Tag Archives: espionage

Private Equity Firm CEO Leon Black Paid Epstein $150 Million

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From The Daily Beast:

“The CEO of the private equity firm Apollo is stepping down after the company’s board discovered he paid out $150 million to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Black, who is also the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, said Monday he would be stepping down sometime before his 70th birthday in July. Apollo’s board had ordered an inquiry into Black after The New York Times reported in October that he had wired up to $75 million to Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl. Black has denied any involvement in Epstein’s international sex trafficking ring and has not been accused of sexual misconduct.”

Bloombergquint has more details about the networks which helped both:

[Lila: Can we say Mossad agent?]

“Epstein, a Brooklyn native, was an enigma to many inside and outside of finance. He attended Cooper Union and New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences but left both without a degree. He briefly had a job at Bear Stearns Cos. and before his first arrest worked extensively for lingerie mogul Les Wexner. The L Brands founder severed ties with Epstein after his first conviction.”

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/what-leon-black-got-for-paying-jeffrey-epstein-158-million

 

NSA Director Stalls Appt Of Trump Loyalist As NSA Counsel

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Business Insider reports:

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told the head of the National Security Agency to install a Trump loyalist as the top lawyer at the agency, The Washington Post reported.

Miller ordered that Michael Ellis be appointed as general counsel by 6 pm on Saturday, but NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone did not follow that order as of the deadline, according to CNN.

The Post reported Ellis was tapped for the job back in November by Pentagon General Counsel Paul C. Ney Jr., but he still hasn’t taken the position and has to finish administrative procedures.

Google’s “Hummingbird”: IP Theft & Mind-Control

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Google’s new search algorithm Hummingbird adds to the company’s sinister reputation among privacy advocates.

Google’s creepy Google Glass didn’t help it either.

Now comes Hummingbird, the biggest algorithm change in the search engine in twelve years.

“Hummingbird should better focus on the meaning behind the words,” Sullivan reports. “It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might understand that ‘place’ means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that ‘iPhone 5s’ is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.”

(“Hummingbird is Google’s biggest algorithm change in 12 years,” WebProNews,  Sept. 28, 2013)

Simply put, Hummingbird is about Google trying to find the holistic meaning behind the individual words of a search-string (the query or series of words you input into the search function),  or, in the case of websites, the overall intent behind the key-words most used.

Bottom-line: Google is trying to figure out what’s going on in your mind when you type out certain words.

That is terribly similar to an area of research dear to the defense and spy agencies – predictive software and technology.

For instance,  DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is very interested in developing the cognitive footprints of users for identification purposes.

The goal is to bypass the need for passwords, which tend to be cumbersome for users and vulnerable to password-cracking, phishing, social-engineering, memory failures, and hardware theft.

“Software biometric modalities” are to be used to develop what it terms Active Authentication.

Anyone can see how useful the new Hummingbird algorithm would be to DARPA.

Indeed, given Google’s prior collaboration with the CIA in the monitoring of social media, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hummingbird has also come out of a joint project with the government.

The defense agencies come up with the technology to figure out what random “bad guys” are up to. Google monetizes it and returns the favor by data-sharing with the government.

The consumer might have his every need…indeed wish…met, but web-users are now going to find that Google’s “free lunch:” is not only not free, it’s not remotely cheap.

And web users are the ones footing the bill.

Here’s how.

“Google Hummingbird: Where no search has gone before,” Jeremy Hull, iProspect, Wired, October 15, 2013

“Google has updated its search algorithm many times over the past few years, but previous updates were focused on making Google better at gathering information — for example, indexing websites more often and identifying spammy content. Hummingbird is focused on the user. It’s about Google getting better at understanding what searchers really want and providing them with better answers.”

That’s Google’s stated objective, of course. But how about websites?

When you search Google for answers to questions, what website owners want is for you to go to their site to get the information.

This is not only because they might hope to sell you something and thereby earn a living.

It’s also because they hope that by giving you good information not available in the mainstream media,  they might attract you to their site and persuade you on other issues.

By offering free information, web writers hope you will find them reliable, credible, or interesting and become committed readers. That’s why millions of writers and websites, spend inordinate amounts of energy and time finding answers and giving them away to others for free.

Of course, ethics and decency demand that readers who benefit from that information cite the place they found it and give the author credit.

Not Hummingbird.

It harvests information from the net and puts it on Information cards that pop up in answer to searches.

Now, if the information is immediately given to the reader by Google, why will they visit the websites from which Google might have culled the answer?

They won’t.  That means that Google is not only stealing the private data of its users through Gmail, Google Earth, and a bunch of other programs, it’s also stealing from the websites it’s supposed to be helping.

But “Hummingbird” is not just unfriendly to websites offering information to the public, it acts to control what information is presented to you and how.

Hummingbird’s graphic is an easy way for Google to give you what Google (and very likely, the government) want you to know, rather than what you might learn if you delved into your search results yourself.

The new graphic could even give you downright misleading or inaccurate information. Just think about Snopes, the ostensibly myth-busting site that somehow manages to bust myths only in left-liberal ways.

So, Hummingbird is not only using your personal information for Google’s own commercial (and the government’s surveillance) purposes, it’s using information from blogs/websites, without their permission, for its own operations.

That’s two counts of IP theft.

Then, the whole business of trying to determine exactly what you’re thinking when you type certain things into the search function sounds awfully like mind-reading to me. In order to do that kind of mind-reading, all sorts of personal information from your web usage (even more than Google has been collecting so far) has to be collated and compared. Mapped, if you will.

That’s two counts of privacy invasion.

Finally, by manipulating access to the knowledge available on the Internet, under the guise of consumer satisfaction, by giving you pre-packaged answers before it gives you your search results, Google is actually  trying to control your thinking.

That’s one count of mind-control.

Is it any surprise that the new algorithm shares its name with DARPA’s nano flying robot/drone Hummingbird, which beats its wings like a bird?.

DARPA’s Hummingbird is a spy drone:

“The drone, built by AeroVironment with funding from DARPA, is able to fly forwards, backwards, and sideways, as well as rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. Not only does the ‘bot resemble its avian inspiration in size (it’s only slightly larger than a hummingbird, with a 6.5-inch wingspan and a weight of 19 grams), it also looks impressively like a hummingbird in flight.

But that’s not vanity — it’s key to the drone’s use as a spy device, as it can perch near its subject without alerting it.”

Google’s Hummingbird seems no less innocuous and no less insidious.

It’s more evil-doing from the Franken-SearchEngine that routinely spies for the NSA and CIA and systematically  commits Intellectual Property theft.

Read more at Entrepreneur .com

Anti-Spy Wear: Modest Swim-Suits Fight the Pornocracy

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In an age of universal surveillance and blackmail, involuntary porn, state-mandated voyeurism, mass rape and sodomy of prisoners,  Google-Glass, and citizen-spying, modest swim-wear might be the most astute political statement a woman can make.

It protects her privacy and dignity from snoopers and pornographers, looking for cheap shots, as well as from state operatives and contractors, fattening their files for blackmailing purposes.

I’ve made the connection between surveillance and blackmail many times on this blog and even back in 2004, in essays on virtual crime (used later in Language of Empire).

Alfred McCoy’s recent piece on the subject (cited above) substantiates the accuracy of my analysis.

The making and circulation of pornographic images are powerful tools of the state-corporate complex.

The key role of such images in blackmailing operations that universalize the power of the state is precisely the reason I am less than admiring of theorists who praise the public virtues of blackmail unthinkingly, people like Murray Rothbard and Walter Block.

Check out the Christian blog,  Big-is-Beautiful, for attractive, modern swimwear that is modest….

..that lets a woman be a lady and leaves her physical dignity and privacy intact.

(Here is a list of modest swim-wear made for Jewish ladies; this one is for Muslims).

Draupadi Disrobed: India Strip-Searched By US…..

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Draupadi disrobed in the Mahabharat

Credit for image of Draupadi vastraharan to Naari.com

“When the US tows away a Russian diplomat’ car in Washington for a parking violation, six US diplomatic cars disappear in Moscow. The Russian car then magically appears with apology.

That is the type of diplomacy we need.”

This was a comment I saw posted at the Indian news site, Firstpost.com, below an article on the unequal “relationship” between the US and  India, as evidenced in the Devyani Khobragade case.

India is claiming “victory” …….even though a senior female diplomat still faces indictment and a possible 10 year sentence and was strip-searched and cavity-inspected, for an allegation over what amounts to a routine visa issue.

Meanwhile, not even a criminal case was registered against Wayne May (the State Dept Security chief in New Delhi who is behind the whole affair.

May was guilty of subversion of the Indian judiciary, actual trafficking, and tax and visa fraud.

Further clarification of  a canard being circulated that Khobragade was lying.

Devyani Khobragade says she was strip-searched, DNA swabbed, and cavity-searched, multiple times.

The US Marshals deny that she was cavity-searched but admit she underwent a standard procedure strip-search.

So who is telling the truth? Devyani or the Marshals?

BOTH. There is just a confusion of terms.

Under US law today (ratified by Supreme Court in a 2012 case), arrests are accompanied by strip-searches.

1 The standard procedure of a strip-search

This is what the US Marshals admitted happened.

It involves the removal of all clothes and examination of all bodily cavities, including mouth, nose, ears, eyes, genitals and rectum.

It involves “baring of the labia.” That can be done multiple times.

It includes DNA swabbing and recording (for security purposes).

As we now know, the US has a vast espionage and surveillance network and nearly all sensitive nodes of telecom and electronic communication are monitored centrally.

Thus, images of such a search WOULD HAVE BEEN RECORDED AND SHARED WITH SPY AGENCIES. THAT IS GUARANTEED.

These images can then be transferred to private corporations, working with the United States Government (and Israel.

Israel has complete access via backdoors in the electronic equipment as well as more directly).

Corporation working with the spy agencies and with the USG include Facebook, Microsoft,  Google, Digg, Verizon, Brighthouse and many many more.

There is immense  potential here for black-mail against a political figure like Khobragade, from a political family tied to the Dalit vote-bank (voting power of the lower caste/untouchable community), a prize for both Congress and the BJP.

Indeed, we don’t know that black-mail has not ALREADY occurred behind closed doors.

Extortion of the Khobragade family would mean extortion of the Ministry of External Affairs (foreign office of New Delhi), in which Uttam Khobragade, Devyani’s father, has power.

The MEA and the US Embassy in New Delhi were at logger-heads for some time before this episode

“Jail Strip Searches: The light at the end of the tunnel was not a train,” Gary W. De Land, Directors of Jail Operations, Utah’s Sheriff’s Association gives a detailed history of the litigation over strip-searches as well as the often confused terminology, from the perspective of someone in favor of more wide-spread use of strip-searches.  His description of the standard strip-search, including visual inspection of cavities (which he terms relatively useless since the cavities cannot actually be seen)

“The early strip search cases created a bit of confusion over what a strip search is. Part of that confusion was use of the term “body cavity search” or “visual body cavity search.”

The terms seem to imply searches actually probe or look inside of the rectum or vagina which was not the case.

The body-cavity searches were those where the male was required to lift his genitals for visual inspection to see if contraband was being hidden and bending or squatting to allow visual inspection of the anus (an external inspection). For females, prisoners were required to bend and spread their buttocks and/or squat to permit an visual inspection of the external genitalia and anus.

The Supreme Court commented on the different and confusing meanings that have been applied in various cases to “strip searches.”

The term is imprecise. It may refer simply to the instruction to remove clothing while an officer observes from a distance of, say, five feet or more; it may mean a visual inspection from a closer, more uncomfortable distance; it may include directing detainees to shake their heads or to run their hands through their hair to dislodge what might be hidden there; or it may involve instructions to raise arms, to display foot insteps, to expose the back of the ears, to move or spread the buttocks or genital areas, or to cough in a squatting position.

The impact of the Florence ruling is that the term “strip search” now covers each of the different levels of intrusion listed above. Since the so-called visual body-cavity searches are permitted without reasonable suspicion, then certainly the less intrusive strip searches are also authorized. It is now appropriate for jail officials to simply refer to levels levels of unclothed searches as strip searches.”

B. The procedure called a “cavity search”

Devyani mistakenly used this term, when she should have used the term “cavity inspection.”

That is understandable since in India, BOTH procedures would be considered custodial rape.

Cavity search (probe)  involves digital probing of the cavities (insertion of fingers or fists into rectums or vaginas).

This is literally sodomizing of an innocent person, on mere charges or suspicion.

“Probing” did NOT happen, which is why the US Marshals are denying the story.

Devyani used the wrong term, but she is not lying, just using the wrong terminology.

The standard inspection of the cavities would in fact be brutal and demeaning enough on its own.

The US apparently misjudged how people would react and then tried to muddy the affair by flooding the media with allegations and statements from the US prosecutor and the alleged victim.

In effect, this is a way to try the case in the media and cover up their own outrageous position.

The hoax video that was released on the net, showing the gang-rape of  Devyani, was apparently intended to muddy the story.

Perhaps that was so as to make it appear that the reaction was a misplaced reaction to exaggerated reports.

My first book “Language of Empire” dealt with such “hoaxes” and the problems they create.

Notice, as well, that almost immediately after the Facebook statements of the May surfaced, how another “gang-rape” allegation has surfaced from Delhi, this time by a Danish woman.

Yet, the police did not find any injuries consistent with a gang-rape and she refused to undergo a medical examination in Delhi.

She is using medical evidence from Denmark to press her case.

This is an extraordinary case from the point of view of setting precedents, because it means that the Delhi police might from now on be sued based on evidence cooked up abroad and concocted for political purposes.

Now, we see the political motivation behind the drum-beat about a “rape crisis” in Delhi

even while the rate of rape in the UK, for example, is ten time that in India, and although India is not to be found in the top ten countries for high rape rates, while the US, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, and Belgium all are.

Read about the 25 signs of the Nazification of the US police-state.

India Nanny-Gate: Color Revolution In the Making: Part One

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I’m re-posting this blog-post from a few days back, with footnotes and links.

I’ll be adding to the evidence shortly.

INDIAN NANNY-GATE: COLOR REVOLUTION IN THE MAKING?

PART ONE: THE WELL-FUNDED NGO’S BEHIND THE ANTI-TRAFFICKING AGENDA

By now, everyone knows that on December 13, 2013, an Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was arrested and strip-searched by New York police on charges that she failed to pay her Indian maid minimum wage and lied about it to the US government.

In the Western media, the diplomat Devyani Khobragade was treated as a poster-child for the latest human-rights cause celebre, transnational human-trafficking.

However, a closer reading of media reports suggests that the case was set up from the beginning and might well be part of an organized attempt by the Western elites to destabilize India, as part of their ongoing attempt to replace nation-states around the world with transnational bureaucracies under their own direction.

Here’s the evidence so far:

A.

The activists advocating for the maid are part of a very well-financed, ideologically left-wing, transnational network.

The maid’s lawyer Dana Sussman works in the anti-trafficking program of a New York outfit called Safe-Horizon, the largest victims services outfit in the US.

Its directors include representative of the leading multinational financial institutions and corporations in the US, including UBS, JP Morgan Chase, Verizon, and Calvin Klein. (1)

The anti-trafficking program at Safe Horizon was started by Florrie Burke, “a consultant on Human Trafficking and modern day slavery to both governmental and non-governmental agencies.”(2)

Ms. Burke is also on the steering committee of the New York Anti-Trafficking Network and chairman emeritus of the Freedom Network, a coalition of 35 experts and NGOs across the nation, which styles itself the only national group to adopt a “rights-based framework” for its efforts.(3)

The 2013 -2014 policy committee of the Freedom Network is co-chaired by Naomi Tsu of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Dana Sussman, the maid’ lawer, from Safe-Horizon.(4)

The SPLC, once a well-regarded civil rights organization, is increasingly regarded as a biased and selective enforcer of left-wing ideology, known for over-the-top characterizations of its ideological foes.(5)

This should lay to rest any idea that Dana Sussman is just a lawyer defending a client. She is instead a prominent activist, paid by the biggest victims services Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in the USA and, thus, in the world.

B

The Anti-trafficking network has the backing of major corporate and financial leaders.

Safe Horizon not only has the backing of major banks and corporate bosses in the US, it is embedded in the NY city government through its court-based victims services programs.  (6)

New York’s government is the most important local government in the US, since New York is the financial capital of the nation and the home of many international bodies, including the United Nations.

C. The Freedom Network has taken a vociferous and one-sided stance on behalf of the Khobragade maid, as evident from letters on its site, such as the following:

“An Open Letter to Ambassador Samantha Powers Regarding Exploitation Charges Against Indian Diplomat.”
(7)

D.

The chief of the anti-trafficking network was on an extended tour conferencing with media and government in sensitive areas of India at the time of Khobragade’s arrest.

Just before the arrest of Ms. Khobragade, Ms. Burke was in India on December 7 at Guwahati in the north-east state of Assam.

She was there for a conference on human-trafficking, which she described as a menace needing an all-India body that would coordinate efforts across the states to combat it. (8)

To the Assamese newspaper, Sentinel, Ms. Burke said:

“After Abraham Lincoln, it is only Obama who has spoken out as stridently as possible against modern day slavery.”

Besides Assam and Andhra (a Southern coastal state), Ms. Burke mentioned Afghanistan and Pakistan as sites where anti-trafficking efforts should be expanded.

Andhra has been a site of Naxalite terrorism, as well as of CIA and NGO/Church interference in the government, as has Assam.

Many have seen such intervention as the soft-power arm of empire, operating through bribery and espionage. (9)
Afghanistan and Pakistan of course are targets of imperial hard-power, that is, bombs.

Ms. Burke didn’t explain why her anti-trafficking interests mesh so exactly with US strategic interests.

Recall that the Indian electric outage first began in the North-East region of India, as I blogged in July-August 2012. (10)

Since then, other bloggers have shown that there is evidence that the electricity outage might have been caused by Stuxnet. (11)

With that background, and with our current awareness of the level and depth of US and Israeli espionage against the entire globe, it is interesting to find that the Guwahati anti-trafficking conference promoted the use of software enabling cross-border collaboration between law-enforcement agencies prosecuting anti-trafficking cases. (12) (My emphasis)

Cross-border collaborations between intelligence agencies of countries as far apart in their ability to “project power” as the US and India must inherently be asymmetrical and accrue to the advantage of the more powerful country.

In short, collaboration may be just another pretext for Great Power spying for business and military ends.

Remember that the biometric ID has already been introduced in Afghanistan and is being pushed in India. (13)
Again, as with the anti-trafficking program, the ID is advocated with a “good governance” pretext, in this case, that it will reduce fraud in welfare distributions.

Returning to Florrie Burke’s tour of India as chief of the Freedom Network and its anti-trafficking agenda, we find that the Facebook page of the anti-trafficking conference at Guwahati shows an Indian newspaper editor (Editor, Sikkim Express) receiving the “Impulse” Model Award For Media Change Maker from Cristina Albertin, Representative, UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) Regional Office for South Asia. (14)

Awards are also being given to the editors of papers from Meghalaya.

Thomas Lim, editor Meghalaya Times and Deepak Singh, Associate Editor of Meghalaya Times received the Impulse Model Award For Media Change Maker from Helen LaFave, CG, U.S. Consulate, Kolkatta.

The presence of a US consular officer shows once again that the US government itself is never far behind altruistic “human rights” outfits.

To put this more bluntly, the national anti-trafficking coalition which has been vocally lobbying against Devyani Khobragade has also been canvassing support for its agenda among the media of outlying states in India.
These are the states with histories of being infiltrated and subverted by Maoists and Naxalites, often abetted by the CIA, American NGOs, proselytising churches and missionary bodies. (15)

In fact, since the arrest of Ms. Khobragade took place only a few days after this anti-trafficking grand tour, it wouldn’t be too much to wonder if the two were coordinated.

E.

The Indian media networks that endorse anti-trafficking also support key elements of the UN’s Agenda 21, which has the backing of George Soros, the billionaire front for the Zionist/Rothschild banking cartel.

The “Impulse” in Impulse Media, one of the groups referenced in the Face-book page of the anti-trafficking conference at Guwahati, refers to Impulse Social Enterprises, a group that says it supports ‘sustainable livelihoods for all.” (16)

Now, “sustainability” is a word that crops up frequently in any program espoused by the Western power-elite.

Peter Wood, executive director of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) says, “It turns out that virtually the entire agenda of the progressive left can be fit inside the word sustainability.'” (17)

In fact, the word “sustainability” is code for UN Agenda 21, signed by the US in 1992 (18):

Vice President Gore s book, Earth in the Balance, addressed many of the general issues of sustainability.

Within the past year, the President s Council on Sustainable Development has been organized to develop recommendations for incorporating sustainability into the federal government.

Also, various groups have been formed to implement Agenda 21, a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable development that was adopted at the recent UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro (the Earth Summit. )

and later,

A common misconception is that sustainability is synonymous with self-sufficiency; on the contrary, sustainability must recognize the interconnections between different levels of societal structure. (18)

One American activist writes:

“Agenda 21 is about total control of our personal property, our ability to travel, our energy consumption& health; the list literally goes on and on.

As Rosa Koire, author of Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21 states, under an Agenda 21 future, your energy consumption will be controlled until you can’t farm, can’t manufacture, can’t travel, can’t fish, can’t use your land.

Productivity and businesses are limited now.

Through pushing everyone into smart cities and onto smart grids, the Obama EPA s clampdown on coal, and the steering of all manner of public policy from land-use and land ownership restrictions to seemingly small traffic initiatives that ultimately restrict personal travel, evidence of Agenda 21 can be found everywhere we look these days.

It s just as former Rockefeller Board of Trustees member (the Rockefeller Foundation is behind Agenda 21 imitative America 2050? among others) and Earth Council Chairman Maurice Strong envisioned when he wrote the forward to ICLEI s The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide sustainable development implementation document:

In my parting words at the conclusion of the Earth Summit, I said that we all must move down from the Summit and into the trenches where the real world actions and decisions are taken that will, in the final analysis, determine whether the vision of Rio will be fulfilled and the agreements reached there implemented.

Of the many programs that have resulted from the Earth Summit, none is more promising or important than this one, which has hundreds of local authorities around the world now setting out and implementing their Local Agenda 21s.” (19)

It’s clear from this that the anti-human-trafficking program is closely tied to Sustainability and Human Rights, two of the pillars of the UN/CIA agenda and that the terms mean something far different from what they mean in ordinary usage.

The UN/CIA agenda has been shown by activists to be funded and supported by George Soros.

Soros is a billionaire front of the Rothschild banking cartel. (20)

Would it be too far-fetched to ask if there might not be a financial and strategic reason for the pursuit of the anti-trafficking agenda, and would it be too cynical to ask, cui bono?

(TO BE CONTINUED)

NOTES

(1) http://www.safehorizon.org/index/about-us-1/board-of-directors-88.html

Executive Committee members include the following:

Paul Germain, Global Head of Prime Services, Credit Suisse

Cheryl Abel-Hodges, President, Calvin Klein Underwear

Jeffrey S. Brodsky, Chief Human Resources Officer, Morgan Stanley

Nancy Clark, Senior Vice President, Operational Excellence & Process Transformation, Verizon
Founder Chairman A.S.O. A Second Opinion, Serves on Whole Foods Board and HSN Board

Linda Lam, Partner, Professional Practice Quality and Regulatory Matters, Ernst & Young

Rohit Menezes, Partner, The Bridgespan Group

Samantha Saperstein, Head of Card Strategy

Consumer and Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase

Mark C. Smith, Financial Advisor/ Account Vice President of Investments, UBS Financial Services Inc.

Many other corporate representatives.

(2) http://freedomnetworkusa.org/tag/florrie-burke/

(3)http://freedomnetworkusa.org/about-us/human-rights-approach/

(4) http://freedomnetworkusa.org/about-us/policy-advocacy/

(5) “Isn’t the Southern Poverty Law Center the Rea Hate Group?” Human Events, July 28, 2011.

http://www.humanevents.com/2011/07/28/isnt-the-southern-poverty-law-center-the-real-hate-group-2/

(6) http://www.safehorizon.org/index/what-we-do-2/court–community-58.html

(7) http://freedomnetworkusa.org/an-open-letter-to-ambassador-samantha-power-regarding-exploitation-charges-against-indian-diplomat/

(8) “Implement, Coordinate, Tackle: Florrie Burke – The Human Trafficking Menace,” Bikash Sarmah, The Sentinel, Guwahati, December 7, 2013
http://www.sentinelassam.com/mainnews/story.php?sec=1&subsec=0&id=177449&dtP=2013-12-08&ppr=1

(9)
See Introduction, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Fault-lines,” Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan, Amaryllis, July 1, 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-India-Interventions-Dravidian-Faultlines/dp/8191067374/ref=sr_1_2/190-4553732-5082940?m=ANJ49XFOVFOZN&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1388957989&sr=1-2

(10)

“War on India: Is Massive Electricity Outage Sabotage by Elites?” Lila Rajiva, Mind-Body Politic blog, July 31, 2013.

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2012/07/31/war-on-india-is-massive-electricity-outage-sabotage-by-elites/

(11) “India on the Grand Geo-Political Energy Chessboard – Part One,” Shelley Kasli, Great Game India blog, June 30, 2013
http://greatgameindia.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/india-on-the-grand-geopolitical-energy-chessboard-part-i/

(12) Facebook page of Impulse Social Enterprises
https://www.facebook.com/ImpulseSocialEnterprises?hc_location=timeline

TiP Conclave 3 Session 4 (5 photos)
Collaboration across the borders between the Law Enforcement through Anti-Human Trafficking Software
6th December 2013 in Guwahati, India.

(13) See “US Army Amasses Biometric Data in Afghanistan,” Jon Boone, The Guardian, UK, October 27, 2010.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/27/us-army-biometric-data-afghanistan

(14) Face-book page of Impulse Social Enterprises
https://www.facebook.com/ImpulseSocialEnterprises?hc_location=timeline

Amit Patro, Editor Sikkim Express, receives Impulse Model Award For Media Change Maker from Cristina Albertin, Representative, UNODC Regional Office for South Asia with Arijit Sen and Amit Patro in Guwahati, India.

(15) See Introduction, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan, Amaryllis, July 1, 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-India-Interventions-Dravidian-Faultlines/dp/8191067374/ref=sr_1_2/190-4553732-5082940?m=ANJ49XFOVFOZN&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1388957989&sr=1-2

See also, “Former IB Chief: Maoists Won’t Hurt Collector,” Sheila Bhatt, Rediff, April 23, 2012:
“Young Christians are their [Naxalites’] primary constituency,” he [Intelligence Bureau chief] added, “and they bank heavily on them in the jungles.”

For the history of Naxalite terrorism, see

“The Naxalite Rebellions,” Haider Ali Hussain Mullick, The American Interest,
August 11, 2013

http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/08/11/the-naxalite-rebellions/

Mullick writes:

“Today we spend less on training Indian security personnel than we do on security forces from Morocco, Tunisia, El Salvador, Poland and Pakistan. Compared to the zero dollars currently allocated to India in the Foreign Military Financing account, we provide $13.2 million to Bulgaria; $22 million to Indonesia; $35 million to Yemen; $42 million to Poland; and $296 million to Pakistan. Moreover, $800 million is allocated to Pakistan under the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund, with little bang for the buck. This distribution of resources, compared to both need and affinity, makes little sense.”

Rajiva: On the other hand, it makes perfect sense, if US-India security cooperation is less about security from terrorist threats and more about using the country as a cats-paw to further US goals in the region.

Note: The Global Terrorism Index 2012 ranks India in the top five countries around the world suffering from terrorism, ahead of countries like Somalia and Columbia in the number of terrorist incidents and deaths.

(16) See the website of Impulse Social Enterprises, http://impulsempower.com/

(17) “The Worst Campus Code-Word,” John Leo, April 19, 2008, www.mindingthecampus.com.
See also “From Diversity to Sustainability: How Campus Ideology is Born,” Peter Wood, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2013.

(18) “How Sustainable Is Our Planning?” Robert Odlund, American Planning Association Newsletter, 1994
The newsletter excerpts are cited in “You Want Proof? Here is the Smoking Gun,” Tom De Weese, News With Views, July 2, 2013
http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom235.htm

(19) Melissa Melton at Truth Stream Media.
http://truthstreammedia.com/smoking-gun-proof-sustainable-development-is-u-n-agenda-21/

See also “Behind the Green Mask,” Rosa Koire, The Post Sustainability Press, September 2, 2011
http://www.amazon.com/BEHIND-THE-GREEN-MASK-Agenda/dp/0615494544

Also, see the Post-Sustainability Institute
http://www.postsustainabilityinstitute.org/what-is-un-agenda-21.html

(20)  “George Soros Digs Deep for Human Rights With $100 million Gift,” The Independent, 2010.

(21) Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics
https://wikispooks.com/ISGP/intro.htm

“The donation will put the once-small group [Lila: Human Rights Watch] into the same league as organisations such as Amnesty International. The £65m will allow Human Rights Watch to add 120 members of staff to its 300-strong payroll, and almost double its annual budget to £50m, meaning it could expand operations in such countries as South Africa, China and India.”

Murray Rothbard: Hooray For Che!

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File under ideological insanity – Rothbard gives props to the people’s poseur, Che Guevara, whom even the anarchist left today has rejected:

“What made Che such an heroic figure for our time is that he, more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of Revolution. More than any man since the lovable but entirely ineffectual nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, Che earned the title of “professional revolutionary.” And furthermore, to paraphrase Christopher Jencks in a recent perceptive, if wrongheaded, article in the New Republic, we all knew that his enemy was our enemy–that great Colossus that oppresses and threatens all the peoples of the world, U. S. imperialism.

Trained as a physician in Argentina, witnessing CIA-fomented counter-revolution by the thug Castillo Armas in Guatemala, Guevara dedicated the rest of his life to the Revolution. He found a promising field first in Cuba, where, as everyone knows, Che was second only to Fidel Castro in waging and then winning the revolution there.”

and this:

But in his mighty heart Che could not refrain from leaping a whole raft of stages, from plunging romantically but recklessly into the premature adventure of armed struggle in Latin America. And so, with tragic irony, Che Guevara, in his daring and courage, was betrayed by the very Bolivian peasantry whom he was trying to liberate, and who barely understood the meaning
of the conflict. Che died from violating his own principles of revolutionary war.

And this, enthusiastically quoting from Fidel Castro’s praise of Che:

“Newspapers of all tendencies have univermlly recognized Che’s virtues… . He is an almost unique example of how a man could win the recognition and respect of his enemies, of the very enemies he faced with his arms in his hands, of those who have been ideological enemies and have nevertheless expressed feelings of admiration and of respect toward Che.”

Murray Rothbard, “Ernesto Che Geuvara: RIP,” Mises.org http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_1.pdf

See also this article from a strict anarcho-capitalist position about Rothbard’s misrepresentation of his views to placate or mislead followers: The 10 Points Of The Libertarian Party Abolitionist Caucus.pdf.

Note – My main objection to an-cap positions is that they are easily manipulated by the state (national and transnational) for its own ends. An an-cap world is possible, but only spottily.

Now, in contrast to Rothbard’s glowing portrait, here is a more candid assessment of Che’s actual record from the anarchistlibrary.org (Che Guevara: why anarchists should view him critically):

Organise, Issue 47, Winter 1997/1998
flag.blackened.net

QUOTE: “After all, the Che cult is still used to obscure the real nature of Castro’s Cuba, one of the final bastions of Stalinism.”

QUOTE: “He demanded the death penalty for “informers, insubordinates, malingerers and deserters.” He himself personally carried out executions. Indeed the first execution carried out against an informer by the Castroists was undertaken by Che. He wrote: “I ended the problem giving him a shot with a.32 pistol in the right side of the brain.” On another occasion he planned on shooting a group of guerrillas who had gone on hunger strike because of bad food. Fidel intervened to stop him. Another guerrilla who dared to question Che was ordered into battle without a weapon!”

QUOTE: “With the Castroite victory in 1959, Che, along with his Stalinist buddy Raul Castro, was put in charge of building up state control. He purged the army, carried out re-education classes within it, and was supreme prosecutor in the executions of Batista supporters, 550 being shot in the first few months. He was seen as extremely ruthless by those who saw him at work. These killings against supporters of the old regime, some of whom had been implicated in torture and murder, was extended in 1960 to those in the working class movement who criticised the Castro regime. The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists had their press closed down and many militants were thrown in prison. Che was directly implicated in this.”

QUOTE: “Photo opportunities with the peasantry and proletariat, good looks and a dramatic death in no way exonerate him from his historical role in the suppression of the popular classes, state terror and capitalism, and changing Cuba from the semi-colony of one great power the US, to another, the USSR.”

QUOTE: “I’d like to confess, papa, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing” “Hate will be an element of the battle, a merciless hate for the enemy, that will inspire the guerrilla-soldier to superhuman efforts of strength and changes him into an effective, violent, selected, in cold blood killing machine”

UK Foreign Office Warning to Travelers About Israeli Passport Forgery

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I didn’t have time to complete this post from a week ago, but with the really bizarre story of the Polish plane, I thought I should revisit it, as is:

At the end of March, Haaretz (March 31) reported that the British Foreign Office issued a travel advisory last week to citizens traveling to Israel and Palestine, “hours” after it decided to expel an Israeli diplomat.

“The risk applies in particular to passports without biometric security features,” the warning on the [UK foreign office] Web site said. “We recommend that you only hand your passport over to third parties including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary.”

This follows confirmation last week that killers of a Hamas operative in Dubai used forged passports from multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, France, Ireland, and Germany.

An editor at the Guardian notes that this is the lowest point in Anglo-Israeli relations since 1988, when an Israeli diplomat was expelled for being an agent of the Mossad.

Current relations with Israel are already strained, because senior Israeli officials visiting the UK have been threatened with arrest for alleged war crimes.

[Note:

The Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in January in a hit that Dubai police have said they are 99 percent certain was the work of Israel’s spy service, Mossad. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this.

Dubai has named 27 alleged conspirators in the pursuit and killing of the Palestinian, and has claimed that they used fraudulent British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports to enter and depart from Dubai. More than half of the people identified share the names of foreign-born Israeli nationals].

Earlier, UK foreign secretary David Miliband had said there were “compelling reasons” to believe Israel was responsible and had called the use of 12 forged British passports “intolerable,” according to an earlier report by the BBC (March 23).

Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, confirmed there would be no diplomatic retaliation, but expressed disappointment at Miliband’s decision. Israel has previously said there is no proof it was behind the killing at a Dubai hotel.

Israel claims the Australians are also going to follow suit, says this report:

“Official Israeli sources told The Australian newspaper that there is a high chance that Australia will follow Britain’s lead and also expel a high ranking Israeli diplomat. “It appears that Israeli officials have received indications in Canberra that Australia is preparing to expel a diplomat,” it said in the newspaper.”

Meanwhile, according to The Australian (March 31) ECAJ president Robert Goot told The Australian: “I think it would be an extreme reaction or possibly an overreaction (to expel an Israeli diplomat). The Jewish community would hope the Australian government might adopt a more nuanced position, depending on the outcome of the (Australian Federal Police) investigation.”

That’s not likely, now that former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky has told ABC Radio that the spy agency had used Australian passports for previous operations before last month’s hit on a top Hamas commander in Dubai that has been blamed on Israel. (see the Sydney Morning Herald (Feb 26, 2010)

Israel has previously dismissed claims from Ostrovsky, who has detailed various accusations against the country in his books. He said Mossad prefers to use “false flag” passports, as Israeli papers frequently invoke suspicion in the Middle East.

“They need passports because you can’t go around with an Israeli passport, not even a forged one, and get away or get involved with people from the Arab world,” he said.

“So most of these (Mossad) operations are carried out on what’s called false flag, which means you pretend to be of another country which is less belligerent to those countries that you’re trying to recruit from.”

Ostrovsky said Mossad had a “very, very expensive research department” dedicated to manufacturing the fake documents which simulates different types of paper and ink.

The Australian newspaper also said Ali Kazak, a former Palestinian representative to Australia, had warned in 2004 that a Mossad agent in Sydney had obtained 25 false Australian passports.

According to The Age (Feb 26, 2010), in Dec 2004, a second secretary in the Israeli embassy in Canberra was recalled because he was suspected of ties to passport fraud in New Zealand, where in March 2004 two suspected Mossad agents were convicted for fraudulently trying to get local passports. The New Zealand case eventually led to the downgrading of diplomatic ties and the canceling of Israeli PM Moshe Katsav’s visit.

The same report notes that Mossad used forged Canadian passports in 1997 in a bungled plot to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.

Then, as now, the Israeli prime minister, who has to approve all assassination attempts, was Benjamin Netanyahu.

Europol Now Official Police Agent of EU

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The New American (hat-tip to Michael Rozeff)

“According to the terms of its new status as the “official” criminal intelligence-gathering branch of the EU government, “Europol now benefits from increased powers to collect criminal information and a wider field of competence in supporting investigations.” Among these increased powers is the power to access the voluminous personal data stored on the computers of Scotland Yard if agents suspect a person may be participating in a “preparatory” act that may lead to criminal behavior.

As has been reported in The New American, the database of information compiled and stored by the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the most extensive in any developed nation. The database was established in 1995 and is the world’s largest. It contains the DNA material of over five million Britons, a figure that represents 8 percent of the population of England and Wales. The recording system was initially developed, ostensibly, to aid the police in the investigation of crime scenes and function as a “vital crime-fighting tool” in tracking down elusive offenders.

Now, every byte of that very personal information is available to Europol, without regard for the national laws of the United Kingdom. The relevant data to which Europol now has unfettered access includes political affiliation, routine, places frequented, DNA, tax obligations, voiceprints, and sexual preference. In fine, everything stored on those massive mainframes is now firmly within the province of distant Europol investigators.

The standard for granting Europol access to the personal data of Britons is much different from that governing their own national law enforcement. According to terms of Title VI of the Maastricht Treaty, the Europol Convention, and the new directives, a mere suspicion of likely criminal behavior in the following vague areas will trigger Europol investigation: racism, environmental crime, xenophobia, computer fraud, and crimes against the environment.

You read that correctly, Europol can now extract “behavioral data” on any citizen of any member state that it suspects — rightly or wrongly — is likely participating in any of the above listed “serious crimes.”

Headley Spy Case Raises Questions In India About CIA Role

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Asia Times columnist M. K. Bhadrakumar writes that US citizen David Headley, a key player (Indian sources say, the mastermind), in the November 2008 Mumbai  terrorist attack that killed 166  people* has reached a plea bargain with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that allows the US Government to hold back from producing evidence against him in a court of law that would have revealed details of his ties to US intelligence. [*163, according to the NY Times, March 26, 2010; 165, according to the Wash Po, March 27, 2010]

Headley will be protected from cross-examination by the prosecutor, and the 166 victims will not be represented by a lawyer at the Chicago trial that’s now commencing.

Nor can he be extradited to India or questioned by Indian agencies about his links to US and Pakistani intelligence.

(Note: He will be accessible to India through video conferencing, deposition, and Letters Rogatory)

Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American socialite from Philadelphia (according to the NY Times piece), was a drug-pusher in the 1990s who then went on to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency.

He’s said to have prepared for the attack with five visits to India between 2006 and 2008, each time returning via Pakistan and meeting with several handlers, some of whom included members of the terrorist group Lakshar-e-Toiba (LeT), which has close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)

Headley has reportedly named five-six serving officers of the Pakistan army as among the leaders of the Karachi Project, which organizes attacks on India through fugitive Indian jihadis being sheltered in Karachi by the ISI and the LeT.

The Asia Times article goes on to ask some questions about the CIA’s possible involvement that are likely to strain US-Indian relations:

“How much did the CIA know?
The plea bargain details that while working as an American agent Headley attended at least five “training courses” conducted by the LeT in Pakistan, including sessions in the use of weapons and grenades, close-combat tactics and counter-surveillance techniques, from February 2002 until December 2003.

Training courses in April and in December 2003 were each of three months’ duration and in such close proximity to the 9/11 attacks that it stretches credulity to believe the CIA didn’t care to know what their agent was doing in the LeT training camps.

Today, the heart of the matter is how much did the CIA know in advance about the Mumbai terrorist strike and whether the Obama administration shared all “actionable intelligence” with Delhi?

A senior Indian editor wrote on Sunday, “Headley … was convicted on drug charges and sent to jail in the US. We know also that he was subsequently released from jail and handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which said that it wanted to send him to Pakistan as an undercover agent. All this is a matter of public record. What happened between the time the US sent Headley into Pakistan and his arrest at Chicago airport a few months ago? How did an American agent turn into a terrorist? The US will not say.”

Yet, cooperation in the fight against terrorism lies within the first circle of US-India strategic cooperation. The Mumbai attacks led to unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the US – “breaking down walls and bureaucratic obstacles between the two countries’ intelligence and investigating agencies”, as a prominent American security expert, Lisa Curtis, underscored in US congressional testimony on March 11 regarding the Mumbai attacks and Headley.

To quote Curtis, “Most troubling about the Headley case is what it has revealed about the proximity of the Pakistani military to the LeT.”

Curtis put her finger spot on the US government’s deliberate policy to view the LeT through the prism of India-Pakistan adversarial ties. This is despite all evidence of the LeT’s significant role since 2006 as a facilitator of the Taliban’s operations in Afghanistan by providing a constant stream of fighters – recruiting, training and infiltrating insurgents across the border from the Pakistani tribal areas.

The US policy is impeccably logical. It prioritizes the securing of Islamabad’s cooperation on what directly affects American interests rather than squandering away Pakistani goodwill by Washington covering for the Indians.

This political chicanery lies at the core of the unfolding Headley drama. What emerges, even if one were to give the benefit of the doubt to the CIA, is that Headley was its agent but he possibly got involved with Pakistan-based terrorist organizations and became a double agent

No doubt, the US administration is behaving very strangely. It has something extremely explosive to hide from the Indians and what better way to do that than by placing Headley in safe custody and not risk exposing him to Indian intelligence?”