Bogus War on Terror Watch, al-CIA-duh Watch

Surprise!

In about-face, Pentagon says U.S.-trained Syrians gave trucks, weapons to al Qaida

No one could have predicted that!


And our allies in Afghanistan are filled with despicable homosexual pedophiles.

U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies

No wonder they are all so fucked up over there.

Ugghhhh!


Then the new threat-- Thousands Enter Syria to Join ISIS Despite Global Efforts

As "terroristy" as ISIS may be, they are really more of a jihadist army interested in forming a true Islamic caliphate state, than a true terror group. Which doesn't mean that they don't have CIA influence of course. Or that the war against them isn't bogus. This article ends with a nice 33:

Still, France finds itself reeling. Its Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, told the French Parliament this month that 1,800 French citizens and residents are believed to be enlisted in jihadist networks worldwide. Among them close to 500 are still in Syria and Iraq, and 133 have died in combat.

Mind-Control and Brainwashing-- a CIA Ruse?

Many purveyors of the conspiracy world are very familiar with reports of the CIA trying to brainwash people and control their minds through drugs and advanced psychological techniques. This is typically referred to as the MK-ULTRA program and the Monarch program.

Most famously, the Robert F Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan was said to be under the control of CIA mind control-- a sleeper agent set to go off after given a specific signal. Kathy O'Brien popularized MK-ULTRA with her books and story, although there is very little if any independent evidence to back up her claims. Recently, there have been vast numbers of pop stars who are said to be under CIA mind control, and who spread mind control memes or Satanic messages in their songs.

However, there is a different side to this story that I only recently learned about, which is actually the origins of the mind control meme.

It started with the Korean War, and rumors of what the Chinese did, and allegations by some American prisoners of war, that occurred after they were captured.

The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known English-language usage of brainwashing in an article by newspaperman Edward Hunter, in Miami News, published on 7 October 1950. Hunter, an outspoken anticommunist and said to be a CIA agent working undercover as a journalist, wrote a series of books and articles on the theme of Chinese brainwashing, and the word brainwashing quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines.[4][5] 

The Chinese term 洗腦 (xǐ năo, literally "wash brain")[6] was originally used to describe methodologies of coercive persuasion used under the Maoist government in China, which aimed to transform individuals with a reactionary imperialist mindset into "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system.[7] The term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart/mind" (洗心, xǐ xīn) before conducting certain ceremonies or entering certain holy places.[8] 

Hunter and those who picked up the Chinese term used it to explain why, during the Korean War (1950-1953), some American prisoners of war cooperated with their Chinese captors, even in a few cases defecting to the enemy side.[9] British radio operator Robert W. Ford[10][11] and British army Colonel James Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their war-era imprisonment.[12] 

The U.S. military and government laid charges of "brainwashing" in an effort to undermine detailed confessions made by military personnel to war crimes, including biological warfare.[13] After Chinese radio broadcasts claimed to quote Frank Schwable, Chief of Staff of the First Marine Air Wing admitting to participating in germ warfare, United Nations commander Gen. Mark W. Clark asserted: "Whether these statements ever passed the lips of these unfortunate men is doubtful. If they did, however, too familiar are the mind-annihilating methods of these Communists in extorting whatever words they want .... The men themselves are not to blame, and they have my deepest sympathy for having been used in this abominable way."[14]

So basically, the US military, likely with the aid of the CIA, invoked the use of mind control and brainwashing to undermine claims by the POWs that the US conducted horrific war crimes such as biological warfare in Korea during the war.

It turns out, there is reasonable evidence that the US did use biological weapons and does anyone seriously put it past the US?

This would mean that the whole mind control idea is a hoax put out to cover up horrible war crimes by the US in Korea. This is further supported by the fact that several people, including people from the CIA, have come out and said that mind control doesn't work and doesn't exist in a viable form. This would mean all the popular stories of mind control are bullshit, and that Sirhan Sirhan, for instance was not a government agent.

Of course, it is an attractive idea that mind control exists, and such technology does seem feasible, given our advanced state of science and known techniques such as hypnosis. So what is the truth?

But it's an interesting dichotomy:

On the one hand, we have mind control really existing, which would imply that the North Koreans and Chinese were able to make American POWs make false allegations, meaning the US did not commit war crimes. At the same time, this means that RFK could have been killed by a mind-controlled CIA patsy, and that popular culture stars are spreading hidden messages to us, to help control us.

On the other hand, we have mind control being a hoax, which implies that the US committed major war crimes in Korea, but that other implications of mind control are false.

Which one is worse?

I know people are probably used to allegations of war crimes, and killing people in war by terrible means is not so shocking as it should be, but it is freaking evil. Controlling people to assassinate our leaders and also to control our actions has a much greater creepy factor, but it doesn't mean it is true.

Of course, it could be that the Chinese and Koreans really weren't able to brainwash our soldiers, and that the allegations of war crimes are true, AND that the US was able to perfect mind control and used it for controlling assassins and for other nefarious deeds. I wouldn't be surprised. Still, it's interesting how calling one CIA program a hoax can cut both ways, to both help and hurt the US.

God Versus Aliens

George Carlin once said the evidence for aliens/extra-terrestrials was stronger than the evidence for god. I think this is true.

This is the problem with god, in a nutshell:

So, my thinking is, there are many very weird things in this world and in history that just cannot be explained by natural events, i.e. the standard scientific view of reality and our planet and life here.  Many people think these supernatural events can be explained by "god". Logically however, god makes no sense as an all-powerful deity that can perform magical deeds in response to humans.

What does make more sense for the origin of these super-natural events, appearances and actions is extra-terrestrials.

Given the vast number of stars in the universe capable of supporting life, it is a foregone conclusion that advanced life has developed elsewhere, probably many times over. Thus, it would be no surprise if they came here, for various reasons we both can and cannot imagine.

Abduction

For whatever reason, it seems like a relatively small percentage of people want to consider UFOs/aliens as a real possibility, and even fewer want to consider alien abduction as a real possibility. Nonetheless, there are some very striking and well-documented cases of alien abduction that are some of the best evidence for ET visitation of the earth. 

These are some of the strongest and strangest cases:

Betty and Barney Hill

Travis Walton

Brooklyn Bridhge UFO incident

The Mojave Incident

Corporations Are Evil Too, My Friend

Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago ...
Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions. 

Destroying the environment for fun and profit. It just doesn't get any more sick than this.

Trump Takes Into Consideration and Doesn't Condemn a Call to Remove Muslims from the US

Sure, it's not as bad as killing children in wars (see post below) or many other things posted here, but this is incredibly despicable and disturbing:

For several months, Donald Trump has campaigned for president by largely ignoring traditional notions of decency. Thursday night, however, things reached a new low.

At a Trump campaign rally in Rochester, New Hampshire a man in a “Trump” shirt took the microphone and said, “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.”

“We know our current President is one,” he added. “You know he’s not even an American.”

“We need this question,” Trump replied, smiling.

Then things turned even darker, as the man discussed his beliefs that Muslims were in training camps plotting to kill. “That’s my question. When can we get rid of ‘em?” the man said.

Trump was unfazed at the casual suggestion of cultural genocide. “We are going to be looking at a lot of different things. A lot of people saying that,” Trump said.

Notably, Trump did not correct or object to the man’s false characterization of Obama as a Muslim. Trump also did not dispute the man’s contention that Obama was not an American. Trump has been one of the most prominent “birthers,” insisting that Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii was faked.

"Where Is the Outcry Over Children Killed by U.S.-Led Forces?"

I couldn't agree more with this:

By John Horgan | September 10, 2015 

(snip)

For years, I’ve tried to get more people—and especially Americans, citizens of the most militaristic nation on Earth--to agree with me that war that must be abolished.

One simple--some would say simplistic--argument I’ve tried is this: war is wrong because killing children is wrong, and children are inevitably killed in wars.

If I believed in moral absolutes, not killing kids would be a leading candidate.

(snip)

Since 9/11, U.S.-led forces have killed—directly, not indirectly--more than a thousand children in Syria and other war zones around the world. To my mind, each one of these victims should provoke universal horror, pity and condemnation.

Various nonprofit watchdog groups try to keep count of children killed by U.S. and allied forces by tracking media, government and non-governmental-organization (NGO) reports. According to Iraq Body Count, between 2003 and 2011, U.S. coalition forces killed at least 1,201 children in Iraq alone. Airwars.org estimates that more recent attacks by U.S.-allied forces against Islamic forces in Iraq and Syria have killed between 536 and 1,550 civilians, including an unknown number of children. According to a recent United Nations report, U.S. and allied forces killed 24 children in Afghanistan in 2014. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade have killed between 172 and 207 children. (snip)

Crawford adds that “the harm to children in war is also indirect--morbidity and mortality due to the destruction of infrastructure which impairs delivery of medical care, makes drinking water unsafe, and makes food scarce.”

Unfortunately, many people react to the killing of children with a shrug or a cheer. Americans flocked to American Sniper, which lionizes a soldier who, in the opening scene, shoots an Iraqi boy and his mother.

When I object to the U.S. military killing children, I often hear three counter-arguments.

Here they are, with my responses:

Argument 1: Children are often killers themselves, whom our troops kill in self-defense. This is the view advanced implicitly in American Sniper. The sniper, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, shoots a boy who is threatening U.S. soldiers with a bomb. The phenomenon of child warriors is all too real. According to the United Nations, “hundreds of thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world.” But child soldiers are victims, who should if possible be rescued and rehabilitated, not killed. Moreover, the vast majority of children killed by U.S. forces are not suspected combatants. They are “collateral damage” resulting from U.S. attacks on adult targets.

Argument 2. Our enemies kill children too. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Boko Haram and other militant groups have indeed committed atrocities against children, according the United Nations. But we abhor these groups, supposedly, because we find their brutal treatment of civilians (among other acts) inexcusable. Their behavior cannot excuse ours. Moreover, when we commit atrocities, we provide ISIS and other groups with a provocation and justification for their behavior. We should set a moral example for militant groups, not stoop to their behavior.

Argument 3. We don’t kill children on purpose. When presented with irrefutable evidence that its forces have killed children or other civilians, the U.S. occasionally apologizes (see below), while insisting that the deaths were unintentional. But when our forces kill children over and over again, claims that the killings are unintentional become hollow, a cynical evasion of responsibility. We would be outraged if American police, in attacks on suspected criminals, routinely killed children who happened to be nearby. We should be equally outraged when U.S. troops kill children in their operations. Last November, for example, an air strike by the U.S.-led alliance aimed at a suspected “explosives-making and storage facility” in Syria “likely caused the deaths of two civilian children,” the Pentagon has acknowledged. One was a five year old girl, Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour, who poses with her father, Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddoura, a suspected militant, in the photo above. Airwar.org has posted a video of Daniya and the other child killed in the attack here. Pentagon officials admit that the deaths of the two children violate “international humanitarian law” and state that the alliance should “ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

At this point, many readers are no doubt thinking that war is a messy, unpredictable business, which always ends up hurting innocent people, such as children. Exactly. That is why war must end.

Did the Iran Deal Kill AIPAC?

We can only dream! 

But it does seem like AIPAC lost a lot of power over this... maybe aligning exclusively with regressive assholes and criminals like the GOP and Netanyahu wasn't such a good idea....

And it's also nice to see that long-time anti-Zionist, semi-conspiracy blogger Xymphora is still going.

And speaking of Zionist monsters, fuck this bullshit:

It’s a regular and terrifying scene in the occupied West Bank: heavily armed Israeli soldiers, often with large dogs, raid a Palestinian family’s home. They wake the children, arresting one or more of them. This is what happened to Hamza Muayyad Shukri Hammad, 15, when his home in Silwad, a village near Ramallah, was invaded at 2am on Sunday.

As reported by the Arabic-language Quds news site, Hamza’s mother said that during the two-hour raid on her family’s home, Hamza and his 10-year-old brother, Bilal, were detained. Soldiers raided Hamza’s room, ransacking it. They confiscated phones and smart devices from the home and a computer was deliberately smashed. An Israeli officer threatened Hamza while searching him, and tried to pressure the boy to confess to charges not specified in the Quds report.

Hamza’s mother said “The officer told us that he would treat [Hamza] the way they treated his father and arrest him.” The teen’s father, Muayyad Hammad, is currently serving multiple life sentences on charges that he was part of a cell that carried out military operations against the Israeli army. He has been imprisoned for 13 years, according to Quds.

Other Palestinian children in Israeli detention have endured similar trauma as Hamza.

During a visit to Megiddo prison on Sunday, Hiba Masalha, a lawyer with the Palestinian Authority ministry for prisoner affairs, took the testimony of three teenagers who were beaten during their arrest and transfer to Israeli detention.

Ahmad Ismail Abu Amr, 17, from a village near the West Bank city of Nablus, was beaten all over his body, blindfolded and cuffed by Israeli soldiers who used their weapons to strike him on his head and shoulders when they arrested him two months ago. He was strip-searched during his transfer to Megiddo prison in the north of present-day Israel.

Another 17-year-old, Ahmad Sabah, was arrested several months ago when Israeli soldiers raided his home in Tuqua, a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, in the middle of the night. Ahmad was woken from his sleep by the shouting soldiers, who had police dogs with them. He was cuffed and blindfolded and put into a military jeep, in which soldiers beat him on his head and hands. He too was strip-searched upon his transfer to Megiddo.

Iyad Adawi, 17, was beaten during his arrest at Beit Furik checkpoint near Nablus and testified that one of the soldiers deliberately wounded him as he used a knife to remove plastic cuffs from the boy’s hands.

During the month of June, there were 160 Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, according to the human rights group Defence for Children International-Palestine. Israel holds additional Palestinian children in its civilian court system.

Never Forget... 9/11 Was an Inside Job

14 years later... a day of massive fakery and death and destruction led to even more massive world-wide wars and death and destruction.

And still no justice for the people of the world.

But hey-- they opened a new memorial for flight 93.

Whatever happened to that plane, anyway?

Funny how the articles on the new flight 93 memorial feature all Gordy Felt, brother of passenger Ed Felt. Apparently Gordy is the head of the flight 93 families or some such group.

Why doesn't he ever talk about the major oddity that is the phone call from Ed Felt from on board the plane before it supposedly crashed?

Syrian Girl on the Syrian War and the Refugee Crisis

I think she makes good points here-- a nicely done video on a hugely important issue.

The Oathkeepers Are Hitting Rock-Bottom

When they were formed in 2009, they seemed to have some promise in terms of having US soldiers really following the constitution. Lately, they have become pure right-wing reactionaries, supporting the right-wing idiot Cliven Bundy and now trying to defend the Christian bigot Kim Davis. Seriously, what a joke.

The Iran Nuclear Deal Is KIlling All the Evil Mongers and Zionists

Seriously, all the worst people in the world are against this thing.

Cheney

John Bolton

Louie Gohmert

Glenn Beck

Sarah Palin-- what a psycho freak

Ted Cruz

All the GOP idiot/assholes

What a great move for peace and openness.

And fuck Chuck Schumer:

“You know, my name comes from the word shomer: guardian, watcher,” Senator Chuck Schumer told the host of a Jewish radio program in 2010. “My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer, to be the shomer Yisrael”—the guardian of Israel—“and I will continue to be that with every bone in my body.” Schumer and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s efforts to rally Democratic opposition to President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal have now failed. On Tuesday, the support of Senators Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, and Gary Peters assured Obama that any Republican resolution of disapproval would not even come up for a vote. But the extraordinary identity Schumer was claiming—to be a “guardian of Israel,” without apparent fear of being at odds with American foreign policy or the Democratic Party—may be the greater loss. It’s hard to see how AIPAC, and Schumer, come out of the Iran fight with the authority they had going in.

Yay for Bernie Sanders:

Those who have spoken out against this agreement, including many in this chamber, and those who have made every effort to thwart the diplomatic process, are many of the same people who spoke out forcefully and irresponsibly about the need to go to war with Iraq – one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of our country. 

Sadly, people like former vice president Dick Cheney and many of the other neo-cons who pushed us to war Iraq were not only tragically wrong then; they are wrong now. Unfortunately, these individuals have learned nothing from the results of that disastrous policy and how it destabilized the entire region. I fear that many of my Republican colleagues do not understand that war must be a last resort, not the first resort. 

It is easy to go to war, it not so easy to comprehend the unintended consequences of that war. As the former Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, I have talked to veterans from WWII to Iraq, and I have learned a little bit about what the cost of war entails. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we have lost 6,700 brave men and women, and many others have come home without legs, without arms, without eyesight. Let us not forget that 500,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came back to their families with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. 

The suicide rate of young veterans is appallingly high. The divorce rate is appallingly high, and the impact on children is appallingly high. God knows how many families have been devastated by these wars. And we should not forget the many hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children who died in that war, and those whose lives who have been completely destabilized, including those who are fleeing their country today with only the clothes on their back as refugees. 

The cost of war is real. Yes, the military option should always be on the table, but it should be the last option. We have got to do everything we can do to reach an agreement to ensure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon without having to go to war.

The whole idea of Iran being a nuclear threat was a ridiculously over-blown psyop meant to spread paranoia among gullible jingoists and racists and conservatives. Thankfully, we seem to be moving past the GOP bullshit on this deal-- one of the best and most important things Obama has done.

John Mack on Reptilians

I love his open mind and overall attitude on this. What a great academic. Such a tragedy that he was killed in a freak accident about 11 years ago.

 

"Dr. John Mack, M.D., was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School who had spent 40 years exploring the question of how our perception of ourselves shapes our perception of the world around us. Includes a fascinating discussion on reptilian extraterrestrials, Draco, and our relationship with them. Great understanding, great wisdom."

1994 UFO Incident at a Zimbabwe School

Incredible story:








We are not alone.

Fuck War and Fuck the War Machine and the Evil Powers That Be

The manufacture and use of cluster bombs by the US is a great evil.

The psychotic war mentality of Henry Kissinger, a true American war criminal, a la Bush and Cheney.

The incredible, horrible evil of the US-Korean war. 

The US loves to talk about human rights, but in reality, has a very poor record on human rights.

And, of course, everyone ignores the fact that war has basically been illegal for 87 years.


David Swanson:

... it matters that we know the evils of war and try to stop the new ones. U.S. cluster bombs in Yemen, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, U.S. guns in Syria, U.S. white phosphorus and Napalm and depleted uranium used in recent years, U.S. torture in prison camps, U.S. nuclear arsenals being expanded, U.S. coups empowering monsters in Ukraine and Honduras, U.S. lies about Iranian nukes, and indeed U.S. antagonization of North Korea as part of that never-yet-ended war — all of these things can be best confronted by people aware of a centuries-long pattern of lying.

Obama Is In Alaska Talking About Climate Change, After Giving Shell Oil Approval to Drill In the Arctic

Of course, despite his rhetoric, Obama is heavily supportive of the US oil and gas industries, particularly with the fracking boom of recent years.

So, what's the deal?


Is Obama just paying lip service to environmentalists by talking about climate change, while at the same time, caving into powerful and greedy but destructive corporate interests?

Or is this some sort of weird psy-op, where he pretends to supports the "hoax" of climate change, while silently continuing on with business as usual with petroleum fuels?

As you might guess, I prefer the first explanation. But are there people who believe the second?

Windows 10 Is Basically Pure Spyware

Avoid it at all costs. 

33 of the Day: Trump Takes on the Bush Family

In a 35-minute interview this week with The Washington Post tracing his history with the Bushes, Trump unleashed a hailstorm of scorn.

He found 33 ways to skewer the family — about one put-down per minute. 

On Jeb Bush: “I mean, this guy. I don’t think he has a clue.” 

On George H.W. Bush: “I really liked the father — really like him as a person. But I hated his ‘read my lips, no more taxes,’ and then he raised taxes monstrously.” 

On George W. Bush: “He didn’t seem smart. I’d watch him in interviews and I’d look at people and ask, ‘Do you think he understands the question?’ ” 

And back to Jeb: “He’s not up to snuff. . . . Jeb is never going to bring us to the promised land. He can’t.”