TBR News April 25, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. April 24, 2017: “If the liberal media community is determined to halt what the Clinton-type supporters call ‘false news,’ they ought to start with the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The amount of slanted and often entirely invented stories published in support of liberal figures and against anti-globalization figures is amazing.

The days when the media could control public opinion, win elections, support the banking industry are gone.

The Internet has, in essence, destroyed the influence, and credibility of the media, print and television.

If the organizations that seek to keep power and increase it wish to silence the Internet or control it, they will not succeed. And anyone, inside or outside, of the United States who dares to make public acts that the oligarchs wish to hide, they will face arrest and imprisonment.

A Rumanian who hacked into the private email files of George W. Bush and found pictures of naked Vietnamese boys in his shower was, on order of Washington, arrested in Romania and extradited to the United States for punishment.

Washington has been furiously attempting the lay their hands on Julian Assange under the mistaken impression that he controls WikiLeaks and might somehow release more intercepted private messages that could further wreck the waning confidence the voters of America have in the occupants of their very own monkey house.”

Table of Contents

• North Korea nuclear: White House calls Senate to briefing
• US-Israeli man indicted in Israel for threatening Jewish centers, airlines & politician
• CIA Fights Disclosure of Secret Aid to Israel
• Plight of Palestinian refugees now spans 5 generations
• Ontario plans to launch universal basic income trial run this summer
• 10,000 Windows computers may be infected by advanced NSA backdoor
• FEMA and REX 84

• Erdogan pursues French “assassination” pundit

 North Korea nuclear: White House calls Senate to briefing

April 24, 2017

BBC News

In an unusual move, the entire US Senate is being called to the White House for a briefing on North Korea.

Washington has become increasingly concerned at North Korean missile and nuclear tests and threats to its neighbours and the US.

The briefing, involving 100 senators as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defence Secretary James Mattis, is being held on Wednesday.

China, North Korea’s main ally, has called for restraint from all sides.

China’s call came in a phone conversation between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump on Sunday.

Mr Xi urged all parties to “maintain restraint and avoid actions that would increase tensions”, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

Why Beijing should lead on North Korean crisis

For his part, Mr Trump said North Korea’s “continued belligerence” was destabilising the Korean peninsula.

White House officials regularly go to Congress to brief on national security matters, but it is unusual for the whole Senate to go to the White House.

Alongside Mr Tillerson and Gen Mattis will be National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and Gen Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Questioned by reporters at his regular briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer referred further inquiries to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Aides, quoted by Reuters, say the House of Representatives is seeking a similar briefing on North Korea.

Washington says a flotilla, led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, is expected to arrive off the peninsula within days, despite conflicting messages last week on its exact whereabouts.

Mr Trump has also told United Nations Security Council ambassadors, meeting at the White House, that the UN must be ready to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

The US is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to make its point on North Korea, the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue in Washington says.

First it wants the UN to tighten sanctions even further, and to ensure those in place are properly enforced.

Secondly, it is attempting to put fresh pressure on China to rein in its communist neighbour. The third aspect is the sending of an aircraft carrier to the Korean peninsula – making clear military action is an option.

North Korean rhetoric

North Korean state media said on Sunday the country’s forces were “combat-ready to sink” the Carl Vinson.

The ruling Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun called the carrier a “gross animal”.

North Korea has promised to press ahead with missile tests despite Mr Trump’s warnings and experts say it may be preparing for another nuclear test, in defiance of UN resolutions.

However, a North Korean ballistic missile test on 16 April failed within seconds of launch, US experts said.

Washington is concerned that Pyongyang may develop the ability to place a nuclear bomb on a missile capable of reaching the US.

Beijing is worried about the possibility of all-out conflict on the peninsula, which could lead to the collapse of the North Korean regime under its mercurial leader Kim Jong-un.

China fears this could cause a sizeable refugee problem and lead to an American presence up to the Chinese border.

Timeline of recent tensions

• 8 April: The US military orders a navy strike group to move towards the Korean peninsula
• 11 April: North Korea says it will defend itself “by powerful force of arms”
• 15 April: North Korea puts on a huge military parade – complete with missiles – to mark 105th birthday of the nation’s founding president, Kim Il-sung. Meanwhile US Vice-President Mike Pence arrives in South Korea
• 16 April: North Korea conducts a rocket test, but it fails
• 17 April: Senior North Korean official tells the BBC the country will continue to test missiles “weekly” and Mr Pence warns North Korea not to “test” Donald Trump
• 18 April: It emerges the US Navy strike group was not heading towards North Korea when US officials suggested it was
• 22 April: US Vice-President Mike Pence says the group will arrive off the Korean peninsula “within days”.
• 23 April: North Korea says it is “ready to sink” the US aircraft carrier

US-Israeli man indicted in Israel for threatening Jewish centers, airlines & politician

April 24, 2017

RT

Israel has indicted an 18-year-old Jewish man with dual American-Israeli citizenship for making bomb threats to Jewish community centers (JCCs) in the United States, among other actions. He was arrested after a joint probe by US and Israeli authorities.

Michael Ron David Kadar made more than 2,000 threatening calls to schools, airports, police stations, malls and other targets over a span of two years, Israeli prosecutors say.

He faces multiple charges in Israel, including the extortion of a Delaware state senator and publishing false information in order to cause panic.

Kadar has been held in Israel since his March 23 arrest following an investigation by the FBI and Israeli police. His crimes were committed over the Internet from Israel, according to reports, at times using computers in other countries.

He’s accused of using a powerful antenna to harness nearby Wi-Fi routers and employed voice-masking techniques to make the threats.

On April 21, Kadar was charged in US federal court in Florida with 28 counts of threatening calls and false information. He was also charged with three counts of cyberstalking in an indictment out of federal court in Georgia.

Kadar was not named in the Israeli indictment based on his age when the offenses occurred, but he was named in the US indictment.

Some of Kadar’s threats were made on behalf of others in exchange for Bitcoin payment, according to authorities. He made $238,000, at times using subcontractors.

Kadar attempted to extort money from Delaware state Senator Ernesto Lopez and threatened to kidnap and kill the children of George Little, a former Pentagon and CIA spokesman, according to prosecutors.

Kadar also is accused of targeting several British Jewish schools from February 2016 to March 2017. The Jewish Museum in London was evacuated in February after a bomb threat that officials said was connected to Kadar.

He is also accused of threatening passenger planes, including British Airways and an El Al flight to Israel that had to be escorted by French and Swiss fighter jets. A threat to a Virgin Australia plane resulted in the airline dumping eight tons of fuel into the ocean prior to landing, and a plane flying members of the National Basketball Association’s Boston Celtics had to be searched following a bomb scare.

Kadar is accused of calling 48 police stations with fake emergencies, claiming people were being held hostage at certain addresses. He also threatened the Israel consulate in Miami, Florida, and a hospital in New Jersey.

Kadar’s lawyer says he “suffers from a brain tumor that may have had an effect on his cognitive functions.”

“This is a young person that because of his very, very serious medical condition didn’t serve in the army, didn’t go to high school, didn’t go to elementary school,” said Galit Bash, according to CBS News.

His lawyer has also said Kadar has a high IQ but very low emotional intelligence. His American-born mother told Israel’s Channel 2 that Kadar has autism.

“He can’t control it,” she said, according to BBC News. “He can’t think straight.”

So far this year, more than 150 bomb threats have been made to Jewish community centers and schools across the US and Canada. In March, US journalist Juan Thompson was arrested and accused of making at least eight such threats in an attempt to settle a score with a woman.

In addition to threats made to US JCCs, American universities have reported an uptick in anti-Semitic activities on campuses. The latest occurred late last week at the prestigious Princeton University, where anti-Semitic, racist, anti-immigrant fliers were posted around campus by a group, Vanguard America, whose rallying call is “White Nationalist American youth working to secure the existence of their people.”

CIA Fights Disclosure of Secret Aid to Israel

Legality of aid uncertain amidst public opposition

April 24, 2017

by Grant Smith,

AntiWar

On March 30 Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan found it “neither logical nor plausible” for the CIA to claim it had no intelligence budget expenditure data of support to Israel between the years 1990 and 2015. The court then ordered the Department of Justice legal counsel to “meet and confer” about responding to the original Freedom of Information Act request for the data and file a response by April 24.

The original FOIA request sought public disclosure of the secret portion of US taxpayer-funded foreign assistance delivered to Israel. (PDF) Although “memorandum of understanding” packages, the most recent guaranteeing $3.8 billion per year over a decade, and additional Israel-bound appropriations passed by Congress are publicly known, secret US intelligence aid is not.

On September 11, 2013 journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency was pumping electronic intercepts of communications of American citizens to Israel, with no legally binding limits on how the data could be used.

On August 5, 2015 President Barack Obama quantified the possible dollar value boundaries of intelligence aid during a speech at American University, claiming “…due to American military and intelligence assistance, which my administration has provided at unprecedented levels, Israel can defend itself against any conventional danger…” Given historic military aid is publicly known, secret intelligence aid to Israel in 2015 was either an additional $1.9 billion per year or $13.2 billion if the president adjusted for inflation. These are the amounts Obama would have had to provide to meet “unprecedented” combined levels of military and intelligence assistance.

The question has grown in importance. The Trump administration has indicated that it will be slashing the US foreign aid budget, except for funding to Israel. This may make the percentage of total US aid received by Israel jump from an average of 9 percent over the past four years to 20- 30 percent or even more of the total foreign aid pie. This worries many within the Israel lobby who wish to obscure how disproportionate it has become. Also, according to statistically significant opinion polling, the majority of Americans overwhelmingly oppose US aid to Israel.

The legality of US aid to Israel is also under scrutiny. In February reporter Sam Husseini made Senator Chuck Schumer, an ardent Israel supporter, admit during a National Press Club briefing that Israel has nuclear weapons. Under the Arms Export Control Act, the US may not provide foreign aid of any type to nuclear weapons states operating outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty unless they comply with special procedures.

On April 21, hoping to avoid a public hearing, Justice Department legal counsel Joseph Borson made a second attempt to get Chutkan to dismiss the CIA aid FOIA lawsuit. (PDF) Avoiding entirely the topic of whether the CIA is providing intelligence support to Israel, Borson argued that because there are “17 separate intelligence agencies” it was wrong to for Chutkan to assume definitively the CIA had any budget data on Israel.

In an attached affidavit, Chief Management Officer of the Director of National Intelligence Mark W. Ewing cautioned that if the court forced the CIA to go beyond a “GLOMAR” response (neither confirming nor denying such information exists) it would reveal too much. (PDF) “If the CIA were to confirm or deny that a portion of its individual Agency intelligence budget relates to Israel, it would tend to show whether or not the intelligence assistance provided was related to HUMINT (a CIA area of expertise).”

If, rather than being forced to meet in court on April 24, the CIA manages to get the judge to throw the FOIA lawsuit out, the pathway it recommends to the information sought is clear. The plaintiff would have to file a FOIA with each of the remaining 16 intelligence agencies, either wait years for responses or sue them within 20 working days, receive their GLOMAR responses or citations of FOIA exemptions allowing them to withhold information from release—all without ever knowing whether the CIA had responsive data.

Or Judge Chutkan could order the CIA to release the information in court because it is in the public interest, as she did the Department of Defense in 2015, revealing the DOD knew as early as 1987 that Israel had a hydrogen bomb program.

However, the CIA may not be as accommodating as the Pentagon. It has long resisted public accountability generally and the Freedom of Information Act particularly. In practice, courts have little ability to enforce orders to produce information under FOIA or punish the CIA even when it willfully and egregiously violates the law. When ordered by a judge to produce the so-called “torture tapes” of detainee interrogations, in 2005 the agency instead incinerated them. The Justice Department, which rigorously defends the CIA in all FOIA cases, subsequently chose not to charge the agency officials responsible for violating the order.

Plight of Palestinian refugees now spans 5 generations

April 23, 2017

by Karin Laub

Associated Press

JERASH CAMP, Jordan (AP) — As a boy, Palestinian Abdullah Abu Massoud fled the war over the birth of Israel in 1948 and sought refuge in the nearby Gaza Strip.

As an adult, Abu Massoud was displaced again when Israeli forces captured Gaza, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem, in 1967. He escaped to Jordan, where he has been living in a refugee camp for 50 years.

Now 77, Abu Massoud is the white-haired patriarch of a refugee family spanning five generations, including a great-great-granddaughter. The future looks bleak.

“Fifty years have passed without a step forward,” said Abu Massoud. “We don’t belong here.”

The plight of Palestinians uprooted by Israeli-Arab wars is one of the world’s longest-running refugee crises, and a solution would likely require setting up a state of Palestine that would take in large numbers of them. Such a solution appears distant, even as President Donald Trump says he wants to try to broker an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being displaced again by regional conflicts, including civil war in Syria. The head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which helps displaced Palestinians said they are no longer the world’s focus.

“We are dealing here with a community  that has essentially reached a crisis of existential nature,” said Pierre Kraehenbuehl.

Abdullah Abu Massoud was born in a Bedouin encampment in what is now Israel. His family fled Israeli forces during the war over Israel’s creation, walking to Egyptian-run Gaza. More than 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted at the time.

In his 20s, Abu Massoud married Bassama, an Egyptian, and settled in Gaza.

Bassama, 72, said that after Israel’s capture of the territory in 1967, Gaza residents began talking of leaving, fearful of what Israeli rule might bring. Israel was offering transportation to Jordan, Bassama said.

In April 1968, the Abu Massouds and other displaced Palestinians from Gaza boarded a truck to Jordan’s border. From there, they took buses to an area near the town of Jerash where UNRWA was setting up a tent camp. Bassama remembers her feet sticking out of the tiny tent while she slept.

Under U.S. proposals in previous Israeli-Palestinian talks, a Palestinian state created from lands Israel captured in 1967 would welcome families like the Abu Massouds. In addition, an agreed upon number of refugees would be allowed to return to Israel and others could opt to stay in their host countries.

But disagreements remained, and talks failed. Palestinians wanted Israel to accept moral responsibility for the plight of refugees. Israel feared this would lead to a large-scale return to Israel and dilute its Jewish majority.

There have been no serious negotiations since gaps widened with the 2009 election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister. Continued Israeli settlement expansion made a partition deal more difficult.

Today, 5.3 million Palestinians and their descendants are registered with UNRWA in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, making them eligible for health and education services. Some in Netanyahu’s government allege UNRWA and others perpetuate the refugee problem artificially. U.N. officials say refugee status is typically handed down through the generations in protracted conflicts.

A 29-year-old grandson of Bassama and Abdullah, Alaa Abu Awad, has never set foot in historic Palestine, the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. But he clings to an idealized image of Gaza to help him deal with his statelessness. He has tacked a Palestinian flag to the wall of his shop in Jerash camp.

“It’s the flag of my homeland,” said Abu Awad.

Most Palestinians in Jordan received citizenship as descendants of refugees from the neighboring West Bank, which was under Jordanian control for two decades, until 1967. The offspring of those who arrived from Gaza – more than 150,000 – are still temporary residents. They can’t own property and are barred from government jobs.

This has curtailed opportunities.

Alaa Abu Awad dropped out of school because there was no payoff for an education. As a tailor, he struggles to feed his family. Business has slowed because of rising prices and unemployment. He fears he’ll spend his life in the camp.

Circumstances vary for displaced Palestinians like the Abu Massouds.

Fewer than 30 percent live in U.N. camps. Many are poor. Others became successful; Palestinians helped drive economies in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East.

In Lebanon, refugees cannot access public health or schools and are barred from most skilled professions.

In once welcoming Syria, about 400,000 of the nation’s 560,000 Palestinians were displaced in the civil war.

Most of the 2.2 million UNRWA-registered Palestinians in Jordan have citizenship, arguably ending their refugee status. Others say Jordan did this as a temporary protection measure.

In Palestinian-run areas of the West Bank and Gaza, descendants of refugees have the same rights as others. Pinned down by poverty, many remain in camps, which have been hotbeds of unrest against Israel and resentment against the Palestinian ruling elite.

Life in Jerash has changed the women.

Unlike Bassama’s generation, the younger women wear face veils, signaling that a more fundamentalist version of Islam is taking root. The women say being covered head to toe also offers protection in the crowded camp.

Privacy is rare. In the Abu Massoud home, Bassama typically sits on a floor cushion, overseeing young female relatives as they cook and clean.

She accepts her refugee life as fate. She did her best to provide a home for their seven children, all now married.

Bassama has no hope of return and expects to be buried in the camp’s rundown cemetery.

“Gaza is gone. Palestine is gone,” she said. “It’s over. For 50 years, they are saying, peace, peace. We are tired of the words.”

Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this report.

 Ontario plans to launch universal basic income trial run this summer

About 4,000 low-income participants in Canadian province will receive monthly payments to assess whether program can provide stability and positive changes

April 24, 2017

by Ashfia Kassam

The Guardian

Toronto-The Canadian province of Ontario will launch a trial run of universal basic income with about 4,000 participants this summer, making it the first North American government in decades to test out a policy touted as a panacea to poverty, bloated bureaucracy and the rise of precarious work.

Participants in the three-year, C$150m pilot program will be drawn from the cities of Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Lindsay. A randomly selected mail-out will invite applications in the coming months, with participants screened to ensure they are between the ages of 18 and 64 years and living on a low income.

The pilot will include a mix of those who are working in low-paying or precarious jobs and those on social assistance, with participants able to opt out at any point during the three years.

“This is a new world with new challenges,” Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s premier, said on Monday as she announced details of the highly anticipated pilot. “From technology to Trump, it is a time of greater uncertainty and change.”

The pilot aims to answer whether basic income – an idea long touted by those on the left and right – is an effective means of addressing this unpredictability. Unconditional monthly payments will begin to flow this summer; single people will receive up to C$16,989 ($12,570) while couples will receive C$24,027. All participants will continue to receive child or disability benefits, if applicable.

The monthly income represents a slight increase for those currently on social assistance or disability support but come with less monitoring and administration. Those who work will see the amount of their basic income reduced by 50 cents for every dollar they earn.

“It’s not an extravagant sum by any means,” said Wynne. “But our goal is clear. We want to find out whether a basic income makes a positive difference in people’s lives. Whether this new approach gives them the ability to begin to achieve their potential.”

The outcomes of the monthly stipend will be monitored on an ongoing basis, with researchers delving into its impact on health, education, housing and labour market participation. The province is also in the early stages of working with aboriginal partners to develop a parallel pilot that would test the idea among First Nations communities.

The scheme began last June, when the provincial government tasked a Conservative political strategist and longtime advocate of the idea with exploring potential directions for the pilot.

The trial run in Ontario comes as the idea of basic income is undergoing a popular renaissance. As leaders around the world struggle to find a balance between fighting poverty, the push for austerity and the steady erosion of stable jobs with pension and benefits, basic income projects are in the pipeline in Finland, the Netherlands and Kenya.

Canadian officials have long held an interest in the merits of the idea – the country was once home to one of North America’s largest and most ambitious experiments in basic income.

In 1974, about 1,000 residents in Dauphin, a small farming town of 10,000 people in Manitoba, began receiving monthly payments with no strings attached. The pilot, a joint effort by the federal and provincial government, set the stipend at around 60% of Statistics Canada’s poverty threshold, translating to roughly C$16,000 a year in today’s dollars for a single person. For every dollar earned from other income sources, 50 cents were scaled back from the monthly payment.

The payments flowed for four years, turning Dauphin into a potent test site for the policy. Research found little change in the residents’ work habits, save for new mothers who took longer maternity leaves and teenage boys who were more likely to stay in high school.

Instead the monthly income became a source of stability, buffering residents from financial ruin in the case of sudden illness, disability or unpredictable economic events. Hospitalisations dropped, as did injuries and mental health issues.

But the budget of $17m – the equivalent of about $85m today – ran short halfway through the project, hindering data collection. A growing federal push for austerity along with a change in Manitoba’s government in 1977 sounded the final death knell for the project.

Ontario’s pilot project risks falling victim to the same pressures. A provincial election is expected to be held by mid-2018, coming one year into the pilot program. Polls currently suggest that the Liberal government, who have held power in the province for some 14 years, are unlikely to win another majority government. Soaring electricity prices and allegations of bribery in a 2015 byelection are among the issues that have sent Wynne’s approval ratings tumbling to around 12% – the lowest of any premier in Canada

10,000 Windows computers may be infected by advanced NSA backdoor

Did script kiddies use DoublePulsar code released by NSA-leaking Shadow Brokers?

April 21, 2017

by Dan Goodin

arstechnica

Security experts believe that tens of thousands of Windows computers may have been infected by a highly advanced National Security Agency backdoor. The NSA backdoor was included in last week’s leak by the mysterious group known as Shadow Brokers.

DoublePulsar, as the NSA implant is code-named, was detected on more than 107,000 computers in one Internet scan. That scan was performed over the past few days by researchers from Binary Edge, a security firm headquartered in Switzerland.

Separate mass scans, one done by Errata Security CEO Rob Graham and another by researchers from Below0day, detected roughly 41,000 and 30,000 infected machines, respectively. To remain stealthy, DoublePulsar doesn’t write any files to the computers it infects. This design prevents it from persisting after an infected machine is rebooted. The lack of persistence may be one explanation for the widely differing results.

Not everyone is convinced the results are accurate. Even 30,000 infections sounds extremely high for an implant belonging to the NSA, a highly secretive agency that almost always prefers to abort a mission over risking it being detected. Critics speculate that a bug in a widely used detection script  is generating false positives. Over the past 24 hours—as additional scans have continued to detect between 30,000 and 60,000 infections—a new theory has emerged: copycat hackers downloaded the DoublePulsar binary released by Shadow Brokers. The copycats then used it to infect unpatched Windows computers.

“People [who] have gotten their hands on the tools just started exploiting hosts on the Internet as fast as they could,” Dan Tentler, founder of security consultant Phobos Group, told Ars. “On the part of Shadow Brokers, if their intention was to get mass infections to happen so their NSA zerodays got burned, the best [approach] is to release the tools [just before] the weekend. DoublePulsar is a means to an end.”

Tentler is in the process of doing his own scan on the Shodan computer search service that makes use of the DoublePulsar detection script. So far, he has run a manual spot check on roughly 50 IP addresses that were shown to be infected. All of the manual checks detected the hosts as running the NSA backdoor. Once installed, DoublePulsar waits for certain types of data to be sent over port 445. When DoublePulsar arrives, the implant provides a distinctive response. While security practices almost always dictate the port shouldn’t be exposed to the open Internet, Tentler said that advice is routinely overridden.

In a statement issued several hours after this post went live, Microsoft officials wrote: “We doubt the accuracy of the reports and are investigating.” For the moment, readers should consider the results of these scans tentative and allow for the possibility that false positives are exaggerating the number of real-world infections. At the same time, people should know that there’s growing consensus that from 30,000 to 107,000 Windows machines may be infected by DoublePulsar. Once hijacked, those computers may be open to other attacks.

FEMA and REX 84

April 25, 2017

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

 

In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Directorate Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national “readiness exercise” under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA’s readiness to assume military authority in the event of a “State of Domestic National Emergency” concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 8,750,000 undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country.

REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors.

Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently.

The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to “assembly centers or relocation camps” of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.

Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was a classified “scenario and drill” developed by the United States federal government to suspend the United States Constitution, declare martial law, place military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens who are deemed to be “national security threats”, in the event that the President declares a “State of National Emergency”. The plan states, events causing such a declaration would be widespread U.S. opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad, such as if the United States were to directly invade Central America. To combat what the government perceived as “subversive activities”, the plan also authorized the military to direct ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels.

Rex 84 was written by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was both National Security Council White House Aide, and NSC liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and John Brinkerhoff, the deputy director of “national preparedness” programs for the FEMA. They patterned the plan on a 1970 report written by FEMA chief Louis Giuffrida, at the Army War College, which proposed the detention of up to 21 million “American Negroes”, if there were a black militant uprising in the United States. Existence of a master military contingency plan (of which REX-84 was a part), “Garden Plot” and a similar earlier exercise, “Lantern Spike”, were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in an article in CounterSpy.

Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.

The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.

Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted at any moment by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

 

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA’s Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA’s role as a “new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.” FEMA’s powers were consolidated by President Carter to incorporate the…
• National Security Act of 1947 which allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities.

• 1950 Defense Production Act gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy.
• Act of August 29, 1916 authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency.
• International Emergency Economic Powers Act enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national. These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979.

 

Alaska:

Wilds of Alaska east of Anchorage.

No access by road however, there is a railway system.

Facility now designed to hold 500,000 people.

 

Arizona:

• Ft. Huachua, 20 miles from the Mexican border, 30 miles from Nogales. Rex 84 program. Emergency Custodial Facility.
• Florence WWII German/Italian POW camp now being renovated.
• Pinal County Gila River. Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facility.
• Yuma County Colorado River. Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facility.

 

Arkansas:

• Ft. Chaffee Has a new runway for aircraft, new detention camp facilities with cap of 20,000 prisoners.
• Chicot/Drew Counties Jerome. Renovated spec Interment camps for Japanese Americans WWII.
• Descha County Rohwer. Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention centers.
• Blythville AFB This base was closed but is now being used as a camp location. New wooden barracks have been constructed at this location. This camp is surrounded by high wire topped with barbed wire, and has guard towers.
• Berryville FEMA facility located east of Eureaka on Hwy 62.
• Omaha FEMA facility located on Hwy 65 south of old wood processing plant. It is on an old dirt road that leads to a toxic waste dump. Note: The facility in Miss. is also located on an old toxic waste dump.

 

California:

• Oakdale Ca 90 miles East of San Francisco on HWY 120. Holds a minimum of 15,000 people. REX 84 program, Emergence Custodial Facility.
• Vandenberg AFB Located midway between San Louis Obispo, and Santa Barbara. The base is on Hwy 1 and close to Hwy 101. REX 84 program, Emergency Custodial Facility.
• Ft. Irwin Irwin is a remote Mtn region south of Death Valley, National Monument. This base is designated as inactive however, there is a concentration camp located at this facility about 30 miles from Interstate 15 in Barstow.
• Inyo County Manzana. Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention center.
• Modoc County Tulelake. Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facility.
• Sacramento Army Depot No specific data at this time.

 

Colorado:

• Old Lowell AFB. Recently all new chain link fence was installed around the borders, plus 400,000 handcuffs and shackles were purchased by the government for this site.

 

Florida:

• Avon Park No data available
• Camp Krome Located near Miami Dept of Justice detention and interrogation facility.
• Elgin AFB This base is greater than 50 miles long extending from Pensacola Bay to Hwy 331 in De Funiak Springs. It is adjacent to Interstate 10 on the North and the Fort Walton Beach vacation spot.
• REX 84 program, Emergency Custodial Facility.

 

Georgia:

• Ft. Benning Located East of Columbia near the Georgia/Alabama state line. – REX 84 program – Emergency Custodial Facility.
• Unadilla, Ga Macon County; Located on east railroad street, Plunket road leads into the facility 1 1/2 miles from Unadilla on county road 230. This is a FEMA prison manned and staffed but no prisoners.
• Oglethorpe, Ga. Macon County; facility is located five miles from Montezuma, three miles from Oglethorp. Traveling south on highway 49, located on the west side of the highway. This FEMA prison has no staff and no prisoners.
• Morgan, Ga. Calhoun County; I-75 exit 32 to 300 south to Albany. Take highway 234 to Morgan. Go through Morgan taking highway 45 south. The FEMA facility is 1 1/2 miles on the right (west) side of highway 45. This FEMA facility is fully manned and staffed but no prisoners.
• Camilla, Ga. Mitchell County; from Camilla take highway 19 south, travel 5.4 miles from 37/19 junction to Mount Zion Road, turn left (east) on Mount Zion Road. The FEMA facility is located on Mount Zion Road aprox: 5.7 miles south of Camilla. This facility is not manned or staffed and there are no prisoners.
• Hawkinsville, Ga Pulaski County; located on fire road 100/ Upper River Road, 2 miles west from alternate 129 North 257 / 112 east. Five miles east of Hawkensville. This FEMA facility is fully manned and staffed but no prisoners.
• Abbeyville, Ga. Wilcox County: south side of Abbeyvilleon highway 129 (Broad Street) off highway 280 (Main Street). This FEMA facility is fully manned and staffed but no prisoners.
• McRae, Ga. Telfair County; 1.5 miles west of McRae on highway 134 (8th street). The FEMA facility is on Irwinton Ave. off 8th street. This facility is fully manned and staffed but no prisoners.
• Frequencies: 153.7400 Georgia State Correctional Institutions 154.9050 Intrastate Coordinating (car to car state wide) 154.9350 Intrastate Coordinating (base to base / state wide) 155.3700 Georgia Police Intersystem (State wide)

 

Idaho:

• Jerome County – Minipoka – Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facility.
• Kooski plus 50 miles East. Near Lolo pass
• Moose Creek Unmanned and there is a near by landing strip in or near a national forest.

 

Illinois:

• Marseilles It is located on the Illinois River off Interstate 80 on Hwy 6. It is a relatively small facility with a cap of 1400 prisoners.
• Though it is small it is designed like other concentration camp facilities with high fences topped with barbed wire and guard towers.

 

Indiana:

• Thousands of acres located just out of Indianapolis, Indiana holds a large Concentration camp facility complete with barracks, high fence, razor wire, towers, turnstyles, a railroad, helicopter landing pads, and what appears to be three large furnaces with 3 inch mains on one of the buildings. This is a massive facility, still under construction with a completion date sometime in 1996.
• Ft. Benjamin Harrison A U.S. Army facility located on the outskirts of Indianapolis will be used to hold prisoners.
• Ft. Wayne FEMA Detention facility
• Terre Haute FEMA Detention facility

 

Kansas:

• Leavenworth U.S. Marshal’s Fed Holding Facility PFP.
• Concordia WWII POW German/Italian POW camp being renovated.
• El Dorado Federal prison.
• Topeka 80 acres converted to a holding camp.

 

Kentucky:

• Louisville FEMA Detention facility
• Lexington FEMA Detention facility

 

Louisiana:

• Livingston WWII German/Italian POW camp being renovated.

 

Maine:

• Houlton WWII German/Italian POW camp being renovated.

 

Missouri:

• Richards Gebaur AFB This facility is located in Grandview, A large civilian internment facility has been built on this facility, and base personnel are restricted from the area.

 

Michigan:

• Kincheloe Correctional Facility (Formerly Kincheloe AFB with B-52 sized runways). Has five large prison buildings able to house 5000+. The facility has about 500 prisoners at this time. Location: 20 miles south of Sault Ste. Marie (Soo Locks) at the eastern end of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
• K.I. Sawyer AFB Large construction program has been going on under the name of “Operation Gateway”. High security is in place with a large portion of the base closed to civilian view. Location: 20 miles south of Marquette, MI in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.
• Raco Field Raco field is an interesting facility. The above ground runways form a perfect triangle. Few buildings appear on the surface, but ventilators can be seen. Civilian workers report that a subsurface facility exists. No publicity exists indicating what the role of Raco Field is, although something is there. To observers, it is an “inactive WWII base.” Location: 15 miles NW of Kincheloe Correctional Facility on Hwy 28.
• Bark River A large construction operation is ongoing in the Bark River, MI, area. Locals are tight-lipped. The facility is off the main highway in a wilderness area. While most of the locals say that the construction is associated with the ELF (extreme low frequency) project of world-wide communications, others suspect FEMA is involved. (Note: the ELF grid is located 100 miles NE of the Bark River area) Location: 20 miles west of Escanaba in the upper penninsula of Michigan.
• Bay City Sits on Saginaw Bay which connects to Lake Huron. This facility has high fencing, barbed wire and guard towers.
• Grayling Camp Grayling Michigan National Guard Base. Detention facility. Guards towers, razor wire.
• Southwest area of the state FEMA Detention facility
• Central part of the state FEMA Detention facility
• Detroit FEMA Detention facility

 

Mississippi:

• Hancock County – The NASA facility at this location has two camps the first being located at the end of Kiln road at Waveland, and then the next road after ammo road at the Post Office.
• The second camp is located in the center of a rest station back from the Interstate.
• Inmates from the Hancock County jail claim they have worked details involving the delivery of food to these camps under the supervision of U.N. Guards.

 

Nebraska:

• Scottsbluff WWII German/Italian POW camp being renovated.
• Northwest corner of state FEMA Detention facility
• Northeast corner of state FEMA Detention facility
• South Central Hastings area FEMA Detention facility

 

Nevada:

• Elco There is a prison facility 10 miles out of Elco.
• Wells Camp is located in the O’Niel basin area, 40 miles North of Wells, and West off Hwy 93, 25 miles.
• Winnemucca Camp is located at the I-80 mile marker 112, on the south side of the road and 3/4 miles off of the road.
• Wells/Winnemucca Camp is located near the base line of the mountains. Reno Nevada plus 150 miles east south side of road if your headed west, 150 yards off the road.

 

New Jersey:

• Ft. Dix Fully operational prison camp with approximately 35,000 prisoners.

 

New York:

• Ft. Drum located in upstate New York, probable location for Eastern area processing of people, located near the St. Lawrence river and access to Lake Ontario. Both waterways may be used for transport. Located very close to Canada.
• Watertown FEMA Detention facility
• Albany FEMA Detention facility
• Buffalo FEMA Detention facility

 

Ohio:

• Cleveland FEMA Detention facility
• Columbus FEMA Detention facility
• Cincinnati FEMA Detention facility
• Lima FEMA Detention facility

 

Oklahoma:

• Oklahoma City Tinker AFB, This is a civilian detention facility, all base personnel are prohibited from going near the area, and the area is under constant guard.
• McAlester WWII German/Italian POW camp being renovated.
• Will Rogers Air Port This is a newly constructed FEMA facility, and it is believed that it will be used as a primary processing center for prisoners West of the Mississippi River.

 

Pennsylvania:

• Camp Hill Camp Hill Pa located off I-15. Sits across the navigable Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. Close to Cumberland Army Depot and the Camp Hill Correctional facility.
• Crossville WWII German/Italian POW Camp being renovated.

 

Texas:

• Ft.Hood Ft. Hood has a newly built concentration camp, constructed complete with towers, high fencing, and barbed wire.
• Mexia WWII German/ Italian POW camp being renovated.
• Amarillo FEMA Detention facility

 

Utah:

• Millard County – Central Utah – Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facility.
• Skull Valley Camp William property – west of the old bombing range South/southwestern portion of Camp Williams This camp was discovered by a man and his son who were rabbit hunting, they were discovered and apprehended.
• Utah Lake 15 miles south of Saratoga Recreation center 200 – 300 yards off the road Black wire 40 to 50 feet tall, made to look something like a golf driving range.
• Cedar City East of Cedar City Utah – no more data.

 

Washington:

• Okanogan County borders Canada and is a site for a massive concentration camp capable of holding hundreds of thousands of people.

 

Wisconsin:

• Ft. McCoy Located in Western Wisconsin 30 miles East of LaCrosse between the point where 90 and 94 intersect. REX 84 program, Emergency Custodial Facility.
• Central part of the state FEMA Detention facility.

 

Wyoming:

• Park County – Hart Mountain – Renovated WWII Japanese-American special internment detention facilities
• North Central part of the state FEMA Detention facility
• Southeast part of the state FEMA Detention facility
• Southwest part of the state FEMA Detention facility
• East Yellowstone – Manned facility. Investigators were apprehended by European soldiers, unable to identify the language used by the foreign soldiers, American government helped clear the situation.

Erdogan pursues French “assassination” pundit

A former French diplomat turned analyst has been accused by Turkey of “inciting” assassination bids against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish state media say Philippe Moreau Defarges will face “legal consequences.”

April 24, 2017

DW

Defarges’ suggestion made Saturday on French BFM television – for which he later apologized – resulted Monday in one of Erdogan’s lawyers filing a formal complaint to Ankara prosecutors.

“There will either be a civil war or another scenario… his assassination,” Defarges had said on Saturday, predicting what he termed a “catastrophe” through polarization in Turkey, given strengthened powers for Erdogan narrowly endorsed in Turkey’s referendum on April 16 versus widespread Turkish disquiet.

Erdogan’s lawyer Huseyin Aydin was cited by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency on Monday as saying that Defarges’ remarks were not a simple expression of opinion but were “clearly instigating the crime in question.”

Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told a press conference in Ankara that Defarges’ comments would have “legal consequences.”

‘Sincere apologies’

Defarges, 74, a senior fellow at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) on Sunday offered his “sincere apologies,” describing his televised remarks as “clumsy” and saying they “might have been wrongly interpreted.”

Kalin replied that the apology was “not enough,” adding that the issue “can not be taken lightly.” It was a test to see how Europe would react, he added.

A senior Erdogan adviser Gulnur Aybet demanded that IFRI “terminate” Defarges’ fellowship.

Narrow referendum outcome

Preliminary counts from the referendum showed Erdogan garnering a narrow 51.4-percent “yes” margin in his bid for sweeping extra powers.

The “no”-vote amounted to 48.59 percent.

On Sunday, pro-government columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in the “Hurriyet” newspaper that those results should be an “early warning” for Erdogan’s AKP party ahead of November 2019.

That is when presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled simultaneously, and most of Turkey’s constitutional changes are due to come into force.

Street protests continue

Opposition parties, including Turkey’s main opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP), have filed petitions to annul the referendum counts, but last Wednesday Turkey’s electoral commission rejected those bids, and Erdogan said such attempts were futile.

Brookings Institute analyst Kemal Kirisci said that Erdogan’s AKP and its ally MHP together had lost 10 percent in votes on April 16 – compared with their combined tally in Turkey’s November 2015 legislative elections.

“The alliance seems to have fallen short …despite all the bravado that marked their language,” Kirisci said, referring to Erdogan’s pre-referendum campaigning.

Street protests continued on the weekend in Turkish cities against Erdogan’s asserted victory. Arrest warrants were issued in Izmir against seven activists.