Friday, July 31, 2015


D.B. COOPER: EVER DREAM THIS MAN?

DBCooper

D.B. COOPER

EVER DREAM THIS MAN?

It has been about a month since I moved into a new place so that I could find a healthy retreat. It is a place that has many creature comforts and many people who have been there say the place begs you just to come in and take a nap. However, there is a wonderful accessory to the apartment and that is a 70 inch wide screen TV. The only problem is some of my favorite TV shows are gone because of the summer hiatus.
Shows like “The Walking Dead” would be perfect to watch and well the Seahawks won’t be playing for another 50 days or so. One of my other shows that I loved and hated at the same time was “Mad Men.” I started watching it and it was interesting at first, but the main character Don Draper started getting on my nerves. His arrogance and infidelity even when he had a hot French wife for some reason turned me off.
Then there were there were the rumors about who Don Draper really was. The time the final season of the show aired, the internet was a buzz that Don Draper would eventually leave New York and drive to The Northwest and become the infamous D.B. Cooper.
In fact the last episode had the character leaving New York, going to California and then Utah and eventually to a hippie commune somewhere in the Northwest.
But, unfortunately he did not become the famous hijacker.
Too bad, because I have been thrust into the D.B. Cooper investigation, and it is all because of dumb luck and an association from long ago.
On the eve of Thanksgiving nearly 45 years ago, a man calling himself D.B Cooper or Dan Cooper jumped from a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 and became a legend.
It was Nov. 24, 1971, when Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 was scheduled for a 30-minute hop from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. A man dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase bought a one-way ticket at the counter under the name Dan Cooper.
Northwest Airliner on Runway During Hijacking
He took a seat near the back of the plane. There were 36 other passengers on board the 727 and after it was airborne, Cooper handed a flight attendant named Florence Schaffner a note which she initially ignored, thinking the man was making a pass at her.
He leaned forward and whispered to her and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.” He then sternly told her to sit next to him. She asked to see the bomb and he opened his briefcase to expose wires and red sticks resembling dynamite.
He then demanded $200,000 in unmarked $20 bills and four parachutes.
The plane circled Sea-Tac Airport for two hours as FBI and Seattle police worked to secure the money and parachutes.
The plane landed on a remote runway and once the ransom money and parachutes were delivered, the other passengers were released. The pilot, first officer and one attendant were kept on the plane.
According to the FBI, Cooper then demanded to be flown to Mexico. However, he also ordered that the plane be flown with the landing gear down, the flaps at 15 percent, a speed of no more than 200 mph and an altitude no higher than 10,000 feet.
The crew on the flight was unanimous; this man knew what he was doing. He knew enough about flight procedures and protocols.
The mystery of what happened between Seattle and Reno on that night in 1971 has been the source of thousands of tips to the FBI, the subject of books and movies, the inspiration for copy cats, and the subject of untold hours of speculation by amateur investigators who would love nothing more than to be the one who unlocks one of the country’s great unsolved mysteries.
That includes Seattle lawyer Galen Cook, who is convinced that he is on the trail of the man that has been kept form the public eye and has a very good chance of being D.B. Cooper.
The strangest thing of all is that suspect was an old friend of mine.
The D.B. Cooper case for me has always been one of those mysteries that sat on the back shelf. It was always one of those stories that lost its flavor after many years of dead ends and people who could just out of the blue claim that they are D.B. Cooper or have a friend of a friend that is the infamous Hijacker. No one can imagine the shock that you get when you find out that one of your old friends, one of your mentors is named as a suspect in the case.
I know it certainly is a remarkable claim to make, and people all ask me why I haven’t written a book or have called attention to it, but since Cook’s revelation I have been keeping up with the case and am still trying to come to grips that Galen Cook says that a friend of mine, Wolfgang Gossett an associate that taught me how to do what I do now, was one of the most legendary criminals in the United States.
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I guess I could say that I will leave it up to the investigators and the F.B.I. to determine whether that Gossett, was indeed D.B. Cooper.
Galen Cook is convinced letters sent to the Reno newspapers a few days after the incident hold the clues to the question everyone wants answered. Galen Cook and myself have also conducted private investigations, some of them with Ground Zero listeners to try and piece together some of the evidence and DNA samples that were left on the plane and compare them to hair and other DNA left behind by Gossett who died in Depoe Bay, Oregon in 2003.
About, five days after the hijacking, a letter arrived at Reno Newspapers editor’s desk of the morning Nevada State Journal and afternoon Reno Evening Gazette.
The letters were postmarked “Oakdale, California.”
The letter was sent in what can be called the typical cut-out and pasted words from magazines “Attention! Thanks for Hospitality, was in a Rut. D.B. Cooper.”
The Reno Evening Gazette published the letter on its front page that evening. They had the scoop and the FBI did not even know that the letters existed.
Four days later, on Dec. 2, another letter arrived with similar cut-out magazine clippings that spelled out “Plan ahead for Retirement income. D.B. Cooper.”
Cook is convinced the Reno letters along with letters to newspapers in Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland, Oregon were written by the hijacker, who wanted to taunt the FBI.
Cook said the first letter to the Gazette, postmarked Oakdale, was near where his suspect, William Gossett, lived. The second Reno letter carried a Sacramento post mark.
Cook started investigating Gossett as a suspect in 2008. In his records, Cook also has Gossett’s 1978 marriage proposal to his fifth wife. The letter was written on “MGM Grand Reno” stationary.
Since Cook’s revelation in 2008, I have been thrust into the yearly ritual of doing investigations into the case with what little time I have had. In fact, in 2008 I was still recovering from my second cancer surgery when I was part of an investigation team that was headed up by former F.B.I investigator Richard Tosaw. The team, along with a few Ground Zero listeners, arrived in Vancouver, Washington with Galen Cook to look over maps and carry out a Columbia River expedition on the shores of a beach called Tena Bar.
In February of 1980, 8 year-old Brian Ingram was digging a fire pit on the beach and found $5,800 dollars of badly deteriorated cash buried in the sand. The serial numbers matched the numbers on the bills that Cooper had with him when he parachuted over Battle Ground, Washington.
The evidence of the money being found just downstream from Vancouver counters the F.B.I.’s claims that Cooper landed near Ariel, Washington, some 30 miles northeast of the area where the money was found.
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Since I have been to these areas with Cook and other law enforcement teams, I made my own conclusions as to where D.B. Cooper may have landed – if he survived. While at Tena Bar, I was told that the topography of the area was different at the time of Cooper’s jump into history and that the Columbia River narrowed near Tena Bar.
On the west side of the Columbia is an area near the Port of Portland called St. Johns, Oregon. The area is not as a rugged as the Ariel area and it is possible that Cooper (Gossett), a trained paratrooper in the military, bailed out of the Northwest Orient Airlines jet, deployed his parachute in a winter storm and, with the strong gorge winds blowing out of the east, was blown west towards Oregon and landed near Tena Bar in the narrowed Columbia River.
He then ditched some of the money and the parachute on the shore. He was then able to go to St. Johns, obtain a ride out of the area and disappear into history.
Galen Cook revealed that a 2-3 foot diameter “pilot” chute was discovered near Tena Bar in 1988, just one mile upstream from the money find. The chute was found by Richard Towsaw’s team and it was also revealed that fishermen in the area had found shredded $20 dollar bills upstream from the Ingram find at Tena Bar.
Bruce Smith who is columnist for the Mountain News in Washington State informed me that Earl Cossey the parachute rigger for D.B. Cooper was found murdered on April 26, 2013. Cossey packed the chutes for Cooper used in his famous getaway in 1971.
Earl Cossey’s daughter discovered her father’s body lying on the garage floor of his Woodinville, Washington home. The King County Sheriff’s Office reported that Cossey was killed by blunt force trauma to the head.
FBI documents reveal that Earl Cossey was a significant figure in the Norjak (Code name for “Northwest Hijack”) investigation, especially in the early days, and frequently advised agents on the particulars of the parachutes and DB Cooper’s skills. In effect, Cossey was the FBI’s technical expert for Norjak.
Now this opens up a new door in the case.
Did Earl Cossey want to speak up about other details he knew about the case and was murdered before he could reveal them?
The King County Sherriff’s department later declared the case an unsolved burglary and murder. A “good Samaritan” later mailed Earl Cossey’s driver’s license and credit cards to his house.
Police asked for this “good Samaritan” to come forward. The investigation drew no connections to the D.B. Cooper mystery.
Every year, usually the Saturday after Thanksgiving I travel to the old store in Ariel, Washington where people gather together for “D.B. Cooper days.” I am always around to hear stories from old timers who were there, and from people who tell outrageous stories including a man who told me that his mother was D.B. Cooper. It was some strange transgender story. When I acted as though I was disinterested the guy threatened to punch me in the face.
I also ran into a guy that had the original note book that was carried by the deputy Sherriff that did the initial investigation. I read through the description notes of the suspect and there was a section that said “Suspect possibly Hispanic?”
Well, I would believe that more than some outrageous claim about a D.B. LGBT Cooper.
However anymore, nothing would surprise me.
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MOLECULAR PROFILING

molecularprofiling

MOLECULAR PROFILING

After Obama was elected president in 2008, and before Obamacare became the brand meme for affordable health care, he gave the okay for some $50 billion dollars in electronic medical records and law enforcement software.
He claimed it would save us $10 billion in costs to consumer and create a database where records could be obtained instantaneously.
The Obama administration, under the direction of Zbigniew Brzezinski – a chief controller in the cyptocracy, is basically carrying out the plan for social evolution by creating a medical surveillance state.
It also confirmed that his staff, headed by Brzezinski, confidently knew that the medical surveillance apparatus would be part of his proposed health care plan. This was all planned many years prior to him becoming President. There is also a plan to establish an extensive bio metric/DNA database in order to help in law enforcement.
Using DNA to trace people who are suspected of committing a crime has been a major advance in policing. When DNA profiling is used wisely it can help to convict people who have committed serious crimes or exonerate people who are innocent. However, concerns arise when individuals’ tissue samples, computerized DNA profiles and personal data are stored indefinitely on a DNA database. There are concerns that this information could be used in ways that threaten people’s individual privacy and rights and that of their families.
Forensic DNA databases are now well established in many countries in the world. Rules on what data can be collected and stored and how it can be used differ greatly between different countries. As DNA sequencing technology advances and becomes cheaper, there are plans to set up new databases or expand existing databases in many countries.
In some countries, databases that used to contain records only from people convicted of serious crimes are being expanded to include many innocent people who have been arrested but not convicted and people convicted or given police warnings or other sanctions for minor crimes. These people are treated as a ‘risky population’ who may commit future offences. In other countries, a DNA database of the whole population is proposed. Data-sharing, involving the transfer of information across international borders is also on the increase.
Anyone who can access an individual’s forensic DNA profile can use it to track the individual or their relatives. Access to a DNA sample can reveal more detailed information about a person’s health. DNA evidence is not foolproof and mistakes can be made in laboratories or in court. However, there are currently no international
safeguards that would protect people’s privacy and rights and prevent miscarriages of justice.

Using extensive DNA databases is the next phase in the technological terror that has been and integral part of the police state. It also puts us closer to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of the bridege to a new technocratic control apparatus.
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Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his famous signature book “Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era”:
“It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous control over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date files containing even the most personal details about health and personal behavior of every citizen, in addition to the more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information.”
It is now almost mandatory for the mainstream media to not only report that a suspected killer has committed a crime, but to also give us a rundown of his past medical history.
The media now presents not only the background of a suspected criminal, but what drugs he takes, past mental history, and in some cases medical condition, even if the suspect has not been convicted of anything.
The question we have to ask ourselves is if the suspect has been convicted of a crime , does the public have a right to know his personal medical history? How is it that the media has a right to publish medical details on the nightly news?
It may be that we know too much about high profile people of interest in cases of crime, gun crime, hate crime, or even terrorism. This is all part of the extensive medical surveillance apparatus.
Four years ago a young woman and her 3-year-old daughter were murdered in Columbia, South Carolina. There were no known eyewitnesses to the murder, no security cameras caught a figure coming or going.
Nonetheless, the police released a sketch of a possible suspect. Rather than an artist’s rendering based on witness descriptions, the face was generated by a computer relying solely on DNA found at the scene of the crime.
It may be the first time a suspect’s face has been put before the public in this way, but it will not be the last. Investigators are increasingly able to determine the physical characteristics of crime suspects from the DNA they leave behind, providing what could become a powerful new tool for law enforcement.
Already genetic profilers can determine a suspect’s eye and hair color fairly accurately. It is also possible, or might soon be, to predict skin color, freckling, baldness, hair curliness, tooth shape and age.
Computers may eventually be able to match faces generated from DNA to those in a database of mug shots. Even if it does not immediately find the culprit, the genetic witness, so to speak, can be useful, researchers say.
Mandatory DNA testing is now the law in Kuwait. This law is for every citizen, foreign resident, and visitor.
Violations of this truly dystopian law carry the penalty of a year in prison or a fine of $33,000. Falsifying a DNA sample carries a seven-year prison term. If you think this won’t come to the U.S., you should carefully consider how frighteningly close we already are, and the rather daunting future implications.
The Kuwaiti government made the groundbreaking albeit terrifying decision to require mass DNA collection following the June 26 bombing of a Shia mosque in Kuwait City that killed 25 and injured over 200.
That attack was part one of three the same day—all claimed by ISIS that included a mass shooting at a tourist resort in Tunisia, which left 28 dead and 36 injured, and an explosion at a gas factory near Lyon, France.
Passed in early July at a cost of $400 million, the procedures for DNA testing and collection are not yet known, but the project is expected to be complete no later than September 2016.
Molecular profiling or DNA phenotyping, as it is called, is also raising concerns. Some scientists question the accuracy of the technology, especially its ability to recreate facial images. Others say use of these techniques could exacerbate racial profiling among law enforcement agencies and infringe on privacy.
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Some are also worried that this will also aid in what is called pre-determined crime.
DNA, of course, has been used for more than two decades to hunt for suspects or to convict or exonerate people. But until now, that meant matching a suspect’s DNA to that found at the crime scene, or trying to find a match in a government database.
DNA phenotyping is different: an attempt to determine physical traits from genetic material left at the scene when no match is found in the conventional way. Though the science is still evolving, small companies like Parabon NanoLabs, which made the image in the South Carolina case, and Identitas have begun offering DNA phenotyping services to law enforcement agencies.
Of course one of the most well known companies is Illumina. Illumina, the largest manufacturer of DNA sequencers, has just introduced a forensics product that can be used to predict some traits, as well as to perform conventional DNA profiling.
Researchers are closing in on specific physical traits, like eye and hair color. A system called HIrisPlex, which was developed at Erasmus University MC Medical Center in the Netherlands, is about 94 percent accurate in determining if a person has blue or brown eyes, but less so with intermediate colors like green.
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HIrisPlex, which analyzes 24 genetic variants, is about 75 percent accurate for hair color.
If you value privacy and aren’t a fan of Big Brother, these technological developments are rather creepy or, more accurately, downright terrifying when you consider that there is no real protection from taking a DNA sample without your consent.
Perhaps there should be a warrant issued before someone uses your DNA?
In just six years, the FBI’s DNA database has more than doubled in size, from 6.7 million profiles in 2009 to nearly 13.8 million as of May 2015 due, in part, to warrantless, suspicion less testing for arrestees. Over 2 million profiles and rapidly counting have been added to that database stemming purely from arrests.
Law enforcement is pushing heavily toward Rapid DNA Analyzers which can complete a profile in 90 minutes or less that can be used by a layperson in the field since they are comparable in size to a laser printer.
Just a prick of your finger, and soon everyone will know everything about you.
While most people believe that a sub dermal chip is the answer to their fears of a so called mark of the beast consider that fact that DNA sequencing and an expanded database fits in well with what the FBI has planned for us.
The FBI announced during a biometrics conference in 2014, there are rather disturbing possible future implications. In order to link its Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database with the CODIS DNA profiles, the FBI is looking to simplify by assigning a universal identification number to every citizen.
Given the context of DNA collection for people who haven’t even been arrested judged constitutional by a high court, the increasing prevalence of Rapid DNA tech, and the assigning of a number to link between the DNA and NGI databases what could possibly go wrong? Is the thought that we could be identified in the not-so-distant future with chilling accuracy in less than an hour and a half by a number sounding like some apocalyptic fulfillment?
It is always said that people that have nothing to hide have nothing to fear in the police state, this is because most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that only criminals desire privacy and fear getting caught.
If you believe that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to worry about then you are then indicating that you believe that we are all worthy of suspicion until proven otherwise.
If left unchecked we will go way beyond the age of the medical surveillance state and will arrive the postmodern age of molecular and biometric authoritarianism.
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64 Nations Say No to GMO, Yet US Government Nears Illegal GMO LabelingBueno, para aquellos que aún no entiendan bien quién era hitler, les ...

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The WHO has already declared that five of the major chemical herbicides used to grow GMO crops are either likely or definitely cancerous, yet the USA still makes secret trade deals that would allow biotech to push their genetically modified ‘food’ on Americans who don’t want to eat it.
Our right to know if we are even eating GMO crops is being taken away via legislation known as the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act (DARK) act. (This is officially known as the ‘Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act.)
More than 60 countries have already passed mandatory GMO labeling laws, and many will ban GMO crops altogether this year if they haven’t already. You can see a great map of these GM labeling bans here.


So are we really supposed to believe that genetically engineered crops are safe and that the average consumer in America who is practically begging for organic food is simply over-reacting, or are we to correctly assume that the United States has been bought by biotech?
The DARK act, otherwise known as Mike Pompeo’s bill to support Monsanto, is being fast tracked through Congress right now even though thousands of people have signed petitions to stop it. It’s clear that Congress isn’t looking out for the people, and has biotech’s interests in mind. Natural Society also made a petition you can sign here.
So while a huge number of countries throughout the world are smart enough to stand up against Monsanto and their biotech buddies, HR 1599 is almost on the books as a law that will prohibit mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs) at both the state and federal levels.

Russia Shoots Down “US Stealth Coup”: Tough Times for America’s “Color Revolution” industry.


Armenia
Times are tough for America’s “color revolution” industry. Perfected in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and honed during the so-called “Arab Spring,” the process of backing subversion in a targeted country and overthrowing a sitting government under the cover of staged mass protests appears to be finally at the end of running its course.
That is because the United States can no longer hide the fact that it is behind these protests and often, even hide their role in the armed elements that are brought in covertly to give targeted governments their final push out the door. Nations have learned to identify, expose, and resist this tactic, and like Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime’s tactic of Blitzkrieg or “lighting war,” once appropriate countermeasures are found, the effectiveness of lighting fast, overwhelming force be it military or political, is rendered impotent.
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This was most recently observed in Armenia during the so-called “Electric Yerevan” protests – Yerevan being the capital of Armenia, and “electric” in reference to the alleged motivation of protesters – rising electric prices.
American-backed “color revolutions” always start out with a seemingly legitimate motivation, but soon quickly become political in nature, sidestepping many of the legitimate, practical demands first made, and focusing almost entirely on “regime change.” For the Armenian agitators leading the “Electric Yerevan,” they didn’t even make it that far and spent most of their initial momentum attempting to convince the world they were not just another US-backed mob.
The Stealth Coup 
Nikol Pashinyan and his “Civic Contract” party are transparently US-backed. So many found it suspicious that he was the most prominent voice insisting that the “Electric Yerevan” was not political and by no means a US-backed movement.
Verelq, an Armenian-based news website which inexplicably links to the US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Armenian site, would report in their article, “Nikol Pashinyan: Protest actions in Yerevan are of exclusively social nature,” that:
“Even if you look at the ongoing processes through the microscope, you cannot see any foreign political or domestic political components in the demonstrations. People do not want electricity to grow in price. That’s all,” said Pashinyan. He said electric power is first of all a product: the Electric Networks sells it and the citizens buy it. “The protest actions should be considered as protection of consumers’ rights. Politics is nowhere near,” he said.
But politics were very near, including politicians like Pashinyan himself, who made it a point to visit jailed protesters throughout the failed uprising and even at one point called for the construction of a “human wall” of prominent Armenian personalities between protesters and police. US State Department-funded Armenia Now (of the New Times Journalist Training Center) reported in their article, “Politics in the Middle: Lawmakers, public figures form “human wall” between police, protesters,” that:
The appeal to create a human wall was made by opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan late on Tuesday as he urged all former and current MPs, scholars, show-biz representatives, lawyers, reporters, religious representatives and other public figures to visit the standoff site in order to ensure no force is applied against the protesters.
Other obvious ties between the protests, Pashinyan, and US-backed NGOs have been laid out by geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko in his article, “‘Electric Yerevan’ is Sliding Out of Control.”
Despite these links, some have attempted to claim Pashinyan was merely an opportunist and that his US-backing, and attempts by US NGOs to manipulate the protests had little to do with the protests themselves. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Stealth Agitators
628x471America’s next generation of “color revolutions” attempt to obfuscate all possible ties between themselves and their agitators in an attempt to take back the strategic initiative by maintaining maximum plausible deniability. But if one knows where to look, they will find that no amount of obfuscation and subterfuge can cover the links between the US State Department and its mobs.
The protests were the work of  the “No To Plunder” group, led by lawyers and activists emanating from the US State Department National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and Open Society-funded Armenian Young Lawyers Association (AYLA) and the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office who openly coordinated efforts with “No To Plunder” to pressure the government on a number of issues.
At least 2 members of AYLA, Ara Gharagyozyan and Arthur Kocharyan, were identified as core members of “No To Plunder.”  AYLA’s news website “Iravaban” would list a number of young lawyers and activists attending one of its internship programs in 2014. Iravaban would also cover the protests in intricate detail from start to end, as well as report on activities AYLA and the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office undertook to support the protests.
A number of other pro-protest “news sites” included Hetq, which while it admits it is funded by convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, does not list the US NED as a sponsor – NED however does list Hetq. There is also Media.am, funded by USAID as well as the European Endowment for Democracy. All of this adds up to a large network of locally-based but foreign funded and directed media outlets that help add the illusion of consensus to disinformation spread regarding the protests.
Together with US-funded training programs indoctrinating students and training lawyers and activists in the finer arts of sedition, then allowing them to go off on their own to lead mobs, the US believes sufficient plausible deniability has been created to hide ties between themselves and protest leaders. Similar efforts have been made in both Hong Kong and more recently in Thailand, where overtly US-backed mobs have been replaced by students trained, then unleashed by US-proxies.
Despite this careful arrangement, the “Electric Yerevan” protests never reached critical mass. The reason for this is simple – they were suspected of being US-backed and the more overt US assets that would eventually need to move in to lead the protests were unable to, lest they confirmed that suspicion and undermined the entire effort. Without these more mainstream assets moving in and providing support, larger protests are logistically and politically impossible.
How to Shoot Down a Stealth Coup
Russia’s emerging media influence on the world stage played an essential role in unmasking and disrupting America’s efforts to destabilize and overthrow the government in Armenia. The ability to be one step ahead of the Western-narrative and expose the players before they even take to the stage, meant that people already knew what to look for.
When the protesters hit the streets, and as the protests dragged on, US NGOs and Western media reports supporting the protests confirmed initial Russian warnings. When clumsy, overt assets like Pashinyan began getting involved, there was little doubt that electrical prices, while a real point of contention, were being used as a means to create a larger, more disruptive, and ultimately dangerous attempt at foreign-backed regime change.
In the future, the government of Armenia should be careful about giving such points of contention for foreign interests to use in the first place – meaning that dedication to economic and social progress cannot be ignored, even if one is confident they can tamp down potential protests.
Other nations around the world have a lot to learn from how Russia disrupted this latest attempt by America to project power beyond its shores and disrupt the lives of a sovereign people thousands of miles away. By simply informing people of what is really going on, following the money, and exposing the players involved, people in Armenia were able to assess for themselves whether or not to support the mobs – they chose wisely not to. Were Armenia to adopt similar laws as Russia’s regarding NGOs – mandating that they declare openly and often their foreign funding – people can better assess whether or not mobs these NGOs are supporting are truly marching for their interests, or Wall Street and Washington’s.

The TPP Trade Agreement, Sovereignty, and Secrecy. Economic Dislocation, Environmental Degradation    ~ hehe from the MOST  "trans~parent" admin in the history of the Re~pube~lick   ,yep 

Region:

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“National security secrecy may be appropriate to protect us from our enemies; it should not be used to protect our politicians from us.” Margot E. Kaminski, NYT, April 14, 2015.
It’s coming to you, roughly packaged, crudely thought out, and, we hope, incompetently executed. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is just about done and dusted, so claim those who have found it appropriate to keep this most “secret” of treaties under wraps. The Hawaii round of negotiations, taking place at the Westin Resort and Spa in Maui, will provide the final touches, though the delegates may be overly optimistic in assuming that their local parliaments will quite accept matters without a fight. If parliamentary sovereignty counts for anything, this will be it.
US negotiators were always in the main lane, suggesting that they would get what they wanted, breezing through the 21st century with Washington’s vision like modern buccaneers. Much of this is based on the illusory idea the future is calculable, that economic modelling becomes truth. Sign on the dotted line, and the Mammon shall be yours.
The US Treasury Department has come up with an astrological figure of increases in American exports to Asia by $123 billion. Other figures have been drawn out of hats, most of which will hardly cut muster when the deal is actually in place. Such deals have a habit of enriching unevenly, leaving a good deal of economic, and social pillage in their wake.
Hurdles to the arrangement include sugar, milk and drugs. Canada refuses to accept more dairy imports, which has put off the delegates of the US and New Zealand. Mexico continues to stall on the issue of opening its market to exports from Asia.[1]
But the quibbling, and to-and-fro nature of such talks belies something more important. The first is the technocratic presumption that what is being negotiated is going to be beneficial for the uninvolved and effectively disenfranchised subject. Naturally, a corporate “person”, and yes, the glories of Anglo-American law were good enough to give corporations personalities, will have the sun shining upon them. (The degree this sun was anticipated can be gauged by the amount of corporate money expended in influencing the trade delegations.[2]) But the TPP, in its entire negotiating process, has become a genuine punch to citizen sovereignty, a trickle-down bonanza of delusionary advances.
There have been voices in the political spectrum lamenting the pathological secrecy behind the entire process. Such behaviour goes beyond the realms of simple diplomatic protocol, the closed-doors approach which sees the shuffling of papers and provisions beyond press scrutiny. The TPP, one part of a US-led reorientation of markets and strategies, affects citizens who have no voice, or shape, in discussions.
The colourful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii’s 2nd district, not essentially the picture of congressional participation, took to the floor to express her frustration at the lack of transparency in the entire process.[3] Even the locals were being left out in the cold by the business clerks. As legal scholar Margot E. Kaminski would explain in April, “Even if current negotiations over the trade agreement end with no deal, the draft chapter will remain classified for four years as national security information.”[4]
Such is the situation that even former trade officials are wondering why the process is being kept out of the critical eye of public discussion. Australia’s former Industries commission chief, Bill Carmichael, sees no problem adopting a more open approach to negotiations on such instruments. These are the industry and financial wonks who do believe that the link between parliament and the voter still prevails. Let the discussions rage.
Instead of taking the peripatetic walk of conversation in the name of national interest, the parties to the negotiations have muzzled their political representatives. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley explained in April that the public would not be able to peruse the document till the horse had bolted. “What’s wrong with it first and foremost that we’re not allowed to read it before the representatives vote on it.”[5]
O’Malley’s feeling here is that the El Dorado being sought is the lower wage bracket, obtained an exploited overseas market. Free trade is not so much a case of improving living standards as attempting to buffer the status quo with low grade incentives.
The same goes for other states involved in the negotiations. Members of parliament in Australia, for example, may see the document with their uncomprehending eyes, but must sign a four-year confidentiality provision. One of the requirements counters, if not repudiates the parliamentary spirit altogether: “I will not divulge any of the text or information obtained in the briefing to any party, I will not copy, transcribe or remove the negotiating text”.[6] This absurd state of affairs can only trigger suspicion.
Then come the dangers, in terms of use and price, to medicine and copyright. Weasel words are circulated – “digital governance” is a hot one, code for control, restriction and regulation. Embedded in the agreement is a form of copyright policing that seems both draconian and unrealistic. The US delegation still insists on copyright terms of 70 or more years with the necessary compensation for infringements.
Few on the medical side of things are convinced by this. Doctors without Borders has insisted that the TPP brings the kibosh to bear on cheaper pharmaceuticals, proving it to be “a bad deal for medicine.”[7] This is less a case of bring on the medicine than bringing on the money. “Unless damaging provisions are removed before negotiations are finalised, the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”[8]
The horse trading has also reached degrees of cynicism that would make any Machiavellian hack proud. Deals have been done to paper over wretched human rights records – take the case of Malaysia, which was upgraded by the US State Department in the human trafficking stakes ahead of fresh talks in Hawaii. It had previously received the worst rating in terms of trafficking, something which bars the US from making trade deals.
Under Secretary of State Sarah Sewall would unconvincingly parry suggestions that the TPP had shadowed the moves. “No, no. no. The annual TIP Report reflects the State Department’s assessment of foreign government efforts during the reporting period to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking persons, established under US law, under the TVPA.”[9]
Sheer coincidence, of course. Until you realise that these alignments tend to mount. The leaked environment chapter of the TPP shows how environmental degradation will be tolerated in favour of the profit principle. And if there is one thing that this agreement will enshrine, is the profit principle over that of representative democracy.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email:bkampmark@gmail.com
Notes

DARE WE SAY CONSPIRACY?: REMEMBER JOURNALIST MICHAEL HASTINGS AND ALL THOSE “CYBER-CRASH” THEORIES? THEY’RE NOT SO IMPLAUSIBLE AFTER ALL

Dare we say "conspiracy" in the automobile death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings? Well, you tell us. Hastings, you'll recall, died in a fiery car crash on June 18, 2013, in Los Angeles. While some merely thought that the crash was an unusual and unfortunae accident, others - including us - were not so sure. Hastings had, of course, investigated General McCrystal in Afghanistan, causing him to resign. At the time of his untimely death - Hastings was only 33 - he was rumored to be investigating the CIA, though the specific focus of that alleged investigation is not known, though some speculate he was investigating the Director. In any case, Hastings had apparently toward the end of his life become very tense and anxious, and at one point had also asked a friend to borrow his car, as Hastings thought his car was being messed with, though I haven't been able to find any specific mention of how Hastings thought it was being done, nor by whom.
But in any case, the theories soon focused on anomalies of the crash itself, including the incongruous fact that the engine of Hasting's car was apparently ejected from the vehicle during the crash and thrown some distance from the car. These theories quickly concluded that the possibility existed that the car was hacked, and turned into a weapon against Hastings. Things were not helped by the fact that US counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke signed off on the possibility.
Well, now there's these two stories, shared by Mr. R.G. and Mr. V.T.:
Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It
Newest Remote Car Hacking Raises More Questions About Reporter’s Death
As the second article notes, measures are working their way through Congress to pass legislation ostensibly for the purpose of protecting drivers in their vehicles, which seems absurdly contradictory to the surveillance state that COngress, in large part, has allowed America to become.
But for our high octane speculation purposes, however, the scenario raises some disturbing potentials. If indeed Mr. Hastings was murdered through a cyber-attack on his own vehicle(and I am inclinced to think he was), then this would imply a fairly sophisticated player is in the mix. And this in turn would require a thorough investigation of its own, beginning with an attempt to determine, with as much exactitude as possible, for that in turn will establish motivation, and perhaps means. We are looking, in other words, at an automotive version of Global Hawk airplane remote control technology. Personally, I have my doubts that Mr. Hasting's unfortunate death was due simply to his alleged investigations of the CIA or its Director. After all, many people have done similar investigations, published riveting exposes. and have not crashed into trees or telephone poles. In short, a generalized "investigation" doesn't provide anything near the detail needed to make reasonable conclusions or assumptions regarding motive. Until more details are known, we are left with more questions than answers.
We are also left, however, with a number of anomalies, including Hasting's own statements to friends, and a very unusual "accident."

Human Capital – Episode 1: Planned Parenthood’s Black Market In Baby Parts

Planned Parenthood
“We Can See How Much We Can Get Out of It,” says Planned Parenthood Affiliate VP; Whistleblower Who Harvested Aborted Baby Parts Details Traumatic Job in Planned Parenthood Clinics in New Documentary Web Series
SkyWatch TV, July 30–The first episode in a new documentary web series features a woman who once worked in Planned Parenthood clinics describing the profit motive involved in Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal body parts, and includes new admissions from top-level Planned Parenthood leadership about the illicit pricing structure.
The “Human Capital” documentary web series is produced by The Center for Medical Progress and integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to tell the story of Planned Parenthood’s commercial exploitation of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 1, “Planned Parenthood’s Black Market in Baby Parts,” launches today (watch at the bottom of this page).
Episode 1 introduces Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist who unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” at the fetal tissue company and biotech start-up StemExpress in late 2012. “I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” says O’Donnell, who fainted in shock on her first day of work in a Planned Parenthood clinic when suddenly asked to dissect a freshly-aborted fetus during her on-the-job training.
For 6 months, O’Donnell’s job was to identify pregnant women at Planned Parenthood who met criteria for fetal tissue orders and to harvest the fetal body parts after their abortions. O’Donnell describes the financial benefit Planned Parenthood received from StemExpress: “For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage. The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.”
Episode 1 also shows undercover video featuring the Vice President and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) in Denver, CO, Dr. Savita Ginde. PPRM is one of the largest and wealthiest Planned Parenthood affiliates and operates clinics in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada. Standing in the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic pathology laboratory, where fetuses are brought after abortions, Ginde concludes that payment per organ removed from a fetus will be the most beneficial to Planned Parenthood: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).
Dr. Katherine Sheehan, Medical Director emerita of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest in San Diego, describes her affiliate’s long-time relationship with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a middleman company that has been providing aborted fetal organs since 1989: “We’ve been using them for over 10 years, really a long time, you know, just kind of renegotiated the contract. They’re doing the big government-level collections and things like that.”
“Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts is an offensive and horrifying reality that is widespread enough for many people to be available to give first-person testimony about it,” notes David Daleiden, Project Lead for The Center for Medical Progress. “CMP’s investigative journalism work will continue to surface more compelling eyewitness accounts and primary source evidence of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking and selling baby parts for profit. There should be  an immediate moratorium on Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding while Congress and the states determine the full extent of the organization’s lawbreaking.”

And Now for the Robot Apocalypse…

07/28/2015
t800by James Corbett
TheInternationalForecaster.com
July 28, 2015

Well, you can’t blame them for trying, can you?
Earlier today the grandiloquently named “Future of Life Institute” (FLI) announced an open letter on the subject of ‘autonomous weapons.’ In case you’re not keeping up with artificial intelligence research, that means weapons that seek and engage targets all by themselves. While this sounds fanciful to the uninformed, it is in fact a dystopian nightmare that, thanks to startling innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence by various DARPA-connected research projects, is fast becoming a reality. Heck, people are already customizing their own multirotor drones to fire handguns; just slap some AI on that and call it Skynet.
Indeed, as anyone who has seen Robocop, Terminator, Bladerunner or a billion other sci-fi fantasies will know, gun-wielding, self-directed robots are not to be hailed as just another rung on the ladder of technical progress. But for those who are still confused on this matter, the FLI open letter helpfully elaborates: “Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.” In other words, instead of “autonomous weapons” we might get the point across more clearly if we just call them for what they are: soulless killing machines. (But then we might risk confusing them with the psychopaths at the RAND Corporation or the psychopaths on the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the psychopaths in the CIA or the psychopaths in the White House…)
In order to confront this pending apocalypse, the fearless men and women at the FLI have bravely stepped up to the plate and…written a polite letter to ask governments to think twice before developing these really effective, well-nigh unstoppable super weapons (pretty please). Well, as I say, you can’t blame them for trying, can you?
Well, yes. Actually you can. Not only is the letter a futile attempt to stop the psychopaths in charge from developing a better killing implement, it is a deliberate whitewashing of the problem.
According to FLI, the idea isn’t scary in and of itself, it isn’t scary because of the documented history of the warmongering politicians in the US and the other NATO countries, it isn’t scary because governments murdering their own citizens was the leading cause of unnatural death in the 20th century. No, it’s scary because “It will only be a matter of time until [autonomous weapons] appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc.” If you thought the hysteria over Iran’s nuclear non-weapons program was off the charts, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait till the neo-neocons get to claim that Assad or Putin or the enemy of the week is developing autonomous weapons!
singularityIn fact, the FLI doesn’t want to stop the deployment of AI on the battlefield at all. Quite the contrary. “There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans” the letter says before adding that “AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so.” In fact, they’ve helpfully drafted a list of research priorities for study into the field of AI on the assumption that AI will be woven into the fabric of our society in the near future, from driverless cars and robots in the workforce to, yes, autonomous weapons.
So who is FLI and who signed this open letter. Oh, just Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Nick Bostrom and a host of Silicon Valley royalty and academic bigwigs. Naturally the letter is being plastered all over the media this week in what seems suspiciously like an advertising campaign for the machine takeover, with Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk having already broached the subject in the past year, as well as the Channel Four drama Humans and a whole host of other cultural programming coming along to subtly indoctrinate us that this robot-dominated future is an inevitability. This includes extensive coverage of this topic in the MSM, including copious reports in outlets like The Guardian telling us how AI is going to merge with the “Internet of Things.” But don’t worry; it’s mostly harmless.
…or so they want us to believe. Of course what they don’t want to talk about in great detail is the nightmare vision of the technocractic agenda that these technologies (or their forerunners) are enabling and the transhumanist nightmare that this is ultimately leading us toward. That conversation is reserved for proponents of the Singularity like Ray Kurzweil and any attempts to point out the obvious problems with this idea are poo-pooed as “conspiracy theory.”
singularity2And so we have suspect organizations like the “Future of Life Institute” trying to steer the conversation on AI into how we can safely integrate these potentially killer robots into our future society even as the Hollywood programmers go overboard in steeping us in the idea. Meanwhile, those of us in the reality-based community get to watch this grand uncontrolled experiment with the future of our world unfold like the genetic engineering experiment and the geoengineering experiment.
What can be done about this AI / transhumanist / technocratic agenda? Is it possible to be derailed? Contained? Stopped altogether? How?

Malaysian Airlines MH370 and MH17. A Criminologist Questions: What are the Probabilities? Is it a Mere Coincidence?

Vladimir Putin is to Blame, according to the Mainstream Media

poker
Both the MH17 and the MH370 crashes are currently in the news. While MH17 is the object of the UN Security Council Resolution, US officials confirm that debris of MH370 have been found in the French island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean.
This incisive July 2014 article by Criminology Professor Jason Kissner of California State University analyzes the relationship between the two Malaysian airline crashes.  
*       *      *
Four months after the vanishing of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was allegedly brought down by a surface-to-air missile.
Western Mainstream Media (MSM) hastened–on the basis of very thin evidence joined with the refusal to even mention other evidence–to attribute blame to the “appropriate” party, which in the case of flight 17 happens to be Vladimir Putin.
 Careful observers of the mainstream media processes are well aware that this sort of thing is what we are to expect, and undoubtedly helps explain the very low level of trust people place in MSM institutions.
 Here, of course with the leave of figures such as Anderson Cooper and Barack Obama, we are going to do some of our own thinking about, and analysis of, certain key pieces of evidence.  In so doing, we should not be surprised if we arrive at conclusions different from that which our Ruling Class masters would have us believe.
 First, let’s present the currently prevailing theory as to what happened.  K.T. McFarland, national security analyst at Fox, presents “three possible scenarios” pertaining to the attribution of responsibility.
Of the three “possible” scenarios McFarland presents (and one wonders exactly what scenarios are supposed to be impossible), McFarland (and many others) appears to favor the prospect that pro-Russian rebel separatists are responsible.  The theory is that motive and opportunity coincide in that group better than they do with respect to other potential malfeasants.
 Maybe the separatists are responsible.  But the case is hardly closed, and plenty of evidence that people such as McFarland choose to ignore should be considered as objectively as possible.
First, similar to Malaysia Airlines flight 370, there is evidence that contact with Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was lost in advance of the wayward event. Next, and once more like flight 370, we have evidence that the pilot of Flight 17 actually diverted–purportedly on the basis of a vague sense of being “uncomfortable”–the craft into the dangerous warzone region where it was shot down.
Next, reflect that, on the same day, 55 planes flew over Donetsk just as flight 17 did and that these flight patterns have been in place for some time.
The Normal MH17 Flight Path vs. the Warzone flight path over Donesk Oblast on July 17th
IngoGraph
And here is evidence reported by Zero Hedge that may be very important:
 “While there are various questions that have already emerged from what was supposed to be Ukraine’s “slam dunk” proof confirming Russian rebel involvement in today’s MH-17 tragedy, perhaps one just as gaping question emerges when one looks at what is clearly an outlier flight path in today’s final, and tragic, departure of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
 Perhaps the best visualization of what the issue is, comes from Vagelis Karmiros who has collated all the recent MH-17 flight paths as tracked by Flightaware and shows that while all ten most recent paths pass safely well south of the Donetsk region, and cross the zone above the Sea of Azov, it was only today’s tragic flight that passed straight overhead Donetsk.”

 The Karmiros evidence could of course be wrong, but can we prove that it is wrong now, and can we be 100% confident that what the MSM tells us is true?
 And, if it’s wrong, why hasn’t the Karmiros evidence been refuted?  The answer to that is that it’s probably because it hasn’t received any discussion.  Why not?
 Next, here are a few other curious tidbits.  The flight 17 crash shares an anniversary with the demise of TWA 800, which AT’s own Jack Cashill has compellingly argued was, in fact, brought down by a missile on July 17, 1996 and subsequently covered up by the US government.  And, the maiden flight of flight 17 occurred in 1997 on the date of, you guessed it, July 17.
[Moreover Russia's last ruling monarch of the Romanov family Tsar Nicholas II, together with his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei were executed on 17 July 1918. Subliminal message to Putin? No doubt it's another "coincidence"]
 So “17s” are everywhere.  To be sure, though, each of the items in the last paragraph is easily ranged under the heading “coincidence.”
But before we do that, there is one more piece of evidence to consider.  Upon having done so, we will synthesize all of the evidence by thinking in terms of probabilities.
 There is evidence at YouTube that seems to indicate that CNN recently used footage of a helicopter downing in Syria and represented it as depicting the downing of a helicopter, by pro-Russian forces, in the Ukraine (go to 2:39 for a photo comparison).
Now to the probabilistic summary.
Reasoning with probabilities is notoriously tricky, so we have to proceed carefully.  Fortunately, a simple coin flip analogy can be employed.  If you flip a fair 50/50 coin twice, four possible sequences can occur, and each has an equal likelihood of occurring {HH, HT, TH, TT}.  The equal likelihood of the possible sequences flows from the standard supposition that the coin flips are independent of one another, which is simply to say that an H on flip 1 says nothing about whether flip 2 will produce an H or a T.
The analogy with MH 17 is as follows.  If five months ago (before the vanishing of MH 370) you had contemplated the likelihood that the next two major airline disasters to receive massive global coverage would each involve Malaysia Airlines, you would have been justified in concluding that the likelihood was very low indeed.  By analogy, it would be like specifying only an {H, H} sequence as the outcome ahead of time (a {T, T} sequence would represent the same airline as having been involved, but not Malaysia Airlines).
 Now what the Western mainstream media are implicitly arguing is that MH 370 and MH 17 have no real link and are only connected with massive airline disasters in recent months by chance; they’re saying that it could just as well have been any two flights so linked (by analogy, {H, H} or {H, T} or {T, H} or {T, T}).  If this argument is valid, nothing at all should be made at all of the fact that Malaysia Airlines was involved in both instances, since all possible sequences are accounted for and no sequence is much more likely than any other.
And yet, the evidence presented in this article suggests that MH 370 and MH 17 are linked in ways that might not be due to chance.  Both MH 370 and MH 17 appear to have lost communicative contact, and both appear to have veered off course on very unusual routes.  How many aircraft of other airlines have done so in recent months, never mind how many of the 55 aircraft over Donetsk did so on July 17?  How many aircraft other than MH 17 had their inaugural voyage on the date of July 17?
These considerations suggest that, in fact, in the cases of MH 370 and MH 17 we might not be dealing with a “fair coin.”
In turn, the following very reasonable question presents itself: was Malaysia Airlines in particular targeted on July 17, and, if so, what ragtag rebel would have even been in a position to do that (especially given the route alteration, if true), and, if so, how did they accomplish it?
 One suspects that the MSM will completely ignore these considerations and will likely coalesce, for several reasons, around an account that blames the episode on an accidental discharge that Putin can nonetheless be blamed for given the hostilities in the region.
However that may be, one thing is almost certainly true: the likelihood that Western MSM would in any way, shape, or form discuss evidence implicating U.S. aligned interests in the demise of MH 17 is virtually nil, no matter how compelling such evidence might be.
Dr. Jason Kissner is Associate Professor of Criminology at California State University. Dr. Kissner’s research on gangs and self-control has appeared in academic journals.  His current empirical research interests include active shootings.   You can reach him at crimprof2010@hotmail.com.