TBR News March 10, 2016

Mar 10 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., March 10 2016: “I see that the press is finally admitting that there are devices now in use that shut down all electronic transmissions around them. The one I am aware of is unobtrusive, fits in a coat pocket without being noticed, is easy to turn on and is effective up to 1000 meters. It shuts off all transmissions of any kind. Works inside or outside, has rechargeable batteries and is devastating in use.  It works fine in a moving car. The piggies can easily slip a GPS bit underneath a bumper or fender and track any vehicle. But with this little device (the size of a cigar case) they cannot track you at all. Some people like to keep the jammer off until they get to an interchange and then flick on the turn-on button so that the piggies can see one at the interchange and then have total silence. These are made in Finland and selected merchants sell the hell out of them. Such frustrated anger in the sow-pen! There is another device, recently on the underground market, that, when attached to your computer, will absolutely fry any alien computer system that attempts to break into yours. The harddrive on the intruder’s computer system is obliterated, all saved files wiped out and all programs gone with the wind. And if the target’s system is interfacing with another at the time, that one goes as well. The cost is ca $500.  More fun and games aimed the dim of wit and wearers of very dirty underwear.”

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. 55

Date: Monday, December 30, 1996

Commenced: 8:45 AM CST

Concluded: 9:21 AM CST

RTC: Hello, Gregory. Have a nice Christmas?

GD: Wonderful. I got a sled, some bunny slippers, a silencer for my shotgun, a pornographic Bible, three pair of socks that were too small and a dead turtle. Yourself?

RTC: Somehow, I don’t believe you. Christmas was fine here. I take it you did not have an extensive Christmas.

GD: The rabbit died and we were in deep mourning. But then we ate it and felt much better.

RTC: I could send a sympathy card.

GD: Just flush it down the loo. It might meet up with what’s left of the rabbit. Robert, to be serious, you said that Corson did not like Mark Lane. He represented Carto in a lawsuit and I was wondering what was the reason for the bad feeling?

RTC: My God, Gregory, this is like an old auntie’s sewing circle. Everyone here hates everyone else, tells lies, sticks out their tongues at each other and acts like small children. There was a lawsuit of the Keystone Cops type. Victor Marchetti, who used to be one of ours but got booted out, wrote an article for the Spotlight paper saying that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot. He was. Hunt sued the paper and got a judgment. The paper fought back and got Mark Lane to defend them.

GD: The Oswald lawyer?

RTC: The same. So they went back and forth. Marchetti is a fat slob who thinks he is very important when we who really know him consider him to be a chattering nut. Hunt is grossly incompetent but the reason why Corson hates Lane and everyone else, is that Marchetti claimed he got this information about Hunt in Dallas on November 22nd from Corson. Corson got dragged over the coals by Lane and clearly was proved to be a liar. However, there was a third person there when Corson told his little story to Marchetti and that’s what nailed him. Poor Bill. He always has to put his oar in, needed or not.

GD: Well, he told Kimmel that he knew some secret British soldier who told Corson about the Roosevelt/Churchill conversation. Corson claimed he backed it up. Kimmel went for this like a duck after a June bug, but I can’t believe it. Who was this mysterious witness? Corson said his lips were sealed.

RTC: Too bad that isn’t true.

GD: Back and forth. I know Corson has lectured me on a subject that I knew far better that he did but I just kept quiet and acted impressed. Didn’t he get court-martialed?

RTC: My God, Gregory, don’t ever go into that one. Look, these people like Bill and Trento, Marchetti and the rest of them, are like squirrels in the park running around begging nuts from the public. This is the Beltway, Gregory. It’s a hot house. Someone sees the President from about two hundred feet away, driving past in his armored limousine and then tells his friends that he had a chance to talk to the President that afternoon and the President told him….and that’s how it goes. Trento thinks he is a brilliant writer, Bill thinks he’s a mover and shaker, Marchetti sees himself as a secret agent and Hunt has just enough sense to put on his pants before going outside to get the paper. These are the hangers-on, Gregory, the wannabes as the current generation calls them.

GD: Ah, Robert, but you were actually there, you knew from doing it. The sun versus the moon. The moon reflects the glory of another. Does that role make you happy?

RTC: It makes me sad sometimes. And they run around acting like old women. Chatter, chatter, boast, back-stab, strut and eventually die. We all die, Gregory, but some take a long time to do it. I’m pleasant with them because perhaps they can help me but I am giving up with most of them. I thought Costello would be a good outlet but I gave up on him long before he died last year. Trento thinks he’s a great intelligence writer but he reminds me of a wino rooting around in old dumpsters for chicken bones. Bill hints at great secrets that only he knows and Hunt is a bumbling idiot and we should have done him instead of his wife. Marchetti is a little bit of all of them. If you listen to them, Gregory, they will convince you that big black cars drive up in front of their homes, every evening, and give them briefcases full of very secret papers. You know the types.

GD: I do, Robert, I really do. I love it when one of your pinheads starts telling me about German intelligence. Oh yes, and what about Nosenko?

RTC: A Russian double agent that Angleton mismanaged.

GD: Was Angleton Italian?

RTC: No, half Mexican. He spoke wop from his father, having lived there and sold cash registers but he was a Mexican. He was well-connected with the mob, though.

GD: Mueller told me about Boris Pash…

RTC: That asshole. A gym teacher with more dreams of glory.

GD: Heini said that Pash tried to kill the Italian Communist leader.

RTC: Togliatti. Yes, but he missed. They always miss, Gregory.

GD: I have an Irish friend who never does. He prefers a knife but bombs will do very well.

RTC: I think you mentioned him. Mountbatten?

GD: The same. Now that’s a professional. And he doesn’t talk like the rest of them.

RTC: Real professionals never do.

GD: So if we both agree on what constitutes a professional agent, how do you analyze Corson, Kimmel, Marchetti, Trento and the others? Are they agents? Kimmel works for the FBI, Marchetti used to work for your people and the others?

RTC: What we have there is the wannabe club, Gregory. All of them think they are important people and, because they have, or have had, connections with the intelligence community, they begin to feel, somehow, that they are possessors of the secrets that others do not have. This elevates them from boredom and real obscurity and makes them believe that they are privy to those who really do walk in the corridors of power. I am the one, pardon the vanity, with the secrets and I am the one who walked once in the corridors of power so they gather around me, snapping up any little bit of information I choose to drop. There are many things I would like people I know, such as my family, to know about. I would like not to leave a legacy of mystery and negativity behind me. I know Corson and the others would like to have a private club type of inner knowledge, to sit around the fire solemnly talking about great secrets they have known. Never happen. When I go, they go. It’s that basic. I had thought once to cultivate Costello and let him speak for me but I gave up on him after his visit with you. The man was brittle, opinionated and as blind as a bat. Kimmel is an establishment man with no creative juices, Corson runs around barking like one of those obnoxious little Mexican dogs that were once raised for food, Marchetti reminds me of a drunken little rat running around in a barn, trying to get out. And when he does get out, he runs around outside trying to get back in. Trento and his wife are delusional and self important and love to mix it up with losers and never-could-have-beens.

GD: Basking, like the moon, in reflected glory.

RTC: Absolutely. And these are at the top of the rank amateur clubs. Down below them, we find the “experts” and the “researchers” who represent the bottom of the pyramid. They are the ones who scribble, jabber and strut. They look upwards to the top for the voices of the masters. They all feed on each other, Gregory. Their little worlds are all they have and if someone like you, especially someone like you, comes along, they loathe, fear and despise you. You see, you are the real thing and they are just wearing Halloween costumes and they know it. After Costello returned from his visit with you and spent hours telling me how terrible and unpleasant you were, I put this down to simple jealousy and thought that perhaps I might look into you myself. And that’s why we’re talking right this very moment.

GD: Thank you for your approval, Robert. I agree with you, but they are wearing the gold-braided clown suits and go to clubs and meetings and, like old peacocks, preen endlessly. What you tell me I already know, Robert, but short of grabbing them by their throats and banging their heads against the wall, there isn’t much I can do…

RTC: Except to out-produce them, Gregory. And they know you can do it and they hate you for it. A week does not go by without my getting some kind of a phone call about what a terrible, evil person you are and warning me never to talk with you. Notice how impressed I have been with these dire warnings. But please make my life a little easier in my old age by not quoting me to any of these cheap hustlers. If they really get it into their heads that I am being informative to you, they will call me every other day, warn Greg and Emily to protect me from you and then do everything in their shabby little power to trash you. Do not, and I repeat, do not trust any of them, ever. I think we understand this all, don’t we?

GD: Oh, yes. I never trusted these sort anyway. They remind me of old aunties or, even worse, academics. Both of them gossip, chatter, denigrate everyone not present and can’t sleep well at night unless they feel they have damaged someone else that day. They see themselves as giants and, in fact, they are small, chattering mice. But, and I am sure you know all about this, we have to put up with them in order to get along with the really important matters. Don’t worry about making myself vulnerable to these types. It ends up that they make themselves vulnerable to me in the end. What is the saying? Out of nothing, nothing is made.

(Concluded at 9:21 AM CST)

Oregon protesters face new charges over refuge damage, theft

March 8, 2016

by Eric M. Johnson

Reuters

Seattle-Participants in a six-week armed occupation at a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon have been indicted on fresh charges, including that they carried firearms in federal facilities and stole and damaged government property.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on March 8 and unsealed on Wednesday as the anti-government protesters appeared in a federal court in Portland, supersedes an earlier indictment in the case.

It adds new charges against protest leader Ammon Bundy and other sympathizers who were indicted last month of conspiring to impede federal officers policing the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge during a long-simmering fight over land rights.

The takeover, which began on Jan. 2 with at least a dozen armed men, was sparked by the return to prison of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal property in the vicinity of the refuge.

It also marked the latest flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West.

On Tuesday, a county prosecutor said protest leader Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who was fatally shot by Oregon State Police in late January during a traffic stop, was struck three times in the back during the incident. The prosecutor deemed the slaying “justified and necessary.” The superseding indictment lists 26 defendants. Each is charged with the initial charge of conspiring to impede federal agents. It newly accuses some of the protesters of: possession of firearms and dangerous weapons in federal facilities, use and carry of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, and depredation of government property.

That last charge was leveled against protester Sean Anderson and another sympathizer, whose name has been redacted from court documents. It alleges the pair damaged an archeological site considered sacred to the Burns Paiute Tribe through the use of excavation and heavy equipment.

The FBI has said it was working with the Tribe to identify damage to the tribe’s artifacts and sacred burial grounds during the 41-day occupation

Three armed occupiers were also indicted on charges of theft of government property, including a 2012 Ford F-350 Truck and cameras and related equipment.

A lawyer for Ammon Bundy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Leaked ISIS ‘entry forms’ could expose 22,000 terrorists from over 50 states

March 10. 2016

RT

A batch of leaked Islamic State documents with the names of some 22,000 militants from 51 countries has been passed to UK security services. The papers, which were obtained by Sky News via a defector, could expose terrorists planning attacks in Europe.

The files reportedly contain data on 22,000 Islamic State (IS, ISIS/ISIL) recruits from all over the world, including the UK and rest of Europe, the US, Canada, North Africa and Middle East.

The biggest chunk of the 1,736 files represents simple questionnaires which would-be terrorists had to fill out to be eligible to join the terror group. Each form consists of 23 personal questions resembling a typical job application form, apart from several points.

Some of the IS application forms appear to have been published by Zaman Al Wasl, a Syrian pro-opposition news site. The documents are penned in Arabic and stamped with IS logos.

According to Zaman Al Wasl, the majority of IS recruits are from Arab countries, with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt accounting for two-thirds of the jihadists. Up to 25 percent of the fighters are allegedly Saudis. The group’s “foreign” (non-Arab) recruits are topped by Turks, with French nationals coming second.

The site claims that only 1.7 percent of IS recruits are Syrians, and just 1.2 percent are Iraqis. Separately, it speculates that Iraqis and Jordanians form the “backbone” of IS forces only in Iraqi regions such as Mosul and Ramadi.

Newcomers were requested to name a person who recommended them as reliable candidates – a kind of ‘reference check.’ The recommendation clause will likely become the subject of a particularly careful examination by security services, to which Sky has forwarded the documents.

It will give them [the security services] an indication of not just who they are, where they come from, but will be able to potentially lead them to the individuals who radicalized these individuals as well as facilitated their departure,” Afzai Ashraf, a counter-terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told the media.

The would-be jihadists also had to provide details about their previous battleground experience, home towns, countries they have traveled through, their phone number, and understanding of Islamic law. The ‘applicants’ were also required to list the next of kin and specify a preferable position in the group such as ‘fighter’ or ‘suicide bomber,’ and list special skills they command. One of the secured files was marked as ‘martyrs’ and was devoted exclusively to militants who intended to blow themselves up.

Also on Monday, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police (BKA) police announced they had obtained documents disclosing jihadist identities, which could be the same forms Sky News was given access to.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere confirmed the authenticity of the find on Tuesday, saying it would facilitate “speedier, clearer investigations and stricter prison sentences,” as quoted by the DPA news agency.

It helps us to understand the underlying structures of this terrorist organization,” de Maiziere added. The BKA has not provided details on how it obtained the batch.

Richard Barret, a former British diplomat and intelligence officer, who served as Director of Global Counter Terrorism Operations for the British Secret Intelligence Service, called the materials “an invaluable resource for analysts,” which shed light on who was joining the terror group and why.

The documents feature the names of infamous IS members such as Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a former London rapper turned jihadi fighter, who joined Islamic State in 2013 and is primarily known for an image he uploaded on Twitter last August of him with the severed head of a Syrian Army soldier. Another is Junaid Hussain, a British computer hacker who had been working for Islamic State until he was killed last August in a drone attack.

The copies of the documents were provided to Sky News by a former IS member, who had stolen a memory stick with data from the chief of the group’s so-called internal security police. The man, who goes under the name of Abu Hamed, is said to have become disenchanted with IS leadership for its disregard for Islamic doctrine. He explained that Islamic rules “totally collapsed inside the organization,” which caused him to abandon it. Hamed, who claims to be a former member of the Free Syrian Army, a Western-backed anti-government rebel group, handed over the device to Sky in a secret location in Turkey.

In February, Europol director Rob Wainwright said that “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than in a decade,” referring to up to 5,000 jihadists that returned from Syria back to Europe and remain on the loose.

We can expect [IS] or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population,” he added.

Since the start of the military conflict in Syria in 2011, between 25,000 and 30,000 foreign fighters have reportedly arrived in Iraq and Syria, with Europe accounting for 21 percent of the total number.

Pentagon report justifies deployment of military spy drones over the U.S.

March 9, 2016

by Gregg Zoroya

USA TODAY

The Pentagon has deployed drones to spy over U.S. territory for non-military missions over the past decade, but the flights have been rare and lawful, according to a new report.

The report by a Pentagon inspector general, made public under a Freedom of Information Act request, said spy drones on non-military missions have occurred fewer than 20 times between 2006 and 2015 and always in compliance with existing law.

The report, which did not provide details on any of the domestic spying missions,  said the Pentagon takes the issue of military drones used on American soil “very seriously.”

The Pentagon has publicly posted at least a partial list of the drone missions that have flown in non-military airspace over the United States and explains the use of the aircraft. The site lists nine missions flown between 2011 and 2016, largely to assist with search and rescue, floods, fires or National Guard exercises.

A senior policy analyst for the ACLU, Jay Stanley, said it is good news no legal violations were found, yet the technology is so advanced that it’s possible laws may require revision.

“Sometimes, new technology changes so rapidly that existing law no longer fits what people think is appropriate,” Stanley said. “It’s important to remember that the American people do find this to be a very, very sensitive topic.”

Other federal agencies own and operate drones. The use of unmanned aerial surveillance (UAS) drones over the USA surfaced in 2013 when then-FBI director Robert Mueller testified before Congress that the bureau employed spy drones to aid investigations but in a “very, very minimal way, very seldom.”

The inspector general analysis was completed March 20, 2015, but not released publicly until last Friday.

It said that with advancements in drone technology along with widespread military use overseas, the Pentagon established interim guidance in 2006 governing when and whether the unmanned aircraft could be used domestically. The interim policy allowed spy drones to be used for homeland defense purposes in the U.S. and to assist civil authorities.

But the policy said that any use of military drones for civil authorities had to be approved by the Secretary of Defense or someone delegated by the secretary. The report found that defense secretaries have never delegated that responsibility.

The report quoted a military law review article that said “the appetite to use them (spy drones) in the domestic environment to collect airborne imagery continues to grow, as does Congressional and media interest in their deployment.”

Military units that operate drones told the inspector general they would like more opportunities to fly them on domestic missions if for no other reason than to give pilots more experience to improve their skills, the report said. “Multiple units told us that as forces using the UAS capabilities continue to draw down overseas, opportunities for UAS realistic training and use have decreased,” the report said.

A request for all cases between 2006 and 2015 in which civil authorities asked the military for use of spy drones produced a list of “less than twenty events,”  the report said. The list included requests granted and denied.

The list was not made public in the report. But a few examples were cited, including one case in which an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to find potholes in the mayor’s city. The Marines denied the request because obtaining the defense secretary’s “approval to conduct a UAS mission of this type did not make
operational sense.”

Shortly before the inspector general report was completed a year ago, the Pentagon issued a new policy governing the use of spy drones. It requires the defense secretary to approve all domestic spy drone operations. It says that unless permitted by law and approved by the secretary, drones “may not conduct surveillance on U.S. persons.” It also bans the use of armed drones over the United States for anything other than training and testing.

The CIA and Russia

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

The first serious, and successful, U.S. direct interference in Russian leadership policies was in 1953. An ageing Josef Stalin, suffering from arteriosclerosis and becoming increasingly hostile to his subordinates, was poisoned by Laverenti P. Beria, head of his secret police. Beria, was a Mingrelian Jew, very ruthless and a man who ordered and often supervised the executions of people Stalin suspected of plotting against him, had fallen out of favor with Stalin and had come to believe that he was on the list of those Stalin wished to remove. With his intelligence connection, Beria was contacted by the American CIA through one of his trusted agents in Helskinki and through this contact, Beria was supplied dosages of warfarin  The first drug in the class to be widely commercialized was dicoumarol itself, patented in 1941 and later used as a pharmaceutical. potent coumarin-based anticoagulants for use as rodent poisons, resulting in warfarin in 1948. The name warfarin stems from the acronym WARF, for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation + the ending -arin indicating its link with coumarin. Warfarin was first registered for use as a rodenticide in the US in 1948, and was immediately popular; although it was developed by Link, the WARF financially supported the research and was assigned the patent.

Warfarin was used by a Lavrenti Beria to poison Stalin. Stalin’s cooks and personal bodyguards were all under the direct control of  Beria. He acknowledged to other top Soviet leaders that he had poisoned Stalin, according to Molotov’s memoirs. Nikita Khrushchev and others to poison Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Warfarin is tasteless and colorless, and produces symptoms similar to those that Stalin exhibited. Stalin collapsed during the night after a dinner with Beria and other Soviet leaders, and died four days later on 5 March 1953.

Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, in his political memoirs (published posthumously in 1993), claimed that Beria told him that he had poisoned Stalin. “I took him out,” Beria supposedly boasted. There is evidence that after Stalin was found unconscious, medical care was not provided for many hours. Other evidence of the murder of Stalin by Beria associates was presented by Edvard Radzinsky in his biography Stalin. It has been suggested that warfarin was used; it would have produced the symptoms reported.

After the fall of Gorbachev and his replacement by Boris Yeltsin, a known CIA connection, the Russian criminal mob was encouraged by the CIA to move into the potentially highly lucrative Russian natural resource field.

By 1993 almost all banks in Russia were owned by the mafia, and 80% of businesses were paying protection money. In that year, 1400 people were murdered in Moscow, crime members killed businessmen who would not pay money to them, as well as reporters, politicians, bank owners and others opposed to them. The new criminal class of Russia took on a more Westernized and businesslike approach to organized crime as the more code-of-honor based Vory faded into extinction.

The Izmaylovskaya gang was considered one of the country’s most important and oldest Russian Mafia groups in Moscow and also had a presence in Tel Aviv, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, Miami and New York City. It was founded during the 1980s under the leadership of Oleg Ivanov and was estimated to consist of about 200 active members (according to other data of 300–500 people). In principle, the organization was divided into two separate bodies—Izmailovskaya and Gol’yanovskaya  which utilized quasi-military ranks and strict internal discipline. It was involved extensively in murder-for-hire, extortions, and infiltration of legitimate businesses.

The gangs were termed the Oligarchy and were funded by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Israeli-owned Bank of New York all with the assisance of the American government.

The arrival of Vladimir Putin as the new leader of Russia was at first ignored in Washington. A former KGB Lt. Colonel who had been stationed in East Germany, Putin was viewed as inconsequential, bland and colorless by the purported Russian experts in both the Department of State and the CIA.

Putin, however, proved to be a dangerous opponent who blocked the Oligarchs attempt to control the oil fields and other assets, eventual control of which had been promised to both American and British firms.

The Oligarchs were allowed to leave the country and those remaining behind were forced to follow Putin’s policies. Foreign control over Russian natural resources ceased and as both the CIA, various foreign firms and the American government had spent huge sums greasing the skids, there was now considerable negative feelings towards Putin.

The next serious moves against Russia came with a plan conceived by the CIA and fully approved by President George W. Bush, whose father had once been head of the CIA.

This consisted of ‘Opertion Sickle’ which was designed to surround the western and southern borders of Russia with states controlled by the United States through the guise of NATO membership. Included in this enricelement program were the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia and a number of asiatic states bordering southern Russia. It was the stated intention of the NATO leadership to put military missiles in all these countries. The so-called “Orange Revolution” funded and directed by the CIA, overthrew the pro-Moscow government in the Ukraine, giving the United States theoretical control over the heavy industrialized Donetz Basin and most importantly, the huge former Soviet naval base at Sebastopol.

The Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) was an American-sponsored 18-month, $64-million program aimed at increasing the capabilities of the Georgian armed forces by training and equipping four 600-man battalions with light weapons, vehicles and communications. The program enabled the US to expedite funding for the Georgian military for Operation Enduring Freedom.

On February 27, 2002, the US media reported that the U.S. would send approximately two hundred United States Army Special Forces soldiers to Georgia to train Georgian troops. The program implemented President Bush’s decision to respond to the Government of Georgia’s request for assistance to enhance its counter-terrorism capabilities and addressed the situation in the Pankisi Gorge.

The program began in May 2002 when American special forces soldiers began training select units of the Georgian Armed Forces, including the 12th Commando Light Infantry Battalion, the 16th Mountain-Infantry Battalion, the 13th “Shavnabada” Light Infantry Battalion, the 11th Light Infantry Battalion, a mechanized company and small numbers of Interior Ministry troops and border guards.

Eventually, responsibility for training Georgian forces was turned over to the US Marine Corps in conjunction with the British Army. British and American teams worked as part of a joint effort to train each of the four infantry battalion staffs and their organic rifle companies. This training began with the individual soldier and continued through fire team, squad, platoon, company, and battalion level tactics as well as staff planning and organization. Upon completing training, each of the new Georgian infantry battalions began preparing for deployment rotations in support of the Global War on Terrorism

The CIA were instrumental in getting Mikheil Saakashvili, an erratic policician, pro-West, into the presidency of Georgia but although he allowed the country to be flooded with American arms and “military trainers” he was not a man easily controlled and under the mistaken belief that Ameriacn military might supported him, commenced to threaten Moscow. Two Georgian provinces were heavily populated by Russians and objected to the inclusion in Georgia and against them, Saakashvili began to make threatening moves.

The 2008 South Ossetia War or Russo-Georgian War (in Russia also known as the Five-Day War) was an armed conflict in August 2008 between Georgia on one side, and Russia and separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other.

During the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia, in an attempt to reclaim the territory. Georgia claimed that it was responding to attacks on its peacekeepers and villages in South Ossetia, and that Russia was moving non-peacekeeping units into the country. The Georgian attack caused casualties among Russian peacekeepers, who resisted the assault along with Ossetian militia. Georgia successfully captured most of Tskhinvali within hours. Russia reacted by deploying units of the Russian 58th Army and Russian Airborne Troops in South Ossetia, and launching airstrikes against Georgian forces in South Ossetia and military and logistical targets in Georgia proper. Russia claimed these actions were a necessary humanitarian intervention and peace enforcement.

When the Russian incursion was seen as massive and serious, U.S. president George W. Bush’s statement to Russia was: “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.” The US Embassy in Georgia, describing the Matthew Bryza press-conference, called the war an “incursion by one of the world’s strongest powers to destroy the democratically elected government of a smaller neighbor”.

Initially the Bush Administration seriously considered a military response to defend Georgia, but such an intervention was ruled out by the Pentagon due to the inevitable conflict it would lead to with Russia. Instead, Bush opted for a softer option by sending humanitarian supplies to Georgia by military, rather than civilian, aircraft. And he ordered the immediate evacuation of all American military units from Georgia. The huge CIA contingent in the Georgian capital fled by aircraft and the American troops, mostly U.S. Marines, evacuated quickly to the Black Sea where they were evacuated by the U.S. Navy. British and Israeli military units also fled the country and all of them had to leave behind an enormous amount of military eqipment to include tanks, light armored  vehicles, small arms, radio equipment, and trucks full of intelligence data they had neither the time nor forersignt to destroy.

The immediate result of this demarche was the defection of the so-called “NATO Block” eastern Europeans from the Bush/CIA project who saw the United States as a paper tiger that would not, and could not, defend them against the Russians. In a sense, the Russian incursion into Georgia was a massive political, not a military, victory.

The CIA was not happy with the actions of Vladimir Putin and when he  ran for reelection, they poured money into the hands of Putin’s enemies, hoping to reprise the Ukrainian Orange Revolution but the effort was in vain and now, the Russian parliament passed a bill designed to hamper and frustrate civil society groups that accept money from abroad. 

Sleepwalking Toward Catastrophe

Because the mainstream U.S. media remains neocon-dominated, there has been little rational debate about the risks of stumbling into nuclear war with Russia,

March 7, 2016

by James W. Carden

consortium news

One question that the no-doubt intrepid debate moderators of the forthcoming Republican and Democratic debates might bestir themselves to ask the remaining candidates is: Given the fact that the U.S. and Russia are now circling one another on the Black Sea, in Ukraine, and in the skies over Syria, it is possible that policymakers are not completely alive to the risks inherent in such maneuverings?

The question is well worth asking since the world balance in 2016 is not only dangerous, it carries risks far in excess to the last time the great powers accidentally stumbled, into catastrophe. After all, unlike in the summer of 1914, today, all the great world powers have nuclear weapons. A brief consideration of The Great War reveals startling parallels with the situation that obtains today.

In the days immediately following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand no one could have imagined what was ahead – and this points to a lesson that is still very relevant today: that in international affairs the intentions of other nation-states are essentially unknowable. As such, the pre-war status quo collapsed under the weight of that uncertainty.

What followed stands as a vivid example of what the political scientist Robert Jervis has called “the security dilemma.” This posits that when a state undertakes measures to increase its security, those measures will inevitably be seen as offensive rather than defensive by other states, who will then take counter-measures to increase their own security, and so on. In other words, so-called “defensive” weapons are not seen as “defensive” in the eyes of the states against which they are aimed.

As the eminent scholar of Europe, Professor David Calleo, has written, the Germans didn’t see themselves as aggressors. “The Imperial Germans,” he writes, “maintained they were waging war for defensive purposes, they were protecting their national unity from the wrath of the French who were determined to undo it.” The Entente Powers saw things differently.

It is also instructive to note the way democratic societies behaved in the run-up to the First World War. Today, well-funded and influential think tanks endlessly promote the idea that the U.S. ought to engage in a crusade to promote democracy abroad because “democracies don’t fight each other.” Yet the Great War puts the lie to that assertion, especially when you consider that the voting franchise in Germany was more inclusive than America’s at the time.

Democratic peace theory also purposefully ignores one of democracy’s principal problems: that when it comes to war, its citizens are prone to fall prey to a mob mentality. And a mob mentality and a war fever is exactly what gripped the democracies in Europe in the run-up to the Great War.

In an editorial published a week before hostilities broke out, The Nation magazine reported that: “In Vienna, in Paris, in Berlin, in St Petersburg, there were signs of acute mania affecting large bodies of people. Mob psychology often shows itself in discouraging and alarming forms, but is never so repulsive and appalling as when it is seen in great crowds shouting for war. Lest we forget indeed – about nothing does the mob forget so quickly as about war.”

The editorial went on to conclude: “If one looked only at these surface manifestations, one would be tempted to conclude that Europe was about to become a gigantic madhouse.”

Professor Calleo recounts that after Chancellor of Germany, Bethmann-Hollweg, was deposed, he wrote that he too saw the role of public opinion as “the crucial element – how else to explain the senseless and impassioned zeal which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America not originally involved in the war, no rest until they too had immersed themselves in the bloodbath?”

Today’s rush, likewise senseless and impassioned, to restart the Cold War is largely a product of the mutual admiration society that has sprung up between the Pentagon, hawkish administration officials, and their unscrupulous admirers in the media.

The propaganda churned out by Washington’s ‘military-media—think tank complex’ would have been all too familiar to the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both of whom served on the front lines of the Great War in France.

Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum est” was written at the front in 1917 and describes the death of a fellow soldier who had been gassed by the Germans. In the poem’s final stanza, Owen directly addresses a civilian war propagandist back in England, telling him that if he had seen first-hand the horrors of war:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori

It is sweet and right to die for your country”

Owen was killed at the front a week before the Armistice was signed. His friend Sassoon survived. Unlike Owen, Sassoon lived a long life and produced some of the best known anti-war literature of the day.

At the front he produced what may be his most memorable offering, Suicide in the Trenches, in which he too castigated the hearty band of war propagandists cheering from the sidelines:

You smug faced cowards with kindling eye

Who cheer as soldier lads march by

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The Hell where youth and laughter go”

One can’t help but wonder what Owen and Sassoon might have made of the legions of armchair generals and assorted foreign policy hangers-on who make up the ever expanding ranks of the New Cold Warriors in Washington today.

The corrosive dangers lurking in private wells

Private water wells remain largely unregulated, but researchers and residents point to Flint-like lead hazards, Reuters finds

March 9, 2016

by M.B. Pell and Joshua Schneyer

Reuters

ORLEANS, New York – In this town of 2,800 just south of the Canadian border, residents have long worried about the water flowing from their taps.

The water in one household is so corrosive it gutted three dishwashers and two washing machines. Another couple’s water is so salty the homeowners tape the taps when guests visit. Even the community’s welcome center warns travelers, “Do Not Drink The Water.”

So, when the water crisis in Flint, Michigan happened, Stephanie Weiss and husband Andy Greene feared that, as in Flint, their corrosive water was also unleashing lead into their tap water. Weiss scoured water-testing reports in Orleans and discovered the truth: Lead levels in her water – fed by a private well – exceed the threshold set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for public water systems and utilities.

The community’s experience is not unique. Across the country, millions of Americans served by private wells drink, bathe and cook with water containing potentially dangerous amounts of lead, Reuters reporting and recent university studies show.

Researchers from Penn State Extension and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech, tested private well systems in their states and found that 12 percent of wells in Pennsylvania and 19 percent in Virginia had lead levels exceeding the maximum EPA threshold for public water systems. Lead poisoning can lead to heart disease, kidney disease and brain damage. It is especially dangerous to children, as small amounts of exposure can cause irreversible developmental delays.

Though most Americans are served by public water utilities, private wells are the main source of drinking water for 15 percent of U.S. households, or 47.8 million people. Typically located in rural areas, private wells serve residents not connected to municipal water lines. Though many wells are found in impoverished communities, some serve wealthy homeowners and those living in urban environments.

Little research has examined the lead risk in private well water on a national scale. But if the researchers’ rate played out nationally, more than 9 million Americans served by private wells would have unsafe levels of lead in their water, according to a paper published in October by some of the same Virginia Tech researchers who found lead in Flint’s water.

Yet these private wells always fall outside EPA testing regulations, and only a few states require that wells be tested for lead. Unless residents pay for tests, they may not know what lurks in their water.

The community in Orleans, in Jefferson County dotting the northernmost tip of New York State, is one case study. Weiss and Greene found that the water they use to cook for their two children, ages eight and 10, measured lead levels more than double the EPA threshold, town records show.

When I realized that my water had the equivalent of Flint levels of lead, I got chills,” said Weiss, assistant director of Save the River, an environmental advocacy organization. “I felt sick thinking of all the things I had tried to get right as a mother for my kids to grow up happy and healthy, when all the while they were living with lead contaminated water.”

I was also angry thinking that the state government had likely caused this situation.”

The aquifer feeding their well is polluted with salt from a nearby barn used by the New York State Department of Transportation to store salt spread on roads during snowstorms, according to an analysis by Alpha Geoscience, a Clifton Park, New York, consulting firm that specializes in hydrogeologic studies. The study was commissioned by Stephen Conaway, a local winery owner who in 2011 sued the state, alleging it had been polluting his water for years.

As far back as 2004, a DOT official told Conaway it was not unreasonable to assume the salt barn was the source of contamination, according to a letter sent to Conaway and reviewed by Reuters.

Flint is not served by private wells, but its battle to get the lead out of the water has triggered alarms in other communities – including those served by private wells, which can draw in corrosive water that leaches lead, copper and other heavy metals from well components, water pipes and plumbing fixtures.

The EPA has no standards for private wells, even as the National Ground Water Association recommends testing. Asked about the standards gap, an EPA spokesperson said that the Safe Drinking Water Act, as written by Congress in 1974, makes the EPA responsible for regulating only public water systems.

Under the EPA Lead and Copper Rule, published in 1991, if 10 percent of samples taken by a water utility contain a lead level of 15 parts per billion or higher, the utility must improve corrosion control and inform the public of the lead risk. The utility may have to replace lead water lines.

The university researchers used this standard to assess potential harm in communities served by private wells.

Water from one Virginia home had lead levels 1,600 times the EPA maximum threshold, concluded Virginia Tech researcher Kelsey J. Pieper, lead author of a study published in the Journal of Water and Health last September that examined lead levels in tap water from houses in Virginia using wells. Pieper’s research, along with a 2013 Journal of Environmental Health study by Penn State Extension researchers, point to a problem governments have largely failed to address.

Lead exposures decreased after 1980s legislation banned lead in paint and gasoline. But private wells remain a potential source of exposure. If lead exposure from private wells is not addressed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be challenged to meet its goal of eliminating elevated levels of lead in children by 2020, Pieper found.

Pieper said many private wells across the country have clean water, but she recommends testing.

Looking at lead concentration in Flint’s water and our results in private wells in Virginia, they were similar,” Pieper said. “One of the biggest differences is it’s solely the responsibility of the homeowner to identify and correct the problem for private water systems.”

To be sure, private homeowners are responsible for testing and maintaining their wells.

Yet many have no idea they should test for lead. Some who do test find troubling answers.

LEAD AND CHILDREN: A CASE IN PENNSYLVANIA

In central Pennsylvania, Jeremiah Underhill and his wife took their one-year-old son Dalton to the family doctor for his checkup in April 2014. Knowing the family was renovating their 76-year-old house, and concerned paint in the house may contain lead, their doctor suggested testing Dalton for lead.

The results showed elevated lead levels in his system.

I was devastated,” said Jeremiah Underhill, an attorney in Harrisburg, whose family home is surrounded by 30 acres of corn and soybean fields.

The Underhills immediately began a battery of tests searching for the lead’s source. For years, public health experts have cited paint as the most dangerous source of poisoning for children, who may ingest paint chips and dust in older housing.

But it was a water sample, not paint, which tested positive for lead. The lead level in the water was at the maximum threshold set by the EPA, though Penn State analysts warned that the levels could fluctuate and may well exceed the maximum if tested more regularly. The Underhills found that, as in Flint, their well water was corrosive and leaching lead from plumbing in their house.

The family installed a treatment system to make the water less acidic. Their soda-ash injection system cost about $400, though if a family member had not helped install it, the cost would have been far higher. Today, their water has no lead and Dalton’s blood work is clear. The couple feels fortunate to have caught it early, knowing lead exposure can trigger brain damage.

The only reason we caught this was because our doctor was smart enough to say, ‘Let’s test this,’” Underhill said. “I mean, it was the water we used to mix Dalton’s formula.”

Most children are never tested, and rules on testing children for lead exposure are inconsistent and often ignored across the country, Reuters found.

Many physicians, wrongly, don’t believe that lead poisoning is still a problem,” said Dr. Jennifer Lowry, a toxicologist and pediatrician at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. “They may not be seeing it because they are not testing for it. I think every kid should be tested.”

Many people believe if they have a new home or well, their plumbing does not contain lead. Yet virtually all plumbing before 2014 has some lead in its components, and older homes tend to have more leaded plumbing. Until January 2014, “lead free” meant the plumbing component contained less than 8 percent lead.

In Highlands, North Carolina, Robert and Suzanne Gregory discovered lead in their water after drilling a well for their home last August.

Macon County required they test the new well for bacteria. Robert, an engineer, wanted to know more and paid for an in-depth test that found the water corrosive and contaminated with lead. He believed the source was the galvanized steel pipe that ran down his well. The couple had the galvanized pipe, whose coating may have contained lead, replaced with lead-free stainless steel. They tested again and the lead was gone.

The combination of acidic water and galvanized steel is a problem, and I think it’s bigger than most people understand because most people don’t even know they have galvanized,” Robert said.

Even if a homeowner conducts a lead test, the solutions can be too expensive for families with limited means. Some water treatment systems cost more than $10,000.

Only a few states, including New Jersey and Rhode Island, require wells be tested for lead – a test required when the property and well are transferred to a new owner. Though many states require tests for e coli and other bacteria, lead tests are seldom required, said John Hudson, vice president at Mortgage Financial Services in San Antonio, Texas.

A TOWN’S PLEA FOR CLEAN WATER

Some residents know they have contaminated wells and want municipal water, but can’t get it.

In Orleans, New York, residents live in a region known for its boating, fishing and outdoor activities but also its doggedly high unemployment rate. The town began petitioning the state for municipal water four years ago. Since then, residents have made flyers and set up a Facebook page, but there’s still no plan in place for public water.

State officials say they aim to obtain $13 million to extend municipal water service to homes in Orleans with contaminated water, but Kevin Rarick, the Orleans town supervisor, calls the plan “smoke and mirrors.” Almost all of the money would come from a loan that would cost each water user $500 a year to pay off, and the state has not announced a plan to change the way it stores salt at the barn.

Homeowner Greene, whose family has had to replace salt-tainted appliances, views the equation as unfair: The state polluted the aquifer feeding his well, and now wants his community to bankroll the solution.

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation said the source of the salt is “inconclusive,” and that the salt has been stored safely. An official noted that the state has given residents bottled water.

If I had a salt pile that leached salt into my neighbor’s well, the state would be here the next day fining me and making me clean it up and making me be a good neighbor,” said Greene. “That’s all we want from them, to be a good neighbor.”

The US cities luring millennials with promises to pay off their student debts

Programmes offer young people money towards house deposits or repaying loans in return for moving to places such as Detroit or Kansas

March 10, 2016

by Jana Kasperkevic

The Guardian

When he graduated from college in 2006, he was $30,000 in debt. Ten years later, there is about $10,000 left. The main reason Waldron was able to pay down so much of his debt is the Kansas Opportunity Zones programme.

Designed to reverse the trend of declining population in many of the state’s rural areas, the local lawmakers created a scheme that would offer college graduates tax breaks and up to $15,000 in student loan repayment. In 2015 alone, Opportunity Zones provided $1.2m in student loan repayments.

Waldron and his wife, Sara Jo, were living in California when his mother-in-law called to tell him of Kansas’s programme, which was set up in 2011 and has now been expanded to 77 counties in the state. After moving back to Kansas, his wife’s home state and where he went to college, Waldron ended up qualifying for $3,000 a year in loan repayments for five years.

I was making these minimum payments six months after graduation. I was just chipping away at it. This basically cut my timeline in half,” said Waldron. Without the programme, he said, he would have been less open to taking on more debt, such as a mortgage.

As it is, the year they returned to Kansas, the couple were able to buy a house, and now live with their two young daughters in Hillsboro, Marion County. “We probably wouldn’t have bought our first home for a few more years had I not known I was going to have some wiggle room in my budget.”

While in California, Waldron worked as a youth pastor and coached high school football. In Kansas he took a job as a director of admissions at his alma mater, Tabor College.

He is convinced that schemes such as Opportunity Zones work for both the individuals and the counties.“It originated to attract younger families back to these smaller counties to hopefully settle in, to create jobs, to bring money to the counties,” he said. “I am a success story. You got someone to come back. You got someone to settle in. I have a feeling my family and I are going to be here for a while.”

Road to debt

Student debt has ballooned in the US over the past generation, with a college degree coming to be regarded as the equivalent of a high school diploma: a costly requirement for most entry-level jobs. One year at a private, four-year college costs on average $30,000 for tuition and fees alone. At a public college, in-state students pay on average $9,000 a year, while out-of-state students pay $23,000.

Of course, student loan debt is not a problem restricted to the US. In the UK, student debt has soared since the introduction of tuition fees in 1998. However, tuition costs are still lower in the UK than in the US, and graduates start repayments only when they earn more than £21,000 (roughly US$290,000) a year. For the most recent graduates, repayments are set at a flat rate of 9% of any income above the £21,000. Similarly, in Australia, graduates only begin to pay back their debt once they earn more than AU$54,000 (£28,000/US$39,000). In the US, student loan repayment bills start arriving months after graduation even if the graduate is unemployed.

[Millennials are] not only taking on debt at a higher rate, they’re paying it off at a slower rate,” said Lucia Dunn, an economics professor at Ohio State University. “These poor kids come out of college with the equivalent of a mortgage already.”

Brassfield, 33, took a singular route to deep indebtedness. She had always hoped to attend a good college and pursue a career in art. Instead, she dropped out of high school, got a GED (a high-school equivalency diploma) and worked in a series of “dead end jobs”. It was not until her mother – who had been a graphic artist – was dying that Brassfield finally decided to apply to college at 24.

Brassfield said she had been just one course away from finishing her degree when she ran out of money and couldn’t afford to take out another loan.

Brassfield does not regret going to college, but she does regret picking the wrong one. She attended the Art Institute of Portland. Its parent company, Education Management Corporation, was sued in 2011 for illegally paying recruiters and exaggerating the career placement abilities of its schools.

In November 2015, EMC agreed to repay $95.5m and forgive more than $102.8m in loans held by more than 80,000 former students. But Brassfield was not one of them. The settlement was less than 1% of the $11bn that the lawsuit first sought to recover.

Outraged that EMC was able to settle for so little, Brassfield joined the Debt Collective – a remnant of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has helped hundreds of debtors organise and go on strike and refuse to pay back $182m in student debt.

How is it that EMC can settle for less than 1% of that total due? If I could settle for that percentage, I’d give them a cheque right now. I would sell everything I own,” she said. “I would run 100 miles through sleet and snow, barefoot. I would do it because I just want this off my back.”

Attracting millennials

Live Niagara Falls, a scheme similar to the one introduced in Kansas, was designed to attract millennials into the city in New York state by helping them with their living costs. It’s a two-year programme available only to college graduates, with participants getting about $3,500 a year.

Bobbie Thoman, 26, was one of the five people selected for the programme in 2013. The financial incentive was helpful for her, since she had roughly $40,000 in student debt. “It’s scary. You’ve graduated from school. You have all of this student debt and then you have to find a job and look into getting a house and a car,” she said. “It’s so much financial responsibility. So to have that money there so that I can make my monthly payments is huge. It’s so helpful.”

Ken Lambert, 28, was attending the same master’s course as Thoman, who convinced him to apply. Lambert criticised the programme for not doing enough to help participants find local jobs and said he was forced to move away to find work. “The money was helpful in terms of paying some of my bills,” he said, “but [it] wasn’t enough to make a big difference.”

The Niagara Falls programme is small, with funding for just 20 participants. Since it started in 2013, 14 people have taken part, with four more to be chosen this year.

Lambert, the only participant to move away, went to Philadelphia to work for AmeriCorp, a civil society project. Since the group is funded by the US government, participants can delay paying their student loans without accruing interest. Still, Lambert worries about how he will pay off the $60,000 he owes in student loans.

I worked really hard in my life to try to move myself up,” said Lambert, who grew up in poverty but went on to gain degrees in political science and international relations. “I don’t want to be in debt for like 50 years. I am terrified. I want it paid. I hate that I owe this much money.”

A home of their own

Other millennials have been given a helping hand to pursue their dreams of home ownership, just not necessarily where they had expected.

A few days before Christmas, Samantha Harris was eating a pizza on the living room floor of her new home in Detroit. The 25-year-old had just been given the keys.

Harris, who had previously doubted she would ever be able to afford a place of her own, bought the house through the Live Downtown programme in Detroit, an attempt to regenerate the bankrupt city by encouraging millennials to move there.

Live Downtown began in 2011 and soon became a lifeline for the city and for millennials looking to lay down some roots. A handful of businesses quickly moved into central Detroit, offering financial incentives to 16,000 employees to move with them, triggering a revitalisation of the area. One employer offering this incentive was Quicken Loans, where Harris works as a senior training consultant overseeing the company’s mortgage bankers.

Harris could choose between getting $20,000 to use towards a down payment on a home in the downtown area, or receiving $3,500 over two years to supplement rental costs. Harris’s new three bedroom home is valued at $275,000, with a 30-year mortgage. “My first home could actually be my forever home.”

Additional reporting by Jessica Glenza in New York.

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