'freeway' ricky ross: reagan/bush let nicaragua drugs flow free to US

from russia today: “Freeway” Ricky Ross, a former US street legend, who as a drug dealer was once responsible for flooding California’s streets with most of its hard drugs, spoke with RT about his activism against drugs. After making up to US$2 million a day and then spending 20 years in prison, Ross started from scratch and is now trying to make a difference by keeping kids from following into his footsteps.

flashback: 'american drug war - the last white hope'

33 'conspiracy theories' that turned out to be true

from jonathan elinoff: Most people can't resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue ... and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous. Lets not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy ... "Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning."

1.Dreyfus Affair (video)

2.Mafia (video)

3.MK-ULTRA (video)

4.Operation Mockingbird (video)

5.Manhattan Project (video)

6.Asbestos (video)

7.Watergate (video)

8.Tuskegee Syphilis Study (video)

9.Operation Northwoods (video)

10.1990 Testimony of Nayirah (video)

11.COINTELPRO (video)

12.Iran-Contra Affair (video)

13.BCCI Scandal (video)

14.CIA Drug Running in LA (video)

15.Gulf of Tonkin Incident (video)

16.Business Plot (video)

17.Conspiracy to Assassinate Hitler (video)

18.Operation Ajax (video)

19.Operation Snow White (video)

20.Operation Gladio (video)

21.Church Committee (video)

22.New World Order (video)

23.Kennedy Assassination & the HSCA (video)

24.1919 World Series Conspiracy (video)

25.Karen Silkwood (video)

26.CIA Drug Smuggling in Mena, Arkansas (video)

27.Bohemian Grove (video)

28.Operation Paperclip (video)

29.Round Table (video)

30.Illuminati (video)

31.Trilateral Commission (video)

32.Big Brother/Shadow Government (video)

33.Federal Reserve (video)

cia continues to stonewall release jfk assassination files

from raw story: The CIA is fighting to prevent the release of hundreds of documents involving its funding of an anti-Castro group in New Orleans that engaged in well-publicized clashes with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the files "involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations - but never told the committee of his earlier role."

Joannides was the deputy director for psychological warfare at the CIA's Miami station, JM/WAVE, which was the center of anti-Castro activities in the early 60's and served as a spawning ground for figures who would later be involved in covert operations in Vietnam and in Iran-Contra. In 1963, Joannides worked closely with leaders of the the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil and exercised a significant degree of control over the group's leaders.

Former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley has been engaged since 2001 in a battle to learn move about the dual role placed by Joannides, which has raised suspicions that he was part of a coverup. "I know there's a story here," Morley told the Times. "The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive."

In December 2007, a Court of Appeals panel ordered the CIA to reveal its files on Joannides, and some documents were released last year confirming Joannides' role in New Orleans. However, the CIA is still withholding or even refusing to confirm the existence of hundreds more.

This past July, Morley wrote, "Last week, I did my part to hold the CIA accountable. I filed my sixth (!) declaration in connection with Morley v. CIA, my ongoing lawsuit against the agency seeking records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ... The Joannides file, say a diverse group of JFK authors, are part of the assassination story and should be made public. For six years, the CIA has refused, alleging their release would harm 'national security.'"

Morley's quest has gained prominent supporters, including even anti-conspiracy assassination scholar Gerald Posner, who believes that the CIA's secretiveness is feeding into conspiracy theories.

G. Robert Blakey, who served as staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the Times, "If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath - he would have been a witness, not a facilitator ... How do we know what he didn’t give us?"

10/22 updates:
after jfk: how lbj took control nov 22, 1963*
jfk assassination: nytimes acknowledges cia deceptions*
judge: cia misled kennedy panel*

related video: jfk ii: the bush connection

corbett report: episode102 - know your history: iran-contra

from corbett report: What happened in the 80s doesn't stay in the 80s. Iran-Contra was an historical moment that reaches forwards and backwards in time to connect some of the key political players of the past 50 years... and exposes the shadow government that has been in operation for decades. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we replace the Orwellian con/text of history by putting Iran-Contra history in context.

download episode102 [60.1mb mp3]


related video: reportagebook.com


video update: new world next week - pilot episode, oct11

from corbett report: James Evan Pilato of MediaMonarchy.com joins James Corbett of corbettreport.com for a new video news update series, The New World Next Week. Each week we'll be discussing stories, news, memes and myths of significance and analyzing them from an alternative media perspective. This week we discuss: Ahmadinejad was born a Jew, FBI doctors OKCCTV & Project Censored's Top 25.

video update: economics101 - richard c. cook on the cook plan


previous episode: 101 - new world order 101

selection '08: debates, deportation, hacks, raids & more

wwf stagematch, round2:
obama & mccain wage counterinsurgency
from danger room: Last night's debate was supposed to be all about the economy, or about who had the scummier friends. But more than a few rounds of the showdown in Nashville were devoted to military matters -- specifically, on how best to wage a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. John McCain repeated his call to broadly use the Iraq blueprint on the Afghan front:

"Now, General Petraeus had a strategy, the same strategy -- very, very different, because of the conditions and the situation -- but the same fundamental strategy that succeeded in Iraq. And that is to get the support of the people."

Obama didn't sound all that much different. He put a bit more emphasis on pouring more troops into Afghanistan, "because our bases and outposts are now targets for more aggressive... Taliban." He talked about "eliminat[ing] some of the drug trafficking that's funding terrorism" there. And he said that Afghanistan's political leaders had to be brought into the process. "You are going to have to do better by your people in order for us to gain the popular support that's necessary," Obama recently told Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

In essence, both Obama and McCain were quoting from the military's now-famous counterinsurgency manual, which talks about the people being the center of gravity for these sorts of campaigns. The old-style bombs-and-bullets operations have their place, of course. But the key to stabilizing a country is allowing the people to lead "normal, social, economic, political lives," as McCain noted.

It's certainly a far cry from the debates of 2000, when then-Governor George W. Bush said, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow [a] dictator when it's in our best interests."

One could even argue that last night represented kind of a capstone victory for the U.S. military's cadre of counterinsurgency-focused thinkers. For years, they've been clashing with the armed forces' more traditional strategists, who think the future of conflict lies in big wars with conventional adversaries. In the debate, both Obama and McCain passed up on the chance to declare a new Cold War with Russia. They were too focused on the insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan to bother.

mccain linked to iran-contra, ‘nazi collaborators,’ & ‘right-wing death squads’
from newsbusters: On Tuesday, an Associated Press article featured on MSNBC.com and briefly as a top headline on the popular internet homepage MSN.com was titled: "McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra case." The subtitle read: "Organization had ties to former Nazi collaborators, right-wing death squads." The article attacked a group founded by retired U.S. General John Singlaub: "The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe." The AP appears to be getting its story tips from the Obama campaign, as Boston Globe deputy national political editor, Foon Rhee, reported: "The Obama camp today is sending around reports on Singlaub, founder of the US Council for World Freedom, which was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal during the mid-1980s and was criticized for supposed links to Nazi collaborators and right-wing death squads in Central America." The AP article justified reporting on the tenuous McCain connection by explaining: "McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago."

jerome corsi, anti-obama author, detained in kenya
from times online: A leading American neo-conservative author has been detained by immigration authorities in Kenya as he tried to launch a book smearing Barack Obama. Jerome Corsi, of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth fame, was this morning being held after failing to reckon with Obamamania. He had been planning to launch his book, entitled 'Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality', before travelling to one of Nairobi’s slums to donate money to the Senator’s half-brother George, who was found living in squalid conditions two months ago.


tennessee student indicted for hacking palin email
from threat level: David Kernell, the 20-year-old Tennessee student who has been under suspicion for allegedly obtaining unauthorized access into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo e-mail account, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Tennessee. According to a Justice Department spokeswoman, the grand jury returned the sealed indictment Tuesday afternoon, and Kernell turned himself into the FBI this morning, after which the indictment was unsealed. Kernell was arraigned in Tennessee today, and a tentative trial date has been set for December 16. Kernell, who is the son of Tennessee Democratic state representative Mike Kernell, is indicted on only one felony count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the indictment mentions an additional statute, the Stored Communications Act.

update: tennessee student accused of hacking palin account involved in another computer intrusion years ago

fbi raids investigates obama's friend's home
from washington times: (Editor's note: The original version of this article has been corrected. The office of Larry D. Walsh was not raided.)

The FBI is investigating a former Illinois state senator who is a poker-playing buddy of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. According to Chicago authorities, the FBI visited the offices in Joliet, Ill., of a Will County auditor to ask questions about Larry Walsh, a longtime friend of Mr. Obama's, and his chief of staff Matt Ryan. Mr. Walsh, who served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2005, was endorsed by Mr. Obama in his county executive election bid. With the support of some of Mr. Obama's U.S. Senate volunteers, he easily defeated incumbent Republican Joseph Mikan. Will County auditor Steve Weber confirmed that his office had been asked by the FBI to assist in an investigation, but he did not elaborate on the specifics. Two FBI agents out of Chicago reportedly spent more than an hour in the Will County offices on Wednesday morning.

ron paul reacts to obama’s 'change'


nader challenges obama & mccain to visit mosque before elections
from votenader.org: Ralph Nader will be holding a news conference Friday, October 3 at 11 a.m. outside the Grand Mosque Islamic Center in Washington DC where he will challenge Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain to visit a mosque, like they have churches and synagogues, before the November election as a show of respect and tolerance. Nader recently wrote a letter to Obama and McCain asking the men to act on such a request.

“As you know, discriminatory acts against Muslim-Americans have soared in recent years. They emanate from stereotyping, ethnic profiling, bigotry and, unfortunately, actions by some local, state & federal officials. The documentation is broad and deep on this unfortunate situation that spreads fear and anxiety among millions of Muslim-Americans… Out of respect for Muslim-Americans who have served in all the dimensions of our society from the professions to the armed forces, from the trades to the arts and sciences, from blue collar to white collar work, while raising their children to surpass their own achievements as befits the American horizon, we urge you to visit a Mosque before November 4, 2008.”

The letter is published in its entirety [here].

satire video: gunman kills 15 potential swing voters
from the onion: The Obama campaign is cautiously optimistic after initial reports indicated that most of the people killed were registered Republicans.

eyes only: [redacted]

in its            offices, the national security archive houses stockpiles of           , gotten from the government by           
from washington post: The National Security Archive is the house that FOIA built and a mecca for document buffs. Despite its official-sounding name, the archive is not a government agency. It's an independent, nonprofit institute created in 1985 by a handful of reporters, historians and activists who'd been filing FOIA requests for documents related to American activities in the guerrilla wars then raging in Central America. Its first director was Scott Armstrong, a former Senate Watergate Committee staffer and Washington Post reporter. Armstrong finagled a grant from the Ford Foundation and borrowed office space at the Brookings Institution and soon he was filing hundreds of FOIA requests, many related to the big scandal of the '80s, the Iran-contra affair. Naturally, these activities made him extremely unpopular with the Reagan administration.

news on the march

US says it will increase efforts against 'tax defiers'
from new york times: If you think paying taxes is unfair, illegal or unconstitutional, then watch out - the Justice Department is after you. Just as the Internal Revenue Service is getting into its perennial tax-season tough talk, Justice Department officials weighed in Tuesday with a vow to ramp up efforts against “tax defiers.”

texas woman threatens bank tellers with morgellons
from alice echo news: A woman claiming to have Morgellons, a skin disease, drove through the Wells Fargo motor bank downtown and threatened the tellers by rubbing the bank canister on her sores and sending it through the tube. "A customer went through the drive-thru and threatened the bank staff to give them a contagious disease," said investigator David Valadez with the police department.

venezuela axes 'the simpsons' as bad for kids
from reuters: Venezuela has forced U.S. cartoon "The Simpsons" off its airwaves, calling the show a potentially bad influence on children, and filled its morning slot with reruns of the beach-and-bikini show "Baywatch."

'ruthlessness gene' discovered
from nature news: Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness. The study might help to explain the money-grabbing tendencies of those with a Machiavellian streak - from national dictators down to ‘little Hitlers’ found in workplaces the world over.

activists want screeners on camera
from washington times: Religious, minority and civil rights activists are asking Homeland Security officials to screen their own airport screeners using video cameras to check whether passengers are being subjected to bias or profiling. "We believe such controls are critical to ensuring that our nation's [screeners] are focused squarely on security threats and not distracted by any personal bias," the organizations said in a letter...

US irked by iran's joining of shanghai cooperation organization
from press tv: The US says it will use all means to prevent Iran's influence in the region including its membership in Shanghai Cooperation Organization... Washington would not remain silent if there were signs the grouping was evolving in the direction of forming a military cooperation.

army conduct waivers double
from stars & stripes: The percentage of recruits requiring a waiver to join the Army because of a criminal record or other misconduct has more than doubled since 2004 to one for every eight new soldiers, USA Today reported...

40 nasa workers on same floor have cancer
from newsnet5: There are 40 cases of cancer among people who work in the same building at NASA Glenn Research Center. Dozens of the employees fear that their cancer was triggered by years of working in the developmental engineering building, NewsChannel5 reported... "What we've seen in the way of cancer here has just been astronomical on this third floor alone and we're just a little scared," said Dennis Pehotsky, of the Lewis Engineers and Scientists Association.

washington licenses to get rfid
from jerome corsi: The state of Washington announced a pilot project to introduce a driver's license "enhanced" with a radio frequency identification, or RFID... the enhanced license is intended to be an alternative way of complying with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative mandated by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

continuity of government & the 'endgame' scenario
from global research: Back in 1987 during joint congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra affair, Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX) asked Lt. Col. Oliver North, Reagan's point-man on the National Security Council:

Since those 1987 hearings, the "arrangements" alluded to by Sen. Inouye about this prickly topic, Continuity of Government (COG), have yet to result in an open hearing before relevant congressional committees. Why?

dhs wants permanent checkpoint in vermont
from wcax: Homeland Security wants to build a permanent immigration checkpoint in central Vermont. An exact location has not been revealed, but officials say it would be similar to this one that used to be on Interstate 91 in Hartford. Agents use the check points to search for illegal immigrants, drugs smugglers and terrorists.

dhs ponders microwave raygun missile defences at airports
from the register: The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will consider fitting high-power microwave electropulse rayguns at US airports, in order to defend against the threat of terrorists firing portable anti-aircraft missiles at airliners. American defence heavyweight Raytheon would partner with Israel's Rafael and Kongsberg of Norway to provide the technology, according to a report in Flight International. The proposed kit is known as "Vigilant Eagle", and is competing for DHS securo-dollars with defensive systems that could be fitted to the airliners themselves - for instance BAE Systems' JetEye.

study shows high levels of toxic chemical in wv residents' blood
from ap: Thousands of West Virginia and Ohio residents have elevated levels of a chemical used to make the nonstick coating Teflon, according to preliminary data from a study... DuPont agreed to fund health screenings for up to 70,000 residents who claimed releases of the chemical C8 from the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg had contaminated public and private wells.

44th anniversary of a coup d'etat

from oregon truth alliance: On November 22, 1963, the United States of America had a military coup d'etat - an event that most people chose not to see (a society of "not see's").

President Kennedy was removed after changing his mind on the Cold War. He refused to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle, refusing to start nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though his military advisers were demanding it), stopped atmospheric nuclear testing and began the process to withdraw troops from Vietnam.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned that we should beware the unchecked power of the military-industrial complex. This speech is one of the greatest in American history, and prescient in understanding what was coming. Now, the future that Eisenhower warned about is the content of the daily news.

The removal of Kennedy (and later, of his brother on the threshold of his victory in the Presidential campaign) led to the escalation of the Vietnam war, Watergate, the 1980 "October Surprise," the Iran-Contra scandals, BCCI, the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm (1991 war on Iraq), allowing the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, the stolen election in Florida in 2000, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks on the Democrats and the media, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the stolen 2004 Presidential election (to cite a few of the many scandals since 1963).

If our society is going to shift course to use our resources for our survival - instead of military dominance - we will have to convert the military budget toward peaceful purposes. A key part of the understanding needed to shift course is an honest discussion of these events in Dallas - and how those events led to the permanent warfare national security state.

Perhaps the simplest question to understand who perpetrated the assassination of President Kennedy is to ask: Who had the power to change the motorcade route?
(the original route would not have passed next to the Book Depository nor the famous 'grassy knoll')

In the film JFK, the character played by Donald Sutherland (loosely based on Colonel Fletcher Prouty), states:

"That's the real question, isn't it - why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia - keeps them guessing like some sort of parlor game. Prevents them from asking the most important question: Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?"

'jfk, 9/11 & war'

from peter dale scott: In American history there are two types of event: ordinary events which the information systems of the country can understand and establish. There are also deep events, or meta-events, which the mainstream information systems of the country cannot digest. I mean by a “deep event” an event in which it is clear from the outset that there are aspects which will not be dealt with in the mainstream media, and will be studied only by those so-called “conspiracy theorists” who specialize in deep history.

The events I shall discuss today exhibit continuities with each other and with other deep events, notably the Iran-Contra affair of the mid 1980s and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. But the three I shall discuss today – the JFK assassination, the initial Watergate break-ins, and 9/11 – are outstanding in this respect: that while they were attributed to insignificant and very marginal people, they had momentous impact, far more than most daily events by more important people, in redirecting American history.

'eerily like vietnam escalation'

from raw story: Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, retired Lt. Colonel Oliver North, who hosts Fox News Channel's War Stories, said that he doesn't support President Bush's plan to for 20,000 additional ground troops in Iraq.

In this clip, O'Reilly quips that the conservative military analyst, best known for his key role in the Iran-Contra affair, is aligning himself with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when he claims that Bush's "surge" plan "sounds eerily like Lyndon Johnson’s plan to save Vietnam in the 60s by gradual escalation as a way not to lose."

bush crime family crony robert gates a shoo-in

from kurt nimmo: “Robert Gates, the former CIA director and Texas A&M University president, is expected to easily win nomination as President Bush’s next defense secretary following a hearing today that is likely to focus on strategies in Iraq,” reports Express-News.

Easy nomination, no matter the guy is a criminal, not to mention a blood-thirsty warmongering psychopath.

Gates was at the core of the so-called Iran-Contra affair, but then it is business as usual in Washington, as the Bush administration is packed like a sardine tin with Iran-Contra criminals. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, knew Gates was lying about his collaboration with fellow criminal, now respected Fox News talking head, Oliver North, the guy who wanted to suspend the Constitution and throw demonstrators in gulags under Rex-84. In 1984, as understudy and protégé of then CIA director-ghoul, William Casey, Gates wanted to bomb the dickens out of Nicaragua...

In many ways, Gates is a perfect choice for the neocons. “Gates was making it clear to analysts what intelligence they were to produce,” Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, tells the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a chilling record, because you have two main themes of the Iraq war present in Robert Gates’ career at CIA: the arrogance and bullying of a Rumsfeld and the intelligence cherry-picking of a Cheney.”