The Marine Corps once again did damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.
The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the Marines in the photograph will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naïve mistake.
The Marines believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to be associated with a racist organization, said Maj. Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, where the Marines were based.
“I don’t believe that the Marines involved would have ever used any type of symbol associated the Nazi Germany military criminal organization that committed mass atrocities in WWII,” Chapin said. “It’s not within who we are as Marines.”
The world’s first mobile team to administer euthanasia in patients’ homes will be launched.
Units will be dispatched when family doctors refuse to administer lethal drugs on ‘ethical’ grounds.
They are expected to send the number of euthanasia cases in Holland soaring, with pro-campaigners claiming they will end the lives of an additional 1,000 patients a year.
Officially, 2,700 Dutch people a year choose assisted suicide, but critics say the real figure is far higher.
President Obama invoked the NDAA, which authorizes the use of military force, and issues an executive order declaring the “threat” of Iran a National Emergency.
This issuance of President Obama executive order declares Iran’s threat to cut off oil supplies a national emergency.
The executive order directs all government agencies to respond immediately to the threat.
It further invokes the authority of the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) which gives the President the power to launch military action against any nation without the approval of Congress.
Ironically, the State of Emergency order also accuses the Iranian central bank of deceptive banking practices.
Billionaire financier Nat Rothschild exposed his friend Peter Mandelson to accusations of a conflict of interest while the Labour peer was an EU trade commissioner, the High Court ruled.
The Swiss-based hedge-fund manager had launched a libel battle against the Daily Mail over his trips to Moscow and Siberia with Lord Mandelson and a Russian oligarch.
He claimed an article painted him as a ‘puppet-master’ willing to exploit his friendship with the former Labour spin doctor to impress his business associate, metals magnate Oleg Deripaska.
But he lost the case, and photographs of him, Lord Mandelson and Deripaska at an aluminium smelting plant, were ruled by the judge, along with other evidence, to disprove Rothschild’s claim that the visit has no business-related purpose.
With the announcement that 30,000 drones are expected to fill American skies within 10 years, the U.S. government has officially declared war on the American people, turning to technology normally used to hunt down insurgents abroad as the whole arsenal of the war on terror is re-focused domestically.
“The Federation Aviation Administration said up to 30,000 drones could be in airspace shared with airliners carrying passengers,” reports UPI.
Once signed by president Obama, the FAA Reauthorization Act allows for the FAA to permit the use of drones and develop regulations for testing and licensing by 2015.
Some types of surveillance drones are already being used by police departments across the country, including in Montgomery County, Texas, where the Department of Homeland Security recently gave the go-ahead for law enforcement in the United States to deploy the ShadowHawk mini drone drone helicopter that has the ability to taze suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers.
US law enforcement bodies are already using drone technology to spy on Americans. In December, a Predator B drone was called in to conduct surveillance over a family farm in North Dakota as part of a SWAT raid on the Brossart family, who were suspects in the egregious crime of stealing six missing cows.
Local police in this one area have already used the drone on two dozen occasions since June last year.
The DHS also recently announced a plan to spend up to $50 million dollars on a spy system that has been used to hunt insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan for the purposes of “emergency and non-emergency incidents” within the United States.
While preparing the use of surveillance drones against Americans, the U.S. government is also keen to characterize a myriad of behaviors and activities, no matter how normal or mundane, as potential indicators of terrorism, encouraging citizens to spy on each other in a chilling throwback to how people were hired as informants under the East German Stasi.
As part of its Communities Against Terrorism program, the FBI is encouraging business owners from across the spectrum to spy on their customers.
Lists of examples of “suspicious behavior” being sent out to everything from Internet Cafes to tattoo parlors define things like paying for a cup of coffee with cash, buying food in bulk, and showing an interest in online privacy as evidence of potential terrorist activity.
The DHS has also released numerous PSAs that depict routine activities as potential signs of terrorism, including using a video camera, talking to police officers, wearing hoodies, driving vans, writing on a piece of paper, and using a cell phone recording application.
The federal agency attracted much derision when it announced that Super Bowl vendors, including hot dog sellers, had been trained to spot terrorists under the First Observer program.
Even more chilling, the feds have also begun to characterize perfectly legitimate political and economic beliefs as those held by terrorists, effectively denouncing them as thought crimes.
As Reuters reported authorities are now treating those who “believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard” as extremists who are a potential violent threat to law enforcement.
The DHS has also previously characterized returning veterans, Ron Paul supporters, gold investors, and people who display political bumper stickers as potential domestic terrorists.
All this serves to underscore the fact that the American people have now been targeted as the number one terror threat in the eyes of the authorities. The state has declared war on U.S. citizens.
Not only will they be subject to surveillance and intimidation campaigns, but with the recent passage of the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA, the government has afforded itself the power to hold Americans without trial.
The Fox Business Channel has cancelled one of the only shows on the entire Fox News network that was in any way informative or watchable - Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
In a press release distributed the channel announced that its entire prime-time programming lineup had been changed, with re-runs of already existing programs replacing Freedom Watch.
Napolitano’s show had been airing for a year, in which time he had consistently covered major issues that other news programs would only gloss over, if they devoted any coverage to them at all.
Napolitano’s coverage of the freedom stripping National Defense Authorization Act for one was second to none as far as mainstream news output was concerned. His legal and constitutional expertise on such matters is also unrivalled.
His focus on Austrian economics and Libertarian social policy provided a much welcome alternative to the endless left/right bickering constantly played out on programming from the likes of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News itself.
Napolitano regularly defended the free market and lambasted the actions of the Federal Reserve, holding it accountable daily for the economic crisis that the US finds itself mired in.
Congressman Ron Paul was a regular guest on the show, with a host of other informative analysts who were not merely about peddling the establishment party line or representing special interests.
It is for these very reasons that many fans of the show suspect Napolitano has been axed by the corporate machine.
Regarding Napolitano’s future, Fox Business stated that the judge will be “continuing to make significant contributions to both FOX Business and FOX News” and would “be showcased throughout future programming on both networks”
“Currently one of the leading judicial analysts on television, Judge Napolitano will continue his role on both FOX Business and FOX News, providing key legal insights surrounding the growing intersection between Washington and Wall Street.” the statement read.
Linking to the press release on his Facebook page, Napolitano wrote “sad news friends, but don’t worry I’ll still be here defending liberty.”
Libertarian activist Lew Rockwell is spearheading a campaign to have Freedom Watch reinstated, writing on his website:
“If you are as outraged as I am at the cancellation of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch,” here is something you can do.”
Please contact Fox Business to ask them to reverse their decision.
Irena Briganti,
“Be respectful but be sure to convey your outrage at this matter, and state that you and many others will boycott the network if the show is taken off the air.” Rockwell added
As the militiamen saw it, they had the best of intentions. They assaulted another militia at a seaside base here this week to rescue a woman who had been abducted.
When the guns fell silent, briefly, the scene that unfolded felt as chaotic as Libya’s revolution these days — a government whose authority extends no further than its offices, militias whose swagger comes from guns far too plentiful and residents whose patience fades with every volley of gunfire that cracks at night.
The country that witnessed the Arab world’s most sweeping revolution is foundering. So is its capital, where a semblance of normality has returned after the chaotic days of the fall of Tripoli.
But no one would consider a city ordinary where militiamen tortured to death an urbane former diplomat two weeks ago, where hundreds of refugees deemed loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi waited hopelessly in a camp and where a government official acknowledged that “freedom is a problem.”
Much about the scene was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace.
“Some of it is really overwhelming,” said Ashur Shamis, an adviser to Libya’s interim prime minister, Abdel-Rahim el-Keeb. “But somehow we have this crazy notion that we can defeat it.”
There remains optimism in Tripoli, not least because the country sits atop so much oil. But Mr. Keeb’s government has found itself virtually paralyzed by rivalries that have forced it to divvy up power along lines of regions and personalities, by unfulfillable expectations that Colonel Qaddafi’s fall would bring prosperity, and by a powerlessness so marked that the national army is treated as if it were another militia.
According to an unconfirmed statement by a senior Iranian military official, reported by the Middle East and Israeli press, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard special forces (Quds) Kassam Salimani, was in Damascus for top level consultations regarding military support as well as the possible dispatch of Quds Special Forces to Syria.
The Salimani mission to Damascus, according to reports, preceded the visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which arrived in Damascus. The Lavrov mission included a delegation of senior of military and intelligence officials.
The delegation accompanying Minister Lavrov consists of Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Vladimir Zimakov, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Department of Russia’s Foreign Ministry Sergey Vershinin, and Russia’s Ambassador to Damascus Azamat Kulmukhametov.
In a statement to the press after his meeting with President al-Assad, Minister Lavrov said that he conducted very important meetings with the Syrian leadership, primarily with President al-Assad, Vice President Farouk al-Shara, and Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, during which he affirmed Russia’s readiness to assist in emerging from the Syrian crisis as soon as possible on the basis of the Arab League plan.
What is significant is the timing of these two missions to Damascus. Although no official statements were forthcoming, the reports intimated that both the Russian and Iranian missions integrated by senior military officials focused on cooperation with a view to curbing the armed insurrection, which is covertly supported by foreign powers.
Foreign troops are already on the ground working in liaison with the Syrian Free Army. The presence of British and Qatari special forces in Homs was, according to Debka, the Israeli intelligence news emdia, on the agenda of the talks between president Bashar Al assad and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Damscus on February 8.
Unconfirmed reports by the Al Arabiya news network suggest that some 15, 000 Quds Special Forces are to be dispatched to Syria in support of government forces.
A poll published at the Washington Post finds that a majority of even “liberal Democrats” approves of Obama killing US citizens. Of course, this would almost certainly be different if Obama were a Republican.
What if an organization with money but no partisanship (are there some?) were to commission a poll from a pollster willing to face a firestorm of attacks from the political parties (are there any such pollsters?), a poll that would ask people all their demographic info, including politics and party identification if any, and ask some of them:
If President Obama had to kill a US citizen to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?
If President Obama had to imprison a US citizen with no trial to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?
If President Obama had to launch a war without congressional authorization in order to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?
If President Obama determined it to be necessary to deploy a nuclear bomb and did so, would you approve?
The results would almost certainly show that many in the United States do indeed place loyalty to political parties or elected officials above matters of life and death — at least the lives and deaths of others.
This would, of course, be shameful, and if it made it into the corporate news it would make all types of partisanship look bad. It might, very likely, however, make one brand of partisanship look worst.
I would predict that Republicans would each be highly approving of these abuses by at least one Republican candidate, and that their approval would diminish for the others, and especially for Obama.
Democrats, I expect, would be less approving, but still strongly approving in the case of Obama, but that there would be a particularly significant drop off in approval by Democrats of such crimes if committed by any of the Republicans.
What pollster would be willing to test these assumptions?
Of course, in reality there is such a thing as being too late. Opposing abuses when Bush is president, but limiting the opposition at the behest of the Democratic Party, was followed by support for Obama’s protection of and continuation and expansion of the crimes.
Now shady Bush policies have become open “legal” practice. It is too late to take them back from the next Republican president, or any president, without fundamental change to our government.
If we continue down the current path, eventually the partisanship will retreat on this issue and supporters of presidential murder will tend to support it by any president and to imagine that no alternative to that exists.
The 50-state settlement with the banks (Oklahoma didn’t sign, but supports letting the banks go scot-free) over mortgage fraud is a stealth bank bailout, according to many top observers.
MUSLIM HALFBREED TRAITOR HUSSEIN OBAMA
All of Obama’s previous “mortgage relief” programs have really been stealth bank bailouts which screwed the homeowner.
Most independent experts say that the government’s housing programs have been a failure.
That’s too bad, given that the housing slump is now … worse than during the Great Depression.
Indeed, PhD economists John Hussman and Dean Baker, fund manager and financial writer Barry Ritholtz and New York Times’ writer Gretchen Morgenson say that the only reason the government keeps giving billions to Fannie and Freddie is that it is really a huge, ongoing, back-door bailout of the big banks.
Many also accuse Obama’s foreclosure relief programs as being backdoor bailouts for the banks.
Settling prosecutions for pennies on the dollar is a form of stealth bailout.
It is also arguably one of the main causes of the double dip in housing.This is par for the course …
Desperate to sell another “humanitarian” invasion, the leftist media in the United Kingdom has resorted to inventing conspiracy theories about events in Syria as part of a campaign to depict President Bashar Assad’s government as genocidal, while completely failing to acknowledge that the country is in a state of civil war.
While the likes of the Guardian and other establishment leftist newspapers in Britain routinely savage anyone who dares to commit the thought crime of questioning the official story behind the 9/11 attacks or the London bombings, apparently it’s perfectly reasonable to continually imply that the wave of bombings and attacks targeting President Bashar Assad’s forces are false flags committed by the regime itself.
The UK Guardian, which has completely prostrated itself as a 24-hour rolling mouthpiece for opposition fighters it habitually describes as “activists,” is at it reacting to news that explosions have killed 17 people in an attack carried out by opposition rebels which targeted Syrian military and security buildings in the northern city of Aleppo, by insinuating the Syrian government bombed its own facility.
They did the same thing when were 30 people killed by opposition rebels following two terrorist attacks in Damascus back in December.
The newspaper’s live coverage of events is little more than a platform for dubious ‘tweets’ sent out by anyone with a Twitter account claiming to be a Syrian activist, almost all of which claim with no evidence that Assad is killing his own forces to blame it on the opposition.
“Blow up people then broadcast the gory aftermath on morning TV. What an utterly disgusting regime,” reads one tweet featured by the Guardian.
“Two explosions rock Aleppo, obviously another Regime charade on the bodies of innocent civilians and some of its cronies,” writes another.
These baseless accusations could be coming from anywhere, whether they be from real Syrian “activists” or from within the halls of Britain’s Foreign Office.
The Guardian simply regurgitates them alongside an editorial tone that affords the claims total credence, ignoring the independent observers from the Arab League who confirmed in their report that opposition fighters were using indiscriminate violence against government forces.
The plausibility of terrorists targeting the Syrian regime is perfectly viable given the fact that hundreds of Libyan rebels, commanded by Abdulhakim Belhadj, a committed jihadist who fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, were airlifted into Syria last November to aid the opposition in carrying out attacks against government forces.
British Special Forces are now also on the ground advising rebels. Why would Special Forces who are trained to kill be advising “activists,” as the Guardian describes them?
The Guardian was even called out by one of its own readers, who pointed out that the fighting is actually a two-sided affair, rendering claims that Assad is engaging in “genocide” totally inaccurate.
“The definition of genocide is: “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”. Your writers, and the writers of many other publications, use it incorrectly all too often.
What is happening in Syria is tragic, certainly could be called a crime against humanity, etc, but it is not genocide. It is civil war.
Misusing genocide as frequently and mainstream journalists seem to love to do is inappropriate, unprofessional, and immoral in the sense that it is crying wolf and diminishing the severity of the word and the magnitude of the times genocide has actually occurred,” commented the reader.
No one denies that Assad’s forces are killing opposition fighters, what do you expect when NATO powers have flown in the same terrorists who helped them overthrow Gaddafi to aid Syrian rebels?
But to portray the rebels as “activists” who are the victims of bloodthirsty repression, even as they carry out terror attacks killing innocent people and Syrian government personnel, is wholly dishonest.
Don’t forget that these are the same media outlets who for weeks persisted in describing Libyan rebel fighters who were armed with RPGs and were commandeering fighter jets as “demonstrators,” urging the UN to impose a “no fly zone” which quickly turned into a bombardment.
The “humanitarian” attack on Libya so yearned for by liberal interventionists, with NATO powers again throwing their weight behind Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists who had killed US and British troops in Iraq, has produced a country run by mobs of thugs who hunt, torture and kill dissenters, notably black Libyans who have been rounded up and incarcerated in detention camps.
Thanks in part to leftist cheerleaders of “humanitarian” war like the Guardian, the Al-Qaeda flag now flies proudly over Libya.
The Guardian is not alone in its efforts to portray Syrian rebel fighters as peace-loving angels while denouncing Assad’s government as an army of genocidal maniacs.
The London Independent has got in on the act too, claiming that “Syrian President Assad’s security forces have indiscriminately killed scores of newborn babies in Homs this week,” writes Patrick Henningsen.
The claim, which evokes memories of the notorious Saddam Hussein incubator babies hoax, has absolutely no foundation in evidence and comes directly from inside Britain’s Foreign Office.
Despite there being no media access inside Syria whatsoever, the international corporate press has simply relayed propaganda from “activists,” who are regurgitating talking points handed to them by Britain and the US, while completely ignoring the Arab League’s report which affirmed that the media has greatly exaggerated the amount of violence taking place in Syria.
