TBR News May 2, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 2, 2016:”With the world news pregnant with negativity, perhaps some warped humor might lighten the gloomy day. Here we have a suggested list of bumper-stickers that could lighten the hearts of many drivers:
- Jesus loves you… but everyone else thinks you are an asshole
- Impotence… Nature’s way of saying “No hard feelings”
- The proctologist called… they found your head
- Everyone has a photographic memory…some just don’t have any film
- Save your breath…You’ll need it to blow up your date
- Some people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them
- I used to have a handle on life… but now it is broken
- WANTED: Meaningful overnight relationship
- Hang up and drive
- If you can read this… I can slam on my brakes and sue you
- Heart Attacks… God’s revenge for eating His animal friends
- Your ridiculous little opinion has been noted
- Try not to let your mind wander… It is too small to be out by itself
- Bush for Queen
- Don’t like my driving… Then quit watching me
- Guys… just because you have one… doesn’t mean you have to be one
- Welcome to America… NOW speak English
- Hire the Handicapped: They’re fun to watch!
- Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.
- Asians don’t drive cars, they aim them ,,,,
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversations with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt:
Conversation No. 56
Date: Thursday, January 2, 1997
Commenced: 1:35 PM CST
Concluded: 2:10 PM CST
RTC: A New Year, Gregory. Will we see it out, do you think?
GD: Probably. Unless, of course, we have the Rapture and you and I are left behind. Are you particularly religious, Robert? If you are, I will refrain from comment so soon after the celestial birthday.
RTC: Nominal, just nominal. Say what you like.
GD: I don’t know if you want that, Robert. I have very strong views on some aspects of religion.
RTC: A Christmas indulgence from me, Gregory.
GD: Every society needs a moral core. Mostly, Robert, religion supplies this. For the Nazis and the Communists, Hitler and Stalin supplied the religious themes, but not here. Why is America the compost heap that produces, not flies from maggots, but the Christian Jesus freaks out of absolutely nothing but pulp fiction? The Gospels are all forgeries, written a long time after the events depicted in them and they have been constantly changed over the centuries to reflect various political and economic needs. I mean, Robert, that there is not one bloody word in the New Testament depictions of Jesus that could be considered to have even a gram of historical accuracy. I could go on for hours about this subject, but the whole fabric of the Christian conservatives or the rampant Jesus freaks is that their dogma is based on total and very clear fraud. The so-called Battle of Armageddon, for example, is nowhere in the Bible…
RTC: Are you serious?
GD: Look it up, Robert. Revelations 16:16 is the sole mention of it. Just a geographical name, that’s all. No blitzkrieg of Jesus versus the Evil Ones. Nothing at all. It was all pure invention.
RTC: Well, if not in the Bible, who made it up?
GD: One Charles Fox Parham, that’s who made it up. He was a very nasty type who ran a bi-racial church in Los Angeles around the turn of the century, before he was chased out. And, of course, he did time in jail for defrauding his flock of money and, more entertainingly, buggering little boys in the fundament. Oh my yes, he made up the whole Rapture story and ranted on endlessly about a fictional Battle of Armageddon. It’s like having the Church of the Celestial Easter Bunny or the Divine Santa Claus. At least there really was a Saint Nicholas, but the Easter Bunny is as fictitious as Jesus the Water Walker.
RTC: I don’t recall learning about that as a child at all.
GD: Of course not, you belong to the original Christian church, Robert, not one of the later cults. Neither the Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox people have this silly Rapture business anywhere in their early literature. This was a fiction started up at the beginning of this century by some nut named Blackstone who claimed that Jesus was coming. I think the word ‘rapture’ didn’t come I into use until about 1910. It’s just more nut fringe fiction, nothing more.
RTC: Well, I haven’t had much in the way of contact with these people except to chase off the Jehovah’s Witnesses who bang on my door and try to shove all kinds of pamphlets on me. In the long run, Gregory, you should learn to avoid the lunatics and concentrate on more important issues. There are always nuts. Didn’t they burn witches in Salem?
GD: The same types, only then they were in power. Now they lust after power so they can shove their fictional crap onto the sane part of society.
RTC: Well, then, what about the ones who don’t believe in evolution?
GD: The same types. We have them across the street. Told me yesterday the world was only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and men commingled in Kansas somewhere. You can’t tell these people anything. They just keep repeating that whatever fiction you go after is in the Bible. When you ask them to show you, they get angry. Nuts always get angry when you puncture their fantasy balloons.
RTC: And Armageddon? I vaguely recall something about a battle between the Antichrist somewhere.
GD: But not in the Bible. The only reference to Armageddon is Revelations 16:16 and it just mentions the name of the place, nothing about a battle, Jesus, Satan, the Antichrist or my cousin Marvin. Nothing. But when you tell the nuts this, they almost froth at the mouth. They’ll tell you the battle is there and when you make them open their chrome-plated Bible and look, they flip back and forth and get more and more upset. Of course it isn’t there so they make faces and later they tell me, with great triumph, that they asked Pastor Tim and he said it was all there. Of course when I ask them for chapter and verse, they don’t have it.
RTC: Gregory, a word of fatherly advice here. Why bother with these idiots? Who cares what they believe? Are they of use to you in some project? If they are, be patient and go along with them. If they aren’t, drop them.
GD: But they are annoying. Robert, if I told you the Japanese attacked Spain in 1941, wouldn’t such stupidity annoy you?
RTC: No, it wouldn’t. When I was in harness, I heard worse than the babbling of the Jesus nuts, believe me. Senior Company people acting like spoiled children because no one listened to their pet theories about this country, that economy, that head of state, that foreign political party and on and on. Sometime…. no, more often than I liked, some rabid lunatic did us all kinds of damage, as witness the Gottleib mind control stupidity. People like that, Gregory, should be taken out for a trip on your boat or a walk in the Pine Barrens and simply shot. What did Joe Stalin say? ‘No man…no problem.” I often had to listen to these boring nuts, but you don’t. I had to make excuses to get away from them, but you don’t have to deal with them in the first place. Most small-minded people fixate on something utterly unimportant and think they have discovered the wheel. Yes, I agree that religious loonies are probably the worst, but, believe me, the political experts are almost as bad. They hop up and down shouting, ‘Listen to me! Listen to me!’ And who gives a damn what they think? No, I agree with you about the Jesus freaks but there are legions, I say, legions of others that are just as fixated, just as crazy, just as annoying, so you would be far better served if you just shut them out of your mind and turned your talents to other matters more important. Take some comfort in the thought that just as their lights go out and the darkness swallows them that they realize in the last second that there is no heaven, no Jesus and nothing but the embalmer’s needle and the worms. Nothing. But then their brains have turned to Jello and they don’t care anymore because they have returned to the dirt that they came from.
GD: I agree, Robert, I agree with you, but I still get annoyed. But these nuts, and you can add the Jewish Holocaust nuts to the pile, demand you do not say this or read that or watch that movie. They aren’t content to live in their basements and talk to themselves or tyrannize over their poor children and wives, so they rush out into the street and issue orders as if anyone cared or worse, as if they really mattered. That I object to strongly. I have waded through tens of thousands of pages of official German papers and I can tell you, without any doubt, that the Germans did not gas millions of Jews. What do these creeps do? They tell the archives to seal the papers that make them out professional liars and attack anyone who dares to question them. The holocausters and the Jesus freaks are cut from the same piece of God’s underwear. I think the dirty parts to be sure.
RTC: (Laughter) Oh, Gregory, such passion for so little. They both think they are really important and that people actually listen to them, and even care about their unimportant obsessions. Ignore the Jews, too, Gregory, like you should ignore the Jesus freaks.
GD: Ah, but the Jews control the media and most of the publishing houses. If you write, you don’t get published. Now if I made up some fantasy that said the Germans burned two hundred million Jewish babies, I would be a best seller, number one on The New York Times book reviews and a great one on the lecture and TV interview circuit. Of course about ten people would read my fictions, but no one would be rude enough to talk about that. Christ, most of the Holocaust books are pure fiction and the rantings about the Rapture are right in with them.
RTC: Well, I can see some sense here and I admit it is difficult to get away from obnoxious Hebrews, but why not try? I find that if you ignore people like this, eventually they will go away and annoy people in public lavatories. Just another step to oblivion.
GD: I really shouldn’t bore you with you with my own obsessions but I do not suffer fools gladly.
RTC: God, there are so many of them.
GD: I remember my grandfather and one of his pet comments to bombastic idiots he encountered at social functions. He would smile and say, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but are you anybody in particular?’
RTC: (Laughter) I don’t suppose any of the gas bags got that.
GD: No, but grandfather did, and so did I. I remember once my mother started yelling at me non-stop because I had come in late from a night with the ladies and the bottle. I listened to her rantings for about an hour and finally, after she ran out of steam, she asked me if I had anything to say and I told her, very politely, that I had been trying to tell her for the longest time that she had some hairpins coming loose just over her right ear.
RTC:(Laughter) My Lord, Gregory, what a put-down. Whatever did she do?
GD: She was so worn out shouting that she just stared at me with her mouth open and before she could get her wind back, I went in my room and locked the door. She stood in front of it yelling that I was disrespectful, until my father came out and made her go back into the house because the lights were going on in the neighbor’s homes. I had a warm and caring family life, Robert, believe it. But I didn’t have to listen to the braying of human donkeys all the time. Just the occasional parental psychotic episode. Now they come up with glazed eye and threads of drool dripping from their mouths while they clutch at you and screech, ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ or ‘six million, six million.’ Oh how I would love to give them lobotomies with a chain saw.
RTC: I don’t think you would have much luck with a lobotomy, Gregory. Most creatures like that don’t have brains.
GD: No, Robert, they don’t. What they do have are knots on the top of their spine to keep their asses from plopping down onto the sidewalk.
(Concluded: 2:10 PM CST)
German far-right party calls for ban on minarets and burqa
Alternative für Deutschland conference says Islam is not compatible with Germany’s constitution
May 1, 2016
Reuters
Stuttgart-In a raucous and highly emotional debate on the second day of a party congress, many of the 2,000 delegates cheered calls from the podium for measures against “Islamic symbols of power” and jeered a plea for dialogue with Germany’s Muslims.
“Islam is foreign to us and for that reason it cannot invoke the principle of religious freedom to the same degree as Christianity,”Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an AfD politician from the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said to loud applause.
Merkel has said on many occasions that freedom of religion is guaranteed by Germany’s constitution and that Islam is welcome in the country.
As many as 2,000 leftwing demonstrators clashed with police on Saturday as they tried to disrupt the AfD conference. About 500 people were briefly detained and 10 police officers were slightly injured, a police spokesman said.
The chapter of the AfD manifesto concerning Muslims is titled “Islam is not a part of Germany”.
In Sunday’s debate, one delegate’s call for greater understanding drew jeers and loud whistles.
“I call for a differentiation and urge everybody to visit their local Muslim communities and initiate a dialogue,” said Ernst-August Roettger, a delegate from the northern city of Lüneburg.
He was speaking in support of an amendment that called for acceptance of everybody’s religious freedom and for the party not to regard all Muslims as extremists. Delegates rejected the amendment.
Germany is home to nearly four million Muslims, who make up about 5% of the population. Many of the longer established communities came from Turkey to find work, but those who have arrived over the past year have mostly been fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last month the head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims likened the AfD’s attitude towards his community to that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis towards the Jews.
Delegates from Germany’s anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) backed an election manifesto on Sunday that says Islam is not compatible with the country’s constitution and calls for a ban on minarets and the burqa.
The AfD was set up three years ago and has been buoyed by Europe’s migration crisis and the arrival of more than a million mostly Muslim migrants in Germany last year. The party has no presence in the federal parliament in Berlin but has members in half of Germany’s 16 regional state assemblies.
Opinion polls give AfD support of up to 14%, presenting a serious challenge to Angela Merkel’s conservatives and other established parties in the run-up to the 2017 federal election. Other parties have ruled out a coalition with the AfD.
5 suspected rapists detained in Swedish migrant center over assault on teenager
May 2, 2016
RT
Five men were arrested in a case of sexual violence at a Swedish refugee center – this time in Varmland, on the border with Norway. A boy aged 15-18 was attacked, local media report.
The police were called around 6pm on Sunday. According to authorities, the men who were detained had assaulted and threatened further violence against the teenager. The identities of the alleged assailants and their victim have not yet been disclosed
It has also not been made clear if the attackers are residents at the center, situated in the town of Arjang.
On Monday, the charges were elevated from attempted rape to aggravated sexual assault, assault and aggravated assault.
“It has now changed to aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault, and threatening behavior,” officer Bo Jansson told Varmland media. “We have no more details.”
Such incidents have been on the rise, putting a strain on the Swedish police force’s workload. Rapes, murders and riots have now become a mainstay.
One incident in January saw asylum center workers barricaded inside a room fearing for their lives, as 19 youths at the center rioted.
Later that month, a 22-year-old woman, also a worker at a center, was stabbed by a young man at a center for unaccompanied minors. Numerous other examples of this new trend exist.
Eyeing an Indiana victory, Trump says, ‘It’s over’
May 1, 2016
by Steve Holland and Valerie Volcovici
Reuters
WASHINGTON-Front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday that he will have essentially sealed the Republican U.S. presidential nomination if he wins Tuesday’s contest in Indiana, where he holds a big lead over chief rival Ted Cruz.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist opinion poll showed Trump with a wide lead in Indiana, 49 percent to 34 percent for Cruz and 13 percent for a third candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich.
Trump, a 69-year-old billionaire real estate developer, sounded confident in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” when asked whether Indiana would basically end the long-running Republican race in his favor.
“Yes, it’s over,” Trump said. “It’s already over.”
The poll showed the depth of the challenge facing Cruz, a conservative U.S. senator from Texas who is trying to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to seal the nomination.
Cruz’s hopes rest on emerging as a consensus alternative to Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 18-21. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 68, leads U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, 74, of Vermont in the race for the Democratic nomination.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cruz, 45, was asked several times whether he would support Trump if the New York businessman was the Republican nominee. Cruz evaded the question each time and turned the questions into an attack on broadcast media.
“I recognize that many in the media would love to see me surrender to Donald Trump because that means that Hillary wins. The media has given $2 billion in free advertising to Donald Trump,” Cruz said.
Americans will elect a successor to President Barack Obama on Nov. 8.
‘THE MOST UNELECTABLE PERSON’
Trump, who has amassed 996 delegates, according to an Associated Press count, has momentum behind him and looks increasingly likely to win the nomination outright, without a contested convention, perhaps when California votes on June 7.
Indiana has 57 Republican delegates. Three are awarded from each of the state’s nine U.S. congressional districts with the candidate who receives the most votes taking them all. The 30 others are awarded to the candidate who wins the most votes statewide.
At a rally in Terre Haute, Indiana, Trump urged Republicans to join his “movement” and turn out for him in big numbers.
The EU – A CIA Covert Operation
Will it end in failure on June 23?
May 2, 2016
by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
The upcoming British referendum on whether to stay in the European Union (EU) represents the culmination of a long term project by the United States to destroy the concept of national sovereignty in the Old World and replace it with a supranational entity with ironclad links to Washington.. Whether that longstanding ambition has succeeded will be decided on June 23 – which is why President Barack Obama made a special trip to the Mother Country to give them a little lecture on the alleged evils of nationalism and the goodness of the EU.
Some were shocked at the brazenness of such an aggressive intervention into a purely British affair by a sitting US President, but to anyone who knows the real history of the “European idea,” Obama’s pushiness is hardly surprising.
The European Union was born in the bosom of the Central Intelligence Agency: that’s what declassified documents tell us about the origins of the European project and its progress since the Truman administration.
In the midst of the cold war, the United States and its European allies conceived the EU as the political concomitant of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The basic idea was to counterpose a European identity against the “internationalist” ideology of the Soviets and their increasingly powerful fifth columns in the West. The “European Movement,” which was and still is the “grassroots” organization that relentlessly pushed for the creation of a European super-state, was financed to the tune of $1 million a year by the “American Committee for a United Europe” (ACUE), which was founded by Allen Dulles, who was at that point chairing a committee tasked with looking at how to organize the nascent CIA, and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who had been head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. Allen Dulles, who would become a CIA’s director, was the Vice President. On the board was Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, as well as number of spook-ish figures who played various roles in the American intelligence community at one time or another. Prominent politicians such as Herbert Lehman and businessmen, such as Conrad Hilton, were involved, as well as left-leaning labor leaders, such as David Dubinsky and the ex-Communist Jay Lovestone. CIA agent Tom Braden served as Executive Director.
Covert US financial support to the European federalist movement never amounted to “less than half” of the various groups’ budgets. The money was funneled through the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other private conduits. The head of the Ford Foundation was Paul Hoffman, a former OSS official who played a major leadership role in the ACUE.
The ACUE was organized at the behest of Winston Churchill, although support for European federalism in Britain was limited to a small minority. European unity was seen by Washington and Churchill as the indispensable glue that would hold NATO together and provide resistance to what they saw as an imminent threat of a Soviet takeover. Yet the British contingent, centered in the Conservative Party, began to pull back when they felt the project was moving too far, too fast, and this almost led to a public split that was, however, eventually papered over by the Americans.
The bulk of support came from the non-Communist left on the Continent, and was closely linked to the CIA’s support for noncommunist left elements in an effort to battle the Kremlin’s allies in France and Italy. The Social Democrats and other leftists were enthralled with the idea of the Schuman Plan, a scheme cooked up by French foreign minister Robert Schuman, that would put the production and sale of French and German steel and coal under the direction of a central authority: the arrangement would then be opened up to other European countries. This was the precursor to the vast apparatus of economic planners and regulatory agencies that today make up the EU’s notorious bureaucracy, which controls every aspect of economic life in the member states.
The ACUE agitated for the Marshall Plan – a giant serving of globaloney that funneled billions of American taxpayer dollars to postwar Europe – sponsoring speaking tours by pro-unity European politicians and cultural figures, and putting direct pressure on Congress to release the funds. Radio programs, print media, and all forms of mass communication were utilized – at taxpayers’ expense – to push the “European idea.” An academic section was established, which promoted all sorts of “research” projects pushing not only Euro-federalism but also “world federalism,” i.e. the concept of a world government.
The secrecy and authoritarianism that characterizes the ruling style of the Eurocrats was prefigured in the memos sent back and forth between US government officials, the ACUE, and their European sock puppets. As the Telegraph reports:
“A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth. It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which ‘adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable.’”
Indeed, the American sponsors of this “European” project directed every aspect of the pro-unity Astro-turf “movement.” As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard points out, “Papers show that it treated some of the EU’s ‘founding fathers’ as hired hands, and actively prevented them finding alternative funding that would have broken reliance on Washington.”
All of this ancient history should give us a new perspective on current events. When thousands of demonstrators showed up in the streets of Kiev waving EU flags, and demanding the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, there was nothing spontaneous about it. The “deep state” covert agencies of the Western powers were in it up to their necks, of that we can be sure. Even though the Soviet Union is long gone and the Russian “threat” to Europe is largely a figment of the neoconservative imagination, the function of the EU as the political complement to NATO is today clearer than ever.
The fact of the matter is that it is far easier for Washington to control Europe with one central authority at the reins than it is dealing with dozens of separate sovereignties. Indeed, the very idea of national sovereignty as the foundation of international relations is something the empire-builders of the Beltway, and their bag-men in the capitals of Europe, would like to do away with. For this time-honored idea stands in the way of the “democracy”-promotion crusades we have been engaged in since the end of the cold war, and contradicts the left-internationalist doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” that has sparked wars from the Balkans to Libya and Syria.
Globalism is the name of the game for our deracinated elites, and nationalism – of any kind, including the American variety – is the enemy. That’s why we’re seeing both the Obama administration and the ostensibly “Conservative” Party leadership of the British state undertake a combined assault against Euro-skepticism and the threat of “xenophobia.” If you don’t want to see your country absorbed into the Euro-Borg, then you’re a “racist,” a right-wing extremist, and a hate-criminal to boot.
Yet the EU never had popular support in the countries it now lords over: that’s why they had to stage multiple elections until they got the “right” result in France, Ireland and Denmark. Which brings to mind that State Department memo about creating an aura of the inescapable around the EU project.
Britain, which has been the most resistant to European “integration,” has never had a referendum, and this upcoming test is crucial to the survival of the EU. If the Brits vote to exit, the CIA’s longest-running campaign, begun under the administration of Harry Truman, will have ended in failure.
The globalist idea is a central canon of the War Party. For if national borders are to be erased – and the very concept of national sovereignty relegated to the dust heap of history – then the job of justifying Washington’s wars is made much easier. The claim that there is a “higher” principle operative in international affairs than the inviolability of national borders – “humanitarianism,” “democracy”-promotion, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. – gives the War Party a green light to rampage over the earth to its heart’s content.
What they want is a world empire with no borders – and June 23 is a day when they could very well be turned back.
First US cruise liner in more than 50 years leaves Miami for Cuba
US passengers have set sail from Miami on a Cuba-bound ocean liner. It’s the first cruise ship in decades to depart from a US port for the communist island nation since the thaw in US-Cuba relations.
May 2, 2016
DW
Carnival’s Havana-bound cruise ship Adonia got underway at 4:24 p.m. (2024 UTC) Sunday, ferrying more than 700 passengers from Florida to Cuba.
Restarting cruises ship connections is an important element of a bid by US President Barack Obama’s administration’s initiative to increase tourism to Cuba, after last year’s historic decision to restore diplomatic relations and move toward normalization.
“Times of change often bring out emotions and clearly the histories here are very emotional for a number of people,” Carnival CEO Arnold Donald told reporters.
“To be a part of truly making history and preparing for an even more positive future for everyone is one of the greatest honors any company can have,” Donald added.
The ship will visit three Cuban ports over the seven-day voyage. Carnival said the Adonia will cruise every other week from Miami to Cuba.
US embargo still in place
Uncertainty over whether the cruise would be allowed to happen was resolved last week when the Cuban government lifted restrictions for seaborne visits of Cuban nationals to and from the United States, opening the door for Cuban-Americans to board the ship.
The cruise company initially refused to accept reservations from such people, because of Cuban restrictions first imposed when the island’s Communist regime feared landings by anti-Castro militants.
That prompted charges of discrimination amid a firestorm of criticism.
But the world’s leading tour ship operator eventually relented and began to allow reservations from Cuban-born customers.
Among them was 61-year-old Isabel Buznego who as a youngster emigrated with her family from Cuba and was returning to the island for the first time.
“My dad wanted to come because he had never been able to come, but he passed away,” she told the AFP news agency. “So I’m coming in his name. That is why I have so many different emotions, but I am mostly happy.”
The Miami Herald newspaper reported that a boat carrying activists protesting the trip to Cuba was nearby in Florida waters before the ship’s departure on Sunday. But the paper said the boat pulled away before the Adonia set sail, with an expected Monday arrival in Havana.
Iraq crisis: Consequence of US regime change strategy’
May 1, 2016
RT
The problem with the US’s regime change strategy is that after a leader in a country as delicate as Iraq is removed, there are an infinite number of things that could possibly go wrong, says Max Abrahms, assistant professor at Northeastern University.
A state of emergency was declared in Baghdad on April 30 after hundreds of supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone and entered the parliamentary building. Iraqi security forces used tear gas against protesters and shot bullets into the air.
The US says it is concerned the political crisis in Iraq will have a negative influence on the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
“…At a time when they’re still fighting Daesh [Arabic name for Islamic State, ISIS/ISIL], Mosul is still under ISIL control. At a time when, because of low oil prices, they’ve got challenges with respect to their budget. There’s a dam that needs to be fixed. They’ve got a lot on their plate. Now is not the time for government gridlock or bickering,” US President Obama told a media conference during his visit to Riyadh on April 21.
Earlier in the week, US Vice President Joe Biden visited Iraq. The meeting was held in secret, but it’s reported it was about solving the country’s political crisis.
RT asked experts whether Washington can really solve the problem now, given the current situation.
According to Max Abrahms, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, “The obvious answer is no.”
“This is one of the big problems with the strategy of regime change. The US and other countries are able to effectively remove the leader, but it is a little bit like Humpty Dumpty in terms of putting the pieces back together again. After you remove the leader, especially in the country as delicate as Iraq, there is literally infinite number of things that could possibly go wrong. One of the main problems historically in Iraq… is sectarian discord. And it is a very sensitive balance,” he said.
“The US, on the one hand, is responsible, to an extent, for the unrest that has followed the removal of Saddam Hussein. But on the other hand, the US is not in a very good position to affect a political climate on the ground. And this comes at a particularly bad time for the US and frankly, the broader international community, because we have seen some signs of progress in Iraq as well as in Syria in terms of combatting ISIS,” Abrahms said.
The US is in an uncomfortable position as it has good relations with the Iraqi government, which is increasingly unpopular with the country’s population, Abrahms said.
“The likely alternative to this government, although it would be more popular presumably in Iraq, would have worse relations with the US. Indeed, Sadr is an important Shia cleric, he is a political leader but he is also the leader of militia there – he is a military leader. And historically the US has really conflicted with his militia – the Mahdi army in Iraq was one of the main problems to the post-Saddam Hussein occupation there. So, there is no love lost between Sadr and the US government. And increasingly he seems to be a real threat to the current government,” he added.
Ray McGovern, former CIA officer says: “The key element here is that Moqtada al-Sadr has the real power in Baghdad and in most of Iraq.”
“Nine years ago he was very clever…He got out of town when it became clear that president [George W.] Bush didn’t want to lose the war before he departed from office. And so he had a so-called surge. And the surge came and cleaned out a whole bunch of people. Moqtada al-Sadr was just happy to be out of town during that purge. What happens now? The ostensible reason of the surge was to make sure that Shia and Sunni could work out a reasonable agreement to govern together. That was never achieved and instead Moqtada al-Sadr waited his time and now he is in with the power as he says to ruin this government,” he told RT.
The Iraqi government is “totally corrupt” and the Iraqi people have had enough of that, said McGovern.
“What Moqtada al-Sadr said: ‘Look, we need to change this and the parliament can’t change it.’ Then, wonder of wonders – the Greene Zone is breached, the parliament is entered and we have a totally new situation,” he added.
In McGovern’s view, the situation cannot be repaired “by the likes of Joe Biden or John Kerry or anyone else”; it is a direct result of the failure of the surge in 2007.
“And what will happen now is that the Shia will get together and make sure that [Iraqi Prime Minister] Abadi either obeys their diktat or is removed,” he said.
“I am sure that Biden and the others will be saying: ‘Oh, no. We have to really get together and make sure we work together.’ But they are nine years late on that. And the surge that inserted 30,000 US troops to save the situation for Bush and Cheney… The the reason given was to get Sunni and Shia cooperating with each other to form a viable government. That was never the real reason. The real reason was simply to prevent what’s happened now from happening before Cheney and Bush left office. That was a terribly cynical move. Robert Gates was the key player together with… David Petraeus,” the expert believes.
China trains ‘fishing militia’ to sail into disputed waters
April 30, 2016
by Megha Rajagopalan
Reuters
BAIMAJING, China The fishing fleet based in this tiny port town on Hainan island is getting everything from military training and subsidies to even fuel and ice as China creates an increasingly sophisticated fishing militia to sail into the disputed South China Sea.
The training and support includes exercises at sea and requests to fishermen to gather information on foreign vessels, provincial government officials, regional diplomats and fishing company executives said in recent interviews.
“The maritime militia is expanding because of the country’s need for it, and because of the desire of the fishermen to engage in national service, protecting our country’s interests,” said an advisor to the Hainan government who did not want to be named.
But the fishing militia also raises the risk of conflict with foreign navies in the strategic waterway through which $5 trillion of trade passes each year, diplomats and naval experts say. The United States has been conducting sea and air patrols near artificial islands China is building in the disputed Spratlys archipelago, including by two B-52 strategic bombers in November. Washington said in February it would increase the “freedom of navigation” sail-bys around the disputed sea.
BASIC MILITARY TRAINING
The city-level branches of the People’s Armed Forces Department provide basic military training to fishermen, said the Hainan government advisor. The branches are overseen by both the military and local Communist Party authorities in charge of militia operations nationwide.
The training encompasses search and rescue operations, contending with disasters at sea, and “safeguarding Chinese sovereignty”, said the advisor who focuses on the South China Sea.
The training, which includes exercises at sea, takes place between May and August and the government pays fishermen for participating, he said.
Government subsidies encourage fishermen to use heavier vessels with steel – as opposed to wooden – hulls.
The government has also provided Global Positioning Satellite equipment for at least 50,000 vessels, enabling them to contact the Chinese Coast Guard in maritime emergencies, including encounters with foreign ships, industry executives said.
Several Hainan fishermen and diplomats told Reuters some vessels have small arms.
When “a particular mission in safeguarding sovereignty”, comes up government authorities will coordinate with the fishing militia, the advisor said, asking them to gather information on the activities of foreign vessels at sea.
ROW WITH INDONESIA
That coordination was evident in March, when Indonesia attempted to detain a Chinese fishing vessel for fishing near its Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. A Chinese coast guard vessel quickly intervened to prevent the Indonesian Navy from towing away the fishing boat, setting off a diplomatic row. Beijing does not claim the Natunas but said the boats were in “traditional Chinese fishing grounds”.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Brunei also have conflicting claims over the islets and atolls that constitute the Spratly Archipelago and its rich fishing grounds.
State-controlled fishing companies dominate the fleets that go regularly to the Spratlys and are recipients of much of the militia training and subsidies, industry sources said.
China has by far the world’s biggest fish industry, but depleted fishery resources close to China’s shores have made fishing in disputed waters an economic necessity, fishermen and industry executives say.
State-owned Hainan South China Sea Modern Fishery Group Company says on its website it is “both military and commercial, both soldiers and civilians”. One of its aims, the company says, is to let the “Chinese flag fly” over the Spratlys.
“Defending sovereignty is primarily the government’s concern,” said Ye Ning, the company’s general manager, in an interview at his office in Haikou. “But of course, regular folks being able to fish in their own countries’ waters should be the norm. That goes for us too.”
The company provides fishermen who sail to the Spratlys with fuel, water, and ice, and then purchases fish from them when they returned, according to a written introduction to the company’s work executives provided to Reuters.
‘LOT MORE RISKY’
“It’s gotten a lot more risky to do this with all kinds of foreign boats out there,” said Huang Jing, a local fisherman in the sleepy port town of Baimajing, where a line of massive steel-hulled fishing trawlers stretches as far as the eye can see.
“But China is strong now,” he said. “I trust the government to protect us.”
Chen Rishen, chairman of Hainan Jianghai Group Co. Ltd, says his private but state subsidized company dispatches large fleets of steel-hulled trawlers weighing hundreds of tonnes to fish near the Spratly Islands. They usually go for months at a time, primarily for commercial reasons, he said.
“If some foreign fishing boats infringe on our territory and try to prevent us from fishing there … Then we’re put in the role of safeguarding sovereignty,” he said in an interview in Haikou, the provincial capital of Hainan.
China does not use its fishing fleet to help establish sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said: “This kind of situation does not exist.”
China had taken measures to ensure the fishing fleets conduct business legally, he told a ministry press briefing last month.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Chen said his fishermen stop at Woody Island in the Paracel islands, where China recently installed surface-to-air missiles, to refuel and communicate with Chinese Coast Guard vessels.
They look forward to using similar facilities China is developing in the Spratly Islands, he said.
China has been pouring sand from the seabed onto seven reefs to create artificial islands in the Spratlys. So far, it has built one airstrip with two more under construction on them, with re-fuelling and storage facilities.
“This all points to the need for establishing agreed protocols for ensuring clear and effective communications between civilian and maritime law enforcement vessels of different countries operating in the area,” said Michael Vatikiotis, Asia Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which is helping claimant states design such confidence building measures.
A regional agreement on communications and procedures when rival navies meet at sea applies only to naval ships and other military vessels, he said.
(Additional reporting by Greg Torode in HONG KONG. Editing by Bill Tarrant)
The Wrong Way to Handle the Kunduz Tragedy
May 1, 2016
by Eugene RF. Fidell
New York Times
Last October, an American gunship mistakenly launched a devastating attack on a Doctors Without Borders trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 innocent people. An investigation released last week detailed a cascade of human and technical errors that led to the bombardment. Now the Pentagon is compounding the tragedy by treating the case as less grave than it is.
Kunduz is not the first time aerial bombing has unintentionally killed noncombatants on the ground. In World War II, American bombers repeatedly strayed into Swiss airspace, dropping ordnance and causing significant damage. The Swiss finally registered a strong protest after Zurich was bombed, resulting in a court-martial of some of the crew. (The president of the court-martial was a colonel named Jimmy Stewart — the movie star.) The lead pilot and a navigator were acquitted, but at least there was a trial.
As matters currently stand, there will be no Kunduz trial. Instead, 16 members of the American military, including a general, have received disciplinary action or adverse administrative action, including letters of reprimand, removal from command, transfer out of Afghanistan and requiring recertification in a job specialty. Given the loss of life and damage to a hospital which, by definition, is a protected site under the law of armed conflict, it is hardly surprising that many view these actions are inadequate.
United States Central Command has justified the absence of courts-martial based on the report’s conclusion that, in its words, the errors that led to the attack were unintentional and that “other mitigating factors, such as equipment failures,” affected the mission. Certainly, mitigating factors should be taken into account when deciding on the disposition of charges. But both the process and outcome are open to serious question.
For example, the process that the Pentagon used to investigate the bombing was closed. Doctors Without Borders had asked for an international body to investigate. There were domestic alternatives as well: Instead of using the routine Army investigative process, the government could have convened a court of inquiry, as provided for in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. These are more formal, and have been used for major incidents. The Navy convened one in 2001 after the submarine Greeneville, on a V.I.P. cruise, surfaced abruptly off Honolulu, sinking a Japanese fishing vessel in the process and killing several of its crew.
It is unclear why a court of inquiry was not used in the Kunduz case, given the Greenville precedent. Such a court would have been closed to the public when classified evidence was being examined, but much of it could have been open. That alone would have fostered greater confidence in the results. The Army could also have convened a preliminary hearing to determine if there was probable cause to court-martial anyone.
Another procedural problem is hard-wired into the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Commanders decide who is charged with what offenses, and how those offenses will be disposed of. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, has led efforts on Capitol Hill to transfer this all-important “disposition” power into the hands of lawyers outside the chain of command. That proposal — which would bring the country into step with other democracies — gained traction as a result of widespread dismay over sexual abuse in the armed forces. But the issue of whether commanders have a built-in conflict of interest might have applied here.
The military code includes several offenses that seemingly apply to the Kunduz attack, including reckless destruction of property and reckless or wanton operation of an aircraft. Murder includes acts that “evince a wanton disregard of human life,” and manslaughter includes unlawfully killing someone “by culpable negligence.” These are major offenses, while the actions ordered in the wake of the attack are of a kind typically reserved for minor offenses.
Dereliction of duty, another military crime that may apply here, covers willful and negligent failure to perform duties, and performing them in “a culpably inefficient manner.” The test is merely whether the individual “exhibits a lack of that degree of care which a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances.”
Among the challenges a case like Kunduz presents is how to achieve accountability in an era in which an attack on a protected site is not the act of an isolated unit or individual. In today’s high-tech warfare, an attack really involves a weapons system, with only some of the actors in the aircraft, and others — with real power to affect operations — on the ground, in other aircraft, or perhaps even at sea.
No one should be content if matters are left where they currently stand. That would be an injustice for the victims not just of this tragic mistake, but of future ones as well.
Zika virus: first American dies of complications linked to disease
CDC reports man San Juan man developed autoimmune disorder after recovering from Zika symptoms, including fever and rash
April 30, 2016
by Amber Jamieson
The Guardian
The first American has died from complications related to the Zika virus, health officials with the Centers for Disease Control reported late Friday.
A Puerto Rican man in his 70s died in February from “complications related to severe thrombocytopenia”, the CDC reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The man, from the San Juan area, fell ill with the Zika virus and experienced symptoms including fever, rash and joint pain. After recovering from the Zika symptoms, the man then developed immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, an autoimmune disorder that has been linked to the virus. The bleeding disorder that killed him was as a side-effect of the ITP.
“Although Zika virus–associated deaths are rare, the first identified death in Puerto Rico highlights the possibility of severe cases, as well as the need for continued outreach to raise health care providers’ awareness of complications that might lead to severe disease or death,” reports the CDC in its findings.
Thrombocytopenia is a bleeding disorder that causes deficiencies in blood platelets, as antibodies that would attack the virus turn against the platelets that help clotting.
Research so far has shown Zika itself to be a relatively mild and short-term disease, but secondary infections and transmissions have been linked to deaths and birth defects. Three people infected with Zika in Colombia who died earlier this year showed symptoms of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder, and earlier this month the CDC confirmed Zika’s relation to abnormally small heads in infants.
“It’s of high public health importance that we figure this out and, as quickly as we can, design some interventions to stop it,” said Tyler Sharp, a CDC epidemiologist working in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Sharp has also said that the death had not been reported earlier so that researchers could check into the man’s medical background and speak with family members.
Zika first began spreading in Puerto Rico in December. More than 6,150 people have been tested for infection, with 683 found to have current or recent traces of Zika in Puerto Rico. The median age of those infected is 34.
The island imported all blood products during 5 March to 14 April from the mainland US to ensure the safety of blood.
“To ensure continued blood safety, blood collection resumed with a donor screening program for Zika virus infection, and all units screened positive are removed,” the CDC wrote in its report.
No incidents of microcephaly, the severe birth defect where babies are born with shrunken heads and brain damage, have yet been reported in Puerto Rico, although one has occurred in the mainland US. The CDC said 65 pregnant women in Puerto Rico had been found to have symptoms of the virus since November.
Congress is considering nearly $2bn in emergency funding to combat the virus and prevent its spread, but the plan has stalled because of opposition from hardline conservatives. Concern is especially high in southern states such as Florida, where summer and fall conditions are ripe for mosquitoes, which are the virus’s primary mode of transmission.
Reuters contributed to this report
Exxon Mobil reaches bottom of the oil barrel
April 29, 2016
by Kevin Allison
Reuters
Exxon Mobil has reached the bottom of the oil barrel. The U.S. energy goliath reported a 63 pct fall in first-quarter profit on Friday. Rivals Chevron and ConocoPhillips were hurting, too, as crude fell below $30 in January before investment cuts helped ease the excess supply and push up the price of oil. Recovery will be slow and patchy, but the worst is probably past.
Cost cuts helped Exxon surprise Wall Street, but the $1.8 billion in net earnings was the company’s lowest quarterly sum since 1999. Chevron, meanwhile, reported its second consecutive loss as crude prices averaged about $34 a barrel from the start of the year through the end of March. And Conoco’s net loss of $1.5 billion was twice as big as Chevron’s.
There are reasons to start thinking the only direction from here is up. Brent crude already has recovered from its January nadir to $48 a barrel. What’s more, unlike last year’s brief surge back above $60, this latest uptick has a better chance of sticking.
Saudi Arabia keeps pumping, but two years of less spending on exploration across the sector is taking its toll. U.S. crude production this month slipped below 9 million barrels a day for the first time since late 2014. That’s a notable drop from the weekly high of over 9.5 million barrels last July.
Big producers also have adjusted their business models to withstand low prices, even as smaller producers with weaker balance sheets struggle to survive. Along with cutting capital spending by more than a quarter since 2014, with further reductions likely this year, the industry has killed projects, axed buybacks and fired workers. In Conoco’s case, even the sacred dividend was slashed.
Investors have been anticipating a rebound. Before the Friday earnings reports, Exxon and Chevron shares had gained a respective 20 percent and 30 percent from their January lows. Conoco’s are up 50 percent since mid-February.
The rally may not be sustainable. Iran’s return to the global crude market and a potential recovery in shale production – if prices continue to rise steadily – could yet prove impediments. For Big Oil, however, the barrel is at least now only half empty.
FBI Chooses Secrecy Over Locking Up Criminals
May 2, 2016
by Jenna McLaughlin
The Intercept
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to discuss even the broad strokes of some of its secret investigative methods, such as implanting malware and tracking cellphones with Stingrays, is backfiring — if the goal is to actually enforce the law.
In the most recent example, the FBI may be forced to drop its case against a Washington State school administrator charged with possessing child porn because it doesn’t want to tell the court or the defense how it got its evidence—even in the judge’s chambers.
The FBI reportedly used a bug in an older version of the free anonymity software Tor to insert malware on the computers of people who accessed a child-porn website it had seized. The malware gave agents the ability to see visitors’ real Internet addresses and track them down.
Defense lawyers for Jay Michaud of Vancouver, Wash., argued they had the right to review the malware in order to pursue their argument that the government compromised the security of Michaud’s computer, leading to the illicit material ending up there unintentionally.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma agreed.
“The consequences are straightforward: the prosecution must now choose between complying with the Court’s discovery order and dismissing the case,” Michaud’s defense attorneys wrote in a brief filed last week.
The FBI’s lawyers took what they described as the “unusual step” in late March of asking the judge to reconsider his order, repeating earlier arguments that revealing the full details of the technique would be “harmful to the public interest.” The information might damage future investigations by allowing potential targets to learn about the FBI’s tactics, its attorneys argued, and might “discourage cooperation from third parties and other governmental agencies who rely on these techniques in critical situations.” The bureau sometimes pays third parties for exploitable security flaws, which lose their market value when they are made public and get fixed.
FBI officials declined to comment to The Intercept about their legal strategy.
In their frequent public arguments against unbreakable encryption, FBI officials have been arguing that public safety takes precedence over personal privacy.
But if this case gets dropped, the “defendant walks because the Government has decided that its secrecy trumps someone else’s becoming a victim of Crime Everyone Hates,” Scott Greenfield, criminal defense lawyer, wrote in his blog Simple Justice.
“The FBI would rather let a criminal go free than actually follow a court order designed to ensure a fair defense” even though revealing the bug “would almost certainly not help the defense,” tweeted Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California.
And this isn’t the first time FBI has expressed “its preference for secrecy over public safety,” tweeted Amie Stepanovich, U.S. policy manager for digital rights group Access Now.
Indeed, the FBI’s insistence on keeping certain surveillance tools secret —particularly the Stingray, or IMSI catcher, which imitates a cellphone tower to secretly grab up data about nearby phones – is letting criminals go free.
In Baltimore, 2,000 convictions may be overturned because of evidence that the police and the FBI purposefully withheld and then lied about the capabilities of the technology.
And last week, a city judge in Baltimore reluctantly tossed out key murder evidence gathered after the use of a cell site simulator because the police, who had been concealing use of the device as part of a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, used it without getting a search warrant. She called it an “unconstitutional search.”
Journalists have also reported on cases in New York and Florida where the FBI instructed prosecutors to offer a deal or drop the case entirely to hide details about the technology. In Milwaukee, the FBI simply tried to hide its use entirely from the record.
At least 20 local agencies have signed non-disclosure agreements when they purchase Stingrays, according to privacy advocate Mike Katz-Lacabe who keeps track. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have chronicled federal and local law enforcement use of Stingrays in at least 23 states.
“We still don’t know all of the law enforcement agencies that actually have StingRay/HailStorm/DRTbox devices,” Katz-Lacabe wrote in an email to The Intercept. “With a few exceptions, we don’t know how they are used by each agency or how frequently. We don’t know their full range of impact on nearby phones as we don’t know the technical capabilities of the amplifiers and antennas that are used with the devices. We don’t know which agencies are using equipment that can actually intercept calls instead of just track them. I think that more cases will be thrown out as defense attorneys, judges, and the public learn about the technology that law enforcement has tried to keep secret,” he wrote.
Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, says the FBI’s openness about Stingrays seems to have gotten a little better since the DOJ updated its Stingray policy in September 2015 to increase privacy protections and legal requirements. “It looks like the DOJ policy has had an effect at least on what the FBI is telling judges when it seeks judicial authorization. The FBI should have exercised at least this level of candor with judges starting years ago, but at least there’s evidence that they’re doing so now,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept.
And yet, he wrote: “The biggest continuing problem involving FBI secrecy about Stingrays is at the state and local level, where the FBI’s non-disclosure agreement has kept judges, defense attorneys, and the public in the dark.”
When it comes to hacking tools, the FBI’s secrecy is “still intense,” Wessler concluded.