This hand out picture courtesy of Nicole Tung taken on
November 5, 2012 in Aleppo shows US freelance reporter James Foley (AFP Photo /
Nicole Tung)
The American photojournalist who
was beheaded by Islamic State militants was also tortured using some of the
same methods employed by the CIA in its controversial, post-9/11 interrogation
program.
James Foley was subjected to
waterboarding multiple times while being imprisoned by the Islamic State, as
were three other kidnapped Westerners. According to the Washington
Post, several unnamed American officials confirmed the news,
with one adding that Foley “suffered a lot of physical abuse” before
his death.
Maria Fernandes (Photo courtesy
of Elizabeth police department)
A New Jersey woman who worked
four jobs, who sometimes “wouldn’t sleep for five days,” according to a
co-worker, died Monday while napping between shifts in her car on the side of
the road.
Maria Fernandes died in her 2001
Kia Sportage after inhaling carbon monoxide and fumes from
an overturned gas container she kept in the car, according to the New York
Daily News.
The 32-year-old Newark woman
pulled into a WAWA convenience store lot in Elizabeth, New Jersey for a nap
early Monday. She left the car running. The carbon monoxide and gasoline fumes
were the likely cause of death, authorities said.
Said President Barack Obama, there must be an Iraqi government and the
University continue to achieve this by clicking declaring fielded's Foreign
Minister John Kerry to the Middle East to forge an alliance to fight Daash, and
continue strikes against terrorism.
Obama said at a news conference at the White House after meeting his deputy Joe
Biden and senior adviser to the National Security that "American air
strikes on sites Daash in Iraq, he lost a lot of strength and our focus is now
to protect our soldiers and our facilities there and provide humanitarian
assistance to the trapped."
"We are working on the evaluation of effective Iraqi forces, and there
must be an Iraqi government university and we continue to press to make it
happen and when this government, the possibility that Iraqi forces are more
effective and we asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make sure that Daash can
not control Iraq and prevent them from it." .
Benjamin
Fulford – le 11 août 2014 : Les scénarios à long terme pour la planète
Terre tels qu’ils ont été négociés entre les différentes sociétés secrètes
Note
aux lecteurs : Cette semaine marque le début de ma pause annuelle d’un
mois par rapport à internet. Pour cette raison et jusqu’à l’édition du 25 août,
les messages aborderont des thèmes non liés à l’actualité.
Les
récents évènements au Moyen-Orient se sont déroulés de la manière dont ils
m’ont été expliqués il y a plusieurs années par les Illuminati gnostiques (rien
à voir avec ceux de la Cabale, NdT.) Etant donné que leurs prédictions
s’avèrent vraies, cela vaut la peine de revenir sur d’autres prédictions et des
accords passés en coulisse par les principales sociétés secrètes.
Over the last few years an urban myth of sorts has been slowly building
which speaks of an imminent reset of all the worlds currencies. It is
expected that in one fell swoop the exchange rates of currencies will be
adjusted with huge potential windfalls from specific currencies.
These currencies, namely the Iraqi dinar, Vietnamese dong, and a handful
of other devalued currencies will reset at extreme exchange rate swings leading
to riches for all who hold the currencies.
In fact, whole online communities have been built up around this
myth. These communities feed on the hopes and dreams of those who believe
such things can happen. Reading these sites is like a trip down despair road
where the shoulders are littered with the downtrodden and ignorant who can do nothing
but dream and risk all in their pursuit of unimaginable riches.
Many times I have attempted to hint or insinuate where the source of
this myth can be found. In the SDR and New Bretton Woodsseries we explored the advancement of the multilateral
financial system structured around the SDR of the International Monetary Fund,
including the broad level of support from all countries and international
institutions in the implementation of such a system.
Politburo member Le Hong Anh (left) meets with
Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday in Beijing, capital of China. —
VNA/VNS Photo Hai Yen
BEIJING (VNS) — The Party, State and people of Viet
Nam have always attached great importance to pursuing the consolidation of Viet
Nam and China's comprehensive strategic partnership, together with the Party,
State and people of China, and ensuring the partnership's sound and
long-lasting stable development.
Politburo member Le Hong Anh, Special Envoy of the
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, reiterated this in his talks with the
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, State President Xi Jingping,
in Beijing yesterday.
We are pleased to report that historic bond closings have begun in earnest in Zurich. Boxes of historic bonds have already been authenticated, and are in the TTM stage now.
Published time: August 24, 2014 02:16 Edited time: August 24, 2014 03:19
Organized by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network advocacy group, the #WeWillNotGoBackmarch attracted close to 3,000 people from across New York City and New Jersey, according to initial estimates by the police. Thousands of people gathered on New York’s Staten Island on Saturday as they protested against police violence and called for justice in the case of an unarmed man killed by an officer via an illegal chokehold.
Protesters marched through the streets, chanting against police brutality and holding up numerous signs, many of which read, “Respect Human Rights.” Others featured statements like, “The police are criminals, not our youth,” and, “We seek justice, not violence.”
A police officer helping to keep Ferguson calm on Wednesday.Scott Olson / Getty Images
The Pentagon has provided local police with $4.3 billion worth of military hardware
The photographs and videos of police trying to calm the rioting in Ferguson, Mo., look like a war zone. There’s the black-clad special-ops cops, backed by armored tactical vehicles that wouldn’t look out of place on a battlefield. The police are doing their best to restore order following Saturday’s police killing of unarmed Michael Brown, 18. But their tools and tactics have grabbed the attention of some of the nation’s real soldiers dispatched to fight its post-9/11 wars.
Brandon Friedman, who served as an Army officer with the 101st Airborne in Afghanistan and Iraq, tweeted a pair of photographs contrasting a policeman in Ferguson with one of him on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion. “The gentleman on the left,” he said of the Missouri cop Wednesday, “has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq.”
“Army underequipped pros,” a commenter said. “Cops here overeq/amateurs.”
A Missouri State Highway Patrol tactical vehicle patrolling Ferguson.Michael B. Thomas / Getty Images
Actually, that’s not right. Local police departments are strapped for cash and can’t afford the high-tech body armor, communications gear, weapons and armored vehicles that have replaced the local cop’s nightstick, revolver and cruiser. Most of this beefed-up arsenal is coming from the world’s biggest Army-Navy surplus store: the Pentagon.
The scenes from Ferguson have reached a point where Mashable hasposted photos from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ferguson—and asked readers to try to figure out where they’re from. The Department of Defense told USA Today last year that Ferguson acquired two Humvees, a 10-kilowatt generator and an empty flatbed trailer. St. Louis County, whose police have been out in force in Ferguson, acquired much more equipment, according to the Missouri Department of Public Safety, including night vision goggles, Humvees and more.
With the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles, Kevlar-vested and helmeted personnel, outfitted with serious-looking firepower, in some snapshots it’s tough to tell Ferguson from Firdos Square in Baghdad or Farah, Afghanistan.
To be sure, there are times when a law-enforcement challenge—rescuing hostages or taking down terrorists—requires such heavy-duty gear, including some military handdowns. But the use of SWAT—Special Weapons and Tactics— teams has leapfrogged from such serious cases to less-serious episodes of trying to calm civil unrest, where a less-confrontational approach might work better.
“American policing has become unnecessarily and dangerously militarized, in large part through federal programs that have armed state and local law enforcement agencies with the weapons and tactics of war, with almost no public discussion or oversight,” the American Civil Liberties Union reported in June. “The use of hyper-aggressive tools and tactics results in tragedy for civilians and police officers, escalates the risk of needless violence, destroys property, and undermines individual liberties.”
Police on guard in Ferguson on Tuesday.Scott Olson / Getty Images
The Pentagon encourages the trend. Beginning with its effort to help fight the war on illegal drugs in 1997, the Defense Department’s provision of military gear to local police departments exploded following 9/11. “Since its inception, the [Law Enforcement Support Office] program has transferred more than $4.3 billion worth of property,” LESO says on its website. “In 2013 alone, $449,309,003.71 worth of property was transferred to law enforcement.” (Seventy-one cents?)
There’s a bit of a sales pitch, too: “If your law enforcement agency chooses to participate, it may become one of the more than 8,000 participating agencies to increase its capabilities, expand its patrol coverage, reduce response times, and save the American taxpayer’s investment,” it adds, along with a proviso noting that the weapons “are on loan from the DOD and remain the property of the DOD. … Trading, bartering or selling of the weapons is strictly prohibited.”
In 2011 and 2012, the ACLU estimated that an 63 police departments received 500 Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, armored 20-ton behemoths (3-5 mpg) that were designed to defeat enemy roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. The New York Times reported in June that the Pentagon has given local police forces 435 other armored vehicles, 533 aircraft and nearly 94,000 machine guns.
This has at least a few cops wondering what’s going on. “We’re not the military,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has said. “Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.”
An ex-Boston police lieutenant—from a force not known for its gentler, kinder demeanor—agrees. “Have no doubt, police in the United States are militarizing, and in many communities, particularly those of color, the message is being received loud and clear: ‘You are the enemy,’” Tom Nolan, who spent 27 years on the Beantown beat, wrote for Defense One in June. “Police officers are increasingly arming themselves with military-grade equipment such as assault rifles, flashbang grenades, and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, or MRAP, vehicles and dressing up in commando gear before using battering rams to burst into the homes of people who have not been charged with a crime.”
From a Pentagon website seeking to interest local law enforcement agencies in trading up to an MRAP.DoD
The ACLU said its analysis showed that 79% of SWAT missions were for drug investigations, while 7% were for hostage or barricade situations. It also noted that more than half of the SWAT deployments tracked were aimed at minorities. “The incidents we studied,” it added, “revealed stark, often extreme, racial disparities in the use of SWAT locally, especially in cases involving search warrants.”
We’ve been through similar, if not precise, episodes before: Think of the Ohio National Guard killing four students with their M1 Garand rifles at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970, for example. The troops turned on the students after some lobbed rocks and tear-gas canisters toward them. A presidential commission refrained from concluding why the Guardsmen fired the estimated 67 shots, but concluded that “the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”
At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case.
