavior is anything but acceptable. The woman had no choice in the matter facing, arrest or a $10,000 fine.
I don’t know what planet the agent is from but on earth this is considered profound abuse of power.
Condoning such an act as the TSA spokesperson did it also an abuse of power in every way imaginable. How dare anyone condone such an action towards an elderly terrified woman. TSA says they train their employees to be sensitive. Well that is a load of BS. A blatant lie if you ask me.
Who is protecting people like this Elderly woman so horrifically, humiliated by the TSA?
This is just one incident there are many more.
Check HEREfor more nightmares the Elderly and Handicapped have been put through at the hands of TSA.
TSA Screening Abuse of Children & Minors
The short list:
Detaining and searching 3 year old;s., Exposes 17-Year-Old ’s Breasts, Baby 18 months old ordered off plane, 5th Grader Was Groped By TSA, TSA molesting child, Eight-Year-Old on TSA Terrorist Watchlist, to name a couple of infringements.
TSA Has No Idea How To Screen A 7-Year-Old With Cerebral Palsy
By Chris Morran April 25, 2012
The tiny (potential) terrorists of the world continue to wreak havoc at airport security checkpoints. We already brought you the story of the 4-year-old who dared to hug her grandmother in view of TSA screeners, and now comes the tale of a 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy whose crutches and leg braces reportedly confounded security personnel at JFK Airport.
The girl’s parents tell TheDaily.com that they know their daughter needs to go through a pat-down when she flies because her crutches and braces throw off the scanners and other detectors.
But, says her father, the family recently missed their flight out of JFK because the TSA screeners were not only rude, but also could not decide how to properly screen his daughter.
Because their daughter is developmentally disabled and can react negatively to being inspected by strangers, the parents say they usually ask the screeners performing the pat-down to introduce themselves to the little girl.
“[T]he woman started screaming at me and cursing me and threatening me,” the father recalls.
Things seemed to be okay after a supervisor decided that searching the girl’s crutches would suffice.
But after the family had been sitting at the gate for an hour, the TSA suddenly decided it hadn’t done its job and it needed everyone to come back to the checkpoint to re-screen the girl.
When that was all done, the family say they attempted to race through the terminal to make their flight but they were too late and had to be re-booked onto a later flight.
The TSA gave Consumerist the following statement:
TSA takes all passengers claims seriously and each one is thoroughly reviewed. A TSA manager determined that a TSA officer did not complete the screening procedure on the child.
When the checkpoint manager learned that the screening was not completed, TSA officers went to the gate and offered to conduct a modified pat-down at the gate, or back at the checkpoint, where there is a separate screening room for privacy. The family ultimately returned to the checkpoint to complete the screening process.
TSA officers strive to screen passengers respectfully while ensuring the safety of all travelers. Source
This type of behavior from TSA employees is not acceptable.
Sexual harassment, TSA agents ‘laugh at travelers’ naked scanner images in backrooms, vandalizing travelers property, reaching into woman’s bra, Women’s Breasts exposed by TSA screeners, TSA pulls down man’s pants, ordered to strip naked for airport security while workers took pictures and video, people sexually assaulted, to name a few.
Flier’s TSA ‘grope’ nightmare
By HEATHER HADDON
March 27, 2011
The skies were a little too friendly for a Brooklyn woman who said her security pat-down at La Guardia Airport last week felt more like fondling than frisking.
“If I had been physically attacked, this would have been a very, very similar experience,” said Nancy Campbell, 33, an urban planner who said she was traumatized by a touchy-feely female TSA agent before her flight to Washington Tuesday.
Campbell had already cleared security and was approaching the gate when the young agent stopped her, told her to drop her stuff and demanded she stand spread-eagled.
UNHAPPY LANDINGS: Brooklynite Nancy Campbell claims her search was like a physical attack.
As passers-by gawked, the TSA agent patted Campbell down, touching her breasts, inner thighs and crotch, the freaked-out flier told The Post.
When she protested, the agent said, “You can either continue on flailing about, or you can let me do my job. If you don’t, you can’t fly.”
The petite Brooklynite was in tears when she boarded her plane after the three-minute ordeal.
Hers is just one of the hundreds of complaints heard since Nov. 1, when the Transportation Security Administration started sending some passengers through full-body scanners to better detect explosives. Those who refused the scan would face a more vigorous pat-down.
But Campbell says she was never asked to step through a scanner. The guard provided no other options to the random pat-downs at the gate.
Putting passengers through enhanced pat-downs after they’ve already cleared security is “very, very strange,” said Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU.
Campbell said two other women were groped during the random checks at Gate 18.
Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman, said the agency has randomly screened bags and travelers at gates since 2008.
Davis would not say if the pat-down described by Campbell broke agency protocols or was overly intrusive. When asked about the rules, Davis said she could not discuss them because of security concerns.
“We will certainly look into the specifics of this passenger’s complaint. Officers are trained to conduct these pat-downs in a professional manner,” she said.
The TSA has received 900 complaints from travelers who underwent or witnessed pat-downs and another 4,515 from those against the public friskings in general.Source
This is how the Department of Homeland Security and TSA protects the people of the US.
The above reports are up to April 2013 only.
Thank you, to those who have come forward and reported all the abuses. Thank you, to all those who have reported and collected all the information. There certainly is a mountain of crimes, being committed in the name of Security.
I will leave you with this last thought.
Disgraced Catholic priest who was defrocked after ‘sexually abusing two young girls’ now works as a TSA airport screener (Thomas Harkins)
A disgraced priest who was kicked out of the Catholic church after he allegedly abused two young girls has found new employment supervising airport security screeners for the TSA.
The post gives Thomas Harkin access thousands of travelers, including untold numbers of children, as they pass through security checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport every day.
And now, a third alleged victim has come forward saying that Harkin molested her up to 15 times when she was 11, including in the rectory of Saint Anthony of Padua parish in Hammonton, New Jersey.
All of the alleged abuse occurred in the 1980s, but none of the alleged victims came forward before the statute of limitations expired, CBS Philadelphia reports.
Harkin could not be prosecuted, but when the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, learned of the allegations in 2002, he was defrocked.
It’s unclear when Harkin landed the job supervising airport screeners, but the Transportation Security Administration says he in is charge of overseeing baggage, not passengers.
Karen Polesir, the Philadelphia spokeswoman with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told the TV station she fears Harkin still has access to any passengers coming through the security gates.
New allegations: A third accuser has come forward to say Harkin molested her up to 15 times at Saint Anthony of Padua parish when she was 11
As the public, we are screened to our underwear getting on a plane, and yet they hire a man like that,’ she said.Harkin, when confronted by CBS Philadelphia, denied that the public was in danger, but refused to comment on his job, on the abuse allegations, or the lawsuit filed by his newest accuser.The TSA says it hired Harkin after he cleared a criminal background check. His security record was clean because he was never arrested on the abuse allegations.However, it’s unknown whether he would have been disqualified even if he had been arrested for child molesting, Huffington Post reports.
The TSA says its background checks search for ’28 disqualifying crimes,’ but the agency doesn’t say what the crimes are, so no one can say whether sexually abusing children disqualifies potential screeners.
Harkin refused to speak with a reporter from CBS Philadelphia who confronted him over the allegations
Father Dan Miller has pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault in Pembroke Court this week. He was originally charged with 12 counts involving young boys while he was a priest at several locations in the Ottawa Valley. A pre-sentence report has been ordered and the sentencing phase is set to begin September 17th. Miller remains out of custody pending the sentencing hearings. Source
For more complete information on Father Dan Miller Go to the link HERE
Canadian clergy and other prominent Roman Catholics publicly accused, sued and or charged in relation to allegations of criminal acts of any nature and/or actions which are unbecoming to that person’s station in life. Please send names and details (newspaper clippings, legal documents) of those who should be added to the list. Also please advise on the outcome of trials or legal action. For information on those charged or to report abases pending or have already gone to trial GoHERE
Another offender recently convicted.
Paul Laframboise given 18 more months
Jun 6, 2013 By Patricia Leboeuf
EMC news -After getting an additional 18 months for molesting four teenage girls, Paul Laframboise started shaking, wringing his hands and muttered “I’m going to die.”
The 74-year-old Fitzroy Harbour man had previously pleaded guilty to several charges including sexual assault, sexual exploitation and sexual interference as well as careless storage of guns.
He has been in jail since October and has served 225 days behind bars.
Laframboise remained stone-faced as Judge Heather Perkins-McVey read impact statements the girls provided, highlighting how profoundly affected they all were by his actions.
Two of the girls wrote about their attempted suicide while another described how she would wake up in tears, terrified that he would find her and hurt her.
She no longer trusts people, particularly older men.
She now lives in constant fear that she will be harmed for stepping forward.
Another blamed herself and fears she is seen differently be her peers. Her self esteem and self worth have been deeply affected. All four bare deep emotional pain from his actions, according to the judge. They also wrote that the media had also caused further harm by publishing lurid and identifying details.
Laframboise previously spoke of his deep remorse, but Perkins-McVey did not feel he truly comprehended the deep turmoil he inflicted on the girls.
“You speak about your life and health,” she said. “You show little realization on how it affects your victims.”
Laframboise’s lawyer Joseph Addelman argued for a more lenient sentence consisting of an additional 34 days, citing that his client was old, sick and this was his first offense. He had also pleaded guilty, allowing his victims to avoid having to testify in court. And he brought forth his own difficult upbringing, his aboriginal status and the unwavering support of his wife of 52 years.
JUDGE SENDS MESSAGE
Perkins-McVey took these aspects into consideration, but ultimately decided she needed to send a message that children are to be cherished and protected.
Laframboise had been an upstanding member of the Fitzroy Harbour community for several years, working as a Sunday school teacher and a school custodian, she said.
After being asked to step down from his church role for unknown reasons, he spiraled downwards, drinking heavily and allegedly occurring $200,000 in gambling debts.
Perkins-McVey said that despite his remorse, he consistently portrayed himself as a victim of the justice system.
Previously in court, he told the judge to “do to me what you politically must” as he no longer trusted Man, was used to being treated like garbage and life was knocking him down.
Once released, he will receive three years of probation and his DNA will be put on record.
As the judge discussed what to do with his weapons, some of which are heirlooms, Laframboise rose to his feet, leaning up against the glass partition of the prisoner’s box. He called over his lawyer, muttering that the judge couldn’t take much more from him.
He was given the option between incarceration in Toronto with treatment on location or staying in Ottawa and receiving treatment afterwards. He chose to remain close to home.
He was given an evaluation by a psychiatrist who access that he was at a low risk to reoffend despite being aroused by adolescents. Source
Man, 74, gets 18 months added on for molesting teens
Saturday, June 1, 2013
By Chloé Fedio, Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA — A 74-year-old former Sunday school teacher wrung his hands and muttered, “I’m going to die,” after he was sentenced to an additional 18 months in jail for molesting four teenage girls.
Paul Laframboise offered the girls money, cigarettes and booze to keep them muted — and told one he would kill himself if she told anyone what he had done.
“He told her where he would put his suicide note,” Justice Heather Perkins-McVey said during her decision.
But the girls did come forward to report what the Fitzroy Harbour man had done between May 2010 and October 2012, and their victim impact statements revealed how “profoundly affected” they were by his actions, Perkins-McVey said.
Two girls described their suicide attempts.
One girl wrote that even though he is locked up, she still lives in fear of him and continues to suffer sleepless nights.
“He will find me and hurt me because I told someone,” she wrote. “I can’t trust people anymore.”
Another girl described how she feels “gross, disgusting and dirty” when she has flashbacks of being molested.
“The effects have been devastating,” Perkins-McVey told Laframboise. “It’s very sad that those young girls feel responsible.”
Laframboise has been in jail since his arrest in October 2012 — and served 225 days in custody before his sentencing. He did not seek bail and pleaded guilty to half a dozen charges, including sexual assault, sexual exploitation and sexual interference.
Laframboise also pleaded guilty to the careless storage of three rifles and a Luger-style handgun.
Despite an expression of remorse and pleas of guilty, which spared the girls from having to testify, Perkins-McVey said Laframboise had “little insight” into the devastating effect of his actions.
“If you truly appreciated that, you wouldn’t see yourself as a victim,” she told him.
Laframboise previously told the court, “Do to me what you politically must.”
He also said, “I have grown quite used to being treated like garbage.”
Perkins-McVey rejected the suggestion that he was “a victim of the justice system.”
Perkins-McVey did consider his aboriginal status, advanced age, health problems and the fact that this is his first conviction. She also considered that he was a positive member of his community for many years, working as a Sunday school teacher, volunteer firefighter and school custodian.
But Perkins-McVey said she needed to send a message that “children are to be cherished and respected.” Source
Recognizing the signs
Following a sexual assault, victims have a wide range of reactions, which are influenced by many factors: their age, personality, the form of sexual assault committed against them, their relationship with their assailant, the degree of violence they experienced and the frequency of the assaults.
However, in the days immediately following an assault, here are some of the common reactions of an adult or underage victim in a state of shock:
Acting angry and/or aggressive with people around them
Intense fear
Feelings of sadness and depression
Frequent mood swings
Problems sleeping
Problems eating
Less tolerance for situations that are perceived as a threat to one’s safety
Sexual assault is a personal and destructive crime. Its effects on you and your loved ones can be psychological, emotional, and/or physical. They can be brief in duration or last a very long time. It is important to remember that there is not one “normal” reaction to sexual assault. Therefore your individual response will be different depending on your personal circumstances. In this section, we explain some of the more common effects that sexual assault victims may experience.
Depression: There are many emotional and psychological reactions that victims of rape and sexual assault can experience. One of the most common of these is depression. The term “depression” can be confusing since many of the symptoms are experienced by people as normal reactions to events. At some point or another, everyone feels sad or “blue.” This also means that recognizing depression can be difficult since the symptoms can easily be attributed to other causes. These feelings are perfectly normal, especially during difficult times.
Depression becomes something more than just normal feelings of sadness when the symptoms last for more than two weeks. Therefore, if you experience five or more of the symptoms of depression over the course of two weeks you should consider talking to your doctor about what you are experiencing. The symptoms of depression may include:
Prolonged sadness or unexplained crying spells
Significant change in weight or appetite
Loss of energy or persistent fatigue
Significant change in sleep patterns (insomnia, sleeping too much, fitful sleep, etc.)
Loss of interest and pleasure in activities previously enjoyed; social withdrawal
Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness or guilt
Pessimism or indifference
Unexplained aches and pains (headaches, stomachaches)
Inability to concentrate, indecisiveness
Irritability, worry, anger, agitation, or anxiety
Thoughts of death or suicide
If you are having suicidal thoughts, don’t wait to get help. Call us or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) at any time.
Depression can affect people of any age, gender, race, ethnicity, or religion. Depression is not a sign of weakness, and it is not something that someone can make him/herself “snap out of.”
Rate your risk for depression
Flashbacks: when memories of past traumas feel as if they are taking place in the current moment. These memories can take many forms: dreams, sounds, smells, images, body sensations, or overwhelming emotions. This re-experience of the trauma often seems to come from nowhere, and therefore blurs the lines between past and present, leaving the individual feeling anxious, scared, and/or powerless. It can also trigger any other emotions that were felt at the time of the trauma.
Some flashbacks are mild and brief, a passing moment, while others may be powerful and last a long time. Many times you may not even realize that you are having a flashback and may feel faint and/or dissociate (a mental process in which your thoughts and feelings may be separated from your immediate reality). If you realize you are in the middle of a flashback:
First, Get Grounded: The first thing to do is sit up straight and put both feet on the floor. This will help you to feel grounded.
Be In the Present: It can be helpful to remind yourself that the event you are reliving happened in the past and you are now in the present. The actual event is over, and you survived.
Breathing: Try focusing on your breathing. One way to do that is to count to four as you breathe in. Count to four as you hold that breath and then count to four as you exhale. If you do this and keep repeating it, you may find that you can become calmer and can be in the present.
Pay Attention to Surroundings: Another way to help yourself feel like you are in the present is to pay attention to your surroundings. What is the light in the room like right now? Touch something around you that is grounded like a table or a chair. What does it feel like? Can you smell anything? Do you hear any sounds?
Self-Soothing: Are there things that normally make you feel safe and secure like wrapping a blanket around yourself or making some tea?
Normal: Also, remember that it can take time to recover. You are not crazy. This is a normal reaction.
Take care of yourself: Give yourself time to recover after a flashback. Reach out to loved ones or counselors who will be supportive.
Rape Trauma: a common reaction to rape or sexual assault. It is a normal human reaction to an unnatural or extreme event. There are three phases to rape trauma:
Acute Phase: occurs immediately after the assault and usually lasts a few days to several weeks. In this phase, you can have many reactions but they typically fall into three different categories:
Expressed: when you are openly emotional
Controlled: when you appear to be without emotion, and act as if “nothing happened” and “everything is fine”
Shocked disbelief: when you react with a strong sense of disorientation
Outward Adjustment Phase: resume what appears to be your “normal” life, but inside you are still suffering from considerable turmoil. This phase has five primary coping techniques:
Minimization: pretending that everything is fine or convincing yourself that “it could have been worse”
Dramatization: you cannot stop talking about the assault and it dominates your life and identity
Suppression: you refuse to discuss the event and act as if it did not happen
Explanation: you analyze what happened, what you did and what the rapist was thinking/feeling
Flight: you try to escape the pain (moving, changing jobs, changing appearance, changing relationships, etc.)
Resolution Phase: the assault is no longer the central focus of your life. While you may recognize that you will never forget the assault, the pain and negative outcomes lessen over time. Often you will begin to accept the rape as part of your life and choose to move on.
NOTE: This model assumes that you will take steps forward and backwards in your healing process and that while there are phases it is not a linear progression and will be different for every person.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: a normal human reaction to an extreme or abnormal situation. Each person has a different threshold for what is perceived as a traumatic event. PTSD is not a rare or unusual occurrence, in fact, many people experience PTSD as a result of a traumatic experience such as rape or sexual assault. You may be experiencing PTSD if you have experienced the following symptoms for at least a month:
Shown symptoms of intense horror, helplessness, or fear
Experienced distressing memories of the event
Regularly avoided things or triggers that remind you of the event
Shown significant impairment or distress due to the event
Shown at least two symptoms of increased arousal (sleep difficulties, difficulty concentrating, hyper vigilance, an exaggerated startle response, or irritability or outbursts of anger/rage)
Pregnancy: Because rape, just like consensual sex, can lead to pregnancy, it is important for female victims to be tested after an assault. If you need additional information visit Medline Plus
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs):
Victims of sexual violence are at risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections.
If you went to the emergency room for a rape exam, you should have been offered preventive treatment (antibiotics) for sexually transmitted infections and given information about where to go for follow-up testing.
If you need more information about this, or did not receive preventive care, call us and we can help you figure out what resources are available.
If you did not get medical care after your attack, it’s still important to get tested for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.
The Centers for Disease Control recommend follow-up testing two weeks after a sexual assault and blood tests to rule out HIV infection 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months after an assault.
If left untreated, STIs and HIV can cause major medical problems, so it’s very important to get tested (and treated, if necessary) as soon as possible.
Suicide
Some survivors of sexual assault may get so depressed that they think about ending their own life. Suicidal thoughts should be taken very seriously.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please get help immediately.
If you have already taken steps, or feel that you can’t avoid harming yourself, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.
You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for help 24 hours a day at 800-273-TALK (8255). If you are having suicidal thoughts or you know someone who is, they can listen and help.
If you are worried that a loved one is contemplating suicide, it’s okay to ask them about it directly. Suicide experts say that asking someone about suicidal thoughts will not lead them to consider suicide if they’re not already contemplating it.
Effects for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Assault:
There are many reactions that survivors of rape and sexual assault can have. But for adult survivors of childhood sexual assault there are reactions that may either be different or stronger than for other survivors. These include:
Setting limits/boundaries: because your personal boundaries were invaded at a young age by someone that was trusted and depended on, you may have trouble understanding that you have the right to control what happens to you.
Memories/flashbacks.
Anger: as a child, your anger was powerless and had little to no effect on the actions of your abuser. For this reason, you may not feel confident that your anger will be useful or helpful.
Grieving/mourning: being abused as a child means the loss of many things: childhood experiences, trust, perceived innocence, and a normal relationship with family members (especially if the abuser was a family member). You must be allowed to name those losses, grieve them, and then move forward.
Guilt/shame/blame: you may carry a lot of guilt because you may have experienced pleasure or because you did not try to stop the abuse. There may have been silence surrounding the abuse that led to feelings of shame. It is important to understand that it was the adult who abused his/her position of authority and should be held accountable, not you
Trust: learning to trust again may be very difficult for you.
Coping skills: as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, you may have developed skills in order to cope with the trauma. Some of these are healthy (possibly separating yourself from certain family members, seeking out counseling, etc.); some are not (drinking or drug abuse, promiscuous sexual activity, etc.).
Self-esteem/isolation: low self-esteem is a result of all the negative messages you received and internalized from your abusers. And because entering into an intimate relationship involves trust, respect, love, and the ability to share, you may flee from intimacy or hold on too tightly for fear of losing the relationship.
Sexuality: many survivors have to deal with the fact that their first sexual experience came as a result of sexual abuse. You may experience the return of body memories while engaging in a sexual activity with another person.
Body Memories: when the memories of the abuse you experienced take the form of physical problems that cannot be explained by the usual means (medical examinations, etc.). These maladies are often called “psychosomatic symptoms” which does not, as many people think, mean that it is “in your head.” Rather, it means that the symptoms are due to the connection between the mind and the body. Physical problems that can come of these somatic memories include:
The Growing Global Challenge to Monsanto’s Monopolistic Greed
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
May 25, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – The common problem we face is the power of concentrated wealth and monopolistic corporate interests. This has created a crony capitalist economy that uses government to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the people, often threatening our basic necessities for life. A clear example of this is found in the behavior of the chemical and seed corporation, Monsanto.Monsanto threatens the world’s food supply; this is a major challenge of our era. This struggle is central to the global ecosystem, economy and energy crises. Monsanto also pushes poisonous chemicals into the environment and promotes agricultural practices that exacerbate climate change.
Monsanto’s actions truly affect each of us. They put their profits over the need for healthy foods, diverse seed supplies and the stability of the agricultural economy. They employ a variety of tools to control access to seeds and aggressively push genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and toxic chemicals despite serious safety concerns about them. And they accomplish this with great help from the US government.
When President Obama appointed a Monsanto lobbyist, Michael Taylor, as the “food czar” (officially the deputy commissioner for foods) – avoiding the Senate confirmation process, which would have brought public attention to the appointment – it was one more example of how corrupted both parties have become by corporate influence.
A global grassroots movement is building to challenge Monsanto as more people realize that we are in a struggle for our survival. May 25 is a global day of action against Monsanto taking place in hundreds of cities and 41 countries. Monsanto must be stopped before its unfettered greed destroys our health and environment. We urge you to join the effort to stop Monsanto.
Monsanto: A Threat to Public Health and the Environment
Monsanto’s products increase the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, water and energy. At a time when the world needs to be making a transition away from the destructive impacts of energy and chemical-intensive agriculture toward local and organic food and farming, Monsanto is pulling the world in the opposite direction.
Monsanto began as a chemical company in 1901. In the 1930s, it was responsible for some of the most damaging chemicals in our history – polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB’s, and dioxin. According to a Food & Water Watch corporate profile, a single Monsanto plant in Sauget, Illinois, produced 99 percent of PCB’s until they were banned in 1976. PCBs are carcinogenic and harmful to multiple organs and systems. They are still illegally dumped into waterways, where they accumulate in plants and food crops, as well as fish and other aquatic organisms, which enter the human food supply. The Sauget plant is now the home of two Superfund sites.
Dioxin is the defoliant used in Vietnam known as Agent Orange. It is one of the most dangerous chemicals known, a highly toxic carcinogen linked to 50 illnesses and 20 birth defects. Between 1962 and 1971, 19 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam. A class action lawsuit filed by Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange was settled for $180 million. And a Monsanto plant that made dioxin in Times Beach, Missouri, poisoned the area so greatly that the town has been wiped from the map. Thousands of people had to be relocated and it is now also a superfund site. Consistent with their method of operation, Monsanto has denied responsibility for the harm these chemicals have caused.
Their biggest selling chemical worldwide is the herbicide glyphosate, sold under the name RoundUp. Monsanto markets it as a safe herbicide and has made a fortune from it. Sales of Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides accounted for 27 percent of Monsanto’s total 2011 net sales. Monsanto engineers genetically modified seeds, branded as “Roundup Ready,” to resist Roundup so that the herbicide is absolutely necessary for those who buy these seeds. Roundup Ready seeds have been Monsanto’s most successful genetically modified product line and have made Roundup the most widely used herbicide in the history of the world.
Roundup is toxic, known to cause cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, birth defects and infertility. A 2012 European Report found that the, “Industry has known from its own studies since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses” and that industry has known “since 1993 that these effects also occur at lower and mid doses.” This information was not made public, and both Monsanto and the European government misled people by telling them glyphosate was safe – as did the US government.
In response to Monsanto’s denial of this toxicity, Earth Open Source explicitly pointed to studies, including some funded by Monsanto, that showed “glyphosate causes birth defects in experimental animals” and also causes “cancer, genetic damage, endocrine disruption and other serious health effects. Many of these effects are found at very low, physiologically relevant doses.”
Before the use of glyphosate-resistant seeds, farmers used lower quantities of Roundup for fear of killing their own plants (since the herbicide kills anything green). But, a 2012 report found that with resistant seeds, “the herbicide can be sprayed in massive amounts, often from planes, near homes, schools and villages, resulting in massive increases in cancer and birth defects.”
In addition, farmers are discovering Roundup resistant “super weeds” that are not killed by the herbicide. An Arkansas farmer tells US News “This is not a science fiction thing, this is happening right now. We’re creating super weeds.” Indeed, there are now 24 Roundup resistant weeds that have been reported. In response to the appearance of these weeds, a report found: “farmers … use progressively more glyphosate as well as mixtures of other even more toxic herbicides.” In fact, farmers who grow genetically modified crops use about 25 percent more herbicides than farmers who use traditional seeds.
Monsanto produces a variety of pesticides that are less well known. Author Jill Richardson reports that these include “a number of chemicals named as Bad Actors by Pesticide Action Network.” They include known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors and other toxins such as Alachlor, Acetochlor, Atrazine, Clopyralid, Dicamba and Thiodicarb.
Not only does Monsanto never take responsibility for the impact of its poisonous chemicals, but they do their best to prevent research showing toxic effects. For example, in 2011, Monsanto acquired Beeologics, a company dedicated to restoring the health of the bee population, amid scientific and media speculation that an overuse of pesticides was to blame for dwindling bee populations.
Monsanto also threatens the sustainability of agriculture because its products require the use of larger quantities of water and fossil fuels in farming. While genetically engineered crops are supposed to be more drought resistant, the opposite turns out to be true. Don Huber, a science expert, notes “It takes twice as much water to produce a pound of a Roundup-ready crop soybean plant treated with glyphosate, as it does with soybean plant that’s not treated with glyphosate.”
Monsanto is a major threat to climate change due to its energy-intensive agricultural model and promotion of ethanol as a fuel source. The Organic Consumers Association adds it all up: “All told, the production and processing of Monsanto’s GMO crops, from deforestation to fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, polluting factory farms, and fuel-intensive food processing and distribution, is estimated to produce up to 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
As a result of Monsanto’s marketing, there are a lot of myths about GMOs. The truth is that GMO foods are different from traditional foods and are neither more nutritious – nor have they been proven to be safe to eat. Limited studies so far indicate that GMO foods may cause kidney and liver damage. GMO crops do not produce larger crop yields or make farmers’ lives easier, nor are they a key to feeding the world. The use of GMO seeds does environmental damage by increasing the use of pesticides, fossil fuels and water. And they make the world’s biggest environmental problem, climate change, worse.
Monsanto: A Threat to Biodiversity and Independent Agriculture
One of the keys to sustainability and durability in times of environmental stress is biodiversity. This means the existence of many varieties of plants and the insects, fungi and bacteria they require for survival so that food can be produced under different conditions. With climate change upon us, the environment is in a state of great stress: more extreme weather, new varieties of insects moving from south to north and new weeds are becoming common. This is a time when biodiversity is more important than ever.
Yet years of chemical-based agriculture have poisoned the air, water, soil and food supplies, which has killed many living things and decreased biodiversity. In addition to causing disease in humans, the use of herbicides and pesticides is contributing to a rapid species extinction of beneficial plants, insects and animals.
Monsanto is pushing agriculture toward less biodiversity by concentrating the world’s seed supply under its control. Through promotion of their genetically altered crops, contamination of traditional seeds and the practice of monopolization, Monsanto is rapidly dominating our global food system.
Monsanto’s genes are currently found in 40 percent of the crops grown in the United States. A March 2013 report found 86 percent of corn, 88 percent of cotton and 93 percent of soybeans farmed in the US are now genetically engineered (GE) varieties, making the option of farming non-GE crops increasingly difficult. As GE crops spread and infect or mix with traditional crops, it is becoming harder to preserve traditional seeds. This creates a great problem because, as we discussed above, GE crops are unsustainable for a variety of reasons.
Monsanto’s efforts to dominate the market began with buying up the competition as early as 1982. In the decade after the mid-90s, Monsanto spent more than $12 billion to buy at least 30 businesses contributing to the decline of independent seed companies. One of the big purchases that consolidated the market was a 1997 purchase of Holden Foundation Seeds and two Holden seed distributors for $1.02 billion. Holden was the country’s last big independent producer of foundation seed. The company was in the Holden family for three generations. They produced seed that was planted on about 35 percent of the acreage set aside for corn and were the biggest American producer of foundation corn, the parent seed from which hybrids are made.
Jill Richardson describes how aggressively Monsanto uses their market power “to get seed dealers to not stock many of their competitors’ products … they restrict the seed companies’ ability to combine Monsanto’s traits with those of their competitors. And, famously, farmers who plant Monsanto’s patented seeds sign contracts prohibiting them from saving and replanting their seeds.” They promised rebates to farmers who ensured that Monsanto products made up at least 70 percent of their inventory to keep competitors out of the market. As a result of this, through either purchases or forcing competitors into bankruptcy, the number of independent seed producers has dropped from 300 to under 100 since the mid-90s. Monsanto also required that their Roundup Ready seeds be used only with Roundup, thereby keeping generic, less expensive competitors out of the market.
The result has been increased prices for farmers and consumers. Since 2001, Monsanto has more than doubled the price of soybean and corn seeds and farmers have been told to expect prices to keep increasing. According to a March 2013 report, from 1995 to 2011, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent; cotton prices spiked 516 percent and corn seed prices are up by 259 percent. The rising cost has had a deadly effect in India, where more than 270,000 farmers who grew Monsanto’s Bt Cotton committed suicide, many by drinking pesticides, because of endless growing debt. Nonetheless, the greatest threat from the loss of biodiversity in the seed markets is the ability to adapt to increasingly unpredictable climate changes. As Salon reports: “Many of the seed breeders and retailers Monsanto purchased were regional experts, familiar with the soil and adept at breeding crops suited to the vagaries of local pests and climate. That sprawling network of local knowledge and experimentation has been severely thinned.” Richardson adds, when crops are “too genetically homogenous, then they are vulnerable to a single disease or pest that can wipe them out.”
A March 2013 report, Seed Giants vs. US Farmers, found that Monsanto’s seed dominance is also shrinking the number of independent farmers. According to the report, as of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states. Some of these farmers are sued because pollen brings Monsanto products onto their farms. There are so many cases it is impossible to summarize them in this article, but the Organic Consumers Association has an excellent web site for more information on this and other Monsanto controversies.
Monsanto: Leading Example of Corrupted Government Unable to Operate in the Public Interest
You would think this concentration of industry would lead to antitrust litigation. In fact, shortly after taking office, the Obama administration began an antitrust investigation, taking over from several states that were looking into the market practices of Monsanto. The investigation was announced with much fanfare, but last November, without even a press release, the Department of Justice closed the investigation, leaving us to conclude that it may have been a tactic to thwart state efforts.
At the beginning of the antitrust investigation, there was hope that a marketplace with more diverse seed sources and competition could exist in the future, but with the Obama administration’s decision to drop the investigation, Monsanto domination of the market has been given the imprimatur of legality and the abusive practices Monsanto uses to buy or destroy competition have been ratified.
Monsanto exemplifies political connections, the revolving door, bought-and-paid-for corporatist governance and so much that is wrong with the way the US government operates. Open Secrets reports Monsanto is one of the biggest spenders in Washington. It spent $6 million lobbying in DC in 2012, the biggest agribusiness spender. The next was Archer Daniel Midlands, spending just over $1 million.
Monsanto epitomizes the revolving door between industry and government. At least seven Monsanto officials have served in government positions. Michael Taylor left the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1984 to join King & Spalding, a law firm that lobbies for Monsanto. He returned to the FDA in 1991 and then left again to return to Monsanto in 1994 as their vice president for public policy, only to return to the FDA again as the current “food czar,” where he has led major advances for genetically modified foods. Taylor played the lead role in introducing rBGH (bovine growth hormone), which was used to increase cows’ milk production, into the US market in the early 90s along with two other Monsanto-FDA door revolvers, Dr. Margaret Miller and Susan Sechen, both from the Office of New Animal Drugs.
Other door revolvers include high level officials: Arthur Hayes, commissioner of the FDA from 1981 to 1983 and consultant to Searle’s public relations firm, which later merged with Monsanto; Michael A. Friedman, former acting commissioner of the FDA, who later went on to become senior vice president for clinical affairs at Searle; and Virginia Weldon, a member of the FDA’s Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee, after retiring as vice president for public policy at Monsanto.
But it is not only the revolving door that is the problem. It is also that some top government officials “work” for Monsanto while they are in office. One example took place during the Clinton administration when the French government was reluctant to allow Monsanto’s seeds on French soil. First the US Trade Representative Charlene Barschefsky urged the French government to allow the seeds. When that did not work, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lobbied for Monsanto in France. When that failed, President Clinton himself took up the task of giving Prime Minister Lionel Jospin “an earful” about Monsanto. Even that did not work. Finally, Vice President Gore pushed Jospin – who finally gave in.
This is just one example of many in which the US government foreign policy apparatus operated on behalf of Monsanto. Five years of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables during the Bush and Obama administrations reveal that the State Department lobbied for Monsanto products worldwide and pushed genetically modified foods wherever it could. It is almost like the US government is a marketing arm for Monsanto and genetically modified foods. Indeed, in August 2011, WikiLeaks exposed that American diplomats requested funding to send lobbyists for the biotech industry to hold talks with politicians and agricultural officials in “target countries” in areas like Africa and Latin America.
There is no doubt that in the new massive trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the trade agreement being negotiated with Europe, the United States will seek to include protections for Monsanto and GMOs. Europeans involved in every aspect of agriculture or food safety are very concerned that lowered trade barriers will allow GMOs into Europe. In Europe, GMOs are currently grown on less than 1 percent of farmland.
When people try to use democratic tools to change Monsanto’s behavior, Monsanto and its allies spend millions to confuse voters and create fear. That was clear in the California initiative in November 2012 in which tens of millions were spent to prevent the requirement that foods be labeled so consumers would know whether they contained GMOs or not. Consumer groups continue to push for labeling. Another vote will be held in 2013 in Washington State, and Vermont may become the first state to pass a law requiring labeling.
Although labeling of foods that contain GMOs is required in Europe and US corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s comply with these rules in Europe, Monsanto and its allies are taking the fight to prevent labeling in the United States to new levels. As more state-level battles and an energized grass roots develop, Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association reports Monsanto and allies are trying to subvert these efforts by getting the corrupt federal government to pass a law forbidding states to pass labeling laws.
Impossible, you think? Well, Monsanto has done the seemingly impossible before. Most recently, one legislative victory that enraged people was the Monsanto Protection Act (actually misleadingly named the Farmer Assurance Provision) which was buried in a spending bill earlier this year and which protects Monsanto from the courts. For example, under the new law, federal courts are not allowed to stop the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future. There are now efforts to add a rider to the farm bill to repeal this measure.
Stopping Monsanto and Moving to Sensible Agricultural Policy
The first step to stopping the entrenchment of genetically modified foods in our food supply is labeling. As noted above, states are moving forward on that front, despite the efforts of Monsanto to stop them. This is the big battle because when foods are labeled, consumers have the power of knowledge and can choose not to buy them. Cummins reports that in Europe, the labeling of foods was the key to stopping the development of genetically modified foods.
One of the tools we must use is the boycott. Large food and beverage corporations that sell billions of dollars of organic and natural foods bankrolled the industry opposition to GMO labeling in California. Brand names like Kashi, Cascadian Farms, Bear Naked, Honest Tea, Odwalla, Naked Juice and others need to be told that we will not buy their products if they continue to fund ignorance by blocking GMO labeling.
To protect our food and health, the United States needs to adopt the precautionary principle, which means products must be proven to be safe before they are allowed on the market. The US applies a sham standard of “substantial equivalence” which avoids the need to test for safety. Applying the precautionary principle to Monsanto’s products would mean a moratorium on them until their safety can be demonstrated by independent (non-corporate-funded), long-term tests for food safety as well as safety for agriculture. Our health should come before Monsanto’s profits.
People need to be empowered not just with credible information about genetically modified foods and how to avoid them – that is, buy organic and non-processed foods – but also with access to courts to sue if agriculture, the environment or their health is damaged by GMOs. The repeal of the “Monsanto Protection Act” is a first step in that direction, but people also need to have a greater ability to sue corporations that harm them.
We advocate a two-path approach – protest what you do not like and build what you want. That means that while we encourage community-supported agriculture, organic and local gardening, preparing your own non-processed foods and working to change laws, we also urge protest. This May 25, nearly 300 protests are being held all over the world against Monsanto in the March Against Monsanto organized by Occupy Monsanto. Join these protests.
As it is with many other issues, the future of the world’s food supply boils down to the people vs. concentrated wealth and corporate power. It highlights the corruption of government and the need for a real democracy in which people are allowed to make choices for themselves on basic issues like what kind of food they eat and what kind of plants they want to grow. Popular resistance to concentrated wealth is growing as more people demand the right to control their own lives.
You can learn more and hear our interview with Ronnie Cummins, Patty Lovera and Adam Eidinger, “Reasons to Protest Monsanto” at Clearing The FOG.
Police in Renfrew are now saying that a reported attempted abduction Monday (May 13) did not happen. They are not saying who made up the story but a full investigation of the reported attempt to grab a 10 year old girl has led them to determine the incident never happened. Police thank members of the public for their assistance and they are continuing to deal with the situation. Making a false police report can lead to serious criminal charges.
Thank you to all who passed on the story. Everyone should be relieved it was bogus. At any rate Always keep a watchful eye on children as it could happen, fortunately this time it was a false alarm. Next time it may not be. Again thank you to all who forwarded the story and please forward this one to everyone you may have sent the previous one to as well, so everyone will know the truth.
Sent out the story to everyone the other day. It has since been found that the report was false. So if you come here to view the story it has been deleted.
ATTEMPTED ABDUCTION IN RENFREW BOGUS
May 15 2013
Police in Renfrew are now saying that a reported attempted abduction Monday (May 13) did not happen. They are not saying who made up the story but a full investigation of the reported attempt to grab a 10 year old girl has led them to determine the incident never happened. Police thank members of the public for their assistance and they are continuing to deal with the situation. Making a false police report can lead to serious criminal charges.
Thank you to all who passed on the story. Everyone should be relieved it was bogus. At any rate Always keep a watchful eye on children as it could happen, fortunately this time it was a false alarm. Next time it may not be. Again thank you to all who forwarded the story and please forward this one to everyone you may have sent the previous one to as well, so everyone will know the truth.
This is rather a long read. It is important that we all know the facts. If banks were properly regulated this would not have happened. It all started back in 2008 in the US and is still continuing. The question we all should be asking is, why is it those who created the problem never get punished?
Cyprus Steal The West’s Premeditated Bank Robbery
By Jeff Nielson 04/01/13
VANCOUVER, Canada (Bullions Bull Canada) — The veils have been removed. The open criminality of Western regimes is now on display for all the world to see. Bank robbery is now official government policy across the West with no debate and no voting.
As was noted in my original commentary on this government-perpetrated crime, it was immediately obvious that this was an entirely staged/scripted event. To fully comprehend the premeditated nature of this crime requires a detailed examination of the chronology.
December 10, 2012:
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the UK Bank of England jointly release a “position paper” titled “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” Sounds wonderful: “resolving.” They are finally coming up with a plan to put the “Too Big To Fail” fraud factories out of our misery. Wrong.
This document is a blueprint for precisely the opposite: propping up these TBTF monstrosities forever. This manifesto was simply coming up with new “proposals for financing” — i.e. feeding the Beast. And one of these proposals was the “bail-in.”
…[Item 19] The introduction of a statutory bail-in resolution tool (the power to write down or convert into equity the liabilities of a failing firm)… [emphasis mine]
Why was there no rioting in the streets of the U.S. and UK? Why were there no scathing condemnations from our wonderful “free press?” In fact, why did the media not even mention the “bail-in” was now government policy for the U.S. and UK?
And what about our “leaders,” the politicians? Why did not a single one of these stalwarts in the U.S./UK utter so much as a “peep” about bank robbery becoming official government policy in the United States and United Kingdom?
Because when these traitor governments made this their “official policy” they never fully defined what they really meant by “bail-in.” Here is as close as the FDIC/Bank of England come to telling the truth:
…A bail-in tool would enable the U.K. authorities to recapitalize an institution by allocating losses to its shareholders and unsecured creditors…[emphasis mine]
Why were no UK politicians protesting the “bail-in?” Because when the Bank of England spoke of “allocating losses to…unsecured creditors” no one would have dreamed that what this central bank really meant was stealing the money out of peoples’ bank accounts.
It should be noted that while that provision was explicitly designated as applying only to “the U.K. regime” that it can be implicitly understood that it applies to the U.S. as well. While the provisions for “the U.S. regime” do not use the term “bail-in,” here is the vague language which was employed:
…Title II [of the Dodd-Frank Act] requires that the losses of any financial company placed into receivership will not be borne by taxpayers, but by common and preferred stockholders, debt holders, and other unsecured creditors… [emphasis mine]
December 10, 2012:
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the UK Bank of England jointly release a “position paper” titled “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” Sounds wonderful: “resolving.” They are finally coming up with a plan to put the “Too Big To Fail” fraud factories out of our misery. Wrong.
This document is a blueprint for precisely the opposite: propping up these TBTF monstrosities forever. This manifesto was simply coming up with new “proposals for financing” — i.e. feeding the Beast. And one of these proposals was the “bail-in.”
…[Item 19] The introduction of a statutory bail-in resolution tool (the power to write down or convert into equity the liabilities of a failing firm)… [emphasis mine]
Why was there no rioting in the streets of the U.S. and UK? Why were there no scathing condemnations from our wonderful “free press?” In fact, why did the media not even mention the “bail-in” was now government policy for the U.S. and UK?
And what about our “leaders,” the politicians? Why did not a single one of these stalwarts in the U.S./UK utter so much as a “peep” about bank robbery becoming official government policy in the United States and United Kingdom?
Because when these traitor governments made this their “official policy” they never fully defined what they really meant by “bail-in.” Here is as close as the FDIC/Bank of England come to telling the truth:
…A bail-in tool would enable the U.K. authorities to recapitalize an institution by allocating losses to its shareholders and unsecured creditors…[emphasis mine]
Why were no UK politicians protesting the “bail-in?” Because when the Bank of England spoke of “allocating losses to…unsecured creditors” no one would have dreamed that what this central bank really meant was stealing the money out of peoples’ bank accounts.
It should be noted that while that provision was explicitly designated as applying only to “the U.K. regime” that it can be implicitly understood that it applies to the U.S. as well. While the provisions for “the U.S. regime” do not use the term “bail-in,” here is the vague language which was employed:
…Title II [of the Dodd-Frank Act] requires that the losses of any financial company placed into receivership will not be borne by taxpayers, but by common and preferred stockholders, debt holders, and other unsecured creditors… [emphasis mine]
The official policy of the U.S. government is precisely the same as that of the UK (hence the joint “position paper”). The FDIC simply didn’t articulate its own plans for bank robbery to the same degree. Put another way: There were seven sections detailing how the UK would “resolve” these “systemically important institutions” (but no mention of bank-robbery) versus only two sections for the U.S.
Now we come to the remainder of the chronology, which not only proves that the Cyprus Steal was planned (at least) as far back as December 2012, but that the fix was in: our traitor governments had already reached agreement with the traitor government of Cyprus to perpetrate this crime.
March 15:
The EU banking cabal and its puppet politicians “surprise” the world by announcing a plan to steal money out of the bank accounts of ordinary people in order to “recapitalize” a private bank in Cyprus, while a publicly owned bank would be liquidated and also fed to the private bank. Victimizing the people twice in order to temporarily prop up another reckless/insolvent fraud factory.
As noted previously, this was obviously a proposal intended to fail in this silly, two-act theater. This was proven by the zealous insistence of the European Central Bank that the original proposal must “magnify the hit” on smaller depositors. This would ensure maximum public outrage, and guarantee that the politicians would vote against it.
The ECB is the third member of the Western Troika, along with the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. They were solely responsible for the final language of the original proposal; solely responsible for its rejection.
March 19:
Cyprus politicians (government and opposition alike) unanimously reject the “bail-in.” What a surprise!
March 21:
Stephen Harper, leader of Canada’s Conservative government officially tables the 2013 Canadian Budget, which makes the “bail-in” the official law of Canada.
[page 145] The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks…
As with the U.S. and UK, the Canadian document contains nothing but weasel-words that never fully define what “bail-in” really means — i.e. robbing peoples’ bank accounts to temporarily prop-up reckless/parasitic banks.
Is Stephen Harper the most stupid politician in the Western world? Two days after the government of Cyprus unanimously rejects bank robbery as a means to “recapitalize banks,” Harper makes this the official law of Canada. Would he really want to go into the next election as “Stephen Harper: Bank Robber of the West” or did Harper know something then, almost no one else knew?
March 25:
The government of Cyprus approves the “new and improved” Cyprus Steal amid reports that the Big Money had already been warned about this bank robbery, and had moved their own money out weeks/months ahead of time.
Now our picture is complete.
We have our traitor governments planning this bank robbery months in advance and warning the big-money oligarchs so they would not be affected. We have them then staging an “emergency.”
The TG’s then tell us that because of this “emergency” they need to instantly raise a lot of money, and so they don’t have time to fairly and systematically “tax” people with some broad, general levy; rather, they “need to” simply seize wealth from a particular group of targeted victims.
This time it was stealing money out of bank accounts. Next time it might be confiscating pensions. The blueprint (i.e. script) is now firmly in place:
(Secretly) plan the robbery.
Warn the Big Money (so all their wealth is moved to safety).
Announce/stage an “emergency.”
Perpetrate the theft.
The criminality of the West’s traitor governments is now a matter of record. Their written confessions are contained in official, public documents.
The question then becomes: What will be the response of the Sheep — i.e. the pseudo-citizens of these regimes? Will they simply sit back and submit to a “taxation regime” that has now abandoned even the pretense of legitimacy?
If the answer to that question is “yes” then one can only conclude the Sheep deserve to be robbed. They elect these traitor governments. They continue snoozing when the politicians publicly announce they plan on openly stealing from them. They allow themselves to be robbed.
You can’t help victims who refuse to help themselves.
What about the rest of us, the remaining citizens of these once-legitimate regimes? We have no choice but to protect ourselves — not with guns, but with our brains.
We must therefore divest ourselves of as much paper as possible, with “physical” gold and silver bullion being the best/safest option. Do not pump every last penny of your wealth into our “bubble” real-estate markets. They are all doomed to suffer major crashes.
Obviously, we will receive no further “warnings” from our governments. Source
‘It’s robbery!’ New Cyprus bombshell as Britons are told they may lose EVERYTHING over £85k
Bank of Cyprus will see 37.5% of deposits over £85k converted into shares
Laiki Bank customers are also reported to be facing the loss of 80%
Experts say there is a good chance that shares will be worthless
By Dan Atkinson And Ian Gallagher
March 31 2013
British expats in Cyprus face a near-total wipe-out of any deposits over £85,000 as the full nightmare of the stricken island’s EU bailout became clear yesterday.
Although it was known that the wealthiest savers would take a large hit from last week’s €10 billion (£8.5 billion) EU rescue deal, the loss is far greater than feared.
The blow will fall on customers of the country two biggest banks – Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank.
Bank of Cyprus savers will see 37.5 per cent of any deposits over €100,000 (£85,000) converted into shares in the bank, with a strong possibility that these will prove worthless. Another 40 per cent will be repaid only if the bank does well in future, while 22.5 per cent will go into a contingency fund that could be subject to further write-offs.
Laiki Bank customers are also reported to be facing the loss of 80 per cent of their deposits above the £85,000 limit.
An early bailout plan – highlighted by The Mail on Sunday two weeks ago – would have seen the losses shared across all bank customers, regardless of their balance.
However, that plan was voted down by the Cypriot parliament, leaving the country in urgent need of a new solution to raise its €5.8 billion contribution towards the bailout.
The deal – which was clinched last Monday between Cyprus, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund – made clear that richer bank customers would shoulder a much larger bill.
Although it is not known how many of the 60,000 British expats living on the island have deposits of more than £85,000, it is likely that a considerable number will be caught in the net.
Neil Hodgson, 48, who moved to Paphos, on the south-west coast of the island, six years ago, said he has lost nearly £200,000. The former farmer, who has two accounts with Bank of Cyprus, added: ‘I had more than €300,000 in my deposit account and €20,000 in my current account. When I went to the bank the other day I was told the total balance for both is €100,000.
‘They were unable to explain how this had been worked out but indicated I might get some back at a later stage.
‘I checked online and it confirmed that the €20,000 in my current account remains, but that I only have €80,000 in my savings account. It’s robbery, plain and simple.’
Laiki Bank customers are also reported to be facing the loss of 80 per cent of their deposits above the £85,000 limit
Banks in Cyprus are open for normal business but with strict restrictions on how much money their clients can access, after being shut for nearly two weeks
Mr Hodgson, from Newcastle upon Tyne, whose wife died two years ago, said he moved to Cyprus believing he was destined for a ‘happy life of semi-retirement’.
‘Our farm in Ayrshire was bought by a mining company and I came into a lot of money,’ he added. ‘We moved to Cyprus for the sunshine and easy life but it has turned into a nightmare.
‘My big mistake was to move all my money here, but at the time things were very stable. Most of the Brits here had the foresight to move their money in the last few months, but I genuinely thought it would be OK. I’m not sure what the future holds now.’
The Treasury has said it will compensate any of the 3,000 British Service personnel facing losses.
Those hit hardest include thousands of wealthy Russians who have deposited millions of euros on the stricken island. Peter Dixon, strategist at European bank Commerzbank, said: ‘These suggested new sacrifices being demanded of better-off depositors sound even worse than we assumed.
‘The problems in Cyprus are twofold. First, the central bank ignored the huge build-up of debt. There was a problem of mismanagement.
‘Secondly, the Cypriots essentially imposed these tough solutions on themselves and the eurozone rubber-stamped them.’
Last week markets took fright at suggestions that the Cyprus model could be a blueprint for future bailouts elsewhere in Europe.
Those with less than £85,000 in the bank have also seen themselves hit by the bailout. Temporary capital controls have been imposed to stop residents taking cash off the island, including capping cash machine withdrawals at €300 a day.
At the same time, businesses have been told they will be unable to transfer more than €5,000 abroad without approval, while no one, including tourists, can leave the island with over €1,000 in cash.
Meanwhile, the spotlight has now swung to Slovenia, another small member of the single currency in which investors are losing faith.
Last week, the price it had to pay to borrow money jumped sharply as markets began to take account of the risk that the country may default on its debts. However, on Friday, finance minister Uros Cufer insisted: ‘We will need no bailout this year. I am calm.’
Dan Atkinson: How the euro turned into the biggest theft in history
For a currency that promised to provide a sure bet on a glorious future, the euro is turning into the biggest theft of people’s savings in Western Europe since the war.
Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain were among the first to be crushed by the fallacy of a one-size-fits-all currency. Now it is Cyprus’s turn, and the scale of losses for some savers is eye-watering.
Last week, the latest Cypriot bailout proposals hinted at a 40 per cent levy on all deposits of more than €100,000, or £85,000. This weekend, it emerged that the true cost for those better-off depositors could be much closer to 80 per cent. British expats feature prominently among those who will suffer from an effective confiscation of their assets.
Claims that the victims are shady Russian oligarchs have a nasty whiff to them, and even if some of the cash that will be taken is of doubtful provenance, that cannot justify the burden now being placed on the tiny island economy.
Smaller savers may not have been hit by a levy on their bank accounts, but they will be swept up in the economic storm that is sure to descend on Cyprus as a result of such draconian measures.
It’s tempting to wonder why any troubled eurozone country like Cyprus was ever let into what was obviously a rich man’s club.
But that is unfair – the poorer members were welcomed with open arms, with the assurance that the euro would turn them into German-style economic titans. It was like persuading a pauper to join a casino.
Yes, Cyprus let its banking sector balloon wildly and, yes, it is the Cypriot government that has dreamt up some of the more masochistic features of the various bailout plans.
But all this human sacrifice in the eurozone – austerity, mass unemployment, arbitrary bank account levies – is about saving the euro. You wonder how much pain there has to be before someone realises that what must be sacrificed is the euro itself. Source
Morici: The Insanity of the Cyprus Crisis
By Peter Morici 03/28/13
NEW YORK Cyprus did not manufacture its banking crisis. The European Central Bank and European Union bear that responsibility. Yet, Cypriots will pay the price for their dysfunctions.
Until recently, Cyprus was a prosperous island economy with robust tourism, shipping and a significant international banking sector. Its big banks, like others in Europe, attracted large overseas deposits and invested heavily in sovereign debt. In Cyprus, much of the money came from Russia and was invested in Greek bonds.
Like the United States, the large banks are subject to stress tests but with an important distinction. The Federal Reserve is responsible both for undertaking those tests and sustaining the operation and protecting depositors of large money center banks in a crisis. During the recent financial meltdown, the Federal Reserve printed billions of dollars to purchase souring bonds and the U.S. Treasury borrowed to inject new capital into large banks when their mortgage-backed securities failed.
In the eurozone, the European Banking Authority undertakes those stress tests, and in 2010 and 2011 — well aware of their considerable holdings in Greek bonds — determined Cypriot banks had plenty of capital to withstand a financial crisis.
Meanwhile, Greece was in the throes of a financial crisis. In February 2012, the European Central Bank and European Union, along with the International Monetary Fund, imposed a 53.5% haircut on all private bondholders — for all practical purposes, that sunk the large Cypriot banks and manufactured their crisis.
Unlike the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank lacks the authority to print money to rescue failing banks. European Banking Authority is an arm of the European Union, which lacks the borrowing authority of the U.S. Treasury and the taxing capacity to back up bonds. Hence neither the ECB nor EU is in a position to bail out the Cypriot banks without substantial contributions and consent from the largest and healthiest European economy, Germany.
Germany might be willing to extend ECB the authority to print money and the EU to borrow and tax to save banks in Frankfurt but not in Cyprus or just about anyplace outside Germany. Domestic politics prevent the German government from borrowing and taxing to bail out other troubled European banks and governments without extracting a high price from private actors. In Greece, those were private bondholders, which included banks spread throughout Europe but most heavily those in Cyprus.
Simply, Cypriot banks hardly have enough capital to cover their losses on Greek sovereign debt, and their economy is too small to afford the Cypriot government the borrowing and taxing capacity to rescue them.
In exchange for 10 billion euros in aid, the ECB and EU are demanding that Cypriot banks be downsized — banking in Cyprus can be no larger than the average for the entire European Union. Moreover, under eurozone rules, championed by Germany, austerity — cuts in government spending and strict limits on deficits — will be required.
In Cyprus, the loss of international banking will impose double-digit unemployment of perhaps as high as 20% because this small island economy cannot devalue its currency to attract new investment, as Iceland did after its crisis. Most laid-off workers, whose native tongue is generally Greek, have few employment options elsewhere in Europe.
Thanks to a crisis manufactured by the European Central Bank and European Union, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, Cyprus will join Spain, Portugal and Greece in a permanent recession.
Spain suffered a similar banking crisis premised on foreign money inflows and real estate loans and similar problems engineering a recovery. The contrast between Spain and Cyprus, which are locked into the euro, and Iceland, which has its own currency and recovered, plainly illustrates the euro does not make sense for these economies.
Germany’s prescription for all these economies is austerity. Observing failed experiences with those policies across the Mediterranean recalls the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
The bailout terms and prescriptions for restructuring imposed on Cyprus are nothing short of insane, and the only sane course would be for Cyprus and the other Club Med states to negotiate an orderly withdrawal from the euro. Source
The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery
Ron Paul
After Cyprus, the EU’s Attention Turns to Tiny Luxembourg
By Peter Coy
March 29, 2013
It’s getting hot in Luxembourg, a nation that’s something like Cyprus on steroids. Its population is smaller and its banking sector is bigger. If you thought it was risky for banks in Cyprus to have assets about eight times the national gross domestic product, then what is one to make of Luxembourg, where the multiple is nearly 23?
Worryingly for Luxembourg, there’s a new idea afloat that European Union nations, even small ones, should take responsibility for saving banks operating within their borders, instead of falling back on the EU for help. This week, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is president of the euro zone group of finance ministers, had tough words for the likes of Luxembourg and Malta in a joint Reuters-Financial Times interview:
Deal with it before you get in trouble. Strengthen your banks, fix your balance sheets, and realize that if a bank gets in trouble, the response will no longer automatically be: We’ll come and take away your problems. We’re going to push them back. That’s the first response that we need. Push them back. You deal with them.
Dijsselbloem later said that he did not intend to say that the original Cyprus plan to tax depositors of Cypriot banks should be a template for other bailouts.
Seemingly in response, the government of Luxembourg warned that the European Union risks hurting financial stability if it moves to isolate banking systems within national borders. “Luxembourg will therefore not adhere to policies that intend to renationalize elements of the single market,” the government said in an e-mailed statement, according to Bloomberg News.
In a March 27 statement, (PDF) the Luxembourg government said it is “concerned about recent statements and declarations” on financial systems and the “alleged risks” of over-dependence on banks. It pointed to the “very high solvency ratios” of the mostly international banks, insurers, and asset managers operating on Luxembourg soil.
Luxembourg has a population of about 520,000 people, making it no bigger than Albuquerque, N.M. It relied on financial services for 23.5 percent of its gross domestic product in 2011, the highest proportion in Europe, according to the European Union’s statistics office. The figure for Cyprus was 8.9 percent. Assets of its banks are nearly 23 times as big as the national gross domestic product. That compares with a little over eight for Cyprus. Still, Luxembourg’s banks are far healthier than those of Cyprus, which were overexposed to Greece.
There’s no realistic way for Luxembourg to rescue its banking sector if serious trouble develops. That’s why for Luxembourg, shoring up the commitment to shared responsibility for bank bailouts is a matter of life and death. Source
European Austerity Costing Lives:
As the euro crisis wears on, the tough austerity measures implemented in ailing member states are resulting in serious health issues, a study revealed on Wednesday. Mental illness, suicide rates and epidemics are on the rise, while access to care has dwindled. Source
Financial Wars:
Attack is the Best Form of Defence
By Alexander GOROKHOV
The US has been using its best endeavours to create a Free Trade Zone with the European Union with a view to finally removing the remaining barriers to the penetration of American capital into Europe and, after engineering the collapse of the euro, to buy up Europe’s tastiest morsels using vastly inflated dollars under the pretext of saving the EU’s economy.Source
The criminals are protected and everyone else pays.
Believe me when I say no one wants to live in a Free Trade Zone.