Iraq: A Different Kind of Legacy

Uruknet

The Iraq War is now 11 years old and still tearing up the country, but no longer with the assistance of U.S. troops. Between 500,000 and 700,000 people died from 2003–2011. The monthly civilian toll now is as high as it’s been since 2008....And that’s not all. We now know, thanks to the courageous efforts of several researchers, that environmental toxins have likely poisoned the country – another consequence of the war instigated by the United States. 

The munitions the United States used in Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom are the apparent culprits, and, like the grim Agent Orange legacy in Vietnam, controversy and denial animate much of the discussion. Two agents are at issue. One is depleted uranium, which is used to harden bullets and mortar shells to enable them to more easily penetrate targets...A 2010 peer-reviewed study by molecular biologists found high rates of birth defects among Iraqis in Fallujah – "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied," according to the lead author...

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5 Reasons Why Google Wants to Gain Control of Your Car

Susan Posel

Google is very proud of their self-driving cars.

So much so that their self-driving car (SDC) project has “entered a new stage” with the development of new technology that can:

• Drive an estimated 700,000 “accident-free” miles
• Utilize lasers, radar and camera to analyze urban driving conditions
• Artificial intelligence can “read” road signs
• Navigate obstacles in roadways
• Navigate merging into lanes and bad weather conditions
• Detailed mapping of the country

Chris Urmson, SDC project manager for Google said: “We’re growing more optimistic that we’re heading toward an achievable goal — a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention.”

Urmson is part of Google X Lab (GXL) which is a technology-based initiative to bring advanced robotics to the public within the next 3 years.

It was explained that with “jaywalking pedestrians [and] cars lurching out of hidden driveways, double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view”; in megacities of the future, the goal is to free residents from the “congestion from cars circling for parking and have fewer intersections made dangerous by distracted drivers. That’s why over the last year we’ve shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving.”

First on GXL’s list is to get SDCs on the road to replace human drivers.

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Ukraine: Coup-Government Acknowledges Defeat

Moon of Alabama

Pushed by CIA Director Brennan and Vice President Biden the Ukrainian government twice tried to use its military against federalists in the east. The second time, when it pushed to blockade the city of Slovyansk, the Russian Federation announced a snap maneuvers of its border troops and threatened to intervene. Kiev called back its forces and the federalists occupied state buildings in more cities in east. Some 23 cities and towns in the Donbass region, which delivers a third of Ukraine's GDP, are now in their hands. More will be by tomorrow.

The coup government in Kiev has, for now, given up:

Ukraine’s president warned Wednesday that its police and security forces are “helpless” to subdue unrest in the country’s east, even as pro-Russia militants seized government buildings in another city in the restive region.

“I will be frank: Today, security forces are unable to quickly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under control,” said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov ...

"Western" media call the protesters in the east "separatists" or "pro-Russian". Those concepts are wrong. Unlike in Crimea there is no majority in the east that wants to join the Russian Federation. These people want autonomous states within the Ukraine with locally elected governments and some control over their foreign relations. They want a federal Ukraine with a weak central government that does not interfere in their affairs.

As things proceed now they may well get what they, and Russia, want. With no authority over the east and no reliable security forces the Kiev government can do nothing to prevent that. The U.S. public is against further U.S. intervention in Ukraine and six month before midterm elections public opinion will for once be noticed. There is also no support in Europe for any escalation like further sanctions on Russia. The "west" and its stooges in Kiev have run out of valid instruments to achieve their goals.

The neocon plan to capture the Black Sea harbor Sevastopol for NATO was defeated when Russia snapped Crimea away. The NATO plan to include Ukraine into its containment ring around Russia has failed. The European Union plan to devour what is left of Ukraine's natural richness is in tatters.
Ukraine will become, as an elder statesman (and war-criminal) adviced two month ago, a finlandized federal nation between the east and the west.

But there are still possible spoilers. The neocons and humanitarian interventionists will fume about their loss and they may still plan some mischief. They could, using their connections with the Ukrainian fascists, try to start a civil war in Ukraine. If only to keep Russia busy and to distracted it from other issues.

Open Source Seed Initiative aims to keep seeds free from patents

Natural News

 In a public ceremony on April 16, a coalition of farmers, scientists and sustainable food advocates launched the Open Source Seed Pledge, a parallel licensing system designed to keep seeds in the hands of the public and prevent them from being patented by private interests.

Plant researchers released the seeds of 29 new varieties of broccoli, celery, kale, quinoa and other vegetables and grains under the pledge in a ceremony at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"These vegetables are part of our common cultural heritage, and our goal is to make sure these seeds remain in the public domain for people to use in the future," said plant breeder and UW-Madison professor Irwin Goldman, one of the pledge's co-authors.

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Five Stunning Facts About America’s Prison System You Haven’t Heard

seankerrigan.com

We’ve done several exposés on the prison system in America, including The Prison System Runs Amok, Expands at Frightening Pace (Sept 6, 2012) and Selling the American Dream is the Biggest Market of All (Sept. 30, 2013), but there’s still much more to be said about this topic. America’s massive prison system is creating a long list of unintended consequences, some of which will effect all of us in the coming years. To help explain just how bad things have gotten, we’ve compiled this list of the most stunning facts and statistics on the America’s prison system today.

1) Because of its prison system, the US is the only country in the world where more men are raped than women.

 

According to the 2011 report from Department of Justice, nearly one in 10 prisoners report having been raped or sexually assaulted by other inmates, staff or both. According to a revised report from the US Department of Justice, there were 216,000 victims of rape in US prisons in 2008. That is roughly 600 a day or 25 every hour.

Those numbers are of victims, not instances, which would be much higher since many victims were reportedly assaulted multiple times throughout the year. Excluding prison rapes, there about 200,000 rapes per year in America, and roughly 91 percent of those victims are women. If these numbers are accurate, this means that America is the only country in the world where more men are raped than women.

Even if the number of unreported rapes outside of prison were substantially larger than most experts believe, the fact that many victims in prison tend to be raped repeatedly would indicate that rape against men is at least comparable to rape against women.

Kendell Spruce was one such inmate, sentenced to six years for forging a check for which he hoped to purchase crack cocaine. In a National Prison Rape Elimination Commission testimony, Spruce said:

“I was raped by at least 27 different inmates over a nine month period. I don’t have to tell you that it was the worst nine months of my life… [I] was sent into protective custody. But I wasn’t safe there either. They put all kinds of people in protective custody, including sexual predators. I was put in a cell with a rapist who had full-blown AIDS. Within two days, he forced me to give him oral sex and anally raped me.”

Spruce was diagnosed with “full blown AIDS” in 2002 and died three years later.

2) There are more black slaves in America today than in 1850.

 

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The Lost Tribe of Palau

"An incredible find on a tiny chain of islands in Micronesia provides what at first appeared to be human bones, but archaeologists quickly realised they were too small and unusual. The problem is the bones are only a few thousand years old... Was it a new species of previously unknown human? Was it a different species entirely? The biggest problem is the Islands of Palau are so remote there is no explanation as to how these human-like creatures ever arrived there in the first place. One of the most remarkable archaeological finds in history, the lost tribe of Palau contains a secret that changes our entire view of evolution..."

Hundreds of prisoners sentenced to death in the US are innocent, research suggests

The Independent 

More than 4 per cent of inmates sentenced to death on the United States’ notorious death row are probably innocent, research suggests. 

The findings, led by a University of Michigan Law School professor, offer a “conservative estimate” of the number of wrongfully convicted death row inmates over three decades.

Researchers reviewed the outcomes of the 7,482 death sentences issued from 1973 to 2004, and found that of that group, 117 inmates were exonerated.

They concluded that with enough time and resources, more than 200 other prisoners, at least 4.1 per cent, would have been proved innocent.

They reached that conclusion by using survival analysis, an advanced statistics tool used in medicine to judge the effectiveness of new treatments.

One of the main reasons why wrongly convicted defendants are not vindicated is because many win appeals reducing their death sentences to life in prison.

Researchers believe that once they have been granted a life sentence, proving their innocence is not as thoroughly pursued.

The results of the probe are likely to send shock waves through anti-death penalty campaign groups.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, said the findings expose profound problems with the death penalty.

“This impressive study points to a serious flaw in our use of the death penalty,” he said. “The ‘problem of innocence’ is much worse than was thought."

The article was published yesterday in an American academic journal.

The History and Science of Color Revolutions Part 4

Brandon Turbeville 
Activist Post

Eastern European, Slovac, and Middle Eastern nations are not the only targets of Anglo-American destabilization campaigns and color revolutions, particularly in recent years. South America, Asia, and even Russia have been and continue to be subject to Western meddling in their own internal affairs, with some of these mass mobilizations being more successful than others.

It is well-established that the entire “Arab Spring” uprising was nothing more than a Western-backed color revolution bolstered by many legitimate complaints of the subject populations yet instigated and guided by Anglo-Americans who have no interest in bringing these people real democracy or freedom. Instead, the teeming masses are nothing more than battering rams for an agenda they do not understand or even know exists.

As in the color revolutions of Eastern Europe and the Slovac world, the “Arab Spring” was engineered and controlled from the very beginning, with “freedom-spreading” organizations working on the ground to recruit, organize, train, and assist participants for the upcoming protests and destabilization. As Tony Cartalucci and Nile Bowie write in their e-book War on Syria: Gateway to WWIII,

One of the organizations involved in recruiting, training, and supporting youth activists ahead of the “Arab Spring” was described in an April 2011 New York Times article. The organization, Movements.org, or Alliance of Youth Movements, would later be described admitting to US funding and involvement in the “Arab Spring” uprisings. The article implicates Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy, and two of its satellite organizations, the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute, in recruiting, training, and supporting the unrest starting as early as 2008. While the New York Times article doesn’t mention the organization by name, it links to an official US State Department announcement titled, “Announcement on Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,” that most certainly does.[1] The Alliance of Youth Movements is a corporate-sponsored “coup college” of sorts, training activists to subvert and topple governments on the US State Department’s behalf.

Indeed, while the aforementioned New York Times article still attempts to obfuscate and cover for the NGOs in their role in the Arab Spring, and therefore does not reveal the extent to which they were responsible, it is surprisingly open regarding the role played by Western NGOs in the movement. The author of the article, Ron Nixon, writes,

But as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The work of these groups often provoked tensions between the United States and many Middle Eastern leaders, who frequently complained that their leadership was being undermined, according to the cables.

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.

Readers of my “The History and Science Of Color Revolutions” series of articles should recognize at least three hallmarks of a destabilization campaign or color revolution – i.e. the presence of well-funded NGOs and Foundations, foreign training of activists and movement leaders, and election monitoring.

That being said, Nixon further explains the methods used by these organizations to instigate and promote the “Arab Spring” color revolution. He states,

Some Egyptian youth leaders attended a 2008 technology meeting in New York, where they were taught to use social networking and mobile technologies to promote democracy. Among those sponsoring the meeting were Facebook, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School and the State Department.

“We learned how to organize and build coalitions,” said Bashem Fathy, a founder of the youth movement that ultimately drove the Egyptian uprisings. Mr. Fathy, who attended training with Freedom House, said, “This certainly helped during the revolution.”

Ms. Qadhi, the Yemeni youth activist, attended American training sessions in Yemen.

“It helped me very much because I used to think that change only takes place by force and by weapons,” she said.

But now, she said, it is clear that results can be achieved with peaceful protests and other nonviolent means.

Although, in the end, many of the countries suffering under the “Arab Spring” did indeed dissolve into chaos and violence, it is important to remember the work of Gene Sharp and “nonviolence as a form of warfare.”

Nixon continues his explanation by writing,

Diplomatic cables report how American officials frequently assured skeptical governments that the training was aimed at reform, not promoting revolutions.

Last year, for example, a few months before national elections in Bahrain, officials there barred a representative of the National Democratic Institute from entering the country.

In Bahrain, officials worried that the group’s political training “disproportionately benefited the opposition,” according to a January 2010 cable.

In Yemen, where the United States has been spending millions on an anti-terrorism program, officials complained that American efforts to promote democracy amounted to “interference in internal Yemeni affairs.”

But nowhere was the opposition to the American groups stronger than in Egypt.

Egypt, whose government receives $1.5 billion annually in military and economic aid from the United States, viewed efforts to promote political change with deep suspicion, even outrage.

Hosni Mubarak, then Egypt’s president, was “deeply skeptical of the U.S. role in democracy promotion,” said a diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Cairo dated Oct. 9, 2007.

At one time the United States financed political reform groups by channeling money through the Egyptian government.

But in 2005, under a Bush administration initiative, local groups were given direct grants, much to the chagrin of Egyptian officials.

According to a September 2006 cable, Mahmoud Nayel, an official with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, complained to American Embassy officials about the United States government’s “arrogant tactics in promoting reform in Egypt.”

The main targets of the Egyptian complaints were the Republican and Democratic institutes. Diplomatic cables show that Egyptian officials complained that the United States was providing support for “illegal organizations.”

Gamal Mubarak, the former president’s son, is described in an Oct. 20, 2008, cable as “irritable about direct U.S. democracy and governance funding of Egyptian NGOs.”

The Egyptian government even appealed to groups like Freedom House to stop working with local political activists and human rights groups.

Clearly, the color revolution machine is not unique to Eastern Europe. Not only the theory, but the practical application of the color revolution and destabilization methodology extends across the world with the necessary networks already set in place with willing staff and plentiful funding.

Thus, the Anglo-European color revolution apparatus, relying heavily on the United States for coordination and funding, are traditionally the most successful players in the geopolitical game, at least in recent years.

Unfortunately, it is Americans that have typically fallen for every color revolution enacted overseas (and domestically) just as much as Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Africans have done.

The American people must quickly learn the formula behind color revolutions, destabilizations, and the agendas of the world oligarchy before it becomes too late for us all.

Notes:
 
[1] “Announcement on Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.” America.gov Archive, November 20, 2008.

The History and Science of Color Revolutions Part 3

Brandon Turbeville 
Activist Post

In my last article regarding the history and science of color revolutions, I attempted to demonstrate how the science of using mass movements of “swarming adolescents” to destabilize national governments and implement regime change is actually a well-established instrument of imperialist desires. In addition, the previous article also demonstrated the methodology of this type of attack in terms of the means of deployment and necessary components of the color revolution.

Yet, if one were to desire a case study in the art of color revolution and destabilization, then the case of Milosevic’s Serbia could easily be provided.

Indeed, Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post wrote an article in 2000 entitled, “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition: Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition Topple Authoritarian Leader,” where he peripherally outlined the tactics used by the United States and NGOs in order to accomplish the desired regime change and the weakening of yet another target nation. This successful destabilization resulted in what Mowat deems in his excellent article “A New Gladio In Action,” “The Serbian Virus,” a domino effect of color revolutions in the Eastern European and Slavic countries.[1] Dobbs wrote,

U.S.-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan "He's Finished," which became the revolution's catchphrase.

Some Americans involved in the anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was up to. Whatever it was, they concluded it was not particularly effective. The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government's foreign assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI).

While NDI worked closely with Serbian opposition parties, IRI focused its attention on Otpor, which served as the revolution's ideological and organizational backbone. In March, IRI paid for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest a few hundreds yards along the Danube from the NDI-favored Marriott.

During the seminar, the Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime. The principal lecturer was retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has made a study of nonviolent resistance methods around the world, including those used in modern-day Burma and the civil rights struggle in the American South.[2]

Those readers familiar with the methods used to deploy a successful color revolution will immediately recognize three aspects of Dobbs’ statement. First, the fact that U.S. organizations funded many of the activists directly and/or paid for supplies needed for guerrilla and overt activism on the ground. Second, that there was the clear existence of a parallel vote counting and reporting apparatus and, third, the involvement of individuals like Col. Robert Helvey.

Jonathan Mowat picks up the topic, particularly that of Helvey’s involvement and summarily documents the rest of the Serbian story in his own article by writing,

Helvey, who served two tours in Vietnam, introduced the Otpor activists to the ideas of American theoretician Gene Sharp, whom he describes as "the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement," referring to the renowned Prussian military strategist.
Peter Ackerman, the above-mentioned [in his own article] coup expert, analyzed and popularized the methods involved in a 2001 PBS documentary-series and book, "A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict," together with retired US Airforce officer Jack DuVall. Focusing on youth organizing, they report:

After the NATO bombing, which had helped the regime suppress opposition, Otpor's organizing took hold with a quiet vengeance. It was built in some places around clubhouses where young people could go and hang out, exercise, and party on the weekends, or more often it was run out of dining rooms and bedrooms in activists' homes. These were "boys and girls 18 and 19 years old" who had lived "in absolute poverty compared to other teenagers around the world," according to Stanko Lazendic, an Otpor activist in Novi Sad. "Otpor offered these kids a place to gather, a place where they could express their creative ideas." In a word, it showed them how to empower themselves.

In addition, Otpor offered food, shelter, and entertainment to a portion of the population that was suffering from a tragic lack of those things. Otpor, as a heavily-funded organization, was thus able to gain the trust and allegiance - conditional as it may have been - of a substantial number of young Serbians.

Jonathan Mowat continues by writing,

Otpor's leaders knew that they "couldn't use force on someone who . . . had three times more force and weapons than we did," in the words of Lazendic. "We knew what had happened in. Tiananmen, where the army plowed over students with tanks." So violence wouldn't work—and besides, it was the trademark of Milosevic, and Otpor had to stand for something different. Serbia "was a country in which violence was used too many times in daily politics," noted Srdja Popovic, a 27 year-old who called himself Otpor's "ideological commissar." The young activists had to use nonviolent methods "to show how superior, how advanced, how civilized" they were.

This relatively sophisticated knowledge of how to develop nonviolent power was not intuitive. Miljenko Dereta, the director of a private group in Belgrade called Civic Initiatives, got funding from Freedom House in the U.S. to print and distribute 5,000 copies of Gene Sharp's book, "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation." Otpor got hold of Sharp's main three-volume work, "The Politics of Nonviolent Action," freely adapting sections of it into a Serbian-language notebook they dubbed the "Otpor User Manual." Consciously using this "ideology of nonviolent, individual resistance," in Popovic's words, activists also received direct training from Col. Robert Helvey, a colleague of Sharp, at the Budapest Hilton in March 2000.

Helvey emphasized how to break the people's habits of subservience to authority, and also how to subvert: the regime's "pillars of support," including the police and armed forces. Crucially, he warned them against "contaminants to a nonviolent struggle," especially violent action, which would deter ordinary people from joining the movement: and alienate the international community, from which material and financial assistance could be drawn. As Popovic put it: "Stay nonviolent and you will get the support of the third party."

That support, largely denied to the Serbian opposition before, now began to flow. Otpor and other dissident groups received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, affiliated with the U.S. government, and Otpor leaders sat down with Daniel Server, the program director for the Balkans at the U.S. Institute for Peace, whose story of having been tear-gassed during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration gave him special credibility in their eyes. The International Republican Institute, also financed by the U.S. government, channeled funding to the opposition and met with Otpor leaders several times. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the wellspring for most of this financing, was also the source of money that went for materials like t-shirts and stickers.

Yet the color revolution did not end with Serbia. With the small nation now under control and a successful destabilization having taken place, a large portion of the Slavic world and Eastern European bloc was now in the crosshairs of the Anglo-Americans.[3] This spread of the color revolution, organized and directed by the West from the word “go,” was the reason behind Mowat’s designation of the chain of events as the “Serbian Virus.” Very soon after Serbia was successfully overthrown, the color revolution motive move on to at least three more countries in Eastern Europe.

Mowat describes this situation as follows:

In the aftermath of the Serbian revolution, the National Endowment for Democracy, Albert Einstein Institution, and related outfits helped establish several Otpor-modeled youth groups in Eastern Europe, notably Zubr in Belarus in January 2001; Kmara in Georgia, in April 2003; and Pora in Ukraine in June 2004. Efforts to overthrow Belarus President Alexsander Luschenko failed in 2001, while the US overthrow of Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was successfully accomplished in 2003, using Kmara as part of its operation.
Commenting on that expansion, Albert Einstein staffer Chris Miller, in his report on a 2001 trip to Serbia found on the group's website, reports:

Since the ousting of Milosevic, several members of Otpor have met with members of the Belarusian group Zubr (Bison). In following developments in Belarus since early this year, It is clear that Zubr was developed or at least conceptualized, using Otpor as a model. Also, [Albert Einstein's report] From Dictatorship to Democracy is available in English on the Zubr website at www.zubr-belarus.com. Of course, success will not be achieved in Belarus or anywhere else, simply by mimicking the actions taken in Serbia. However the successful Serbian nonviolent struggle was highly influenced and aided by the availability of knowledge and information on strategic nonviolent struggle and both successful and unsuccessful past cases, which is transferable. 

Otpor focused on building their human resources, especially among youth. An Otpor training manual to "train future trainers" was developed, which contained excerpts from The Politics of Nonviolent Action, provided to Otpor by Robert Helvey during his workshop in Budapest for Serbs in early 2000. It may be applicable for other countries. 
And with funding provided by Freedom House and the US government, Otpor established the Center for Nonviolent Resistance, in Budapest, to train these groups.

This harkens back to an article written in 2004 for The Guardian by Ian Traynor, entitled “US Campaign Behind The Turmoil In Kiev,” also cited by Mowat. Indeed, Traynor discussed this very movement in his article when he wrote,

In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.
They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Kmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time.
Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists' weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.

Going back to “A New Gladio In Action,” Mowat adds to the description of how color revolutions are orchestrated on the ground inside the target nation as well as across national borders. Indeed, the color revolution in Georgia was just such an operation, involving the coordination of organizations and training sessions that spanned from Georgia itself into Serbia. In Serbia’s own color revolution, the people power putsch was organized from Hungary. Similarly, we saw the shipping in of high numbers of death squad fighters who posed as “protesters” early on during the destabilization of Syria (although their true nature became clear very soon after) through a complex network of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Libya, and Jordan.

Jonathan Mowat describes the cross border operations as follows:

Last year, before becoming president in Georgia, the US-educated Mr Saakashvili traveled from Tbilisi to Belgrade to be coached in the techniques of mass defiance. In Belarus, the US embassy organized the dispatch of young opposition leaders to the Baltic, where they met up with Serbs traveling from Belgrade. In Serbia's case, given the hostile environment in Belgrade, the Americans organized the overthrow from neighboring Hungary—Budapest and Szeged.

[Quoting Traynor] In recent weeks, several Serbs traveled to the Ukraine. Indeed, one of the leaders from Belgrade, Aleksandar Maric, was turned away at the border.The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US State Department and USAID are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Mowat also quotes an article published in the Associated Press by Dusan Stojanovic, on November 2, 2004, entitled "Serbia's export: Peaceful Revolution." The article elaborates on the “for hire” nature of the revolutionary organizations created with the help of Western intelligence and the U.S. State Department. The article states,

"We knew there would be work for us after Milosevic," said Danijela Nenadic, a program coordinator of the Belgrade-based Center for Nonviolent Resistance. The nongovernmental group emerged from Otpor, the pro-democracy movement that helped sweep Milosevic from power by organizing massive and colorful protests that drew crowds who never previously had the courage to oppose the former Yugoslav president. In Ukraine and Belarus, tens of thousands of people have been staging daily protests—carbon copies of the anti-Milosevic rallies—with "training" provided by the Serbian group.

The group says it has "well-trained" followers in Ukraine and Belarus. In Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, anti-government activists "saw what we did in Serbia and they contacted us for professional training," group member Sinisa Sikman said. Last year, Otpor's clenched fist was flying high on white flags again—this time in Georgia , when protesters stormed the parliament in an action that led to the toppling of Shevardnadze.

Last month, Ukrainian border authorities denied entry to Alexandar Maric, a member of Otpor and an adviser with the U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House. A Ukrainian student group called Pora was following the strategies of Otpor.

Mowat also adds that:

James Woolsey's Freedom House "expressed concern" over Maric's deportation, in an October 14, 2004, press release which reported that he was traveling to Ukraine as part of "an initiative run by Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute to promote civic participation and oversight during the 2004 presidential and 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine." In a related statement, it added that it hoped the deportation was not a sign of the Ukrainian government's "unwillingness to allow the free flow of information and learning across borders that is an integral and accepted part of programs to encourage democratic progress in diverse societies around the world."[4]

In the doublespeak world of destabilization organizations such as USAID, NDI, IRI, and Freedom House, “free flow of information and learning” amounts to nothing more than the free flow of agents of unrest and the learning of propaganda well-funded and specifically designed to bring about the change in domestic national society that is desired by the world Oligarchy.

Notes:

[1] See also: Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[2] Dobbs, Michael. “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition; Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition Topple Authoritarian Leader.” The Washington Post. December 11, 2000. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-565855.html Accessed on July 4, 2013.
[3] See also: Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[4] See also: Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 254-256.

The History and Science of Color Revolutions Part 2

Brandon Turbeville 
Activist Post

In my previous article dealing with destabilization mechanisms and color revolutions entitled “The History and Science of Color Revolutions, Part 1,” I briefly discussed the history of the theory behind such mass movements and the related mobilizations of “swarming adolescents” as well as the purposes for which color revolutions are generally deployed.

Whenever one discusses color revolutions, however, it is important to understand that this tactic is not merely a recent invention on the part of the ruling elite. In fact, this particular method of destabilization has quite a long history, having been perfected in the late 1960s and refined into an art form as time has progressed.

It is also extremely important to understand how color revolutions work, as well as how these methods are successfully deployed. Such an understanding is particularly relevant if one wishes to combat or, at the very least, avoid the tragic results of color revolutions in their own country or the propaganda narrative surrounding those revolutions in another part of the world.

Because color revolutions, destabilizations, and coups require much more than propaganda inside or outside the country, it is necessary to organize, train, indoctrinate, and mobilize with “boots on the ground” inside the target nation. Since the movement will not be an organic one, the “swarming adolescents” must be organized by the agents directing the destabilization.

With this in mind, Jonathan Mowat’s excellent article, “The New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents,’” which I cited at length in my last article, goes into the recent history of color revolution tactics along with a brief discussion regarding the history of some of its individual and organizational players, most notably Gene Sharp, Bob Helvey, and The Albert Einstein Institution.

Still, it is important to understand that these individuals and organizations are by no means the pinnacle of international destabilizations and color revolutions nor are they the sole facilitators of it.
[1]

Regardless, Mowat explains,

The creation and deployment of coups of any kind requires agents on the ground. The main handler of these coups on the "street side" has been the Albert Einstein Institution, which was formed in 1983 as an offshoot of Harvard University under the impetus of Dr. Gene Sharp, and which specializes in "nonviolence as a form of warfare." Dr. Sharp had been the executive secretary of A.J. Muste, the famous U.S. Trotskyite labor organizer and peacenik. The group is funded by Soros and the NED. Albert Einstein's president [2006] is Col. Robert Helvey, a former US Army officer with 30 years of experience in Southeast Asia. He has served as the case officer for youth groups active in the Balkans and Eastern Europe since at least 1999.

Mowat then goes on to briefly describe Robert Helvey’s background in relation to the color revolution industry. He writes,

Col. Helvey reports, in a January 29, 2001, interview with film producer Steve York in Belgrade, that he first got involved in "strategic nonviolence" upon seeing the failure of military approaches to toppling dictators—especially in Myanmar, where he had been stationed as military attaché—and seeing the potential of Sharp's alternative approach. According to B. Raman, the former director of India's foreign intelligence agency, RAW, in a December 2001 paper published by his institute entitled, "The USA's National Endowment For Democracy (NED): An Update," Helvey "was an officer of the Defence Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, who had served in Vietnam and, subsequently, as the US Defence Attache in Yangon, Myanmar (1983 to 85), during which he clandestinely organised the Myanmar students to work behind Aung San Suu Kyi and in collaboration with Bo Mya's Karen insurgent group. . . . He also trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989" and "is now believed to be acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong, the religious sect of China, in similar civil disobedience techniques." Col. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with Albert Einstein and Soros long before then.

Yet, as Mowat demonstrates, Helvey was by no means the backbone of the Albert Einstein Institute, despite his heavy involvement. Indeed, AEI relies heavily on the work of one of the leading figures of color revolutionary theory, Dr. Gene Sharp. Mowat states,

Reflecting Albert Einstein's patronage, one of its first books was Dr. Sharp's "Making Europe Unconquerable: The Potential of Civilian-Based Deterrence and Defense," published in 1985 with a forward by George Kennan, the famous "Mr. X" 1940's architect of the Cold War who was also a founder of the CIA's Operations division. There, Sharp reports that "civilian-based defense" could counter the Soviet threat through its ability "to deter and defeat attacks by making a society ungovernable by would be oppressors" and "by maintaining a capacity for orderly self-rule even in the face of extreme threats and actual aggression." He illustrates its feasibility by discussing the examples of the Algerian independence in 1961 and the Czechoslovakian resistance to Soviet invasion in 1968-9. In his forward, Kennan praises Sharp for showing the "possibilities of deterrence and resistance by civilians" as a "partial alternative to the traditional, purely military concepts of national defense." The book was promptly translated into German, Norwegian, Italian, Danish, and other NATO country languages. See the link to the Italian translation of the book (Verso un'Europa Inconquistabile. 190 pp. 1989 Introduction by Gianfranco Pasquino) that sports a series of fashionable sociologists and "politologists" prefacing the book and calling for a civil resistance to a possible Soviet invasion of Italy. 

Such formulations suggest that Albert Einstein activities were, ironically, coherent (or, possibly updating) the infamous NATO's "Gladio" stay-behind network, whose purpose was to combat possible Soviet occupation through a panoply of military and nonmilitary means. The investigations into Gladio, and those following the 1978 assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, also shed some light (immediately switched off) on a professional apparatus of destabilization that had been invisible for several decades to the public. 

It is noteworthy that the former deputy chief of intelligence for the US Army in Europe, Major General Edward Atkeson, first "suggested the name 'civilian based defense' to Sharp," John M. Mecartney, Coordinator of the Nonviolent Action for National Defense Institute, reports in his group's CBD News and Opinion of March 1991. By 1985, Gen. Atkeson, then retired from the US Army, was giving seminars at Harvard entitled "Civilian-based Defense and the Art of War."

The Albert Einstein Institution reports, in its "1994-99 Report on Activities," that Gen. Atkeson also served on Einstein's advisory board in those years. Following his posting as the head of US Army intelligence in Europe, and possibly concurrently with his position at the Albert Einstein Institution, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports that Gen. Atkeson, who also advised CSIS on "international security," served as "national intelligence officer for general purpose forces on the staff of the director of Central Intelligence." 

A 1990 variant of Sharp's book, "Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System," the Albert Einstein Institution reports, "was used in 1991 and 1992 by the new independent governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in planning their defense against Soviet efforts to regain control." 

As we shall see below, with such backing, Col. Helvey and his colleagues have created a series of youth movements including Otpor! in Serbia, Kmara! in Georgia, Pora! in Ukraine, and the like, which are already virally replicating other sects throughout the former Soviet Union, achieving in civilian form what had not been possible militarily in the 1980s. The groups are also spreading to Africa and South America.[2]

Achieving in civilian form what had not been possible militarily is the whole purpose of the color revolution, despite the fact that military involvement may follow the initial destabilization campaign.

Learning the ins and outs of the color revolution technique, however, will provide a much needed service in terms of preventing that goal from being met.

Notes:

[1] Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action.” Online Journal. Reposted by ColorRevolutionandGeoPolitics.blogspot.com. Accessed on July 3, 2013.
See also: Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[2] Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action.” Online Journal. Reposted by ColorRevolutionandGeoPolitics.blogspot.com. Accessed on July 3, 2013.
See also: Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 248-250.

The History and Science of Color Revolutions Part 1

Brandon Turbeville 
Activist Post

In my last article, “Color Revolutions 101: The Making Of A Controlled Revolution,” I discussed the basic setup of various State agencies, intelligence apparatus, Non-Governmental Organizations, and Foundations that enable and engineer color revolutions across the world. In that article, I attempted to show the different manifestations of the color revolution as well as the methodology used to coordinate such movements in their various locations.

Although more recent movements were the focus of that discussion, it is important to understand, however, that the color revolution is not merely a recent invention on the part of the ruling elite. In fact, this particular method of destabilization has quite a long history, having been perfected in the late 1960s and refined into an art form as time has progressed.

Indeed, Jonathan Mowat adds to the recent historical understanding of the controlled-coup and color revolutions in his article, “The New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents,’” also focusing on the players and the methods of deployment. Mowat writes,

Much of the coup apparatus is the same that was used in the overthrow of President Fernando Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, the Tiananmen Square destabilization in 1989, and Vaclav Havel's "Velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia in 1989. As in these early operations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its primary arms, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), played a central role. The NED was established by the Reagan Administration in 1983, to do overtly what the CIA had done covertly, in the words of one its legislative drafters, Allen Weinstein. The Cold War propaganda and operations center, Freedom House, now chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, has also been involved, as were billionaire George Soros' foundations, whose donations always dovetail those of the NED.

What made the color revolution grow more successful, of course, is the predominance of the technology that now exists in today’s society. With the advent of cell phones, the Internet, social media and other forms of electronic communication, the ability of the color revolution to act in a more coordinated and effective fashion has been multiplied exponentially. Mowat addresses this issue when he states,

What is new about the template bears on the use of the Internet (in particular chat rooms, instant messaging, and blogs) and cell phones (including text-messaging), to rapidly steer angry and suggestible "Generation X" youth into and out of mass demonstrations and the like—a capability that only emerged in the mid-1990s. "With the crushing ubiquity of cell phones, satellite phones, PCs, modems and the Internet," Laura Rosen emphasized in Salon Magazine on February 3, 2001,"the information age is shifting the advantage from authoritarian leaders to civic groups." She might have mentioned the video games that helped create the deranged mindset of these "civic groups." The repeatedly emphasized role played by so-called "Discoshaman" and his girlfriend "Tulipgirl," in assisting the "Orange Revolution" through their aptly named blog, "Le Sabot Post-Modern," is indicative of the technical and sociological components involved.

The emphasis on the use of new communication technologies to rapidly deploy small groups, suggests what we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs" doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments "enabled" by "real time" intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of "intelligence helmet" video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine's civilian application.

This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The "revolution" in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. . . . .

The new techniques of warfare include the use of both lethal (violent) and nonlethal (nonviolent) tactics. Both ways are conducted using the same philosophy, infrastructure, and modus operandi. It is what is known as Cyberwar. For example, the tactic of swarming is a fundamental element in both violent and nonviolent forms of warfare. This new philosophy of war, which is supposed to replicate the strategy of Genghis Khan as enhanced by modern technologies, is intended to aid both military and non-military assaults against targeted states through what are, in effect, "high tech" hordes. In that sense there is no difference, from the standpoint of the plotters, between Iraq or Ukraine, if only that many think the Ukraine-like coup is more effective and easier.[1]

Mowat then goes on to demonstrate how this theory of destabilization fits with that endorsed by military-industrial theoreticians like Dr. Peter Ackerman who wrote the aptly-named book Strategic Nonviolent Conflict. For instance, when Ackerman spoke at the “Secretary’s Open Forum” at the State Department in June 29, 2004, Ackerman did not quibble with the imperialist goals of the Bush administration, only the methods used to achieve them.

In his speech, “Between Hard and Soft Power: The Rise of Civilian-Based Struggle and Democratic Change,” Ackerman suggested that youth movements, not American military might, could be used to bring down North Korea and Iran and that they could have been used to bring down Iraq. Ackerman also stated in his speech that he was working with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, the U.S. weapons designer, for the purpose of creating new communications technologies that might be used by these “youth insurgencies.”[2]

As Mowat points out, Ackerman is the founding Chairman of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts of Washington, D.C. where Jack Duvall, a former U.S. Air Force officer, is President. Ackerman is also co-director with former CIA Director James Woolsey of the Arlington Institute (AI) of Washington, D.C. The AI was created by John L. Peterson, in 1989 who is the former Chief of Naval Operations, for the stated purpose of helping “redefine the concept of national security in much larger, comprehensive terms” by introducing “social value shifts into the traditional national defense equation.”[3]

Yet the theory of “youth insurgencies” in no way began with Ackerman. As far back as 1967, the Tavistock Institute, the major psychological experimentation wing of the military industrial complex, was studying the effects of using “swarming adolescents” as an instrument of governmental disruption and regime change. As Jonathan Mowat summarizes,

As in the case of the new communication technologies, the potential effectiveness of angry youth in postmodern coups has long been under study. As far back as 1967, Dr. Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute, and an expert on the "hypnotic effects" of television, specified that the then new phenomenon of "swarming adolescents" found at rock concerts could be effectively used to bring down the nation-state by the end of the 1990s. This was particularly the case, as Dr. Emery reported in "The next thirty years: concepts, methods and anticipations,'' in the group's "Human Relations," because the phenomena was associated with "rebellious hysteria." The British military created the Tavistock Institute as its psychological warfare arm following World War I; it has been the forerunner of such strategic planning ever since. Dr. Emery's concept saw immediate application in NATO's use of "swarming adolescents" in toppling French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967.[4]

Of course, the publicly acknowledged and published studies and theoretical applications of using “swarming adolescents” for the purposes of destabilizing one’s enemy continued on through the years becoming more and more refined as it moved forward in both theory and practice. As mentioned in my article “Color Revolutions 101: The Making Of A Controlled Revolution,” the use of death squads and mass movements against the nation state or rival movements is nothing new. This much is evidenced by the work T.E. Lawrence many years ago. However, the details and techniques of the manipulation of mass numbers of people have only continued to become more and more advanced and sophisticated. Mowat further describes the research and theory behind color revolutions:

In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university's "Program for Social Innovations in Global Management," began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in "Human Relations" in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of "Social Architecture'' at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that "rock video in Kathmandu," was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a "global civilization." There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, "building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,'' and "creating global events" through "the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media."

Mowat goes on to describe what he deems to be the “final” aspect of color revolutions and destabilizations - the implementation of polling operations providing false “exit poll” data, confidence in government, satisfaction with the current regime, support for the opposition, etc. This method serves to create the perception both inside and outside the target country that conditions were abominable before the “revolution” (which may or may not be true), that the overwhelming majority of the citizens within the target country support the coup, and that the regime is failing. In short, the goal is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of governmental collapse.

After a short propaganda blitz citing these “poll watchers,” “freedom and democracy organizations,” and “human rights organizations,” the door is opened to the implementation of international pressure against the target governments, covert action inside and outside of the nation, and the defection of pre-planned agents planted within the governmental and military structure.

Mowat writes,

This brings us to the final ingredient of these new coups—the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television to give the false (or sometimes accurate) impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive. Polling operations in the recent coups have been overseen by such outfits as Penn, Schoen and Berland, top advisers to Microsoft and Bill Clinton. Praising their role in subverting Serbia, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (and later Chairman of NDI) , in an October 2000 letter to the firm quoted on its website, stated: "Your work with the National Democratic Institute and the Yugoslav opposition contributed directly and decisively to the recent breakthrough for democracy in that country . . . This may be one of the first instances where polling has played such an important role in setting and securing foreign policy objectives." Penn, Schoen, together with the OSCE, also ran the widely televised "exit poll" operations in the Ukrainian elections.

In the aftermath of such youth deployments and media operations, more traditional elements come to the fore. That is, the forceful, if covert, intervention by international institutions and governments threatening the targeted regime, and using well placed operatives within the targeted regime's military and intelligence services to ensure no countermeasures can be effectively deployed. Without these traditional elements, of course, no postmodern coup could ever work. Or, as Jack DuVall put it in Jesse Walker's "Carnival and conspiracy in Ukraine," in Reason Online, November 30, 2004, "You can't simply parachute Karl Rove into a country and manufacture a revolution."[5]

Because color revolutions, destabilizations, and coups require much more than propaganda inside or outside the country, it is necessary to organize, train, indoctrinate, and mobilize with “boots on the ground” inside the target nation. Since the movement will not be an organic one, the “swarming adolescents” must be organized by the agents directing the destabilization.

Regardless, the propaganda that is used both inside and outside of the target nation is traditionally very effective in garnering domestic support for whatever additional measures are then taken against the victim state. Americans have typically fallen for every color revolution enacted overseas (and domestically) just as much as Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Africans have done.

The American people must quickly learn the formula behind color revolutions, destabilizations, and the agendas of the world oligarchy before it becomes too late for us all.

Notes:

[1] Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[2] Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[3] Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[4] Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 243-270.
[5] Tarpley, Webster G. Obama: The Postmodern Coup. Mowat, Jonathan. “A New Gladio In Action: ‘Swarming Adolescents.’” Progressive Press. 2008. Pp. 247-248.

Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia

Consortium News 

Now that the demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in full swing, one has to wonder when the neocons will unveil their plan for “regime change” in Moscow, despite the risks that overthrowing Putin and turning Russia into a super-sized version of Ukraine might entail for the survival of the planet.

There is a “little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly” quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme.

If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with “regime change” – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your “regime change” in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program.

So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.

When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you’ve succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin’s resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of “regime change.”

Your many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with a propaganda barrage that would do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin “group think” is near total and any accusation – regardless of the absence of facts – is fine.

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Suspicious Deaths of Bankers Are Now Classified as “Trade Secrets” by Federal Regulator

Wall St. On Parade

It doesn’t get any more Orwellian than this: Wall Street mega banks crash the U.S. financial system in 2008. Hundreds of thousands of financial industry workers lose their jobs. Then, beginning late last year, a rash of suspicious deaths start to occur among current and former bank employees.  Next we learn that four of the Wall Street mega banks likely hold over $680 billion face amount of life insurance on their workers, payable to the banks, not the families. We ask their Federal regulator for the details of this life insurance under a Freedom of Information Act request and we’re told the information constitutes “trade secrets.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the life expectancy of a 25 year old male with a Bachelor’s degree or higher as of 2006 was 81 years of age. But in the past five months, five highly educated JPMorgan male employees in their 30s and one former employee aged 28, have died under suspicious circumstances, including three of whom allegedly leaped off buildings – a statistical rarity even during the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

There is one other major obstacle to brushing away these deaths as random occurrences – they are not happening at JPMorgan’s closest peer bank – Citigroup. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup are global financial institutions with both commercial banking and investment banking operations. Their employee counts are similar – 260,000 employees for JPMorgan versus 251,000 for Citigroup.

Both JPMorgan and Citigroup also own massive amounts of bank-owned life insurance (BOLI), a controversial practice that pays the corporation when a current or former employee dies. (In the case of former employees, the banks conduct regular “death sweeps” of public records using former employees’ Social Security numbers to learn if a former employee has died and then submits a request for payment of the death benefit to the insurance company.)

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