Syria: "chemical attack victims" recognized by their relatives: kidnapped in Latakia by the Islamists

The children who appeared in a video as victims of the alleged "chemical attack" in Damascus have been recognized by their relatives: they were kidnapped in Latakia (the main Syrian harbor, NW of the country) before the false-flag show, of which Western governments are fully accomplices (or more likely organized directly, as hacked emails suggest).

115 Latakian citizens, of which 68 were minors were kidnapped by the Islamist terrorist groups weeks before the attack. According to the Syrian government, they were then concentrated in a single spot and gassed, however it seems plausible that, because of Western scruples, they were in fact just drugged, as appeared in a video that I could watch before YouTube censored the whole account (heh, freedom of information?)

What we do not know is what happened to them after the video was filmed. I fear that they are dead by now, if nothing else in order to erase their pretty dirty tracks. Those Islamists and US spies have no compassion.

There are also many first person accounts, which either reject the existence of the chemical attack altogether or blame it on the Islamists.

Probably there was a small chemical scatter to provide a "fingerprint" and all the rest is fake videos like the one of the kidnapped children or the other one of the "zombies", which was filmed in Qatar's "Little Hollywood", along with a concert of big lying mouths insisting on a single and quite unlikely culprit: Assad. 

Main source: Webguerrillero[es], citing Telesur.

Syria: even more evidence of the falsehood of the "chemical attack"

A Christian nun, Agnes-Marie de la Croix, confirmed to Russia Today that she witnessed how children were selected for the farcical video of the supposed "chemical attack". 

The nun also declared total hostility against any Western attack against Syria, describing the Islamist groups as new barbarians, who have massacred mercilessly all non-Sunni communities: Chistians, Druzes, Alawites and Ismailites. The terrorist crimes by the Islamist gangs include rapings, kidnappings and beheadings, among other crimes. 

Also, a former hostage of an Islamist gang, Ukrainian journalist Anhar Kochneva also supports the version that the "chemical attack" was a farce. That day she was at her residence just a few kilometers from the location of the supposed attack and the wind blew strongly in her direction (some 20m/s). 

She explains that if there would have been any such chemical attack they would have been no doubt affected, exactly the same as they smell the gunpowder and the burning. However there was nobody intoxicated in Damascus that day. 

The only "evidence" for the attack, she explains, are some videos highly questioned in their credibility. It is generally believed that the children were taken hostage from Kurdish areas or maybe from Latakia and then drugged as a video now removed from YouTube (account canceled, what a coincidence!) showed very clearly. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link1, link2).

Geopolitics around Syria

I just drew a map showing the 30 largest World powers, according to GDP (PPP), and reflecting their governments' political stand on the so-far speculative attack against Syria:

Red: imperialist camp: government declared support for attack against Syria
Blue: anti-imperialist camp: government declared opposition to attack against Syria
Yellow: unknown official stand
Black: Syria (for reference)
Circles' areas are proportional to GDP(PPP)
(IMF data 2012, except Syria: WB 2005-2012)

Notice please that the alignment of governments on this matter may and in most cases does not reflect that of the people or even the parliament. In fact in some cases (UK), the government had to step down from its hawkish stand because of parliamentary opposition. In all cases the citizenry seems very hostile to any new imperialist adventure, especially considering how poorly justified it is (obvious psy-op) and who are the beneficiaries (Islamist terrorists of the worst kind).

Personally I believe (or at least hope) that the attack will never take place and that the various imperialist governments are actually using the parliament card to get an excuse not to intervene, while at the same time using the crisis to gauge the weight of global alliances.

But, whatever the case, we do get an interesting picture of global alignments. First of all the BRICS bloc has responded unanimously against the imperialist aggression, second some important and possibly unexpected non-BRICS states like Mexico, Egypt or Indonesia stand against the intervention. Of these the most notable is probably Germany, which also opposed (along with Italy) the intervention in Libya.

One can speculate that Merkel is just being cautious because of the elections but in fact she has such a wide advantage that she could do anything. The reality is that all this classical Western imperialism (it's just like the old Entente) is hurting German interests, which has long and strong ties with states like Iran, not to mention Russia, etc.

Also very notorious is the stand of India, often ambiguous. But maybe the most interesting development is the stand of Egypt. It is not just a calculated stand to appease the populace but apparently the Egyptian military is very hostile to any intervention in Syria and would like Assad to stay in place. In fact the anti-Damascus stand of the former President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have been one of the triggers of the military coup.

Not just the military, heavily dependent on US aid, but also Tamarod flatly rejects any intervention against Syria and has called for the government to close the Suez canal to Western military ships in such event, calling traitors to anyone who supported the Western aggression. 

The ghost of Nasser, who nationalized the Suez canal and was adamant of pan-Arabism, has returned strongly to Egyptian politics. Many would like Al-Sissi to be another Nasser, although I suspect that this is quite unlikely.

In any case around the Syrian crisis a new cold war seems to be brewing. True that China, the rising superpower, is keeping a relatively low profile but it is also true that, would the crisis escalate to the Persian Gulf, as it is perfectly possible they would be extremely upset.

California prisoners suspend hunger strike after almost two months

Yesterday Pelican Bay State Prison inmates announced that they have suspended their hunger strike, lasting for nine weeks. They warn however that the struggle is far from over. 

Greetings of Solidarity and Respect!

The PBSP-SHU, Short Corridor Collective Representatives hereby serve notice upon all concerned parties of interest that after nine weeks we have collectively decided to suspend our third hunger strike action on September 5, 2013.

To be clear, our Peaceful Protest of Resistance to our continuous subjection to decades of systemic state sanctioned torture via the system’s solitary confinement units is far from over. Our decision to suspend our third hunger strike in two years does not come lightly. This decision is especially difficult considering that most of our demands have not been met (despite nearly universal agreement that they are reasonable). The core group of prisoners has been, and remains 100% committed to seeing this protracted struggle for real reform through to a complete victory, even if it requires us to make the ultimate sacrifice.  With that said, we clarify this point by stating prisoner deaths are not the objective, we recognize such sacrifice is at times the only means to an end of fascist oppression.

Our goal remains: force the powers that be to end their torture policies and practices in which serious physical and psychological harm is inflicted on tens of thousands of prisoners as well as our loved ones outside.  We also call for ending the related practices of using prisoners to promote the agenda of the police state by seeking to greatly expand the numbers of the working class poor warehoused in prisons, and particularly those of us held in solitary, based on psychological/social manipulation, and divisive tactics keeping prisoners fighting amongst each other. Those in power promote mass warehousing to justify more guards, more tax dollars for “security”, and spend mere pennies for rehabilitation — all of which demonstrates a failed penal system, high recidivism, and ultimately compromising public safety.  The State of California’s $9.1 billion annual CDCR budget is the epitome of a failed and fraudulent state agency that diabolically and systemically deprives thousands of their human rights and dignity. Allowing this agency to act with impunity has to stop! And it will.

With that said, and in response to much sincere urging of loved ones, supporters, our attorneys and current and former state legislators, Tom Ammiano, Loni Hancock, and Tom Hayden, for whom we have the upmost respect, we decided to suspend our hunger strike.  We are especially grateful to Senator Hancock and Assembly Member Ammiano for their courageous decision to challenge Governor Brown and the CDCR for their policies of prolonged solitary confinement and inhumane conditions. We are certain that they will continue their fight for our cause, including holding legislative hearings and the drafting legislation responsive to our demands on prison conditions and sentencing laws. We are also proceeding with our class action civil suit against the CDCR.

The fact is that Governor Brown and CDCR Secretary Beard have responded to our third peaceful action with typical denials and falsehoods, claiming solitary confinement does not exist and justifying the continuation of their indefinite torture regime by vilifying the peaceful protest representatives. They also obtained the support of the medical receiver (Kelso) and Prison Law Office attorney (Spector—who is supposed to represent prisoners interests, and instead has become an agent for the state) to perpetuate their lie to the public and to the federal court — that prisoners participating in the hunger strike have been coerced — in order to obtain the August 19, 2013 force feeding order.

We have deemed it to be in the best interest of our cause to suspend our hunger strike action until further notice.

We urge people to remember that we began our present resistance with our unprecedented collective and peaceful actions (in tandem with the legislative process) back in early 2010, when we created and distributed a “Formal Complaint” for the purpose of educating the public and bringing widespread attention to our torturous conditions.

After much dialogue and consideration, this led us to our first and second hunger strike actions in 2011, during which a combined number of 6,500 and 12,000 prisoners participated. We succeeded in gaining worldwide attention and support resulting in some minor changes by the CDCR concerning SHU programming and privileges. They also claimed to make major changes to policies regarding gang validation and indefinite SHU confinement by creating the STG/SDP Pilot Program. They released a few hundred prisoners from SHU/AD SEG to general population in the prison.  But in truth, this is all part of a sham to claim the pilot program works and was a weak attempt to have our class action dismissed. It didn’t work.

In response we respectfully made clear that CDCR’s STG-SDP was not responsive to our demand for the end to long term isolation and solitary confinement and thus unacceptable.  (See: AGREEMENT TO END HOSTILITIES)

Our supporting points fell on deaf ears, leading to our January 2013 notice of intent to resume our hunger strike on July 8, 2013 if our demands were not met.  We also included Forty Supplemental Demands.

In early July, CDCR produced several memos notifying prisoners of an increase in privileges and property items, which are notably responsive to a few of our demands, while the majority of our demands were unresolved, leading to our third hunger strike, in which 30,000 prisoners participated and resulted in greater worldwide exposure, support and condemnation of the CDCR!

From our perspective, we’ve gained a lot of positive ground towards achieving our goals.  However, there’s still much to be done.  Our resistance will continue to build and grow until we have won our human rights.

Respectfully,

For the Prisoner Class Human Rights Movement
Todd Ashker, C58191, D1-119
Arturo Castellanos, C17275, D1-121
Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry), C35671, D1-117
Antonio Guillen, P81948, D2-106

And the Representatives Body:
Danny Troxell, B76578, D1-120
George Franco, D46556, D4-217
Ronnie Yandell, V27927, D4-215
Paul Redd, B72683, D2-117
James Baridi Williamson, D-34288. D4-107
Alfred Sandoval, D61000, D4-214
Louis Powell, B59864, D1-104
Alex Yrigollen, H32421, D2-204
Gabriel Huerta, C80766, D3-222
Frank Clement, D07919, D3-116
Raymond Chavo Perez, K12922, D1-219
James Mario Perez, B48186, D3-124

Source: Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (see also Electronic Intifada, which compares the inhumane situation in Palestine's prisons with that of California).

Hacked Pentagon emails show USA behind Syria "massacre"

"Massacre" that, as discussed previously in greater detail, was a farce, with drugged children being presented as victims while someone talked in the background on how well would that look in Al Jazeera and the CNN. 

The hacked emails show Colonel Anthony J. McDonald and Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (whatever that means) Mary Shapiro implicated in the warmongering farce.

In one email someone by the name of Eugene P. Furst congratulates Col. McDonald for their psy-op in Damascus:

(click to expand)

I don't know who he is but a quick search shows that there are only five people named Eugene Furst in the USA and, of them, one man aged 40-44 named exactly Eugene P. Furst lives in Arlington Virginia, where the Pentagon (and many other US government and military facilities) is. To be even more precise his address is:

5211 N Carlin Springs Rd Arlington, VA 22203-1333

Maybe some local knows what this means (oh, yeah, not just the NSA can use the Internet for a revealing search!)

In other two emails to Jennifer McDonald (wife of the former), Mary Shapiro worries about those poor Syrian kids but Mrs McDonald explains that:

... Tony [Col. Anthony J. McDonald] comforted me. He said the kids weren't hurt, it was done for the cameras. So don't worry, my dear.

(click to expand)

(click to expand)

Sources: Before It's News, Tercera Información[es].

Fascist USA: police violently arrest peaceful anti-war activist for no reason and keep her incommunicado

Emily Yates, a member of Iraq Veterans Against War, cried "this is a police state" as she was arrested and she could not be more correct. That's exactly how a police state looks like: you are arbitrarily and violently arrested for no reason whatsoever and you are kept incommunicado afterwards.

They call it "democracy" but it is not.

Video of the arrest:

According to the Emily Yates Defense Fund, which is raising money for her legal defense, she has not been allowed any communication with the outside world since she was arrested. 

In fact we do not know even if she is alive at all, as the last we can watch in the video is how police agents choke her.

The incident happened in Philadelphia. 

Sources: The Raw Story, Webguerrillero[es].

Syria announces that it will retaliate, if bombed, by flattening Israel in three hours

Damascus has become outspoken about what may happen if Obama actually does what he says (what is intrinsically unlikely) about bombing Syria. 

They have announced that they would launch a thousand missiles against "occupied Palestine" (they mean Israel in essence) in just three hours. 

That would be just the beginning because Syria has some 200,000 missiles. 

They also warned that making war to Syria would end up backfiring because the retaliation would reach the Western capitals themselves. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es], citing HispanTV. 

While they said nothing about other targets, the US military base of Incirlik in SE Turkey looks like a candidate target as well. I am not sure if Syrian missiles can reach other targets like the very ships of the 6th Fleet or the US bases in the Persian Gulf without being knocked down in the meantime, what is certain is that Iranian forces can, and can also close the Strait of Hormuz in a matter of hours without the USA being able to do anything about it.

It is unclear if the US aggression would spillover to the Gulf or even to Russia, which has sent ships to the area in an unmistakable signal of warning. If so it could well escalate to nuclear holocaust in no time. 

Sincerely, I think that Obama will let Congress veto him on this matter, exactly as Cameron did in London. They have tested the waters and it's quite clear that they are too deep and unsavory. Al Qaeda will have to look for some other place to mess with.

Former NSA analyst: the intelligence services rule the USA, "this is a police state"

This is a most interesting video interview with former NSA analyst Russel Tice (military, conservative but still outraged).

Some key points:

• The whole political, business classes and even the Supreme Court is being spied on. Even Barack Obama and Gral. Petraeus used to be.
• In his time it was VP Richard Cheney who was directing this shadowy business (of course).
• The upper echelon of the "intelligence community" rules the USA in practical terms.
• Direct comparison with Orwell's totalitarian dystopia: everything is being watched, everyone. 

The direct source for me of this video is an article by Gaius Publius at Naked Capitalism. He pinpoints Gral. Keith Brian Alexander, Director General of the NSA, as a key person of megalomaniac character. He's probably not the only one with a say but these seem limited to a very few top-tier spies and billionaires. As Publius puts it:

Do we send every cop in an Occupy city to join the spook state in a national one-day takedown? With a Yes from every full-blown billionaire and each junior-mint Keith Alexander, Obama couldn’t stop it if he wanted to.

USA: nonviolent resistance against immigrant deportations

Hundreds of activists of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition and United We Dream surrounded deportation facilities in the state capital Phoenix. Six activists sat before the deportation bus for hours until the expulsion was halted. 

The authorities arrested two, paperless Mexican-American José Patiño and UWD leader Ray José. After a long night of uninterrupted phone calls from the citizenry they were both released.

Patiño stated upon his liberation:

I am doing this because I am so fed up with people playing games with our lives," said Ray Jose. "My mom and my dad are getting tired. My dad cannot do physical labor any more. It is for the sake of my family, who sacrificed so much for me, that I am ready to do this".

Hours earlier four other DREAM activists were arrested after chaining themselves to the ICE complex. They are Yadira García, Francisco Luna, María Castro and Alejandra Sánchez. 

The essential content of these protests is anti-apartheid:

We cannot accept any legislative proposal that would amplify the pain our communities have been subjected to for decades while blocking our families from a path to citizenship," said Cristina Jiménez, Managing Director of United We Dream. "Terrorizing our communities or creating a permanent underclass is un-American and unacceptable".

The civil disobedience organizations describe themselves as follows:

The Arizona Dream Act Coalition is the largest immigrant youth led organization in the state of Arizona. Our mission is to have a nation full of educated and integrated immigrant youth. We are an affiliate of the United We Dream Network.

United We Dream is the first and largest immigrant youth-led network in the nation with 51 affiliate organizations in 25 states that organize and advocate for the dignity and fair treatment of immigrant youth and families, regardless of immigration status. UWD's current priority is to win citizenship for the entire undocumented community and end senseless abuses and deportations.

Source: Kasama.

USA: Bush administration on trial for crimes against humankind

Well, they may be: it depends on the guts of the tribunal. From Global Research:

Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II.

(...)

In her lawsuit, Saleh alleges that:

– Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz began planning the Iraq War in 1998 through their involvement with the “Project for the New American Century,” a Washington DC non-profit that advocated for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

– Once they came to power, Saleh alleges that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz convinced other Bush officials to invade Iraq by using 9/11 as an excuse to mislead and scare the American public into supporting a war.

– Finally, she claims that the United States failed to obtain United Nations approval prior to the invasion, rendering the invasion illegal and an act of impermissible aggression.

The US Government has asked for immunity for the accused (George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz) on the grounds that the war falls within the legal scope of their jobs.

If so, it seems formally critical to prove that they had planned the war long before being appointed as such public officers.

Of course, We The People know that they are guilty, no matter what tribunals may say.

Syria: Lavrov warns of imminent NATO attack

Dismissing the claims of Damascus using chemical weapons as unfounded and extremely unlikely (because Assad does not need them to win a war that is almost over), Russia Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov warned that it looks like the USA and allies (France, UK, etc.) are already determined to intervene in Syria with whatever pretext. 

Source: Bloomberg.

USA: yet another alert at Hanford nuclear site: 4 workers sent to hospital

Yet another mysterious and dangerous alert was issued today at Hanford nuclear site, where hundreds of obsolete and ill-managed tanks full of nuclear material are being... done something (nobody really knows: some sort of patching and relocation).

Four workers were hospitalized with radiation damage, parts of the site got the scary order of "take cover", 1500 mSv/hr were reported... 

Source: EneNews (citing several news outlets).

USA: amnesty calls begin as soon as Manning is sentenced to 35 years

Whistleblower Bradley Manning was sentenced today by an opaque military court to 35 years of prison.

As soon as the sentence was known, the Bradley Manning Support Campaign began a signature collection to ask the President for a pardon. Meanwhile Amnesty International asked Obama to commute the sentence to time served. They say:

Instead of fighting tooth and nail to lock him up for several decades, the US government should turn its attention to investigating and delivering justice for the serious human rights abuses committed by its officials in the name of countering terror.

USA: Michael Hasting's strange death autopsy released

It can be read at Los Angeles Times.

See: USA: was investigative journalist Michael Hastings murdered? for background.

It is very apparent from the data that Hastings was already dead prior to the suspiciously extreme fire, most unusual for a car, that followed the accident:

The bronchi and pulmonary arteries are intact and empty.

(...)

The carbon monoxide level was below 10 volumes percent, indicating
that the decedent did not inhale the products of combustion,
consistent with an instantaneous death.

There are a number of antemortem fractures in right limbs and chest (these deadly) that suggest that he was killed by the impact almost instantly. Of these there is one that seems a bit strange to me: fracture of the right horn of the hyoid bone. 

Per Wikipedia:

Due to its position, the hyoid bone is not susceptible to easy fracture. In a suspected case of murder, a fractured hyoid strongly indicates throttling or strangulation.

However I do not feel qualified enough to judge this injury. The fact that it is only the right horn of the bone is consistent with all the limb fractures pertaining to the right side of the body, so maybe it was caused by the frontal crash itself (hitting the wheel with the neck?) but I would like a qualified opinion anyhow.

No airbag

What the autopsy does not mention is that, obviously, the safety belt and airbag did not enter in play. While using the safety belt is obviously up to the driver, the airbag should have been activated automatically, very especially in a frontal collision as was this one. 

So for some odd reason the airbag did not work. 

The right limb fractures have been reported as consistent with impact to the sole of the right foot, what seems to mean that he was actively using that foot to either speed up or trying to activate the breaks, most likely the latter.

Obviously the car is also in need of an autopsy: no breaks and no airbag are extremely suspicious and consistent with the hypothesis of electronic hacking.

The fact that Hastings' car was traveling at roughly the legal speed of 35 mph and then suddenly sped up just before the accident (see original report by San Diego 6 News) is consistent with the hypothesis of hacking, which is clearly no fantasy, as this video illustrates. 

A hacker could disable the breaks and airbag, speed up the car from 35 mph caught in the security video to the more than 100 mph that it was estimated to have at the time of the accident and even steer the wheel to hit that palm right in time. 

It is less clear how the fire could be triggered so easily. Alcohol bottles were reported by the autopsy some 15 feet (less than five meters) north of the crash but it is not clear if they were related to it in any way. 

The autoignition temperature of gasoline is 246–280 °C and the deposit is usually far from the engine (which in this case was found many meters away from the crash - how?), in the rear of the car. The chances of a car burning by a mere crash are extremely low (unlike what happens in Hollywood's action movies), as was demonstrated by the popular Mythbuster show several times.

So sincerely, I'd ask for a car autopsy.

USA: police is becoming an army

And again nice insight from Naked Capitalism (originally at Corrente, by Lambert Strether):

“We’re Building a Domestic Army” – Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino Before Concord, NH Town Council.

The centerpiece is this video from Concord Town Council meeting:

Key excerpt:

And so what we’re doing here, and let’s not kid about it, we’re building a domestic army and we’re shrinking the military because the government is afraid of its own citizens. 

Maybe even more interesting is what the authorities, led by that Gestapo which is Homeland Security, pretend to do with such a domestic army:

[On] the domestic front, the threat is real and here. Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges.

Latest advances in energy storage may pave way for renewable-only energy grid

While some countries like Germany have take giant steps in the development of cost-efficient solar and other renewable energy sources, that virtually scrap the need for the so-called "conventional" sources like oil, gas or nukes, a problem remains: how to store energy in a reliable and efficient way to be released in a controlled way when the renewable sources are temporarily not available (night for solar, windless days for eolic, etc.)

Research is in progress but I will mention here a few examples on how this is advancing. 

A year ago, a team of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, led by Sri Narayan, developed an advanced battery based on iron rusting. This method has the advantage of being relatively well known (has been around from the 1970s) but previously faced the challenge of about half its capacity being robbed by hydrolysis. This research managed to reduce such loss to just 4%, what is a great advance, thanks to the use of a small amount of bismuth sulfide. 

More recently research has been focused on membraneless batteries. In April team of U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University researchers announced a lithium polysulfide battery, that overcomes material limitations of previous similar designs (lithium and sulfur are relatively inexpensive) and is easily scalable for large scale energy management needs.

This week MIT researchers offered another new membraneless alternative that beats lithium capacities by "an order of magnitude". The model, based on bromine and hydrogen reactions overcomes the limitations of these materials, whose composite hydrobromic acid tends to eat the battery membranes, by totally suppressing them. The development is being presented as "a quantum leap" in energy storage systems, although other researchers are more cautious.

Gladio: Nato's shadow state (III): against communism by any means necessary

The third article[es] of Daniele Ganser on the Gladio affair (French version) is most interesting for the present time, especially as communist forces like SYRIZA in Greece (or maybe others in the near future or at sub-state level, as may be the Basque case) aspire to reach to power by purely electoral means.

Some, very naively, expect the state apparatus to obey them as soon as they reach power but the reality is quite the opposite and the increased Nazi penetration in the Greek police forces is the proverbial tip of the iceberg that evidences that the deep state of the Balcanic country is getting ready to counter such an eventuality by all means. 

Gladio investigations established that NATO is not merely a defensive alliance but first and foremost an anti-communist organization of global reach. They also evidence that the real command is in Washington and not Brussels, with Europeans being relegated to a secondary role as auxiliary forces of the American Empire. Role that nevertheless many exert enthusiastically. 

A key organism is the hyper-secret Security Bureau, created in 1949 and whose declared mission is to coordinate, oversee and implement NATO's security policies. It's top officer is the Security Director, main councilor of NATO's Secretary General and President of the Security Committee of NATO. This committee gathers the chiefs of security services of NATO member states and discusses matters such as espionage, terrorism, subversion and other threats, including communism. 

In other words: it coordinates all NATO secret services. However some such services seem to have acted independently from their governments with full blessing by NATO. According to Portuguese newspaper Expresso (1990):

It seems evident that NATO applies a criterion of restricted trust. Under such doctrine some governments are not active enough in the struggle against communism, so it is not useful to inform them about the activities of the NATO's secret army. 

In a closed doors meeting, whose details were revealed by Portuguese media, Manfred Wörner, then NATO's Secretary General, explained that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) coordinates the activities of the Gladio network through the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created in 1952. 

This network was first created in Italy as early as 1947 (the same year in which the CIA was organized) and then extended to the rest of Europe: France, Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Greece.

Former NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns declared to the press that he had no knowledge of the network. Luns implied that every secret operation was part of NATO, emphasizing that NATO is controlled by the USA and that the Commander General of the organization (SACEUR) is always a US-American appointed by Washington (the Deputy SACEUR has been mostly British but, since 1980, also occasionally German).

Thomas Polgar, retired CIA officer, acknowledged that there exists "a sort of group in charge of planning non-conventional war". He also emphasized US control of this department. 

According to the Belgian parliamentary committee, this organization was founded even before NATO itself with the name of Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), which coordinated the allied secret services. This seems to be the same as the Security Bureau, as it's known nowadays, but was known for long as Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC). 

The first public evidence of the existence of secret anti-communist protocols was revealed in 1966, soon after De Gaulle retired France from the NATO structure (not the alliance itself) and expelled NATO headquarters from French soil. It was De Gaulle himself who denounced such protocols as a violation of national sovereignty.

According to US journalist Arthur Rowse (1994):

A secret clause of the original NATO treaty stipulated that every country candidate to adhesion must have established first a National Security authority in charge of directing the fight against Communism through clandestine citizen groups. 

Italian journalist Giuseppe de Lutiis found that in 1949, in the event of joining NATO, Italy had to sign a protocol establishing an unofficial organization in charge of guaranteeing the alignment of Italy's internal policies with those of the Western bloc by all means necessary, even in the event that the population would manifest a divergent inclination.

NATO officers have confirmed on condition of anonymity that such protocols explicitly protect far right members considered useful in the fight against communists. Even West Germany signed such protocols, in which it explicitly agreed to abstain from prosecuting notorious Nazi activists (Searchlight 1991).

The CPC was all the time directed by Washington, with a secondary role for London and Paris (before De Gaulle's walk out). In all CPC meetings there were CIA officers. A parallel structure is the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC), created by order of the fourth SACEUR, Lauris Norstadt, in 1952. It's more relaxed and horizontal ambient allowed Gladio commanders to share their networks more effectively.

To this day NATO still denies the existence of either the CPC or the ACC. But even former CIA officers like Thomas Polgar have acknowledged them as very real. However no public debate has ever existed in the North American federation on these matters. Just a few journalists have attempted to inquire on these matters but had no or very limited success. 

Britain must also be mentioned. In 1991 the BBC reported that the role of Great Britain in the creation of these "stay behind" networks was central. This should surprise nobody considering that London was deeply implicated in the ascent of European fascisms in the 1920s and 1930s, including that of Hitler, naturally (just that he got off the leash by threatening to invade Russia single-handedly, which would have given Berlin too much power if successful). British democracy is a mere facade, serving as cover for terribly secret entities like the MI6, whose very existence was only revealed to the public in 1994.

Almost nothing of the British dirty war is known to this day. Nobody in Westminster seems concerned: the regime has 100% of the seats or almost.

Main source[es]: Daniele Ganser "Gladio: Por qué la OTAN, la CIA y el MI6 siguen negando" (also in French). 

Previous entries: I, II.

Gladio: NATO's shadow state (I)

When Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said that the attackers of September 9th 2001 were "America's chicken coming home to roost" he was nailing it. However the chicken are not, as he implied, bearded Islamists but rather Christian right-wing extremists who make up the real shadow government in Europe, that overseas province of the USA, and now also in the homeland as well. 

Daniele Ganser has written for Voltaire Network a series of articles in Spanish (most also available in French) on the "stay-behind" network of NATO known popularly as Gladio, it's Italian name. 

The work is almost monumental but I will try to synthesize here and in future articles the most essential of it, because it is something that we must all know about, surely more important than electoral politics and the like.

The first article deals with the best known Gladio network and the only properly deserving that name: the Italian one. 

Bologna station after the NATO attack

Between 1969 and 1987, the so-called years of lead, several terrorist massacres against civilians took place in Italy, inspiring fear and serving as pretext to persecute the communists, who were blamed for the attacks (just as they were blamed for the Reichstag fire by the Nazis). Not just the Brigate Rosse were persecuted until their annihilation but many many intellectuals and activists who had no part in armed struggle were as well.

Italy had the belated luck that a judge, Felice Cassone, eventually began investigating the many issues surrounding all these massacres and political attacks. As it became known in the trial, almost 15,000 acts of political violence shattered Italy between those dates, many of them being brutal indiscriminate attacks in which 491 people were killed and 1181 injured.

Cassone indicted one man, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a fascist member of the secret organization Ordine Nuovo (New Order), who confessed that he enjoyed total protection by a whole well-positioned network in Italy as in other countries.

In the trials, General Giandelio Maletti, former chief of the Italian counter-espionage, declared that not just nearly all the Italian state was involved in Gladio but that every single attack was approved by the White House and the CIA. In his own words:

The CIA, following the orders of their government, wanted to forge an Italian Nationalism able to counter what they considered a slide to the Left and, with that goal, they could use far-right terrorism. (...) One was under the impression that the Americans were willing to do anything to impede that Italy leaned to the Left. (...) Don't forget that it was Nixon who was the head of the government and Nixon was not any common guy, he was a very smart politician but a man of very unorthodox methods. 

In 1988 the Italian Senate created a commission to investigate the matter. It was a difficult process, as witnesses did not want to speak, documents were destroyed and the Right sabotaged the investigation all they could. However in 1990 Gladio was confirmed as a very real thing. 

However the conscience of this terrorist network existed since long before. In 1974, another judge, Giovanni Tamburino, brought General Vito Miceli, commander of the SID (military secret service, later SISMI) to trial, accused of creating a secret organization that gathered civilians and officers alike, whose goal was to stir an armed insurrection in order to illegally modify the Constitution and the composition of the government.

Miceli, who had also been chief of NATO's Security Bureau, declared in anger:

Did I have a super-SID under my command? Of course! But I did not organize it myself in order to stage a coup, I merely obeyed the orders of the USA and NATO!

Giulio Andreotti

Sadly Miceli got away on bail and the network remained poorly known until the revelations of quasi-permanent Prime Minister Andreotti in 1990, who acted only on demand of the Senate and in a climate of many investigations, which even put the very godfather of Italian politics in jail for some time. It was the only occasion in which Gladio was revealed in full.

Andreotti edited his first written declaration. However Senator Gualtieri, President of the Commission, had made copies of the original version. When compared, it became obvious that Andreotti had edited all the references to international connections and the existence of Gladio in other states. 

It was such a poor trick that in his final version Andreotti admitted that Gladio was a network extending through all NATO, which in Italy was originally agreed between the CIA and the local secret services as a "stay behind" network against possible Soviet invasion. 

This cooperation was structured within NATO's Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1959, which was part of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). In 1964 the Italian secret services got incorporated also to the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC). 

However Andreotti's report was in some contradiction with the declarations of Vinciguerra in the sense that the veteran politician claimed that Gladio was not involved in the terrorist attacks. He also declared that every single Prime Minister was informed of the existence of the stay-behind network, causing major embarrassment to the other Prime Ministers of the First Republic. Only the then President Francesco Cossiga acknowledged the fact, declaring his "pride" for contributing to its creation in the 1950s and to be able to keep such a secret for so long. 

Subsequent political turbulence forced his resignation in 1992.

Meanwhile Andreotti had confirmed in public audience that Gladio was a NATO structure and that it existed also in other member states, mentioning by name Germany, Greece, Denmark, Belgium and even France.

The Senate Commission concluded that:

Those massacres, those bombings, those military operations were organized, instigated or supported by people who worked for the Italian institutions and, as was discovered more recently, by individuals linked to the US intelligence structures.

Those are the "chickens" who came back "home to roost". Let's not forget that G.W. Bush' administration was almost exactly that of Nixon.

USA: was investigative journalist Michael Hastings murdered?

Michael Hastings, a Rolling Stone investigative journalist, was killed in a car "accident" on June 17th in Los Angeles, California.

Hastings, 33, had reported on Iraq and Afghanistan invasions but also on the dirty war and psy-ops by US military and spy agencies, including the global political persecution against Julian Assange. His most notorious report however was the uncensored interview with General Stanley McChrystal, which sent him out of the command chain.

He was at the moment of his death investigating CIA Director John Brennan, who was central in the witch-hunt against journalists by the US secret services, according to a Stratfor email published by Wikileaks.

Precisely the day before his "accident" Hastings was paid visit at home by FBI agents. He also sent mail to several friends saying that he was onto "a big story" and needed "to go off the radar for a bit". He also mentioned that the feds were interviewing all his "close friends and associates".

Hours later his car crashed against a palm tree at high speed, exploding in flames in a way practically impossible for a car outside Hollywood studios.

Actually the car was first traveling at a mere 35 mph (~50 Km/h), according to scientific estimates based on video evidence, however a gas station witness mentioned that the car was speeding up to maybe 100 mph (~170 Km/h) or more.

The angle at which the car hit the palm tree evidences that the car also turned just before the crash. Strangely the tree was unharmed.

Video taken just after the "accident":

Also very intriguing is the way the car burned. Normally cars don't explode nor burn at all (only in action movies but those are Holywood tricks, not reality) and, if they do, they need some time to ignite and do not burn as dramatically as Hastings' car. Therefore an the presence of an explosive device is suspected.

From Global Research:

“I’ve never seen an explosion like that,” said Terry Hopkins, 46, a former U.S. Navy military policeman who served in Afghanistan, told me. “I’ve seen military vehicles explode, but never quite like that. Look, here’s a reporter who brought down a general. He’s sending out emails saying he’s being watched. It’s four in the morning and his car explodes? Come on, you have to be naïve not to at least consider it wasn’t an accident.”

This is the tentative reconstruction by San Diego 6 News:

The release of a new surveillance video from a nearby Italian restaurant by Michael Krikorian, an author, freelance blogger who also writes for LA Weekly, reveals a lot of information about Hastings’ final seconds.

A University professor told San Diego 6 News that calculating the speed of Hastings car follows a simple mathematic equation. By using the video and the distance traveled (195 feet) as well as the seconds that lapsed prior to the explosion – the car was traveling roughly 35 mph.

That revelation is important because Jose, an employee of ALSCO a nearby business, and a witness to the accident told KTLA/Loud Labs (Scott Lane) the car was traveling at a high rate of speed and he saw sparks coming from the car and saw it explode BEFORE hitting the tree.

The pre-explosion could possibly explain the flash of light on the video that preceded the appearance of the car in the video. The pre-explosion and slower speed could also explain the minimal damage to the palm tree and the facts the rear tires rested against the curb. It also provides an explanation for the location of the engine and drive train at more than 100 feet from the tree impact area. 

However other experts disagree (again from Global Research):

I showed the video to Scott E. Anderson, an Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor with Digital Sandbox who has engineered explosions for many films.

He viewed the footage more than 20 times at various speeds, including frame by frame. Anderson concluded, “This was not a bomb.”

He said a bomb would have propelled the car upward, not forward.
“It’s very hard to blow up stuff well,” Anderson said. “I think too many things would have to go right. Luck would be involved. Good and bad. Does someone doing this to Hastings want to rely on luck? Too many things have to go right. It would have to be perfect. And that’s almost impossible.”

He continued, “It comes down to physics. A bomb would have lifted the car and the engine up. Based on this video, the car doesn’t go up, and the engine goes forward, which makes sense since the car apparently did not hit the tree head on.”

He said the fireball may be enhanced by the recording device.

“That type of surveillance camera has auto exposure so it can change what it sees based by the ambient exposure day or night,” Anderson explained. “This camera is set at night and anything that happens very quickly, be it a flash light or a big ball of fire, the camera won’t react fast enough, so the first flash of light is going to appear much bigger in the viewing. So the initial explosion would always look bigger than it is.”

He suggested a simple demonstration using a cellphone video app: Strike a match in a dark room and it will flare up on camera much more than in reality.

Another, maybe complementary, hypothesis is that the car was hacked. Modern cars are full of electronic devices that control every single function and, of course they can be hacked. This video shows it:

I really hate this kind of cars, sincerely, because a simple electronic malfunction can cause an accident or the inability to solve a real life problem, such as getting out of the car after falling into water. But nowadays most are like that.

But what I had never imagined before in my naivety was that they could be so dramatically hacked to the point you don't have control at all anymore. No "manual control" function exists: either the ECUs obey you or not, and, if not, they may well be obeying someone else. 

So your call: was Hasting murdered or does the "accident" version (sustained by LAPD) ring true in your mind instead? And, if murdered, was it the FBI, the CIA, Gral. Stanley's personal revenge or a bit of it all?

USA: nuclear accident in South Georgia: chemical explosions at radioactive waste site

The Perma-Fix Environmental Services plant at Valdosta (Georgia, border with Florida) suffered a series of huge chemical explosions today. The industry describes itself as "a global provider of nuclear services and radioactive waste management solutions". The profile of the residues treated in the plant are openly described as "radioactive waste".

The plume of the accident rose at least 30 meters above ground, what may imply radioactive and other unclear risk for the surrounding area. 

Source: Energy News.