Armed fed raid prompted by safety rules

Armed fed raid prompted by safety rules

Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass

 

Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass

April 16, 2014

Exclusive: As the post-coup regime in Ukraine sends troops and paramilitaries to crack down on ethnic Russian protesters in the east, the U.S. news media continues to feed the American public a steady dose of anti-Russian propaganda, often wrapped in accusations of “Russian propaganda,” Robert Parry reports.

By Robert Parry

The acting president of the coup regime in Kiev announces that he is ordering an “anti-terrorist” operation against pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine, while his national security chief says he has dispatched right-wing ultranationalist fighters who spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

On Tuesday, Andriy Parubiy, head of the Ukrainian National Security Council, went on Twitter to declare, “Reserve unit of National Guard formed #Maidan Self-defense volunteers was sent to the front line this morning.” Parubiy was referring to the neo-Nazi militias that provided the organized muscle that overthrew Yanukovych, forcing him to flee for his life. Some of these militias have since been incorporated into security forces as “National Guard.”

Ukrainian Secretary for National Security Andriy Parubiy.

Parubiy himself is a well-known neo-Nazi, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991. The party blended radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy also formed a paramilitary spinoff, the Patriots of Ukraine, and defended the awarding of the title, “Hero of Ukraine,” to World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose own paramilitary forces exterminated thousands of Jews and Poles in pursuit of a racially pure Ukraine.

During the months of protests aimed at overthrowing Yanukovych, Parubiy became the commandant of “Euromaidan,” the name for the Kiev uprising, and – after the Feb. 22 coup – Parubiy was one of four far-right Ukrainian nationalists given control of a ministry, i.e. national security.

But the U.S. press has played down his role because his neo-Nazism conflicts with Official Washington’s narrative that the neo-Nazis played little or no role in the “revolution.” References to neo-Nazis in the “interim government” are dismissed as “Russian propaganda.”

Yet there Parubiy was on Tuesday bragging that some of his neo-Nazi storm troopers – renamed “National Guard” – were now being sicced on rebellious eastern Ukraine as part of the Kiev government’s “anti-terrorist” operation.

The post-coup President Oleksandr Turchynov also warned that Ukraine was confronting a “colossal danger,” but he insisted that the suppression of the pro-Russian protesters would be treated as an “anti-terrorist” operation and not as a “civil war.” Everyone should understand by now that “anti-terror” suggests extrajudicial killings, torture and “counter-terror.”

Yet, with much of the Ukrainian military of dubious loyalty to the coup regime, the dispatch of the neo-Nazi militias from western Ukraine’s Right Sektor and Svoboda parties represents a significant development. Not only do the Ukrainian neo-Nazis consider the ethnic Russians an alien presence, but these right-wing militias are organized to wage street fighting as they did in the February uprising.

Historically, right-wing paramilitaries have played crucial roles in “counter-terror” campaigns around the world. In Central America in the 1980s, for instance, right-wing “death squads” did much of the dirty work for U.S.-backed military regimes as they crushed social protests and guerrilla movements.

The merging of the concept of “anti-terrorism” with right-wing paramilitaries represents a potentially frightening development for the people of eastern Ukraine. And much of this information – about Turchynov’s comments and Parubiy’s tweet – can be found in a New York Times’ dispatch from Ukraine.

Whose Propaganda?

However, on the Times’ front page on Wednesday was a bizarre story by David M. Herszenhorn accusing the Russian government of engaging in a propaganda war by making many of the same points that you could find – albeit without the useful context about Parubiy’s neo-Nazibackground – in the same newspaper.

In the article entitled “Russia Is Quick To Bend Truth About Ukraine,” Herszenhorn mocked Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev for making a Facebook posting that “was bleak and full of dread,” including noting that “blood has been spilled in Ukraine again” and adding that “the threat of civil war looms.”

The Times article continued, “He [Medvedev] pleaded with Ukrainians to decide their own future ‘without usurpers, nationalists and bandits, without tanks or armored vehicles – and without secret visits by the C.I.A. director.’ And so began another day of bluster and hyperbole, of the misinformation, exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and, occasionally, outright lies about the political crisis in Ukraine that have emanated from the highest echelons of the Kremlin and reverberated on state-controlled Russian television, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.”

This argumentative “news” story spilled from the front page to the top half of an inside page, but Herszenhorn never managed to mention that there was nothing false in what Medvedev said. Indeed, it was the much-maligned Russian press that first reported the secret visit of CIA Director John Brennan to Kiev.

Though the White House has since confirmed that report, Herszenhorn cites Medvedev’s reference to it in the context of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.” Nowhere in the long article does the Times inform its readers that, yes, the CIA director did make a secret visit to Ukraine last weekend. Presumably, that reality has now disappeared into the great memory hole along with the on-ground reporting from Feb. 22 about the key role of the neo-Nazi militias.

The neo-Nazis themselves have pretty much disappeared from Official Washington’s narrative, which now usually recounts the coup as simply a case of months of protests followed by Yanukovych’s decision to flee. Only occasionally, often buried deep in news articles with the context removed, can you find admissions of how the neo-Nazis spearheaded the coup.

A Wounded Extremist

For instance, on April 6, the New York Times published a human-interest profile of a Ukrainian named Yuri Marchuk who was wounded in clashes around Kiev’s Maidan square in February. You have to read far into the story to learn that Marchuk was a Svoboda leader from Lviv, which – if you did your own research – you would discover is a neo-Nazi stronghold where Ukrainian nationalists hold torch-light parades in honor of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Without providing that context, the Times does mention that Lviv militants plundered a government weapons depot and dispatched 600 militants a day to do battle in Kiev. Marchuk also described how these well-organized militants, consisting of paramilitary brigades of 100 fighters each, launched the fateful attack against the police on Feb. 20, the battle where Marchuk was wounded and where the death toll suddenly spiked into scores of protesters and about a dozen police.

Marchuk later said he visited his comrades at the occupied City Hall. What the Times doesn’t mention is that City Hall was festooned with Nazi banners and even a Confederate battle flag as a tribute to white supremacy.

The Times touched on the inconvenient truth of the neo-Nazis again on April 12 in an articleabout the mysterious death of neo-Nazi leader Oleksandr Muzychko, who was killed during a shootout with police on March 24. The article quoted a local Right Sektor leader, Roman Koval, explaining the crucial role of his organization in carrying out the anti-Yanukovych coup.

“Ukraine’s February revolution, said Mr. Koval, would never have happened without Right Sector and other militant groups,” the Times wrote. Yet, that reality – though actually reported in the New York Times – has now become “Russian propaganda,” according to the New York Times.

This upside-down American narrative also ignores the well-documented interference of prominent U.S. officials in stirring up the protesters in Kiev, which is located in the western part of Ukraine and is thus more anti-Russian than eastern Ukraine where many ethnic Russians live and where Yanukovych had his political base.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland was a cheerleader for the uprising, reminding Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” discussing who should replace Yanukovych (her choice, Arseniy Yatsenyuk became the new prime minister), and literally passing out cookies to the protesters in the Maidan. (Nuland is married to neoconservative superstar Robert Kagan, a founder of the Project for the New American Century.)

During the protests, neocon Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, took the stage with leaders of Svoboda – surrounded by banners honoring Stepan Bandera – and urged on the protesters. Even before the demonstrations began, prominent neocon Carl Gershman, president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, had dubbed Ukraine “the biggest prize.” [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What’s the Matter with John Kerry?”]

Indeed, in my four-plus decades in journalism, I have never seen a more thoroughly biased and misleading performance by the major U.S. news media. Even during the days of Ronald Reagan – when much of the government’s modern propaganda structure was created – there was more independence in major news outlets. There were media stampedes off the reality cliff during George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War and George W. Bush’s Iraq War, both of which were marked by demonstrably false claims that were readily swallowed by the big U.S. news outlets.

But there is something utterly Orwellian in the current coverage of the Ukraine crisis, including accusing others of “propaganda” when their accounts – though surely not perfect – are much more honest and more accurate than what the U.S. press corps has been producing.

There’s also the added risk that this latest failure by the U.S. press corps is occurring on the border of Russia, a nuclear-armed state that – along with the United States – could exterminate all life on the planet. The biased U.S. news coverage is now feeding into political demands to send U.S. military aid to Ukraine’s coup regime.

The casualness of this propaganda – as it spreads across the U.S. media spectrum from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times – is not just wretched journalism but it is reckless malfeasance jeopardizing the lives of many Ukrainians and the future of the planet.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Effective Immediately: France Bans All GMO Cultivation

 

"I do not want"

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post
The French National Assembly has made a sweeping declaration with a new bill, effective immediately. No more genetically modified crops.
On Tuesday, the French lower house of parliament adopted a law immediately banning cultivation of any GMO corn, due to environmental safety concerns.
Recently, they also made a halt decree to prohibit planting the only GM crop allowed in the EU - Monsanto's MON810 corn, with built-in insect resistance.
Jean-Marie Le Guen, the minister in charge of relations with parliament, said:

It is essential today to renew a widely shared desire to maintain the French ban. This bill strengthens the decree passed last March by preventing the immediate cultivation of GMO and extending their reach to all transgenic maize varieties.

Farmers and seed companies are challenging the rule, as they have blocked similar decrees before, viewing safety concerns insufficient. But Le Guen bound the rule so that member state decisions could not be litigated against.
The ban heads back to the Senate for final approval - if rejected, the French National Assembly gets to cast the final ruling. Future strains will be banned even if the EU states approve more.
Of course big biotech companies are not satisfied to let bans rest. If companies like Monsanto have any say, they'll be back. The EU actually wants to give them that final say.
Additionally, DuPont and Dow Chemical are poised to crash the EU again, if allowed. They already jointly developed Pioneer 1507 GM corn and most of the member states did not gather enough votes to block it.
It appears these companies have money, power and persistence on their side to keep pushing despite wide-spread consumer and safety concerns.
Sources:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/us-france-gmo-idUSBREA3E1NY20140415
http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/16/french-parliament-bans-gmo-corn/
Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.
Recent posts by Heather Callaghan:

• Vermont Senate Overwhelmingly Votes for GMO Labeling
• 7.6 Mag. Quake in Solomon Islands; Tsunami Warnings Issued
• 'Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act' Is Anything But

Effective Immediately: France Bans All GMO Cultivation
Activist
Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:17:00 GMT

Industry’s Own Words: 6 Admissions Of In-Home Surveillance Using Smart Meters

 

Josh del Sol
Activist Post
A look at what utility companies, PUCs, and the former CIA director have to say about the ‘smart’ meters, data-mining, and surveillance — sans propaganda.
It’s always a drag to find out when a friend is saying one thing to your face, and another to your back. As uncovered in our film Take Back Your Power, the way in which most utilities are now delivering the lies and propaganda — with your individual rights, security, and potentially health on the line — is elevating the trait of “two-faced” to a completely new level.
It’s important to note that the first 4 of these references have to do with the smart meters / grid infrastructure capabilities as of this time. According to the sum of my research over the past 3 years, the plan involves achieving a greater and greater level of granularity and extraction of in-home data over time — see #5 and #6 below as examples (as well as my article on Google’s Nest acquisition). So as far as privacy and surveillance go, according to utilities’ own documentation and writings, ‘smart’ meters are effectively a trojan horse.
1) US Congressional Research Service report, "Smart Meter Data: Privacy and Cybersecurity" (February 2012)

With smart meters, police will have access to data that might be used to track residents’ daily lives and routines while in their homes, including their eating, sleeping, and showering habits, what appliances they use and when, and whether they prefer the television to the treadmill, among a host of other details.

Source: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42338.pdf – see page 7 (page 10 of the PDF)

2) Colorado Power Utility Commission report, "Smart Metering & Privacy: Existing Law and Competing Policies" (Spring 2009)

First, the privacy concerns are real, and should be addressed proactively in order to protect consumers. Second and related, a salient privacy invasion—were it to happen and get press—could create significant opposition to smart grid deployment efforts.

Source: http://www.dora.state.co.us/puc/DocketsDecisions/DocketFilings/09I-593EG/09I-593EG_Spring2009Report-SmartGridPrivacy.pdf – see page 6

3) California Public Utility Commission press release, "California Commission Adopts Rules to Protect the Privacy and Security of Customer Electricity Usage Data" (July 2011)

Our action today will protect the privacy and security of customer usage data while enablingutilities and authorized third-parties to use the information to provide useful energy management and conservation services to customers.

I support today’s decision because it adopts reasonable privacy and security rules and expandsconsumer and third-party access to electricity usage and pricing information. I hope this decision stimulates market interest.

Source:http://smartenergyportal.net/article/california-commission-adopts-rules-protect-privacy-and-security-customer-electricity-usage-d

4) SF Chronicle article, "California Utilities Yield Energy Use Data" (July 2013)

California’s electric utilities last year disclosed the energy-use records and other personal information of thousands of customers, according to reports the companies filed with state regulators.

The vast majority of those disclosures – 4,062 – were made by one utility, San Diego Gas and Electric Co. In 4,000 of those cases, the information was subpoenaed by government agencies.

New digital smart meters being installed throughout the state can measure a home’s energy use hour by hour, showing when residents leave for work, go to sleep or travel on vacation. Older analog meters, which measured cumulative energy use over the course of a month, couldn’t do that.

“Before smart meters, what happened inside houses couldn’t be revealed unless there was a police officer inside with a warrant,” Ozer said.

Source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Calif-utilities-yield-energy-use-data-4611159.php

5) Raab & Associates, Steering Committee report (February 2013) – Under the heading “Strategic (3-10 years)”:

New tools for mining data for intel

Under the heading “Transformational (10+ years)”:

Centralized intel combined with widespread local/distributed intel

and

Data mining and analytics becomes core competency

Source: http://magrid.raabassociates.org/articles/raab%20subcommittee%20update%20draft.ppt

View slide 17 only (PDF): http://www.takebackyourpower.net/documents/RaabDraft-17.pdf

6) Wired.com, "CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher" (15 Mar 2012)

‘Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,’ Petraeus said, ‘the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.

“Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices “change our notions of secrecy” and prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.” All of which is true — if convenient for a CIA director.”

Source: http://www.wired.com/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/

* * *
Did we really think that the technocratic oligarchy would stop at collecting information about how we use our phones, who we call, and where we’re located? If we did, we were naive. Plainly, there is a corporate intention to effectively colonize your home.
However, there is also a rising awareness, and resistance, as new solutions are uncovered. The first step is to remove your consent, in writing.
The following is actually written into the California Civil Code. Not only do these provide a strong clue at how the corporatocracy functions (and gets away with what it does), but they also outline a basis for remedy: (notes in parentheses, italics)

California Civil Code (2009)

1619. A contract is either express or implied. (If you didn’t say no, you said yes.)

3515. He who consents to an act is not wronged by it. (The way they do business is in writing. If you didn’t send them a letter or notice to remove your consent, you have agreed to their terms, and thus have agreed to a reduction in rights.)

3521. He who takes the benefit must bear the burden. (Utilities and their executives – and many public servants – are taking the benefit. They must, according to their law, accept the liability for all harm if the liability is enforced.)

3523. For every wrong there is a remedy. (We are not bound into something which would have us be as slaves, if we do not want to be.)

3527. The law helps the vigilant, before those who sleep on their rights.

What statutes are YOUR utilities and governments bound by?
Stay tuned, watch and share Take Back Your Power, and subscribe your email on our website to be informed of important developments and solutions.
Related articles by Josh del Sol:

• Exposed: Google’s “Smart Home” Surveillance Plans, or, How To Not Be Colonized
• The Real Consequences of Corporatism, “Smart” Grid and Corrupt Government
• Power Takeover: Are smart meters part of the largest corporate scam in history?

Josh del Sol is the director and producer of Take Back Your Power, a revelatory documentary feature film uncovering the worldwide ‘smart’ metering and grid agenda. Watch the film and subscribe to updates at www.takebackyourpower.net, and follow him via twitter @TBYPfilm.

Industry’s Own Words: 6 Admissions Of In-Home Surveillance Using Smart Meters
Activist
Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:35:00 GMT

Report: Research Facility “Loses” Thousands of Tubes Containing Deadly Virus

 

Mac Slavo
Activist Post
A French research institute working on various deadly viruses, including SARS, has apparently misplaced thousands of tubes and no one is quite sure where they went.

A routine inventory check at Paris’ Pasteur Institute revealed that 2,349 tubes containing fragments of the virus responsible for the deaths of 774 people in 2002 were missing, the centre named after French chemist Louis Pasteur said.

[…]

It is not clear how the tubes disappeared from one of the institute’s safest laboratories. Management were made aware of the loss in January, Le Monde newspaper reported.

For weeks, staff at the institute tried to find the missing vials, general director Christian Bréchot said.

“We’ve looked for those boxes [containing the tubes] everywhere,” Bréchot explained.

“We went thought the lists of all the people who have worked here in the past year and a half, including trainees. We have scrutinised their profile to check if there was any conflict.”

Bréchot said that foul play was “highly improbable” but had not been ruled out.

Though it’s not clear how, investigators have pretty much ruled out foul play. But keep in mind that we’re talking about a deadly virus that has been removed from what should be a highly secured area. Moreover, no one seems to know when the virus was actually taken.
According to the Pasteur Institute, however, there is no immediate danger because the virus in the vials won’t spread the disease:

The institute was quick to reassure the public and said that the contents of the missing vials had no infectious potential. They contained only part of the virus and had no ability to spread.

“Independent experts referred by health authorities have qualified such potential as ‘non-existing’ according to the available evidence and literature on the survival of the Sars virus,” the institute said.

When dealing with deadly viruses, it is always a good idea to secure your facility, which makes this particular disappearance alarming.

Although the fragments are not dangerous, they do raise concerns by revealing the lab’s vulnerability, said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

“It’s actually not in itself so scary but you wonder about the procedures in that laboratory,” said Schaffner, who is also a former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “Could that lab and perhaps others actually misplace vials that have the complete virus so that it might escape?”

For all we know, the vials disappeared months ago, which brings up the possibility that other infectious disease tubes may have also disappeared.
Apparently, security at these high-level research facilities is not up to par. Last year a vial of Guanarito bio-terror agent capable of being used in a “contagion attack” disappeared from a Galveston, TX facility. The incident was voluntarily disclosed to the public but the lost tube has yet to be located.
What’s scary is that, even though such events must be reported to the CDC by law, the public really has no way of knowing whether a deadly agent has been compromised, giving ample time for such a virus to spread should it be released as a weapon.
Moreover, we now have government facilities being built in and around population centers such as the Bio Safety Level 4 facility centrally located in Kansas.
In the wrong hands, one of these agents could easily be used to attack an entire population – and given the “security” of these facilities it may not be so hard to acquire one. And once they have it, it’s as simple as releasing it in a major airport, sitting back, and watching the infection spread and kill off thousands, or perhaps millions of people.
You can read more from Mac Slavo at his site SHTFplan.com where this first appeared.

Report: Research Facility “Loses” Thousands of Tubes Containing Deadly Virus
Activist
Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:47:00 GMT

Owens Valley mobilizes against proposed DWP solar project - latimes.com

Owens Valley mobilizes against proposed DWP solar project - latimes.com

Rand Paul Questions Number Of Armed Federal Agents, Criticizes Government Treatment Of Rancher - Personal Liberty : Personal Liberty

Rand Paul Questions Number Of Armed Federal Agents, Criticizes Government Treatment Of Rancher - Personal Liberty : Personal Liberty

Ron Paul: IRS Targeting Campaign For Liberty Donors

THANK GOD HE IS FORMER JUSTICE!! YET ANOTHER TRAITOR!! Former Justice Stevens Wants the Second Amendment Edited

 

Kurt Nimmo | Gut the Second Amendment and turn the individual's natural right to self defense into a crime.

Former Justice Stevens Wants the Second Amendment Edited
kurtnimmoadmin
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:22:42 GMT

Retired associate Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens has an op-ed in The Washington Post today calling for the Second Amendment to be edited thus:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.

According to Stevens, the “national tragedy” of the shootings at Newtown and the Navy Yard in Washington make it necessary to gut the Second Amendment and turn the individual’s natural right to self defense into a crime.

Stevens insists Second Amendment advocates are emotional and distort “intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands. Those emotional arguments would be nullified by the adoption of my proposed amendment.”

Also nullified would be the right to own firearms. If adopted, which is admittedly unlikely, government would quickly enact a raft of laws spelling out confiscation. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s edictthat Mr. and Mrs. America “turn ‘em all in” or face prosecution would become a reality and, in a worse case scenario, those refusing to obey the government would be hunted down and executed.

Liberals like Mr. Stevens want a throughly disarmed public. It is the liberal’s emotional and irrational response to the destructive behavior of a few psychotic individuals that threatens the natural right of self-defense.

If Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had not outlawed private ownership of firearms, the imposition of authoritarianism in those countries would have been virtually impossible, as would have been the genocide of tens of millions of Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Maya Indians, Christians, and all sorts of government designated political enemies and rivals.

Stevens and the Second Amendment haters would enable government to do what it invariably does when given absolute and unchallenged power – violently eliminate all political enemies.

As the sociologist Max Weber pointed out nearly a hundred years ago – before the unprecedented mass murders by government that would be the shameful hallmark of the 20th century – the state invariably claims a monopoly on the use of physical force and violence. It will unhesitatingly use that monopoly against all threats, no matter how trivial or ineffectual, to its absolute control.

This article was posted: Friday, April 11, 2014 at 2:22 pm

US Corn Exports to China Drop 85 Percent After Ban on GMO Strains – Industry Report

RT | US traders have lost $427 million in sales.

US Corn Exports to China Drop 85 Percent After Ban on GMO Strains – Industry Report
Adan
Sat, 12 Apr 2014 20:42:15 GMT

LiveJournal Tags: GMO,Global agenda,Economy,Conspiracy,Genetically Modified