In 1985 when TCE was found in several agricultural wells off of El Toro, Camp Lejeune on the East coast was forced to close down wells contaminated with TCE and other contaminants. As many as one million veterans and their dependents were exposed to Lejeune’s contaminated wells over 30 years (1953-1987). Congressional hearings and the testimonies of veterans and dependents pressured Congress to pass health care without any provision for disability compensation for Lejeune’s survivors. El Toro closed in 1999 and sold at public auction in 2005 is not on anyone’s radar.
Amazon Page
At El Toro, over 40 years of water distribution engineering drawings and original well construction drawings are missing while the Navy and Corps support a fabrication that the base wells were abandoned over 60 years ago for municipal water—a scarce commodity in arid Southern California. The base wells were more likely than not still secured to El Toro’s water distribution system in 1985 when the Orange County Water District found TCE contaminated agricultural wells on and off the base. In 1986, El Toro at considerable expense had an agricultural and engineering firm redraw the entire set of water distribution engineering drawings. No base wells were in the 1986 engineering drawings.
BETRAYAL, self-published on Amazon was written by two former El Toro Marines, Robert O’Dowd, investigative reporter and Tim King, photo/journalist, war correspondent, and Executive News Editor of Salem-News.com.
Islamabad, Nov 23: Pakistan on Saturday closed its border with Afghanistan ahead of protests against US drone attacks, official sources said. Thousands of people will begin a protest sit-in on the main NATO supply route in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, later on Saturday. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) or Justice Movement, which rules the province, has announced it will close the supply line for NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan as part of its anti-drones protest strategy. Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, who leads PTI, said the protest will continue unless the US stops drone strikes.
Protest rallies outside the US embassy and UN mission in Islamabad have also been planned in the coming days, said Shah Farman, spokesman for the provincial government. The authorities closed the main border point of Torkham with Afghanistan ahead of the protest over security concerns, officials said. It is one of the two main border points used for NATO supplies. Officials say nearly 70 percent of supplies for thousands of foreign troops are transported through Pakistan. The police in Peshawar Saturday blocked “Ring Road”, the route NATO containers use to head to Afghanistan. Officials said hundreds of police personnel were deployed in the city to tighten security in Peshawar and surrounding areas. Experts from the Bomb Disposal Squad also visited the venue of the sit-in and searched the area. PTI chief Imran Khan would speak at the rally and announce the future protests strategy, organisers said. The protest was planned after the Nov 1 drone strike in North Waziristan which killed the Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud just a day ahead of a meeting between a government-led team and the Taliban. Pakistan accused the US of sabotaging the peace process with the Taliban. The US expanded its drone campaign and rained missiles on a religious school in a non-tribal district of Hangu Nov 21 and killed six students and teachers. IANS
New story with photos and maps, and PBI comment, below the line.
This is certainly no surprise. CSO reveals, “People Flock to Anonymizing Services After NSA Snooping Reports.” Writer Grant Gross highlights several anonymous search services that have seen usage soar since certain NSA practices have come to light. DuckDuckGo is on the list, as well as Tor and mobile solution Silent Circle. The brand new Disconnect Search saw over 400,000 searches within four days of its launch. Clearly, many people are beginning to cover their virtual tracks. But is it pointless, after all? The article points out:
“Disconnect Search’s FAQ includes information about possible government searches. ‘The reality is the U.S. government may force us to begin logging the search queries of a particular user or group of users,’ the FAQ said. ‘If served with a court order that includes a non-disclosure provision, we may not be able to tell our users about this change for some period of time, possibly forever. And the U.S. government may also have other methods of monitoring user searches which Disconnect Search cannot prevent.’”
Though we now know several prominent firms quietly complied with NSA demands to fork over their records, at least one search service has elected to fold rather than cave. Lavabit made the tough choice to shut down their decade-old organization rather than comply with. . . something. Owner Ladar Levison’s explanation, which is all that is left of the site, laments that he can’t tell us exactly what was demanded of him, but his frustration and ire are apparent in the strongly worded note. He writes:
“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.”
So, there’s that. Not exactly encouraging for fans of privacy. Lavison seems to hold at least a sliver of hope for a favorable verdict as Lavabit takes their fight to court. Is even that too optimistic?
Two months ago, hundreds of thousands of Chileans somberly marked the 40th anniversary of their nation’s September 11th terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende.
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Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other nations might get ideas about independence, were the very reason for the coup and even the partial moves toward nationalization instituted by Allende could not be tolerated by the US business class.
Henry Kissinger was national security advisor and one of the principle architects – perhaps the principle architect – of the coup in Chile. US-instigated coups were nothing new in 1973, certainly not in Latin America, and Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were carrying on a violent tradition that spanned the breadth of the 20th century and continues in the 21st – see, for example, Venezuela in 2002 (failed) and Honduras in 2009 (successful).
Where possible, such as in Guatemala in 1954 and Brazil in 1964, coups were the preferred method for dealing with popular insurgencies. In other instances, direct invasion by US forces such as happened on numerous occasions in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and many other places, was the fallback option.
The coup in Santiago occurred as US aggression in Indochina was finally winding down after more than a decade. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger again, along with Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
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It is impossible to know with precision how many were killed during those four years; all the victims were considered enemies, including the vast majority who were non-combatants, and the US has never been much interested in calculating the deaths of enemies.
Estimates of Indochinese killed by the US for the war as a whole start at four million and are likely more, perhaps far more. It can thus be reasonably extrapolated that probably more than a million, and certainly hundreds of thousands, were killed while Kissinger and Nixon were in power.
In addition, countless thousands of Indochinese have died in the years since from the affects of the massive doses of Agent Orange and other Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction unleashed by the US. Many of us here know (or, sadly, knew) soldiers who suffered from exposure to such chemicals; multiply their numbers by 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 – again, it’s impossible to know with accuracy – and we can begin to understand the impact on those who live in and on the land that was so thoroughly poisoned as a matter of US policy.
Studies by a variety of organizations including the United Nations also indicate that at least 25,000 people have died in Indochina since war’s end from unexploded US bombs that pocket the countryside, with an equivalent number maimed. As with Agent Orange, deaths and ruined lives from such explosions continue to this day. So 40 years on, the war quite literally goes on for the people of Indochina, and it is likely it will go on for decades more.
Near the end of his time in office, Kissinger and his new boss Gerald Ford pre-approved the Indonesian dictator Suharto’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, an illegal act of aggression again carried out with weapons made in and furnished by the US.
Discusses Richard Nixon saying Warren Commission was biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, and death-bed confession of E. Howard Hunt including entire CIA chain of command in support of the assassination. Discusses CIA use of fast-moving cancer to attempt to kill Castro, to kill Ruby, others. Points out many obvious flaws in the official story that the media and academia studiously ignored.
Almost a complete blackout across the board when we there should be a national mobilization of state and local civil officialdom including schools to begin the measured precautions to protect our kids, particularly on the West Coast.
Pakistan-Pakistani Taliban: The Pakistani Taliban rejected peace talks with the government on Thursday after electing hardline militant Mullah Fazlullah as their new leader.
Earlier this month militant sources said that the consultative Shura council of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chose Khan Said Mehsud known as Sajna as the new leader. But the election of Sajna, who leads the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, reportedly was opposed by Taliban's other groups. Fazlullah was reported to have strongly objected to the choice of Sajna.
Shahidullah Shahid, the main spokesman for the TTP said talks with the government were a “waste of time” and the new chief Maulana Fazlullah was against them. “Holding of peace talks is not even an issue to discuss — this government has no authority, it is not a sovereign government, it is a slave, a slave of America. Holding peace talks is a waste of time.”
Fazlullah's men shot and wounded Malala Yousafzai last year, instantly turning Malala into a global hero for the education of girls.
Comment: Fazlullah's election does not necessarily mean that negotiations will never occur. Hardline leaders often are the only ones capable of negotiating with credibility. But that is for the future. Meanwhile, no peace talks are likely in the near term. Pakistani Pashtun savagery against Pashtun women will increase, including murder attempts against Malala in the UK.
Fazlullah's election signifies rejection of Prime Minister Sharif's peace overture. It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.
