ATF agent says "Fast and Furious" program let guns "walk" into hands of Mexican drug cartels with aim of tracking and breaking a big case
(CBS News) WASHINGTON - Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.
He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?
"Yes ma'am," Dodson told CBS News. "The agency was."
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.
Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public.
"I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. "Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen."
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.
ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.
So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.
Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.
One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."
Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."
Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.
Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."
There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..."
"We just knew it wasn't going to end well. There's just no way it could," Dodson said.
Investigation: US ATF Secretly Arming Mexican Drug Cartels
According to Dodson, "They said, 'Did you hear about the border patrol agent?' And I said, 'Yeah.' And they said 'Well it was one of the Fast and Furious guns.' There's not really much you can say after that."
Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry's murder.
Dodson said, "I felt guilty. I mean it's crushing. I don't know how to explain it."
Sen. Grassley began investigating after his office spoke to Dodson and a dozen other ATF sources -- all telling the same story.
The response was "practically zilch," Grassley said. "From the standpoint that documents we want - we have not gotten them. I think it's a case of stonewalling."
Dodson said he hopes that speaking out helps Terry's family. They haven't been told much of anything about his murder - or where the bullet came from.
"First of all, I'd tell them that I'm sorry. Second of all, I'd tell them I've done everything that I can for them to get the truth," Dodson said. "After this, I don't know what else I can do. But I hope they get it."
Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartels. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.
Late tonight, the ATF said it will convene a panel to look into its national firearms trafficking strategy. But it refused to comment specifically on Sharyl's report.
Statement from Kenneth E. Melson, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:
"The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will ask a multi-disciplinary panel of law enforcement professionals to review the bureau's current firearms trafficking strategies employed by field division managers and special agents. This review will enable ATF to maximize its effectiveness when undertaking complex firearms trafficking investigations and prosecutions. It will support the goals of ATF to stem the illegal flow of firearms to Mexico and combat firearms trafficking in the United States."
Twenty minutes before a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam landed at Detroit, some kind of firework was set off: ‘A passenger on board has reportedly set off fireworks as it was arriving in the US city of Detroit,’ quoting from an early report: “It sounded like a firecracker in a pillowcase,” said Peter Smith, a traveller from the Netherlands. “First there was a pop, and then (there) was smoke.” Flames were seen: ‘“It started to spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”
That was the experience. A photograph shows unsinged seats, along with fire-extinguishers and a bit of white powder on the floor. I suggest that the plane was never in danger. We have been shown no photos of seats burnt by fire on that flight 273 to Detroit. What people saw seems to have been a sparkler-type effect. The 23-year old ‘terrorist’ (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) was later reported to have had sixty grams of PETN (a military explosive) strapped to his crotch, which ‘failed’ to blow up – I do not recommend believing that bit! His trousers may have burnt and he spent a day or so in hospital being treated for burns. If he had had that small amount of PETN positioned on a seat and cushioned underneath him, and if he could have made it explode, using a detonater – which he did not have – then such an explosion would not have caused significant damage to the plane. Strapped against the wall maybe – but not with him sitting on it.
A Mr Kurt Haskell of Newport, Michigan and his partner happened to be sitting near their boarding gate in Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified South-Asian man. Mutallab was poorly dressed, but his friend was dressed in an expensive suit. The suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time.’” (Mutallab is Nigerian). The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn’t see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane (Source).
Let’s now hand over the story to Ian Crane (1), he tells it so well…
‘Public reaction to the Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow Northwest Airlines flight 273 all over Detroit, by allegedly igniting explosive strapped to his nuts, can be gauged by the willingness with which travellers will now accept the four hour check-in time for flights to the US and the quiet acceptance with which they subject themselves to increasingly invasive body searches. The campaign to make air travel a nightmare experience, for all but the political elite, continues to be ramped up. The US Transport Security Administration has just issued the following directive to all airlines flying to US destinations:
‘Passengers are also required to remain seated during the last hour of flights, and cannot access carry-on baggage or have blankets, pillows or other personal belongings on their lap during this time.
Aircraft phones, internet service, TV programming and global positioning systems are to be disabled prior to boarding and during all phases of flight. Flight crews are also prohibited from making any announcements to passengers about the flight path or the plane’s position over cities or landmarks.’
‘Not only is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab permitted on to the plane without a passport, he is accompanied by a ‘smart dressed man’ who smooths the way for him. Call it a hunch but I’d say it’s fair bet that the ‘Indian looking gentleman’ was on the payroll of the Mossad/CIA/NSA/MI6 globalist terror organisation. The CCTV cameras that cover the Schipol Airport complex should provide all the evidence necessary to identify and apprehend Umar’s smartly attired escort but I doubt any of us will fall off our chairs in shock, when it is announced that there was a system failure at the precise times that the scruffy student and his dapper chaperone were making their way to the gate.
‘Neither will anyone be surprised to learn that the Company responsible for security at Schipol is none other that ICTS. The same company that was responsible for the security at all the airports from where the planes allegedly departed on 9/11 and was responsible for the security camera network on the London Underground on 7/7. Clearly ICTS is regarded as a ‘safe pair of hands’ by the perpetrators of these Hollywood style events but that should be of no real surprise to anyone who has conducted even the most cursory research into this organisation. If ICTS is new to you, here’s a few selected links to bring you up to speed:
‘Conveniently for the Nobel Peace Prize winning President of the USA, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab commenced his journey in Yemen. Thus providing the necessary excuse to bomb the crap out of another oil producing country in the name of ‘Freedom & Democracy’. Yemen is strategically essential to controlling the entrance to the Red Sea (effectively the southern end of the Suez Canal) but perhaps even more importantly, it provides access to the southern Rub Al-Khalil or Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. Surely, you only need one guess as to what lies beneath the largest expanse of sand dunes on the planet?… The people who live in this part of the world live simple lives and are incredibly generous with their hospitality but by a quirk of the geo-strategic importance of this generally unspoilt landscape, it’s about to become another military base as the globalists go about the business of securing Full Spectrum Dominance. The perpetrators of these collective atrocities are confident in their belief that the vast majority of humanity remain ignorant and disinterested in the pernicious globalist agenda ….’ (31.12.09)
That overview gives us about as much sense as this story is ever going to make! Next we move over to the brilliant US expert on ‘synthetic terror’, Webster Tarpley, for some of the complicated background. (His www. Tarpley.net has the geopolitical analysis). Umar he described as ‘a protected patsy or puppet deliberately used by the US intelligence community for a Christmas Day provocation designed to facilitate US meddling in the civil war in Yemen’, and as ‘a set-up provocation controlled by US intelligence,’ adding: ‘Banker’s son Umar Farouk had been denied an entrance visa to Great Britain , and had been denounced to the US Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, as a possible terrorist by his own father in mid-November. His one-way ticket to Detroit was bought in Ghana for cash, and he reportedly entered Nigeria illegally. In Amsterdam , he was assisted at the Northwest Airlines gate by a “well-dressed Indian” who explained that Umar Farouk had no passport. He did have PETN, the same substance supposedly used by the mentally impaired shoe bomber Richard Reid in his abortive attack of eight years ago. In spite of all this, Umar Farouk’s US entry visa was never revoked, he never made it onto the no-fly list, and he was never thoroughly searched. These egregious lapses in normal procedure show that Umar Farouk was part of an orchestration sponsored by the CIA, which has now yielded 4 solid days of media hysteria. Obama has formulated his new version of the Axis of Evil, composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan , Somalia , and Yemen… The new CIA-promoted synthetic entity is “Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP, a gaggle of US patsies, dupes, and fanatics which is claiming credit for the Umar Farouk incident. The US hopes to further dominate the exit from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, while also easing pressure on the battered US dollar by jacking up the price of oil in an atmosphere of tension on the Arabian peninsula.’
Tarpley has well described the motive for the act as: ‘the desire of a rogue network inside the US government to unleash a new wave of Islamophobic hysteria to rehabilitate the discredited “global war on terror” strategy in a new and more sophisticated form, while imposing a new round of outrageous and degrading search procedures at airports (such as the full body scanners peddled by the venal Michael Chertoff) to soften up the American people for heightened totalitarian control and political repression.’ Yep, that’s about it. He is here envisioning a rogue network that is responsible. As to how Mutallab was gotten onto the plane despite a pile of documented terror-links (mainly over 2008-9, after he had left UCL): ‘Only the active complicity of treasonous moles can explain Mutallab’s miraculous immunity to all surveillance and screening despite all these factors of suspicion.’ For Tarpley’s account of how such rogue networks operate see his 9/11: Synthetic Terror: Made in the USA.
Several different strands are weaving into this complex fake-terror event. Once the young man becomes news we are never allowed to hear him speak. As in, eg ‘No of course I didn’t try to blow my balls up.’ That is always the case with patsies (ie, set-up victims) – you never get to hear their view. A question you might like to ask is, ‘How come a former president of University College London’s Islamic Society with a millionaire uncle would want to perform so clueless an act?’ – You won’t hear that answered! Why would a young, wealthy Nigerian want to commit suicide over the plight of Afghanistan – if that was supposed to be his motive? Abdulmutallab (if that was him) boards Flight 253 in Amsterdam with only a carry-on bag for his international flight. After the event, he seemed strangely vacant and calm, and offered no resistance when floored. A flight attendant sprayed a fire extinguisher and a passenger jumped on him, but “He didn’t fight back at all,” Kurt Haskell recalled. Witnesses also reported a man standing ten rows behind Abdulmutallab who used his camcorder to film the whole incident starting before it began – no-one has heard of him since, or found out who he was.
Had this young man been President of UCL Islamic Society 2006-7, when he lived in a £4 million pounds apartment in Central London, although only a student? The UCL Union has put out a statement confirming that the young man arrested is that same person, however I spoke at length to members of the Islamic Society at UCL (my old college) and they do not have anyone there who recalls him from three years ago, or even photos of him as their president. I urged them to post a more cautious statement on their site, noting that no images of his face appear either from the plane photos or from the Detroit trial (nor, for that matter, Amsterdam airport). The young man must have had considerable ability, to become President in his second year as an undergraduate (he studied mechanical engineering).The luxury flat he lived in was registered to a US company. I suggest reflecting a bit more on first the statement which UCL initially put out on this subject: ‘But the college said it wasn’t certain the student was the same person who was on the plane. (Source)’
Second Suspect Detained
Kurt Haskell recalled that after landing there was another suspect handcuffed at the airport – this emerged on the Alex Jones show of 1st January. The FBI has changed its tune several times in explaining this. Haskell says the detained passengers were told this man was identified by a bomb-sniffing dog as having explosives in his luggage. He recalled the following FBI announcement: “We have those (Plural) we believe are responsible for this in custody, we will now be doing interviews with each of you and then you are free to go.” “Appearing on The Alex Jones Show yesterday, Haskell related how after being allowed to disembark from the plane by officials, passengers were detained in customs with their carry-on luggage for six hours while they waited to be interrogated by the FBI. Bomb sniffing dogs then detected a possible explosive device in the luggage of an Indian man around 30 years old before the man was arrested and led away to an interrogation room. The probability that there was a bomb in the man’s luggage was all but confirmed when the FBI moved the passengers to another location. “You’re being moved,” the FBI told them, “it is not safe here. I’m sure you all saw what happened and can read between the lines and why you’re being moved.” The identity of the second man has not been discussed by authorities or the media and Haskell’s description of his own interview with the FBI suggests that the feds are deliberately trying to bury the notion that the bomber had one or more accomplices.
A week later, Amsterdam security has admitted (Haskell points out) that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures” and he has challenged them to define what they mean by that. Had they scanned its barcode, a lot of damning information would have come up. Also, Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the “sharp dressed man” that he alluded to – but, as Haskell points out this has not been released anywhere. He has appealed to them: ‘Release the video!’ Let’s have a quote from him on his sense of trauma in the aftermath: ‘Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans.’ The world is indeed fortunate for the integrity of Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori, and let us hope they do not have to pay too high a price for their centrally-important testimony.
A Triune plot
It turns out that the Detroit Christmas bomber was deliberately and intentionally allowed to keep his US entry visa as the result of a national security override issued by an as yet unknown US intelligence or law-enforcement agency with the goal of blocking the State Department’s planned revocation of that visa. This is the result of hearings held on January 27 before the House Homeland Security Committee. Commentred Tarpley, ‘What we see here is a classic example of the use of a national security override on the part of subversive moles who are performing their most basic responsibility of protecting a patsy by preventing him from being arrested or otherwise interfered with until that patsy can perform his assigned task and produce the desired incident, with the goal of inducing an intensive political response in the form of a wave of public hysteria… We do not need body scanners at airports. We need mole detectors installed … The urgent necessity is now to find out precisely who issued a critical override that allowed Mutallab to keep his visa and board his flight to Detroit.’
The smartly-dressed Indian man who accompanied Umar at the Amsterdam airport is suspected by Asian intelligence services of being an agent of India’s Research and Analysis Wing. His influence convinced airline and airport security personnel that Mutallab was a bona-fide Sudanese refugee. This event is being viewed as a false flag operation carried out by the intelligence tripartite grouping of the CIA, Mossad, and RAW, according to Asian intelligence sources who closely monitor the activities of these three agencies in India and Southeast Asia.
Binary Munitions
On Friday, January 8th Umar Fizzlepants (as he is being called) was in court in Detriot, pleading not guilty. The court was told, he had ‘tried to destroy the plane carrying nearly 300 people by injecting chemicals into a package of explosives concealed in his underwear.’ What chemicals could those possibly have been? So-called ‘binary munitions’ involve an alleged deadly explosive made by mixing two harmless chemicals together. Major fake terror trials have hinged upon this concept, notably the Heathrow ‘liquid bomb’ hoax. The chemicals involved always have to remain unspecified – because you can’t actually do it! Promoting such a story means relying upon the cluelessness and servility of the media – always a safe bet. You’ve seen the Hollywood films that use binary munitions, so you will believe it, won’t you?
The Defence of that trial ought to have asked the simple question, what was the liquid in the syringe that would have caused the PETN to explode? No liquid will do that, it needs to have a detonator. PETN is a high explosive, not easy to detonate, and it will only burn slowly if ignited. This story involves sixty grams of PETN being found (possibly with some TATP according to the Wikipedia account) and let’s hope they are not allowed to change this – these fake terror stories often involve considerable vacillation over the chemistry involved. The Phantom Menace – you have to believe it!
No image Seen – Pictures of the court case had his face blurred out – was this really the same person who had been at UCL for three years? ‘There were no pictures of Umar taken inside the courtroom or anywhere outside it for that matter. So right now, all we have is the “good word” of those helpful FBI and CIA types as far as Umar’s identity is concerned. Oh, well, we do have that one picture of him on the plane where they blurred, out his face… for some reason.’ (Scott Creighton)
Fake Jihad videos
“Jihadist websites”, produced a picture of Mutallab with what they claim is the flag of the media arm of the dreamed-up “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” and a message from ther group claiming Mutallab as one of their own:
“We tell the American people that since you support the leaders who kill our women and children … we have come to slaughter you (and) will strike you with no previous (warning), our vengeance is near,” the statement said
For comparison, on July 7th 2005, a message from the unheard-of ‘Al Qaeda in Europe’ was posted on a Houston notice board having connections to the Bush family – and has never been heard of since. I suggest that following account of an expert analysis is highly relevant to the July 7 story, where somewhat similar doubtful-looking ‘Al-qaeda’ images of two of the alleged four ‘terrorists’ were promoted.
‘Scared yet? Well, the people at Intelcenter really hope you are. They put a lot of effort into producing these messages and videos and images. For example, a 2006 ‘al-qaeda’ video featuring al-Zawahiri released by Intelcenter was analysed by Neal Krawetz, a researcher and computer security consultant. During a presentation he gave at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas in 2007 about analyzing digital photographs and video images for alterations and enhancements, Krawetz showed that the video had been altered in a very interesting way. He could print out the quantization tables in a JPEG file (that indicate how the image was compressed) and determine the last tool that created the image – that is, the make and model of the camera if the image is original or the version of Photoshop that was used to alter and re-save the image. Despite this evidence, we are being asked to believe that the latest message and photo from ‘al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ that IntelCenter just happened to find on a “Jihadist internet message board” that links Mutallab with ‘al-Qaeda in Yemen’ is authentic!’
The Axis of Evil, readjusted
This Christmas-surprise story licenses attacks against the tiny nation of Yemen. ‘We’re reminded that yes, Yemen has oil and natural gas reserves worth stealing’ noted one commentator. Its villages began to be strafed with unmanned drones a few weeks before this event. Obama had personally issued the order for US air strikes in Yemen on 17 December 2009, which killed scores of civilians, including women and children. Concordant with this, he re-defined the ‘Axis of Evil’ on December 16th, to include the Yemen. Both Pakistan and the Yemen were now being broadcast as foci of ‘Al-qaeda.’ Let’s quote Tarpley on this weighty issue: ‘As a result of Mutallab’s handiwork, Obama has now declared a new Axis of Evil composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan , Somalia , and Yemen . Yemen in particular has been catapulted to the center of international attention by an Anglo-American propaganda blitzkrieg of monumental proportions.’ Iran is off the list! Local officials and witnesses in the area of Mahsad, the site of the heaviest US bombardment, put the number of those killed at more than 60 and said the dead were mostly civilians. They denied that the target was an al Qaeda stronghold.
Deadly X-ray Exposure
On the same day as the Detroit trial, January 8th, President Obama announces one billion dollars for airport X-ray full body scanners to be implemented: ‘We are at war’ he explained (Jan 8th). Perhaps he feels that the forty percent incidence of death by cancer in the USA, the highest rate in the world, needs to be pushed up higher. If so, this would be a startlingly effective way of achieving that.
The most lucrative growth industry of our times is the “terror” business, churning out police state technology – and it isn’t over-bothered about civilian radiation impact. Suddenly, very expensive and invasive full-body scans at airports is being called for, that will enable Israeli security firms to ogle naked images of men, women and children at airports, using cancer-inducing X-ray scanners. Alarming headlines appeared, such as
Full-Body Scanners to Fry Travelers With Radiation
Strip Search All 18-28 Year Old Muslim Men At Airports
These millimeter wave (MMW) are a type of X-ray device, but millimetre wave machines give more of a 3-D image. A path has been cleared for the government to publicly roll out these full-body scanners after the ‘failed terrorist’ attempt on flight 253. Neocons are calling for the government to implement the human x-ray machines on a nationwide scale, giving travellers unhealthy amounts of ionising radiation.
Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at the prestigious University of California, Berkeley, says there is no safe dose level of ionizing radiation. Virtually all passengers and airline crews who pass through airport screening checkpoints in the U.S. may soon be forced to submit to compulsory, whole-body X-ray exposure, with some fliers “fried” several times in one day.
This high-energy radiation is positioned between microwaves and infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. It seems that these ‘terahertz’-ray scanners will be operated by non-healthcare, hourly wage-earners, not trained in radiation medicine.
The UK has been contemplating use of CCTV-type X-ray technology on the streets, to ‘detect terrorists’. BBC Hypes X-ray body scanners 12.1.10) One in 9 UK women are liable to get breast cancer, that’s a higher rate than elsewhere in Europe, and this is especially affected by X-ray scanners.
A Socialist View
Socialists and ‘peace activists’ will not go near ‘false-flag terror.’ They will not go near it because of a virtue they call ‘solidarity.’ They experience a unity in their (somewhat outdated) struggle. The idea that an act of deception, or almost of enchantment, whereby something quite nonexistent is given the semblance of reality, in order to generate collective hate and fear, can have a central role in modern politics – that cannot be on their agenda. It would necessitate Thought on their part – help, help, which would split their movement between those who understood what was happening and the lazy majority who would denounce them as ‘conspiracy theorists.’ But, it is of interest to see how far they go in this case, and their position is what we call ‘LIHOP’ rather than ‘MIHOP’ – ‘let it happen on purpose’, not ‘make it happen on purpose.’ The Obama admin had confessed to a failure to ‘join the dots’ and here is the World Socialist Website responding – making a rather implausible analogy to 9/11:
Eight years after 9/11, with all of the still unanswered questions surrounding the attacks that were used to justify an explosion of American militarism, the attempt to gloss over an event that nearly cost the lives of 300 people with this hackneyed metaphor does not hold water. The general outlines of the Northwest bombing attempt and the 9/11 attacks are startlingly similar. One might even say that what is involved is a modus operandi. In both cases, those alleged to have carried out the actions had been the subject of US intelligence investigations and surveillance and had been allowed to enter the country and board flights under conditions that would normally have set off multiple security alarms. Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes.
There were a whole lot of preceding ‘warnings’ that had been received by British and American intel about this character, whereby under normal circumstances there is no way that Umar would have been allowed to board a plane to America, especially without a passport. No doubt this is significant. However, the central issue is not seen by this author – namely that the seat on which the patsy was sitting appears hardly to have been burnt, and the story is inherently impossible even just from a chemical viewpoint; the ‘lone nut’ terrorist was accompanied by others who somehow facilitated the event. Socialists are not seeing how this event has been constructed, and how the central figure is a patsy – just as they have failed to discern how the 19 hijackers on 9/11 had no role in making that event happen.
One could view this incident as a follow-on to the Heathrow liquid bomb hoax, where some Muslims were arrested for allegedly having the intention of blowing up planes over America. It had a similar crackpot chemistry, but in that case nothing actually happened – some young men may have bragged of what they might do in internet chat rooms but it was hard to see anything else. At least Umar got onto a plane. Both of these constructed fake-terror events entailed a vast inconvenience to passengers. Here is my analysis of that earlier event.
The Truth
A BBC film on this topic disgracefully omitted just about everythng we have here considered - How Safe Are our Skies? Detroit Flight 253 on BBC2, March 9th [NB this link may not work for long, BBC films are often removed] Note that even the BBC could not get any film of Mutallab – not in Amsterdam, not on the plane, not in Detroit.
Fortunately, a fine riposte to it has appeared, see ‘Wideshut.co.uk’ where a young British lad explains things! He exposes the BBC cover-up, its fabricated story. Let’s hope this articulate young man continues expose the NWO agenda. His account concludes with some footage of Kurt Haskell the witness, absent from the BBC’s version.
I like the comments. His talk was ’a video response to BBC (British Brainwashing Corporation) – Flight 253‘ and here are three replies: ‘The underwear bomber had what amounted to overgrown firecrackers strapped to his crotch … His “bomb” barely gave him crotch burns, let along doing any damage to a plane…They need to keep the “terror” alerts up, they needed an excuse for more security in airports (see Michael Chertoff, evil bstard).’ ‘Sad to see the once mighty instrument of truth that is the BBC turning into North Korean state television.’ ‘I think one of the main things we fail to address is that the NWO and its constituents are now committing such atrocities right in plain view.’
Here’s a Yemen war upgrade, from Chossudovsky, September 2010: ‘Yemen, like Afghanistan and Iraq before it, is being targeted not to eradicate terrorism—the killing of civilians with cruise missiles and drone attacks will only produce more recruits for terrorist attacks—but because of its strategic location, bordering Saudi Arabia, the number-one oil exporter, and the vital Bab al-Mandab strait, through which three million barrels of oil pass daily.’
1. Ian was formerly President of the London 9/11 truth movement, and more recently has masterminded the ‘Alternative View’ conferences: http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk/
The Christmas Day attempt by the son of a prominent Nigerian banker and business tycoon connected closely to top Nigerian leaders to detonate a chemical improvised explosive device aboard Delta Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam Schiphol to Detroit was a false flag operation carried out by the intelligence tripartite grouping of the CIA, Mossad, and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), according to WMR’s Asian intelligence sources who closely monitor the activities of the three agencies in India and Southeast Asia.
The tripartite alliance of the CIA, Mossad, and RAW were behind the terrorist attacks on Mumbai earlier last year and on December 28 Rupee News reported the three agencies worked together, along with former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents, to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: “The Benazir assassination was pre-planned and executed via triangulation by KHAD, RAW, CIA and Mossad using the most modern radioactive weapons available in the market. The Israeli PM publicly admitted helping India in Kargil recently. The purpose of the covert KHAD, RAW, CIA, Mossad operations is to destabilize Pakistan. The IMF plan to de-fang Pakistan in 2000 did not work, but provincial autonomy will make the center bankrupt triggering an implosion.”
The outcome of the failed terrorist attempt by Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab on the Detroit-bound plane has resulted in major Christmas gifts for the neocons and militarists who still call the shots on U.S. policy: the deployment of privacy-invasive millimeter wave (MMW) full body scanning equipment at airports in North America and Europe. The ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King (R-NY), who is an ardent defender of the Catholic Church and its prelates in Ireland, has defended the scanning system which can image the naked bodies of passengers, including children and babies, an increase in the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Yemen, retention of US USAPATRIOT Act surveillance provisions, an increase in racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims -- and because Mutallab is African -- blacks in the United States, and more cumbersome travel restrictions for airline passengers.
The neocon propagandists are already spinning counterclaims to reports that indicate that Mutallab was a witting accomplice of a larger plot cooked up by American, Israeli, ajd Indian intelligence agents to carry out yet another false flag terror operation on American soil. The eyewitness testimonies of Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his attorney wife Lori Haskell are being pilloried by the corporate media after the two were featured on major U.S. television networks. Haskell and his wife witnessed a “well-dressed Indian man” arrange for Mutallab to board Delta 253 without a passport at the check-in desk at Schiphol.
Haskell told CBS News: “Only the Indian man spoke, and what he said was, this man needs to board the plane, and he doesn’t have a passport. And the ticket agent then responded saying you need a passport to board the plane, and the Indian man then said he’s from Sudan. We do this all the time.”
WMR has learned that the Indian man is suspected by Asian intelligence services of being a RAW agent who used his influence to convince airline and airport security personnel that Mutallab was a bona fide Sudanese refugee. Mutallab reportedly spent several hours in a Schiphol airport lounge before boarding the Delta flight. Dutch agents are reportedly scanning Schiphol CCTV footage and have reason to believe that Mutallab had accomplices at the airport, which bolsters the witness accounts of the Haskells. The FBI has interviewed the Haskells and the bureau, as is its modus operandi, appears to be intimidating witnesses and pressuring them to support the government’s party line.
The neocon spin machine is also refuting reports that Mutallab traveled to the United States without a passport and that his ticket was only one-way. The facts emerging are that Mutallab was not traveling on a Nigerian passport but on an Italian passport. Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, happens to hold the Italian Order of Merit. In addition, Mutallab’s ticket was purchased in Accra, Ghana, with $2,831 in cash and was later re-issued, on December 16, with a different itinerary at the KLM office in Lagos. The original itinerary was Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit-Amsterdam-Accra but the return leg on January 8, 2010, was changed from Amsterdam to Lagos instead of Accra.
Previously, WMR reported that the security company that cleared Mutallab in Schiphol is ICTS, a firm that is headquartered in Israel and Amstelveen, Netherlands. The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. Reid, who was bound for Antigua, was profiled after he purchased his ticket at a travel agency in the 18th arrondissement in Paris. Reid had previously traveled to Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, Belgium and France and he obtained pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a component of the explosive Semtex, and his specially designed shoes in Amsterdam. Reid was linked by French authorities to French convert to Islam Jerome Courtailler, who, in 2004, was sentenced in absentia by a Dutch court to six years for plotting to attack U.S. targets in Belgium and France. Mutallab’s undershorts also contained PETN.
There is a possibility that Mutallab was recruited to carry out a false flag attack after another one failed on November 13. A Somali man was arrested at Mogadishu airport with the same chemicals, powder, and syringe combination that Mutallab used to ignite his clothing. The Somali man was attempting to board a Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, Djibouti, and Dubai. Daallo is the national flag carrier of Djibouti and is owned by Dubai World’s Istithmar World Aviation (IWA) Holdings. Dubai World’s recent financial woes sent shock waves through the global financial community. It is also noteworthy that Delta 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa, the young man who wrestled Mutallab to the ground and prevented him from carrying out his terrorist mission, was driven to Schiphol on Christmas morning by his friend Chris Van Amersfoort. Van Amersfoort’s Facebook page lists himself as a “fan of” Dubai World’s owner “His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum,” the Emir of Dubai.
Daallo Airlines has an interline agreement with a single U.S. airline, which happens to be Delta Airlines, the same airline that saw Mutallab successfully board its flight 253 in Schiphol. It has similar agreements with other airlines that fly to the United States, including Qatar Airways, Saudia, Ethiopian Airlines, and Alitalia.
Schuringa’s father works for Shell and, in 1993, they were evacuated by the French foreign Legion from Gabon during riots by demonstrators opposed to the tainted re-election of Gabon’s presidential dictator Omar Bongo. The Curacao-born Jasper Schuringa attended film school in Miami and he also lived in Oman. After accusations in the media that he was publicizing himself over the Muttalab incident, Schuringa largely receded from public view. Schuringa was en route to Costa Rica via Detroit to visit his sister. The National Counter-terrorism office in The Hague is being mum about any connections it had with Schuringa, according to the Dutch paper Parool.
On October 18, a little less than a month prior to the attempt by the syringe- and chemical-armed Somali to board the Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu, Shaykh Muqtaar Abu Zubeyr, the leader of Somalia’s radical Al Shahab Islamic Movement, warned Somalis in leaflets distributed in Mogadoshu’s Bakaraha market and other points in the city not to fly on Daallo Airlines, Somalia’s largest carrier, because he said the airline had “close ties” with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, the United States and the “Jewish government” of Israel.
Before moving from Egypt, Mutallab was in an MBA course in Dubai at the time of the Daallo warning. Mutallab later dropped out of school in Dubai.
Mutallab’s father, Umaru, the retired chairman of First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), is among the top elite of Nigeria, counting among his friends the top royalty of northern Nigeria, including the Emir of Gombe, the Emir of Zazzau, and the Sultan of Sokoto, as well as Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, who has been recovering from a mysterious illness in Saudi Arabia. Mutallab’s empire included FBN (UK), which its president described as “the very first UK bank owned by a Nigerian bank and could be counted as an equal to other UK banks.” Mutalan was also a contender to be President of the National Council of the Nigeria Stock Exchange. In 2003, Mutallab formed Nigeria’s first Islamic bank, Jaiz International Bank.
The same bureaucratic stovepiping issues used by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities to explain away the lack of intelligence on the 9/11 attacks are at play with the Delta 253 incident. Of course, all these problems were to have been solved by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence. Mutallab was entered as a terrorist suspect in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database of 500,000 names maintained by the director of National Intelligence’s National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC) but not on the “no fly” list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA).
On November 19, just six days after the Somali attempted to board the plane in Mogadishu with a syringe and chemicals, the elder Mutallab met with the CIA Station Chief at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. Mutallab told the CIA official that he was concerned about the radicalization of his son, who was called “Alfa” -- a term for an Islamic scholar -- while attending the British International School in Lome, Togo. The elder Mutallab was quite emphatic that his son posed a significant security risk.
After dropping out of the MBA program in Dubai, the younger Mutallab turned off his cell phone and destroyed the phone’s SIM card before leaving Dubai for Yemen where it is said he wished to improve his Arabic. It is not known who bought Mutallab’s ticket to Detroit in Accra and why the return destination was changed from Accra to Lagos. Mutallab’s multiple entry visa for the United States was issued on June 16, 2008, with an expiration date of June 16, 2010.
In response to the elder Mutallab’s warning, the U.S. embassy in Abuja sent a Visa Viper cable to the State Department and NCTC on November 20. However, Mutallab’s name was not added to the no-fly list. The State Department is refusing to disclose the classification of Mutallab’s visa and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly is refusing to reveal information on Mutallab’s visa application.
The Daily Trust of Abuja penned the following editorial in the aftermath of the flight 253 incident: “The story caused anxiety among regular air travellers, not only for the safety of planes, but also for the kind of reception that Nigerian travellers to Europe and the US, especially Muslim ones, are likely to get in the next months and years. The story also excited Northern Nigeria’s many conspiracy theorists, who think another grand Western plot is in the offing to tarnish the image of Muslims, possibly as a prelude to another invasion.” The editorial added, “Among officials of Nigeria’s embattled Federal Government, though, the story caused a mix of anxiety and relief. Anxiety, because it threatens to throw this country’s fitful Rebranding Campaign into further chaos. But it provided welcome relief from endless newspaper commentaries on President Yar’adua’s health.”
The Nigerians are obviously suspicious also about those behind the attempt on the aircraft. The Abuja editorial continues: “Bringing down a plane is not a thought that comes easily to people in Northern Nigeria. Most people here, with me as a typical example, cannot breathe easily in a plane until it hits the tarmac. A man who holds fast to a plane’s aluminium frame for support during a turbulent take-off hardly can think of bombing it. This explosive substance that Faruk allegedly used in the Delta Airlines plane, pentaerythritol or PETN, may be known to British school kids, but I have never heard of it. To think that I once taught in a university’s Faculty of Science. If indeed Faruk told the Americans that he was an Al-Qaeda operative, then he was a very poor one, to be frank. His bomb, which he said he got in Yemen, was weak [exploding like a fire cracker] and technically deficient [failed to go off properly]. He was easily subdued by a film producer, did not struggle when he was grabbed, did not say anything when they held him, and almost as soon as he reached the FBI station, he began to sing like a canary. Sounds very much like the gentle British lad that he is.”
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report
NEW DELHI: A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary.
Under the Act, an 'intermediary' is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks, web-hosting and internet service providers, search engines, online payment and auction sites as well as cyber cafes are identified as intermediaries. The draft has strangely included bloggers in the category of intermediaries, setting off the online outcry.
Blogs are clubbed with network service providers as most of them facilitate comment and online discussion and preserve the traffic as an electronic record, but equating them with other intermediaries is like comparing apples with oranges, says Pavan Duggal, advocate in the Supreme Court and an eminent cyber law expert.
'This will curtail the freedom of expression of individual bloggers because as an intermediary they will become responsible for the readers' comments. It technically means that any comment or a reader-posted link on a blog which according to the government is threatening, abusive, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, racial, among other omnibus categories, will now be considered as the legal responsibility of the blogger," he explains.
Even Google, the host of Blogger, among India's most popular blogging sites, expressed displeasure at the proposal. "Blogs are platforms that empower people to communicate with one another, and we don't believe that an internet middlemen should be held unreasonably liable for content posted by users," a spokesperson told TOI.
Blogs, which are typically maintained and updated by individuals, have showcased their political importance in recent times and the internet community views these rules as a lopsided attempt to curtail an individual's right to expression.
"If individual blogs are an intermediary, then why can't Facebook and Twitter also be classified as such, as they too receive, store and transmit electronic records and facilitate online discussions," retorts the spokesperson of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based organization, which works on digital pluralism. "These rules will not only bring bloggers and the ISP provider on the same platform, but the due diligence clause will also result in higher power of censorship to the larger player. Imagine your ISP provider blocking your blog because it finds that certain user-comments fit these omnibus terms," the CIS spokesperson added.
Most experts, including Duggal, see these rules as the outcome of the government's one-size-fits-all approach — at least in regulating online activities — and ask for an amendment to the IT Act.
The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites. Private security firms employeed by the government have used the accounts to create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues.
The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.
According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number of false signals to convince users that the poster is in fact a real person. A single user could manage unique background information and status updates for up to 10 fake people from a single computer.
The software enables the government to shield its identity through a number of different methods including the ability to assign unique IP addresses to each persona and the ability to make it appear as though the user is posting from other locations around the world.
Included in HBGary's leaked emails was a government proposal for the government contract. The document describes how they would 'friend' real people on Facebook as a way to convey government messages. The document reads:
"Those names can be cross-referenced across Facebook, twitter, MySpace, and other social media services to collect information on each individual. Once enough information is collected this information can be used to gain access to these individuals social circles.
Even the most restrictive and security conscious of persons can be exploited. Through the targeting and information reconnaissance phase, a person’s hometown and high school will be revealed. An adversary can create a classmates.com account at the same high school and year and find out people you went to high school with that do not have Facebook accounts, then create the account and send a friend request. Under the mutual friend decision, which is where most people can be exploited, an adversary can look at a targets friend list if it is exposed and find a targets most socially promiscuous friends, the ones that have over 300-500 friends, friend them to develop mutual friends before sending a friend request to the target. To that end friend’s accounts can be compromised and used to post malicious material to a targets wall. When choosing to participate in social media an individual is only as protected as his/her weakest friend."
Other documents in the leaked emails include quotes from HBGary CEO Aaron Barr saying, "There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas... Using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example."
Additional emails between HBGary employees, usually originating from Barr, discuss the vulnerability social networking causes.
One employee wrote, "and now social networks are closing the gap between attacker and victim, to the point I just found (via linked-in) 112 females, wives of service men, all stationed at Hurlbert Field FL - in case you don't know this is where the CIA flies all their "private" airlines out of. What a damn joke - the U.S. is no longer the super power in cyber, and probably won't be in other areas soon."
Barr also predicted a steady rise in clandestine or secret government operations to stem the flow of sensitive information. "I would say there is going to be a resurgence of black ops in the coming year as decision makers settle with our inadequacies... Critical infrastructure, finance, defense industrial base, and government have rivers of unauthorized communications flowing from them and there are no real efforts to stop it."
The creation of internet propoganda software is only one of HBGary's controversial activities. According to Wikileaks competetor and occasional collaborator Cryptome.org, several other progressive organizations were intended to be targeted including anti-war activist, anti-torture organizations and groups opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce.
The emails also include a number of other embarrasing entries including the purchase of the book "The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know" from Amazon for $6.76.
There used to be a saying: ”No one makes a name for himself without giving something up”
As a youngster, I was awed by people who ”made it to the top” by creating and innovating corporations, technologies, or simply establishing themselves through sports, music, entertainment, etc. thus becoming millionaires.
Now as I have grown older, I realize how illusory this paradigm really is. I came to the conclusion that if you want to reach the ”top’,’ you have to give up your soul.
Take Mark Zuckerberg for example. He is one of the most ”successful entrepreneurs” in the last decade. Having made a fortune through his Facebook empire, he reaches more than 500 million people worldwide. It seems like a fairytale. A student creates a new interface to connect the people throughout the world. Well, it sounds great doesn’t it? It would, if we were true.
Here is a good video that demonstrates that Facebook was indirectly funded by the CIA with the goal of learning and storing everything there is to know about you. Why? To monitor and ultimately control.
Again, the people have been totally duped by the Facebook-mania and can only see what they are told to see. As my friends say: ”It is to connect people and share information”. In the wake of the recent crisis in Egypt, we might add that Facebook has become not just a data-mining operation, but also a soft power proxy for crisis-creation.
Let’s look at headlines that should cast no doubt about the true character of CIAbook:
US spies invest in internet monitoring technology – Quoted from this article: ”In an attempt to sift through the blizzard of information, the investment arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel, has invested in a software firm that monitors social media.”
TIME Mag Person of the Year 2010 - This link is just a mere reminder of past history and the perversion of ”honoring”those who don’t deserve it. Would you like to share this front cover with Hitler, Stalin, Kissinger, etc.? I sure wouldn’t. Obviously Zuckerberg has done something ”great”. Just my 2 cents about this garbage.
GOOGLE
Google has come under scrutiny over its attempt to eliminate competing search engines and block ”controversial” sites and people, but the biggest controversy came over its alleged ties to the CIA and NSA.
Google founders Sergey M. Brin and Lawrence E. Page are portrayed as average folks, Stanford University students, who teamed up to create a ”superior search engine”. Their attempt to do just that turned out to be so successful that they started to get funding from big players, for example Sun Microsystems. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin#Search_engine_development)
It can be assumed that the CIA and NSA funded them as well. As in the above example of Facebook, don’t forget the Google scandal connected to China last year, where Google simply evaded censorship laws by moving to Hong Kong.
The CIA might have used Google as a soft power proxy in China as well for destabilization operations. Here are a few issues that made the news regarding Google:
I admit I have Facebook. I am not particularly happy about it, but it does facilitate being connected with friends from other places. I try to keep a low profile. Don’t reveal anything or don’t click on trivial buttons, for example the ”Likes”.
Use alternatives to make contact if you can, e.g. email or other messengers. If you have Facebook, you have probably realized how people have literally sold their lives over to it.
Every time I see people revealing things to the finest detail, they don’t think about any consequences, or let’s say, they are not smart enough to care. The scientific dictatorship has done a ”good” job in brainwashing and manipulating the masses. Don’t be fooled by the deceit. The mainstream media has been very reluctant to cover the disturbing Google/Facebook ties as it would expose important assets for the Big Brother machine and its secret use to destabilize.
Zuckerberg or the Google founders would never have gotten the publicity, wealth and success without a CIA or NSA connection. To elaborate on the opening quote, I assume they have been initiated into the Illuminati Order and sold their soul.
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Sandeep Parwaga is a 22 yr old Indian student who currently lives in the UK.
On Friday, a Minnesota jury found that a blogger must pay $60,000 in damages because of statements he published in his blog about a public figure who was subsequently fired from his job. Internet publishers and free speech advocates should pay close attention to this case if it is appealed because the blogger was found liable even though the jury did not find that the blogger's statements were false.
This decision is the latest example of the law's apparent struggle to apply basic constitutional protections to internet publishers. If the Minnesota ruling holds up, it will mean that bloggers will have to worry they will be forced to pay for true statements that they publish that cause a person damages.
In June 2009, Jerry Moore was fired from the University of Minnesota after blogger John Hoff a/k/a Johnny Northside wrote a blog post criticizing the college for hiring Moore. In the post, Hoff criticized Moore's previous work as Executive Director of a community organization and linked Moore to a real estate scandal. In the post, Hoff stated, "Repeated and specific evidence in Hennepin County District Court shows Jerry Moore was involved with a high-profile fraudulent mortgage at 1564 Hillside Ave N."
Following his firing, Moore brought a lawsuit in Minnesota state court (copy of complaint), claiming Hoff was liable for defamation and intentional interference with his contract with the school. The case went to trial last week and on Friday, the jury returned its verdict in favor of Hoff on the defamation claim but against him on the intentional interference with contract count.
The jury found Hoff was not liable for defamation because they were not convinced that the blogger's statements about Moore were false. The jury returned the following interrogatory (answer in bold):
1. Was the statement “Repeated and specific evidence in Hennepin County District Court shows that Jerry Moore was involved with a high-profile fraudulent mortgage at 1564 Hillside Ave. N.” false? No
Although it has been reported elsewhere that the jury found that Hoff's statement was true, that is not precisely correct. The jury found that Moore did not prove that Hoff's statement was false, not that the statement was true.
Since the publishing of a false statement is a basic element of a defamation claim, that finding was enough to defeat the defamation count. Although the judge had previously ruled that Moore was a limited public figure, which would have also required the jury to find actual malice in order to prove defamation, the jury stopped at the first question and did not make a finding on actual malice.
Moore's failure to prove a false statement seemingly should have been the end of the entire case against Hoff, but it was not. Even without a false statement, the court allowed the jury to find against the blogger on the intentional interference with contract claim and awarded Moore $35,000 in damages for lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress.
Generally, intentional interference with contract occurs when someone knows about a contractual relationship and intentionally induces one of the parties to breach the contract. If the other party to the contract suffers damages, he can sometimes sue to recover his losses.
In the absence of First Amendment protections, this case might be a reasonable example of an intentional interference with contract. Hoff's blog posts give the impression that he knew about Moore's contract with the college and that his posts were at least partially intended to convince the college to fire Moore, which they did. However, Constitutional free speech protections should not permit a plaintiff such as Moore to fail to make a defamation case against a publisher, but still be able to backdoor his damages through another claim.
The Minnesota case reminds me of the famous 1988 Hustler Magazine v. Falwell case, in which a jury found that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt was not liable for defamation, but found him liable for intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Reverend Falwell. Unlike the Minnesota case, the Falwell case specifically focused on a publisher's right to publish satire of a public figure rather than the right to publish direct factual claims, but in both cases, a jury found against a publisher even though they found the publisher was not liable for defamation.
Hustler Falwell Parody
Flynt appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, who overturned the jury finding in favor of Falwell because the First Amendment demands that the proper action against a public figure is a defamation suit, not a suit for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The Court reasoned that criticism of public figures, such as Falwell or Moore, is sometimes going to cause unfortunate damages, but this important form of speech must be protected by "a constitutional rule that allows public figures to recover for libel or defamation only when they can prove both that the statement was false and that the statement was made with the requisite level of culpability."
This does not mean that a publisher is free to say anything about a public figure, whether true or false, without repercussions. The Court explained that the First Amendment does not allow unfettered speech without any limits and culpability because of the particularly insidious nature of false statements. The Court stated that a defamation claim, which requires a showing of a false statement, is the appropriate action to bring against a publisher because:
False statements of fact are particularly valueless; they interfere with the truthseeking function of the marketplace of ideas, and they cause damage to an individual's reputation that cannot easily be repaired by counterspeech, however persuasive or effective.
The same analysis should be applied to the Minnesota case. Even if Hoff's statements damaged Moore, who was deemed a public figure, if those statements were not false and did not reach the level of defamation, the First Amendment should protect Hoff from having to pay damages. Allowing Moore to recover for intentional interference with contract is not very different from allowing Jerry Falwell to recover damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. In both cases, a jury has ruled that the publisher's speech was not defamatory, yet the plaintiff is awarded the damages caused by that speech.
Legal commentator Eugene Volokh believes that the ruling against Hoff will be ruled unconstitutional if the case is appealed. He also astutely adds that most states have a rule of intentional interference with contract that states that “One who intentionally causes a third person not to perform a contract or not to enter into a prospective contractual relation with another does not interfere improperly with the other’s contractual relation, by giving the third person … truthful information.”
Hoff's attorneys have stated they plan to appeal the decision and they should. If a decision like this is allowed to stand, it could have a chilling effect on bloggers' ability to do the important work of making true factual accusations against politicians and other public figures.
Bloggers and other publishers must be free to expose these true facts, even if those facts bring a public figure down without fear that they will have to compensate the public figure for the fall. Otherwise, would we find ourselves in a country where Woodward and Bernstein would have to had to pay Richard Nixon for the losses caused by his impeachment and loss of job as President even if they were telling the truth about Watergate?
David Makarewicz is an attorney practicing internet law concerning privacy rights and copyright defense for websites and blogs. Visit Dave at Sites and Blogs to keep up with breaking Internet news.
The following video was posted on YouTube on March 8th, three days before the Earthquakes and Tsunami hit the coast of Japan.
One signature that was particularly of interest to me was the date 3/11. It was the first thing that I noticed when I heard about the news of earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a few hours after it struck. Disasters continue to hit on days associated with the number 11. In a previous post on this blog titled "The Numerology of Disasters or Coincidences?", I mentioned how some of the man-made disasters were associated with certain numbers, particularly the number 11.
I do not know if the Japan Earthquakes and Tsunami were man-made but what I know is that it's very much possible to create 'natural disasters' using weather modification technologies available to some highly advanced nations of the world. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former director of the National Security Council under Jimmy Carter and one of the chief architect of the Trilateral Commission along with David Rockefeller, in his book Between Two Ages wrote:
"Not only have new weapons been developed, but some of the basic concepts of geography and strategy have been fundamentally altered; space and weather control have replaced Suez or Gibraltar as key elements of strategy."
He further states that:
"Technology will make available to the leaders of major nations a variety of techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of security forces need be appraised... One nation may attack a competitor covertly...techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce periods of drought or storm, thereby weakening a nation's capacity and forcing it to accept the demands of the competitor."
The above statements from a highly influential and very powerful globalist, who is hell-bent on creating a New World Order, should not be taken in a light sense. Scalar Weapons technology and technologies such as HAARP could very well be used to create earthquakes in targeted regions of the earth by beaming electro-magnetic waves reflected off from the ozone layer. If such an earthquake is set-off under the ocean, the result would be a tsunami. As mentioned in the above quotes, these technologies could be used to attack nations covertly and the people and leaders of the nation would never even realize it. Such engineered disasters could wreck havoc in targeted nations and drain their whole economy. Is there any better way to bring a nation to their knees and to the bidding of the golbalist. Think about it..
While the above discussions are just speculations and possiblities, I don't know the truth as yet. However, the date 3-11-11 stands out as a prominent signature. Since this year is 2011, the year denoted by the number 11, be prepared and expect to hear more such news this year. We already started off this year with news about the mysterious death of thousands of birds and millions of fish, then it moved to the crisis in middle-east and now disaster in Japan. What's coming next?
"The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened" ~ Joseph Stalin
The following is a clipping from Fox News reporting from the Federal Court in Detroit where the underwear bomber Umar Abdul Mutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up the passanger plane on Christmas day 2009, was taken for trial recently. Fox News makes it appear as a big surprise when a couple of passengers who were in the same flight turned up at the court to testify their eyewitness account of that event. Note that the reporter says, "they have an interesting theory about what really happened".
The couple whom the reporter is referring to were Mr. Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori Haskell who travelled in the same flight (North West Airlines Flight 253) on Christmas day 2009 from Amsterdam to Detroit. They were key eyewitnesses to some strange happenings at the Amsterdam airport while waiting to board the flight. Prior to boarding the flight, Kurt Haskell and his wife, {testified live on CNN (see Link [1])}, witnessed a "smartly dressed Indian man" who spoke "in an American accent" escort Abdul Muttalab to the ticket agent at the gate helping him get on the plane. Haskell says, only the 'Indian man' spoke and he told the ticket agent that "this man needs to board the plane and he doesn't have a passport". The ticket agent refused to allow Abdul Mutallab on the plane because he did not have his passport. In response, the wealthy looking 'Indian man' said: "he is from Sudan, we do this all the time". Who is this mystery 'Indian man' who played a key role in getting Abdul Muttalab on the plane? Why no media talks about him and why would any investigating agency refuse to track him down?
The authorities, however, seems to have completely ignored this key eyewitness account so that an year later, Fox News makes it appear as a total surprise. Kurt Haskell is a lawyer by profession and hence qualifies as a really good witness who is trained to be able to carefully document things. Therefore, his words cannot be simply discarded. What's bizarre about the incident is that nobody cares to trace or talk about the sharp dressed 'Indian looking man' who seemed to have escorted Abdul Mutallab to the gate at Amsterdam airport. Yet, it's based on this dubious event that TSA appeared on the scene demanding all airports to have body scanners.
The FBI interrogated Haskell at his office few days after the incident. Shortly after this FBI interrogation, Kurt Haskell appeared on the Alex Jones show and posted below are the links to his interview with Alex Jones. It is interesting to note that the FBI brought some photos of suspected terrorists but never really cared to bring the video footages from Amsterdam airport. Any investigating officer should have first obtained the video from Amsterdam airport to trace the well-dressed Indian looking man. This would have been the key thread to unravelling the whole episode of the underwear bomber. Once again we see a blatant disregard for truth from the side of the investigating agencies.
Kurt Haskell's interview with Alex Jones after FBI Interrogation - 1
Kurt Haskell's interview with Alex Jones after FBI Interrogation - 2
Kurt Haskell's interview with Alex Jones after FBI Interrogation - 3
Although, Fox News makes it appear as a surprise, the fact is that this couple has already come on air, even on mainstream media, just after the incident, an year ago. Unfortunetely, no security officials have taken their testimony seriously or they have simply turned a deaf year to the couple's plea. Perhaphs, this is why they were present at the Federal Court in Detroit where Abdul Muttalab was brought for trial.
We all know that it was after this incident that TSA's body scanners appeared at the airports. In fact, just hours after this incident, we began hearing the news channels hype it and officials talking about beefing up the security apparatus in airports by possibly bringing in body scanners. How could they have come to such a solution so quickly in matter of hours unless they already had this solution in mind well in advance.
There are few other dots that needs to be connected in order to see the bigger picture.
Abdul Mutallab comes from an affluent family and had a decent educational background. Abdul Mutallab is the youngest of the 16 children of his father who is one of the richest men in Africa and the former Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and former Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development. According to Wikipeida, Abdul Mutallab did his schoolingat the British International School in Lomé, the capital of Togo and later proceeded to earn his Mechanical Engineering degree from the University College London in June 2008.
Apparently, Mutallab's background also seems to show him having connections with some extremist groups in Yemen. It's reported that Abdul Mutallab's father himself alarmed the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19 regarding his son's "extreme religious views" and his involvement with Al Qaeda. Further, Mutallab's name was also in the 'no-fly' list. So, here we are talking about an young man with a decent educational background but having connections with some terror networks, get on a plane without even a passport and then do something stupid altogether. A few questions come to my mind though:
1) How could a man who is known for his suspecious background and in the 'no-fly' list manage to get on a plane even without a passport?
2) Why did he do something so stupid sitting in his own seat surrounded by passengers that even a grade school student would not think of donig?
3) Eyewitnesses/passengers from the flight, including Kurt Haskell, also confirms that 2 people were arrested by the FBI at the Detroit Airport on that eventful day but we hear only about Abdul Mutallab in the media and in the official version of the story? Who was the other person arrested by the FBI and why don't we hear about him?
Given his rich family background and the credentials he hold, Abdul Mutallab should be considered as a reasonably intelligent man. What's strange about the whole scenario is the sheer stupidity in the act of such a reasonably intelligent man. How could a person with reasonable intelligence and commonsense sit in his seat and try to light up his underwear while being surrounded by passangers. Sounds so silly! If he was really serious about what he was doing, he could have gone to the toilet/washroom, locked the door and then tried lighting the explosives. The case sounds more like a fabricated one and even more it insults the intelligence of the American public.
Further, here we see a person with suspecious background and in the 'no-fly' list being escorted to the flight by smart-dressed, wealthy looking individuals, when that person doesn't even have a passport. How many of us have had that rare opportunity of passing through the security checks and getting to the boarding gate without a passport, let alone get into the airport itself? Some things doesn't really add up here.
Last time when I was passing through the London Heathrew Airport, I found those officials at the security check asking mothers with infants to taste the baby food, milk, water and other food items they were carrying for thier children. I was laughing in my mind. Despite all these stringent measures, the shoe bombers, the underwear bombers and the likes continue to walk in to the planes with ease, as and when they wish; some without passport; some even escorted by officials. On the other hand, because of these bogus events, the ordinary people have to shamelessly subject themselves to the harrasment of those newly appointed Crotch Watchers with their Porno-Scanners and even worse to the sexual assault procedure of groping or pat-down, which by the way might quench the pleasures of some sodomites and pedophiles. As a result, pornography, pedophilia and sodomites can now operate in public by Government's approval because I wonder what other kind of people can consciously susbcribe to such 'sexual assualt' procedures like groping and crotch watching. I even heard on a radio talk show, that passengers who refuse to go through the porno-scanners for fear of ionizing radiations, which takes detailed graphics of their naked bodies, but opt for the physical or sexual assault procedure of groping or pat-down, now run the risk of contracting diseases like herpes, crabs etc., because the officials don't change their gloves.
It all looks like the government was hand-in-glove with some business conglomerates looking for a new avenue to expand their markets. Now that airports across the United States are required to install these new porn-machines, they have opened up an avenue for a whole new business venture and perhaphs employment opportunities for potential sodomites and pedophiles. And all these things are pushed down our throats in the name of security because of that one phony underwear bomber.
How long are the people of this world going to take all this nonsense?
"We all formulate our thoughts, opinions, perspectives and actions based on what we know, and what we Need-to-Know is that our knowledge base has been altered in an effort to control us." - Cathy O' Brien
