TBR News April 14, 2016
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. April 14, 2016: “When the ancient remains of a dwarf-like humanoid were found on an island in SEA, the Evangelicals said these were not the remains of a regular human but only a deformed dwarf. Then many more relics were found so the Christians found other things to complain about. Europe was once populated by the so-called Neanderthal. This was an extinct creature closely related to the monkey and who had moved north from Africa. About 35,000 years ago, the so-called Cro Magnon man appeared on the scene, displacing the smaller and far stupider Neanderthal. The Cro Magnon man is identical with modern man but the question is that no one knows where he came from. He did not evolve from monkeys but arrived, at the mouth of the Volga River, as he is today. He spread up into Europe, Scandinavia and down into what is now the Iranian area. There are segments of modern society that find all of this unsettling because they believe, in error, that humans are all the same. They are not. Recently, stone tools were dredged up off the Virginia coast and analysis of the stone proved they came from European sources and were not native in origin. During the last major ice age, the sea levels were much lower than they are today because the northern ice fields contained most of the planet’s water. The Atlantic was shallower and easier to navigate then so it is not impossible that European tribes could with relative ease cross over the water to the west. DNA research is becoming more and more sophisticated and eventually, the myths and legends of the past will have to be, reluctantly in many cases, drastically revised.”
Note: Readers with interesting information, questions or comments can contact us at: tbrnews@hotmail.com
Conversations with the Crow
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever
After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.
Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversations with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped and later transcribed them.
These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.
Conversation No. 30
Date: Tuesday, August 6, 1996
Commenced: 11:10 AM CST
Concluded: 11:47 AM CST
GD: Ah, good morning to you, Robert. How is life treating you today?
RTC: Good morning, Gregory. There are good days and bad days. I’m not sure about today.
GD: Certainty is illusion, Robert. I was talking to an old friend of mine last night. He’s down at Norfolk. Was Navy but retired. I went to school with him. King’s Point and then the NSG.
RTC: King’s Point is Merchant Marine.
GD: I know. They have a reserve commission and they can activate it if they want to. He did. Nuclear vessels surface and then the NSG. He was the Naval Attaché in the Dominican Republic. Worked on the Trujillo assassination. But that’s not the issue now. We got to talking about AIDS and since he had quite a bit of sherry, he told me quite a story about how that originated. I thought you might have some input on that. Want me to go on?
RTC: Why not?
GD: Well, according to him, the Navy had an experimental medical station down in Haiti. They were down there because there was a huge pool of very poor locals they could use as subjects in tests. He said that they were developing something that would lower a person’s resistance to the point where a common cold would put them out of action for weeks.
RTC: Go on. What then?
GD: Well, they hit on a virus that does this, experimented with the locals and when they were sure it actually worked, somehow they got this into local whores whom the Cuban government then shipped over to Angola to service their volunteers fighting there.
RTC: I’ve heard stories about that.
GD: But somehow, the virus mutated into something far more serious. The HIV thing. And they didn’t care if all the Cubans died, or the whores either, but it seems that some the younger Haitians got this and when American gays made excursions down there for some cheap black cock, they got it, too, and you can see where that went. Then, my friend said, after they found out what had gone wrong, the Navy shut down its facility, disposed of their volunteer locals by taking them out on boats and dumping them into the water. Anyway, that’s what he said, and I believe him. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.
RTC: There is something to that. Your friend had best be very quiet or he’ll end up taking a one-way boat trip. And I would be careful not to put any of that into one of your books. If you take my drift.
GD: No, it wouldn’t fit in with the Mueller material. It is true, then?
RTC: Basically it is. Take note that it didn’t start out to kill off all the homos, although the Christians thought it was a wonderful thing, but your friend was right when he said it mutated. I was never in that part of the agency but one hears things or talks to colleagues. I mean there was only the intention to interfere with the combat capabilities of enemy troops, not liquidate social outcasts. When we learned about this, the burn bags were used overtime at Langley.
GD: Were your people part of it?
RTC: In a sense. The Navy supplied the tactical, and we supplied the strategic. They produced the weapon and we, the targets. We were planning to use this on the Russians.
GD: Well, I know something about that aspect. You know about General Ishi?
RTC: Oh yes, I do indeed.
GD: His Japanese military units had a BW lab up in Manchuria and they used to develop the plague and God knows what else. Poisoned thousands of Chinese, wanted to loose the plague against their Russian neighbors and used Allied POW’s as lab specimens. Most of them died of plague and other nasty things.
RTC: Ah, the redoubtable Dr. Ishi. After we took over Japan, he was caught along with his staff and they were planning to try him for very ugly war crimes but MacArthur, acting on specific orders from the Pentagon, rescued him, set him with a big lab in Tokyo and back they went to developing the bubonic plague. I guess they were going to use it on the Russians if all else failed.
GD: That I know all about. Not the Japanese but using the plague against the Russians. There was a German Army doctor, a Dr. Walter Schreiber, who was a specialist in communicable diseases. He developed a form of the plague and the military used it to clean out the overcrowded Russian POW cages. Cost too much to feed and guard them. The rationale was that they never used them in the West. Roosevelt, as you might know, was planning to use mustard gas against the Germans in Russia until the Bari raid blew up a boat-full of mustard gas, and when Hitler learned of this, he threatened to let nerve gas loose on London and Washington. Amazing how quickly FDR backed off.
RTC: You do your homework, don’t you?
GD: Oh yes. Schreiber came over to us in Berlin after the war and we vetted him and sent him to San Antonio to set up a lab there to cultivate the plague. Again, we planned to use it against the Russians. I don’t what the Russians did to infuriate our sacred leaders, but I don’t think they would have deserved that. Schreiber got outed and had to be shipped back to Germany.
RTC: Drew Pearson was the man who did that.
GD: Whatever. Well, the Brits practiced BW when they gave the Indians smallpox-laced blankets back in the eighteenth century, but Mueller and I were discussing Schreiber’s project. Mueller was very angry when he heard this and rounded Schreiber up. Had to let him go. Orders from on high. Mueller said that there were no Customs agents at the borders to stop the spread of such filthiness right back from whence it came. But he told me about a CIA plan to ruin the Asian rice crop. That failed but only barely. It would have spread and ruined everyone’s rice crop. He said that creatures that dabbled in such things should be shot out of hand or they would destroy everyone, good or bad. I suppose the definition of good or bad depends on your politics, but the whole thing should be forbidden by law.
RTC: I believe it is, but only in theory.
GD: But they put the story out that AIDS came from monkeys in Africa and other funny stories.
RTC: Well, now it’s raging in Africa and they estimate that in ten years, everyone there will be infected. Of course, there is something to be said about depopulating Africa. They’re a bunch of incompetents who are sitting on very valuable natural resources, such as gold and uranium and when they all die, the treasures are there for the finding.
GD: That’s a bit cynical but true. But what about the American homosexuals?
RTC: The Christians and the far right would be in favor of exterminating them all. However, that having been said, we would lose so many really valuable public servants, not to mention all the florists and interior decorators.
GD: Thank God I’m not a Christian. They’re such filthy bigots. If they ever get into power here, I’ll move to some cleaner place.
RTC: I don’t see that happening, Gregory.
GD: I have no problems with the mainline faiths but the extremists are flat-out nuts and we don’t need that rampant and fanatical bigotry.
RTC: But it could be useful.
GD: But you can’t really control it. I’ve known a few Jesus freaks and, believe me, they are as nutty as they come. Most of them try to hide it from us sane ones but once in a while, it leaks out. It would be entertaining if the head of the Navy’s medical branch caught AIDS from his cousin or how about the DCI?
RTC: Now, now, Gregory, you must realize that accidents happen. Try not to be too judgmental about such things.
GD: It’s bloody difficult not to.
RTC: Look, Africa is full of people who are only a generation or two out of the jungle. They ran out the white people, who set up the business structure, and now they are running around with spears, eating each other. Why be concerned if they pass away and give the civilized part of the world access to their unused natural resources? After all, that’s why we killed off the head of the UN. He was interfering with the uranium business in the Congo so we had a little aircraft accident. We basically shot him out of the air. And that put an end to his meddling in important matters. Uranium, I don’t need to remind you, is vital for our weapons programs. Balance that against one meddling Swede and I don’t think there’s much of a problem.
GD: Well, for him…
RTC: Against the common good? You need to consider the practical priorities, Gregory. Believe me, we had no intention of causing AIDS. Our goal was to render a battlefield enemy incapable of combat, that’s all. These things sometimes happen and there is no reason at all to dwell on unexpected and certainly not planned consequences.
GD: Ah, remember that Lenin once said you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Of course, it didn’t originate with him and I know it won’t end there but you take the point because you articulate it. But I have to agree with Mueller when he tore into such projects. And if you know the Bible, remember that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. Wars once were conducted by gentlemen with a certain amount of civility but those days are gone. Democracy, not kings, now rules and civility is dead.
RTC: You sound like a monarchist, Gregory.
GD: In many ways I am, Robert. I recall my German grandfather saying that democracy was government of the mentally misfit by the mentally mediocre and tempered by the saving grace of snobbery. Grandfather was usually right I remember once at one of his formal family dinners when one of my idiot aunts was going on about her constant attendance at the local Methodist church and her choir practices. My grandfather turned to me and told me, so the whole table could hear, that I ought to take a lesson in piety from my aunt. I recall saying, and I am not being funny here, that it seemed to me that there was considerable madness in aunt’s Methodism.
RTC: Did you actually say that, Gregory?
GD: Yes, and I was only ten, Robert.
RTC: Your family must have loved you.
GD: I don’t actually think so. When Grandfather said at some other occasion that my aunt and uncle were going to Lower Asbury Avenue, I said that they certainly would if they lived there long enough.
RTC: (Laughter) You must have been a most unpleasant child, Gregory.
GD: I do not suffer fools gladly, Robert. Lincoln has been misquoted. He said, or is supposed to have said, that God must love the common people because he made so many of them. What he actually said was that God must love fools because he had made so many of them.
RTC: Now you can see why our organization is so necessary. Imagine leaving state policy in the hands of idiots.
GD: Point of view here, Robert. Whose ox is gored? Destroying the Asian rice crop? Thousands or millions dead of starvation?
GTC: But consider the common good. These are Communists, Gregory, and they want to destroy our system.
GD: Another point of view once more, Robert. Yes, abstract Communism is utopian nonsense, just like abstract Christianity is. No one wants to work to help others, but they will help themselves. But that still does not justify slaughtering millions, does it?
RTC: But that is a very extreme and certainly tainted view, Gregory.
GD: Again, it’s the gored ox. But civilized people can disagree with each other and still remain civilized, Robert. Right?
RTC: I assume so but let’s try to be a bit more objective. You need to view the larger picture.
GD: Mueller said it so well to me once, just before one of my nice French dinners. He said that morals and ethics were excellent norms but hardly effective techniques.
RTC: Those sentiments I can agree with.
GD: A difference without much a distinction. Well, enough moralizing here. I’m glad to see that my naval friend was not just engaging in drunken babble.
RTC: I would strongly urge you not to take this issue any further. I would be concerned about your safety if you did.
GD: A point well taken. As a cross between a social Darwinist and a monarchist, even I can see the perils of contemplating moral issues from a neutral point of view.
RTC: And if you felt like giving me your talkative friend’s name and address, it might be appreciated. He ought to be spoken to.
GD: I doubt that I would want to do that, Robert. After all, I have never discussed our conversations with anyone else.
RTC: Point taken.
(Concluded 11:47 AM CST)
‘America First’ – The Trump Slogan the Establishment Hates
He’s raising the banner lowered so long ago
April 13, 2016
by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar
Why do they hate Donald Trump?
Why has the Establishment pulled out all the stops in an effort to smear him, stop him, and crush him underfoot? Every single day the “mainstream” media unleashes a foam-flecked fusillade of fury at the GOP front-runner: he’s a “racist,” he’s “corrupt,” his campaign manager is a “bully,” he “incites violence,” etc. etc. ad nauseam.
Of course the media is going to attack any Republican candidate. However, this time the GOP elite is joining in, and the level of ferocity is something we haven’t seen since 1964. That was the year Barry Goldwater’s trip to Germany provoked a report by Daniel Schorr on the CBS Evening News that falsely linked the GOP candidate to German neo-Nazis – while Nelson Rockefeller denounced Goldwater’s delegates as “extremists” who “feed on fear, hate, and terror.”
Yes, “terror”!
The same violence-baiting hysteria is being deployed against Trump, but one has to wonder what’s behind it. I was watching Bill O’Reilly the other day, and he was saying that it has to do with the elite’s visceral dislike of Trump as a personality. They think he’s a “vulgarian” who appeals to the rubes in flyover country. Well, there’s something to that: these consumers of arugula and “artisan” cheese no doubt disdain the hamburgers-and-beer crowd embodied by Trump’s persona, but there’s more to it than that. And I can sum it up in two words: foreign policy.
Yes, yes, I know: foreign policy isn’t supposed to figure in presidential elections. Dan Drezner keeps telling us that. And yet I couldn’t help but notice that the anti-Trump hysteria hit a high note (or is that a new low?) when he came out with a series of foreign policy pronouncements and started attacking NATO. The hairs on the back of the necks of the foreign policy wonks must’ve stood at attention when he adopted “America first” as his campaign slogan.
An article in USA Today gives voice to the panic of the elites at this evocation of a past they thought they’d successfully banished from the American political landscape:
“In embracing “America First’’ as his guiding foreign policy philosophy, Donald Trump appropriated – spontaneously, it seems – one of the most denigrated political slogans of the last century, and one that evokes an isolationism Trump himself explicitly rejects.
“’It’s a rotten term that evokes the naive idiots, defeatists and pro-Nazis who wanted to appease Hitler and make friends with him’ before World War II, says Susan Dunn, author of 1940: F.D.R., Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler – The Election Amid the Storm. That said, she doesn’t think the old phrase means much today.“Trump’s use of an expression so dated and discredited reflects his willingness to dip into the past for catch phrases that, no matter their historical baggage, can still appeal to voters.”
Ms. Dunn’s book is a compendium of every falsehood ever hurled at the America Firsters: she lionizes the corporate shill Wendell Wilkie, and – prefiguring the anticipated theft of the GOP nomination this year – whitewashes the effort by the Eastern Establishment to bring in “the barefoot boy from Wall Street’ at the last moment to stop the “isolationist” Taft, stealing delegates and pressuring them financially to support the elite’s chosen candidate. Dunn’s line is similar to that of the Communist Party, which, at the time, was aligned with Roosevelt: they acted as the vanguard of the anti-Taft pro-war forces, hurling accusations of pro-Nazism and anti-Semitism at such “bigots” as Norman Thomas, Gerald Ford, and other America Firsters who wanted to keep us out of the European conflagration.
Chicago Tribune publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick, whose newspaper valiantly stood against the Anglophile-warmongering tide, accurately predicted that entering the war would have to mean yet another long struggle, this time against the Soviet Union – and that’s precisely what occurred. Yet court historians of Dunn’s ilk are blind to such prescience: according to her, Wilkie was a hero for turning against the GOP after his humiliating defeat and becoming one of Roosevelt’s lapdogs.
Dunn is quite wrong about something else as well: the slogan “America First” does mean something today, which is why she and her comrades on both sides of the political aisle are screaming bloody murder whenever Trump repeats the forbidden phrase. Trump’s other catchphrases – “the silent majority’’ and “Make America great again” – “were in the Political Rhetoric Hall of Fame when Trump found them,” the USA Today piece goes on to inform us, but “not America First, which overnight went from one of the most popular rallying cries in U.S. politics to the most bankrupt.”
Bankrupt? Really? At its height, the America First Committee was the biggest antiwar movement in American history, with 900,000 members and majority support. Americans remembered the tragedy of World War I – that vicious killing field that only succeeded in creating the conditions for a repeat – and wanted no part of the European horror show. Yet the elites were solidly pro-interventionist: the Eastern Establishment, which worshipped England, and the left-wing radical professors, who worshipped “Uncle” Joe Stalin, were united in their determination to get us into the war. Their allegiances, in both cases, were to a foreign power – thus their opposition adopted the only possible brand name: America First.
World War II is the supreme narrative of the interventionists, both right and left, whose version of its genesis bears no more resemblance to its true origins than does the creation story of the Bible to the Big Bang theory. As Patrick J. Buchanan points out in his Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, World War II was merely a continuation of World War I, the latter making the former nearly inevitable. And the results of the second conflagration embroiled us in half a century of conflict. As Pat put it in his newspaper column:
“They went to war for Poland, but Winston Churchill abandoned Poland to Stalin. Defeated in Norway, France, Greece, Crete and the western desert, they endured until America came in and joined in the liberation of Western Europe.
“Yet, at war’s end in 1945, Britain was bled and bankrupt, and the great cause of Churchill’s life, preserving his beloved empire, was lost. Because of the ‘Good War,’ Britain would never be great again.
“And were the means used by the Allies, the terror bombing of Japanese and German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, perhaps millions, the marks of a ‘good war’?
“[Washington Post columnist Richard] Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a ‘good war.’ But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause. As for the Japanese atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, they were indeed horrific.
“But America’s smashing of Japan led not to freedom for China, but four years of civil war followed by 30 years of Maoist madness in which 30 million Chinese perished.”
We are now in the midst of yet another global struggle, the “war on terrorism,” which has decimated the Middle East, exhausted the US military, driven us to the edge of bankruptcy, and led to nothing but horror and blowback on a scale not even anti-interventionist critics of the decision to enter it imagined.
For Trump to raise the banner of America First in this context challenges so many political and financial interests, so many of the underlying assumptions of US foreign policy since the end of World War II, that the vicious assault on his politics and his character is entirely explicable. Like his predecessors in the America First movement – who weren’t “Nazi sympathizers,” as the smear artist Dunn avers, but ordinary Americans who wanted to simply live in peace – Trump wants a Fortress America that will keep the country safe behind two oceans and a renewed vigilance without going abroad in search of monsters of destroy.
He wants out of NATO, out of South Korea and Japan, out of harm’s way for American military personnel – all too many of whom have come back either in body bags or horribly maimed, only to be treated like unworthy supplicants by a heartless bureaucracy and left to sit on street corners begging for change.
The America Firsters became “obsolete,” USA Today informs us, “But they never went away.”
Of course we didn’t. That’s because ordinary Americans – as opposed to the foreign lobbyists, the arms contractors, and the laptop bombardiers in their Washington “thinktanks” – have always been reluctant to go crusading overseas. The 9/11 attacks induced a fit of madness that made them forget their common sense objections to trying to make alien cultures into Arabic versions of Kansas, but that soon wore off as the costs – in troops and treasure – added up. And as their own country began to disintegrate, both physically and culturally, while George W Bush was busily engaged in “nation-building” in Afghanistan, Americans began to ask: is it worth it?
Today the answer to that question is clearly a firm negative – except, of course, in the precincts of power on the Potomac.
Of all the “experts” hauled out to attack Trump and his “America First” foreign policy, my favorite is left-wing dingbat and “historian” Adam Hochschild, a co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, who blithers that we’re too “deeply enmeshed” to put our own interests first:
“Trump can no more successfully pretend we’re not involved than isolationists of the 1930s could. How can we put ‘America First’ as far as climate change is concerned? Trump does not have the power to make rising ocean waters lap only at other countries’ shores.”
This is what the globalists are reduced to, now that the neoconservative version of internationalism is out of style: we have to keep policing the world because the seas are rising!
One good thing about climate change is that, as the oceans rise, they’ll engulf coastal areas such as the Bay Area, where dingbat Hochschild resides, and he’ll be forced to “enmesh” himself in Middle America – Trump Country – where normal Americans live. Although perhaps he’ll prefer to go under, along with the rest of the die-hard arugula-consuming Trump-hating elites….
CIA behind Panama Papers leaks, says ‘most significant financial whistleblower of all time’
April 13, 2016
RT
Financial whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld, who helped expose American tax evaders hiding assets in Swiss banks, has little doubt the Panama leaks scandal was crafted and orchestrated by the CIA.
In an exclusive interview from Munich, Birkenfeld told CNBC on Tuesday that the leak of over 11 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca is most likely not a whistleblower job, but rather an “intelligence agency operation.”
“The CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” Birkenfeld said, citing as evidence selective management of the information exposed to the public domain that “doesn’t hurt the US in any shape or form.”
“The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States: Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina… and we don’t see one US name. Why is that? Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation,” CNBC cited Birkenfeld as saying.
“That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister behind this,” Birkenfeld said.
The former banker acknowledged that years ago, when he worked in a Swiss bank, he was aware that Mossack Fonseca was an integral part of a worldwide offshore financial network used to avoid domestic taxes.
Birkenfeld also pointed out that the Panama firm was a relatively minor player in the tax evasion scheme.
“We knew that very well in Switzerland. I certainly knew of it,” Birkenfeld said.
Quite a number of firms in Panama are still offering similar services, Birkenfeld revealed.
“The cost of doing business there was quite low, relatively speaking,” he said. “So what you would have is Panama operating as a conduit to the Swiss banks and the trust companies to set up these facilities for clients around the world.”
Birkenfeld, an American citizen once employed by UBS AG, a Swiss bank, is famous for helping to expose the bank’s tax evasion schemes in 2009.
Birkenfeld was convicted in 2008 for helping a former client at UBS AG to hide his wealth from the Internal Revenue Service and spent over two years behind bars. Nevertheless, Birkenfeld did well. As part of the same case, the IRS awarded the former banker $104 million for aiding the investigation that resulted in UBS being fined $780 million. The bank was also forced to disclose the names of 4,700 American clients, who held secret overseas accounts in Switzerland.
American pressure finally put an end to the ‘golden era’ of Swiss banks’ dodgy financial dealings. Many of the country’s banking institutions were fined billions of US dollars for providing tax evasion assistance to US citizens.
Birkenfeld is now living privately in Bavaria, Germany, and is unwilling to speak to journalists. However, in the case of the Panama Papers, he made an exception.
Munich lawyer: Erdogan wants full legal recourse
A Munich lawyer has said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to press charges against satirist Jan Böhmermann through to a final ruling before Germany’s courts. Police are guarding the Cologne-based comic.
April 13, 2016
DW
A Munich lawyer has said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to press charges against satirist Jan Böhmermann through to a final ruling before Germany’s courts. Police are guarding the Cologne-based comic.
Lawyer Michael-Hubertus von Sprenger told the German ZDF public broadcaster that Erdogan intended to press his case to Germany’s highest court if necessary.
“If I’m mandated to take the case, then I’ll proceed through to the end,” Sprenger said, adding that Erdogan wanted to get Böhmermann “back on the right path, to produce satire and not gross insults.
In an open letter published by the German weekly “Die Zeit,” some 70 artists and prominent persons have demanding that proceedings be dropped.
Signatories include German actors Matthias Brandt and Katja Riemann, and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
A diplomatic wrangle – intertwined with a EU-Turkey deal on refugees – has unfolded since March 31, when Böhmermann directed a sexually crude poem at Turkey’s authoritarian president on “Neo Magazin Royale,” a satire show he hosts on one of ZDF’s channels aimed at young adults.
Erdogan pursuing two charges
Prosecutors in Mainz, where ZDF is based, said Erdogan was pressing charges both for being insulted as a private person and as a foreign head of state.
The federal government says it is still evaluating Erdogan’s request for prosecution.
Should German authorities decide to pursue prosecution, the private case could result in a one-year prison sentence while insulting a foreign head of state can be punished by up to five years in jail.
“Discussion about and criticism over Jan Böhmermann’s Erdogan poem belong on the cultural pages of this country’s [press] and not in court chambers in Mainz,” said the open letter’s 70 signatories.
Next satire show canceled
The Cologne production firm bildundtonfabrik, Böhmermann and ZDF announced on Tuesday that they had decided not to produce Thursday’s edition of “Neo Magazin Royal.”Böhmermann himself was placed under police protection over concerns linked to past attacks on artists exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Böhmermann’s chances ‘good’
Klaus Staeck, the former president of the Berlin Academy of Arts, told Deutschlandfunk public radio on Tuesday that during his career he had successfully defended himself 41 times against attempts to ban his works.
“Everyone has the right to take a matter to court, but not to come with a Kalashnikov,” Staeck said, adding that Böhmermann’s chances of acquittal were “good” because judges in Germany tend to issue “opinion-friendly” verdicts.
Michael Bertrams, a former Constitutional Court president, urged the federal government not to authorize a head-of-state prosecution sought by Erdogan.
“[The government] would surrender not only Jan Böhmermann but also the freedoms of opinion and artistic expression to an autocrat and despot who flouts civil rights in his own country in a gross manner,” said Bertram.
Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party, said the federal government should dismiss Erdogan’s complaint.
“Satire is a part of political culture of our country and a part of political life in open societies,” he said. “That must be defended.”
Berlin to make the call
The Social Democrats also called for the law on insulting foreign leaders to be scrapped, describing it as “antiquated” and limiting to freedom of speech.
However, the chancellor’s spokesman said on Tuesday that Berlin would “not shy away” from the Böhmermann case.
“The decision will be made,” even if the law is scrapped, Steffen Seibert said.
Seibert also denied claims from Ankara that Chancellor Merkel was planning a trip to Turkey to open a new refugee camp on the Syrian border.
“I have been asked a half dozen times in the last days and weeks about this trip on April 16 and never confirmed this trip, this appointment, and that is still the case,” Seibert told reporters.
How Saudi Arabia plans to shake up its economy
April 14, 2016
by Katie Paul, Marwa Rashad and Andrew Torchia
Reuters
RIYADH/DUBAI- In late February, several hundred Saudi officials, company executives and foreign consultants gathered in a luxury Riyadh hotel to discuss how Saudi Arabia’s economy could survive an era of cheap oil.
One company manager at the event told Reuters that officials from about 30 Saudi government bodies manned booths in which they described their challenges. Corporate bosses were encouraged to “figure out ways to do partnerships to address those needs, to offer feedback, to complain, and to plan future ventures or even just future meetings,” the manager said. “It was like a private sector version of a national parliament.”
The workshop was part of Saudi government attempts to work out how to restructure the economy so it no longer relies on oil.
The National Transformation Plan (NTP), as Riyadh has dubbed the changes, is expected to be unveiled in the next few weeks. Much is still secret. Ministries have refused to discuss plans in detail and Western consultancies contacted by Reuters declined to confirm their involvement, let alone policy details.
Officials, consultants and executives, though, say the five-year program is both ambitious and risky. It includes asset sales, tax increases, spending cuts, changes to the way the state manages its financial reserves, an efficiency drive, and a much bigger role for the private sector.
Such changes have been talked about for years but never put into action. One reason to think this time could be different is that policy-making has in the past year shifted away from conservative bodies such as the finance ministry and central bank. Power is now concentrated in a new 22-member Council of Economic and Development Affairs, formed after King Salman took the throne in January 2015.
The Council is chaired by his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is about 30. In his role as defense minister, Prince Mohammed launched Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen in March 2015. Now, he wants to shake up economic policy.
“Since the foundation of the kingdom there has been no government-led program that innovates in this way,” said Mohamed al-Afif, a veteran banker who now runs Cash Solutions, a boutique financial services firm.
CONSULTANTS AND WHATSAPP
People familiar with the NTP said it was born late last year in discussions between Prince Mohammed and a few other top officials. At the time, oil was sinking below $30 a barrel, about half the low point that had been expected. That saddled the kingdom with an annual budget deficit near $100 billion and strengthened the case for radical changes.
While Prince Mohammed is the ultimate decider, he has chosen Economy and Planning Minister Adel al-Fakieh, a former food industry executive and mayor of Jeddah, to help with the detail. As labor minister between 2010 and 2015, Fakieh overcame opposition from business to policies that pushed companies to hire more Saudis. People involved in the NTP say Fakieh, 57, uses WhatsApp on his mobile phone obsessively, conducting chats with dozens of groups until the small hours.
Riyadh is spending tens of millions of dollars on foreign consultants for the NTP. London-based Source Global Research estimated in March that total Saudi spending on consultancies – mostly by the government or state-linked bodies – grew over 10 percent in 2015, from $1.06 billion in 2014.
Consultants and ministry officials, many of them young Saudis with Western degrees, work at the Khozama office building in Riyadh, thrashing out policy in as many as 40 groups known as “delivery labs”. The plans are heavy on jargon-labeled targets requiring ministries to hit rigid budget and reform goals, according to documents seen by Reuters.
MODELS
One model is neighboring United Arab Emirates, which began radical reforms by cutting gasoline subsidies last year, people familiar with the Saudi plan said.
Another model is Malaysia, which in 2010 moved to diversify beyond commodity exports and attract more foreign investment. Consultancy McKinsey & Co played a major role in the Malaysian plan and is now at the center of the Saudi effort.
The NTP echoes Malaysia’s program in three ways. It puts a single body in charge of implementation to force better cooperation between ministries. It seeks feedback from the private sector early, even during planning. And it aims to boost the private sector’s share of investment, something Saudi planners consider vital as oil revenues sag.
Riyadh wants private firms to develop tourism facilities on some of its islands, plans to create “free zones” with minimal red tape near airports, and even wants private investment in some schools.
New infrastructure such as roads and port facilities will be constructed under build-operate-transfer contracts, in which private firms finance the projects and then operate them to recoup their investments. “The government will take no risk anymore, it will only provide opportunities,” said a Saudi economist who attended a recent workshop.
The NTP will also speed up Saudi Arabia’s long-running but slow-paced privatization program. Up to 5 percent of national oil giant Saudi Aramco will be sold to the public, Prince Mohammed says, possibly raising tens of billions of dollars. Also on the block: chunks of other companies in up to 18 sectors, including healthcare, mining and transport.
Management of the country’s financial reserves will become more aggressive, according to officials and consultants. The central bank, which acts as the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, holds $584 billion of foreign assets, mostly in conservative investments such as bank deposits and U.S. Treasuries. In the future, privatization proceeds will be invested in corporate assets around the world, generating income and obtaining access to technology and expertise.
Saudi officials have been visiting the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority – which has over $700 billion invested in developed and emerging market equities, fixed income, private equity, real estate and infrastructure – to see how it works, sources said.
Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg last month that one fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), would be expanded to control over $2 trillion eventually. The fund is now believed to have about $100 billion of assets.
DEADLINE
Top officials are reviewing proposals which all the ministries involved were required to submit by March 31, two sources said.
“Everyone is waiting for the NTP announcement for a clue about how things will operate going forward,” said a Western diplomat who monitors the economy.
There are many skeptics. Some say the NTP is too late. Local capital markets are too small to absorb a privatization program so attracting foreign money will be vital. But investors are wary of Saudi Arabia’s prospects given the low oil price.
Eliminating the budget deficit by 2020 will require an additional $100 billion in spending cuts and tax increases – equivalent to about 16 percent of gross domestic product. That could stifle growth and deter the investment the NTP seeks.
Some plans are headline-grabbing but may involve little real change. For example, the PIF will take over assets such as Saudi Aramco but won’t be able to reinvest that wealth unless it sells big pieces of the firm, which would be tough for financial and political reasons.
And then there’s the mixed fortunes of some of the models Saudi Arabia has looked at. “Most of the economic transformation programs in various countries didn’t succeed or diverged immensely from the original plans,” said prominent Saudi economist Ihsan Bu Hulaiga.
Malaysia, for instance, has increased the private sector’s share of investment modestly, to 64 percent in 2014 from 52 percent in 2009. But the country’s currency has plunged along with commodity prices, something Riyadh wants to avoid.
Many question the role of highly paid consultants. “You have people in their 30s with laptops helping to determine the direction of the country,” said one foreign consultant. “The potential for change has certainly gone up, but so has the risk.”
Some Saudis think an economic shake-up could lead to the kind of social changes many foreign business executives believe are needed to modernize Saudi’s economy: allowing women to drive, for instance, or opening up the legal system.
The planning itself suggests some openness to change. Senior officials, normally given to opulent robes, regularly come to workshops in simple clothes, say some attendees. And unusually, female consultants are working closely with men.
(Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Riyadh, Tom Arnold and Hadeel Al Sayegh in Dubai, and Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur; Edited by Simon Robinson)
Dozens of killings by US police ruled justified without public being notified
Guardian study finds officers involved in one in six deaths recorded in the first quarter of 2015 were cleared of wrongdoing without announcement
April 13, 2016
by Jon Swaine and Clara McCarthy
The Guardian
Dozens of killings by police in the US are being ruled justified without the public being notified, according to a Guardian study that sheds new light on the lack of official transparency surrounding the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers.
Officers involved in one in every six deaths recorded during the first quarter of 2015 have a year later been cleared of wrongdoing and returned to work despite no announcements being made by authorities or local media reports appearing.
If this rate is maintained, almost 200 deaths in 2015 will be officially approved away from the public eye, despite the sharply increased scrutiny of shootings and other lethal encounters by police officers over the 18 months since unrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.
At the same time, another one in four deaths at the hands of police officers in early 2015 remain unresolved and are still under investigation more than a year later, restricting the information available to members of the public, including families seeking answers about why relatives were shot or subjected to other deadly force.
Professor Samuel Walker, a criminal justice expert at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, described the figures as “alarming and unacceptable”. “It does not serve the interests of justice and creates community distrust,” he said.
The findings emerged from a new review of data obtained for The Counted, an ongoing project recording all deaths caused by police officers in the US. The federal government has kept no comprehensive count itself, leading to sharp criticism.
Last year, the project prompted the Department of Justice to embark on a new program to collect the same information, drawing on the Guardian’s data and mirroring its methodology. It also pushed the FBI to pledge that it would improve its own discredited system for counting homicides by police, which relies on police departments voluntarily submitting data.
The project also involves an unprecedented effort to monitor the outcome of investigations into every deadly case – whether the actions of police officers were ruled justified, a criminal prosecution is under way, or the death remains under investigation.
Of 289 people killed in the first three months of 2015, 202 cases have now been ruled justified or accidental. But in 51 of these, no public statements announcing the decision appear to have been made by authorities involved, and no local media reports could be found through extensive online, public records and media archives searches.
Multiple prosecutors confirmed they had not actively informed the public of the decisions, taken either by themselves or by a grand jury bringing a “no bill” against officers. “We do not have a formal policy on such announcements,” William Lee Hon, the district attorney in Polk County, Texas, said of the decision to rule justified the fatal police shooting of Eugene Smith in Onalaska in March last year. “Depending upon the level of public and media interest, we may or may not send out a release.”
In another 71 cases of deaths caused by law enforcement officers during the first quarter of 2015, the authorities involved either confirmed that inquiries continued more than a year later, or declined to give details of any developments in the case despite at least three requests from reporters to do so.
‘Prosecutors have an obligation to the public’
Ten police officers have so far been charged with crimes relating to deaths in the first quarter of 2015, following a sharp increase in prosecutions that has been widely noted. So far, one conviction has resulted from these cases: Jason Kenny, a former deputy in Chatham County, Georgia, was found guilty of cruelty to an inmate following the death of Matthew Ajibade from injuries sustained during a violent restraint in jail.
Four officers were reprimanded or fired from their jobs in relation to cases in early 2015. One acquittal has also been registered: Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, police officer Lisa Mearkle was found not guilty of third-degree murder and manslaughter for fatally shooting the unarmed David Kassick in the back as he lay on the ground after fleeing a traffic stop.
While much of the public and media attention has been focused on cases taken to the courts by prosecutors, a strikingly large number of other cases have been concluded without official action or comment, even on occasions when the circumstances or actions of officers were sharply questioned. Four such cases involved the killing of people who were completely unarmed and four involved people accused of using their vehicles as weapons.
One of the unarmed people killed, Joshua Garcia, refused to stop when a deputy in Lynn County, Texas, tried to pull him over. After a chase, and a crash, the 24-year-old was arrested, handcuffed and placed in a police car.
Officers alleged that as they processed his arrest and inspected his car, however, Garcia managed to bring his cuffed hands around in front of him from behind his back, and tried to drive the police vehicle away. The officers opened fire on him and Garcia was fatally struck. Garcia’s mother, Delia, said the officers were found to have fired 14 times.
Nothing has been stated publicly about this unusual case since Garcia’s death 15 months ago. Sheriff’s lieutenant Pete Vallejo said in an interview, however, that the shooting had in fact been ruled justified and the deputies had returned to work. “Generally we don’t make media releases if the deputy involved is cleared,” said Vallejo, a spokesman for the department. “That’s just the current sheriff’s policy.” The local district attorney’s office did not return several requests for comment.
Delia Garcia said she had not been aware the shooting had been ruled justified until she was contacted by the Guardian this week. She said she received the original police incident reports from an attorney who was courting her as a potential client.
“The shooting just could not have happened the way they say it did,” Delia Garcia said. “It doesn’t make sense. But no one has called me, no one has told me anything since a deputy arrived at my house on the day it happened and said there had been a ‘slight incident’.”
Philip Stinson, an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, who monitors police-involved deaths, said regional authorities often allowed cases involving killings by police to be forgotten – either by drawing out the process or quietly concluding it – because of their incendiary nature.
“District attorneys typically don’t want to prosecute police officers if they can avoid it,” said Stinson. “There is an inherent conflict of interest in that they have to rely on their local law enforcement colleagues at other times, so they’re reluctant to deal with these cases.” Amid increased pressure on prosecutors from some quarters of the public to act against officers for excessive force incidents, however, often “they’re not going to issue a press release saying we declined to prosecute”, said Stinson.
Other analysts said prosecutors may simply decline to announce decisions by them or grand jurors to not bring charges against officers for the same reason as with any other defendants. “I do think it’s a problem, though prosecutors never announce declinations,” said Katherine Levine, an assistant professor at New York University law school. Levine argued, however, that “because of the nature of police killings, prosecutors have an obligation to the public that they don’t in others”.
Stinson said many district attorneys remained quiet about non-prosecutions mainly so as not to damage an overall prosecution success rate to which they can point during their re-election campaigns. “It’s the great unknown with prosecutors,” said Stinson. “If something is no-billed in most jurisdictions, they wouldn’t put it out there, because they don’t want people thinking they are bringing forward cases and failing to get indictments.”
Authorities in Arizona were found by the review to have discreetly cleared officers over their involvement in 10 separate deaths in the first three months of 2015 – more than in any other state. “There was no press release,” officer Kevin Watts of Scottsdale police department said of the decision to clear two officers for the fatal shooting of Dewayne Carr in January last year. Carr, an African American 42-year-old, was accused of reversing his car at a detective’s vehicle during an operation to arrest him for credit card fraud. “There is no policy on what is announced,” said Watts. “It is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
A spokesman for the Maricopa County attorney’s office, which handled the Carr case and several others from the 10 in Arizona, did not respond to a request for comment.
Six more cases ruled justified that went unannounced were found in Texas, and five in Oklahoma. “We do not have a policy on that,” Lieutenant Paco Balderamma of the Oklahoma City police department said regarding the public disclosure of decisions to not prosecute officers
Four cases each were found to have been cleared without announcement in California, Florida and Alabama. Two concluded cases were found in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Maryland – “typically, we do not make an announcement of declination,” said TJ Smith of Baltimore police department – along with one each in Alaska, Iowa, Kentucky, Virginia, Mississippi, Utah, New Mexico, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
In the Tennessee case – that of James Greenwell, 31, in Memphis – authorities appeared not to have announced a finding that Greenwell in fact killed himself, rather than having been shot dead by officers on the porch of his parents’ house, as was said at the time of his death in March last year. Greenwell was widely reported to have been killed by officers, and as a result appeared in both Guardian and Washington Post databases of killings by police. “This was a suicide,” said officer Louis Brownlee. “The medical examiner determined Greenwell shot himself.”
Several police departments stressed that to their minds, responsibility for any announcement lay exclusively with the office of the prosecutor who cleared the officers involved, which then decided not to make public statements.
“We generally do not prepare press releases on other agencies’ investigations,” said Maj Johnny Greenwood of the Putnam County, Florida, sheriff’s office, regarding the clearing of deputies who shot Andrew Williams, 48. Williams was shot dead in his car during a chaotic drugs sting operation in March last year. The deputies, who alleged that Williams reversed his car toward them, were cleared by state investigators and the district attorney.
Dozens of incidents remain unresolved
At the same time, however, dozens more deadly incidents involving police officers across the US are still unresolved more than 12 months after they took place. In at least 15 cases involving the deaths of completely unarmed people, authorities confirmed that the investigations remained open more than a year later, or declined to give any status update when asked several times by reporters.
Sheldon Haleck was unarmed when he was killed in a violent encounter with police officers in Honolulu, Hawaii, in March 2015. More than a year later, a spokeswoman for the police department said, the case is still “pending review by the prosecutor’s office”. Investigative work was done by the Honolulu police department itself.
Haleck, a national guard veteran who had suffered from PTSD since working to clear bodies of people killed by the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, was wandering in a street while high on methamphetamine. When he did not obey orders from officers to move to the sidewalk, Haleck, 38, was shocked with a Taser, pepper-sprayed and roughly restrained.
A medical examiner quickly declared his death a homicide in a ruling that was not publicly disclosed for months. Basic police incident reports were only given to Haleck’s parents, William and Verdell, in recent weeks following persistent pressure from their attorneys.“It’s very stressful,” William, a former senior police officer himself, said in an interview. “You’re dealing with unknowns and what-ifs and asking: ‘What did they actually do to my son?’ There’s no closure, no information from anyone. They’re stalling in giving us reports that were probably completed within two or three days.”
Dave Korga, a spokesman for the Honolulu prosecuting attorney, declined to say when the Haleck case was expected to be concluded, nor how its duration compared with other cases handled by their office. “We’ll take the time we need to make the right decision,” said Koga.
Video footage of part of the deadly encounter, which was recorded by one of the officers’ Tasers, was released by police without warning later last year. Haleck’s parents were given no warning and saw it like any other viewer of the local news bulletin. “How would you like to see your son die on TV?” said William. “It was heartbreaking and devastating,” said Verdell.
Stinson, the police use-of-force expert at Bowling Green University, said the process “shouldn’t take that long”. He cited as a problematic example the indictment for murder last August of Adam Torres, a former police officer in Fairfax County, Virginia, over a fatal shooting almost two years earlier, following apparent bureaucratic maneuvering behind the scenes.
“This is a very professional organization in a sophisticated county government,” Stinson said of Fairfax. “It makes me wonder what is going on elsewhere.”
An extended inquiry period can frequently mean that pertinent disclosures are made long after the glare of public attention has moved on. Robert Zapf, the district attorney in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, announced that the fatal shooting by police of Aaron Siler, 26, almost a year earlier, was justified.
Torres had been on his first day back at work following 10 days of leave after he shot a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran, who was allegedly armed with a knife. Siler, who was being pursued over a probation violation, was said to have ignored the officer’s orders to get down and even told him to shoot.
Zapf waited until officer Pablo Torres was cleared in the shooting before revealing that Siler was in effect unarmed when he was killed. Authorities initially told the public that Siler was killed when he “armed himself” following a car chase. This was interpreted by some media outlets to mean that Siler was wielding a firearm, a knife or a metal pipe.
Only a year later did the prosecutor tell the public that Siler was in fact carrying an empty plastic bucket. “It is conceivable that had officer Torres not fired his weapon when he did, Siler would have attacked officer Torres [and] caused him or the civilian witnesses great bodily harm,” said Zapf.
Fact vs Fiction-Medical Division
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
FACT:
U.S. health officials declare Zika cause of severe birth defects
April 13, 2016
by Bill Berkrot
Reuters
U.S. health officials have concluded that infection with the Zika virus in pregnant women is a cause of the birth defect microcephaly and other severe brain abnormalities in babies.
“It is now clear, the CDC has concluded, that Zika virus does cause microcephaly,” Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “There isn’t any doubt that Zika causes microcephaly.”
U.S. and world health officials have been saying for some time that mounting scientific evidence points to the mosquito-born virus as the likely cause of the alarming rise in microcephaly in Zika-hit areas of Brazil. It had not been declared as the definitive cause until now.
Never before in history has a bite from a mosquito been seen as the cause of birth defects, Frieden said.
(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Bernard Orr)
US health experts confirm that Zika causes birth defects
April 13, 2016
BBC
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed that the Zika virus causes severe birth defects, including microcephaly.
Thousands of babies were born in Brazil last year with microcephaly, a syndrome where children are born with unusually small heads.
The defects coincided with a spike in Zika infections, leading experts to suspect the mosquito-borne virus.
Growing research has now affirmed those experts’ suspicions, the CDC said.
“This study marks a turning point in the Zika outbreak. It is now clear that the virus causes microcephaly,” said Dr Tom Frieden, the head of the CDC.
CDC officials said the findings do not change the agency’s earlier guidance to pregnant women.
The CDC has discouraged pregnant women from travelling to places where the Zika virus is spreading, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Dr Frieden said intensive research was under way to find out much more about the mosquito-borne virus and to develop a vaccine for it, although he warned that that could still be years away.
This is the first time that mosquito bites have caused birth defects, Dr Frieden said. The virus can be transmitted by sexual contact as well.
FICTION:
Is the dreaded Zika virus another giant scam?
by Jon Rappoport
Hysteria sells and…
It’s hysteria time again. Let me run it down for you.
This is the word: The dreaded Zika virus! Watch out! It’s carried by mosquitos! It can cause birth defects—babies are born with very small heads and impaired brains!
Here are a few scare headlines that were running on Drudge as of 1/26:
“Brazil sends 200,000 soldiers to stop spread of Zika.”
“Stay away from Rio if you’re pregnant.”
“’Losing battle’ against mosquito.”
“Virus threatening two continents.”
Want more hysteria? The Daily Mail indicates pregnant women are being warned not to travel to 22 countries in Latin America and Africa. Several Zika cases are being reported in Italy, the UK, and Spain.
Then we have this from the Washington Post (“As Zika virus spreads, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018,” 1/22, with italics added):
“The rapid spread of the Zika virus has prompted Latin American governments to urge women not to get pregnant for up to two years, an extraordinary precaution aimed at avoiding birth defects believed to be linked to the mosquito-borne illness.
So we now have governments warning women not to get pregnant. A new form of depopulation. Don’t get pregnant. If you do, and a mosquito bites you, you could give birth to a severely damaged child. Not only that, we have massive advisories against travel, for pregnant women. And 200,000 soldiers in Brazil, the site of the upcoming Olympics, are going door to door and distributing information about this new “plague.” Are the soldiers also telling men and women not to have sex? Who knows?
So let’s take a little side trip to Scam City and examine the science behind the Zika virus and the assertion that it is causing birth defects.
Before a virus can be said to cause disease, a few procedures need to occur. First, the virus must be proved to exist. It has to be isolated from a human carrier as diseased tissue, and then that tissue has to be put under an electron microscope, where many, many (Zika) viruses can be seen. Second, tests have to be run on many suspected human cases, and these tests have to reveal very large amounts of Zika in the body. That’s your basic starter kit for deciding that a virus might be causing actual human disease.
In examining the published literature on Zika, so far I see no reports of diseased-tissue removal from a human, followed by electron microscope photos revealing large amounts of Zika.
Therefore, attributing very serious problems to Zika on a worldwide basis is insupportable and speculative. It isn’t science.
And to make the leap to claiming the virus is causing pregnant women to give birth to babies with very small heads and impaired brains is absurd.
Who benefits from this Zika “science”? Certainly, the people who are releasing genetically engineered (GE) mosquitos as a form of disease-prevention. The big honcho is a company named Oxitec. So far, the GE mosquitos are being used to curtail dengue fever in Brazil, Malaysia, and the Cayman Islands. Florida is next up on the agenda. But with Zika coming on strong in the press as a “mosquito-carried plague,” how long will it be before special bugs are modified to save the planet from this new threat…
Other than that, everything is perfect. Let’s have a big parade and welcome genetically-engineered mosquitos to planet Earth.
“A virus” is the best false cover story ever invented.
More Thrilling Inside 9/11 Information!
by Harry von Johnston, PhD
Here we have a compendium of stunning revelations about a landmark event in modern American politics!
- There were no hijackers on the 9/11 killer jets! The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself has agreed, there were no hijackers. There were no cell phone calls! Everybody aboard that aircraft, pilots and crew, were unconscious within 8 to 18 minutes after take-off
- These planes were being piloted by remote control, probably an AWACs aircraft taking over that airplane or airplanes or drones, unmanned drones. And flying them at 5 and 8 G-force that no pilot could withstand.
- The 9/11 planes that took off full of passengers are now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean! Talk of a military coup — to reverse what he calls the administrative coup d’etat that happened on 9/11 — are rife within the corridors of the Pentagon.
- The truly patriotic members of the military have had to sit there and take all these wild schemes by corporate-controlled politicians.
- It is common knowledge at the Pentagon that Israel fired nuclear weapons at Iraq during the first Gulf War.
- A commercial aircraft did not hit the Pentagon. Most likely it was a cruise missile or a Global Hawk.
- Flight 93, the jetliner that supposedly crashed in Pennsylvania after courageous passengers struggled with armed hijackers, was shot down by the North Dakota Air Guard.
- Most likely it was U.S. forces that tried to kill Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz when he visited Iraq.
- Military tribunals will try current U.S. public officials when the military decides to take over.
- The 9-11 activity and horrific destruction of US property and lives was intentionally meant to trigger a psychological and patriotic reaction on the part of the US citizens, which is paving the way for “combined UN activity” (using the fig leaf of NATO) for striking key targets in both the Middle East/ South Asia and the Balkans. The goal continues to be ultimate destruction of all national sovereignty and establishment of a global government.
- The trigger for the 9-11 activity was the imminent and unstoppable world-wide financial collapse, which can only be prevented (temporarily) by a major war, perhaps to become known as WW 111. To bring it off (one more time), martial law will probably be imposed in the United States.
- The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation against the United States, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles, and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.
- As a tactical military exercise against two significant targets (world financial center and the citadel of world strategic military planning), the attack, from a psychological impact on the American public, equaled the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1941.
But the overriding question of that original group of pilots was: If we are at war, who is the enemy?
- The group determined that the enemy is within the gates, that he has infiltrated into the highest policy-making positions at the federal level, and has absolute control, not only of the purse strings, but of the troop buildup and deployment of our military forces, including active, reserve and National Guard units.
- The United States, and other nations, are actually controlled by Giant Lizards who came to this planet on DC-3s along with progenitors of Scientologists.