TBR News January 24, 2016

Jan 23 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. January 24, 2016: “The Bundy business in Nevada and Oregon is  an example of growing displeasure with govrnment policies. The Bundy people are part of a strange group calling themselves, “Soverign Americans” who do not recognize the Federal government and claim they can do as they please with government property and rules and regulations. They issue “passports” to people, decline to pay taxes and generally behave in a nihilistic manner. Still, our growing and demanding bureaucracy ought to tread lightly lest some incident trigger massive public reactions. There is the anti-draft movement of the Vietnam war to consider. This country came very close to widespread public revolt and Johnson backed down just in time (after the Tet offensive)

The amount of taxpayer’s money spent on the Department of Defense is astounding but not a matter for the press. They do as they are told and the public is fed doses of pap via the media. Eventually, this will fail but the time is not yet.”

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 conversatins 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.

http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Crow-Gregory-Douglas-ebook/dp/B00GHMAQ5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450147193&sr=8-1&keywords=conversations+with+the+crow

 

 

Conversation No. 79

Date: Tuesday, April 8, 1997

Commenced: 9:08 AM CST

Concluded: 9;55 AM CST

 

GD: Good morning, Robert, All week there?

RTC: Very tired today, Gregory.

GD: If I’m calling at a wrong time, maybe I can call back later on…on tomorrow.

RTC: No, just very tired I slept well but I feel like I haven’t been to bed for several days.

GD: Seen a doctor recently? RTC: My God, yes. A number of them. General check ups and Emily is under the impression that because I smoke, she says too much, I might have some kind of lung problems. I am not going to give up smoking now, Gregory. I’ve gotten used to it. Terribly addictive, tobacco.

GD: Yes. I read a recent study on tobacco. Very, very addictive. Causes all kinds of respiratory diseases and cancer as well.

RTC: Ah well, Gregory, if one thing doesn’t get you, something else will.

GD: How about being hanged for rape at 95?

RTC: (Laughter) what do they say about a consummation?

GD: A consummation devoutly to be wished. Shakespeare. We could make it less final and mention being sued for child support at the same age.

RTC: They say that if you father children after a certain age, they have mental problems.

GD: Could be. You see a lot of weird yard monsters being carried around these days, Robert. Flat faces, drooling. Mongoloids. Of course, we don’t call them that any more. I think they say differently abled. But a Mongoloid idiot is still a Mongoloid idiot, no matter how you slice it. So correct now. Bloody twits. Don’t say this, can’t say that. Oh my, that is so demeaning. That’s what someone told me the other day when I called a fat woman a bloato. I apologized and called her a piggy instead. That didn’t go over very well, either. So many Mongoloids and so many jiggling fatties waddling around. If they kept their mouths shut, Robert, it would serve two valuable purposes. On the one hand, we wouldn’t have to listen to their babblings and on the other, they wouldn’t be feeding their enormous guts every waking hour. Well, the potato chip industry would suffer but then, on another negative side, they might live longer, .Robert, as you were on board at the CIA during the formative years, could you address some points I am trying to research?

RTC: I’ll try, if I can, Gregory.

GD: OK. The CIA was originally started up by Truman in about ’48…

RTC: Yes. Harry was not happy with the slanted intelligence the Army was providing so he set us up to counter the bs.

GD: Yes. Gehlen told me about the fake Russian invasion plot of ’48. That’s when his organization of former Gestapo people was run by the Army. Faked up the story of a pending Russian invasion to terrify Congress and the public so as to keep business going along on a wartime footing and the Army from being disbanded.

RTC: Basically true, Gregory. We had nothing to do with that.

GD: The CIA took Gehlen over just after that fraud, correct?

RTC: Yes, after that. We had nothing to do with that.

GD: Mueller said that fake report was the real starting gun for the cold war. Would you agree? RTC: I would go along with that.

GD: Russia had been bled dry during the war and much of her relatively primitive infrastructure had been ruined. Heavy loss in troops and so on. In other words, in 1948, Stalin not only was in no shape to confront the western powers on a military level nor really compete in the marketplace. Right? RTC: Right.

GD: Now I agree that Stalin was engaged in extensive spying here and elsewhere during and after the war. But everyone spies on everyone else. Spying is not a military threat but wasn’t this domestic spying used to terrify the public into supporting a very expensive cold war? You were on the inside then, Robert. Between us and the phone taps, was Russia going to nuke us or start a land war in ’49 or even ’50?

RTC: No, they were not.

GD: So if that were the case, the CIA grew to such a powerful entity solely on the mistaken, deliberately mistaken, premise that Russia, and later China, were going to attack us. Right?

RTC: This is a rather sensitive area, Gregory, but I’m retired and old and overall, you are probably right. But they were spying on us. Bunch of traitorous Jews under Roosevelt were running rampant here. You must know that White and even Wallace were helping Uncle Joe with all of our secrets.

GD: Yes, but annoying as this was, it was not a military threat. And with the great increase in domestic income as a result of the war, Communism had long ago lost its attraction for the poor and the various left wing politicians here. Right?

RTC: Yes, but we are talking about a huge army of spies here then.

GD: Ideological people. Poor. Give a man some money and a new television, and dreams of communism vanish as the waistline spreads.

RTC: Yes but then don’t forget the very real threats to the west by Stalin and his successors.

GD: But these were struggles for markets and natural resources, weren’t they? I mean not a real military threat. It had always been the dream in Moscow to capture the very technical and industrious Germany. Was that was when Lenin took off the fright wig. Always get Germany. I know about this because when Mueller took over the tiny Gestapo in ’35, he said there were about 20,000 active Communist Russian spies loose all over Germany. When he got through with them, there were about five left. Anyway, wasn’t the struggle then just an economic struggle like the one that started the First World War? Odd. Russia and the United States were engaged in a purely capitalist struggle for economic power. Not military power. Do you concur?

RTC: Yes, it boiled down to that. I mean, we had our friends. People we knew as schoolmates, friends or neighbors. Business friends. Old Bill ran some aluminum company and he wanted us to secure bauxite sites in some country that Russia was also interested in. Of course we couldn’t use this as an excuse to topple some government and set up a US-friendly one so we tarted it up to say the existing government there was being run by Moscow and a Communist seizure was just a matter of time.

GD: Like Nicaragua?

RTC: Exactly so.

GD: Levi and Zentner has friends in Langley.

RTC: Well, more like the Grace people but I follow. But why should Russia get its hands on valuable resources when we wanted them? Let’s face it, Gregory, the struggle for natural resources is the struggle for life.

GD: But why not seek less damaging goals? Isn’t there enough to go around?

RTC: Well, that’s the question. Planet is getting very small these days. Too many people need more products and whoever has the natural resources, at least as long as they hold out, has the upper hand. Now, thanks to us, we have the upper hand. We damned near got all the Russia oil and gas under Yeltsin but you can’t win them all.

GD: But Reagan was the last gasp of all that, wasn’t he? RTC: When business sees itself as losing something they want, it will never be over.

GD: But when the cold war was on, we struggled with Russia over the natural resources of Africa. Each of us took over this or that country and set up this or that tin horn dictator answerable to us, or them. And now that the cold war is over, thanks to Reagan, why Africa is no longer of any interest to either side. I predict that in twenty years, Africa, at least sub-Saharan Africa, will be a wasteland. There’s a lot of AIDS there now and once all the natives are dead, we can just walk in and take over the resources. No need for a war, Robert, just let nature take its course.

RTC: Very ruthless, Gregory.

GD: I study history, Robert. Use facts, not emotions.

RTC: I hate to say this but Marx was right when he talked about the role of economics in history.

GD: I’ve read Marx. Fine theories but stupid practices. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Right? Sounds almost Christian, doesn’t it? Of course both systems, Jesus and Marx, sound so noble and self-sacrificing on paper but they are Utopian and never work. And the raging idealists are the first to be shot when the pragmatists come into power. Night following day. And Robert, in the end, who cares?

 

(Concluded at 9:55 CST)

 

 

 

Calais port puts operations on hold after crowd of migrants breaks in, attempts to board ferry

January 23, 2016

RT

Some 200 migrants have broken into the port of Calais, He added that some of the migrants agreed to leave the vehicle voluntarily while the others would be removed by police, who is ready to use force.

According to some reports, migrants failed to board the boat as the staff managed to block all the doors.

in northern France, with several of them boarding the front deck of a British ferry, media reported. The port has put its operations on hold warning of delays to ferry services.

“A demonstration in Calais has drawn around 2,000 people and in the end around 200 people entered the port, with approximately 50 of them boarding a ferry, the ‘Spirit of Britain’, on an external deck,” deputy Calais prefect Denis Gaudin told Reuters.

The Spirit of Britain vessel belongs to P&O Ferries who also confirmed the incident on their official Twitter warning of delays in the service.

The incident followed a pro-refugee rally organized by French leftists which gathered about 2,000 people. The activists carried banners reading “refugees welcome here” and said that an increased security presence in the Calais region is a threat to migrants’ lives.

The demonstration came as British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visited the Calais Jungle and Grande-Synthe (Dunkirk) refugee camps. The British politician expressed his concern with living conditions in the refugee camps and said that the refugee crisis is caused by wars and conflicts.

What I’m trying to achieve here is to understand the nature of the refugee crisis that’s facing the whole of Europe. Ultimately we deal with the situation by dealing with the problem at its source, which are the wars and conflicts,” Corbyn said as cited by the Independent.

We have got people here who have been here for months, if not longer than that, with no proper education, no access to doctors, no access to dentists, limited access to food – in very cold, very wet conditions. These conditions are a disgrace anywhere. We as human beings have to reach out to fellow human beings,” he added.

The refugee camp known as “Jungle” was established in Calais last year. Up to six thousand migrants and refugees live in the camp for months at a time, hoping to cross the English Channel to seek asylum in Great Britain which seems for them a better place to start new life than France.

The UK, however, is not so eager to accept their many attempt to cross the channel illegally – primarily through the Eurotunnel. Since the eruption of the migrant crisis in Calais in June, dozens have died in or near the tunnel.

French officials have recently started to demolish a part of the refugee camp to create a “buffer zone” between the Jungle and the highway in order to protect thousands of lorries from migrants.

 

Oregon militia leaders and FBI begin negotiations to end standoff

Ammon Buddy plans to have a ceremony for ranchers to renounce federal ownership of public land and tear up their federal grazing contracts

January 23, 2016

AP

The leader of an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge in Oregon plans to have a ceremony Saturday for ranchers to renounce federal ownership of public land and tear up their federal grazing contracts.

On Friday, Ammon Bundy met briefly with a federal agent as authorities attempt to resolve the three-week old standoff over federal land policies, but Bundy left because the agent wouldn’t talk with him in front of the media.

The short meeting occurred as Oregon officials are putting increased pressure on federal authorities to take action against Bundy’s group.

On Thursday, Bundy went to the airport in Burns, where the FBI has set up a staging area, and spoke to an FBI negotiator over the phone. They agreed to speak again Friday, but Bundy left the airport shortly after he arrived because the FBI agent he spoke with said federal authorities wanted any conversation to be private.

Bundy wants face-to-face conversations in front of reporters. “I really don’t think, at this point, even having another phone conversation here without him would be beneficial,” Bundy said before leaving Friday.

He also questioned the FBI’s authority. “If you haven’t got sanction from the sheriff, there’s no reason to be talking to you,” Bundy said.

A crowd of reporters watched the brief exchange, while state troopers and armed federal agents looked on.

Bundy’s group began occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon on 2 January. The group plans to open the 300-square-mile refuge for cattle this spring.

The FBI did not immediately comment on Friday’s meeting with Bundy, but the agency said in a statement Thursday that its response “has been deliberate and measured as we seek a peaceful resolution”.

Oregon governor Kate Brown said Wednesday that she was angry because federal authorities have not taken action against Bundy’s group. The Democratic governor said the occupation has cost Oregon taxpayers nearly half a million dollars.

Brown sent a letter Thursday to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, urging them “to endthe unlawful occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as safely and as quickly as possible”.

Bundy, speaking to the Associated Press late Friday while sitting at a desk inside one of the refuge buildings, dismissed the governor’s request.

It just again shows the ignorance of some of our elected officials,” he said. “It’s just amazing that she would just disregard the Constitution to the point where she would think it would be OK to give the federal government that authority to come in and take some dynamic action or something like that.”

Bundy said the governor’s comments might have been about politics.

If they wanted to come get us they would have come got us already,” Bundy said.

The group has recently bolstered a front entrance blockade with timbers and set up another checkpoint at a back entrance. The AP was not allowed to enter the area Friday without an armed escort.

In a statement, US senator Jeff Merkley said it was “long past time for this illegal occupation to end and for the people of Harney County to get their lives back.”

The Oregon Democrat said he hopes authorities could peacefully resolve the situation and hold Bundy’s group accountable.

At community meetings, some local residents have asked Bundy and his group to leave.

Harney County judge Steve Grasty said in a statement Friday that many locals “are incredulous about the federal government’s fear of taking action against the lawlessness that we are witnessing on a daily basis.”

Bundy has said he believes his group’s work is appreciated by locals. He said the armed men have been “helping ranchers”, doing maintenance on the refuge because “it’s in a bad shape,” and taking care of fire hazards in the refuge’s firehouse.

Bundy has also asked the FBI to let two ranchers sent to prison for arson go back home.

The Center for Biological Diversity environmentalist group says it plans to hold a rally Saturday afternoon in the refuge to call for Bundy and his supporters to leave.

 

‘Panic’ as Europe faces demise over refugees, top officials say

January 22, 2016

by Alex Pigman, Nicolas Revise

AFP

Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) – Time is running out to solve Europe’s refugee crisis with the unity of the continent hanging in the balance, top officials at the elite World Economic Forum in Davos said Friday.

Discussions about the waves of refugees still making their way to Europe were on many people’s lips in the Swiss ski resort, with opinions ranging from calls for an ageing Europe to seize an opportunity to stark warnings of impending disaster.

“We have a few weeks to concretely deliver our options… otherwise you have country-by-country solutions (and that is) the beginning of the dismantling for sure,” Emmanuel Macron, the French economy minister, told an audience of billionaires and business leaders.

The incessant flow of now over one million refugees to Europe from war-torn Syria and Iraq has handed the EU yet another crisis, following last year’s debt battles with Greece and the face-off with Russia over UkraineThe confirmation that at least 45 migrants drowned off the coast of Turkey and Greece early on Friday seeped into the usually upbeat Davos meetings.

Macron’s bleak assessment followed a warning by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who said Europe only had six to eight weeks left to solve the refugee problem.

“When spring comes and the numbers quadruple, we cannot as the EU cope with the numbers any longer,” Rutte said.

But Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said his fellow Europeans overlooked migration coming to Poland from war-torn Ukraine, a burden not adequately acknowledged in Brussels, the EU capital.”We are alone in handling this crisis,” the eurosceptic Polish minister said, while adding that the refugees from Syria and Iraq, despite all the problems, were now safe.

EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini warned against the hypocrisy displayed by some EU member states that on one hand urged for European solutions, only to reject them later as too generous for refugees.

“We risk this cycle that countries ask for European responses, then they prevent these European responses from taking place,”

she said, warning against using the crisis for electoral purposes.

‘Panic’ in Europe –

Mario Draghi, the powerful head of the European Central Bank, said the refugees could be an “opportunity” to stimulate economic growth, but it was too early to tell.

“Our society will change, in which direction one can only guess,” he said to a packed room in the Swiss ski resort.

George Soros, the 85-year-old financier and one-time refugee, told a dinner of big players that the numbers of migrants were now dangerously high.

“We have passed a tipping point where the influx reduces the capacity of the countries to assimilate or integrate the refugees,” he said.

“There is panic (in Europe),” he said darkly.

But Helene Rey, one of Europe’s up-and-coming economists, said it was not too late.

“It is an opportunity. You have to invest in the integration of refugees and you get a return on that investment down the road,” said the French academic.

This view was echoed by the International Monetary Fund that said in a report released in time for Davos: “In the long run, the economic impact will depend on the speed of integration of refugees into the labour market.”

US Secretary John Kerry called in Davos for a 30-percent increase in humanitarian funding from the United Nations for refugees.

This would bring the level of aid from $10 billion in 2015 to $13 billion this year, a State Department official said.

Kerry said President Barack Obama would host a summit on refugees at the UN General Assembly in New York later this year in a sign that the issue is sounding alarms worldwide.

Kenya, which has hosted refugees from Somalia and Sudan for decades, said Europe was merely getting a taste of Africa’s problems.

“It is new for Europe, it is not new for the rest of the world,” said Kenya’s Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed.

“Maybe that mindset will change (in Europe), maybe it will shift so that you start looking at other people in the same way that you look at yourselves,” she said.

 

Zika virus reaches New York

A virus likely to have caused thousands of birth defects in Brazil has been found in three individuals in New York. Pregnant women traveling abroad have been warned to exercise particular caution.

January 21, 2016

DW

The New York State Department of Health announced on its website late Friday that three people in the state had tested positive for the Zika virus . The virus, well known in Latin American and Caribbean countries, is known to cause birth defects such as microcephaly if pregnant women become infected.

The Zika virus is often transmitted by mosquitoes, and has been likened to a milder form of dengue fever. No medicine or vaccine exists against the virus, which causes symptoms like rash, fever, pink eye and joint pain, and so the only cure is rest.

Health officials in New York said the three patients had recently returned from countries were the virus is prevalent, and that one had already recovered.

“…This is a time of year when people travel to warmer climates and countries where Zika virus is found, we are urging residents, especially pregnant women, to check all health advisories before traveling and take preventive measures when traveling to affected countries,” said state health commissioner Howard Zucker.

Under normal circumstances, Zika is not a particularly common virus, but health authorities have had cause to worry over an extended outbreak in Brazil that began last year. Since October, some 3,500 babies in the South American nation have been diagnosed with microcephaly, a debilitating condition which causes their heads to be smaller than normal and can lead to disruptions of motor skills, speech ability, and mobility.

 

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

January 23, 2016

by Uri Avnery,

As is well-known, Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”.

 

That is its official designation.

Well…

As for Jewish, it’s a new kind of Jewishness, a mutation.

For 2000 years or so, Jews were known to be wise, clever, peace-loving, humane, progressive, liberal, even socialist.

Today, when you hear these attributes, the State of Israel is not the first name that springs to mind. Far from it.

As for “democratic”, that was more or less true from the foundation of the state in 1948 until the Six-day War of 1967, when Israel unfortunately conquered the West Bank, the Gaza strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan. And, of course, the Sinai peninsula which was later returned to Egypt.

(I say “more or less” democratic, because there is no completely democratic state anywhere in the world.)

Since 1967, Israel has been a hybrid creation – half democratic, half dictatorial. Like an egg that is half fresh, half rotten.

The occupied territories, we should be reminded, consist of at least four different categories:

East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in 1967 and is now part of Israel’s capital city. Its Palestinian inhabitants have not been accepted as nor applied to be Israeli citizens. They are mere “inhabitants”, devoid of any citizenship.

The Golan Heights, formerly a part of Syria, which was annexed by Israel. The few Arab-Druze inhabitants who remain there are reluctant citizens of Israel.

The Gaza Strip, which is completely cut off from the world by Israel and Egypt, acting in collusion. The Israeli navy cuts it off at sea. The minimum the inhabitants need to survive is allowed to come through Israel. The late Ariel Sharon removed the few Jewish settlements from this area, which is not claimed by Israel. Too many Arabs there.

The West Bank (of the Jordan river), which the Israeli government and right-wing Israelis call by their Biblical names “Judea and Samaria”, home of the largest part of the Palestinian people, probably some 3.5 million. It is there that the main battle is on.

From the first day of the 1967 occupation, right-wing Israelis were intent on annexing the West Bank to Israel. Under the slogan “the Whole of Eretz Israel” they launched a campaign for annexing this entire territory, driving the Palestinian population out and setting up as many Jewish settlements as possible.

The extremists never hid their intent of “cleansing” this land entirely of non-Jews and establishing a Greater Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

This is a very difficult aim to achieve. In 1948, during our so-called “War of Independence”, Israel conquered a far larger territory than allotted to it by the United Nations, but was forgiven. Half the Palestinian population of the country was driven out or fled. The fait accompli was more or less accepted by the world because it was achieved by military means in a war started by the Arab side, and because it happened soon after the Holocaust.

By 1967, the situation was quite different. The causes of the new war were disputed, David had turned into Goliath, a worldwide Cold War was on. Israel’s conquests were not recognized, not even by its protector, the US.

In spite of several new Israeli-Arab wars, the end of the Cold War and many other changes, this situation has not changed.

Israel still calls itself a “Jewish and democratic state”. The population in “Greater Israel” is by now half Jewish and half Arab, with the Arabs gaining. Israel proper is still more or less democratic. In the occupied Palestinian territories, a dictatorial “military government” is in charge, with hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers trying to push out the Palestinian Arab population by all means available, including fraudulent acquisition of land and terrorism (called “retaliation”).

In Israel proper, the government belongs to the extreme Right, with some elements that would be called “fascist” anywhere else. The Center and Left are impotent. The only real political fight is between the radical Right and the even more radical extreme Right.

This week, a furious battle broke out between Binyamin Netanyahu together with his Minister of Defense, Bogie Ya’alon, both of the Likud Party, and the Education Minister, Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Jewish Home Party. Bennett, a wildly ambitious Rightist, makes no secret of his intention to replace Netanyahu as soon as possible.

The kind of language used by the two parties would be considered extreme even if used between the coalition and the opposition. Between partners of the coalition government it is, to put it mildly, rather unusual, even in Israel.

Compared to this, the language of the Leader of the Opposition, Yitzhak Herzog, is practically polite.

Bennett said that Netanyahu and Ya’alon hawk old and obsolete ideas and suffer from “mental paralysis”, thereby worsening Israel’s already shaky standing in the world. Netanyahu and Ya’alon, a former Kibbutz member and army Chief of Staff, accused Bennett of stealing. According to them, whenever a good idea is aired in the cabinet, Bennett runs out of the room and proclaims it as his own. Ya’alon called Bennett “childish” and “reckless”.

Who is right? Unfortunately, all of them.

In between stands (or rather sits) the present army Chief of Staff, Gadi Eizenkot, son of immigrants from Morocco in spite of his German-sounding name. In Israel, curiously enough, the army chiefs are generally more moderate than the politicians.

The general proposed ameliorating the conditions of the Arab population in the occupied territories, such as allowing the people in Gaza to build a harbor and come into contact with the world at large. Amazing.

All this happened at a conference of so-called security experts where everybody had his or her say.The leaders of the opposition parties also took part. Yitzhak Herzog of Labor, Yair Lapid of the centrist “There is a Future” party and others had their say, but their speeches were so tedious that they were reported only for fairness’ sake. They grabbed some ideas from here and there, called it “my plan” – with peace, if mentioned at all, deferred to the very, very distant future.

Peace, one gathers, is something nice, the matter dreams are made of. Not something for serious politicians.

What remains is a furious fight between the Far Right and the Even Further Right.

Bennett, a former high-tech entrepreneur, wears a kippah on his bald head (frankly, I always wonder what keeps it there, perhaps sheer willpower). He does not hide his conviction that he must replace the stagnant Netanyahu as soon as possible, for the good of the nation.Bennett accused the incompetent political leadership of failing our brave soldiers and their commanders – an accusation straight out of Mein Kampf, which is about to appear in Hebrew.

Netanyahu’s only possible successor within his Likud party is Ya’alon, a man devoid of any charisma or political talent. However, to succeed, Bennett and his Jewish Home party must overtake Likud at the ballot box – a very difficult thing to do. That’s where the kippah comes in – Divine intervention may be called for.

Speaking about divine intervention: last week the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, criticized Israel’s legal system for having different laws for Jews and Arabs. Netanyahu reacted sharply, and lo and behold – by sheer accident, a few days later the Swedish press was full of stories about the corruption of Wallstrom, who did pay less rent for her government apartment than she should have.

All this could be amusing, if it did not concern the future of Israel.

Peace is a dirty word. The end of the occupation is not in sight. The United (Arab) Party is not even in the picture. The same (almost) goes for Meretz.

On the left, despair is the synonym of laziness. There is a mild debate about the idea that only the outside world can save us from ourselves. This is now propagated by the respected former Director General of our Foreign Office, Alon Lyel, a very brave ex-official. I don’t believe in this. The idea of running to the Goyim to save the Jews from themselves is not one to gain wide popularity.

Bennett is right on one point: stagnation, both mental and practical, is no solution. Things must move again. I fervently hope that the young generation will give birth to new forces and new ideas that will push aside Netanyahu, Bennett and their ilk.

As to our much-lauded democracy: it appears that a group financed by the government has for years paid a private detective, whose job was to rifle through the paper baskets of peace activists to obtain information on human rights and peace associations and personalities.

(Fortunately, I shred everything.)

 

Israeli Spying on US

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

 

Between 1998 and early 2001, more than 200 Israeli nationals were arrested or detained inside the United States, on a variety of visa violations and other nominally petty violations, including low-level drug trafficking. The majority of these detainees claimed they were Israeli art students, peddling art work to cover their college tuitions; or were toy vendors, employed by an Israeli-owned Miami Beach company, Quality Sales Corporation, which investigations link to Israel’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency.

The emerging pattern of surveillance of American government facilities, and established links to suspected Arab and Islamic terrorist cells prior to Sept. 11, by these Israeli nationals, set off alarm bells, following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Prior to Sept. 11, a series of highly-classified government memos had been circulated by the CIA and the NSA, pronouncing this Israeli espionage operation a major national security problem.

Israel is not a friend to the United States. This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the US. The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject that is ever discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the US-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state. . . In 2005 the FBI noted that Israel maintains “an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States.” A key Israeli method, said the FBI report, is computer intrusion. In 1996, the Defense Intelligence Service, a branch of the Pentagon, issued a warning that “the collection of scientific intelligence in the United States [is] the third highest priority of Israeli Intelligence after information on its Arab neighbors and information on secret US policies or decisions relating to Israel.” In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a scathing survey of Israeli intelligence activities that targeted the US government. Like any worthy spy service, Israeli intelligence early on employed wiretaps as an effective tool, according to the CIA report. In 1954, the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone “planted by the Israelis,” and two years later telephone taps were found in the residence of the US military attaché In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador at the time cabled a warning: “Department must assume that all conversations [in] my office are known to the Israelis.” The former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, who also served as a foreign officer in Jerusalem and Beirut, told me Israeli taps of US missions and embassies in the Middle East were part of a “standard operating procedure.” According to the 1979 CIA report, the Israelis, while targeting political secrets, also devote “a considerable portion of their covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence.” These operations involved, among other machinations, “attempts to penetrate certain classified defense projects in the United States.” The penetrations, according to the CIA report, were effected using “deep cover enterprises,” which the report described as “firms and organizations, some specifically created for, or adaptable to, a specific objective.” . . . The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hard-line conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

As the most powerful man in the White House, Cheney was deeply involved in the intelligence field and made three trips to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more ‘forward-leaning interpretation’ of information relating to the possibility that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That there were no such weapons and that the CIA so advised the Vice President, he refused to accept their analysis and continued to insist that they produce documents supporting his thesis. In this he was aided by his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, The latter was later convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison.  

The OSP had access to an enormous amount of “raw” intelligence which came, in part, from the CIA’s directorate of operations whose job it is to receive and evaluate incoming reports from their agents around the world. At Cheney’s insistence, a number of Israeli intelligence agents were given free run of the OSP offices   “None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Douglas Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

1947. Information obtained by the Jewish-owned Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as hearsay.

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attach in Tel Aviv.

1954 “The Lavon Affair”. Israeli agents recruited Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel  illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. ( Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, “US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.”)

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, a CIA intelligence- gathering vessel flying a US flag, operating at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, killing 34 crew members.. In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude that the deliberate assault was an “unfortunate accident,” even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty’s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1984 Jonathan Jay Pollard, a graduate of Stanford University and an employee of the Naval Investigative Service (NIS) surface ships division  was accused and convicted of stealing over a million highly sensitive documents and selling them to the Israeli government. As an example, Pollard stole and copied  the latest version of Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN), a 10-volume manual comprehensively detailing America’s global electronic surveillance network. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison on one count of espionage on March 4, 1987. Pollard is federal prisoner #09185-016 and is incarcerated at the Butner Federal Correction Complex in Butner, North Carolina.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel ( Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: “Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels”

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 “The Samson Option,” by Seymour M. Hersh reports, illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: “Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts.”

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent directly to Israel via their Embassy and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forced San Francisco authorities to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulated a memo warning US military contractors that ” Israel aggressively collects [ US] military and industrial technology.” The report stated that Israel obtains information using “ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties” of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report “Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors” found that according to intelligence sources “Country A” (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.” The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, “Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country.” The report described “An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [ Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was “a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel’s LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information.”

The GAO report also noted that “Several citizens of [ Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes.”

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, “Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare” reported that ” US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology.” Jane’s Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that “until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China.” The report noted that this “represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation.” (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, “inadvertently” gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as Dov, had commented that they may get the letter from Mega, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for Mega is called off. Mega is later revealed to be XXXXXXXXX

2001 It is discovered that US drug agent’s communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, received an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provided the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, which turned out to be located in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, hence could not be further investigated.   

2001 The FBI  investigated 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 The Jewish Defense League’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He was murdered in the LA County Jail dies before he could be brought to trial.

2001 The Isreali Mossad, in conjunction with senior members of the Bush administration, penetrated a Saudi terrorist group located at Hollywood, Florida, and materially assisted them in preparing for an aerial assault on various significant American targets. The White House was kept fully courant of the Mossad’s actions by the Israeli Embassy personnel in Washington.

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, had aggressively been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 Police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to “deliver furniture.” The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were false positives by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public. It is later revealed that they contain “extensive documentation” concerning earlier atomic weapon’s testings at nearby Alamagordo, NM

2003 Israel deployed assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not officially protest when they were informed by the Israeli Embassy that these squads were intended to kill known Muslim terrorists possibly operating inside the United States.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and, on orders from the Department of Justice in Washington,  the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. Their truck tests positive for explosives.

2004, The authoritative Jane’s Intelligence Group noted that Israel’s intelligence organizations “have been spying on the US and running clandestine operations since Israel was established.” The former deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI, Harry B. Brandon, last year told Congressional Quarterly magazine that “the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets.”

2005 August 4,2005 a federal grand jury indiocted Lawrence Franklin a former United States Department of Defense employee, on five charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 in that Franklin passed secret information regarding United States policy towards Iran to staff members of  the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Franklin, pled guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly 13 years of prison but was later released due to pressure from the Israeli government. 

2009: October 20, 2009  Stewart Nozette, a scientist who worked for NASA and had a top-level government security clearance, is charged with trying to sell US secrets to Israel after an FBI sting operation. The FBI pretended to be Mossad agents.

 

Another fine mess: NATO’s ‘Laurel & Hardy act’ in Libya not getting laughs

anuary 22, 2016

by Finian Cunningham

RT

Washington and its NATO allies are stepping up more military involvement in this devastated North African country, now experiencing an uptick in terrorist activity, in some kind of macabre reprise of the classic comedy routine.

Earlier this week, Libya’s skirmishing factions announced that they were forming a new “national unity government”. The administration, backed by the United Nations, was forged from two erstwhile self-appointed rival governments based in the western city of Tripoli and the eastern city of Tobruk.

But the chances of implementing national governance remain wafer-slim. The real power in the country resides with a plethora of warring militias that have an overlapping relationship with the Islamic State terror group and have carved up the country into fiefdoms.

One reason for why the “unity government” was hastily and unconvincingly formed this week is that it gives a fig leaf of legality for greater Western military intervention in Libya under the guise of helping “the authorities” to fight jihadist terrorists.

Three days after Libya’s new government was unveiled, Washington’s top military officer, General Joseph F Dunford, said that plans were under way in the next weeks for “decisive action needed against Islamic State in Libya,” according to a Reuters report.

You want to take decisive military action to check ISIL’s expansion and at the same time you want to do it in such a way that’s supportive of a long-term political process,” said General Dunford, using an alternative acronym for the IS terror group.

The US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman was in Paris where he was consulting with French, British and Italian counterparts in the NATO military alliance.

The New York Times reported on Dunford’s announced military plans thus: “Worried about a growing threat from the Islamic State in Libya, the United States and its allies are increasing reconnaissance flights and intelligence collecting there and preparing for possible airstrikes and commando raids, senior American policy makers, commanders and intelligence officials said this week.”

For the past several months, American, British and French special forces have reportedly been working clandestinely across Libya to try to establish which militias their governments might feasibly collaborate with.

But Libya has been plunged into such tribal anarchy over the past four years since the US-led NATO powers toppled the government of Muammar Gaddafi that it is nigh-impossible to disentangle the plethora of rival militia. Many of the militia and even some of the so-called political parties in the new unity government are integrated with the terror network.

A farcical insight into the NATO-induced chaotic nature of Libya is afforded by a report on how a unit of 20 American special forces were flown into an airport in the town of Al Watiya near Tripoli last month. The US troops were expecting a “warm reception” from the militia thought to be in control of the airport because it had received American training and weapons back in 2012. It turned out the US-trained Libyan battalion were no longer the local top dog. They had been displaced by another rival militia, which wasn’t friendly to the Americans.

A shoot-out was apparently avoided, but a tense standoff ensued before the US commandos were finally allowed safe passage from the airfield.

What that snippet illustrates is the total shambles that Libya has descended into. US troops feel free to land in a country seemingly without any legal sanction and then proceed to a near-firefight with some unknown enemy holding the airport facility. This is precisely the state of ruins that Gaddafi predicted would result from his demise, just before the NATO-assisted insurgents took his life in a barbaric street lynching in October 2011 and proceeded to take over the once-prosperous, stable country.

The Americans and their NATO allies evidently haven’t a clue which groups are running Libya – and that’s months after their special forces have allegedly been reconnoitering for “partners” with which to purportedly fight against the Islamic State.

America’s top general admitted to this cluelessness in his announced plan for more military intervention in Libya.

Dunford said the “US military leadership owed President Barack Obama and the US defense secretary [Ashton Carter] ideas about the ‘way ahead’ for dealing with the [IS] militant group” in Libya.

In other words, Dunford and his NATO counterparts do not have a plan. They are simply going back into a country that is riven with mercurial militias, many of which are apparently aligned with IS.

The American top general did not detail any specific recommendations, saying: “I think it’s pretty clear to all of us – French, US alike – that whatever we do is going to be in conjunction with the new [Libyan] government… My perspective is we need to do more.”

As noted earlier, working “in conjunction with the new government” is not confidence-inspiring given that it has only been cobbled together this week after years of feuding, and given that its various political members are associated with illegally armed groups.

Tragically, Libya is the very predictable outcome when countries are self-entitled to run amok in complete disregard of international law and other nations’ sovereignty.

Washington, London and Paris, together with other members of the NATO alliance, cynically abused a UN no-fly mandate back in March 2011 to launch a seven-month aerial blitzkrieg on Libya. The NATO powers, along with the Saudi-led Arab oil monarchies, colluded with jihadist groups on the ground, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, to achieve regime change in Libya.

These same militia and their cache of weapons were then mobilized by the American CIA and British MI6 to infiltrate Syria, according to American journalist Seymour Hersh, among others. Turkey was the conduit and Saudi Arabia was the financier for the Libya-Syria “ratline”. Note that this was around the same time that the jihadist proxies had stormed the US consulate in Libya’s Benghazi in September 2012, killing the US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American officials.

Now, apparently, because of Russia’s searing military intervention in Syria in support of the Assad government forces, the jihadists are clearing out of that country to set up bases in Libya. This relocation of jihadists from Syria and Iraq to Libya has even been reported in the Western mainstream media.

So, yes, Western governments and their military chiefs may well articulate “concern” about the surge in IS terror activity in Libya. This surge is real enough.

But what Washington, its NATO allies and the Western media won’t tell you is that they incubated the jihadist terror groups in Libya from their illegal regime change against Gaddafi; and then turned the country into a festering failed state from where terror groups were spawned to carry out a covert war for another regime change operation in Syria.

And after all that, we are told that these same Western powers are going back into Libya to sort out a mess – a mess that they created in the first place. This is Laurel and Hardy of the political and military kind. Only it’s far from funny. It’s a diabolically criminal sick joke.

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