‘ISIS Air Force’: US Airstrike Takes Out Battalion of Iraqi Troops Who Were Battling ISIS

Comment: This was the overarching objective for the involvement in airstrikes in the first place.

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21st Century Wire

ISIS terrorists have often lamented, “if only we had an air force to provide air cover when we are fighting in the field.” Yesterday they got their wish (again). 

The dubious US-led ‘Anti-ISIL Coalition’ continues to spiral out of control. As Iraqi soldiers closed in on ISIS terrorists on the ground, a US airstrike struck their column – killing approximately 20 Iraqi soldiers and injuring at least 30 more (see full report below). Additional casualty reports could rise over the coming days.

According to Hakim al-Zamili, head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, this latest incident is said to have occurred near Al-Naimiya in the Fallujah province, after the Iraqi troops freed “a strategically important area” from ISIS.

What was the US reaction to this dangerous move? Washington’s answer: “We’re looking into it.”

According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov:

“If they were not involved in that airstrike, than why are the Pentagon’s representatives, as leaders of the anti-ISIS coalition, hushing up the presence of their allies’ aircraft in the Deir ez-Zor region on December 6? Isn’t it because the [anti-ISIS] coalition air force gets all the information on Islamic State targets in Syria from the Pentagon?” he asked.

Watch a new video of US strikes against Iraqi troops here:

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VOODOO ECONOMICS: The Massive Prison Industry In The United States, Big Business & Slavery

Arjun Walia
rielpolitik.com

Despite the fact that various social, political, and human rights organizations have condemned the United States’ prison system, it remains one of the biggest businesses in existence today. Did you know that America has four percent of the world’s population, yet still carries approximately twenty five percent of the world’s prison population? That is a staggering number. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world and it is increasing exponentially each year. Almost half of American juveniles will have been arrested before they reach their 23rd birthday, and children as young as 13 years old have been sentenced to die in prison. The cost of this system? Approximately $75,000,000,000 a year…

These are just a few startling statistics outlined in the video below. Check it out.

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Syria Shatters Pentagon Dream

Comment: with help from Russia. Well done Putin.

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Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation

No wonder Full Spectrum Dominance practitioners in the Beltway and beyond are consumed by deep denial.

They look at the Syrian chessboard and as power projection goes, they see Russia comfortably settling down, with a serious land and air base, to conduct all sorts of operations across MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) in the near future. The Pentagon obviously never saw it coming.

And that's just the beginning. Further on down the road there's bound to be increased military interaction between Russia, China and Iran across Southwest Asia. The Pentagon qualifies Russia, China and Iran - the key nodes of Eurasia integration - as threats.

Russia getting deeper into Syria - and in the long run MENA - progresses just as Moscow insists on dealing with assorted NATO members as «partners» in the war against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Some stab Moscow in the back, like Turkey. Some may share sensitive military intel, like France. Some may profess the desire to collaborate, like Britain. And some are a geyser of ambiguity, like the US.

Amidst all the ambiguities, «partners» could not be a more delightfully diplomatic way to mask what is a stunning fact in the skies: with its current mix of sophisticated surface-to-air, sea-to-air and air-to-air defenses, from cruise missiles launched out of submarines to the S-400s, the de facto no-fly zone over Syria is now decided by Moscow - not Washington and much less Ankara.  

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NATO Nuclear Scam on Iran Now Carved in Stone

New Eastern Outlook

The IAEA has finally retired the Iranian nuclear military use folder with a unanimous vote which clears the way to removing most of the sanctions. It has been a long day in coming, but the wooden stake was put through the vampire hearts of all the Iran haters with the IAEA declaring it had found no military use of Iranian nuclear technology.

All those who had claimed that Iran had a hidden nuclear weapons program are now proven to have been lying. Why?…because all during the P5+1 negotiation process, during the hard fought Congressional vote on the final agreement, and during this last shot “military portfolio” issue did any intelligence agency reveal its secret stash of proof they had been holding off for the last moment.

The coordinated scale of the Iran threat hoax I viewed as a psychological terror campaign in itself against all countries East and West. Every time Obama or high Pentagon officials mentioned “all options are on the table, including the military one”, they knew they were sending a message to us all that they already had evidence of either weapons grade uranium diversion, or nuclear weapons technology in the works, which would have had to include warhead designing and some initial testing.

For Israel the matter was even worse, due to its constant threats that it would “go it alone” to stop Iran from “getting the bomb” if it had to. Netanyahu and his general staff were also sending a complimentary message that they also had solid Intel on an Iranian weapons program or they would never have risked a preemptive attack. Israel was aiming to justify any future such attack as a defensive move on its part. Even the holocaust card was played repeatedly as part of their “never again” PR cover.
 

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Dutch driving instructors can trade lessons for sex, govt says

RT

Driving instructors in the Netherlands can legally trade driving lessons for sex, government ministers have confirmed. 

 

While prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, this controversial form of exchanging sex for services has recently been a hot topic for debate: Some novice drivers have been learning the rules of the road in exchange for sex, in deals which the conservative opposition party ChristenUnie has labeled "illegal prostitution."

The Dutch government has been researching the appropriate legal stance on such transactions and concluded that offering driving lessons in exchange for sex is not illegal. However it would be illegal if the transaction was to be reversed, with a learner driver offering sex for the lessons.

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In Dramatic Reversal, US Vice President Biden Calls On Turkey To Withdraw Its Troops From Iraq

  “The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,” Kerry said, adding that the focus is no longer “on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.”

 

Comment: Yeah right. I wonder why that might be John? The US-NATO cabal was forced into this position by Putin and now they are having to scrape the egg from their sorry faces. No doubt they are biding their time for another hair-brained scheme. 

 

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Zero Hedge

 

It has been a strange two days for US foreign policy.

Earlier today we reported that in what amounts to a significant blow to the official US position over Syria, namely the multi-year demands to replace president Assad with a western puppet ruler, John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia’s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad’s future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria’s civil war.”

“The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,” Kerry said, adding that the focus is no longer “on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.”
In a testament to the fact that mainstream media is beginning to understand just how weak America’s negotiating position has become, AP offered the following rather sarcastic assessment: “President Barack Obama first called on Assad to leave power in the summer of 2011, with “Assad must go” being a consistent rallying cry. Later, American officials allowed that he wouldn’t have to resign on “Day One” of a transition. Now, no one can say when Assad might step down.”
Kerry also called demands by the “moderate” opposition that Assad step down before peace negotiations begin an “obvious nonstarter.”

All of the above, some may say, makes the US presence in Syria, whether through CIA covert ops, commandos, or even the Islamic State, moot: after all, if the US has folded on an Assad regime change, then there is no longer any point in continuing the proxy war, which revolves around one key issue: regime change in Syria.

But then something even more surprising happened.

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Did Saudi Arabia Just Clear The Way For An Invasion Of Syria And Iraq?

 Zero Hedge

 

And now, a further turn for the absurd.

While it’s still far from common knowledge among the Western public that Washington’s closest allies in the Mid-East are funding, arming, and otherwise enabling the Sunni extremists (including ISIS) battling for control of Syria and working to destabilize Iraq, the massacre that unfolded earlier this month in San Bernardino has managed to focus some much needed attention on the role Saudi Arabia plays in promoting extremism.

As we noted in the immediate aftermath of the California mass shooting, the fact that Tashfeen Malik spent 25 years in Saudi Arabia living with a father who, according to family members who spoke to Reuters, adopted an increasingly hardline ideology as time went on, underscores the fact that the puritanical, ultra orthodox belief system promoted by the Saudis is poisonous. That’s not a critique of Islam. It’s a critique of Wahhabism and the effect it has on the minds of those who are inculcated by Saudi culture.

Here’s an excerpt from “Saudi Arabia Is Underwriting Terrorism. Let’s Start Making It Pay,” by Charles Kenny:

For years since 9/11, U.S. and Western officials have mostly looked the other way at all this ideological support for extremism: Saudi oil was just too important to the global economy, even though many of these Saudi petro-dollars were underwriting repression at home and the growth of Salafist fundamentalism abroad.

This support for radicalism abroad should come as little surprise given that Islamic State is an ideological cousin of Saudi Arabia’s own state-sponsored extremist Wahhabi sect—which the country has spent more than $10 billion to promote worldwide through charitable organizations like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The country will continue to export extremism as long as it practices the same policies at home. 

More, from “Saudi Arabia: An ISIS That Has Made It,” by Kamel Daoud:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things.

The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Consider that, and consider the following headline from Reuters which surely qualifies as the most tragically ironic thing you’ll read all day: “Saudi Arabia announces 34-state Islamic military alliance against terrorism.”

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, you no longer have anything to fear from Sunni extremists because the undisputed king of promoting Sunni extremism is on the case. “The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” a statement from state-ruun SPA said.

But it gets better. Much better.

“The countries here mentioned” of course include Turkey and Qatar. Qatar is a well known sponsor of extremist groups battling in Syria. Recall the following from The New York Times (ca. 2014):

Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

“Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Sheikh Ajmi and at least a half-dozen others identified by the United States as private fund-raisers for Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise operate freely in Doha, often speaking at state-owned mosques and even occasionally appearing on Al Jazeera. The state itself has provided at least some form of assistance — whether sanctuary, media, money or weapons — to the Taliban of Afghanistan, Hamas of Gaza, rebels from Syria, militias in Libya and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region.

Now, however, Qatar is finding itself under withering attack by an unlikely alignment of interests, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, which have all sought to portray it as a godfather to terrorists everywhere. Some in Washington have accused it of directly supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist group so bloodthirsty that Al Qaeda has condemned it — a charge that Western officials, independent analysts and Arab diplomats critical of Qatar all call implausible and unsubstantiated.

As for Turkey, well, we’ve covered Ankara’s connections to ISIS exhaustively, but suffice to say you don’t pull in $500 million or more per year in oil sales without a state sponsor and for Bakr al-Baghdadi, that state sponsor looks to be Turkey. And the oil story only scratches the surface of Erdogan’s complicity when it comes to aiding and abetting extremism in Syria.

Of course Iran is excluded from the new “coalition.” Here’s Reuters again:

Shi’ite Muslim Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia’s arch rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional powers rage from Syria to Yemen.

This would be infuriating if it weren’t so comically absurd. Obviously Tehran has some blood on its hands when it comes to promoting international terrorism via the Quds and via Hezbollah. However, that pales in comparison to the Saudis role in creating a world view that indocrinates the masses with an ideology that aligns almost perfectly with that espoused by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their offshoots.

Further, the IRGC and Hezbollah are actually on the ground fighting the same terrorists the Saudis are talking about. So while Riyadh issues press releases, Iran risks its soldiers. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is busy fighting to restore a puppet government (of course Iran is in many ways battling to restore what some might call a puppet of Tehran in Syria, but you get the point).

The obvious question here is this: is this the precursor to Saudi, Qatari, UAE, and (more) Turkish boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, just as Iraqi Shiite politician Hanan Fatlawi predicted last week? It certainly appears so. Here’s a headline that crossed the wires earlier today (from Reuters):

• SAUDI FOREIGN MINISTER JUBEIR SAYS TALKS ONGOING WITH REGARD TO SAUDI ARABIA, OTHER GULF STATES SENDING SPECIAL FORCES TO SYRIA

With that in mind, we close with one last quote, this one from 30-year-old deputy crown prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman: “There will be international coordination with major powers and international organizations … in terms of operations in Syria and Iraq.”

Turkish MP faces treason charges after telling RT ISIS used Turkey for transiting sarin

Comment: Turkey, as lap-dog to US-NATO imperialism is slipping deeper into its own hole...

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RT

A treason investigation has been launched against a Turkish MP who alleged in an exclusive interview with RT that Islamic State jihadists delivered deadly sarin gas to Syria through Turkey. 

 

Ankara’s Chief Prosecutor's Office opened the case against Istanbul MP Eren Erdem of Republican People's Party (CHP) after his interview about sarin was aired on RT on Monday. 

"Chemical weapon materials were brought to Turkey and put together in ISIS camps in Syria, which was known as the Iraqi Al-Qaeda at that time." 

Turkish MP called traitor after Sarin gas revelationsTurkish MP Eren Erdem faces treason charges after this interview to RT. It's about Turkey, deadly Sarin gas & ISIS. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/6zlw
Posted by RT Play on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Erdem noted that the chemicals used for the production of weapons did not originate from Turkey. “All basic materials are purchased from Europe. Western institutions should question themselves about these relations. Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria,” Erdem told RT.

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Western media brought to you by state-sponsored terrorism

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik

Multi-million-dollar advertising money has long been suspected as an unspoken filter for Western news media coverage. If the news conflicts with advertising interests then it is simply dropped. Western complicity in Yemen's conflict is a case study. Add to that the celebrity sheen of Hollywood stars Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman. What we then have is an illustration of how ugly realities of killing and war crimes are cosmetically air brushed from public awareness.

Let's take three major Western media outlets — BBC, CNN, France 24. All are notable for their dearth of news coverage on the bloody conflict in Yemen. On any given day over the past nine months, these channels have rarely given any reports on the daily violence in the Arabian Peninsula country. Yemen is heading into peace talks in Geneva this week, so there might follow some desultory reports on the said channels. But over the past nine months when the country was being pummelled in an appalling onslaught by foreign powers, the same channels gave negligible reportage.

It also turns out — not coincidentally — that major advertisers on these same news channels include Qatar Airways, Emirates Airlines and Etihad. The latter two advertisers feature screen celebrities Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman, posing as satisfied customers of these Gulf state-owned companies. Other prominent advertisers on BBC, CNN and France 24 are Turkish Airlines and Business Friendly Bahrain. This advertising complex has, undoubtedly, a direct bearing on why the three mentioned Western news channels do not give any meaningful coverage of the disturbing events in Yemen. Notwithstanding there is much that deserves telling about Yemen — if your purpose was journalism and public information. The poorest country in the Arab region is being bombed by a coalition of states that include the US, Britain and Saudi Arabia, as well as a handful of other Persian Gulf oil-rich kingdoms. The latter include Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Thousands of Yemeni civilians — women and children — have been killed in air strikes by warplanes from this foreign military coalition, which claims to have intervened in Yemen to reinstall a regime headed up by a discredited president who was forced into exile in March this year by a popular uprising. The uprising was led by the Yemeni national army allied with guerrilla known as the Houthis.

Out of Yemen's 24 million population, nearly half are in dire humanitarian conditions from lack of food, water and medicine, according to the United Nations. The suffering is aggravated by a sea and air blockade of Yemen by the Western-Arab military coalition. Due to Western involvement in a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Yemen, one might think that Western media would be at least giving some coverage. Well, not if you watch BBC, CNN or France 24.

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Meet the Military-Funded AI that Learns as Fast as a Human

defenseone.com

Today, it recognizes handwriting; tomorrow, it may vastly improve the military’s surveillance and targeting efforts. 

A computer program, funded in large part by the U.S. military, has displayed the ability to learn and generate new ideas as quickly and accurately as can a human. While the scope of the research was limited to understanding handwritten characters, the breakthrough could have big consequences for military’s ability to collect, analyze and act on image data, according to the researchers and military scientists. That, in turn, could lead to far more capable drones, far faster intelligence collection, and far swifter targeting through artificial intelligence.

You could be forgiven for being surprised that computers are only now catching up to humans in their ability to learn. Every day, we are reminded that computers can process information of enormous volume at the speed of light, while we are reliant on slow, chemical synaptic connections. But take the simple task of recognizing an object: a face. Facebook’s DeepFace program can recognize faces about as well a human, but in order to do that, it had to learn from a dataset of more than 4 million images of 4,000 faces. Humans, generally speaking, have the ability to remember a face after just one encounter. We learn after “one shot,” so to speak.

In their paper, “Human-level Concept Learning Through Probabilistic Program Induction,” published today in the journal Science, Brenden M. Lake, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum, present a model that they call the Bayesian Program Learning framework. BPL, they write, can classify objects and generate concepts about them using a tiny amount of data — one single instance.

To test it, they showed several people —and BPL — 20 handwritten letters from 10 different alphabets, then asked them to match the letter to the same character written by someone else. BPL scored 97%, about as well as the humans and far better than other algorithms. For comparison, a deep (convolutional) learning model scored about 77%, while a model t designed for “one-shot” learning reached 92% — still around twice the error rate of humans and BPL.

BPL also passed a visual form of the Turing Test by drawing letters that most humans couldn’t distinguish from a human’s handwriting. (Named after British mathematician Alan Turing, a Turing Test challenges an program’s ability to produce an intellectual product — teletype communication in the most traditional sense — that is indistinguishable from what a human could produce.)

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VIDEO: Police Shoot Man in the Back as He Walked Away — Execute Him as He Crawled for His Life

Comment: Yet another "death by police" as a sign of the terminal disintegration of the American Republic. 

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The Free Thought Project

 

Lynwood, CA – A video of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies gunning down a man, who had his back turned to them, is fanning the flames of protests and debate regarding law enforcement’s use of force.

The short video, which was released yesterday, clearly shows 28-year-old Nicholas Robertson walking away as police opened fire on him. After the first deputy fired over a dozen rounds, the man can be seen falling to the ground, and in a desperate attempt to save his life, begins crawling away from the officer. At this point, a second officer arrives, and after a brief pause, both begin firing recklessly as the man crawls just feet away from a gas pump. In total, officers fired over 30 rounds at this man.

Read more + video

See also: Police State Amerika IV

Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador

EllenBrown.com

 

Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items:

• In Russia, vulnerability to Western sanctions has led to proposals for a banking system that is not only independent of the West but is based on different design principles.

• In Iceland, the booms and busts culminating in the banking crisis of 2008-09 have prompted lawmakers to consider a plan to remove the power to create money from private banks.

• In Ireland, Iceland and the UK, a recession-induced shortage of local credit has prompted proposals for a system of public interest banks on the model of the Sparkassen of Germany.

• In Ecuador, the central bank is responding to a shortage of US dollars (the official Ecuadorian currency) by issuing digital dollars through accounts to which everyone has access, effectively making it a bank of the people.

Developments in Russia

In a November 2015 article titled “Russia Debates Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative,” William Engdahl writes:

A significant debate is underway in Russia since imposition of western financial sanctions on Russian banks and corporations in 2014. It’s about a proposal presented by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. The proposal, which resembles Islamic interest-free banking models in many respects, was first unveiled in December 2014 at the depth of the Ruble crisis and oil price free-fall. This August the idea received a huge boost from the endorsement of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It could change history for the better depending on what is done and where it further leads.

Engdahl notes that the financial sanctions launched by the US Treasury in 2014 have forced a critical rethinking among Russian intellectuals and officials. Like China, Russia has developed an internal Russian version of SWIFT Interbank payments; and it is now considering a plan to restructure Russia’s banking system. Engdahl writes:

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Putin Aide Says Israel is Training ISIS

Uprooted Palestinian's blog
via Truth Seeker

A senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Israel’s Mossad of training Islamic State (aka ISIS) terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria

Alexander Prokhanov told the state-controlled news outlet that Mossad is also likely to have transferred some of its “spying experience” to the leadership of ISIS, even as Israeli military advisers assisted the terrorists in other ways.

Prokhanov said ISIS is a byproduct of US policies in the Middle East.

“ISIS is a tool at the hands of the United States. They tell the Europeans that if we (the Americans) do not intervene, ISIS will cause you harm,” he said. In fact, however, he added, Iran and Russia are the main targets of ISIS terror.

“They launched their first terror attack against us just a few days back in Chechnya,” he said, stressing that the ISIS ideology has got nothing to do with the Islam practiced in Iran and some other Muslim countries in the Middle East region.

Prokhanov said the United States and Israel are one and the same when it comes to supporting a terror organization like the ISIS.

In September, ISIS terrorists fresh from the conquest of the last Syrian military base in the north of the country sent a “special message” to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as his key ally, Putin.

After taking Taqba airbase, the jihadis released a video showing the mass execution of some 250 regime fighters and a group of jihadis addressing Assad directly from inside a hangar in the base.

“You’d better watch out Bashar – we’re coming for you in planes!” declared one terrorist from atop a captured Russian aircraft. “We’ll be coming for you from the skies, with these planes, Allah willing.”

“Brace yourself for what’s coming, you pig.”

A second, young fighter then addresses Putin, whose military and political support has been crucial in keeping Assad in power.

“Vladimir Putin, these are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar. Allah willing, we will take them back to your own turf, and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus, Allah willing… Your throne is being threatened by us,” he said

Source

Spies, Lords & Predators Plus Extra Minutes - Full Version

Comment: Just in case you missed it, this video is a depressing reminder that the VIP paedophile (or rather child rapists) network being under "investigation" will probably go nowhere since half the Establishment is involved either in covering it up or participating in this disgusting abuse - such is the nature of the state. 

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Spies, Lords & Predators Plus Extra Minutes - Full Version

The Stevie B Show
 

10 Things More Likely To Kill You Than Islamic Terror

Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia

 

Guided by talking heads, American armchair warriors spout vitriol, increasingly calling to either treat Muslims like Jews in the Third Reich or simply bomb them into oblivion — and their cognitive dissonance is glaring. These contradictions are evident not least in the paralyzing fear so many ‘Mericans feel toward Muslims who courageously call for soldiers to do their biddingin the Middle East. Their crippling fear of Islamic terror, itself, is cloaked in contradiction. 

According to an analysis by the New America Foundation, Islamic terror attacks in the United States have led to the deaths of 45 people since 9/11. While 45 deaths is 45 too many, the dizzying fear of Islamic extremism currently sweeping the nation is objectively overblown.

Considering Islamic terror killing an average of 3.2 Americans per year (45 deaths divided by 14 years) since late 2001, here are ten causes of death more worthy of their fear:

1. Television: TV might be linked to earlier deaths among those who watch more than a few hours a day, but more concretely, the devices themselves kill 176 people a year. Literally. They fall on people. That’s 55 times more deaths than Islamic terror claims annually.

2. Fireworks: According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, celebrating the 4th of July might be more deadly than Islamic terror attacks. The organization reports an average of 7.1 deaths per year — meaning Americans are more likely to blow themselves up than be eviscerated by the jihadist bombers they so fear.

3. Cows: Yes, cows. According to the CDC, cattle slay an average of 20 Americans every year. While these deaths occur mostly among farm workers, dogs kill 28 Americans per year, spiders kill seven, and venomous lizards and snakes kill six. All of these animals are still more likely to kill an American than the caliphate and other Islamic boogeymen.

4. Elevators: While the fear of dying as a result of an elevator malfunction has probably plagued many Americans at one time or another, such a worry is likely fleeting. However, if Americans are truly concerned with “common sense,” a virtue Donald Trump frequently touts, they would do well to readjust their phobias. Elevators kill 27 Americans per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

5. Choking: Americans will sooner perish from choking on food or other objects than from an Islamic terror attack. At least 2,500 people per year are killed by this type of asphyxiation — 781 times more than from a jihadi assault. Hot dogs are particularly menacing. Perhaps we should ban them in the same vein as Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims. Then again, killing fewer cows to grind up for beef dogs might lead to an uptick in cattle-on-human violence. America is at a perilous crossroads.

6. Lightning: People often quip that one is “more likely to be struck by lightning” when they want to highlight an event’s improbability. However, even as the number of deaths from lightning decreases over the long-term, it is still higher than the number of people killed by Muslim terror attacks each year. Forty-nine people per year die from being struck by lightning — more than 15 times the rate of death from Islamic extremist murders.

7. Car accidents: Though most Americans are aware of the high risk of death by car accident, this knowledge doesn’t mitigate their extreme Islamophobia. The Association for Safe International Road Travel estimates about 37,000 Americans die each year in vehicular accidents, over 11,562 times the number killed by Muslim fanatics.

8. Heart Attacks: Heart attacks are one of America’s leading killers, claiming 190,625 times more American lives than Islamic terror. 610,000 Americans die from heart attacks per year. Cancer kills 589,430 Americans annually, and diabetes is the main cause of death for 69,071 Americans per year. They are responsible for astronomically more fatalities than radical Islamic terror.

9. Police: According to a three-year average of American police killings logged by killedbypolice.net — a more comprehensive database than the federal government’s — police killed 998 people on average per year from 2013-2015. That’s roughly 312 times the average annual number of people killed by Islamic extremists since 9/11. The average number of people killed by Islamic terrorism in the last three years is 7.7 — including the recent shooting in San Bernardino — and by that parallel measure, police are still about 130 times deadlier than terrorists.

10. Prescription Painkillers: The CDC estimates that 44 people die per day from overdosing on pharmaceutical painkillers. Never mind that that number is almost 14 times the number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorism each year. Based on the CDC’s figure, about 16,060 Americans die annually from painkillers — making the Big-Pharma money-makers 5,019 times more deadly than the Islamic terror that has Americans trembling whilst hiding under their blankies.

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“Emergency” Measures May Be Written Into The French Constitution

The Intercept

 

JUST HOURS INTO A TERRORIST ATTACK that started on the evening of Nov. 13, and would eventually claim 130 lives, François Hollande announced that France was reestablishing border controls, and used a 1955 law to proclaim a state of emergency. 

 

This 60-year-old law gives French law enforcement wide and sweeping powers, freeing them from much of the normal judicial oversight. The law gives prefects, the French government’s local representatives, the ability to place people under house arrest, based merely on the suspicion of the intelligence service that they pose a threat to national security. They can also order police raids targeting any place where they think information about terrorism may be found, without a warrant. 

 

Initially intended to last 12 days, the state of emergency was extended on November 19 for an additional three months by both chambers of parliament. During the vote in the lower house, only six MPs voted against the extension. 

 

In some instances, the concrete consequences of the state of emergency border on the Kafkaesque. There’s this man, who was challenging the requirement that he report frequently to a police station (one of the other features of the state of emergency law). Because his court hearing to challenge the requirement was late, he showed up 40 minutes past the time he was supposed to be at the police station. He was immediately detained. Then there’s this man, who was placed under house arrest in southwestern France because he was suspected of being a radical Muslim — except he is a devout Catholic. The police also raided a halal restaurant for no apparent reason. 

 

Since last month’s attacks, there have been some 2,500 police raids, and nearly a thousand people have been arrested or detained. French local and national press are now full of reports of questionable police raids. So outrageous were some cases that the French Interior Ministry had to send a letter to all prefects reminding them to “abide by the law.” 

 

The state of emergency, which was initially supposed to mitigate the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, has been used to target environmental and political activists who have nothing to do with radical Islam, let alone terrorism. Several heavily armed police officers stormed the home of produce farmers in rural France, and Le Monde reported that at least 24 people closely involved with protests around COP21, the Paris climate conference, were placed under house arrest. This includes a member of the legal team of Coalition Climat 21, a well-established gathering of more than 130 organizations and NGOs. The French Human Rights League said the minister of the interior was confusing terrorism with normal civic activities and concluded, “The state of emergency is a danger to civil liberties.” 

 

Yet rather than be regarded as a temporary measure for extraordinary circumstances, the government’s ability to declare an extended state of emergency may soon be written into the constitution. François Hollande, speaking in front of both chambers summoned in Versailles two days after the attacks, announced his plan to modify the French constitution in response to terrorism.

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Why is a Western hate campaign being waged against Muslims?

Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

December 10 2015 

Why is a hate campaign being waged against Muslims? 

Why are Muslims increasingly categorized as terrorists? 

Why is this hate campaign part of the US presidential election campaign? 

Why is Donald Trump calling for police state measures directed against American Muslims? 

Why are Muslims the object of ethnic profiling and job discrimination? 

Why has France's president Francois Hollande suspended civil rights coupled with a hate campaign directed against France's Muslims, which represent 7.5 percent of the country's population?

Why is the West waging a war against Muslim countries?  

Why is Islam regarded as evil?

The answer to all these questions is both simple and complex. 
 
It just so happens that more than 60% of the World's reserves of crude oil lie in Muslim lands. 
 
Muslims are the inhabitants of the countries which possess the oil. And America's imperial agenda consists in acquiring ownership and control over the World's oil reserves. 

If these lands had been inhabited by Buddhists, Western politicians - with the support of the mainstream media - would be demonizing the Buddhists. 

Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess more than 60 percent of the World's crude oil reserves. 

With regard to conventional crude oil (excluding tar sands in Venezuela and Canada), the percentage of global (conventional crude) oil reserves in Muslim countries is much larger.
Countries which possess large reserves of crude oil are slated for destabilization. 

More than 50 percent of the World's crude oil reserves lies between the tip of the Arabian peninsula and the Caspian Sea basin: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan. 

The above region is America's war theater. That is where the battle for oil under the banner of the "war on terrorism" is being fought. Those are the Muslim lands which have been slated for conquest or regime change. Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies and emirates are US proxy states, firmly under US control. 

The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of the tenets of Islam, applied Worldwide, constitutes at an ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the World's energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order. 

This vilification is carried out by actually creating terrorist organizations integrated by Muslims, as part of a longstanding intelligence operation going back to the Soviet-Afghan war. 

Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations are creations of the CIA. They are not the product of Muslim society. Terrorist attacks are undertaken by jihadist entities which are CIA intelligence assets. 

The Islamic State (ISIS) is an intelligence construct which is used essentially for two related purposes. 

1. They are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance, the instruments of destabilization, recruited, trained, financed by the Western military alliance. The various al Qaeda entities are the instruments of destabilization in US-NATO sponsored proxy wars (AQIM in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS in Syria and Iraq). At the same time, they constitute a pretext and a justification to intervene under the banner of a "counter-terrorism" bombing campaign. 

2. On the home front, the various Al Qaeda/ ISIS terrorist cells - supported covertly by Western intelligence - are the instruments of a diabolical and criminal propaganda operation which consists in killing innocent civilians with a view to providing legitimacy to the instatement of police state measures allegedly in support of democracy. 

These false flag attacks allegedly perpetrated by terrorist organization are then used to harness Western public against Muslims. 

The underlying objective is to wage a an illegal war of conquest in the Middle East and beyond under the banner of the "global war on terrorism". According to Western politicians, "we are defending ourselves against the terrorists". According to our governments, the bombing raids allegedly directed against the terrorists in Syria are "not an act of war", they are presented to Western public opinion as an "act of self-defense". "The West is under attack by the ISIS terrorists", the ISIS is based in Raqqa, Northern Syria, "we must defend ourselves" by bombing ISIS. 

We are told that this is not an act of war, it is an act of retribution and self-defense. The only problem with this propaganda op is that "The Terrorists R US", our governments and intelligence services have been supporting ISIS from the very outset. 
 
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. Muslims within Western countries are being vilified as part of an imperial agenda, as a means to justify the destabilization of Muslim countries on humanitarian grounds (e.g. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen). 

America is waging a holy crusade against Muslims and Muslim countries. The "war on terrorism" purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the "civilized world". It is upheld as a "war of religion", a "clash of civilizations", when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region's extensive oil wealth. 

Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again. The Crusades of the Middle Age consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action. 

Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. 

Muslims are equated with terrorists: Islamophobia serves to wage nationwide campaigns against Muslims in Europe and North America. 

It is an instrument of war propaganda used to degrade the history, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while upholding the tenets of "Western democracy" and the "free market" as the only alternative for these countries. 

San Bernardino mass shooting: 3 white gunmen, 2 unlikely culprits, and 1 saving grace

Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Another day, another massacre of innocents in the US of A. 14 people were shot to death during a mass shooting on December 2nd at the Inland Regional Center in the city of San Bernardino, California, about 100km east of Los Angeles. Another 21 people were wounded in what was the worst mass shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012.
Another turkey shoot

At 11am local time last Wednesday, masked gunmen - initially reported as a team of three - "dressed head-to-toe in black tactical gear and vests stuffed with ammunition magazines", entered one of the three main buildings on the site and made their way to the conference room, where staff for the county's Department of Public Health were enjoying a Christmas office party. From the moment they opened fire, the shooting reportedly lasted 5-8 minutes, during which the gunmen "never said a word" and fired about 75 rounds into the group of unarmed civilians, with eyewitnesses saying they paused only to reload their weapons.

The sight of heavily-armed police officers swarming the Regional Center was apparently so familiar to employees there that they initially thought they were witnessing "another active shooter drill". Indeed, according to the LA Times, active shooter drills take place there every "every month or so". Watch as employees remark upon how realistic this latest 'drill' appears, completely oblivious to the fact that some of their colleagues nearby have been shot to death:  

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Monsanto to face ‘tribunal’ in The Hague for ‘damage to human health and environment’

Blacklisted News /RT

 

A global group of professionals, scientists and environmentalists – the Monsanto Tribunal – are preparing a trial for the GMO seed giant in The Hague. They say the crowdfunded action, determined to charge Monsanto with “ecocide,” is more than a symbolic move.

The Monsanto Tribunal’s goal is to research and evaluate all of the allegations made against Monsanto in connection to all the damages its products have caused to human health and the environment. It is scheduled to be held at The Hague from October 12 to 16 in 2016. The trial will wrap up on next year’s World Food Day.

One of the main goals the broad group of signees [ABOUT US] wants the tribunal to achieve is establishing “ecocide” as a crime. “Recognizing ecocide as a crime is the only way to guarantee the right of humans to a healthy environment and the right of nature to be protected,” The International Monsanto Tribunal says on its website.

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U.S. War on Terror Defined: Video Shows Opposing Groups Both Using US-Supplied Weapons

The Free Thought Project

Aleppo, Syria — A recent video, apparently recorded just outside of Aleppo Syria and uploaded to Youtube, illustrates just how insane the US “War on Terror” has become.

What the video shows is the U.S. backed, armed, and financed Free Syrian Army, (aka moderate rebels, aka ISIS-linked terrorists) firing a U.S. Supplied anti-tank TOW guided missile.

Of course, the ‘moderate rebels’ firing a US missile is nothing out of the ordinary. However, what makes this U.S. paid for missile so special is that it was fired at what is clearly a U.S. paid for Humvee.

The description posted inside the video says that they destroyed a Humvee with a 14.5mm machine gun and that all occupants of the vehicle were killed.

Whether or not the Humvee belonged to the huge lot of “stolen” military gear in Iraq last year or if it was driven in by US-supplied Iraqi militias is unclear.

What is clear, however, is that whether directly or through error, the US is financing multiple sides of the conflict in Syria, thereby highlighting the ridiculous nature of America’s foreign policy.

As politicians continue to call for gun control domestically, these idiots are handing out guided missile systems to people linked to violent extremist groups by dropping crates from the sky.

As the death toll passes 250,000 in Syria, the US continues to peddle the bullshit notion that dumping troops and money and weapons into the hands of ‘moderate rebels’ will somehow accomplish peace in the region.

The reality is, however, far different, and those at the top of the global murdering empire know it.

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Assad says UK, France airstrikes in Syria are futile

Press TV

 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says airstrikes launched by the UK and France against purported positions of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the Arab country will be futile as the two states lack the will as well as the vision on how to defeat terrorism.

Putting Paris and London among the main supporters of terrorists in Syria, Assad said their participation in the so-called US-coalition that purports to target Daesh positions is illegal.

"It is legal only when the participation is in cooperation with the legitimate government in Syria. So, I would say they don't have the will and they don't have the vision on how to defeat terrorism," President Assad emphasized.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate since September 2014. The mission has fallen severely short of dislodging the terrorists. Takfiri terror groups like Daesh and the al-Nusra Front have expanded freely despite the US-led coalition air raids, Assad said.

The Syrian leader hailed the Russian aerial campaign against terror groups operating in his country as legal and constructive since it has been coordinated with Damascus.

"Look at the Russians, when they wanted to make this alliance against terrorism, the first thing they did was they started discussions with the Syrian government before anyone else. Then they started discussing the same issue with other governments. Then they came. So, this is the legal way to combat any terrorist around the world," said the Syrian president.

Moscow launched its air raids against the Takfiris, including Daesh terrorists, in Syria on September 30, upon a request from the Syrian government. 

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