Showing posts with label investigative journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label investigative journalism. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

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:

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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.

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

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

USA: Michael Hasting's strange death autopsy released

It can be read at Los Angeles Times.




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. 

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.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

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.

“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?

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

And an iron curtain descended on the USA

A quite interesting story on the person who served as contact for Edward Snowden before his complicated exile is available at the New York Times (needs cookies enabled).

But maybe the most interesting stuff is not when they talk about the spy who became a whistleblower but how Laura Poitras, a journalist, was, long before that, subject to a very extreme political persecution every time she traveled outside her country for reporting transparently on the invasion of Iraq, it seems.
Though she has written to members of Congress and has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, Poitras has never received any explanation for why she was put on a watch list. “It’s infuriating that I have to speculate why,” she said. “When did that universe begin, that people are put on a list and are never told and are stopped for six years? I have no idea why they did it. It’s the complete suspension of due process.” She added: “I’ve been told nothing, I’ve been asked nothing, and I’ve done nothing. It’s like Kafka. Nobody ever tells you what the accusation is.”

And not just her:
William Binney, a former top N.S.A. official who publicly accused the agency of illegal surveillance, was at home one morning in 2007 when F.B.I. agents burst in and aimed their weapons at his wife, his son and himself. Binney was, at the moment the agent entered his bathroom and pointed a gun at his head, naked in the shower. His computers, disks and personal records were confiscated and have not yet been returned. Binney has not been charged with any crime. 

This kind of totalitarian police state is not at all the kind of idea US-Americans have or would like to have about their country. However it is very real: since the false-flag attacks of September 2001, the federation has been taken over by a perpetual state of emergency, renewed each year by the President, that allows police and spy corps to operate beyond any judicial supervision. This police state is justified with continuous allegations of "terrorist" threats, which in most cases, if not all seem extremely suspicious when looked at critically. 

The police state feeds the "terrorist" paranoia, probably even forging real attacks, some of which have been covered in detail in this blog, in order to justify itself. It's a total Gestapo coup whose main goals are clearly to hide the very police state from public scrutiny and to perpetuate its "need" by continuous threats and even some very real false-flag attacks. 

Another example:
Jacob Appelbaum, a privacy activist who was a volunteer with WikiLeaks, has also been filmed by Poitras. The government issued a secret order to Twitter for access to Appelbaum’s account data, which became public when Twitter fought the order. Though the company was forced to hand over the data, it was allowed to tell Appelbaum. Google and a small I.S.P. that Appelbaum used were also served with secret orders and fought to alert him. Like Binney, Appelbaum has not been charged with any crime. 

These are I guess the lucky ones. The police state, which is now legally authorized to murder anyone, has probably killed quite a bunch: suspicious deaths like the "suicide" of Aaron Swartz and many other people with lower profiles pile up. Why? The North American Gestapo trying to hide their tracks. 

So is the USA anymore the country of freedom it presumed of just a decade or two ago? Not at all. It is quickly decaying into a totalitarian police state. The forms are retained by the moment but any close scrutiny evidences an almost total lack of democracy: media concentrated in few hands, politicians that only serve the corporations, a judiciary that has been completely neutralized... and police eavesdropping even in your breakfast bowl. And it is worsening by the hour.

And, of course, what happens in the USA affects all the World.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Fascist USA: journalists not allowed to keep their sources secret

In yet another example showing that the United States is not a democracy but an authoritarian state, a court has ruled (against many precedents and a long-established tradition) that journalists can't keep their sources secret. They applied a century-old emergency law (WWI) which was before only used in three cases.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that New York Times journalist James Risen must testify in the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of leaking classified national defense information to the media.

A lower court ruled previously that Risen could protect the source responsible for sharing intelligence about a CIA operation discussed in his writing, but the US Court of Appeals from the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision Friday morning with a 2-1 vote. 

“The reporter must appear and give testimony just as every other citizen must. We are not at liberty to conclude otherwise,” Chief Judge William Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority opinion.

The trial is about Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent accused of leaking a Clinton-era plan to deceive Iran into using faulty nuclear weapon blueprints. There are other six people accused.
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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Honduras: kidnapped journalist found dead

Aníbal Barrow (pictured), who was kidnapped weeks ago, was found dead in a shallow tomb not far from where his clothes were located, near San Pedro Sula.

Before Barrow at least 27 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the 2009 coup:

1. Nicolás Asfura: 17-Feb-2010.
2. Josep Hernández: 1-Mar-2010.
3. David Meza Matamoros: 11-Mar-2010
4. Nahúm Palacios: 14-Mar-2010.
5. Manuel de Jesús Juárez: 26-Mar-2010
6. Bayardo Ramírez: 26-Mar-2010.
7. Luis Chévez: 11-Apr-2010
8. Georgino Orellana: 20-Apr-2010.
9. Carlos Salinas: 8-May-2010.
10. Luis Mondragón: 14-Jun-2010
11. Israel Zelaya: 24-Aug-2010.
12. Henry Suazo: 28-Dec-2010.
13. Luis Ernesto Mendoza: 19-Mar-2011.
14 Erick Martínez Ávila: 7-May-2012.
15. Héctor Medina: 11-May-2011
16. Adán Benítez: 5-Jul-2011.
17. Nery Jeremías Orellana: 13-Jul-2011.
18. Medardo Flores: 8-Sep-2011.
19. Luz Marina Paz: 6-Dec-2011.
20. Saira Fabiola Almendárez: 1-Mar-2012
21. Fausto Elio Hernández: 11-Mar-2012
22. Noel Valladares Escoto: 23-Apr-2012.
23. Alfredo Villatoro: 15-May-2012
24. Adonis Felipe Bueso Gutiérrez: 8-Jul-2012
25. José Noel Canales Lagos: 10-Aug-2012
26. Julio César Cassaleno: 28-Aug-2012
27. Angel Edgardo López Fiallos: 11-Nov-2012

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Boston massacre: another false-flag attack

After the normal doubts when the official version and your common sense conflict (hey, maybe this time they may be telling the truth: they cannot be such a bunch of compulsive liars, can they?), it seems that again the authorities lied on such a serious issue as the Boston Marathon bomb massacre, as they did with 9/11 and they probably did so many other times. 

The evidence actually piles up to show that the Tsarnaev brothers are just convenient scapegoats and that the attack was probably made by US forces acting with incredible impunity and arrogance.

On the hotspot is particularly Craft International, an elite private paramilitary company, whose declared goals are to provide training for US military and police forces. 

In the photos to the right we can see how several men uniformed as Craft Intl. personnel and carrying black backpacks, identical to the explosive device, are all the time around the area of the explosion, except, of course, when it did explode. 

This is not really new, as I already mentioned it back in the day but then I was missing some key details: like a photo of the exploded backpack and some contextualization. 

All this is provided in the photo-explanation at the right, which I took from Webguerrillero[es], and edited only to translate (back-translate?) the text to Spanish (and then also scale it to half its size for practical reasons, you can see a higher quality image at the original site but with the text in Spanish). 

In the images it's apparent that one heavily tanned man, part of the Craft Intl. group, is a main suspect of actually placing the bomb (one of the two bombs) to any analytical and unprejudiced eye.

Webguerrillero also mentions that an anonymous message to 4chan, hours after the attack, did not just claim that it was a false-flag attack, but did forecast most of what we actually know happened later: that a 20-something youth was blamed and said he did because he is "unstable", and that "the suspect won't be found until the weekend, probably on Friday". 

The site also claims that the elder brother was captured alive and then brutally murdered. 

It is also probably worth mentioning that the founder and former CEO of Craft Intl., Chris Kyle, was murdered in a quite strange incident on February 2nd 2013, barely a month and half before the attack took place. I can't know if it is somehow related to the attack but I would not be surprised at all. 

A few days ago, an acquaintance of the Tsarnaev brothers, a young Chechen man whom his father describes as unable to attack without being provoked, was murdered by an FBI agent while in custody (in an interrogation).


What do they want with these false-flag attacks?

I cannot be sure but something that the farcical attacks of London and Boston have in common is that they seem to want to scatter "Islamist terrorist" responsibility to common people, making every single Muslim (and by extension nearly every immigrant) suspect of terrorism, not anymore the product of organized action by well established organizations like the Western sockpuppet Al Qaeda, but of any other John Doe, or rather Muhammad Ali.

This, if we link with other campaigns like the criminalization of Afro-American resistance, leads to a single conclusion: White, Eurocentric, racism is being promoted as a way to attempt to restore, under US-NATO leadership now, the old colonial order that existed before the Cold War. 

In parallel, it is known by all, how Nazi organizations are being institutionally promoted in all Europe, among other places, as a reserve force to strike against the Working Class, native or immigrant alike.

Also, what the unprecedented state of emergency declared in the suburbs of Boston after the attacks suggests is that they are also experimenting with popular reaction to state of emergency, which may well be the real drill being carried on in this case. 

Finally they must also be testing the reactions of the media and the gullibility of the masses to these campaigns of institutional disinformation and blatant lies.