LedgerGermane

Mar 29

Holy man on the mountain by photographer Joey Lawrence.

[video]

Newly Released FBI Documents Support Sibel Edmonds’ Allegations -

Thanks to a FOIA request, new evidence has emerged from the FBI’s own internal communications that appear to support many of the claims made by Sibel Edmonds regarding (largely though not exclusively) GOP collusion in the spying activities of the Turkish government.

This is no small matter, as it involves blackmail and bribery of high-level officials like former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, PNAC signatory Richard Perle, Congressman Roy Blunt, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, Turkish Ambassador Marc Grossman, Congressman Stephen Solarz, Asst. Sec. Def. Douglas Feith, Congressman Dan Burton and others to “look the other way” from those engaged in spying activities with a foreign government against the United States.

Per the report from the Boiling Frogs website:

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of “Turkish Activities” in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:

• There were a number of very serious FBI investigations into “Turkish activity in Chicago” involving a number of targets, including TACA.
• These investigations were related to “National Security” among other things.
• These investigations were regarded as so sensitive that no files were to be uploaded to FBI’s computer system.
• Congressional corruption was involved.
• The FBI repeatedly conducted actual “physical surveillance” against Turkish and American targets.
  Some of these investigations were shut down in 2001.

What makes it more suspicious is the near universal silence on the part of the corporate media about this whole affair. They spent more energy investigating the deaths of Lacey Peterson or Michael Jackson than they have on this.

It should also be noted that this incident is also tied up with the events surrounding the Valerie Plame/Brewster Jennings outing.

Seven arrested in FBI raids linked to Christian militia group -

vruz:(via ericmortensen)

• Sources have said the FBI was in the second day of raids around the southeastern Michigan city of Adrian that are connected to a militia group, known as the Hutaree, an Adrian-based group whose members describe themselves as Christian soldiers preparing for the arrival and battle with the anti-Christ.
• Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations.
  
  

Mar 26

Severe Nuclear terror risk in Britain? -

• Bomb makers who have been active in Afghanistan may already have the ability to produce a “dirty bomb” using knowledge acquired over the internet.
• It is feared that terrorists could transport an improvised nuclear device up the Thames and detonate it in the heart of London. Bristol, Liverpool Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast are also thought to be vulnerable.
• Lord West, the Security Minister, also raised the possibility of terrorists using small craft to enter ports and launch an attack similar to that in Mumbai in 2008, when more than 150 people were killed.
• The Government is so concerned about the threat that it is setting up a command centre to track suspicious boats.
• The terrorism threat level was raised from “substantial” to “severe” in January after the failed attempt to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day.
• Three separate reviews of the country’s ability to prevent a major terrorist attack were published simultaneously yesterday, before an international meeting on nuclear security in Washington next month.
• Downing Street released an update to the National Security Strategy in which it stated that “the UK does face nuclear threats now” and added that there was “the possibility that nuclear weapons or nuclear material [could] fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups”.
• The International Atomic Energy Authority recorded 1,562 incidents where nuclear material was lost or stolen between 1993 and 2008, mostly in the former Soviet Union, and 65 per cent of the losses were never recovered.

Those lost nukes in an attack would be a perfect no-paper-trail-instrument for intelligence agencies working in collusion with other power brokers who want to expand their ubiquitous presence and control. Never mind the non-existent al-qaeda bogey man, if this goes down it wasn’t because of some farmers growing poppies. Plus, John Robb is right, if regional reactionaries want to hurt the US/UK hegemony, the things to blow up are in their own backyard (oil pipelines, electrical and water infrastructure). 

criminalwisdom:

FLASH MOBS GETTING MORE DANGEROUS IN PHILADELPHIA

“Instant rage and flash disruption. Local police and FBI trying to get ahead of this (but the tools they are using suck). Given that protest and political action are so ineffective, this is yet another step towards something much bigger. “
~ John Robb

Instamatic armies. Just add text. Stir.

Image : Riot Scene by Ariasme.

WikiLeaks Statement on Recent Intimadations -

Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a “James Bond” character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere “we think it would be in your interest to…”.

Developing world violence aside, we’ve become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.

But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.

The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks’ volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.

I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.

The possible triggers:

• our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
• our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
• our release of a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik reporting on contact between the U.S. and the U.K. over billions of euros in claimed loan guarantees.
• pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic “oligarchs”.

Disputed Bay of Bengal island 'vanishes' say scientists -

• A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say.
• The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.
• Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta.
• Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

“

Jones told the hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that Go Daddy had also been targeted by the same cyber attacks, believed to have originated in China, which prompted Google’s decision to stop following Chinese censorship rules.

Go Daddy said the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), a semi-government agency, had always required it to collect customer information such as names, addresses and contact details since it began registering .cn domain names in 2005.

But a policy change late last year required domain name registrars to also include photo headshots, business identifications and signed registration forms from new customers.

Go Daddy Leaves, Fallout from Google China row grows

headshots on file to have a website? yowza.

Coca-Cola Causes Serious Depletion of Water Resources in India -

• New Delhi: In a major development, a High Power Committee established by the state government of Kerala in India has recommended today that Coca-Cola be held liable for Indian Rupees 216 crore (US$ 48 million) for damages caused as a result of the company’s bottling operations in Plachimada.
• The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada has remained shut down since March 2004 as a result of the community-led campaign in Plachimada challenging Coca-Cola’s abuse of water resources.
• The report and recommendations were welcomed by activists who have challenged Coca-Cola’s operations in Plachimada. Demanding compensation from the Coca-Cola company for the damages it has caused has been a central demand of the campaign from its inception.
• “We welcome the Committee’s recommendations and now the state government must find the political will to implement the recommendations,” said R. Ajayan of the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, a statewide organization that has been instrumental in moving the compensation process forward.
• The Adivasi Samrakshana Sangham and the Plachimada Solidarity Committee had submitted detailed proposals to the high level committee on the issue of compensation and the course forward.
• “The Committee thus has compelling evidence to conclude that the HCBPL has caused serious depletion of the water resources of Plachimada, and has severely contaminated the water and soil,” said the report. HCBPL is the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Limited, a subsidiary of Atlanta based Coca-Cola Company.
• “The Committee has come to the conclusion that the Company is responsible for these damages and it is obligatory that they pay the compensation to the affected people for the agricultural losses, health problems, loss of wages, loss of educational opportunities, and the pollution caused to the water resources,” added the report.
• The report also agreed that Coca-Cola should be held criminally liable for its reckless actions in Plachimada – a key demand of the campaign to hold Coca-Cola accountable. “The compensation is not to be viewed as a quid pro quo for not initiating criminal charges,” the report stated.

China: Female Astronauts Must Be Married with Children -

• The men chosen to lead China into outer space are often referred to locally as “superhuman beings” — and not just because they train to cross the final frontier. Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. Chinese astronauts cannot suffer from chronic sore throats or runny noses. They mustn’t have food restrictions, strong regional accents, ringworm, cavities or scars. Bad breath, body odor and a snoring problem are all immediate disqualifiers. And if China’s spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications, so too are its new spacewomen — with two notable additional criteria. China’s first two female reserve astronauts, selected earlier this month from a pool of 15 female fighter pilots, were required to be wives and mothers.
• The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women’s fertility. “It’s out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots,” Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA’s Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. “Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China.” Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country’s manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature.

CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks -

thedaytheytriedtokillme:

Keep following this one.

A scary tweet from Wiki:

1. If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible. 7:33 PM Mar 23rd via bit.ly

Edmonton man renames himself 'God' -

• EDMONTON - God confesses to be a convicted criminal who spent five years in prison for trying to smuggle a suitcase of marijuana into Japan.
• He also lives in Edmonton, and, thank God for name changes.
• A college student formerly known as John Paul LaPointe fought the Alberta government to have his moniker changed to God Dieux - and won.