“Deep within every one of us lies a natural understanding of good and evil. That is why one man can tell the truth convincingly…but it takes the entire apparatus of the state to peddle a lie, and propagate that lie to new generations.”…Gandhi
While the world watches to see when and how the ‘punishment attack’ will be launched on Syria, I read reports all day trying to see if anyone would lay out what really has been going on. They did not.
The US and its allies, to their eternal shame, have already used WMD on the Syrian people, but initially in a non traditional form. They changed their game plan for future regime changes to avoid using their own troops and as little cash as possible. How?
They went rogue. They went over to terrorism. They went over to al-Qaeda, that’s how. Using the Gulf State proxies has fooled no one here.
They dusted off Ziggy Brzezinski’sold destabilization plan for starting Muslim holy wars against the Russians in the Caucasus. The strategy was to keep them tied up in the tried and true, ‘death by a thousand cuts’ insurgent wars.
Ziggy has no regrets over the 150,000 dead in the Chechen war. His justification was “Would you have rather seen them marching into Europe?” There was a little problem with that. They never could have marched into Europe as both ‘assured mutual destruction’ and tactical nuclear weapons served as an effective bear trap.
We move on now to how earlier in Afghanistan where Saudi money and CIA logistics cranked up the first major ‘use the locals for cannon fodder’ war in that region. And yes, the Madrasa schools to indoctrinate children to be an endless supply of holy warriors…yes…we and the Saudis did that.
Anabel Hernández, journalist and author, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the ‘war on drugs' is a sham. She's had headless animals left at her door and her family have been threatened by gunmen. Now her courageous bestseller, extracted below, is to be published in the UK
Book to be Released 10 September 2013 — Can Pre-Order Now
Amazon Page
The product of five years’ investigative reporting, the subject of intense national controversy, and the source of death threats that forced the National Human Rights Commission to assign two full-time bodyguards to its author, Anabel Hernández, Narcoland has been a publishing and political sensation in Mexico. The definitive history of the drug cartels, Narcoland takes readers to the front lines of the “war on drugs,” which has so far cost more than 60,000 lives in just six years. Hernández explains in riveting detail how Mexico became a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. At every turn, Hernández names names—not just the narcos, but also the politicians, functionaries, judges and entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them. In doing so, she reveals the mind-boggling depth of corruption in Mexico’s government and business elite.
Hernández became a journalist after her father was kidnapped and killed and the police refused to investigate without a bribe. She gained national prominence in 2001 with her exposure of excess and misconduct at the presidential palace, and previous books have focused on criminality at the summit of power, under presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. In awarding Hernández the 2012 Golden Pen of Freedom, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers noted, “Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with violence and impunity remaining major challenges in terms of press freedom. In making this award, we recognize the strong stance Ms. Hernández has taken, at great personal risk, against drug cartels.”
The 2008 crash was just the first step. Our economy is being taken over by banks, as this report describes. This is happening because the Obama Administration permits, even encourages this trend, and the Congress has been bought through PACs and lobbying. This is happening because the firewall between banking and commerce has been breached by law. Yet another sign of the corruption that invade! s our government and economy like a cancer. The upcoming election is going to cast our fate for a generation. It is really, really important that you vote.
Syria: The Asad government continues to insist that it did not use chemical weapons in the attack on 21 August. It approved an extension of the UN inspection team's visit and requested that it investigate three gas attacks against Syrian soldiers since 21 August.
Lebanon's Daily Star reported on 26 August that at least four Hizballah fighters are receiving treatment in Beirut after coming into contact with chemical agents in Syria, a security source said.
The source said four or five members came into contact with the chemical agents while searching a group of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar over the weekend. (The attack on 21 August is being called the Jobar incident.)
Last Saturday, Syrian state television said Syrian soldiers found chemical agents in Jobar and that some had suffocated while entering the tunnels
Comment: The three primary questions about the attack remain unanswered.
Nearly 100 years after its creation, the power of the U.S. Federal Reserve has never been greater. Markets and governments around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the Fed Chairman's every word. Yet the average person knows very little about the most powerful – and least understood – financial institution on earth. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Money For Nothing is the first film to take viewers inside the Fed and reveal the impact of Fed policies – past, present, and future – on our lives. Join current and former Fed officials as they debate the critics, and each other, about the decisions that helped lead the global financial system to the brink of collapse in 2008. And why we might be headed there again. (From imdb.com)
The newly disclosed information includes individual agency budgets along with program area line items, as well as details regarding the size and structure of the intelligence workforce. So one learns, for example, that the proposed budget for covert action in FY2013 was approximately $2.6 billion, while the total for open source intelligence was $387 million.
Some of the information only confirms what was already understood to be true. The budget for the National Security Agency was estimated to be about $10 billion, according to a recent story in CNN Money (“What the NSA Costs Taxpayers” by Jeanne Sahadi, June 7, 2013). The actual NSA budget figure, the Post reported, is $10.8 billion.
And the involuntary disclosure of classified intelligence budget information, while rare, is not unprecedented. In 1994, the House Appropriations Committee inadvertently published budget data for national and military intelligence, the size of the CIA budget, and other details. (“$28 Billion Spying Budget is Made Public by Mistake” by Tim Weiner, New York Times, November 5, 1994)
But the current disclosure of intelligence budget information dwarfs all previous releases and provides unmatched depth and detail of spending over a course of several years, based on original documents. The disclosure is doubly remarkable because the Post chastely refrained from releasing about 90% of the Congressional Budget Justification Book that it obtained. “Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online,” Post reporters Gellman and Miller wrote.
This is not a whistleblower disclosure; it does not reveal any illegality or obvious wrongdoing. On the contrary, the underlying budget document is a formal request to Congress to authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence.
But the disclosure seems likely to be welcomed in many quarters (while scorned in others) both because of a generalized loss of confidence in the integrity of the classification system, and because of a more specific belief that the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy today requires increased public accountability.
Though it has never been embraced as official policy, the notion of public disclosure of individual intelligence agency budgets (above and beyond the release of aggregate totals) has an honorable pedigree.
In 1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee advocated publication of the total intelligence budget and recommended that “any successor committees study the effects of publishing more detailed information on the budgets of the intelligence agencies.”
In a 1996 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-Chair Sen. Arlen Specter badgered DCI John Deutch about the need for intelligence budget secrecy.
“I think that you and the Intelligence Community and this committee have got to do a much better job in coming to grips with the hard reasons for this [budget secrecy], if they exist. And if they exist, I'm prepared to help you defend them. But I don't see that they exist. I don't think that they have been articulated or explained,” the late Sen. Specter said then.
Committee Vice Chair Sen. Bob Kerrey added: “I would concur in much of what the Chairman has just said. I do, myself, believe not only the top line, but several of the other lines of the budget, not only could but should, for the purpose of giving taxpayer-citizens confidence that their money is being well spent.”
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission itself recommended disclosure of intelligence agency budgets: “Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret” (at page 416, emphasis added).
These are clearly minority views. They could have been adopted at any time — as disclosure of the aggregate total was — but they haven't been. (And even these voices did not call for release of the more detailed budget line items that are now public.) And yet they are not totally outlandish either.
The initial response of the executive branch to the Washington Post story will be to hunker down, to decline explicit comment, and to prohibit government employees from viewing classified budget documents that are in the public domain. Damage assessments will be performed, and remedial security measures will be imposed. These are understandable reflex responses.
But in a lucid moment, officials should ponder other questions.
How can public confidence in national security secrecy be bolstered? Is it possible to imagine a national security secrecy system that the public would plausibly view not with suspicion but with support, much as the strict secrecy of IRS tax returns is broadly understood and supported? What steps could be taken to reduce national security secrecy to the bare minimum?
Looking further ahead, is it possible to devise an information security policy that is based on “resilience” to the foreseeable disclosure of secrets rather than on the fervently pursued prevention of such disclosure?
Nearly 100 years after its creation, the power of the U.S. Federal Reserve has never been greater. Markets and governments around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the Fed Chairman's every word. Yet the average person knows very little about the most powerful – and least understood – financial institution on earth. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Money For Nothing is the first film to take viewers inside the Fed and reveal the impact of Fed policies – past, present, and future – on our lives. Join current and former Fed officials as they debate the critics, and each other, about the decisions that helped lead the global financial system to the brink of collapse in 2008. And why we might be headed there again. (From 
