We blow the lid on CIA covert operations, assassinations

clipped from www.vheadline.com Marita Lorenz was recruited by the CIA in the late 1950s to form part of a covert operations team code-named 'Commando 40' which included such notorious killers as Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and Frank Sturgis Under her CIA cloak & dagger mission, Lorenz was given the CIA assignment to attempt assassinate Fidel Castro. She gained private access to the Cuban leader and fell for his charms to become one of his lovers for a time. She failed in her bid to kill Castro but survives to tell the tale, including the overland trip she made with fellow CIA hitmen, Bosch, Posada Carriles and Oswald to Dallas from Miami arriving just days before the JFK assassination. Marita Lorenz had also met and co-habited with runaway Venezuelan President Marcos Perez Jimenez with whom she had a much-loved child, Monica Mercedes (Perez Jimenez). She now lives a quiet life as a pensioner in New York, subject to a gag-order she now feels, with the release of the CIA documents, she able and willing to ignore .

Globalist: A Two-State Solution for Iraq? (Part I)

clipped from www.theglobalist.com With escalating sectarian violence, the need for a political solution to stabilize Iraq has become imperative. About the only political alternative — other than moving toward direct talks with Iran and Syria — has been a three-way ethnic partition of Iraq. The problems of that approach, however, are glaring. Either Kurds or Sunnis would go without the support of oil revenues, depending on which group won the struggle for the major oil fields near Kirkuk in the north of Iraq. Turkey would probably feel compelled to invade a purely Kurdish state at some point — if only because its domestic Kurdish rebels would at some point probably provoke a military reaction and try to use Kurdish Iraq as a refuge. And a Shiite state could well be unstable, with the traditional, largely agrarian majority in the south pitted against the angry and desperately poor urban core of Moqtada Sadr's followers from the slums of east Baghdad.

CIA Spied on Left-Wing Canadians in '60s & '70s

clipped from ariananott.livejournal.com The Nott family's waelth and blood goes back many generations. providing only the best for it's decendents. Born and raised in France by nannies and butlers, Ariana never really knew her parents. They were often away and left her to her own devices. clipped from jimcotton.blogspot.com CIA Spied on Left-Wing Canadians in '60s & '70s: Documents The Central Intelligence Agency spied on Canadians critical of the Vietnam War during the late 1960s and '70s in an operation code-named "MH Chaos," CBC News has learned. The CIA operation was aimed at 'sabotaging public opposition to U.S. policy. Brienberg told the CBC he was not surprised to see his name surface on a CIA document three decades later, but blasted the monitoring operation as "utterly shameful." Several other Canadians connected to Simon Fraser University also ended up under CIA scrutiny. The spies were ordered to report on U.S. citizens trying to circumvent Washington's ban on travelling to the two Communist countries by obtaining their visas through Canada.

George W. Bush - "Imagine"

clipped from www.youtube.com George Bush - "Imagine"

There's just something so oxymoronic about this...

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Fascinating Amy Goodman Interview

clipped from www.democracynow.org John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"

This is a fascinating piece with insight into US and NSA practices around the world, including Iraq

IAEA head: Attacking Iran would be 'madness'

clipped from www.usatoday.com The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned on Thursday that an attack on Iran over its refusal to freeze programs that could make nuclear weapons would be "an act of madness," in indirect warnings to the United States and Israel. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei also said Iran would likely be running close to 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges by the end of next month — a number agency officials have described as the point of no return in the start of a large-scale program ElBaradei described any use of force as "an act of madness ... (that) would not resolve the issue." "The next few months will be crucial," he said, adding: "Iran is building a capacity, a knowledge" of enrichment that is irreversible, while not providing "an assurance that this is a peaceful program." "The longer we delay, the less option we have to reach a peaceful solution," he warned. ElBaradei spoke at the end of a meeting of his agency's 35-nation board

Terminally ill inmate will still be executed

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Defense attorney says man is ‘on the verge of death’ with lung, brain cancer OKLAHOMA CITY - The state parole board refused Tuesday to block the execution of a death row inmate who is dying of cancer. Jimmy Dale Bland is to be executed June 26 for the Nov. 14, 1996, murder of 62-year-old Doyle Windle Rains 11 years ago. He is "on the verge of death" with advanced lung cancer that has spread to his brain and his hip bone despite radiation and chemotherapy, defense attorney David Autry told the five-member Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.

Iraq's mercenaries - with a licence to kill

clipped from comment.independent.co.uk 'These private contractors can get away with murder... They aren't subject to any laws at all' Iraq is rapidly vanishing into the mists of uncollectable, unknowable news, with information travelling only as far as an Iraqi scream can be heard. But sometimes, if you peer closely, you can glimpse reality. Last week, Shia militiamen seized four "security contractors" working for the Canadian company Gardaworld. Buried in the story of this small horror is the bigger tale of a vast shift in how Western wars will be fought in the 21st century if the American right has its way - and one of the great lost scandals of this war. As he scurried out the door in 2004, Paul Bremer - the first US viceroy to Iraq - issued Order 17, which exempted all mercenaries operating in the country from having to obey the law. He in effect gave these men a licence to kill - and they are using it, every day.

US Torture Interrogator Blames Himself For Downfall In Iraq

Former US Army Interrogator Speaks Out.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk A former American army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves. Tony Lagouranis conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia. But he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did has contributed to the downfall of American forces in Iraq. He says that he realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis. Mr Lagouranis, who held the rank of specialist, equivalent to a lance corporal, says he never beat a prisoner. But he said: "These coercive techniques - isolation, dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hypothermia - crossed a legal line because they violated the Geneva Convention.

Ignorance, Economics & Global Conflict

This is a fascinating exploration of how common misunderstandings of the way economics work pervade in our society, and how these misconceptions have led to our current ill-conceived entanglements.

Too much good stuff to clip, you'll have to click through to the source for the rest!

clipped from www.mises.org Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies, 1774–2004 By H.A. Scott Trask As an American historian who knows something of economic law, having learned from the Austrians, I became intrigued with how the United States had remained prosperous, its economy still so dynamic and productive, given the serious and recurring economic fallacies to which our top leaders (political, corporate, academic) have subscribed and from which they cannot seem to free themselves—and alas, keep passing down to the younger generation. Myth #2: The Beneficence of War A second fallacy is the idea of war as an engine of prosperity. Students are taught that World War II ended the Depression; many Americans seem to believe that tax revenues spent on defense contractors (creating jobs) are no loss to the productive economy; and our political leaders continue to believe that expanded government spending is an effective way of bringing an end to a recession and reviving the economy.

BBC: Rendition and the rights of the individual

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The outrage evident in the Council of Europe report on the secret CIA rendition programme emerges from a clash between the methods used by the United States to break up al-Qaeda networks The report's author, Swiss Senator Dick Marty "While the states of the Old World have dealt with these threats primarily by means of existing institutions and legal systems, the United States appears to have made a fundamentally different choice: "This legal approach is utterly alien to the European tradition and sensibility, and is clearly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." The most serious charge Mr Marty makes in his report is against Poland and Romania, both of which he all but accuses of having allowed the CIA to run black sites. It therefore built not only Guantanamo Bay, but a series of "black sites", or secret prisons around the world. senior al-Qaeda suspects were held and interrogated, sometimes by so-called "enhanced" methods

US Gun Non-Control. Ireland REAL Control

"Lo and behold, gun crimes are much lower on a per-capita basis in Switzerland than in the United States, despite a high rate of gun ownership."

Lo and behold, gun crimes is lower everywhere except where the 21st century 'liberation' army has an interest or a client!

clipped from digg.com Quicky from Ireland 4th. most peaceful place on earth. The US is somewhere above Iraq. I think. In top 10 of every and any worthwhile list. NO GUNS!!! Uniformed police - NO GUNS Other that recent drug gangs, gun crime is virtually none existent. We are NOT repressed by our REAL democratic government. We only do PEACEKEEPING for the UN only, where we use brain and not brawn. We survive without killing humans, animals or birds. Why do you need a gun? Because the other bloke might have one! Why do you need a knife? Because the other bloke might have one! Over 10% of our population is not ethnic Irish. You took us in when we needed you. Now it is our turn - to people that appreciate our country and life style. You are too violent to be good Irish citizens so keep this information to yourselves. We do not want the 21st century 'liberation' getting ideas, Ok? So, NO GUNS, thank you. You've being sold a pup to keep you violent and on a war footing.