In 2012, Germany celebrated Fredrick the Great and Prussian militarism, and by default foreskin tickling moustaches & a legacy of pedophilia, sacked cities and mass rape, so proud! Commemorating the German NATO alliance, we add ‘honorable mentions’ & ‘members’ ex officio to the ‘Tickle Dick Hall of Fame.’ On behalf of ordinary citizens, especially children, suffering collateral suffering and death due to these dickhead’s ire while NATO states provide chemical weapons to Salifist militants and launders Islamic State oil (and more)
The Tickle Dick Hall of Fame
Beware! My moustache will gore your foreskin like the Bulls of Pamplona!
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Won’t give me a blow-job? I’ll put you in chains!!
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My sweet little goat-herd .. we train them well with practice on the animals .. from the earliest age!
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The crown of syphilis adorns my headdress!
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Privilege of Prussian field marshals, a sweet collection in the stable!
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A man dead for each bit of string on right, a woman raped or a boy-child bred for every string on the left! I am so proud of my soldiers!
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Even the serfs emulate us!
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That boy! His tunic! May I slip it off unseen!?!
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Try it and I’ll tickle your dick with my hammer! (they shot that kid)
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How might I tickle thee? Let me count the ways!
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First choice you fuck the sheep, if none is available, it must be the boy, and if no boys? Ah dear colleague, might we retire and refresh ourselves with a session of ‘tickle-dickia’? Not possible this afternoon? Then we must find women to rape! That makes a man!
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The syphilitic badge of honor!
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When he grows up?
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A great Tickle Dick!
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Inspired by the ‘little fishies’ of a certain Roman emperor Tiberius! Caesar, Kaiser, Sultan, we are the same!
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A medal for every city sacked, one loop in the braid for every rape, that history may never forget!! Let us celebrate the Tickle Dick!!!!
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Do not shy away dear vanquished foe, oral sex performed upon your Prussian captor is not such a bad fate!
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Ah yes, behind closed doors with the children!
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We ‘love’ our captive children in the garden, in secret, no problem!
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‘Tickle Dick Hall of Fame’ celebrates ‘the child’ Frederick!
Red rag & pink flag Black shirt & brown Strut-mince & Stink-brag Have all come to town Some like it shot Some like it hung Some like it in the twot Nine months young
-EE Cummings
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Franconia’s guest entry
Bonaparte |ˈbōnəˌpärt|
verb [ trans. ] (bone + apart)
(chiefly in historical contexts) sack of a city by organized erections
Origin of ‘boner’
queer |kwi(ə)r|
1 adjective
strange; odd: Le Cercle members have a queer political orientation; it follows, John Bolton is a rather queer fellow.
2 verb [ with obj. ]
spoil or ruin (an agreement, event, or situation): Bolton was brought onboard to queer the deal with Iran
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Aspiring ‘members’
orifice |ˈôrəfis|
noun
an opening, as of one in the body, such as a mouth or the anus.
ORIGIN late Middle English: from French, from late Latin orificium, from os, or- ‘mouth’ + facere ‘make.’
Updated 31 July 2016: So, now in (post-coup attempt) Turkey it’s a choice between the democratically elected paranoid narcissist Erdogan, who’s been intimate with the CIA in the efforts to overthrow Assad, behaving somewhat like Mao during the cultural revolution (democratic principles have recently died in Turkey the attentive might notice) embarking on a massive purge of the CIA sponsored Gulen movement and turning to the Russians to keep him in power; or whoever NATO (a future coup) will again attempt replacing him with. Some choice.
Meanwhile (pre-coup attempt) a Gulen associated newspaper, Today’s Zaman, had been shut down by Erdogan following its’ reporting Turkey’s intelligence agency MIT was doing business with Islamic State (supplying arms), as well MIT had facilitated supplying the sarin components used by al-Qaida at Ghouta, Syria in August 2013 (blamed in western media on Assad.) The journalists were jailed. The CHP deputies (members of parliament) who’d produced the sarin investigative files (by now jailed investigating police and judges) have since had their immunity lifted. The main opposition CHP (Republican People’s Party), also under repression, can hardly be accused of any historic sympathy for Gulen. The censored reporting checks out as absolutely legitimate and had been doing the USA no favors. So, who did the shutting down of Today’s Zaman benefit? It follows, the post-coup attempt Gulen ‘fifth column’ purge argument is simplistic, inaccurate, serves as cover for a much wider purge on behalf of the blossoming dictator Erdogan, and as well has been about shutting up news outlets exposing Erdogan as complicit in CIA associated crimes. It’s not a black & white movie folks. If the CHP has been recently linking up with the so-called Gulen movement, it is most certainly survival driven. Then, there’d been the Zaman reporting on the (not so small) matter of Islamic State doing the bulk of its oil exports via Erdogan’s Turkey, as noted previously by the Russians (and admitted by the Pentagon.)
A bit of post-coup attempt levity on Turkey’s purge of the so-called ‘Gulen movement’ or ‘fifth column’ would be an analogy; if every Reform Jew in the USA were fired from their civil service job, inclusive of police, judges, educators, military, legislators, mayors and more, because their leadership were international criminals in bed with MOSSAD via AIPAC, the result would be tens of thousands of honest civil servants who went to work every day simply to do a honest job; purged as a so-called ‘fifth column.’ Tens upon tens of thousands of firings and arrests in Turkey because Gulen has slept with the CIA (Erdogan had done that as well) cannot be construed to be neutralizing a ‘fifth column’ but should rather be construed to be a fracturing society on the road to a police state and likely civil war. The CIA associated Gulen’s notorious rival, the (until just recently) CIA associated paranoid-narcissist Erdogan, might be in some respects popular but popularity does not excuse world class crimes. Meanwhile, the Russians might consider the criminal character and motives of Erdogan, now that he’s pivoting in their direction (I’m certain Putin has no illusions about the filthy character embodied in the current President of Turkey.) It follows, NATO is about to come apart at the seams, Turkey had been their historic under-belly access to Russia and storage site of up to 100 tactical nuclear weapons, guarded by Erdogan’s military. Listen hard for the fellatio the Pentagon will be required to perform to attempt correcting another CIA world class screw-up that can never be admitted; as it would appear the CIA, with a failed coup attempt, just handed control of a Pentagon nuclear arsenal to an unstable paranoid nominally in charge of nation in process of imploding.
Note 1: Those inclined to endorse Erdogan’s mistaken belief the attempted coup was orchestrated via the US military at Incirlik airbase should be disabused of such a fantasy; recalling military career is almost certainly the most common of all CIA operative covers, surpassing the Department of State diplomatic corps.
Note 2: Seven thousand militarized Turkish police suddenly mobilized at Adana, Turkey, location of NATO’s Incirlik airbase coincides with the emergency visit of the USA’s top military commander sending a message concerning the facility where Turkey secures up to 100 of NATO’s (USA) tactical nuclear weapons.
16 March 2016, Today’s Zaman English language website has been taken down. Replacing it is a Turkish language pro-government webpage. More on censored Zaman stories HERE. It didn’t take long, since 6 March when you would go to the Turkish language Zaman website you’d see…
…which translates to English: “The Zaman Gazette website is being updated. Soon we will provide more quality and unbiased service to our readers”
Meanwhile it is reported the 6 March Sunday Zaman paper sold in Turkey’s newstands runs a headline of Erdogan at a newly constructed bridge ribbon cutting ceremony…
…with Erdgan’s court trustee conflict of interest evidence and related incriminating documents and other information disappeared (but preserved here.)
Here is the last pre-censorship article (screenshot headline followed by preserved illustrations and text) of Today’s Zaman in Istanbul. Future editions will be published (if anything is published) by the minions of Sultan Erdogan’s state apparatus and one of the last, important voices of dissent reporting on the crimes of NATO’s Turkey will have been silenced. Today’s Zaman’s sins? Reporting on corruption in the present Turkey regime, inclusive Turkey doing arms business with Islamic State, Turkish intelligence providing the sarin precursor chemicals to al-Nusra (al-Qaida) used to kill 1,400 Syrians; blamed on Assad… examples given.
4 March 2015
An İstanbul court has appointed trustees to take over the management of the Feza Media Group, which includes Turkey’s biggest-selling newspaper, the Zaman daily, as well as the Today’s Zaman daily and the Cihan news agency, dealing a fresh blow to the already battered media freedom in Turkey.
The decision was issued by the İstanbul 6th Criminal Court of Peace at the request of the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, which claimed that the media group acted upon orders from what it called the “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure (FETÖ/PDY),” praising the group and helping it achieve its goals in its publications.
The prosecutor also claimed that the alleged terrorist group is cooperating with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization to topple the Turkish government and that high-level officials of the two groups have had meetings abroad.
The court decision means that the entire management and the editorial board of Feza Media Group companies will be replaced by the three-member board named by the court.
A crowd of Zaman and Today’s Zaman journalists, readers and supporters gathered outside Zaman’s headquarters as court-appointed trustees were expected to arrive at any moment.
Zaman Editor-in-Chief Abdülhamit Bilici addressed his colleagues on the grounds of the newspaper, calling the court decision a “black day for democracy” in Turkey as journalists and other newspaper workers held up signs that read: “Don’t touch my newspaper” and chanted “free press cannot be silenced!”
“Today, we are experiencing a shameful day for media freedom in Turkey. Our media institutions are being seized,” Today’s Zaman Editor-in-Chief Sevgi Akarçeşme said as she addressed the crowd.
“As of today, the Constitution has been suspended,” she said, referencing to the fact that the Turkish Constitution forbids seizure of printing houses and press equipment.
Şahin Alpay, a veteran political expert and a columnist for both Zaman and Today’s Zaman, lamented the situation, saying Turkey is having a “dark day” when one of the most prominent media outlets in the country is being confiscated at the order of a political leader.
“It is utterly saddening, particularly for people of my generation, that Turkey is turning into a third-world dictatorship,” Alpay said.
The takeover of Zaman comes as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) that he founded intensified pressure on the Turkish media. Zaman, which is affiliated with the Gülen movement, is one of the few opposition media outlets in the country, which is dominated by pro-government television stations and newspapers.
Turkey’ satellite provider Türksat halted the broadcast of the independent İMC TV station last week on terrorism charges. Two newspapers and two television stations owned by Koza İpek Holding were placed under the management of a trustee board on charges of financing terrorism in October 2015. Those media outlets were closed down by the trustee board due to financial losses last week.
“This is not a matter of a fight between the government and the [Gülen] movement. This is a matter of existence for Turkey,” columnist Levent Gültekin said as he joined the crowd outside Zaman in a show of solidarity. “Just a few days ago, they pulled the plug on İMC TV for ‘supporting terrorism,’ which is a massive lie.”
Erdoğan declared the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, his number one enemy after a corruption investigation in December 2013 that implicated people in his inner circle. He accused alleged sympathizers of the movement within the judiciary and the police of staging a coup against his rule. The corruption charges were dropped after prosecutors of the case were replaced.
According to the court’s decision three trustees were appointed to the Feza Media Group. One of the trustees is Sezai Şengönül, who serves as an editor at a news website. The two others are lawyers are Tahsin Kaplan and Metin İlhan.
İlhan’s social media accounts showed that he is an open supporter of the AK Party and Erdoğan. His personal Twitter account’s background photo shows Erdoğan and Davutoğlu while some of his tweets even included insults at main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
I noticed an attack on this letter (below) in the comments at third party media basically smearing Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) by association with Bernard Kouchner, a man that departed the organization more than 35 years ago over philosophical differences. I had supported Doctors Without Borders because they had been apolitical, and largely neutral in conflicts. This neutrality had begun a process of erosion in Syria. Unlike the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, where there was no question of which belligerent controlled the air power responsible (NATO’s USA), and where the organization called for an independent, third party investigation, those actors responsible for the attacks concerning the MSF aligned clinics in Syria are not as convincing and clear, arguably creating even more pressing demand for impartial, third party investigation.
Following these most recent attacks on clinics aligned with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Syria, Mego Terzian, President of MSF France, immediately blamed Russia and Assad. MSF International President has gone on record also blaming Russian aligned forces, stating “It was probably carried out by the Syrian-government-led coalition that is predominantly active in the region.” This statement of Dr Liu is disingenuous. Turkey is a major player in its support for jihadi militia in that very area and has a vested interest in information operations intended to undermine the coalition supporting the Assad regime. This is the purpose of false flag attacks. Recent history demands if the finger of superficial appearance had pointed to the NATO aligned nations, there would be calls for impartial investigation rather than immediate trial and conviction by propaganda operations perpetrated in western media.
Relevant to this preceding, it is a fairly safe presumption all high profile international non-governmental organizations will be targets of intelligence agencies for diverse purpose. However there is a large qualitative difference between that organization and the organization which, on the whole, has been tipped by intelligence to a point of co-option; where the organization itself has become the intelligence agency operations asset. Médecins Sans Frontières would appear to be pointed towards this co-option. Here is my response:
Dear MSF
A monthly donor of many years, I feel an explanation is in order for my cancellation and further refusal to participate as a MSF “Field Partner.” I am a former military special operations intelligence professional and anti-corruption investigator of many years. Based on my expertise in open source intelligence analysis and closely following several of the ongoing conflicts, including Ukraine and SYRIA, it has become clear MSF is becoming a tool for geopolitical ends. Either you’ve been penetrated by intelligence agencies for this purpose of promoting false flag information operations or your organization is being manipulated to same effect. I cannot, with clear conscious, be a party to this with further contributions.
The several NATO intelligence agencies are in full force pursuing anti-Russian propaganda operations, which likely include the recent attacks on MSF aligned Syrian clinics; purposeful and professional operations intended to smear Russia and President Putin for purposes of generating political capital for pursuit of geopolitical manipulations. Your organization immediately pointing the finger at Assad and/or the Russians, without time taken to properly investigate, is unethical.
NATO aligned intelligence agency false flag examples provided:
NATO’s Turkey suppressing investigation into their intelligence agency, MIT, providing sarin gas to al Nusra (al Qaida) that killed 1,400 Syrians at Ghouta, blamed on the Assad regime, in August, 2013. Turkish parliamentarians complain of the suppressed facts:
The Maidan snipers in Kiev trained by the CIA according to Member of European Parliament, backed by a leaked phone call between the EU foreign policy chief and the Estonian Foreign minister revealing the snipers were aligned with the new regime in Kiev. This crime had been blamed on the Russian aligned preceding government.
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The crimes in Syria against MSF aligned facilities serve the same propaganda purposes and the Erdogan government cannot be ruled out as committing them, whereas it is NOT in the Russian interest to perpetrate these attacks. Here is a list of Turkish support for bad actors in Syria compiled by Jihad Watch:
It is sad to see MSF go the route of some other organizations and become a pawn of dirty players in geopolitics. I suggest your organization pursue a professional investigation to determine how, and by who, you’ve become manipulated to both a stooge and minion of evil.
“The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime” -Voltaire
note: since I’d written this piece, the Erdogan administration (Turkish government) seized Today’s Zaman newspaper and killed the linked story on the gas attack at Ghouta, Syria, forwarded to MSF in the letter. Anticipating some possibility like this, I had preserved screen shots and the story’s complete text which now may be found by clicking HERE
Originally composed in 2011, this satire is timeless as the corruption cases surrounding Nicolas Sarkozy just never go away. Today, investigating judges handed down preliminary charges of cheating with overspending on his last election with possibility of further charges including money laundering and fraud charges; this on top of a separate investigation involving selling political favors.
Free speech clown series
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Maison de l’Histoire de France
In the annals of two great secular democracies, France has kept her Bastille Day political traditions more intact than the USA has preserved the 4th, but certainly France is not beyond lampooning or, perhaps better said, France has acquired a national habit of self-satirizing, having elected a Hungarian elf with an erection [for jaded super-models] president:
Nicolas Sarkozy, a.k.a. ‘Elfie Fling-fling’, picked up bulemia inspired cat walk queen Carla Bruni within days of his wife Cecelia dumping him for being an elf without a soul. Rather than examine his soulless priorities, having made a big show of a famous socialist humanitarian [Bernard Kouchner] appointed his foreign minister, then Elfie cuddled up with George Bush [apparently soulless Hungarian elves with erections are politically bi-sexual]
More recently the elf tried to strong-arm the employee owned newspaper ‘Le Monde’ into selling itself to one of his politically aligned conservative buddies and failed
Then again, this perpetually erect elf was in the news over a much larger strong-arm robbery-
Enters the scene one erect elf’s acquaintance, gay French troll Francoise-Marie Banier, photographer of modern foppery, who’d pick-pocketed France’s most wealthy woman, 87 year old L’Oreal fortune senility princess Liliane Bettencourt, for over one billion bucks “he is killing me .. give me this, give me that” and [Agatha Christie wrote this next, there can be no other explanation] the senile L’Oreal heiress complies in conversations recorded by her butler
^ Banier
What shows up on the recordings?? One Hungarian elf with an erection tried to block the case coming to court, also his finance minister had solicited and received a bribe of a top-end job for his wife with one senile billionaire heiress’ financial manager, Patrice de Maistre, de Maistre himself [Managing Director at Clymène] is heard telling Bettencourt that she has given Banier, via a foundation, an island in the Seychelles, meanwhile one erect elf managed palace [center of government] “will use people we know” to prevent one gay troll photographer of foppery having to pay back a strong arm robbery proceeds of a billion euro and give up having been named sole heir to the richest woman in France .. all put in the hands of investigating magistrates who, as predicted on tape, declined to prosecute. Next scene?
The Hungarian elf moves to secure his legacy with establishing the ‘Maison de l’Histoire de France’ and it all moves over to a planning session on what it means to be French .. with a peculiar ‘taste’ of colonial Déjà vu.
Invited to the group overseeing the new institution are the elf’s closest confidants .. to include his wife Carla, ex-wife Cecelia and wealthy political patrons, however confused or criminal they might be.. and of course one particularly accomplished con man among this fellowship of con men .. The location is a mansion in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the wealthiest town in France, just outside Paris..
In the men’s room..
Elfie to Banier: I had never known such an ordeal. Never would I have imagined that I would be so profoundly distressed. What was I doing, lobbying you to seduce this woman! Rather I fell in love with you almost immediately. I thought, I must have that man. He’s mine!!
Patrice: Francoise-Marie, I’m going to come straight to the point and it’s a little awkward…. do you still feel like giving Elfie a present? If you do, it should be through Switzerland, not here. And it would facilitate our plans to buy the little boy-whore this legacy of his dreams. There you are. Chlamydia will set up the new project with you, my dear Francoise-Marie. But we are not going to ask Liliane for more money? It wouldn’t smell right
Banier: Not money. An island. That’s it. So, then I can give the island to the lawyer and afterwards..
Elfie interrupts: We live in a world where people don’t all have the same scruples, where all blow jobs cannot be given, and where, to go down on somebody, all means cannot be used. Despite this, nothing will lead me astray from the path that I have chosen. I’m inclined, personally, to think that we Catholics are born pedophile, and it’s a problem that we no longer know how to conceal this pathology. To say I am Peter Pan, it is a lie! To never grow up does not determine a victim!!
Patrice: Yes. Isn’t that odd? [He laughs]
Elfie: How will it go with the project? Francoise-Marie, you are my true soulmate, the person without whom nothing I do would be possible. At the end of the day, my only real worry is you, my Francoise-Marie
Patrice: There is no stopping him
Banier: Yes, the Maison de l’Histoire de France will be funded, I have found a lawyer, he is such a good fuck. Do you have anything against … Lilliane will be buying her own island back again?
Elfie: À coeur vaillant rien d’impossible
Meanwhile, in the ladies’ powder room..
Carla explains to Cecelia: I’m just starting. Nothing was calculated, nothing foreseen. I’ve never been married before and I’m Italian and I don’t like divorce. Therefore I’m the First Lady of France until the end of my husband’s term, and then his wife until death. I know that can hold surprises .. Narcissism lasts a long time, but burning desire — two to three minutes. I’m at most monogamous from moment to moment, I prefer polygamy and polyandry
Cecelia to Carla: Poor girl! In America you would be a Valley Girl, colloquial, materialistic, self-centered, hedonistic, sexually promiscuous, spoiled with more interest in shopping and social status than intellectual development or personal accomplishment
Liliane: I have a feeling Banier is here to ask me for something. Do you know what for?
Cecelia: Fellatio, what else?
Liliane: It’s always the same. He becomes too demanding. Give me this, give me that!
Carla: What is it with these men? Is this why Elfie does not care for my natural orifice?
Cecelia: How did you become pregnant?
Carla: I spit it into a dish at the clinic!
Cecelia: Fellatio bores me stiff, but it can be useful for more than ‘in vitro.’ Carla, if it had been YOU gave the elf a blow job, rather than Bernard-Henri Levy, there would have been no war in Libya, these men are like putty!
Carla: I could not! I was holidaying in Thailand with Benji Biolay, my shaggy dog pop star. Benji’s stiffy is young and does not shrink from natural accommodation. You see, this is why Benji is a ‘bio-lay’ [Carla smirks]
Lilliane calms things: Is that a Jewish name? Excuse me, but I meant is that a reference to ‘kosher’? Please, let me explain something. At my age I have some knowledge of colonial history. To understand fellatio in these men, one must first understand France when Vietnam was French .. and nước mắm. You see all of these men demanding this fermented fish oil, they keep it in the study on the desk. A flask in the pocket. On the nightstand with a shot glass. Why? I will tell you they do not use it as intended with spices .. if only because it’s unadulterated aroma resembles a certain something they do not readily admit. During the siege of Dien Bien Phu, the Legionaires exhausted their supplies of nước mắm. You know, only practicing French Roman Catholics are allowed to be officers. This is the greed, sliminess, snobbishness, hypocrisy, the anti-Semitism that lies beneath our carpet of Catholic haute-bourgeoisie in France. And when the Legionaires discovered the officer’s breath did not change when the nước mắm was exhausted, they could not fight. Suddenly it had been discovered the Legion is gay..
Cecilia: This is why France elected a man, not a couple … we tried everything, I tried everything. But Elfie’s breath disguised as nước mắm, his breath is just so disgusting. A woman with class does not swallow and can wash out the aroma .. will men never learn? To think they would depend on an alibi, the aroma of fermented fish! Please, Carla, you MUST take the seat closest to the elf..
The planning session begins..
Elfie: Today, Cécilia and I are reunited for the good of French history, for real, doubtless for ever, because we are not able and do not know how to separate from each other. Do not be surprised at my appointing her to this group to determine a direction, to establish the Maison de l’Histoire de France as a geographical territory with a soul. And it is so with each of you, a responsibility to adduce the pretensions of France to a certain historical reality..
Carla: Elfie isn’t addicted to power and that’s what makes him courageous. Except for his peculiar breath, I love being with him more than anything. To be certain, I will be seated according to the respect demanded of a hand-maiden to the French people
Elfie: But, I prefer a mouth to the hand
Cecelia: Without a doubt, this is why you have invited Francoise-Marie Banier..
Carla: I can no longer seduce my husband .. I don’t want to hurt him. Thank you Francoise-Marie, because of you, I am no longer a man-eater, I make no mistakes with my teeth!
Banier: As premier mouth-maiden to France, I say it will be established at the Maison de l’Histoire de France, to be French is to ‘sniff’ with a certain éclat. You do this so very well, my sweet Elfie Fling-fling. And I do not mind your breath, because ..
‘C’est pourquoi ils nous appellent les grenouilles’
“It’s why they call us frogs”
Since this satire had been originally composed in 2010, following initial failure to prosecute, the French judicial system has opened criminal investigation into Sarkozy for ‘abuse of the elderly’ tied to whether Sarkozy had accepted large amounts of illegal campaign money from Bettencourt. Since, he’s escaped that but faces a raft of other corruption charges, notably taking millions in illegal cash from Gaddafi, nothing quite like murdering the witnesses against you, eh?
Using google search ‘sarkozy prosecutions’ (top results)
May 7, 2015 – Setback: Criminal investigations into Nicolas Sarkozy will now continue … from prosecution, the Paris home Sarkozy shares with his third wife, …
Sep 24, 2013 – Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy may still face trial for allegedly taking advantage of an ageing millionairess to finance his 2007 …
Jul 4, 2012 – Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has lost his immunity from prosecution and faces three judicial investigations. Photograph: Laurent …
Nov 2, 2015 – Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is under investigation for his involvement … After the pilots were able to escape prosecution, French …
Apr 12, 2007 – Nicolas Sarkozy, the favourite to become France’s new president, denied allegations yesterday that he had struck a deal with the outgoing …
Jan 27, 2009 – A Left-wing cartoonist is to go on trial on Tuesday on charges of anti-Semitism for suggesting Jean Sarkozy, the son of the French president, …
May 8, 2015 – “It’s potentially very dangerous for Nicolas Sarkozy, judicially speaking. What he is accused of can lead him to be prosecuted and convicted …
Jun 15, 2012 – The former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is facing prosecution. His presidential immunity expires this Friday, so he may soon have to …
Jan 15, 2009 – The centerpiece of Sarkozy’s plan calls for the abolishment of … or British accusatorial legal systems, in which prosecution and defense teams …
A shot at the CIA engineered coup d’état in Ukraine. More information/documentation below film-maker Paul Moreira’s damning rebuttal of the critics attacking his work:
The film western intelligence doesn’t want you to see
Trailer at vimeo; The English sub-titled and original French versions of the film by Paul Moreira almost immediately taken down by youtube following its release by Canal+ TV in France. Now, via ‘LiveLeaks’ embed, Russian Insider magazine has posted the English subtitled version, you can watch it HERE. An interesting aside, at ‘LiveLeaks‘ the film is accompanied by this patent disinformation:
“Documentary: Ukraine – Masks of revolution. Eng. Subs. VPE presents highly anticipated, contorversial (to some) documentary about so called Maidan revolution. Movie itself has been produced by high ranking agents of Kremlin inside of French Canal+ TV channel”
^ This small snippet (blatant lie, actually) is a smoking gun LiveLeaks is penetrated/co-opted by western intelligence; intent on discrediting Moreira’s work. This film has Kiev’s ‘authorities’ (empowered by CIA backed neo-nazis) squealing like electrocuted pigs, so it hit a nerve.
After vicious attacks on the film by neocon media, Moreira put forward his defense:
When I started this investigation on Ukraine, I was astonished to discover the degree to which the massacre in Odessa [May 2, 2014] had faded from memory. Forty five people were killed in a huge fire in the heart of a major European city in the middle of the 21st century. Everything was filmed by dozens of cameras and cell phones. Yet around me, no one remembered.
Forty five Ukrainians of Russian origin died in a fire inside a building [the Trades Union House in the city center of Odessa] caused by the Molotov cocktails of Ukrainian nationalist militias. After a quick investigation, I discovered that the event had not been censored. It had been addressed, discussed, but never investigated. As though too embarrassing to discuss.
Why no investigation? Probably because the victims were of Russian origin. These victims were reported as “persons” but without knowing who they were, who killed them and why they were dead. “Persons” who were nobodies.
In speaking of these deaths, our democracies should have expressed some sympathy, officially, solemnly. There should have been strong reactions by chancelleries. Press releases by ministries of foreign affairs. [However], following the Russian invasion of Crimea, Russian-speaking populations in the conflict were assigned the roles of villains.
What happened on that May 2, 2014, in Odessa? I discovered the answer after viewing hours of video shootings, interviewing dozens of witnesses, finding victims and aggressors and comparing the stories until I pieced together facts that make sense of this fury. Important fact: I interviewed and have broadcast only direct witnesses of events – the people I saw on videos – in order to filter to some extent the exaggerations and lies that arise in such a circumstance, on the side of the attackers as well as victims. The result of this painstaking work is at the heart of the film to be broadcast Monday evening [February 1] by Canal Plus [Canal +].
During my investigation into this massacre of little exposure, I saw the importance of Ukrainian nationalist militias. They were at the forefront of street fighting on Maidan Square (January-February 2014], and later formed battalions to fight Russian troops in the east of the country. But these battalions were merged into the army. They did not exercise the same discipline. They were able to serve as auxiliaries to the government; or become a parallel police. And, yes, in their ranks, the signs of neo-Nazi ideology were obvious.
My investigation went against the commonly accepted narrative. I knew I was going to meet strong opposition, that we would be accused of playing into the hands of Putin, to voice elements of Russian propaganda. I did not expect to meet with such huge denial, bordering on hysteria at times. On a Ukrainian website, I am called a “terrorist” in the pay of the Russian secret service. The site calls for a ban on the film. Even the Ukrainian ambassador to France pressured Canal Plus [not to screen the film]. That is what surprises me the most. For it seems to me that Ukraine must ask itself about these paramilitary groups. They are, as stated in the film, the greatest threat to Ukrainian democracy. To renounce saying what one knows to be the truth because “it plays into Russian propaganda” is to become a propagandist oneself. One omits, not because we are liars but because we are full of good intentions. But never forget that from such omissions, the worst conspiracy theories are born.
In France, the accusations against the film have come mainly from two militant blogs and an unusually violent writing by the reporter in charge of Ukraine in Le Monde, Benoit Vitkine. In all three publications, the arguments are similar. It is said I did not nuance enough my perception of the extreme right, which ranges from dark brown neo-Nazism to light-beige nationalism. I exaggerated the importance of the paramilitary groups, armed with Kalashnikovs and sometimes with tanks. I have not stressed enough their heroic role in their fight against the Russians. I exaggerated the influence of Americans in the regime change [of February 2014].
And then certain factual errors are pinpointed. I’ll try to answer them here.
To question the rigor of my documentary, Benoit Vitkine cites one, sole example. He accuses me of having created out of my imagination the manufacture of a new generation of tanks by the nationalist battalion Azov (for which he seems to feel a fond indulgence). But it’s the truth. Andriy Biletsky, the head of the battalion, sang to me its praises [manufactured tank] with much pride. 1.2 meters of armored shield in the front and steering video cameras used to steer it. The technical details of this new beast of war can be found here.
Benoit Vitkine is well aware that Andriy Biletsky comes from the most radical extreme right. His electoral standing is low (although he is a Rada deputy), but his standing in steel and in battle-hardened men is strong.
Then Benoit Vitkine insinuates, without citing anything in support, that my purpose is to highlight “the installation of a new fascism in Ukraine”. Vitkine must be very angry to write such things. I never said that fascism had settled in Ukraine. The key phrase of my documentary is: “The Ukrainian revolution has created a monster that will soon turn against its creator.” And then I tell how far-right groups attacked the parliament and killed three policemen in August 2015. I have never suggested that the attackers were in power. Even if those who are in power were able to use them.
The only “good point” which Benoit Vitkine wants to award me is that I worked on the massacre of Odessa, a “frequently overlooked episode”. You said it yourself, dear colleague…
Anna Colin Lebedev writes a blog on Mediapart.fr. She, on the other hand, reproaches me precisely for my treatment of the “drama” of Odessa. She is careful to never write the word “massacre” or “butchery”, to never precisely name the savagery of the murders. Anna Colin Lebedev affirms that this “drama” is not at all ignored. The only proof she offers are papers published … a year after the fact. Those of Le Monde (Benoit Vitkine) and The Economist. A blogger, Olivier Berruyer, conducted an analysis of article headings in the days immediately following the massacre. This analysis is available on his website. It is most eloquent.
Anna Colin Lebedev accuses me of creating a story “centered on the tears of victims”. That’s true, I gave voice to a mother who lost her 17 year old son, Vadim Papura. She spoke reluctantly, she was certain that I would not use her statements, that the West does not care about their fate. I also give voice to Ukrainian nationalists, some of whom even voice remorse. I interviewed eyewitnesses from all sides. According to Anna, everything is the fault of the police, who were not sufficiently effective [in stopping the violence that day]. This is what the film should have focused on, she says. Not on militiamen who threw Molotov cocktails on the trade union building or who finished off the wounded lying on the ground [after jumping from windows to escape the burning building]. Not on the fact that none of the killers has been imprisoned and that the Ukrainian government has sabotaged any judicial inquiry, as recalled in the article in The Economist [May 8, 2014] which she kindly quotes as reference but which she probably has not taken the time to read.
That’s it for the specific criticisms. From there, we descend into tiny details.
Thus, Anna Colin Lebedev tells me that I mention the presence of the symbol of Azov on Maidan while the battalion had yet to be created. It will be formed three months later. Sure, but for me, it was just a name change: the symbol was everywhere on Maidan, it is the same symbol as the group ‘Patriots of Ukraine’, who have the same leader, Biletsky, the same men and who will go on to form a military battalion to fight in Mariupol [Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine].
So for clarity, I made the editorial decision not to go into such levels of detail. The fact that this famous [Azov] symbol is borrowed from an SS division, Das Reich, does not seem to move my critics.
Igor Moysichuk, according to Anna Colin-Lebedev, was not the spokesman for Pravy Sektor [Right Sector] however he was introduced as such in this televised debate. Igor Moysichuk is a member of nationalist splinter groups that sailed between Azov and Pravy Sektor but he was mostly a crook playing for his personal account. He joined the Radical party of Oleg Lyashko and he was arrested, in front of our camera, after extorting 100,000 Hryvnia from some guy from his party.
In the blog Comité Ukraine [Ukraine Committee] by Renaud Rebardy, I am accused of not reporting that the Azov battalion had integrated into the regular army. Renaud Rebardy will have misheard and, especially, misunderstood the nature of relations between the Ukrainian government and Azov. Here is a verbatim commentary from the film when I talk to Azov: “Officially, this brigade obeys the Ukrainian national army. And yet, many of them remain masked.”
And this is what their leader Andriy Biletsky told me about their financial means: “Well, if we talk about finances, for acquiring armaments, it is provided by the state, as is part of our equipment. The rest comes from the work of activists among whom there are small and medium businessmen. They invest money and make all of this possible. ”
During the interview and in comments that I finally edited out, Biletsky utters a veiled threat against the government he deems too corrupt. The subtlety of Azov is that they are officially in the army but they retain a wide margin of autonomy.
Then Renaud Rebardy says that there have “never been talks” to remove Russian as an official language in 13 Ukrainian regions. The facts: the Ukrainian parliament proposed to do so on February 23, 2014, and the day after, the war started. Russian-speaking populations were worried about their future and Putin took advantage of that to launch military manoeuvres. On February 28, the [interim] Ukrainian president repealed the measure. But it was too late, the devil had escaped from the box.
The same Renaud Rebardy chides me for reporting that the new Ukrainian Minister of Finance is a former U.S. diplomat. Natalie Jaresko became a naturalized Ukrainian in December 2014 in order to join the government. Before that, she worked first as a diplomat at the State Department, specializing in Eastern European countries, from 1989 to 1995, and then she maintained a strong relationship with the U.S. government after taking over the presidency of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), an investment fund that invests money from a U.S. state agency (USAID) in the Ukrainian economy. She remained there (in addition to her position at the private investment fund she ran, Horizon Capital) until she took a job in the Ukrainian government [as finance minister]. These are not trivial matters, correct?
Benoit Vitkine accuses me of reporting that the new ministers of the economy are “pro-business”. Yet this is the politics from which they declare themselves “aggressively pro-business,” I have it in my video recordings. This explains, for example, the fourfold increase in natural gas prices. Among other things.
Rebardy also accuses me of being too harsh with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the Svoboda Party. I describe him: “Historically, he belongs to the neo-Nazi movement.” This man has many times said that he wants to rid the country of the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia”; he often uses the term “Yid”. He was also the founder of the Social National Party (does that name remind you of something?).
Another criticism came from the militant Euromaidan blog: I gave voice to Alexis Albu, a communist activist of Odessa whom they accuse of being homophobic and red-brown.
Why did I interview Albu? Not because of his opinions but because I discovered on amateur video his presence in the building of Odessa on the famous May 2, 2014. And let me remind you, my goal was to find people who are seen in videos and then gather their comments on what they saw. I try to establish the facts. What interested me in Albu is that we see him walking out of the union building intact and shortly thereafter, he is laying on the ground, gravely wounded in the head. What happened in between?
Finally Anna Colin Lebedev noted a sentence written in the presentation of the website of Premières Lignes announcing my documentary: “No one has really asked who they (the Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries) were.” This sentence is obviously factually false. But if she saw the movie and, most of all, listened to it, she knows that this sentence is not in there. It was written to “sell” the film on the website of the production house and can therefore be attributed to clumsy marketing.
All this said, if one sits at the level global public perception, it is clear that the general public knows nothing about the importance of Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, nor the existence of the massacre of Odessa of May 2, 2014. That’s because this issue has been underreported (which is not to say not reported at all). We know from the Russian side, it is said that far-right nationalists went to fight in the Donbass. But we know less on the other side.
To conclude, I invite everyone to watch the film on Monday night on Canal Plus and make your own judgment. Because the people who insult me and threaten me on social networks are precisely those who have not seen the documentary. They imagined it. Faith is a powerful drug.
(Preceding is the statement of film-maker Paul Moreira)
*
The evidence only continues to grow Ukraine’s Yanukovych government had been overthrown by forces antithetical to democratic principles from the very beginning. Concerning the (separate to Odessa) massacre on ‘The Maidan’, Polish MEP [Member of European Parliament] states in an interview the Maidan snipers were trained in Poland in a joint operation with USA intelligence services.
Question: “[you are] a supporter of the thesis it was a CIA operation?”
Answer: “Maidan was also our operation. The snipers were trained in Poland”
The original interview transcript in Polish language HERE
A reasonable English language summary of the interview by PRAVDA:
A leaked phone call between the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Cathrine Ashton and NATO’s Estonian foreign minister, also indicates it was people aligned with the new USA supported Ukrainian administration were behind the snipers who killed both protestors and police during coup d’état in Kiev. (conversation begins about 2 minutes into this youtube posting)
It is the woman handing out cookies in Paul Moreira’s film, Victoria Nuland, brags to Chevron and Exxon-Mobil her USA Department of State has spent $5 billion prepping Ukraine for the coup d’état
Post coup d’état leadership assignments? Here’s our (CIA liaised) Department of State’s Nuland again with her somewhat infamous (‘Fuck the EU’ inclusive) instructions to the USA ambassador on Ukraine:
Nuland’s Ukrainian Nazi associate Oleh Tyahnybok (left), the sidelined Klitschko (center) and the named CIA choice for prime minister “Yats” (Arseniy Yatsenyuk, below, on right)
This letter was rejected at President Mattarella’s email. Apparently ordinary mortals are not allowed to contact him except by physical post, which is how the letter and supporting documents reached him (on 5 February 2016 according to delivery confirmation, since this letter had been first posted here.) However news of the subject may have preceded his receipt of the mail as the letter DID go through via email to the offices of the concerned Italian prosecutors, as well to the over seventy Italian members of European Parliament. The English text follows the Italian:
**
Egregio Presidente della Repubblica,
Questa mia lettera é per informarLa di fatti poco conosciuti che riguardano la carriera criminale di Sabrina De Sousa, una donna che certamente non merita una Grazia da Lei.
Sono un ex investigatore anti-corruzione adesso in esilio volontario da ormai otto anni. I miei problemi iniziarono quando scoprì un complotto criminale interno al Governo degli Stati Uniti a favore di Chevron, un’investigazione che porta alla luce i nomi di John Yoo, Jay Bybee e infine Condoleeza Rice. Incontrai Sabrina De Sousa alla fine del mio primo anno di esilio in Germania, a Wiesbanen nell’estate del 2008, a quel tempo collaboravo non ufficialmente con la polizia tedesca che monitorava la mia situazione per portare alla luce un complotto con il fine di assassinarmi. Le circostanze del mio incontro con De Sousa coincidono con un fallito tentativo di rapirmi molto simile al rapimento in pieno giorno di Abu Omar.
La vigliaccheria istituzionale delle autorità tedesche, in pieno possesso di informazioni riguardanti questi fatti e molto più, che rifiutarono di agire o riconoscere e perseguire gli autori di diversi tentativi di assassinarmi e/o rapirmi, è inconcepibile.
Non ci sono dubbi che questo abuso istituzionale sia dovuto a pressioni politiche da parte degli USA. Le chiedo di non seguire questo esempio, di essere al di sopra delle parti e resistere a eventuali pressioni di graziare questi criminali parte di un’organizzazione clandestina di sicari degli Stati Uniti.
Lo Stato di diritto sta subendo una continua erosione che richiede uomini di forte principio morale che ne pongano fine.
Che speranze hanno i nostri figli e nipoti se noi tollereremo questo impero di odierni criminali di stampo Gladio?
La risposta è nessuna.
“Le chiedo rispettosamente di negare fermamente e incondizionatamente ogni richiesta di Grazia a Sabrina De Sousa da parte degli USA o di cedere a loro pressioni”.
Ho disposto affinché questa mia lettera venisse tradotta in italiano. Le fornirò separatamente documentazione in inglese a prova della veridicità di queste informazioni e della mia persona insieme a ulteriori chiarimenti.
Ringraziando per la cortese attenzione, colgo l’occasione per porgerLe i miei distinti saluti,
This letter is to inform yourself of little known facts concerning the career criminal Sabrina De Sousa; a woman most undeserving of a pardon by your office.
I am a former anti-corruption investigator now in self-exile for eight full years. My problem stems from having discovered a criminal ring working the inside of United States government for Chevron Corporation, an investigation that turns up the names John Yoo, Jay Bybee and ultimately, Condoleezza Rice.
It was at the end of my first year of life in exile I had encountered Sabrina De Sousa at Wiesbaden, Germany, summer of 2008. At this time I was in informal (unofficial) cooperation with German police, who were monitoring my circumstance, at my request, concerning criminal parties determined to assassinate myself. My encounter with De Sousa coincided with a circumstance where I managed to evade a trap nearly identical to the abduction of Abu Omar off the street in broad daylight.
The immense institutional cowardice of the German authorities, in possession of full knowledge of this and much more, officials who have sat on and refused to acknowledge and prosecute the several attempts at murder and/or kidnap of myself, is unconscionable. No doubt this institutional malfeasance is due to political pressures brought by the USA.
I am asking you to be different. To stand up and refuse any pressures to pardon the criminals of what amounts to an executive assassination ring of the United States. The rule of law has been in a serious state of deterioration and requires men of principled stance to end this erosion.
If we are to countenance what amounts to an empire of contemporary Gladio criminals, what hope will we hand to our children and grandchildren? The plain answer can only be “none.”
I respectfully request any USA pressures to pardon Sabrina De Sousa be refused politely but also refused firmly and refused unconditionally.
I have arranged to have this letter translated to Italian. I will separately provide English language references testifying to my character and veracity, as well some certain further information.
Three reference letters, two from well known attorneys and one from a contact inside the German Federal Parliament, as well, an unredacted copy of the ‘Alpha Chronology‘ are included in the appended materials provided to the Italian President and prosecutors –
A slightly differing version of this article has been picked up and run at the online magazine ‘Russia Insider.’ This edition reflects subsequent updates
Anyone who believes VICE isn’t mainstream news should be aware Rupert Murdoch pushed $70 million of his money into buying a piece of the VICE action (buying his kid a seat on the VICE board of directors.) In a piece worthy of Murdoch’s British tabloid ‘The Sun on Sunday’ the public is treated to a rank psy-ops piece:
The 328-page report said there was a “strong probability” the Russian intelligence agency (FSB) directed two men to poison Litvinenko in London, and that this operation was “probably” sanctioned by then FSB head Nikolai Patrushev and Russian President Vladimir Putin
Yep, trust VICE to roll over for the MI6 murder novel at the snap of a neocon finger, with no critical exam of the wider facts surrounding Alexander Litvinenko’s death. The most remarkable words in the British report blaming the Kremlin and Putin are “probability” and “probably.” Probability and probably are NOT evidence but rather spinning an inescapable admission there is no hard evidence backing the accusations. So it is, the west ups the ante in its demonizing Vladimir Putin with sham report per rank propaganda purposes (recalling the Dutch investigation of MH 17.)
This case has always smelled to high heaven. Former FSB officer Litvinenko had all the wrong friends/trusted all the wrong people. As sloppy as the hit on him was, people the British have an ax to grind with (Russians) are purportedly to blame, but Litvinenko’s MI6 employer should be every bit as suspect as anyone.
“Professional standards require intelligence professionals to lie, hide information, or use covert tactics to protect their “cover,” access, sources, and responsibilities. The Central Intelligence Agency [as well, MI6] expects, teaches, encourages, and controls these tactics so that the lies are consistent and supported (“backstopped”). The CIA [as well, MI6] expects intelligence officers to teach others to lie, deceive, steal, launder money, and perform a variety of other activities [such as ‘psy-ops’ or information operations] that would certainly be illegal if practiced in the United States [or Britain]. They call these tactics “tradecraft,” and intelligence officers practice them in all the world’s intelligence services”
A case can be made the preponderance of circumstantial evidence points to the opposite direction of the (heavily influenced by MI6) British report’s conclusion.
More likely Litvinenko’s *truly fatal* mistake was to begin working with Spanish authorities on breaking down the illicit heroin trade at a time when a British ambassador who had been recently fired subsequently penned an essay ‘Britain protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time’ coinciding with revelations both CIA & MI6 had been paying millions in off-record cash to the Karzai government in Kabul (noting Hamid Karzai’s brother, Wali, was both; renting a large compound to the CIA and concurrently playing kingpin in Afghanistan’s heroin trade) .. even as Russia’s anti-heroin efforts are undermined by NATO:
Meanwhile, the British ambassador would appear to have been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan. It is interesting to note his linking the murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator Alexander Letvinenko to uncovering the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a murder blamed in popular media on Russia with no critical exam whatsoever of Litvinenko’s subsequent MI6 connections in this regard.
A CIA/MI6 joint venture? After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by NATO, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA and British military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. As the USA wound down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.
Again, Litvinenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish intelligence on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipeline. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. The product can’t be moved to Russia (ultimately via Russian mafia on the St Petersburg end) by the Americans and British without cooperation bought from the Afghans at the source, again recalling Hamid Karzai’s brother, Wali, was both; renting a large compound to the CIA and concurrently playing kingpin in Afghanistan’s heroin trade. So Litvinenko easily could have been killed by his MI6 employer with Putin blamed as a matter of frosting on the intelligence agency hit. May as well get some gain when embarrassing circumstance requires the killing of your own agent. In the close alternative scenario, MI6 had debriefed Litvinenko with an eye to murdering him in the initial plan; when they’d hired the former FSB anti-corruption expert with entirely too much knowledge of the Russian end of the so-called ‘St Petersburg pipeline.’ At the end of the day, it come down to western intelligence complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news
“I don’t believe for a second that the Russian authorities were involved. The sentence [report’s findings] is a set-up to provide more bad publicity against the Russian government. The Russians had no reason to want Alexander dead. My brother was not a spy, he was more like a policeman. He was in the FSB but he worked against organised crime, murders, arms trafficking, stuff like that.
“He did not know any state secrets or go on any special missions. It is the Western media that have called him a spy. He [Alexander Litvinenko] had already started to get in touch with old friends and would have gone back [to Russia] in due course. My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.
“Why else would the court be called to hold this inquiry only after 10 years?” –Maxim Litvinenko
This article, reprinted with the consent of the author, has been banned from a wide variety of ‘progressive’ news outlets. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important pieces of information people should have absorbed. Dr Bramhall’s reporting on this subject is independently consistent with my own research on ‘color revolutions’ (my appended observations follow Dr Bramhall’s article.)
The CIA and Nonviolent Resistance
One important aspect of the “diversity of tactics” debate (i.e. the debate whether to be exclusively nonviolent) in the Occupy movement relates to mounting evidence of the role CIA and Pentagon-funded foundations and think tanks play in funding and promoting nonviolent resistance training.
The two major US foundations promoting nonviolence, both overseas and domestically, are the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Both receive major corporate and/or government funding. The latter comes mainly through CIA “pass-through” foundations. While the ICNC is funded mainly by the private fortune of hedge fund multimillionaire (junk bond king Michael Milken’s second in command) Peter Ackerman, the AEI has received funding from the Rand Corporation and the Department of Defense, as well as various CIA-linked foundations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the US Institute of Peace and the Ford Foundation (read here on The Ford Foundation and the CIA), which all have a long history of collaborating with the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in destabilizing governments unfriendly to US interests.
This is a strategy Frances Stonor Saunders outlines in her pivotal Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. According to Sanders, right wing corporate-backed foundations and the CIA have been funding the non-communist left since the late sixties, in the hope of drowning out and marginalizing the voice of more militant leftists.
Gene Sharp, the Fervent Anticommunist
Much of this debate focuses around the American godfather of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, the founder and director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharp’s handbooks on nonviolent protest were widely disseminated in the Eastern Europe color revolutions, in the Arab spring revolutions and in the Occupy movement in the US (see Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism). Unfortunately Sharp has become a decoy in this debate, deflecting attention from the larger question of whether the US government is actively financing and promoting the work of the AEI, the ICIC and other groups that promote nonviolent resistance, to the exclusion of other militant tactics. The question is extremely important, in my view, because it possibly explains the rigid and dogmatic attitude in the US progressive movement regarding nonviolence.
Is Military-Intelligence Funding Compatible with Progressive Politics?
The institutional nonviolence clique has cleverly refocused the debate on whether Sharp, who is eighty-three, is a CIA agent and whether he actively participated in US-funded destabilization efforts in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and elsewhere that resulted in so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions. The obvious answer to both questions is no. The more important question is why the alternative media and “official” progressive movement embrace Sharp unconditionally as a fellow progressive without a careful look at his past or his ideological beliefs. Sharp has never made any secret of his fervent anticommunist views. He also makes no secret of the funding he has received from the Defense Department; the Rand Corporation; CIA-linked foundations, such as NED, the IRI and the US Institute of Peace; and George Soros’s Open Society Institute. All this information is readily available from the AEI website.
Thierry Meyssan’s 2005 Expose
The current brouhaha over Gene Sharp was first triggered by an article, The Albert Einstein Institution: Nonviolence According to the CIA, Thierry Meyssan published on Voltaire Net in October 2005. Meyssan, a French intellectual and political activist, first gained international prominence in 2002 by publishing a French best seller entitled L’effroyable imposteur (English title: The Big Lie). The book claimed that the 9-11 attacks were directed by right-wingers in the U.S. government and the military industrial complex, who were seeking justification for military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meyssan’s 2005 article on the Albert Einstein Institutes enumerates a long list of collaborations between Sharp and opposition groups receiving covert US support in campaigns to bring down Asian and Eastern European governments unfriendly to US interests.
Iran and Venezuela’s Denunciation of Sharp
The article was widely reposted on leftist and libertarian websites. In 2008, it resulted in a formal denunciation of Sharp by the Iranian government and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, both targets of AEI destabilization activities. In June 2008, Stephen Zunes, chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Peter Ackerman’s International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) issued a rebuttal, Sharp Attack Unwarranted, in Foreign Policy in Focus. The latter is an on-line magazine of the Institute for Policy Studies, where Zunes serves as Middle East Editor. The article was simultaneously reprinted in the Huffington Post.
Zunes subsequently persuaded Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Code Pink and other high profile progressives to help launch an on-line petition defending Sharp’s progressive credentials. However, as numerous critics point out, he never addressed Meyssan’s most important concerns: the military/intelligence backgrounds of many of the Albert Einstein Institution’s (AEI’s) directors and advisory board members; their documented collaboration, together with Sharp, with opposition groups responsible for the “color” revolutions in Eastern Europe; and their work with Venezuelan opposition groups in an effort to topple president Hugo Chavez.
AEI ties to Department of State and Military-Intelligence Complex
Australian researcher Michael Barker, Canadian activist Stephen Gowans and CIA watchers wrote detailed critiques defending Meyssan’s 2005 expose. Barker’s rebuttal is entitled Sharp Reflection Warranted. Barker’s main argument is that the problem of elite manipulation of ostensibly progressive groups isn’t at all new. He also points readers to excellent links regarding collaboration between the CIA and the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and others.
Gowans argues that Zunes, a paid adviser to the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), is hardly a neutral or objective party, given his involvement with Peter Ackerman and the ICNC. Ackerman, hardly the progressive peace activist, is a Wall Street investment banker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and head of Freedom House. The latter, according to Noam Chomsky (in Manufacturing Consent), is “interlocked” with the CIA and a “virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing.” According to Louis Proyect, Ackerman is also on the advisory board of the ultraconservative Cato Institute’s Project on Social Security Choice. Not surprisingly, this group strongly advocates for privatizing Social Security.
A Close Look At Sharp’s Past
There is no question that Thierry Meyssan’s 2005 article on Gene Sharp’s extensive links to the US military-intelligence complex is one of the most important exposes of the 21st century. Its only weaknesses is Meyssan’s failure to cite many of his references. What follows is the best publicly verifiable chronology of Sharp’s life I could come up with (most comes from Meyssan’s 2005 article with sources added):
1953 – conscientious objector during Korean War, imprisoned for nine months for refusing to report for alternative duty. Imprisoned for refusing to fight in Korean War (People and The Progressive).
1973 – publishes The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) with an introduction by Thomas C. Shelling. Shelling was a well known economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy, and arms control. After working with US ambassador Averel Harriman in Paris in 1948 to implement the Marshall Plan, Shelling had a fifty year affiliation with the Rand Corporation (US military think tank) and is widely credited as the theoretician behind military escalation in Vietnam.
1983 – founds the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) in Boston, with the assistance of Major General Edward B Atkeson, who was on the first AEI advisory board. The AEI website identifies Atkeson as Senior Fellow at the Institute of Land Warfare Association of the US Army. According to the CIA website, during the 1980s Atkeson was also a National Intelligence Officer for General Purpose Forces.
1985 – publishes a book entitled Making Europe Unconquerable: the Potential of Civilian-base Deterrence and Defense. The second edition includes a preface by George Kennan, historian and State Department senior diplomat whose writings influenced Truman in the creation of the Truman Doctrine. Kennan is viewed as the father of the US foreign policy of “containment” (by force) of Soviet expansion.
1986, 1988 and 1989 – travels to Israel/Palestine to bolster support for the Palestinian Center for the History of Non-Violence, founded in 1983 by one of Sharp’s disciple. It’s a matter of public record that Sharp met with Colonel Reuvan Gal, who directed the Israel Defense Force (IDF) Psychological Action Division. Meyssan claims the two conspired to create a split in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) by creating a dissident “nonviolent” group. Gal and Sharp claim the purpose of their meetings were to devise ways to dissuade IDF commanders from using tanks and excessive military force against Palestinian settlers (see The Jeruselem Fund, Mubarak Awad, and Nonviolence).
1987 – receives funding from the US Institute of Peace to host seminars instructing US allies on defense based on civil disobedience. By law, the US Institute of Peace integrates elements of US intelligence.
1989 – assists Colonel Robert Helvey in training anticommunist Burmese opposition groups concerned about the growing strength of the Burmese Communist Party. The AEI website refers to Helvey as a retired US military officer and ex-military attaché in Burma. He was actually a thirty year veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency with extensive experience in overseeing clandestine and subversive operations in Southeast Asia (see Guerrillas Without Guns Col Helvey Weaponizing Nonviolence and Peace Magazine Archive). Following his retirement from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Helvey has been board member and president of the Albert Einstein Institution.
1990 – with his AEI team (according to AEI website), assists Lithuanian opposition leaders in organizing popular resistance against the Red Army. According to the website, the AEI also did trainings with anticommunist opposition groups in Tibet, Estonia, and Belarus.
1998 – travels, with Helvey, to Eastern Europe to train Otpor, a group of Serbian youth opposed to Slobodan Milosevic and Europe’s last communist government. Milosevic was immensely popular with Serbian people for standing up to NATO and for his generous social policies. The trainings were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). (See 2000 New York Times interview with NED officer Paul B. McCarthy).
2004 – Helvey and other AEI members meet with the Ukrainian resistance in Kiev (see Mowat’s Coup d’État in Disguise).
2003-2004 – travels, with Helvey and other AEI team members to Venezuela to meet with wealthy Venezuelan opposition leaders, following the failed 2002 CIA-sponsored coup against Chavez. The AEI advises them in organizing a recall referendum against Chavez. They also train the leaders of Súmate during the August 2004 demonstrations and assist in the formulation of “Operation Guarimba”, a series of often-violent street blockades that result in several deaths. According to an analysis published by Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), Venezuelan student leaders traveled to Belgrade in 2005 to meet with representatives of AEI-trained OTPOR/CANVAS, before traveling to Boston to consult directly with Sharp himself.
Fast Forward to the “Arab Spring”
In the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011, Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) seem to have handed the baton to his disciple Peter Ackerman. It was Ackerman who conducted nonviolence trainings in Cairo and Tunisia in 2009-2010 (see Foreign Policy Journal and New York Times).
As others have documented elsewhere, the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa were neither spontaneous nor indigenous. Many of the individuals and groups who helped organize them received training (in the US) sponsored by the State Department and CIA-linked democracy manipulating foundations (see Tony Cartalucci’s Soros Celebrates the Fall of Tunisia). The New York Times lends further credibility to these claims in their April 2011 U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.
***
About the author: Dr Bramhall is an American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has just published a free non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution, which can be downloaded at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/120942. Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. Her website is at:
CIA methods of discrediting excellent work such as Dr Bramhall’s above article includes [but is not limited to] leaning hard on the better known progressive sites [alternet killed Dr Bramhalls’ article, probably faced with funding threats] not to run the pieces while providing other so-called ‘alternative’ news sites where the articles CAN be run but subjected to guilt by association and other method of discrediting the information. For instance ‘Daily Censored’ picked up and ran this article but concurrently ran an article supporting David Icke’s ‘lizard DNA’ theories [to associate Dr Bramhall’s work with nut jobs.] It then becomes the dilemma of the author whether to publish in less than optimal circumstance or not get the information a wider audience (beyond one’s personal blog.)
Since Dr Bramhalls’ article had been originally published, the classic ‘color revolution’ model based on U.S, Department of State (Siamese twin to CIA) or ‘the Sharp method’ had been employed (again) in Ukraine.
Other method of disinformation is noted in regards to alternative media’s Robert Parry has misreported events in Ukraine (myself not being the only one to notice), effectively pointing away from actions reflecting the role of ‘covert operations’ intelligence. Now, it can’t hurt (truth) to demonstrate the consequence of Gene Sharp suborning Ghandi’s model to utilitarian ‘Realpolitic’ sans morality. What Robert Parry (and his associate Ray McGovern) inexcusably fail to report in relation to Ukraine is, not only did Department of State/CIA aligned NGO’s organize and train the Maidan protesters based on Gene Sharp’s nonviolence model; the CIA operations sector subsequently organized the deaths of the same when they trained and imported the snipers who murdered them. A conservative Polish Member of European Parliament, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, states in an interview the Maidan snipers were trained in Poland in a joint operation with USA intelligence services:
Question: “[you are] a supporter of the thesis it was a CIA operation?”
Answer: “Maidan was also our operation. The snipers were trained in Poland”
The original interview transcript in Polish language HERE
A reasonable English language summary of the interview by PRAVDA:
An earlier leaked phone call between the European Union’s Cathrine Ashton and the Estonian foreign minister, indicate it was people aligned with the new USA supported Ukrainian administration were behind the snipers who killed both protestors and police during confrontation in Kiev.
Robert Parry points solely to out of control ultra-nationalists behind the snipers. A better explanation (backing up both the Polish MEP and leaked conversation) is found in rogue CIA officer Phillip Agee’s expose: ‘Terrorism and Civil Society‘
Furthermore, Robert Parry has misreported the facts on MH 17, detracting from intelligence operations in effort shifting responsibility, as well has pushed blatant American constitutional history revisions. With Ray McGovern’s former military intelligence and CIA background in close association with Robert Parry’s reporting, it is more than fair to question to what extent the American non-violence movement has been penetrated for purpose of information operation manipulations away from discovering the actual facts of the USA’s geopolitical dirty work.
It is a pleasure to see former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, will be going to jail for corruption. A rare event outside of coup governments jailing or killing their predecessors as an insurance policy. Insofar as comparisons respecting ‘democracy’ and the ‘rule of law’ in relation to impunity, this recalls Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez indicted by a Texas grand jury for racketeering and outcome where Cheney didn’t even bother to send a lawyer (he apparently only needed make a phone call, at most) to get the indictment thrown out… it was dismissed with a warning from the judge to the prosecutor to “never” pursue the case again. By comparison, Israeli justice looks pretty good just now with Olmert reporting to Israel’s penal system for incarceration. Even if he gets the ‘country club’ detention, it still says something.
On account of Bibi & company’s rank criminal behaviors, many people from the outside tend to forget Israelis are not entirely made up of dyed in the wool miscreants and it’s always been a habit of people in the west to throw stones from their glass houses, we see this quite a lot in relation to the Israelis. Would I like to see certain Israeli figures jailed for crimes against the Palestinians? Sure. Will that happen? It doesn’t seem likely, but it seem just as unlikely we will see the likes of Bush and Blair jailed for crimes against the Iraqis resulting in perhaps as many as a million collateral deaths due to infrastructure destruction resulting in loss of clean water and consequent disease, among other problems.
Democracy is a beast in its own right where too often it is sociopaths are those most motivated to rise & rule. And when they do, whether Bibi (with an assist from the Americans) outsourcing his assassinations of Iranian scientists to Mojahedin-e-Khalq utilizing hostages & blackmail, or Obama meeting with John Brennan on “Kill List Tuesdays” when deciding who will live or die in a regime of extrajudicial assassinations, it’s clearly a hard fact one is no superior to the other in relation to the rule of law.
Then, we can look at the institutions of law by comparison. In the USA, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts appoints judges to the extra-constitutional FISA court and no one utters a word about it, not so much as any pointed criticism from any fellow Supreme Court justice, nothing from the bar association head, no senator, NO SINGLE PERSON of significance in the machine stands up and says one word. It can’t hurt to mention here Chief Justice Roberts is only once removed from Dick Cheney; Robert’s champion for his nomination and confirmation to the United States Supreme Court had been Cheney’s Vice Presidential legal counsel Shannen Coffin (a close personal friend of Roberts.)
In Israel, on the other hand, rather than a totally co-opted (corrupted) Supreme Court, you have a court that is undermined and often ignored by corrupt politicians (and in some cases my recollection is, by the military.)
The sharp prejudice we see is hardly fair to Israel by comparison to say, Britain or the USA. All are criminally corrupt. All struggle with similar democratic issues. If the shrill left in the USA can be safely ignored (those few sane persons surviving on the right may as well have drowned for all the opportunity they have to be heard), in Israel sane voices are simply not reported on outside of domestic audience. Hardly balanced or fair, but other than to those engaged in self-deceits, life has never been balanced or fair:
“Both the elves and the reindeer made another accusation against Claus: that he discriminated in favor of children from rich families, who invariably got better and more expensive gifts than those of poor families, no matter how good or bad they’d been” (credit to ‘Bill the Butcher’)
My point is, in matters of corruption and relevant impunity, we’re all more or less equal. Olmert goes to jail, that’s a positive, but Bibi’s history is to ignore and undermine the Israeli Supreme Court. In the USA? No one goes to jail and the Supreme Court appears to be in the pocket of the criminal regime when upholding the ‘national security’ and ‘state secrets’ doctrines which determine the most egregious crimes will never be heard before a competent jurisdiction. And no one challenges the criminally complicit chief justice who appoints judges to a patently unconstitutional FISA institution based on color of law usurping constitutional principles.
On top of it all, it seems doubtful democracy can be salvaged in a scenario where the populaces are becoming so radicalized, demagogues bring the greatest appeal to those who’ve yet to disengage (tune out) on the right, or in the alternative, the majority on the left are so self deceived they hold up a 70 years old serial killer of entire nations as the model choice for a first female president (following on the extrajudicial assassinations by the first ‘Black’ or ‘nobel drone’ president who has always been more culturally European than anything else.)
I would offer the following quote to describe the self-deceits of western populace generally…
“Their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound pre-vision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy” -Thucydides
…aside from those Christian supremacist and other knee-jerk anti-Semites who’re actually somewhat a step lower than use of ‘sovereign reason’ in their employ of self-deceits:
“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will” -Yuval Noah Harari
Prognosis for 2016
Worst case scenario
Picture this: Saudi Arabia leads an invasion from the south into Iraq, Turkey from the north into Syria, with USA/NATO backing on the pretext of putting down Islamic State. A large contingent of Daesh is evacuated through Turkey. The Erdogan criminal syndicate funnels the larger portion of ISIS fighters east to initiate operations in Russia’s sphere. However a not insignificant number will, nevertheless, find their way west. This will open opportunity for the NATO deep state apparatus to consolidate a police state and pursue eliminating secular, liberal democratic principles with a likely low intensity guerrilla warfare developing throughout Europe. A second 9/11 type false flag, possibly nuclear, is brought off in attempt by rogue religious right generals at the Pentagon to rule with martial law.
Russia doesn’t dare roll over in the meanwhile, and there is real possibility of escalation to tactical nuclear weapons use when protecting Russian assets in Syria together with upholding the Syrian-Iranian buffer states against NATO and their proxies’ empire expanding east and whatever follows that is likely even less pretty, with a paranoid Israel sitting on the sidelines with nuclear armed missiles targeting all parties.
A reasonable estimation would be, with possible/probable outbreak of WW III, there is a solid chance there will be no next ‘President of the United States.’ That system becomes entirely co-opted. It’s only a matter of when, and under what circumstance, NATO’s deep state perpetrators decide to step out of the shadow to rule openly. Meanwhile, in Europe, democratic institutions are being led like lambs to sacrifice with current developments… and there is (to now) no sign of correcting course back into line with the rule of law. We don’t see 1) sight and 2) courage in any of those holding the necessary positions to force a correction away from a fascist future; with dwindling opportunity with each day that passes.
Best case scenario
An asteroid impact ends the experiment called Western Civilization and attending European cultural mentality before Western Civilization ends all advanced life forms on the planet. Ten thousand years into the future, a mummified Richard Dawkins’ corpse is discovered in the cafeteria at the CERN archaeological site. People marvel at the crude purpose of the Large Hadron Collider, a pointless knowledge quest for ego’s sake, and the destructive nature of the grid used to power it. Shortly after, it is discovered the culture which had created CERN originally derived from a cult practicing ritual cannibalism called ‘Communion’ and the priesthood of a subsequent religion named ‘Empiricism’ applied this cannibalistic attitude to their relationship with the environment sustaining them. The mystery villain of the Anthropocene era’s onset had been solved: Plato.
The New Yorker magazine’s “regular columnist” Seymour Hersh had defected to the The London Review of Books in recent times, in matters of the national security state, apparently because the New Yorker had not been publishing Hersh’s more dangerous or damning materials. There is a full two years gap, March 2013 to March 2015, the New Yorker had not published anything by Hersh at all and those two pieces are mostly more or less ‘harmless’ (to the national security state) materials of either a retrospective or philosophical bent. It had been April 2012 since Hersh’s “Our Men in Iran” had last poked a stick in the American intelligence community’s eye at the New Yorker. Fortunately (or in some cases, perhaps not so fortunately) Hersh found a new platform for his articles.
Now, if I were Seymour Hersh’s ‘national security’ professor at his local community college over the semester and a half since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 (counting semesters in geopolitical decades), now is about the time I would call Hersh into my office and let him know he is in serious danger of flunking the academic year:
One incomplete end of 1st semester assignment he stated he’d be turning in, and has not, on Dick Cheney’s “executive assassination ring”, promised in April, 2009 but still ‘under construction’ a full six years later.
Insofar as the current semester:
January 2011, Class presentation ‘speech at Doha‘ (Qatar) graded B- … Hersh quite accurately describes the Joint Special Operations Command as “Crusaders” with the mission statement equivalent to “‘we’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals'” … however his reduced grade stems from the fact it’s not just the JSOC but the larger command structure at the Pentagon per se. If this crusading element were limited more or less to JSOC (where there is indeed a severe infection) and not the larger Pentagon command structure, e.g. we would have seen the USA military’s number one uber-right evangelical/proselytizing cult, the Air Force Academy, cleaned up. Instead, what we see is a sustained pretense of dealing with the hard core evangelical elements in the USAF officer corps where a necrotic fundamentalism is the demanded, de facto norm, throughout the institution. We’ll come back to this infection.
April 2012, Our Men in Iran; paper graded C+ … excellent beginning work on the Iranian dissident group Mojahedin-e-Khalq having been trained by the Americans on behalf of the Israelis to carry out assassinations in Iran. Reduced grade for overlooking the USA had blackmailed the Mojahedin-e-Khalq into returning to the business of terror (after they’d renounced armed struggle) by holding a large portion of the rank and file membership hostage; initially at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and subsequently at what amounts to a prison annex at the Baghdad airport. These are a few thousand MeK veteran troops have been imprisoned in Iraq, under threat of being handed over to Iran, since surrendering to the Americans, without hostilities, at the outset of the Iraq invasion. Other MeK dissidents are scattered across Europe, where they operate as an Iranian ‘human rights’ front in Berlin, as well large numbers are in Paris where the leadership enjoys a decadent luxury and the ‘friendship’ of some notable American neocons, not least Rudy Giuliani. Meanwhile, the MeK ‘de-listing’ as a terror group by the USA’s Department of State appears to coincide with MeK re-entering the terror game, under duress, on the side of American and Israeli interests, in a cynicism that is typical of western geopolitical realities.
December 2013 is Hersh’s ‘whose sarin‘ initial outline of doubts Assad’s government is the perpetrator of the ongoing chemical weapons attacks in Syria. We’ll consider this a beginning syllabus on the subject Hersh returns to in the next piece. No grade.
April 2014, with The Red Line and The Rat Line Hersh takes the ball forward on the case for sarin gas employ in Syria in what the spooks call a false flag, in this case Turkey’s MIT or external intelligence has facilitated the delivery of all the necessary components to assemble sarin to al-Nusra (al-Qaida) in Syria. His article, if somewhat incomplete with the details, does nail the real perpetrators. Considering his sources are American, and he actually managed to get into the facts, we have to give him a solid B … the reduced grade reflects either 1) USA intelligence is handicapped in the matter (not likely) or 2) Hersh or his sources are hedging, which is more likely the case. In fact, USA intelligence almost certainly knew it was Turkey behind the gas blamed on Assad by the time of Hersh writing his ‘syllabus’ four months previous to this and either they or Hersh held that card until comfortable with its release. Why the hedge? This professor smells a rat we’ll come back to. Hersh should have smelled it too.
May 2015, Hersh pens The Killing of Osama bin Ladin, a piece detailing too many lies, turnabouts and misleads to count within the American ‘security apparatus’ on the supposed death of a man already dead a full 13 years by the time of the Hersh narrative. Second semester mid-term exam F for EPIC FAIL. Central Intelligence had last met with their long time asset bin Ladin in July of 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai where he was being treated for renal failure and a diagnosis of two years to live, maximum. Imagine, just three months later, a frail ‘two years to live’ bin-Ladin puts his portable dialysis machine on mules, together with a portable electric grid or generator, diesel or petrol, and goes to live in a cave in the Hindu Kush. Spare parts for all the machines and backup generator included. On top of having escaped Kandahar with the USA invasion of October, this ‘mule train’ (or whatever substituted for travel over terrain that denied motorized vehicle use, I doubt they were using Uzbek ‘coolies’ to haul generators, dialysis machine and fuel) traveled to Tora Bora which immediate vicinity was subsequently bombed to shards by B-52 heavy bombers raining down ordinance to a point “the landscape has been changed” or enough carpet bombing to level a small city. Now, having to escape THAT, bin-Ladin’s ‘mule train’ consisted of (imagine the tune ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’)
12 Uzbek-Qaida muleskinners
11 mules with shoes a-sparkin
10 Jerrycans a-clanging
9 B-40 rockets a-swingin
80 MmmRrrrEees…
7 cases of 7.62 x 39 mm
6 cell phones with no signal
50 TaleeeBan…
4 ISI agents
3 Pashtun guides
2 generators
and a dialysis machine with spare parts.
Supposedly having left Tora Bora unnoticed, bin-Ladin was never heard from again by SIGNIT (signals intelligence, Tora Bora radio intercepts were his last.) The man was dead. He never made it to Pakistan. However he was still useful as a boogeyman because no one could produce his body and the CIA morons on location presumed bin-Ladin escaped (no doubt with his mule train) rather than admit they didn’t (and don’t to this day) know what actually happened. Bonered up CIA cowboy Gary Berntsen (hiya Gary, how tricks since I buggered your ass at San Feliu de Guixols, 2010? FYI what I did to you is called a ‘dry cob’ job) and CIA moron Cofer Black decided to pin their onerous (odious, actually) failure on the military, and Alfreda Bikowsky, who actually sent the FBI to search for Black al-Qaida cells in Montana (what a story that is), was subsequently put in charge of looking for a dead man.
The most likely consequent scenario is, nearly nine years later it was becoming increasingly clear to the Pakistani ISI that in fact bin-Ladin never survived December-January 2001-2002 and the legend has to be finished off. With an axe to grind with the CIA (the botched Khan nuclear black market sting), they set up a ‘dangle’ (a former ISI officer walks in to bag the $25 million reward) for the CIA which rushes to take the bait. What to do when the raid on the Abbottabad kills several harmless people and at best nets a bin-Ladin look-alike? No photo release and bury him at sea without any ships crew witnessed this and all military records seem to be ‘lost?’ Then SEAL Team Six in the hands of some of the best combat aviator coordinators in the world has a totally unprofessional- incompetent demise and we are assured by the DoD this was not the unit involved in the bin-Ladin ‘body snatch’ (we’re supposed to take the DoD’s word for it.) The Abbottabad bin-Ladin relatives are subsequently held incommunicado (no press interviews) by the Pakistanis and simply vanish, supposedly sent off to live happily ever after in some nirvana-like life courtesy of the House of Saud. Sure, that ought to work. Especially when considering the absolute morons running the CIA throughout this period would be perfect to set up for an inter-intelligence-agency sting. Shit happens.
So, what to do when ‘the prez’ has announced to the world that bin-Ladin has been killed before the DNA samples tested negative? Tell him? Probably not. Classify everything ‘lost’ (that’s what the Department of Defense did) and likely put a counterfeit DNA result into whatever report was necessary over at CIA and then bury it in classification at the highest level (with the ‘original samples ‘lost’ or destroyed, no doubt.) The numerous lies and conflicting stories Seymour Hersh turns up in his ‘The Killing of Osama bin Ladin’ make more sense when looked at in the circumstance of an agency (the CIA) which had been ‘snookered’ and no one knew what story to tell because no one wanted to take on the responsibility of getting all the complicit idiots (liars) on the same page in a situation of no competence. The circumstance precluded creating a consistent mythology. But this is not the case with Hersh’s next avowed set of facts:
December 2015 (the January 2016 issue of the London Review of Books) Hersh’s Military to Military sets out a case for the Pentagon flirting with treason (Hersh does not call it that) with undermining Commander-in-Chief Obama’s objectives in Syria. Hersh’s ‘rendition’ of the facts, in short, is the Pentagon has indirectly propped up Assad with intelligence sharing through the Russian military, so as to prevent the collapse of Syria into the chaos that typifies today’s Libya, only worse. The White House didn’t know this, or if they did, they didn’t know what to do about it except to nominate a hard core right wing Catholic and perfect Russophobe-cold-war-dick named Joe Dunford to take over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and get the loose-cannon generals back under the control of moroness policy advisers like Sam Power and her reptilian reflex approach of ‘if we can fuck it, it will be fucked.’ Hersh’s narrative presents the following, coherent seeming mythology:
Our Generals under recently retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Dempsey, come across as sensible, sane and motivated to the common good in this endeavor.
The White House, by contrast, comes across as senseless, trapped in their incompetence, even insane, or a perfect world peace threatening ‘cluster-fuck’ in the mean vernacular.
Hersh closes his piece with entertaining a mystery; why is it insisted on by the Obama White House we will follow the path of least resistance to absolute world chaos? Or in Hersh’s own words:
The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington’s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria … [t]he message was never listened to. Why not?
The tongue-in-cheek answer would be everyone at the White House is infected with David Icke’s lizard DNA. But not so fast, because I have the real intelligence on the Pentagon and our generals aren’t some crew of goody-two-shoes boy scouts. These guys are real reptiles (a metaphor, let’s not be too friendly with the theology of David Icke) with the ethical motivations of a monitor lizard. This brings us back (as promised) to Hersh’s feeble understanding of the religious right in our military’s officer corps at the very top. General Dempsey, the focus of sanity in Hersh’s presentation, has been little more than an alter boy to the Opus Dei Hersh accuses of hijacking the JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] in his Doha speech, a dyed in the wool, conservative Catholic through and through. Let’s have a look at where the recently retired [former] chairman Dempsy has landed:
American Grand Strategy (AGS) is an interdisciplinary initiative across Duke University that creates and shares new knowledge in the grand strategy field. The program’s mission is to prepare the next generation of strategists by studying past generations and interacting with current strategic leaders. We are building a research community of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates who are committed to deepening their understanding of America’s role in the world – past, present and future.
AGS hosts The Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture series: endowed for the purpose of bringing prominent figures in international security, foreign policy, and diplomacy to Duke University in order to engage with students, faculty, and the larger Duke community about issues of international importance. Contemporary leaders who have attended include, Mitt Romney, Stephen Hadley, Ray Odierno, Karl Eikenberry, David Petraeus, Karl Rove, Howard Dean, Condoleezza Rice, Martin Dempsey, Robert Gates, and Fareed Zakaria
If ever there were a snake-pit of ruinous geopolitical policy-makers and pundits (liars for Jesus) on the right wing of American politics, that’s it. This is Seymour Hersh’s protagonist Dempsey in his real colors. Of the no less than four generals and one Secretary of Defense listed; Odierno, Eikenberry, Petraeus, Dempsey and Gates respectively, all were in position to influence and reduce the radical Christian right’s pervasive influence in the USA’s armed forces. None of them did. Eikenberry and Odierno firmly sat on their hands. Dempsey protected them. Petraeus endorsed them. Gates promoted them and what’s more is, was key in setting the Obama administration down the wrong road at its inception when working with Petraeus to more closely integrate the JSOC to the CIA (not to mention instigating the failed Afghanistan ‘surge.’) Of the non-military personalities, Condoleezza Rice is a rabid right wing evangelical. Her deputy, Hadley, had his fingerprints all over the Bush Jr crimes sprees including the frame-up of Saddam for possession of uranium (Plame affair.) Rove devised the strategy which handed the USA, lock, stock & barrel, to the American religious right. Dean is complicit in providing cover for the Mojahedin-e-Khalq terror de-listing even as that group was blackmailed into reentering the game versus Iran but now on the side of Israel with USA supported assassination training, that very training being the subject of Hersh’s ‘Our Men in Iran.’ Zakaria comes up a CIA media whore for geopolitics in nearly every direction one looks, not least his FORD Foundation funding for past projects. Every one of those listed at the Duke program is a snake dripping venom on the right wing of politics, including stealth neocon Dean, who worked together with Rudy Giuliani and Tom Ridge, when ‘rehabilitating’ Mojahedin-e-Khalq for Bibi Netanyahu’s outsourced assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Now, looking at Dempsey in that cesspool when compared with the sanity assigned by Hersh in his ‘Military to Military’, Hersh’s portrayal of Dempsey can’t hold up.
Then, we have another problem. Why would Hersh’s sympathetic sources rat out the supposedly sane generals trying to keep the insanity from spiraling out of control in Syria? That doesn’t smell right. Not only does it not smell right, it violates his sources intelligence training. All military sources would have the necessary intelligence training to operate at the level Hersh is reporting the leaks from and the discipline not to compromise themselves and associates. Are Hersh’s essential facts on intelligence sharing with Assad through the Russians properly lined up? Probably. So, what’s up? Why the leaks to Hersh?
Behind the Mythology
I’ve seen some of the confidential statements to Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by the few of our secular General Officers pointing to the rampant treason against our constitution by Christian dominion personalities they dare not speak about or challenge openly. If our secular Generals and Admirals don’t dare speak out, what should that say to a reasonable person? Who controls the tactical nuclear weapons that are held independently of the President’s ‘football’ controlling a strategic nuclear launch? Personalities like NATO Supreme Commander (US Air Force General) Phillip Breedlove who is clearly itching for a war with Russia. It would appear he just got an (Obama appointed) ally in Joe Dunford who has replaced Hersh’s faux hero (snake in the grass) General Dempsey as JCS chairman.
Whoever ratted out the Russian connection to Hersh has an agenda and that agenda is not preserving the sanity (probably accurately) portrayed by Hersh. What we are more likely looking at is, the struggle between the Christian dominion and secular officers, the elephant in the living room no one dares bring up. The radical right wing had got wind of what is up and pulled a bait and switch on the reading public by a duped Seymour Hersh who was used as the ‘cut out’ to 1) collapse the secular officers intelligence sharing scheme 2) take credit in the public eye for sanity by those very same insane officers and most importantly 3) undercut Hillary on whose watch the badly fucked up Syria policy was set in motion. What an irony, because Hillary would so deserve this and double rich in irony as it was then CIA director & rabid right wing evangelical David Petraeus did the dirty work initiating the hit job on the Assad regime.
Don’t worry about this all not making much common sense, if Obama’s ‘national security’ squeeze Susan Rice never saw a ‘humanitarian intervention’ she didn’t like, the religious right generals at the Pentagon will take every one of them gratefully; all the while ‘praising Jesus’ on the road to Armageddon and pointing the finger of blame at people who’re just plain stupid and have been played to precisely the generals agenda of seeing the return of Jesus via apocalyptic events in the middle east per their theology and ‘Bible Prophecy’ … while Obama’s ‘girls’ … Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice get the full credit for taking us all to hell in a hand-basket when in fact they only deserve the one half of it. Meanwhile you can take in your Pentagon Bible study HERE
Now, on the overdue paper from last semester, if Hersh’s study of Cheney tracks down the Kosovo criminal ring that harvested Cheney’s replacement heart for his transplant, I’ll pass Hersh for the academic year with a solid C grade 😉
Ronald Thomas West 