Saudi suicide

While Saudi Arabia has adopted the Qatari plan to overthrow the Syrian secular regime, Riyadh seems unable to adapt to the sudden withdrawal of the U.S. Not only did the Saudis reject the Russian-American accord but they pursue the war and announce retaliation to "punish" the United States. For Thierry Meyssan, this stubborness is equivalent to collective suicide by the family of Saud.

Unleashed by the United States against Syria, will Saudi Arabia commit suicide if defeated? This is what one might conclude from the following events:

On July 31st, 2013, Prince Bandar bin Sultan visited Russia, where he not only met his counterpart, the intelligence chief , but also President Vladimir Putin. There are two versions of this meeting. For the Saudis, Bandar spoke on behalf of the Kingdom and the United States. He offered to buy 15 billion dollars worth of Russian weapons if Moscow dropped Syria. For the Russians, he spoke arrogantly, first threatening to send jihadists to disrupt the Olympic Games in Sochi if Moscow persisted in supporting the secular regime in Damascus, then trying to bribe him. Whatever the truth, Putin felt that his interlocutor was insulting Russia.

On September 30th, Prince Saud Al -Faisal had been included on the agenda of the general debate of the 68th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, but, enraged by the warming of relations between Iran and the U.S., the Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs left without excusing himself. In his anger, he refused to have his pre-printed speech distributed to delegates.

On October 11th, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and former head of the Department of State for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, received a Lebanese delegation. Speaking on behalf of Mr. Ban, but probably even more on behalf of President Obama, he had no words strong enough to criticize Saudi foreign policy, built on grudges and unable to adapt to a changing world.

On the 18th of October, the General Assembly of the United Nations, with 176 votes out of 193, elected Saudi Arabia as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for two years from January 1st, 2014. Ambassador Abdallah El- Mouallemi congratulated himself for this victory that reflects "the effectiveness of Saudi policy marked by moderation". (sic) But a few hours later, Prince Saud Al-Faisan issued a press release with Nasserist overtones on the incapacity of the Security Council and the refusal of the Kingdom to take its seat. If the main official reason given was the Syrian issue, the minister offered hiself the luxury of also denouncing the Palestinian issue and the weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, that is to say, to designate as enemies of peace both Iran and Israel. Knowing that the criticism of the Syrian UN policy is a challenge directly to Russia and China, who made ​​use of their vetoes three times, this press release was an insult to Beijing, although China is currently the main customer for Saudi oil. This about face, which plunged the United Nations into dismay, however, was loudly applauded by the presidents of Turkey and France declaring that they share the "frustrations" of Saudi Arabia on Syria.

On October 21st, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan had invited European diplomats posted in Riyadh to his home. There the head of the secret services narrated Saudi fury against Iranian rapprochement with the U.S. and U.S. military withdrawal from Syria. He is said to have announced to his guests that the kingdom would retaliate by divesting from America. Returning to the episode of the seat on the Security Council, the newspaper clarified that according to Prince Bandar, the statement was not directed against Beijing but against Washington; such a clarification being all the more interesting for not corresponding to the situation.

Faced with the disbelief generated by these statements and soothing comments from the State Department, Prince Turki bin Faisal explained to Reuters that the words of his personal enemy, Bandar, committed the kingdom and that the new policy would not be questioned. There is therefore no longer a question of a division of power between the two rival branches of the ruling family, the Sudairi against the Shuraim, but of their common vision.

In summary, Saudi Arabia insulted Russia in July, China two weeks ago, and now the United States. The Kingdom announced that it will withdraw its investments from America likely in favour of Turkey and France, even though no expert can see how this would be possible. Two explanations for this behavior are possible: either Riyadh feigned anger to allow Washington to continue the war in Syria without taking responsibility, or the family of Saud committed political suicide.

The first hypothesis seems contradicted by the declarations of Prince Bandar before the European ambassadors. If he was playing under the table for the United States, he would have refrained from coming to preach revolution to its allies.

The second hypothesis recalls the behavior of camels, animal fetishes of the Saudi Bedouins. They are reputed to be capable of carrying a grudge for years, not finding peace until they have satisfied their revenge whatever the cost.

However, the survival of Saudi Arabia is at stake since the appointment of John O. Brennan at the head of the CIA in March 2013. Formerly stationed in Saudi Arabia, he is a staunch opponent of the system put in place with Riyadh by his predecessors: international jihadism. Brennan believes that even if these fighters once did a good job in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Chechnya, they have become too numerous and unmanageable. What started as a few Arab extremists taking pot shots at the Red Army became a constellation of groups present from Morocco to China, fighting ultimately much more for the triumph of the Saudi model of society than to defeat adversaries of the United States. Already in 2001, the United States had thought to eliminate Al Qaeda by blaming it for the attacks of September 11th. However, with the official Osama Bin Laden assassination in May of 2011, they decided to rehabilitate the system and made great use of it in Libya and Syria. Without Al Qaeda Muammar el- Qaddafi could never have been overthrown. This is evident today by the presence of Abdelhakim Belhaj, former number two of the organization, as military governor of Tripoli. Anyway in the eyes of John O. Brennan, international jihadism should be reduced to low levels and be kept only as a special lever of the CIA for some occasions.

Jihadism is not only the only effective force in Saudi Arabia, whose army is divided into two units obeying the two clans of the Saud family, but also its sole purpose. Washington does not need the kingdom to provide it with oil nor to plead the cause of peace with Israel. Hence the return to the old neocon Pentagon plan: "Throw the Saudis out of Saudi Arabia," the title of a July, 2002 powerpoint presentation to the Political Council of the Department of Defense. This project foresees the dismantling of the country into five distinct areas, three of which are to form independent states from each other and two of which would be attached to other states.

By choosing a showdown with the United States, the family of Saud doesn’t give them a choice. It is unlikely that Washington will allow itself to be dictated to by a few wealthy Bedouins but predictable that it will have them fall in line. In 1975, they did not hesitate to have King Faysal assassinated. This time, they will likely be even more radical.
Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé

http://www.voltairenet.org/article180720.html

Secuestro del primer ministro libio Ali Zeidan

Un grupo armado secuestró al primer ministro libio, Ali Zeidan [a la izquierda en la foto], en Trípoli el 10 de octubre de 2013, en el hotel Corinthia, donde reside desde que regresó a Libia.

El ex diplomático libio Ali Zeidan había desertado en los años 1980. El 7 de octubre de 1981 fundó en Khartum el Frente Nacional de Salvación de Libia, junto al actual jefe de Estado Mohamed Magariaf. Esa formación, que es sólo una fachada de la Hermandad Musulmana, organizó varios intentos de golpes de Estado –como el del 8 de mayo de 1984– financiados por Arabia Saudita y Estados Unidos. Con sus sucesivas intentonas golpistas el Frente Nacional de Salvación de Libia mató en realidad muchos más libios que el régimen de Muammar el-Kadhafi en su 41 años de gobierno.

Refugiado en Suiza, Ali Zeidan estuvo además entre los fundadores de la Liga Libia de Derechos Humanos. En 2011, esa estructura presentó al Consejo de Derechos Humanos de la ONU, en Ginebra, un informe falso donde acusaba a Muammar el-Kadhafi de haber asesinado a más de 6 000 opositores. Fue en base a ese falso informe que el Consejo de Derechos Humanos puso «el caso de Libia» en manos del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, que a su vez dio a la OTAN la misión de imponer una zona de exclusión aérea sobre el territorio libio para proteger a la población de la represión [1]. Y lo que hizo la OTAN fue derrocar el régimen. Mohamed Magariaf se convirtió entonces en presidente y Ali Zeidan en primer ministro.

Durante la guerra contra Libia, Ali Zeidan fue uno de los miembros más influyentes del Consejo Nacional de Transición(CNT), reconocido como único representante del pueblo libio por los mismos países que desataron la guerra contra Libia. Sin embargo, según un documento presentado por Estados Unidos al Comité de Sanciones de la ONU y revelado por la Red Voltaire, el CNT era financiado en secreto por el Libyan Information Exchange Mechanism (LIEM), un órgano informal creado en Nápoles únicamente por Estados Unidos [2].

En resumen, el señor Zeidan es un miembro de la Hermandad Musulmana y fue pagado por Estados Unidos para engañar a la comunidad internacional y ayudar a la OTAN a derrocar el régimen de Muammar el-Kadhafi.

El secuestro de Aliz Zeidan parece ser una respuesta de al-Qaeda al reciente secuestro –también en Trípoli– de Abu Anas al-Libi por un comando estadounidense [3].

[1] Entrevistado en Ginebra por la Red Voltaire, el secretario general de la Liga Libia de Derechos Humanos, Silman Buchuiguir, reconoció ante una cámara la manipulación de aquel informe. Esa entrevista, realizada por Julien Teil, aparece en su film La Guerre humanitaire en Libye.

[2] «Washington trató de robarse 1 500 millones de dólares para pagar a sus asalariados del CNT», por Thierry Meyssan, Red Voltaire, 10 de octubre de 2013.

[3] «Estados Unidos secuestra uno de sus ex agentes en Libia», Red Voltaire, 8 de octubre de 2013.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article180517.html

While Christopher Stevens was killed.... CIA: Libya missiles to Terrorists in Syria

While Christopher Stevens was killed.. CIA moved missiles from Libya to Syria.

A new report by CNN says that many agents and spies of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been working in an annex near the US consulate in Libya in order to push forward the U.S. arms supply-project for the military support of terrorist groups in Syria while the US ambassador Christopher Stevens as well as three other American citizens were killed just next door to the CIA employees, which were busy to start the shipping of Libya missiles to terrorists and jihadists on Syrian soil.

U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans have been killed in Libya, September 2012. The investigation into the death of the U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and the killing of the three other American citizens is still underway and it seems a bit as the U.S. ambassador to Libya could have played the role of the fall guy in this specific event, which is hopefully not forgotten by many Americans because of its probably explosive nature and the certainly questionable death of an US ambassador in Libya.

The CNN report says that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was transferring surface-to-air missiles from Libya to the terrorists on Syrian soil through Turkey, while it is already pretty sure that the CIA guysare in bed with Al-Qaeda, and thus, some of these Libya missiles from the CIA could also have reached the hands of the Syrian Al-Qaeda offshoot – the Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front), which is already more powerful within Syria than the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA).

The criminals and fighters of the foreign-supported “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) are currently in a very hopeless situation in many regions in Syria. They lose the most battles against the Syrian Arab army (SAA) and the armed infighting with the Syrian Al-Qaeda branch (Jabhat al-Nusra) isn`t helpful. Not to mention that the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria currently has the better cards in these armed power struggles.

The report by CNN becomes hot stuff due to the information that the CIA spies were transferring these surface-to-air missiles from Libya (over Turkey) to the terrorists in Syria when the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi took place and this led to the dead of the U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and the mentioned three other Americans in Benghazi.

The CNN has now reported on Thursday that, as mentioned, dozens of agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were working in an annex nearby the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and tried to quickly prepare the shipment of missiles from Libyan armoires to the terrorists and Islamists on Syrian soil in order to give them the needed military aid for the armed overthrow of the secular Syrian government and the President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

So one can probably assume that the U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and the other three American citizens were killed in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi while a lot of CIA employees, and some of these CIA agents were eventually well trained in armed fighting, were just “next door”. September last year becomes more and more interesting due to the sad event of the killing of the (probably) “sacrificial lamb” in Libya.

Of course, it is still the situation that the details and the real background of the activities of the U.S. government and personnel in in Libya’s Benghazi are the continued issue of controversy with several Congressional leaders. These Congressional leaders in the United States still demand a wide-ranging probe into the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, in September 2012. They also demand a deeper and more detailed investigation of the secret CIA operations in the African city and these demands seem very understandable.

Banner in Tripoli: Libya mourning the death of a Libyan terrorist in Syria

CNN also reported that several operatives of the CIA, which “were involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.”

In addition, several sources have already said that more U.S. citizens were wounded in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, than what had previously been reported and this is finally no real surprise anymore.

http://www.syrianews.cc/cia-libya-missiles-terrorists-syria/

Al-Nusra Front Leader in Syria is a CIA Operative: Ex-Terrorist

A former member of al-Qaeda has said the leader of al-Nusra Front, the primary terrorist group in Syria fighting against the Syrian government, is a CIA operative.

“I personally believe that the leader of the Nusra Army who declared his support for Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a CIA operative in the al-Nusra,” Sheikh Nabil Naeem, who led an al-Qaeda training camp in Egypt, made the revelation in a recent video testimony.

Addressing the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra militants, Naeem said, “You are fighting the war in Syria on America’s behalf.”

Naeem, who has renounced violence, also identified al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri as a U.S. double agent.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the head of the terrorist al-Nusra Front, pledged allegiance to al-Zawahiri on April 10.

Naeem was a high profile militant in Egypt and is believed to have been involved in the assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. He was released from prison after the regime of Hosni Mobarak collapsed in February 2011.

He said the United States funded and supported al-Qaeda in Afghanistan for 18 years and that he was personally “fooled by an American plot.”

The United Nations Security Council has added the al-Nusra Front operating in Syria to the UN sanctions blacklist.

The terrorist group has been behind hundreds of deadly bombings targeting both government and civilian institutions including hospitals and schools across Syria since the crisis began in March 2011.

The group is also responsible for killing American troops in Iraq.

According to U.S. media reports, the U.S. military has been secretly training some militant groups since November last year.

The United States has begun shipping weapons to Jordan to arm the militants in neighboring Syria, after the White House claimed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against the militants. Damascus has strongly rejected the allegation.

Damascus says the conflict is being engineered from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants fighting in Syria are foreign nationals.

http://breakingnews.sy/en/article/20081.html

NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES....Former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has carried out one of the biggest leaks in US history, exposing a top-secret NSA

Edited time: June 24, 2013 17:58



The logo of the National Security Agency (NSA) (AFP Photo)

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Former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has carried out one of the biggest leaks in US history, exposing a top-secret NSA surveillance program to the media. Leading tech companies were revealed to be involved in intelligence gathering through PRISM spy tool.

16:55 GMT: The US says that it is “deeply disappointed” over China’s decision to let Snowden leave Hong Kong for Russia.


“We are deeply disappointed by the decision of the authorities in Hong Kong to permit Snowden to flee despite a legally valid US request to arrest him for purposes of his extradition,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters, cites Reuters. Such a decision is “detrimental” for US-China and US-Hong-Kong relations, he added.


16:50 GMT: The US is in touch with countries through which NSA leaker Snowden may travel or where he may decide to stay, the White House spokesman said. Senior officials regularly brief president Obama on the matter, Jay Carney added.

Commenting on the countries that Snowden appealed to for help, Carney noted that “If his passion here is for press freedom and freedom of the Internet and the like, he has chosen unlikely protectors.”

16:40 GMT: The White House spokesperson Jay Carney says they assume that Snowden is still in Russia. Washington expects Moscow to look at all the options available to them to expel the NSA leaker to the US where he faces charges for revealing secret surveillance programs.


15:14 GMT: Ecuador is going to thoroughly analyze the Snowden’s asylum bid and “absolutely independently” make a decision on the matter, that they believe to be “the most appropriate,” President Rafael Correa wrote on twitter.


15:05 GMT: Assange says Snowden received refugee papers from Ecuador to secure him safe passage as he fled Hong Kong on Sunday.


“In relation to Hong Kong, Snowden was supplied with a refugee document of passage by the Ecuadorean government,” the WikiLeaks founder told reporters. Although these documents would not necessarily guarantee the NSA leaker would be granted asylum in Ecuador.


14:44 GMT: WikiLeaks approached Iceland and other countries with a formal request for asylum for Snowden, says the organization’s spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.


“It is already public that I, as an Icelandic journalist, approached the Icelandic government with a formal request from Mr Snowden for asylum in Iceland. Similar processes were carried out elsewhere,” he told the media.

14:12 GMT: Edward Snowden and Wikileaks' Sarah Harrison who is accompanying him are “safe and healthy,” Julian Assange said during a conference call broadcast by RT.

“The current status of Mr Snowden and Harrison is that both are healthy and safe and they are in contact with their legal teams,” the WikiLeaks founder said. “I cannot give further information as to their whereabouts,” Assange added.

“Snowden is not a traitor, he is not a spy he is a whistleblower who told the public the important truth,” he pointed out.

13: 55 GMT: According to aviation expert Chris Yates, it is unlikely that Snowden is on the plane en route from Moscow to Cuba. Even if the NSA leaker did get onboard the aircraft, the expert said the US “possibly could instruct it to land somewhere” on American soil though highly unlikely.


“Of course the pilot himself has the possibility to divert so he does not actually need to enter US airspace to fly down to Havana. And that will be another possibility as well,” Yates added.


13:40 GMT: Ecuador has been in contact with the Russian government over Edward Snowden, and says it is considering his asylum appeal, according to the country's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino speaking during a visit to Vietnam.

Patino stressed the Ecuadorian government puts human rights above any other party’s interests, andquestioned the correctness of calling Snowden a “traitor.”

“The word 'treason' is used, but who has betrayed whom? Is it people who've been betrayed, or certain elites?” Patino asked.

Ecuador is also considering a US request related to Snowden, Patino said, adding that the decision would come “in due time.”


10:56 GMT: Flight to Havana Edward Snowden was booked on has departed, but he is not seen either boarding or on plane, according to RT's correspondent Egor Piskunov, who was onboard.




People look the passenger plane, flight SU 150 to Havana, docking to a boarding bridge at the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport on June 24, 2013. (AFP Photo / Kirill Kudryavtsev)

10:40 GMT: US Secretary of State John Kerry says the US would be deeply troubled if China or Russia had prior notice of Edward Snowden’s travel plans.

10:10 GMT: A lawyer for Edward Snowden pointed out that the former spy agency contractor had been told to flee Hong Kong by a middleman claiming to represent the China-controlled territory – which evidently could mean the advice was Beijing-backed. Albert Ho, who is also a lawmaker critical of Chinese involvement in Hong Kong’s affairs, stressed that in his opinion the case was clearly monitored and controlled by China.



Albert Ho (AFP Photo)

5:04 GMT: Washington has said it expects Moscow to look at every available option to expelSnowden back to the US on charges of espionage. 

4:57 GMT: The Ecuadorian government is analyzing NSA leaker Snowden’s asylum bid as he attempts to elude extradition to the US, said Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino.

"We are analyzing it with a lot of responsibility," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he is currently on an official visit. He added that the decision has to do “with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world."

“We always act in the name of principles not in our own interests. There are governments who make decisions more according to their own interests, we don’t do that. Our main focus is human rights,” said Patino, when asked how granting Snowden asylum could affect Ecuador’s relations with the US.
Monday, June 24

23:02 GMT: Despite America frequently welcoming dissidents from other countries it adopts a harsh stance against those who highlight abuses of power at home, attorney and historian Gerald Horne told RT.

“If you listen to the congress person appearing on Sunday’s chat shows, they are breathing fire threatening measures just short of a nuclear war if Mr Snowden is not speedily dispatched back to New York or Washington,” he said.

“The United States for example routinely accepts on its territory citizens fleeing Cuba without passports. I would also say that the United States routinely receives on its soil those it deems to be political dissidents, who do not have passports. So I do not feel that Moscow’s hands are tied in regard to Mr Snowden not having a passport.”

22:13 GMT: The US is "disappointed and disagrees with the determination by Hong Kong authorities not to honor the US request for the arrest of the fugitive," a US official told Reuters. Meanwhile, the US State Department has warned countries in the Western Hemisphere to not allow Edward Snowden to“proceed in any further international travel,” according to a written statement cited by Reuters.

18:20 GMT: Edward Snowden’s passport was annulled before he left Hong Kong for Russia, a US official said on condition of anonymity. Although the loss of his passport could complicate Snowden’s travel plans, a country could overlook the withdrawn passport if a senior government or airline official ordered it.


15:42 GMT: Edward Snowden has asked Ecuador for political asylum, the country’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino Aroca, wrote on Twitter. Ecuador’s ambassador to Russia, Patricio Chavez, arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport to meet Edward Snowden after his plane touched down in Moscow.


15:30 GMT: The Icelandic government has received no information on whether former CIA officer Edward Snowden intends to fly to the country’s capital Reykjavik via Moscow, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reports.

The arrival of Snowden in Iceland is “highly unlikely”, the head of the Icelandic prime minister’s press-service, Johannes Skulason, told Interfax news agency, adding that the country’s government has no information on the whistleblowers whereabouts.

In accordance with Icelandic law, an individual has to be on the country’s territory in order to apply for political asylum, and such applications cannot be processed from even from the premises of Iceland’s diplomatic missions.


15:10 GMT:

15:00 GMT: Edward Snowden is in a terminal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and is waiting for a transfer flight to Cuba, a source at the airport told Interfax News Agency.

A source from the airline Aeroflot said Snowden, who is accompanied by WikiLeaks representative, Sarah Harrison, has rented a suit at the airport’s «V-Express» Capsule Hotel.

Two cars with diplomatic license plates from Ecuador were also spotted at the airport. A source told RT that a doctor from the Ecuadorian embassy in Moscow has examined Snowden on his arrival in the Russian capital.

11:50 GMT: Diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks are escorting Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to an unnamed “democratic Nation” via Moscow, the group said in a statement.

The group said Snowden had asked for its "legal expertise and experience to secure his safety” and had chosen a safe route for the whistleblower "for the purposes of asylum".


"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," Reuters cites former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group's founder Julian Assange, as saying.


"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."

8:45 GMT:

7:47 GMT: Edward Snowden has left Hong Kong of his own volition for a “third country”, authorities from the city state said.

The whistleblower’s decision to leave the country comes one day after a senior US official told the Washington Post: "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law."


Authorities from the Hong Kong special administrative region [HKSAR] issued a statement saying Snowden had been allowed to leave the country as they had yet to receive sufficient information necessary to process a provisional warrant or arrest and thus had no legal basis to keep him from leaving the country.


"The HKSAR government has already informed the US government of Mr Snowden's departure,” the statement continued.
Sunday, June 23


20:23 GMT: The US says bilateral relations will suffer if Hong Kong won’t act soon on its request to extradite NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, Reuters reports quoting anonymous officials.


18:14 GMT: The South China Morning Post said whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been charged with espionage by the US, was not in police custody in Hong Kong, as had been reported elsewhere.

"Contrary to some reports, the former CIA analyst has not been detained, is not under police protection, but is in a 'safe place' in Hong Kong," the paper said.

16:30 GMT: A White House petition demanding that Snowden be issued a full pardon has reached over 100,000 signatures in less than two weeks, meaning the US government is obliged to review and respond to its requests.

16:27 GMT: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that the Obama administration charging NSA leaker Edward Snowden and requesting his arrest is a move to “intimidate any country” that may wish to protect the whistleblower.

“The charging of Edward Snowden is intended to intimidate any country that might be considering standing up for his rights,” reads a post on Wikileaks webpage on behalf of Assange after his addressfrom the Ecuadorian embassy in London was canceled due to security concerns.

Commenting on Assange’s speech, geopolitical analyst and founder of stopimperialism.com Eric Draitser has told RT that neither the US nor the UK will “change their policies” and “stop spying on the world”.


“As we know the United States, the UK and the other powers in the West have “spent billions of dollars creating the infrastructure of surveillance states,” he said.

13:07 GMT: Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang has said that the normal legal process will be observed following the US filing criminal charges and requesting the arrest of Snowden.

“All foreign citizens must comply with Hong Kong law,” he said, adding that the police would act on the request once it is received.

He declined to comment on whether Snowden was in a police safe house, a rumor mentioned by one Hong Kong newspaper

Saturday, June 22


23:50 GMT: The United States government has released the indictment of Edward Snowden, charging him with espionage, among other crimes. Read RT's full coverage here.

Nick Pickles of the UK's Big Brother Watch has released a statement condemning GCHQ's collection of information. "We need a wholesale review of surveillance law, including the fact that there is absolutely no judicial process within the current system and the people making these decisions are able to hide in the shadows rather than face public scrutiny," he said.


16:40 GMT: The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak.

Friday, June 21


19:50 GMT: USIS, the company that conducted the background check on Snowden in 2011 is now under investigation for "systematically" failing to do its job, Senator Claire McCaskill has said.


19:45 GMT: Documents handed to the Guardian newspaper show that NSA was allowed to use informational "inadvertently" collected from US citizens to be scrutinized without a specific court warrant.

Thursday, June 20

11:33 GMT: President Obama has said that surveillance of phone records and Internet activity helped avert at least 50 terror attacks, and was justified because "Lives have been saved." He added that those threats did not just target the US, but also other countries, including Germany. Obama’s statement was in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s argument that government monitoring of Internet communications needed to remain within proper limits.




U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold a joint news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin June 19, 2013 (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)


"I made clear that although we do see the need for gathering information, the topic of proportionality is always an important one and the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe," Merkel said.


Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama maintained that he was confident the US has struck an appropriate balance between intelligence-gathering and civil liberties. Earlier the head of the National Security Agency also said that more than 50 potential terrorist plots across the globe were thwarted thanks to the controversial surveillance programs.

Wednesday, June 19


15:30 GMT: Alexander was asked to weigh in on Edward Snowden’s remark from earlier this week in which he said the NSA provides Congress with special immunity in regards to the surveillance programs. Alexander responded that he has “no idea” of what the leaker was referring to.

“I’m not sure I understand the context of the special immunity. We treat you with special respect,” said Alexander.

15:10 GMT: Gen. Alexander says the NSA does not have the authority nor the technology to eavesdrop on the emails and phone calls of Americans under the Section 512 and Section 702 programs.

15:07 GMT: Bob Litt, a general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, testified that "The leaks from this investigation are not damaging" and suggested it could be months before the US finds out if the documents released by Edward Snowden will have a detrimental effect on the country.



General Keith Alexander (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)


15:00 GMT: Gen. Alexander dismisses allegations that the NSA has unfettered access to all communications and said, "US companies are compelled to provide these records by US law using methods that are in strict compliance with that law."


14:54 GMT: Of the more than 50 potential terrorist attacks thwarted by the NSA, over 50 involved overseas targets. Only 10 were plotted to occur within the US, and one involved a plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.


14:43 GMT: Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, is testifying on Capitol Hill this morning. He said that his agency will soon shed more light on the terrorist attacks it thwarted using the controversial surveillance programs, and that the number of events exceeds 50. Mirroring what FBI Director Robert Mueller said days earlier, Alexander suggested that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 could have likely been prevented if these systems were in place.
Tuesday, June 18

17:15 GMT: Answering the question about previous whistleblowers and whether their choices influenced Snowden, he replied that “Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures."


He notes that the “draconian responses” instead help to “build better whistleblowers.”

“If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.”


16:55 GMT: “I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school,” said the whistleblower to the Guardian newspaper.




A woman walks past a banner displayed in support of former US spy Edward Snowden in Hong Kong on June 18, 2013 (AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez)

16:41 GMT: An Associated Press journalist reminded in her question that US officials claim terrorists are already altering TTPs because of Snowden’s leaks, calling him a traitor.

Snowden answers that journalists should ask themselves certain questions like “since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.”

16:25 GMT: When the whistleblower was asked about providing classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum, Snowden answered that this allegation was just a ‘predictable’ reaction of the US media.

“This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now”.

16:15 GMT: Snowden was asked to express his opinion on the conduct of companies like Google and Facebook, that provided information which the NSA used in its surveillance program. He answered that he thought that the companies are “legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?”

15:50 GMT: The whistleblower answers a question as to how in general direct NSA's access works and promises to give more details later on.

“...if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user ID, cell phone handset ID (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time."

He adds that “audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5 percent of those performed.”


15:25 GMT: Concerning the question why Snowden waited to release the documents as he wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president, he answered that Obama gave him hope for change.

“Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.”

15:05 GMT: The first two questions in the live Q&A with Snowden were asked by the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald about Snowden’s asylum choice and his NSA leaks.

Snowden answered that he chose to leave the US as the government “immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime.”

He added that it cannot be called ‘justice’ as he “did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.”

14:00 GMT:

13:00 GMT: Starting from 15:00 GMT Snowden will be answering internet users’ questions at The Guardian website. The live chat is subject to his security concerns, as well as his access to a secure web connection, the paper notes. It also asked users to be patient waiting for Snowden to answer their questions. The full transcript of the Q&A will be later published on The Guardian’s site.

00:00 GMT: The documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communications of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, when he attended the G20 summit in London, The Guardian reports.

The paper has also revealed that a UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the London summit. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
Sunday, June 16

13:04 GMT: Swiss President Ueli Maurer said on Sunday that he doubted Snowden’s claims about his activities in Geneva, when he worked there as a CIA employee in 2007-2009. The NSA leaker told the Guardian newspaper that CIA agents intentionally got a Swiss banker drunk and then encouraged him to drive so he could intervene when he was arrested. Later, they recruited the banker, Snowden stated.

“It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media,” Maurer said, reports Reuters, citing a local newspaper. “This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can't imagine it.” SonntagsBlick quoted him as saying.

Maurer added that he would back a criminal probe against Snowden, if prosecutors called for it.

06:38 GMT: An unclassified government document obtained by Reuters claims that only a small proportion of the troves of data collated by the NSA monitoring program used specific phone numbers. The report says the “metadata” does not identify telephone subscribers or email accounts and as such seeks to argue that the practice is legal. Moreover, it stipulates that the information is subject to strict guidelines that ensure personal privacy is not violated.

The paper appears to echo President Barack Obama’s argument that such practices are necessary and justified to conserve the safety of the American people, arguing "dozens of potential terrorist plots [exist] here in the homeland and in more than 20 countries around the world."

Saturday, June 15

02:25 GMT: Facebook announced Friday that “only a tiny fraction of one per cent” of the company’s users were subjected to requests by the National Security Agency. Citing inaccurate reporting and unnecessary levels of government secrecy as his reason to disclose the true number, Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general Counsel, wrote online that the social networking giant “frequently rejects such requests outright.”

“Since this story was first reported, we’ve been in discussions with US national security authorities urging them to allow more transparency and flexibility around national security-related orders we are required to comply with,” Ullyot wrote. "We’re please that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all US national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) – which until now no company has been permitted to do.”

He wrote that government data requests, which in the six months ending on December 31, 2012, totaled between 9,000 and 10,000, while being careful to note that many inquiries come from local police agencies investigating runaways, assault, and other low-level crimes.

“With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.”

19:52 GMT: The 'Stand with Edward Snowden' petition has collected 847,222 digital signatures. The aim is to collect 1 million voices, within 48hrs, calling on Obama to “crack down on PRISM, not Snowden”. “It will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is,” reads the petition.


09:21 GMT: The UK has released an alert to all airlines around the world, asking them not to board ex-CIA staffer whistleblower Edward Snowden on UK flights, AP reported. The alert was issued on Home Office letterhead, which specified that "the individual is highly likely to be refused entry to the UK."



Protesters shout slogans as they hold up a picture of former US spy Edward Snowden in front of the US consulate in Hong Kong on June 13, 2013. (AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez)

Friday, June 14

23:00 GMT: Intelligence officials hot on the trail of Edward Snowden are handling the case as a potential foreign espionage matter, apparently rattled after the leaker’s comments to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post regarding US hacking of computers in China.

According to ABC News, asked whether Snowden was considered at risk of defecting to China a senior official familiar with the ongoing case responded "I think there is a real concern about that."

Intelligence officials evidently considered Snowden’s allegations of spying on China as much of a betrayal as his alleged leaking of highly classified files on the NSA's vast surveillance program.

Jeremy Bash, former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff, told ABC News defection or cooperation with a foreign nation such as China is now a top concern.

"He could do tremendous damage. I think if a foreign government learned everything that was in Edward Snowden's brain, they would have a good window into the way we collect signals intelligence… He had access to highly classified information," said Bash.

20:24 GMT: Reuters is reporting that NSA Director Keith Alexander will release on Monday the list of attacks that the US has thwarted through the use of surveillance.



General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 12, 2013. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

17:46 GMT: According to the Los Angeles Times, Edward Snowden smuggled highly classified documents out of a NSA facility in Hawaii using a portable thumb drive.

Investigators “know how many documents he downloaded and what server he took them from,” an official told the Times on condition of anonymity.

Thumb drives and similar portable storage devices have been banned by the Department of Defense and NSA since 2008.

15:56 GMT: Mueller continues to field questions from Congress, defending the NSA surveillance programs and dismissing allegations of illegality. “These programs have been conducted in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” Mueller said.

14:37 GMT: Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is testifying this morning on Capitol Hill. In regards to the NSA leaks, Mueller said, “These disclosures have caused significant harm to our nation and to our safety,” and that the FBI and Department of Justice are taking “all necessary steps to hold the person responsible.”




Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee June 13, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (AFP Photo / Alex Wong)



02:32 GMT: A series of posts to online forums under the name 'TheTrueHOOHA' have been attributed to Snowden. The forum posts, which were retrieved from the technology and news website ArsTechnica, span a period of ten years, and provide some clues into the NSA leaker’s mindset.

Though many of the comments are on casual subjects, such as a leaked beta for a game or advice on work-related programming tasks, they also point to a preoccupation with covering his own online tracks. In 2003, for example, Snowden asked the forum for advice on fairly sophisticated strengthening of his online anonymity, and in 2009 he sought help in creating a virtual, secure machine using a single CD.

In all, the posts seem to illustrate fairly typical interests for an IT employee and an online gamer, though there are some indications of skepticism of state surveillance.

“It really concerns me how little this sort of corporate behavior bothers those outside of technology circles. Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types,” writes Snowden in one post.
Thursday, June 13

23:30 GMT: About one in three Americans believe that Snowden is a “patriot” and should not be prosecuted, according to results compiled by a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday.

Twenty three per cent of poll respondents believe the former NSA contractor is a traitor to the US, while 31 per cent think that his leaking classified information makes him a patriot. The remaining 46 per cent of those surveyed were undecided. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of respondents thought that Snowden should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

19:37 GMT: Alexander was asked if NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s claims that he could hack into any phone call within the US, to which he responded, “False. I know of no way to do that.”

18:53 GMT: Gen. Alexander defended the NSA’s surveillance programs by saying there are “dozens of terrorist events” on US soil and abroad that have been prevented by his agency’s tactics. He also said the NSA will release more solid figures to the public likely within a week.

18:23 GMT: Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA and the US Cyber Command, testified before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee but declined to discuss the surveillance scandal during his opening remarks. Instead, Alexander concentrated on the United States’ cyber capabilities and said the emerging threats of espionage and hacking continue to pose problems to America’s computer infrastructure. “We have to create a defensible architecture,” Alexander said, adding that while he could not be more proud of his departments’ work, current shortcoming prevent the US from being fully prepared to fight off cyberattacks. “We need to be able to see what’s going on in cyberspace so that we can work with the industry and amongst ourselves,” said Alexander, “because getting information after an attack only allows us to police it up. We have to have some way of stopping it before it goes on, so we need to be able to see it.”

Wednesday, June 12

22:50 GMT: The FBI’s use of a secret and controversial part of the Patriot Act has increased by more than 1,000 per cent under since President Obama assumed office from his predecessor, George W. Bush. NBC News learned that in 2012 alone the bureau filed 212 requests under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the federal government to obtain nearly all domestic communication records from a business and log them for future analysis. The blockbuster revelation that the National Security Agency requested millions of records from Verizon Wireless reflects just a single Section 215 request.




AFP Photo / Getty Images / Spencer Platt

18:43 GMT: Google has asked the Department of Justice for permission to go public with the total number of national security information requests it has received from the federal government.

“Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the US government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue,” Google’s chief legal officer wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller published Tuesday. “However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.”

Earlier this year, Google noted in a transparency report that the government filed between 0 and 999 requests for user data annually since 2009 by using so-called National Security Letters, but declined to publish solid numbers. Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Federal Bureau of Information can seek “the name, address, length of service and local and long distance toll billing records” of a subscriber to an Internet or phone company, such as Google.

17:40 GMT: 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union demanded from Congress to stop unchecked domestic surveillance. In an open letter to lawmakers, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, legal reforms and demand holding accountable public officials responsible for the illegal surveillance.


16:00 GMT: Putin commented on the the NSA surveillance program during a visit to the RT studios.“Such methods are in demand. But you can’t just listen to the phone call in Russia; you need a special order from court. This is how this should be done in civilized society while tackling terrorism with the use of any technical means. If it is in the framework of the law, then it’s okay. If not it is unacceptable,”he said.



Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, during his talk with Russia Today television channel's journalists and correspondents, June 11, 2013. (RT photo / Semyon Khorunzhy)


14:36 GMT: The defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton has confirmed in a statement that Edward Snowden was an employee in their Hawaii team. Snowden worked in the firm “for less than three months,” and was “terminated June 10, 2013 for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy,” the statement added.

Booz Allen has not confirmed or denied if Snowden was behind the leak of the classified information, saying an investigation is now in progress.

The contractor described the new on the leak as “shocking,” and said that, if true, it is “a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values” of the firm.


07:49 GMT: Watch Julian Assange LIVE on RT at 15:00 GMT, as the founder of WikiLeaks discusses one of history’s biggest whistleblowers Edward Snowden, who has revealed the US NSA’s PRISM program.



Julian Assange (AFP Photo / Geoff Caddick)

06:38 GMT: US President Barack Obama is facing a backlash against US surveillance operations. On Monday Congress was divided, with some members calling for the immediate extradition of Edward Snowden from Hong Kong, while others questioned if US tactics have gone too far.

06:13 GMT: There will be more ‘significant information’ exposed in the near future, AP cites The Guardian’s journalist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed classified US surveillance programs leaked by an American defense contractor.

05:57 GMT: Whistleblower Edward Snowden was last seen getting checking out of his hotel in Hong Kong on Monday around noon, Reuters cites witnesses as saying. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

05:20 GMT: A majority of Americans support the US government’s programs that keep track of telephone records to fight terrorism, according to a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. A total of 56 per cent of Americans said it was "acceptable" for the National Security Agency to access the telephone records of millions of Americans through secret court orders, while 41 per cent said it was not.

04:57 GMT: Sales of George Orwell’s ’1984′ novel are up by 177 per cent on Amazon, according to the website. The book celebrated its 60th anniversary on June 6 in the midst of real-world NSA leak and government surveillance stories.



Supporters gather at a small rally in support of National Security Administration (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in Manhattan's Union Square on June 10, 2013 in New York City (Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP)

03:50 GMT US officials maintain that the surveillance program details leaked by Snowden all fall within the legal framework of the Patriot Act and counterterrorism activities. Michael Ratner, a lawyer representing Wikileaks and Julian Assange in the US, disagree.

“The legal part is no point at all, the legal part has to do with laws passed in the US after 9/11, in particular courts that are essentially hand-picked, and a president who is apparently willing to approve this massive surveillance scheme. You can have unjust laws, that’s what we have under surveillance,” Ratner tells RT.

"On the broader issue, does it really prevent anything? Well, I think they’re going to use that as an excuse. In fact terrorism is not the biggest problem in the United States. The uncontrolled use of guns in the United States, many more people -- ten times, a hundred times the number of people are killed by that. I think that terrorism is used as an excuse to be able to surveil and keep tabs on every single American to prevent … progressive government. This is not about our safety, not at all,” he adds.

03:20 GMT: Denver Nicks, an investigative journalist, admitted during an interview with RT that it is a small wonder, considering the number of people granted access to the documents Snowden leaked, that similar disclosures have never been published before. The importance of his leak could potentially influence other NSA employees to publish equally damning documents.

“One wonders if more leaks are coming amid this tremendous crackdown on leaks, where the Obama administration is prosecuting more people for leaking state secrets than all of the previous administrations combined,” he said.

The leak also coincides with the Bradley Manning court-martial, a timing not lost on Nicks or other journalists hoping for increased transparency from the US government.

“I haven’t spoken to Glenn Greenwald or Laura Poitras about this but I would suspect they worked it out to break this story in The Guardian concurrent with Bradley Manning’s court-martial, because it certainly makes a powerful statement,” Nicks said. “I wonder if, in the court of public opinion, people will start to see past this curtain of secrecy and wonder just how much more there is they don’t know.”

01:12 GMT: Russian authorities have promised to join the ranks of those willing to consider giving Snowden political asylum, if he files a formal request – according to the Russian business paper ‘Kommersant’ citing a Kremlin spokesman on Tuesday. “If we receive such a request, we will consider it,”Dmitry Peskov was quoted.



Dmitry Peskov (RIA Novosti / Ilya Pitalev)

00:15 GMT: 68 per cent of respondents to a poll by American firm Rasmussen Reports this week said they believed the government is currently eavesdropping on their communications. The poll, conducted on the heels of President Obama’s claims that PRISM does not target ordinary Americans, shows that a majority think they are in fact being spied on.

“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here,” said Obama.

Meanwhile, a separate poll conducted by Pew indicates that a slight majority of the American public believes that the NSA’s telephone surveillance is an “acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism.” A large plurality disagreed.

Of 1,004 adults polled between June 6 and 9, 56 per cent stated that government monitoring of telephone records is acceptable, while 41 per cent believe it is not. Interestingly, approval of government monitoring of email and online activities is lower, with 45 per cent approving and 52 per cent finding it unacceptable.

More 

http://rt.com/usa/nsa-leak-snowden-live-updates-482/

365. The Boston Bombing, the CIA, and the US Empire | Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Edmonds tells Lew Rockwell what's really happening in Central Asian Caucasus.

Sibel Edmonds website: http://www.classifiedwoman.com/

Caucasus Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus

The Lew Rockwell Show: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwel...

CIA On The Loose to Assassinate Bashar Al Assad

CIA is on the loose again, as if it was ever not on the loose..

A report by Sami Kulaib of Al Mayadeen explains:

CIA is assigned to assassinate Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, after realizing his people do not want to topple him and their fake revolutionaries were exposed and before it's too late for them.

http://www.syrianews.cc/cia-loose-assassinate-bashar-assad/

In Photos: CIA intelligent agents arrested in Tehran

TEHRAN, Jan. 17 (MNA) – Iranian Intelligence Ministry has said that its agents have discovered a group of CIA undercover agents in what the Ministry defined as ‘constant and smart operations.’ Part of the operation has been carried out in France and elsewhere.

Matti Waluk, a CIA operator and executive of a CIA intelligence plan was arrested by security and intelligence agents of Iran along with other members of anti-Iran group.

“In 2008, I registered an employment website, NGR, and signed contracts with European prestigious companies to introduce expert human force to them. In 2009, an individual calling himself Steven Logano, contacted me via Prizma Company Email, purportedly to cooperate,” Mati Waluk accounts.

“In first days, I recognized that his real name was not Steven Logano, and that he is a senior CIA officer, with mission of infiltrating Iranian elite circles and collecting information on Iranian developments in hi-tech industries,” he adds.



Logano, like other members of the group, fell into the Iranian intelligence agents’ trap. In the past, several American had come to Iran for spying, among them were Stephan Richmond, born in 1967, and a US national, and Mark Anthony Vandiar, born in 1958, and a South African national.

These two CIA agents came to Iran under the titles of ‘biotechnology researchers’. They knew that Iran had achieved much in terms of biotechnology developments in more than a decade. They had made friends with science elites in Iran by holding scientific in biotechnology conferences in their own expenses, and transferred their personal information to CIA.

A third CIA agent was Faisal, a Morocco national, with higher education in IT, entered Iran to identify Iranian software and hardware elites, and inform US intelligent centers about that. He purportedly registers a company which was actually an undercover information center for his spies.


Herio Macherosa, with an eastern Asian country passport, was sent to collect critical information on nuclear program under the cover of scientific activity, and deliver them to western intelligence institutes.


A fourth agent was a Malaysian national, Douglas Fernandez, a Christian. To avoid the suspicions, introduces himself as Ali Abdrani. His mission was collecting information on nuclear program and military projects of Iran.



He was well aware that Iran had launched in rapid developments in science, and hence, was sent by CIA for spying. His disciple had made contacts with his targeted individuals on the Internet in Iran and had made appointments inside Iran, to identify and elicit sensitive information from them under commercial cooperation, and even put their names in assassination list of western sources.



The plan was aborted by the Iranian intelligence systemtracking the agents , and thus their mission, who would endanger Iran’s critical structures, had it failed.

SH/EA
MNA
END

http://www.mehrnews.com/en/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=1793535

Good and bad terrorists in Syria

Terrorism is terrorism and it cannot be defined otherwise unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another and the dichotomization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West casts doubt on its claim on democracy.

In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as “absolutely unacceptable” the West’s support for the terrorists in Syria in his exclusive interview with Russia Today.

Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into “bad” and “acceptable,” throwing its support behind the latter.

“It's absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic it might lead us to a very dangerous situation not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists,” the Russian foreign minister said.

The dichotomization of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The delisting of MKO, a long-considered terrorists group, by Washington is in line with this process of redefining well-established concepts and terms by the West.

Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration.

In an enlightening article, Seymour Hersh revealed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members “were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office.”

In a separate interview, a retired four-star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got “the standard training in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry-that went on for six months. They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror.

To the dismay and disappointment of many, US State Department decided in September to remove the MKO from the terror lists.

US State Department said its decision to delist the group was made because the group has notcommitted any terrorist acts for a decade and brashly whitewashed the fact that the group has been to all intents and purposes instrumental in carrying out nuclear assassinations in the last few years in Iran. Although the group has never officially assumed responsibility for the assassinations (which is quite natural), there is solid evidence suggesting that it has been complicit in these terrorist acts.
The terrorist group made unrelenting efforts for years to be removed from the terror list and enlisted a number of Republican and Democratic officials to lobby on its behalf. Instead of paying lobbying fees to them, “it offered honoraria ranging from $10,000-$50,000 per speech to excoriate the US government for its allegedly shabby treatment of the MEK.

Among those who joined the group's gravy train are former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. Many of them profess to have little interest in the money they have collected” (Richard Silverstein, The Guardian September 22, 2012).

MKO has long been engaging in a series of sabotage and terrorist activities against the Islamic Republic in league with Israeli intelligence agencies.

In January 2012, Benny Gantz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, told a parliamentary committee: "For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner."


Just 24 hours after Israeli military chief warned of unnatural events for Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated in broad daylight. It soon transpired that it had been a joint Mossad-MKO operation.
The MKO has reportedly assassinated over 12,000 Iranian citizens, seven American citizens, and tens of thousands of Iraqi nationals.

Anyhow, the dichotomization of ‘terrorists’ into good and bad is far uglier than any form of apartheid.

A comparatively similar story is being repeated in Syria. Washington has branded the Qatar-funded Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. But why? They are fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad together with other militants in Syria who are chiefly composed of foreign mercenaries. The former are considered terrorists simply because they to a large extent fly in the face of Washington’s policies in Syria. So, it is Washington or the US-led West which decides who is a terrorist and who is not.

Let us not forget that the notorious al Qaeda which is sowing seeds of blind extremism and religious sectarianism in the world was founded and financially supported in the seventies by Washington and CIA in an apparent bid to fight the Soviets. Robin Cook laments the creation of al Qaeda and says, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organization would turn its attention to the west.”

This CIA-created Frankenstein's monster has not changed for the better but has grown up monstrously.

Truly known to be one of the most misinterpreted and misused words, terrorism is defined and refined by the West according to the context where it proves deleterious or beneficial to those who define the term.

IS/PKH

Dr. Ismail Salami is an internationally published author of several books and hundreds of articles. In his articles, Salami examines the historical developments that impact national relations today, and the way western people view Iran. He holds a PhD in Shakespeare Studies and is the author of Iran, Cradle of Civilization. His writings have been translated into dozens of languages. More Press TV articles by Ismail Salami

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/25/280088/good-and-bad-terrorists-in-syria/

Hunger Games "Experiment" Said Behind Connecticut Massacre (CIA, DARPA)

An new report prepared by the Federal Security Services (FSB) circulating in the Kremlin today on the horrific Connecticut Massacre is suggesting that these deaths may have been associated with the production of a video game based on the popular book Hunger Games which is about a post-apocalyptic United States where the killing of children is glorified as entertainment for the privileged elite classes.

According to this report, and as we had previously reported on in our report Connecticut Massacre Blamed On Son Of Top CIA Analyst, Nancy Champion Lanza[photo 2nd left], believed to be one of the Central Intelligence Agencies (CIA) top psychological analysts working on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) video game production, is said by Russian intelligence analysts to have been a “close working partner” with Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins who washer neighbor in the affluent Connecticut village of Newton where they both resided.

Though being described in the US mainstream propaganda media as a mysterious “doomsday prepper” and “gun enthusiast” who, without a job, lived in a $1.6 million mansion, this report continues, Nancy Champion Lanza demonstrates all of the characteristics and lifestyle the CIA creates for those of its top agent-analysts who work in the netherworld between American intelligence agencies, their nations corporations and their countries schools whose students have long been subjected to mass experimentation.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of the American people is the CIA’s long history of unethical experimentation on children, and other citizens, without their knowledge, a fact known since 1977 when through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request over 16,000 pages of mind control documents were found as part of that intelligence agencies financial history.

And it hasn’t stopped since, for example, between1988-2008 the number of overseas experiments on children for drugs paid for by US intelligence agencies, intended for American consumption, increased by 2,000%, to approximately 6,500 trials. These trials are often conducted in areas with large numbers of poor and illiterate people who grant their consent by signing an “X” or making a thumb print on a form. In May 2004, also, a young American man named Dan Markingson committed suicide in one such controversial study conducted by the University of Minnesota Department of Psychiatry of atypical antipsychotics.

Even worse, this report continues, was the CIA accelerating its funding of violent video game development after the results of a ground-breaking 2001 study titled Effects Of Violent Video Games On Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, And Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature conducted by Iowa State University researchers Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman revealed that:

“Research on exposure to television and movie violence suggests that playing violent video games will increase aggressive behavior. A metaanalytic review of the video-game research literature reveals that violent video games increase aggressive behavior in children and young adults. Experimental and non-experimental studies with males and females in laboratory and field settings support this conclusion. Analyses also reveal that exposure to violent video games increases physiological arousal and aggression-related thoughts and feelings. Playing violent video games also decreases prosocial behavior.”

In the new CIA financed Hunger Games video game being developed, FSB analysts speculate in this report, Nancy Champion Lanza could very well have had DARPA authorization to pay schools, such as Sandy Hook Elementary, to conduct experiments on young children such as DARPA’s “hackerspaces” project involving high school students, but which Mitch Altman, a co-founder of Noisebridge, noted to the New York Times, “Having these [DARPA] programs in schools is fantastic, but the military calling the shots in American education? I don’t see that as a positive move.”

Important to note, and as we noted in our previous report on this massacre, the FSB received an extensive file on CIA and DARPA video game projects from Iranian intelligence officials after the August, 2011 arrest of CIA agent Amir Mirza Hekmati.

In a video confession to Iranian intelligence officials, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former US Marine of Iranian descent, confessed to a career in American intelligence that included a stint at a video game company in New York that he said was “a cover for the CIA.”

According to an English translation of the report published by The Tehran Times, an Iranian state-run newspaper, about one-third of the way through the report, Hekmati said he had worked for DARPA, after he left the Marine Corps in 2005.

Then, Hekmati said in Persian: “After DARPA I was recruited by Kuma Games Company, a computer games company which received money from CIA to design and make special films and computer games to change the public opinion’s mindset in the Middle East and distribute them among Middle East residents free of charge. The goal of Kuma Games was to convince the people of the world and Iraq that what the U.S. does in Iraq and other countries is good and acceptable.”

Hekmati further added: “The head of Kuma called me and said, ‘I have received your resume from DARPA, and we have a program in which you can help us.’ ” Kuma, Hekmati explained, “was also a cover for the CIA. and only the chief of company knows that you’re working with the agency.”

Most ominous to note in this report is its conclusions, that as many in America are using this massacre to outlaw guns, the “real” threat facing these peoples are the generations of children being given powerful psychotropic drugs, so they’ll be quiet in class, that when combined with the violence their parents and society surround them with through violent video games, television and movies, is making monsters of them all.

December 17, 2012 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report “Who Is Sorcha Faal?”.]

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