RT Op-Edge: Why Obama’s ‘red line’ in Syria has turned pink

May 18, 2013 By 1 Comment

RT Op-Edge
Patrick Henningsen

Back in August 2012, things were a lot different in Washington DC and in the White House…

The Obama administration was brandishing a confident swagger back then, heading into the elections against a hobbling GOP opponent, and Benghazi had yet to unfold in all of its ugliness.

Syrian army soldiers take control of the village of Western Dumayna, some seven kilometers north of the rebel-held city of Qusayr on May 13, 2013. (AFP Photo / Joseph Eid)

Syrian army soldiers take control of the village of Western Dumayna, some seven kilometers north of the rebel-held city of Qusayr on May 13, 2013. (AFP Photo / Joseph Eid)

As Hillary Clinton was jetting around on the US State Department budget promoting her ‘Friends of Syria’ Middle East and European tours, and as the CIA were busy like bees working in the gray shadows of Benghazi, Washington and London were laying the groundwork for their new WMD case is Syria.

As last summer drew to a close, President Barack Obama confidently announced he was drawing a ‘Red Line’ in Syria regarding the use of chemical weapons, meaning that any evidence of their use on either side of that conflict would lead to consequences, the obvious inference being automatic US military intervention.

Fast forward to the present, and Washington appears to have been caught in the vortex of its own spin machine, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently forced to ‘clarify’ the President’s infamous ‘Red Line’ decree with what can only be described as desperate political cover. Here Carney attempted to explain away the previous ultimatum and re-explain the President’s position:

“What the president made clear is that it was a red line, and that it was unacceptable, and that it would change his calculus… What he never did – and it is simplistic to do so is to say that ‘if X happens, Y will happen’. He has never said what reaction he would take.”

It’s hard to run a global empire and still pander to sensitive liberal concerns at home. The White House seems to be at pains coming to terms with what the Neoconservative Bush government already knew a decade ago – that there really is no good, safe way to do a military intervention. In the end, the façade of political spin cannot provide ethical cover for invading and toppling another sovereign state. You can’t finesse your way into it, you have to just go for it in full view – lie if you have to, fabricate evidence if need be, and be damned with the political fallout…

Read more at RT

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Tsarnaev Wife Skull and Bones, CIA Family Connections

May 4, 2013 By 33 Comments
BREAKING: Tsarnaev widow Katherine Russell now officially a ‘person of interest’ in Boston investigation

21st Century Wire says…

Another incredible coincidence?

As more insights into the life and death of dead Boston Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev continues to unfold, based on the available evidence – it’s becoming more and more obvious that he was either an FBI and/or CIA informant (or both), who was chosen to be set up as a fall guy, or patsy for the Boston Bombings. In this instance, he would also have needed a “handler” – someone who could help to steer and influence his day-to-day decision making. That person could be someone was very close to him. This leak appeared on Brasscheck TV’s Facebook page a few days ago:

“CONFIRMED: Katherine Russell (alleged bomber’s wife) is granddaughter of Richard Warren Russell, Skull and Bones member and entrepreneur in the energy industry. 


PHOTO: Like his Uncle Ruslan, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had wife with high level connections to US intelligence.

Russell’s obituary lists Warren King Russell II as son – and that’s Katherine’s emergency room doctor father. 

That means wife had family spook connections as well as husband Tamerlan (Uncle Rusla). And both had fast, dramatic and uncharacteristic conversions to a perverted form of Islam favored by the gangster family that runs Saudi Arabia and works hand in hand with our spooks. 

What does a massive coincidence like this mean? 

You tell me. All I can do is report the stuff no one else seems to be able to get around to. (Nice in-depth front page article today Washington Post on the “mystery” of Tamerlan that breathes a hint of none of this.) 

Katherine reportedly wanted to join the Peace Corps. Maybe she actually joined the agency the Peace Corps is a cover for…”

Who is Katherine Russell?

The CIA is well-known to be a family agency that includes “legacies” in extremely key, or sensitive positions. Katherine’s character in the Tsarnaev story should be looked at more closely, even if, for reasons still yet unknown, she is being completely ignored, and totally unchallenged by the mainstream media before today. Was she simply his doting wife, or the driving force behind his alleged jihadism – or was she merely keeping a close eye on him?

I would be good for America to know more about Katherine Russell. Her mere presence in this story is an anomaly in itself – one which does not add up at all.

When she is called on to do the talk show circuit, or when her book deal goes live – America will be listening very closely to her story for sure.

Uncle Ruslan: The ‘man in the middle’

Aside from the already documented evidence of the FBI interfacing with the elder Tamerlan Tsarnaev over a 5 year span, we have also placed him at a CIA front NGO conference in Russia, as well as highlighted how incredibly well-connected his now famous Uncle Ruslan Tsarni (his name was changed from Tsarnaev to ‘Tsarni” at some point in the past) is with his ties to some major geopolitical strategic oil ventures in Kazakstan and Central Asia, as well as organised crime figures in the former Soviet countries and the historical CIA-trojan horse organisation known as USAID.

Incredibly, just last September 2012, the Kremlin requested the U.S. close its USAID office in Moscow, with Putin claiming that the NGO was being used to create various opposition group in Russia and being used by Washington to try and unseat him from power. Much has been made of the Tsarnaevs’ loose “Chechen ethnic roots”, a long favoured jihadist hot button for Washington DC and Saudi Arabia in their bid to antagonise Russia.

Regarding the crucial issue of Kazakhstan oil and the CPC & BTC Oil pipelines – all of which Ruslan Tsarni has been a key player in organising, author John Laughland explains, “the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled ‘distinguished Americans’ who are its members is a roll call of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror.’

“They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be ‘a cakewalk’; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.”

Tamerlan attends CIA run conference in Russia last year

We now know that the ACPC was later sanitised from “Chechnya”, and rebranded to “Caucasus”, now called the “American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus”, the same organisation which held an event attended by none other than Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the summer of 2012 – an event that was organised by the Jamestown Foundation – another known CIA front, which is part of a vast network “controlled by Freedom House (George Soros) and linked to the CIA” according to Voltaire Network.

Hence, any change in US-Russia policies which may result from the Boston event should be view in the context of what we’ve outlined above.


VIDEO: Uncle Ruslan’s career CV is almost unbelievable.

Uncle Ruslan was married to CIA head’s daughter

In addition to all this… Ruslan Tsarni was also married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller. Coincidence? Madcow Morning News explains here:

The discovery that Uncle Ruslan Tsarni had spy connections that go far deeper than had been previously known is ironic, especially since the mainstream media’s focus yesterday was on a feverish search to find who might have recruited the Tsarnaev brothers.
(…) At the time of their marriage, Ruslan Tsarni was known as Ruslan Tsarnaev, the same last name as his nephews Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged bombers.

It is unknown when he changed his last name to Tsarni.

What is known is that sometime in the early 1990’s, while she was a graduate student in North Carolina, and he was in law school at Duke, Ruslan Tsarnaev met and married Samantha Ankara Fuller, the daughter of Graham and Prudence Fuller of Rockville Maryland. Her middle name suggests a reference to one of her father’s CIA postings.

The couple divorced sometime before 2004.

Today Ms. Fuller lives abroad, and is a director of several companies pursuing strategies to increase energy production from clean-burning and renewable resources.

On a more ominous note, Graham Fuller was listed as one of the American Deep State rogues on Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery. Edmonds explained it featured subjects of FBI investigations she became aware of during her time as an FBI translator. ”

Hand in Hand - CIA and Skull and Bones

The CIA fraternity is a tight group often bound together by a network of trusted generational family connections running like a vein throughout the agency. Yale University’s elite Skull and Bones fraternity provides legacy framework for an elite inner circle of US intelligence insiders, and whose graduates include Cabinet members, Senators, Presidents and of course, former heads of the CIA.

Now we can add Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mysterious Anglo-Saxon ‘Islamic convert’ wife, Katherine Russell into the mix as a person of interest, and pose the question whether or not both Tamerlan and his Uncle Ruslan could have been in fact handled in some way… through their unusually well-connected wives?

Either way, this stands as yet another unbelievable coincidence surrounding key faces in the Boston Bombings.

Russell Family also founded Skull and Bones

Katherine Russell has CIA pedigree in the family, but we are not sure yet whether she comes from the original Russell line. Coincidentally, the name Russell plays a central role in American secret societies and many believe that they preside over one of the most influential legacies in American history.

Yale University’s elite Skull and Bones Society was co-founded by none other than  William Huntington Russell (1809 – 1885) along with his classmate at the time, Alphonso Taft. The secret society’s alumni organization, which owns the society’s real property and oversees the organization, is called the Russell Trust Association.

Most interestingly, William Huntington Russell came to be a student and protegé of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Russell was particularly impressed with the concept of “thesis versus anti-thesis” which underpins Hegel’s famous ‘dialectic’, where the state is absolute, individuals are granted their freedoms based on their obedience to the state, and where conflict is controlled by an intellectual elite in order to produce a pre-determined outcomes that reinforce the elite’s grip on power. The Hegelian Dialectic recently come to be known as the blueprint behind the concept of  the “false flag attack”, embodied in the “problem, reaction, solution” scenario – where you create the problem in order to ignite a public reaction and unbeknownst to the public, a ready-made solution is already prepared and waiting in the wings to be introduced.

William Huntington Russell was also a ‘half-brother’, or cousin, to a man named Samuel Russell, who, through his Russell & Co. trading empire, controlled a large portion of the global opium trade at the time, and who controlled almost all opium entering the United States from overseas. This trade also generated the fortunes of many American dynasty families including the Forbes family (see Robert Bennet Forbes).

Just a coincidence?

This discovery is just one more piece in the continuing pile of coincidences surrounding the FBI’s ‘prime suspects’ in the Boston Bombing event which took place on April 15th, 2013. 

What’s even more incredible, is that absolutely no photographs seem to exist whatsoever of Tamerlan and his Islamic convert wife Katherine together. It’s almost as if their ‘marriage’ was something of a staged affair. 

Investigators into this story should be suspicious of this unusual family set-up and ask more questions about them and their personal histories.
The media have been instructed not ask any questions regarding the material above – which at the very least connects the Tsarnaev family to the CIA and the crucial geopolitical struggle for energy and power in Eurasia.

Do not expect the major media outlets to look below the surface of the Boston Bombings. Do not expect them to demand any answers other than those which make up the FBI’s official story.

If the official story reads like a a fiction novel, that’s probably because it is.

Keep asking these questions.


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Who is Uncle Ruslan?

April 23, 2013 By 1 Comment
Aangirfan Blog

The uncle of Boston’s two Tsarnaev brothers worked for the CIA-front organisation called USAID…

Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?

Obama’s mother also worked for USAID, while being in the CIA, reportedly.

Uncle Ruslan Tsarni (Tsarnaev), of Montgomery Maryland, graduated from Duke Law School in 1998 and is now a ‘well-connected’ oil executive and lawyer.

Uncle Ruslan appears to have links to a group of oil executives who, according to The London Telegraph, comprise “a network of personal and business relationships” allegedly used for “international corruption”… 

Uncle Ruslan is currently involved in an international criminal investigation into Timur Kulibayev, who has links to Prince Andrew…
…..

 
(PHOTO) Kulibayev from Kazakhstan
Kulibayev is the Kazakh billionaire alleged to have stolen $6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank…



Read more


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Why Has US President Already Delivered Guilty Verdict to Boston Bombers?

April 21, 2013 By 4 Comments
President delivers ‘executive verdict’ as Feds draft in Gitmo interrogators to handle 19 year old student held in custody

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

Rule number one for any serious crime scene or investigation is to gather all the evidence and all the testimonies first, before being able to establish criminal charges, let alone deliver any meaningful verdict.

In an extraordinary executive intervention, the President of the United States has weighed in on the Boston Bombing case – already delivering a guilty verdict for the Tsaranev brothers.

Executive Verdict?

Barack Obama informed the nation this weekend, “Whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not, cannot, prevail. Whatever they thought they could achieve, they’ve already failed.”

The President added to this conclusion,“Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?”

Why is there such an incessant rush by the White House to quickly draw a line under this case? Does the President know something yet to be discovered by CSI investigators and witness interviewers in this case?

One reason could be the ever-growing list of unanswered questions and evidence yet to be addressed by either the FBI and law enforcement in charge of this case.

Dzhokar still only a suspect

Granted, a trial in the media is almost expected these days in America, but are we being asked to give up the expectation that the business of determining guilt should be within the jurisdiction of CSI teams, police detectives and the courts – and not within the scope of any politician’s remit? Is it the President’s role to play judge in such matters?

Despite all the patriotic rhetoric, political hype and media fanfare endured over this last week, the fundamental problem with such conclusive statements by the executive branch – is that suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev is only that – a suspect, and no actual or real forensic, or eyewitness evidence has been produced to prove that either him, or his deceased older brother were the actual bombers. 

It has been confirmed that the suspect Dzhokar was not read his Miranda Rights by law enforcement. According to officials, the surviving suspect should not receive the same Constitutional rights normally offered to Americans by invoking a “public safety exception”, effectively placing him in the category of enemy combatant.

“The government has invoked the public safety exception, a designation that allows investigators to question the teen without reading him his Miranda rights and without a lawyer present, another Justice Department official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told CNN.”

Will Dzhokar be allowed to talk?

Interestingly, we are told that 19 year old student Dzhokar may not be able talk at all, due to injuries sustained to his throat. 

“The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings suffered an injury to his throat and may not be able to talk, a federal official told CNN on Saturday, possibly hindering attempts by authorities to question him about a motive in the attack.”

The health and well-being of the suspect should be of the up most importance to everyone involved. One should also note here that if this suspect is not able to tell his story in public, it would be a great loss to the American people, who might be robbed of any further evidence and insight into the actual involvement of the two Tsarnaev brother in the Boston Bombings last week.

Beyond this, if any untoward behaviour or broken procedure was done by law enforcement during the pursuit and apprehension of the two suspects, this would likely be revealed by Dzhokar’s own testimony. His inability to talk might be convenient for law enforcement, if any basic rules of engagement were broken.


PHOTO: Officials announce that Gitmo and CIA torture team on its way to handle suspect questioning.

Guantanamo interrogators assigned to suspect

If this suspect is able to talk eventually, he may have to go through a process of interrogation that is normally reserved for US detainees held at the government’s dubious offshore facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

ABC news conformed today that a team specialising in ‘enhanced interrogation’ are already on the way to conduct information extraction from the 19 year old student. 

“Tsarnaev will be questioned by a federal team called the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which includes officials of the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department, an Obama administration official said.”

This development carries additional implications as to the definition of a suspect’s rights to a fair testimony and trial in the United States.

Sadly, it threatens to drag the entire torture debate back to square one again, with the obvious question rearing its old head: is any evidence or testimony gleaned through torturing a suspect even admissible in a modern court of law? The key word there being “modern”.

Rather than seize the opportunity to advance modern progress in justice and human rights – to really prove the robustness of our own justice system (yes, that one we supposedly fought and died for), the Federal jackboot, led in this instance by President Obama, has chosen to digress instead.

Meanwhile, this highly staged drama continues to unfold…

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Obama’s G8 Prize: Saudi-backed al Nusra unites with al-Qaeda in Syria

April 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
21st Century Wire says… As Obama does the rounds at the G8 and other state backers of Syrian terrorists, US ally Saudi Arabia and the Bush’s family friend Prince Bandar has been allowed to come out of the closet announcing that al Qaeda have joined forces with the Saudi terror outfit to topple the country of Syria. No more hiding the fact any more.


PHOTO: Saudi Prince Bandar at the ranch with George Bush Jr.

So does this signal a new US policy of bringing al Qaeda into Washington’s new foreign policy fold? For those in the know, al Qaeda are nothing more than modern-day privateers and have always been in the pocket of the CIA.

That said,  we can now expect Washington, London, Paris, Saudi and Qatar talking points to be as follows:

“Their thinking is ‘let’s deal with the problem right now of deposing the regime, and then take care of these rogue, radical elements later when we have international support’…

“For now, they need them. When everything is over, there’s going to be a huge fight over basically all of Syria.”

Meanwhile, Obama and Cameron are still pretending in public that they have no sway over the terrorists in Syria, even though they are funding and supporting them directly, and through proxies like Qatar. Do we need any more proof that this is a criminal enterprise?

Channel 4

Jihadist rebel group in Syria Al-Nusra announces it has joined forces with al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch to form a dominant militant force in the fight against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Abhat al-Nusra officially announced that it was a part of the al-Qaeda branch, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, in a 21-minute video posted on a militant website.

Together the two groups will be known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is the traditional name referring to the region from southern Turkey to Egypt on the eastern Mediterranean.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, said: “It is time to announce to the Levantine people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq.”

Read more: Syria's Descent - the jihadist groups 'running the show' in Syria

He also said the Iraqi group was providing half of its budget to the conflict in Syria, and that Jabhat al-Nusra would not have a separate leader but instead be led by the “people of Syria themselves” – implying that he would be in charge in both countries.

Abu Mohammad al-Golani, leader of al-Nusra, said “the sons of Nusra Front renew their pledge (of allegiance)” to Jihad Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda’s worldwide leader.

Extremist rebels

The announcement comes two days after the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Islamic fighters in Syria to unite in their efforts to oust Assad.

Al-Nusra is one of a number of extremist rebel groups fighting against government forces, which has been of concern to Western powers.

.

The US and her European allies have tried to counter the rise of the extremist groups, such as al-Nusra, by supporting groups deemed to be more moderate, which have formed the Syrian National Coalition.

This support has included helping to coordinate shipments of new weapons to rebel groups, and providing training in Jordan.

“For now, they need them. When everything is over, there’s going to be a huge fight over basically all of Syria”. - Bilal Saab, Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis

It has been suspected for some time that al-Nusra was working with al-Qaeda and late last year the US placed al-Nusra on its list of terrorist organisations.

Syria will be at the top of the agenda for foreign ministers arriving in London today for a two-day G8 summit.

Military success

However, it is al-Nusra that has had arguably some of the most devastating impact on the government regime. It has a strong presence in the north eastern provincial capital of Raqqa pictured, below, now under rebel control, and has captured large parts of the Daraa province.

Al-Nusra has also claimed responsibility for a large number of suicide bomb attacks against government buildings in cities such as Aleppo and Damascus, and has captured a number of important military bases….

(…) “Their thinking is ‘let’s deal with the problem right now of deposing the regime, and then take care of these rogue, radical elements later when we have international support’,

“For now, they need them. When everything is over, there’s going to be a huge fight over basically all of Syria.”

Read more




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Revealed: CIA Has Contracted Amazon to Build its Spy Cloud

March 20, 2013 By 1 Comment

By Barb Darrow

Now here’s a story that will probably never get confirmed:  Federal Computer Week is reporting that the Central Intelligence Agency has contracted cloud kingpin Amazon Web Services to build a cloud for the super secret spy agency.

AMAZON_CIAThe report, as you might expect, doesn’t name its sources, but contends that Amazon will help build private cloud infrastructure that will enable the CIA to “keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA’s previous cloud efforts.” The contract is for up to $600 million over the next 10 years, according to FCW, which said neither Amazon nor the CIA would comment.

A CIA spokesman, as expected, declined comment saying: “As a general rule, the CIA does not publicly disclose details of our contracts, the identities of our contractors, the contract values, or the scope of work.”

Here’s the thing though. A collaboration like this makes sense for the CIA, given the U.S. government’s big “cloud first” initiative, which holds that the use of cloud computing technologies will save money and make government more responsive and flexible to its constituencies. And it would give Amazon a test bed to show — at least within the tight-lipped intelligence community — that it can build mission-critical and super secure private clouds for their use.

Amazon, as well as some legacy IT players,  has struggled on that whole private cloud front. Amazon Web Services launched Virtual Private Cloud capabilities four years ago and last week said it is broadening their use. It also hosts GovCloud, which is cordoned off from the rest of AWS, for government accounts.

Source: Washington Post

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Missing: Obama’s Israeli Classmates Don’t Remember Him From Columbia

March 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment
U.S. President Barack Obama, due here for his first official visit next week, graduated college in 1983; yet, none of the 25 or so alumni of his class who are now living in Israel remember laying eyes on him…

By Judy Maltz

Among those Israelis vying for the attention of Barack Obama as he prepares for his visit here next week, one fairly large, yet little-known group can claim a special long-standing connection to the U.S. president: We were his classmates in the Columbia University undergraduate class of 1983.

As of the latest count, there are close to 25 of us living here in Israel, some making the move close to 30 years ago, right after graduation, others pretty fresh off the boat. But on average, most have been here 15-20 years.

What are Obama’s classmates in Israel up to? Quite a few, like him, went straight to law school after finishing their undergraduate degrees. One is a doctor, several are engineers, and a few hold top jobs in finance. There’s an architect in the group, a tour guide, a librarian, a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist and a journalist. Most are married with children (about three on average ), a few are already grandparents, while others, who came to parenting relatively late in life, are still chasing around toddlers. Among the group are also two married couples who began dating while in college.

They’re scattered around the country, but Beit Shemesh and Ra’anana seem to be their preferred locales. Four live in Jerusalem and its outskirts, three in Tel Aviv, two are up north in Kfar Vradim, and two live over the Green Line in the settlement of Ginot Shomron.

But here’s the thing: Not one of us remembers Barack Obama – who transferred to Columbia after his sophomore year at Occidental College in California – from our undergrad years, nor do we know anyone else who does.

“If he wasn’t on my radar, he wasn’t on anyone’s radar,” asserts Jamie Miller, a mother of five, who lives in Beit Shemesh and remains active in the alumni association, traveling back to New York every five years to attend reunions.

“I was a cheerleader, so I knew all the jocks,” says Miller, who went to law school after college and today works as a librarian and English teacher. “I was in the marching band, I worked on the yearbook, and I was involved in student government, so I knew everyone. But I never saw him around.”

Sarah Graber Nehrer, a speech pathologist who moved with her family from the United States to Rehovot last summer, says she became curious about Obama even before his first presidential run. “When he first came on the political scene, back when he was running for the Senate, I was living in Illinois, and I was like, ‘Wait, this guy went to school with me,’” she explains. “But I had no recollection of him whatsoever, and neither did anyone else I know, which I found very strange.

Compared with other American universities, Columbia, a member of the prestigious Ivy League, is small. Its graduating class in 1983 – including Columbia College for men, Barnard College for women and the College of Engineering – had fewer than 2,000 students. And since the campus itself, located in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, is also quite small, the opportunities to bump into your classmates and get to know faces over a period of four years were abundant.

One sure place to spot them was at Butler Library, where many students went to study – or at least to pretend to study – in the evening. You might also find them sitting on the steps of College Walk in the middle of the day, crossing Broadway at 116th Street to get from Barnard to Columbia and vice versa, taking in music and beer at the West End bar late at night, standing in line for coffee at Chock Full o’Nuts (in the pre-Starbucks days ) or going out for a bite at the now-legendary Tom’s Restaurant (originally made famous by the Suzanne Vega song of the same name and more recently by the hit sitcom “Seinfeld.” )

Or you might have crossed paths with them in some of the more popular classes of the time, especially among students of Obama’s ilk, who were not on the science and math track. For example, there was the late Edward Said’s comparative literature class (which Obama reportedly took but didn’t much care for ), or the class in international diplomacy taught by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. For political science majors like Obama, an absolute must at the time was the wildly popular modern political movements class taught at Barnard by Dennis Dalton. Another big draw in those days was the class in film taught by the late critic Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice…

Read more at Haaretz

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Hollywood History Hoax: Iran hires top lawyer to sue for ‘lies’ in Affleck’s Argo film

March 13, 2013 By 2 Comments


RELATED: Zero Dark Thirty wins ‘Albert Speer Oscar’ for Best Propaganda Film

RT

Iran plans to sue Hollywood over the Oscar-winning film ‘Argo’ over its “unrealistic portrayal” of the country. Iranian cultural official haves claimed the film is “a propaganda attack against [Iran's] nation and entire humanity.”

“Argo is made by three film-producing companies in Hollywood… the Islamic Republic of Iran is going to sue all those who have been active in the anti-Iran domain, including directors and producers,” said Mohammad Lesani, General Secretary of the ‘Hoax of Hollywood’ conference held Monday in Tehran.

The conference saw top Iranian cultural officials and movie critics come together to pass judgment on the movie, which is banned from public screening in Iran. French lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre also attended to advise on the possible lawsuit.

Isabelle Coutant-Peyre is known for her political cases. She defended and then married the infamous Venezuelan ‘revolutionary’ Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, who is serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of two French counter-intelligence agents and an informant. She also represented Zacarias Moussaoui early in his imprisonment, while he was awaiting trial to determine his role in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“We will be able to block distributors of the movie, force them to apologize and challenge them to confess that the movie is nothing but a sheer lie,” Coutant-Peyre told Iranian news agency Mehr.

“I will stand by the Iranian people to inform the world about the dissemination of propaganda against Iran.”

Despite the screening ban, pirated DVDs of the film are reportedly available on the black market across the country, and have become something of a hit.

Accurate history or CIA propaganda?

The Iranian revolution grew out of demonstrations against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which started in 1977 and intensified in 1978. The Shah fled Iran to live in exile on January 16, 1979. Two weeks later, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, who left Iran 15 years earlier over his opposing the Shah, returned to the country to become its Supreme Leader.

Iranians demanded the Shah return to stand trial for crimes against his people, and became increasingly angry at the US for allowing the Shah into America for medical treatment and refusing to extradite him. The anger spilled over when the American Embassy in Tehran was ransacked in November 1979, and its staff taken hostage – the events portrayed in ‘Argo.’ The hostages were freed in 1981 after extensive negotiations, a few months after the Shah died in Egypt. The US has not had official diplomatic relations with Iran ever since.

The Shah (L) and President Jimmy Carter
The Shah (L) and President Jimmy Carter

 

 

A February 1979 rally in Tehran in support of the National Front government formed on February 14 by Ayatollah Khomeini. The banner with Khomeini's portrait calls for the creation of the Islamic Republic, which will be formed on April 1 of that year. (AFP photo)
A February 1979 rally in Tehran in support of the National Front government formed on February 14 by Ayatollah Khomeini. The banner with Khomeini’s portrait calls for the creation of the Islamic Republic, which will be formed on April 1 of that year. (AFP photo)

 

The movie ‘Argo’ portrays the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, known in Iran as the ‘Conquest of the American Spy Den.’ Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days after revolutionary crowds stormed the US Embassy. Six Americans managed to escape and hid in the home of the Canadian ambassador in Tehran. They were smuggled out of the country as Canadian filmmakers in a highly risky joint CIA-Canadian operation code-named ‘Argo.’

Director Ben Affleck, who also played the role of CIA agent Tony Mendez in the movie, claimed the film faithfully depicted what happened, and that he “could barely believe” it had taken place. Iran, however, has accused him of distorting history, blasting the movie as CIA propaganda in which Iranians are depicted as violent thugs.

Iran has also claimed that many facts are omitted from the movie, including the reasons behind the Iran hostage crisis – such as US involvement in a 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and installed the Shah.

Anti-American slogans outside of the U.S. Embassy, 20 November 1979 (AFP Photo)
Anti-American slogans outside of the U.S. Embassy, 20 November 1979 (AFP Photo)

Rather than being aimed specifically against Iran, critics of the film have claimed the film presents a distorted view of the hostage crisis that gives all the credit to the CIA,  when the escape plan of the six Americans who fled the embassy was mostly carried out by the Canadians.

The move is primarily a propaganda tool aimed at Americans to sustain their fear of Iran, Danny Schechter, an independent filmmaker and blogger based in South Africa, explained to RT.

“It’s as much a propaganda film for the CIA than it is against Iran itself. In fact, New Zealand passed a resolution against the film for distorting the role of its diplomats,” he said.

However, the movie is hardly flattering to US policies. The movie’s US characters openly criticize America’s role in the hostage crisis – for supporting and then harboring the Shah, and turning a blind eye to the dictator’s crimes.

Jimmy Carter, the US president at the time of the embassy siege, believes the movie is mostly accurate in how it portrayed events: “90 percent to the contributions of the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian,” Carter told CNN. “The movie gives almost all credit to the American CIA. With that exception the movie is very good.” The real hero, Carter believes, was Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador who orchestrated ‘Argo’ escape.

Despite a clear understanding in the West that ‘Argo’ is a fictional commercial project, Iranians believe the film has a political agenda. US First Lady Michelle Obama appeared to announce ‘Argo’ as the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture, fueling such suspicions.

“For many in the Iranian regime, it’s impossible to fathom that Hollywood is not a state-run entity, as it is in Iran,” Omid Memarian, a New York-based journalist who has covered Iranian movies, told the Guardian. “Iranian officials seriously perceive any cultural products about Iran, like movies, as a political statement and a part of what they call the West’s cultural invasion against Iran.”

Iranian authorities have vowed to create their own film to present a more true-to-life story of the US Embassy siege, and the ‘Argo’ escape.

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6 Latin American Leaders Who Criticised US Policies Contract Cancer Simultaneously

March 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Before It’s News

Russian Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov today demanded an international investigation into the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, claiming it was “far from a coincidence” that six leaders of Latin-American countries who had criticized the U.S. simultaneously fell ill with cancer.

“How did it happen that six leaders of Latin American countries which had criticized US policies and tried to create an influential alliance in order to be independent and sovereign states, fell ill simultaneously with the same disease?” Zyuganov told Russian state television, urging an investigation under “international control” into Chavez’s death.

Zyuganov is accurate so far as his claim that six Latin-American leaders were diagnosed with cancer within a relatively close period of time, most notably Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in December 2012, although later analysis proved that she had never actually suffered from the illness.

Current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, have all been hit with cancer in the last few years. In 2006 it was also reported that retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro was also diagnosed with cancer.

latin american leaders cancer

Zyuganov’s comments follow similar rhetoric by Venezuelan Vice President Madurs, who in the hours before the announcement of Chavez’ death accused “the historical enemies of our homeland” of being responsible for Chavez’ cancer, claiming that Yasser Arafat had also been “inoculated with an illness.”

Hugo Chavez himself once speculated that the United States had a cancer weapon after being diagnosed with the disease in 2011. “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” he stated.

“Fidel [Castro] always told me, ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what,’ Chavez added.

The fact that Chavez was almost certainly the target of numerous CIA assassination plots has bolstered the belief amongst some that his cancer could have been surreptitiously induced as a means of unseating Chavez from power, successfully achieving what a 2002 coup failed to accomplish.

fidel castro

Source: http://www.infowars.com/russian-leader-demands-investigation-of-chavez-death/

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Passing of Venezuelan Leader Hugo Chavez leaves tears – and a nation divided

March 6, 2013 By 1 Comment

DAVID USBORNE
The Independent

After struggling for many gruelling months with cancer the form of which was never fully disclosed, Hugo Chavez, the firebrand president of Venezuela, adversary of the United States and former soldier, finally succumbed – passing away at the age of 58 in a Caracas military hospital.

While his death will end months of suspense that have cast a shadow of uncertainty across both his country and its leftist allies in the region, it now also plunges one of the world’s leading petro-nations into what is certain to be pitched political struggle, the outcome of which remains uncertain.

Not that the socialist state machine that Mr Chavez led has not had time to prepare. After winning a third term as President last October, Mr Chavez abruptly declared on 10 December last year that he was once again in the grip of the cancer that was first diagnosed in July 2011. The next day, after a tearful national television broadcast, he vanished to Havana, Cuba, for treatment. He was never to be seen publicly again.

The death of one of Latin America’s most egotistical, bombastic and polarising leaders was announced on television by Vice-president Nicolas Maduro, who is now expected to fight in a snap election to succeed him. Mr Chavez, he told a shocked nation, had died “after battling a tough illness for nearly two years”.

The prolonged absence of Mr Chavez had already caused tensions, notably since his failure to turn up for his own inauguration in Caracas in January. Against furious remonstrations from the opposition, the government insisted at the time that the leader was still in charge of the nation from his hospital bed.

Opposition patience with this and with the relative lack of clear information of what the actual condition of Mr Chavez was had been wearing extremely thin. In mid-February, the government allowed the first pictures of Mr Chavez to be published, which showed him in his hospital cot being attended to by two of his daughters. Shortly thereafter he was flown in the dead of night to Caracas, where he was installed in the main military hospital. It seems now that he was moved so he could at least die on his own soil.

The constitution now demands that elections be held across the country within 30 days to elect a new president and Vice-president Maduro and his allies will doubtless attempt to capitalise on public sympathy. His death comes, however, at a time of uncertainty for Venezuela. Inflation and the rate of violent crime have soared and Mr Chavez leaves a population that is politically deeply divided.

While Mr Maduro will vow to extend the so-called Bolivarian socialist revolution that was begun by Mr Chavez, the opposition has a seasoned candidate in Henrique Capriles, a provincial governor, who built a wide base of support fighting in the presidential contest last summer.

The announcement came just hours after Mr Maduro announced the government had expelled two US diplomats from the country, suggesting that the US and its allies had been responsible for Mr Chavez contracting cancer. “We have no doubt” that Chavez’s cancer had been somehow induced by foul play by “the historical enemies of our homeland”, the Vice-president said.

Just as Mr Chavez was divisive in his political life, his passing provoked reactions ranging from despair to delight. “Hugo Chavez was a tyrant who forced the people of Venezuela to live in fear,” declared the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, Ed Royce. Meanwhile, President Cristina Kirchner, an ally who may have designs on replacing him as Latin America’s scourge of Washington, said all government activities in Argentina were being suspended as a tribute.

“He was a generous man to all the people in this continent who needed him,” a visibly emotional Dilma Rousseff, the President of Brazil, said in Brasilia. President Barack Obama issued a conciliatory statement. “At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government,” he said.

Vice-President’s statement: ‘Hardest news we’ll ever give the people’

“We came here to the military hospital to follow the sequence of our comandante president’s health. We were receiving information and we were accompanying his daughters, his brother, his family members and we received the hardest and the most tragic of news that we will ever transmit to our people. At 4:25 in the afternoon, today, the 5th of March, Comandante President Hugo Chavez Frias died.”

Hugo Chavez: His rise to power

28 July, 1954 Hugo Chavez Frias is born to a working-class family in Sabaneta in the state of Barinas.

1971 Enrols at the Academy of Military Sciences, graduates in 1975.

1982 Creates a new political cell within the army with two fellow officers. Called the MBR200 it is committed to overthrowing the “corrupt” political establishment.

1989 Now Lieutenant Chavez, he falls ill and is not called to suppress riots in Caracazo, which leave hundreds dead. Friends say his “missed opportunity” led him to intensify his preparations for a coup.

1992 Under Colonel Chavez’s command, soldiers loyal to the MBR200 try to seize key installations including the Miraflores presidential palace. The coup fails and he surrenders, giving a national televised address before being sent to prison.

1994 Receives pardon from President Rafael Caldera and is freed.

1998 Wins presidential election and promises to seek “third way” between socialism and capitalism.

1999 Venezuelans vote to accept a new Chavez-backed constitution, including renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

2000 Re-elected to new six-year term.

2002 Protesters demand resignation. Dissident generals oust Chavez and clear way for interim government.

2002 Following huge protests by Chavez supporters, loyal army officers rescue Chavez, restore him to power.

2004 Venezuelans overwhelmingly vote against a referendum asking if Chavez should leave office.

2006 Chavez calls US President George W Bush “the devil” in speech before UN General Assembly.

2007 Government nationalises Venezuela’s largest private electric company.

2008 Chavez orders US ambassador to leave, accusing him of conspiring against his government.

2011 Undergoes surgery in Cuba for pelvic abscess. Confirms he had a cancerous tumour removed.

2012 Undergoes operation removing another tumour. Travels to Cuba to begin radiation therapy.

5 March 2013 Chavez dies after a battle with cancer.

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