We Need to Talk about Sandy Hook

Reposted from the Coalition of the Obvious

Fasten your seat belts – Iran saving democracy in Iraq

Iran may rescue Iraq from a major threat posed by a Sunni Muslim extremist group formerly aligned with Al Qaeda.

A few days ago, ISIL, a Sunni Muslim group, attacked and captured Iraq’s third largest city, Mosul, population 1.8 million, located in Northern Iraq near Iran’s border. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  The group was formally expelled from Al-Qaeda in February due its extremism and the fact that it was attacking Al Qaeda forces in Syria, where both groups were attacking Syria and its government. (Image: Fabian Bromann)

Ukraine President Once Agent for U.S. State Department

Ask yourself, how would you regard a high level U.S. politician who met regularly at a foreign embassy and consistently advanced the interests of that country. 

Is he still working for his former masters in Washington, DC?

Hot War with Russia – The Saker

What’s the likelihood of a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine?  What are the military realities that the United States and it’s NATO collaborators see when they consider a real war in behalf of their proxy government in Ukraine?  Leading edge blogger, The Saker, provides an extended analysis that answers these questions convincingly.   Along with George Eliason’s superb analysis, The Saker is taking citizen journalism to new heights. (Image: Thomas Williams)

A short time before The Saker’s post, we got a bit of good news.  The official propaganda organ of corporate America, Associated Press,  ran this headline at 12:38 PM PDT – AP:  Ignoring Putin, Ukraine Insurgents to Hold Vote. It doesn’t take much to read these tea leaves. Putin is being let off the hook as the evil genius behind the people of Eastern Ukraine. After a little bit of corporate media rehab, Obama will be able to accept Putins ongoing offer to negotiate a reasonable ending to the mess that they created (unless the neocons sabatoge it).

Remembering the important lessons of the Cold War
The Saker at The Vineyard of the Saker

Water Liberty: How Innovation Trumps Privatization

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

The World Bank joins Nestlé in wanting to privatize water, deeming it “extremist” to suggest that those born on this planet have a natural right to clean, potable water. Meanwhile, RT’s Abby Martin reports that the watchdog group Corporate Accountability International recently released a new analysis showing that:

“Investing in private water does not extend access and is also counterproductive for economic development. By contrast, infrastructure investment, abandoned by the corporate sector, is where real benefit can be achieved: the World Health Organization estimates more than $10 of economic benefit from every $1 invested in water infrastructure systems.”

Proof of Turkish False Flag – Erdogan Hail Mary

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government was caught planning a false flag attack on ISIL rebels in Syria according to audio recordings released today on YouTube.   Erdogan warned Syria that any attacks on the shrine to an 11th century religious figure revered by Turks would cause a military response by Turkey.   The shrine is located just inside Syria on the border with Turkey.  There are no reports that any party in Syria has attacked the shrine. (Syrian False Flag, Mar 24)

A false flag operation could mobilized much needed support for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is facing major challenges in March 30 local elections. Since December 17, audio tapes of secret wiretaps exposed criminal behavior by Erdogan and his cronies.  The PM’s response has been varied but a clue to the desperation came when Erdogan said that he would be vindicated of all charges when his party received an endorsement from the people in the elections, now just days away.  

Watch Scott Noble’s Counter Intelligence (full film)

Intro by Brasscheck TV

A detailed and fascinating authoritative history of the CIA. How it came to be, who started it, and what it really does.

Counter Intelligence I: The Company, a Scott Noble film, Metanoia-Films.org, (2012, 119 mins)

“National Security”… The justification for:

– sabotage
– assassination
– coups

Wait, Wait: Ohio law against lies meets 1st Amendment

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Is a Supreme Court brief ever gut-splitting funny? It is when satirist P. J. O’Rourke writes it.

Having served as a paralegal for a couple decades, and later as a writer who follows Supreme Court decisions on food and other matters, like most of the public, I’ve found their rulings inordinately dry, even amid their life-changing effects. So, when a friend passed on a link to a Friend-of-the-Court (amicus) brief in a recent First Amendment case against an Ohio law that criminalizes political lies, I expected more snooze material.

I was delightedly wrong. O’Rourke, who’s often a guest on NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me, was assisted in the amicus brief by the CATO Institute, which promotes “individual liberty, free markets, and limited government.”

Top Documentary Films picks up Vox Populi

By COTO Report

The online film site, Top Documentary Films, has picked up Vox Populi: Methods of Manipulation by COTO Report’s Megan ‘Verb’ Kargher.

USA’s Poison Values

By Robert C. Koehler
COTO Report

Poison gas is not only a “moral obscenity” — one the United States stockpiled for decades after its use was banned in warfare — but a metaphor for human recklessness and wasted science.

Like it or not, we’re forced to think about it these days, since it’s still an enticing pretext for war. And the more I think about it, the more I marvel at the persistent insanity of its existence. The “red line” that the so-called civilized world crossed over a century ago was not in the use of poison gas but in its creation, because it’s lethal whether it’s used or not. Attempting to get rid of it — by burying it, burning it, dumping it — has consequences almost as deadly as firing it off in battle.

Libya in Anarchy Two Years after NATO Humanitarian Liberation

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research

In 2011 when Muhammar Qaddafi refused to leave quietly as ruler of Libya, the Obama Administration, hiding behind the skirts of the French, launched a ferocious bombing campaign and a “No Fly” zone over the country to aid the so-called fighters for democracy.

The US lied to Russia and China with help of the (US-friendly) Gulf Cooperation Council about the Security Council Resolution on Libya and used it to illegally justify the war. The doctrine, “responsibility to protect” was used instead, the same doctrine Obama wants to use in Syria. It’s useful top look at Libya two years after the NATO humanitarian intervention.

Scientific consensus fetishism in climate politics

By Denis G. Rancourt

It pains me to have to write this. It would pain me more to let it go without some kind of a fight.

In this post, I pick up a recent “blowhard” peer-reviewed experts’ article [1] published by a most prestigious publisher and show that its two presumed-established starting assumptions — that global warming is directly perceivable in increasing extreme weather events, and that there is a scientific consensus on global warming — are at best groundless, and wrong, if the evidence matters at all.

HAARP goes under cover: Begich on Coast2Coast

By COTO Report

George Noory quickly covers several newsworthy items on his July 17 Coast to Coast radio show, including illegal license plate surveillance funded by DHS, India food poisoning linked to pesticide, Noory’s renewed “long-term” contract with Clear Channel, and of particular interest to COTO readers, a furlough for Alaska weather modification system, HAARP.  Noory interviews professor Nick Begich, author of Angels Don’t Play This HAARP.

This will save the military about $300,000 a month, says Begich, while they look for a private contractor to run the place. Because private contractors are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, “the real story is that they’re going deeper.”

Watch Counter-Intelligence: A 5-Film Series by Scott Noble

Written and Directed by Scott Noble
Narrated by Mikela Jay
Metanoia Films

From the director of Psywar and Human Resources comes a 5-film series covering the über police state created and developed by America’s secret government. Students of current events get a crash course in the dismantling of what these pathological rulers call quaint: the US Constitution.

Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations includes original interviews with:

Bradley Manning Trial: Is Our Future an Orwellian Nightmare Or Information Anarchy?

By Drew Mendelson
Policy Mic

At its core, the ongoing military trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the admitted conveyer of three-quarters of a million classified U.S. government documents to Wikileaks, is about the evolution of big data into a relentless and almost certainly unstoppable social force. Pfc. Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst arrested in May 2010 and charged with 22 offenses involving the passing of information to Wikileaks, is seen by many as a whistleblower whose actions revealed mendacious covert actions of the U.S. government in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and elsewhere.

How to Keep Your Info Private (Even from the NSA)

By Dan Schointuch
Money Talk News

Thwarting the efforts of a billion-dollar super-secret government spy agency — or anyone else who wants access to your personal information — is not that difficult.

With the recent revelations that the NSA and other agencies have been tapping into corporate streams of data that can provide them with massive amounts of private information about U.S. citizens, now is a good time to start thinking about how best to keep your private information private.

Measuring Up As Men

By Volaar

“I call on men and boys everywhere to take a stand against the mistreatment of girls and women. It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.”  — Desmond Tutu, November, 2012

Not three months prior to Tutu’s statement, two teenage boys brutally assaulted, humiliated and traumatized a sixteen year old girl who was inebriated past the point of being able to take care of herself, let alone call for help from others.

To this very day, the victim’s family and the victim continue to receive death threats and threats of bodily harm from the victim’s teenage peers in the Ohio town of Steubenville, population under 19,000.

How Congress let Monsanto off the hook

By Michael Collins
COTO Report

Not many people like the messes Congress makes but everybody should see how they’re made.

This article takes a close look at the legislation just passed by Congress and signed by President Obama allowing the Secretary of Agriculture to issue executive orders that bypass regulations, safety, and science for the purpose of speeding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered seeds (GE) and crops to market.  The way the law is written, Secretary Tom Vilsack can lift restrictions on GMOs for a set period and, it appears, do so without hindrance from the courts.

The People Say Stop the XL Pipeline – Will Obama Listen? Does He Care?

By Michael Collins

(Washington, DC 1/17)  The nation’s capital hosted over 40,000 citizens assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  The crowd urged President Obama to bring to reality his lofty words on climate change in the inaugural address just days ago.  By stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the president would deal a blow to the rogue energy companies who, by their actions, are ready to sacrifice everything to transport oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands, across the United States, for refinement in Houston, Texas and shipment to China.

The broader concern of the gathered citizens and march sponsors, 350.org, and the Sierra Club, represents the existential issue of our time.  We need to get very real, very soon on the manifest threat to the earth’s climate posed by fossil fuels and the threat to the human species embodied by insane ventures like the Canadian tar sands project.  The verdict of science is clear.  As leading climate scientist James E. Hansen said, the full exploitation of tar sands oil and use by China, or any nation, is “game over for the climate.”

Gary Webb: An American Hero

By Volaar

Eight years ago, December 10, 2004, respected and award-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb was murdered by a conspiracy of an apathetic citizenry, corporate malfeasance and government corruption.  The Sacramento County coroner, Robert Lyons, publically, if hastily, characterized the gunshot wounds in Gary Webb’s head three times before finally ruling the double-gunshot wound to Webb’s face a “suicide,” noting the use of a .38 caliber revolver, the presence of a suicide note and Webb’s close friend and ex-wife, Sue Bell, claiming that Gary, “had been depressed about being unable to obtain employment from another major newspaper for some time.” The San Jose Mercury News, on orders from “on high,” had terminated Gary Webb’s career progression after they claimed they had discovered errors in trivial matters of fact in his career-capping exposé, “A Dark Alliance” (ADA).