Saturday, March 1, 2014

Headlines of note for February 2014

Quote of the month (year? decade?)...

The Western media is a plague upon humanity. - Paul Craig Roberts...

Global Research: Democracy Murdered By Protest - Ukraine Falls To Intrigue and Violence

BoilingFrogsPost (PCR): US and EU Are Paying Ukrainian Rioters and Protesters

...along with the usual suspects, as RT reported in April 2011...

Leading party says Soros prepares “Libyan scenario” for Ukraine

...but also the new activist billionaire on the block...

Pando: Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show


Isn't this rich?..

AP: US urges 'outside actors' to respect Ukraine

...as Victoria Nuland's appointment (as heard in her 'dirty talk' tape) takes the helm of the Ukrainian government...

Kyiv Post: The not-so-revolutionary new Ukraine government

The appointment of Arseniy Yatseniuk as prime minister was not a surprise...

Nuland: "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the... what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know..."

Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform is not represented after turning down offers...

But did Nuland count on this? - though Tyahnybok is not in, other members of his far right Svoboda party were appointed to ministerial positions...

Svoboda, the ultra-nationalist party, received several key positions in the government on top of the general prosecutor's office, which it already oversees...

Oleksandr Sych, 49, was appointed deputy prime minister. This Svoboda Party member from Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast had a swift rise since his party made it to parliament. He has made some highly controversial moves in parliament since his election.

One of his legal initiatives was an attempt to ban all abortions, even for pregnancies that occurred during rape, an idea that caused a massive outcry among human rights groups. He also famously recommended women to “lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, including one from drinking alcohol and being in controversial company.”...

Two Svoboda party members took over the ecology ministry and the agriculture ministry. Andriy Mokhnyk, 42-year-old deputy head of Svoboda with three higher educations (none ecology-related), took over the ecology ministry. This may be bad news for international companies that have signed agreements with Ukraine to develop alternative energy sources because the party had organized fierce resistance campaigns across the nation...

Svoboda's Ihor Shvaika, 38, was appointed Agriculture Minister... he thrived on publicity when he moved to Kyiv after the 2012 parliamentary election. He was very vocal in anti-shale gas campaigns led by Svoboda...

In other destabilization operations...

Strategic-Culture (Madsen): Cold War CIA Coup Templates Back in Business around the World

US Agents Incite Civil War in Venezuela

TomatoBubbleThe untold story of "Pussy Riot" and the "Soft Power" plan to destabilize Russia

Pussy Whipped...

GawkerPussy Riot Attacked by Whip-Wielding Cossacks in Sochi

Pravda: Former Pussy Riot members arrested in Sochi

In the beginning of February, Pussy Riot officially announced that Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were expelled from the band. On their LiveJournal page, it was said that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina stopped to represent the band as soon as they became public figures and lost their anonymity.

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A new twist in the Snowden Saga...

WayneMadsenReport: Snowden was not alone: CIA faction behind leak of NSA document trove

Sources within the U.S. intelligence community have told WMR, on the condition of anonymity, that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden gained access to and released tens of thousands of classified NSA documents because a faction within the Central Intelligence Agency was growing increasingly alarmed over the massive surveillance system controlled by NSA. In many cases, highly compartmented CIA covert operations abroad were made known to NSA because of the ability of the signals intelligence and cyber warfare agency to monitor full spectrum digital communications worldwide, including those of the CIA.

A group of active and retired CIA officers, in addition to CIA contractors, set out to expose the NSA's massive surveillance operations, as well as those of its foreign partners. Snowden, a former CIA employee who worked for the joint NSA-CIA Special Collection Service in Geneva, Switzerland as an official cover CIA employee attached to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and in Misawa, Japan under non-official cover with Dell Computer and Booz Allen Hamilton, was chosen by the CIA faction as the person best positioned to collect NSA documents and leak them to the media.

NSA recently fired a U.S. government civilian who worked at the NSA Regional Security Operations Center in Kunia, Hawaii. The unnamed male civilian, who was not charged with any crime, is said to have shared his "Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Certificate" with Snowden, allowing access to the NSANet. NSA claims that Snowden did not have access to NSANet. NSA's claims of collusion between Snowden and the civilian employee are contained in an UNCLASSIFIED/FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY memo for the House Judiciary Committee dated February 10, 2014. The memo also states that Snowden was assisted by two other personnel in Kunia, an active duty military member and a contractor, in collecting the NSA documents. Although the FBI investigated all three unidentified employees at the Kunia facility, no criminal charges against them were filed by Justice Department prosecutors. The memo states that the civilian government employee "remained in an uncleared employee status pending an appeal of the revocation [of his security clearance], and he resigned on 10 January 2014."

WMR has been told the reason for the lack of criminal charges is that the Obama White House has been stunned by the extent of the operation to expose the NSA surveillance network and the use by both the Obama administration and the previous Bush administration of NSA signals intelligence and other information for purely political purposes having little or nothing to do with national security.

Elements within the CIA have also informed the Obama White House, particularly John Podesta, the counselor to the president for all matters dealing with the NSA leaks, that if the White House or Justice Department moves against the CIA for the Snowden leaks, the CIA will release highly embarrassing personal information on the president.

The CIA faction helped arrange, through its own back channels, safe passage for Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow. Attempts to kidnap or assassinate Snowden in Moscow have been stymied by close cooperation between the CIA faction and the Russian domestic security service, the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki or SVR).

The involvement of Booz Allen Hamilton, which is owned by the CIA- and Bush family-linked Carlyle Group, has put the Obama White House on notice that the operation to expose NSA involves powerful political forces. Suggestions by some within the Justice Department, including Attorney General Eric Holder, and Rick Ledgett, the NSA official in charge of the Snowden leak damage assessment, that some sort of clemency deal might be worked out between the U.S. government and Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Russia is a realization that the operation to expose NSA involves major elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Russia has granted Snowden permanent political asylum.

WMR has learned that NSA's communications surveillance net compromised sensitive CIA operations for which NSA has no certified need-to-know or special compartmented access. The exposure of these CIA operations, including a weapons transfer operation that saw Libyan caches once in the hands of Muammar Qaddafi being transferred from Benghazi to jihadist forces in Syria. This intelligence became known to NSA's FIVE EYES signals intelligence partners in Canada, Britain, and Australia. The compromise of such information to NSA resulted in CIA programs in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East being placed in jeopardy. Some of the more sensitive aspects of the CIA operations, including drone operations, were passed on to Israeli, Indian, French, and German intelligence by the Communications Security Establishment Canada, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Australian Signals Directorate.


Steve PieczenikEdward Snowden - Spy or Whistleblower?  Neither! He is a Manufactured Avatar of the American Intelligence Community!

BoilingFrogsPost: The Entire Snowden NSA Cache Exposed Once and for All

In his first Snowden story under Pierre Omidyar's umbrella, Glenn Greenwald answers his critics...

Firstlook - The//Intercept: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

Other surveillance news...

PandoThe first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No-one noticed, no-one cares.

ReutersObama administration nominates new NSA boss


Cryptome: NSA Snowden Releases Tally Update - *1,227 Pages

GuardianOptic Nerve - millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ

PhandroidNew Google patent suggests automatically sending your videos and photos to law enforcement


The technology is the work of Vicarious FPC Inc., a quasi-secretive startup backed by early Facebook Inc. employees and investors that is part of the rapidly expanding world of artificial intelligence. The company is weaving together bits of code inspired by the human brain, aiming to create a machine that can think like humans...

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Middle East/N. Africa developments...
 
endzog (Feb. 2): LIBYA - RAF Allegedly Bombing Civilians In South In Last Few Days

Maghreb Confidential: Hancock wasn’t put off by mustard gas

That's Jon Hancock not "John".

Zawya: Libya finishes destroying chemical weapons

That doesn't mean some couldn't have been exported, however...

Breaking News: Extremists are trying to send mustard gas from Libya to Syrian fighters

FarsnewsBandar Bin Sultan, UAE Crown Prince Fail to Carry Out Coup in Libya

Al Monitor: Saudi Arabia plans to pitch Obama for regime change in Syria

VoltairenetThe defeat of Saudi Arabia in Syria

With the failure of the mujaheddin proxies model that worked so well in Afghanistan in the '80s, perhaps Obama's favorite method of remote control, mechanized death shall now be amped up in Syria...

Silent Crow News: Is Washington Considering a Full-Scale Drone War over Syria?

Though the "Geneva 2" Syrian peace talks ended largely without settlement, we were treated to these choice observations of the Syrian foreign minister at the outset...

Syrian Arab News AgencyGeneva2 begins with paticpation of Syria's offical delegation, headed by al-Moallem

It is regrettable, Ladies and Gentlemen, that seated amongst us today in this room, are representatives of countries that have the blood of Syrians on their hands, countries that have exported terrorism along with clemency for the perpetrators, as if it was their God given right to determine who will go to heaven and who will go to hell.  Countries that have prevented believers from visiting holy places of worship whilst abetting, financing and supporting terrorists.  Countries that gave themselves the authority to grant and deny legitimacy to others as they saw fit, never looking at their own archaic glasshouses before throwing stones at acclaimed fortified towers. Countries that shamelessly lecture us in democracy, in development and in progress whilst drowning in their own ignorance and medieval norms.  Countries that have become accustomed to being entirely owned by kings and princes who have the sole right to distribute their national wealth granting their associates whilst denying those who fall out of favor.  

They lectured Syria – a distinguished, virtuous, sovereign state, they lectured her on honour whilst they themselves were immersed in the mud of enslavement, infanticide and other medieval practices.  After all their efforts and subsequent failures, their masks fell from their quivering faces, to reveal their perverse ambitions.  A desire to destabilize and destroy Syria by exporting their national product: terrorism.  They used their petrodollars to buy weapons, recruit mercenaries and saturate airtime covering up their mindless brutality with lies under the guise of the so-called “ Syrian revolution that will fulfill the aspirations of the Syrian people.”  

Ladies and Gentlemen, how is what has happened and continues to plague Syria, meeting these aspirations?  How can a Chechen, Afghani, Saudi, Turkish or even French and English terrorists deliver on the aspirations of the Syrian people, and with what? An Islamic state that knows nothing of Islam except perverse Wahhabism? Who declared anyway that the Syrian people aspire to live thousands of years in the past?...

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American Revolution II to commence in Connecticut?

The Daily Sheeple“Surrender Your Firearms,” Connecticut Tells Unregistered Gun Owners

SipseyStreetIrregularsAn Open Letter to the Men and Women of the Connecticut State Police - You are NOT the enemy (UNLESS YOU CHOOSE TO BE.)

As questions continue to arise over the crisis event that got this particular ball rolling...

21st Century WireSandy Hook Game-Changer - Solid New Evidence of a Cover-Up Presented

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South of the Border...


The organization to pick up in business has an interesting history...



NAFTA at 20 years: another step away from Westphalian sovereignty and towards what its champions would never openly admit as such, but what nevertheless effectively is corporation-centered neo-feudalism.

Matt Stoller examines the origins of NAFTA in his Observations of Credit and Surveillance blog...

The Original NAFTA Included Great Britain

The Architects of Free Trade Really Did Want a World Government of Corporations

Up next, the Trans Pacific Partnership...


As that other "trans-Pacific" trade continues...

ENENewsNHK - Failure at Fukushima — Gundersen - Extraordinarily radioactive leak will be in Pacific shortly; “Site is going to bleed into ocean for 100 years”

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Miscellania...

Wall Street on ParadeAs Bank Deaths Continue to Shock, Documents Reveal JPMorgan Has Been Patenting Death Derivatives






Natural Revolution: Confirmed: DNA From Genetically Modified Crops Are Transferred Into Humans Who Eat Them

33rdSquare: A Step Closer To 3D Printing Human Tissues

Daily MailLockheed Martin fires most powerful portable LASER weapon it has ever created in hi-tech race to replace missiles


In the Sochi Olympics, the Russians win the medal count, as "Team USA" was ill served by its military-industrial complex...


For American skaters, the Sochi Games marked the debut of a new suit, the "Mach 39," designed by the apparel company Under Armour in conjunction with the defense contractor Lockheed Martin...

 "There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is the most scientific suit in the whole world," Patrick Meek said Friday. "These guys made F-16 fighter jets. If they can invade Afghanistan and Iraq, they can build a speed skating suit."...

Instead, the USA's best skaters have found themselves facing one of the worst Olympic performances in the country's history.


Washington Times: FBI had human source in contact with bin Laden as far back as 1993

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