Cameron brags of ‘brilliant’ UK arms trade as EU embargoes Saudi

RT

European ministers have embarrassed David Cameron by voting to impose an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia on the same day the British prime minister praised the UK for selling “brilliant” arms to the country.

Speaking at a BAE Systems factory in Preston, the prime minister said the UK had pushed the sale of Eurofighter Typhoons to countries in the Middle East, including Oman and Saudi Arabia. 

His comments come as a report by Amnesty International reveals that EU and US arms trading provided Saudi Arabia with arms worth billions of dollars in 2015. The Saudis are engaged in a military offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The latest figures from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) suggest some 6,400 civilians have been killed or injured in the conflict.

Cameron’s speech in Preston came at the same time the European Parliament voted to impose an EU-wide ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia, citing criticism from the UN of its bombing in Yemen.

Asked at the talks how he was helping to export the planes, Cameron said: “With the Typhoon there is an alliance of countries: the Italians, Germans and ourselves. We spend a lot of time trying to work out who is best placed to win these export orders. We’ve got hopefully good news coming from Kuwait. 

The Italians have been doing a lot of work there. The British have been working very hard in Oman.”
The vote will not force EU members to comply with the ban, but will force the government to examine its relationship with Saudi Arabia.

In the last year the British government has sold £3 billion (US$4.18 billion) worth of arms and military kit to the Gulf state, as well as providing training to Saudi forces.

A report released by Amnesty International on Friday called the ongoing trade with Saudi Arabia “truly sickening,” and urged governments to attend meetings in Geneva on Monday to discuss the implementation of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

The report names the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the US as having issued licenses for arms to Saudi Arabia worth more than £18 billion in 2015.

The arms sold include drones, bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles, which have been used by Saudi Arabia and its allies for gross violations of human rights and possible war crimes during aerial and ground attacks in Yemen, the campaign group said.

Control Arms Director Anna Macdonald said: “Governments such as the UK and France were leaders in seeking to secure an ATT – and now they are undermining the commitments they made to reduce human suffering by supplying Saudi Arabia with some of the deadliest weapons in the world. It’s truly sickening.”

WI-FRIED?

ABCTVCatalyst
Dr Maryanne Demasi

"Could WiFi-enabled devices be harmful to our health? You cannot see it or hear it but Wi-Fi blankets our homes, our schools and our cities. Australia's safety agency says there's no evidence of harm, but that's not the same as saying its safe. A growing number of scientists are concerned that the widespread use of Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi-enabled devices could be slowly making us sick."

Truman Show USA – “Concerned Citizens” at Town Hall Meetings are Often Paid Actors

Liberty Blitzkrieg

 

Here’s a bothersome trend that seems quite fitting for the smoke and mirrors driven, celebrity obsessed, hologram society that America has become. A company known as Crowds on Demand is actually in the business of providing fake protesters for causes, fake entourages for wanna be celebrities and seemingly even fake supporters for unpopular corporate activities.

This just furthers my feeling that action is far more important than traditional protests in the 21st Century. They key to getting out of the mess we are in is to actively create a parallel economy and even monetary system adjacent to the current terminal one. That way, when this one blows up, we already have the infrastructure in place to move to another paradigm. One characterized by peaceful, voluntary human interaction and dominated by decentralization in virtually all aspects of human existence.
– From the 2013 post: Protesters for Hire: For a Few Thousand Dollars We’ll Buy You a Small Entourage.

I first highlighted the company Crowds on Demand over two years ago in the above post. Turns out it’s much worse than I could have imagined.

From NBC News:

In Camarillo, citizens aren’t shy about expressing their opinions. But on a chilly Wednesday night in December, city officials say one man stood out.

For nearly three minutes, Prince Jordan Tyson is on camera telling city leaders what he later admits, is a lie.

In fact, Tyson, who is not from Camarillo, is a self described struggling actor from Beverly Hills and he now believes he was involved in a secretive new industry where actors are hired to try and sway public officials.

In this case, a construction project in Camarillo he says he was hired to criticize.

“It was scripted, they told me what to say,” Tyson told NBC4.

Some of those scripted lines, he says were provided by recent UCLA graduate Adam Swart, CEO of a company called Crowds on Demand, which will stage rallies and demonstrations for any almost candidate or cause.

Swart says he has employed actors to sway city officials in meetings across the country.

“I have worked with dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016 presidential candidates,” Swart told NBC4, adding that he won’t name any names.

“I can’t go in to detail… if I did, nobody would hire us.”

The California Political Practices Commission tells NBC4 political campaigns are required by law to report expenditures.

But, public records indicate only one committee in the entire state has ever reported paying “Crowds On Demand”, that committee is Six California’s, the campaign to split California in to 6 different states.

State officials say some campaigns and politicians who hire “Crowds On Demand”… and fail to report campaign expenditures, could be breaking the law.

Hiring actors is not illegal. Although, entertainment law attorney and USC professor Lincoln Bandlow says telling those actors what to do and say could lead to lawsuits, if someone feels harmed.

“Paying someone to go out there and make false representations to a city council is going to give rise to possible fraud claims, possible intentional interference with business relations claims, maybe defamatory statement claims.”

Swart would not confirm to NBC4 that he hired Tyson or gave him lines, but says he has hired actors on multiple occasions to try and sway city officials across the country.

Swart tells NBC4 he has 20,000 actors across the country and most are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

If there’s a hell, this guy’s going. Personally, I’d settle for prison.

Propaganda Machine Takes Aim at Zika Virus

By Dr. Mercola

It's that time again — time for the pandemic outbreak propaganda machine to cry "Wolf!" and justify the mass use of vaccines and the necessity for chemical remediation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared another global public health emergency.¹

We've seen a string of these over-hyped virus scares over the past six years, from the bird and swine flu to Ebola — all of which died down as suddenly as they emerged, without causing the predicted widespread catastrophic damage in the real world.

This year, it's the Zika virus, which is being blamed for a rash of reports of microcephaly^2,3 among infants born in Brazil. The condition, in which babies are born with unusually small heads, is said to have surged from an average of about 150 cases annually to more than 4,780 cases since October 2015.

Microcephaly Cases Vastly Over-Reported

The Brazilian government has already admitted that overly generous parameters resulted in dramatic over-reporting of the rare condition public health officials have associated with the Zika virus, which has been dubbed by the media as the "shrunken head" virus.

To be on the safe side, when Zika-affected areas began seeing a rise in microcephaly, the Brazilian government asked health officials to report any case in which a child was born with a head circumference smaller than 33 centimeters.

False positives were expected, and when they realized that most of these babies were in fact healthy and normal, the threshold was lowered to 32 centimeters in December. The limit may be lowered even further, to 31.9 centimeters for boys and 31.5 centimeters for girls.

As reported by The New York Times:⁴

"Of the cases examined so far, 404 have been confirmed as having microcephaly. Only 17 of them tested positive for the Zika virus...
Another 709 babies have been ruled out as having microcephaly ... underscoring the risks of false positives making the epidemic appear larger than it actually is. The remaining 3,670 cases are still being investigated." [Emphasis mine]

As noted by The New York Times, there's actually very little scientific evidence tying the Zika virus to this particular condition.

Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus a global health emergency⁵ on February 1, noting that the "main worry" is the virus' potential link to microcephaly and subsequent brain damage.

According to WHO, the Zika virus may have infected as many as 4 million people in the Americas, and public health officials in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador are reportedly all researching the effects of Zika infection in pregnant women.

Poverty, Pollution, and Vitamin Deficiencies May Affect Microcephaly Rates in Brazil

The Zika virus was initially identified in 1947 in Uganda, where it was originally limited to rhesus monkeys. It's an arbovirus, meaning the disease is transmitted via mosquito, tick or flea bites.

According to ATCC,⁶ a "global biological materials resource...organization whose mission focuses on the acquisition, authentication, production, preservation, development, and distribution of standard reference microorganisms," the Zika virus⁷ — which they sell for about $500 — causes paralysis and death.

In humans, Zika infection typically causes only mild flu-like symptoms, if any, and there does not appear to be any prior evidence suggesting it might cause birth defects.
That certainly doesn't exclude the possibility, of course, but there are many other factors and co-factors that offer a far more likely and rational explanation for the rise in microcephaly in this area of Brazil, besides Zika-carrying mosquitoes.

For starters, the "outbreak" is occurring in a largely poverty-stricken agricultural area of Brazil that uses large amounts of banned pesticides.^8,9,10

Between these factors and the lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency, you already have the basic framework for an increase in poor health outcomes among newborn infants in that area.¹¹

Environmental pollution^12,13 and toxic pesticide exposure have been positively linked to a wide array of adverse health effects, including birth defects. When you add all these co-factors together, an increase in microcephaly doesn't seem like such a far-fetched outcome.

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Cryptome’s searing critique of Snowden Inc.

"The current corporate media business model of celebrity as an income producer and celebrity as a sensationalizing, titillating device for increasing the value of content is something we stay away from. It’s deeply cynical to sensationalize this trusted transaction, when someone come to you with a document and puts it forward to you."— Deborah Natsios, Cryptome

Tim Shorrock / Money Doesn't Talk it Swears

This week, John Young and Deborah Natsios, the founders of Cryptome, one of the world’s oldest and best-known repositories of leaked intelligence documents, quietly posted a URL to an interview they conducted on February 6 during a conference in Berlin, Germany.

Young and Natsios are introduced, correctly, as “renowned figures within a larger community people interested in keeping governments and institutions accountable, and using documents to do that.” But they also offer deep insights into the media and how it has handled revelations about U.S. intelligence and the National Security Agency. And their remarks, such as the quote above, clearly catch their host by surprise.

In the 18^th minute, they issue a scathing rebuke of “celebrity” journalism as practiced, in their opinion, by The Intercept, the publication owned by Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media. The interview is worth hearing in its entirety, and I urge anyone who’s had questions and concerns about Edward Snowden and his relationship to The Intercept’s founding editors, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, to listen to it and carefully consider their arguments.

Why? Because Cryptome raises serious questions that nobody else on the left or in the media want to talk about, including how Omidar has created a business from Snowden’s cache; what exactly Snowden may have been doing while he was working for the CIA prior to his time at NSA (and what else he may have been doing at NSA itself); and why Snowden and The Intercept continue to proselytize for Tor, the anonymization tool, despite its massive funding from the U.S. government, the Pentagon and the national security state.

One of the most amazing moments comes when the host, Pit Shultz, grows nervous about how his questions are being answered. It’s a sad insight into how the libertarian left responds to any criticism of its heroes and the arrogance and vitriol that’s been thrown to people who’ve raised questions about Snowden, Tor or Omidyar’s operations. To his credit, Shultz soldiers on – but only after Natsios assures him that “robust debate” is crucial to democracy.

Cryptome’s critique, as expressed in the interview, is not new. Ever since Greenwald first wrote about Snowden’s documents in The Guardian in 2013, the organization has been keeping careful track of the glacial pace of the documents’ release and The Intercept’s almost-total control over the cache. Their latest tally, posted this week, is 6,318 pages of what The Guardian first reported as 58,000 files.

From the start, Young and Natsios made it clear that they strongly disapprove of the fact that this cache has not been made widely available to the public and posted for all to see – as they have done with the tens of thousands of intelligence files they have released since the late 1990s (and as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers). Take a look at how Gawker, a publication very friendly to The Intercept, reported on Cryptome in June 2013:

When the Guardian and Washington Post published their blockbuster NSA reports based on Ed Snowden’s leaks, journalists lined up conga-style to congratulate them on the scoops. Not Cryptome. Instead, the secret-killing site blasted the Guardian and Post for only publishing 4 of the 41 slides that Snowden gave them about PRISM, the NSA’s system for spying on the internet.
“Mr. Snowden, please send your 41 PRISM slides and other information to less easily cowed and overly coddled commercial outlets than Washington Post and Guardian,” Cryptome wrote in a June 10th dispatch titled “Snowden Censored by Craven Media.”

To longtime followers of Cryptome, this response was unsurprising. Before Wikileaks, before Ed Snowden, there was Cryptome. Manhattan-based architects John Young and Deborah Natsios founded Cryptome.org in 1996 as a repository for documents no one else would publish, including lists of CIA assets, in-depth technical schematics of sensitive national security installations, and copyrighted material. As leaking has created a vibrant media ecosystem in recent years, complete with favored outlets, journalists and sources, Cryptome has positioned itself as its curmudgeonly ombudsman, quietly but blisteringly cutting down the hype and blather it sees in its competitors while advocating a form of radical transparency as straightforward as Cryptome.org’s bare-bones website.

Until now, however, I’ve never seen an analysis like this. What follows is my transcript of key parts of the interview.

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Scientists take a step closer to ETERNAL LIFE as they PRESERVE and REVIVE brain

UK Express

 

In a step towards eternal life, researchers from 21st Century Medicine (21CM) managed to freeze the brain of a rabbit using a technique known as Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC).

The team, led by recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate Robert McIntyre, wrote in a press release: “Using a combination of ultrafast chemical fixation and cryogenic storage, it is the first demonstration that near  perfect, long-term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable.”

They achieved this by filling the vascular system of the brain with chemicals that are designed to halt the decaying process, and then froze it to -135 degrees celsius.

When the brain was warmed, the scientists found that the majority of its cell membranes, synapses and structures were still in tact and ready to function.

A statement read: “The key breakthrough was the quick perfusion of a deadly chemical fixative (glutaraldehyde) through the brain’s vascular system, rapidly stopping metabolic decay and fixing proteins in place by covalent crosslinks.”

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BBC Correspondent Confirms Use of Secret Courts But Can’t Report It

True Publica 

This article first appeared yesterday, February 10th, was posted on bbc.com and was written by the BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent Dominic Caciani. This piece echoes one that truepublica published just a few months ago entitled The Use Of Secret Courts Confirms The End Of Democracy In Britain. If you have not read it either, you should. The use of secret courts should raise the hairs on the back of your neck as it demonstrates an alarming rise of authoritarianism in Britain today.

The first paragraph of the trupublica piece reads as follows; “The use of secret courts is a place where trials take place that is not open to the public, nor generally reported in the news and generally no official record of the case or the judge’s verdict is made available. Often there is no legal allegation. The accused is usually not able to obtain the counsel of an lawyer or confront witnesses for the prosecution, and the proceedings are characterised by a perceived miscarriage of justice to the benefit of the ruling powers of the society. This is the stuff of cold war Russia and Nazi Germany – right? Think again.”

BBC Headline – Secret trial: One off – or the first of many?

BBC Correspondent’s Sub Headline – BREAKING: Reporter can’t tell you what’s happened.

 

Possibly the worst headline I’ve ever written. But before I’m accused of completely failing to perform basic contractual duties, allow me to explain why those seven words are rather important.

Since 2013, the BBC and almost every other leading news organisation in the UK has been locked in a bizarre battle to tell you the truth about Erol Incedal. “Who’s he?” I hear you ask. He’s a student from London who was accused of preparing some kind of major terrorism plan. And then after two trials he was found not guilty of that allegation. But I can’t tell you why.

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Migration as a weapon of war: 'Ethno-engineering' used by the elites to manipulate the masses

Catherine Shakdam
RT

Today, war refugees have become headlines onto themselves. Whether referred to as migrants or asylum seekers by a well-thinking media complex, the semantics of this new crisis nevertheless betrays a very globalist agenda - yet more engineering, yet more manipulation.

With war raging on in the Middle East, millions of people were forced to flee before the advances of terror. Trapped in a conflict which was not of their making, and hunted by armies which have sought only their enslavement and/or annihilation, communities have chosen exile over death, chased out of their lands by the brutality of war. In the face of such human tragedy, Europe opened its borders, inviting in, those who lost everything ... or so we were told.

It is this 'humanitarian' narrative EU officials have volunteered to both their constituents and the media - this idea that Western nations hold a duty of care and protection over the millions displaced by war.

Indeed, Western powers are responsible. Actually no ... their role far exceeds the responsibility since the Mid-East has burnt under their fire. Let us remember which powers in fact engineered and purposely exported destabilization to the MENA over the past decade. From Iraq, to Syria, Libya and Yemen, military pyres have lit up many skies, engulfing all in their wake.

I would argue that Western powers stand guilty of crimes against humanity; responsibility is not strong enough of a word to define what in fact they have inflicted on several continents.

How many campaigns and interventions will Western capitals have to promote, sell, and invent for the public to recognize that WAR is indeed the driving ambition behind every, and all political agendas? Left, right or centre, most politicians have played to the same tune, only with a different beat.

Europe has opened itself up to human tragedy so that globalists could have at it. The real trick here would be to define this elusive "it". What is it that the powers that be want with Europe? And more importantly, how are refugees fitting in?

I personally refuse to believe that this "refugee crisis" we are seeing play out on our screens can be reduced to simple fear-mongering against Muslims. Yes, Muslims have become Europe's appointed scapegoats for their faith was made to rhyme with terror, but racism and xenophobia are hardly more than the foot-soldiers of an agenda which speaks of global control, and global re-engineering.

Beyond the human trafficking, the drug connections and the despicable sexual exploitation lies a grand exploitation scheme, where society as a whole is being re-arranged, re-aligned and re-programmed to fit within one system of socio-political and economic governance - notwithstanding the imposition of secular atheism as the new supra-state religion.

A bit much you say? It sounds too outlandish or conspiracy-like for your taste buds, you argue?

Consider this: EU officials, Angela Merkel right in the lead, made absolutely sure that war refugees would find their way to Europe's green landscapes. Actually, experts such as Scott Bennett, a former US special ops intelligence officer have long established that refugees were "made to come to Europe" through a clever game of geographical bottle-necking. Ever wonder why Europe's staunchest allies in the ME refused to open up their borders to offer Jordan and Turkey some relief? Ever wonder why the likes of Saudi Arabia or Egypt, for example, were not called upon to share the refugee load, given they are geographically connected to this crisis, and could have socially absorbed newcomers since they all share ethno-religious markers?

According to a report by Amnesty International, the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council offered zero formal resettlement slots to Syrians by the end of 2014.

"The missing linkage in this tragic drama is the role of Arab countries, specifically the Gulf countries," Fadi al-Qadi, a regional human rights expert in Jordan told Time in an interview last September. "These states have invested money, supported political parties and factions, funded with guns, weapons et cetera, and engaged in a larger political discourse around the crisis," he added.

Europe has been set up. There is no way around it. The real questions we ought to ask is why, and to fit whose agenda. I personally believe globalization to be the culprit. Europe, I would argue, has been transformed into a giant social Petri dish.

Globalists are re-arranging society, hoping that the overlapping of various ethnicities, traditions and faiths will justify for greater state oversight: i.e. social diktat. We are quite cleverly being programmed for a social, military and economic takeover.

British Prime Minister David Cameron's recent comments on Muslim women's alleged "submissiveness" and their role in driving radicalization forward plays into this narrative that all our identities need blending into one "harmonious" lump.

Let's be clear here, the powers that be are looking onto us as if we were corporate assets and products - and we all know how much corporations love individualism.

If we agree to step out of the xenophobic bubble officials stuck us into, we will realize that this new migration wave will actually serve capitalists' agendas. No mistakes were made; there was no lack of foresight, only manipulation.

As migrant-related violence will breed social outrage and prompt calls for actions on the part of our governments, state institutions will be able to manifest those civil liberties, thinning they would not have otherwise been able to roll out. And then of course there is the little matter of cheap labor and human exploitation: those made destitute will have little say when it comes to their future working conditions ... further eroding at those rights we all take for granted.

I'll let you chew on that for a while. 

Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy: The West's Obliteration of Yemen by Covert Means

Bahar Azizi and Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Saudi Arabia's unilateral blockade of Yemen since late March 2015 has caused a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in the Arabian peninsula. It is extremely difficult for journalists, aid workers and diplomats to access the country, but from the little information that does leak out, it is clear the situation there is dire. From a population of 25 million - about the same as Syria's pre-2011 - at least 16 million Yemenis are without clean water, there is a critical shortage of medicine, and 6.5 million civilians are at risk of starvation, including 1.7 million children presently at risk of malnutrition. Peter Maurer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said after visiting the country last August: "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years."

Widespread aerial bombardment by air forces of the Saudi and Gulf states - with significant direct and indirect military assistance from the US and UK - has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians. During a press briefing early this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that "the number of civilian casualties recorded between 26 March and 31 December, 2015 [is] 8,119 people, including 2,795 killed and 5,324 wounded." However, Dr. Judith Brown, who worked in Yemen for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, points out that the death toll resulting from this military intervention is probably much higher than reported. 

But whose war is this anyway? In the Western media narrative, the House of Saud and Gulf monarchs are intervening to [hold your nose] 'uphold the legitimate and democratically-elected leader of Yemen' against an unconstitutional coup that was directed, or at least facilitated, by the Iranian regime. In this context, Saudi bombing of civilians targets are 'mistakes'. In reality, however, the picture is somewhat different. 

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