former high-level US and UK intelligence officials and whistleblowers confirm that the document implicates the West in the birth of ISIS: CIA operations at large

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST ASIA, WINSTON

 

West Busted Supporting ISIS ... Tries Instead to Point Finger At Syrian Government

America's closest allies have been busted supporting ISIS in order to topple Syria's government.  Mainstream U.S. writers are calling for open support of ISIS and Al Qaeda to enact regime change in Syria.
And a newly-declassified government document hints that the West supported the creation of ISIS.
This may sound far-fectched and wild-eyed  ... But the following former high-level US and UK intelligence officials and whistleblowers confirm that the document implicates the West in the birth of ISIS:

• Military analyst - and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower - Daniel Ellsberg

• High-level NSA official Thomas Drake

• Well-known FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley

• Senior MI6 officer Alastair Crooke

• MI5 counter-terrorism officer Annie Machon

• British counter-terrorism officer Charles Shoebridge

In any event, whether or not you believe the West created ISIS, the U.S. is now trying to blame the single most unlikely entity imaginable for ISIS ... the Syrian government.
Specifically,  the U.S. Embassy in Syria just accused the Syrian government of supporting ISIS:

 

This is all kinds of silly ... and is Iraq War propaganda redux.
Specifically, the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies.
The Syrian government - which is allied with Shia Muslims - has been battling Sunni jihadis for many years. ISIS are Sunnis ... the arch-enemy of Shias and the Syrian government.  The Syrian government is ruled by a sect of Shias called Alawites.
In other words, ISIS and the Syrian government are on opposite sides of the war, and have been ever since ISIS was formed.
Similarly, in the run up to the Iraq War, Bush and the gang said that Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda.   Only one little problem: Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other's guts.

Flashback:  A Bogus Iraq-Qaeda "Connection"

Because the accusations that the Syrian government is supporting ISIS mirror so closely what happened in the run up to the Iraq war, let's recap ...
5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”. He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time”, is the statement “Hard to get a good case.” In other words, top officials knew that there wasn’t a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.
Moreover, “Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda”.
And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.
And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Moreover, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph:

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Therefore, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks.
Indeed, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reports that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this.
Suskind also revealed that “Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official ‘that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.’ ”
Cheney made the false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 on many occasions.
For example, according to Raw Story, Cheney was still alleging a connection between Iraq and the alleged lead 9/11 hijacker in September 2003 – a year after it had been widely debunked. When NBC’s Tim Russert asked him about a poll showing that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, Cheney replied:

It’s not surprising that people make that connection.

And even after the 9/11 Commission debunked any connection, Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime , that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties.
Again, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks. See this, this, this.
On December 16, 2005, Bush admitted “There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of 9/11″ (and see this video).  However, Bush and Cheney continued to frequently invoke 9/11 as justification for the Iraq war.  And see this. (Cheney finally admitted in 2009 that there was no link.)
A bipartisan Senate Report from 2006 found that Bush misled the press on Iraq link to Al-Qaeda.
The administration’s false claims about Saddam and 9/11 helped convince a large portion of the American public to support the invasion of Iraq. While the focus now may be on false WMD claims, it is important to remember that, at the time, the alleged link between Iraq and 9/11 was at least as important in many people’s mind as a reason to invade Iraq.
Top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions in an attempt to create such a false linkage.
McClatchy reported in 2009:

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

***

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.
The Washington Post reported the same year:

Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.

***

Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff (Colonel Larry Wilkerson) also wrote in 2009 that the Bush administration’s “principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

Here We Go Again ...

Of course, truth is the first casualty of war, and so the fact that the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies or that Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other makes no difference in the middle of a tidal wave of propaganda.
The U.S. has decided on regime change (again!) in Syria, just like it committed to regime change (again!) in Iraq.
And America will say and do anything to get its war on.

US Police And Prosecutors Fight To Retain Barbaric Right of “Civil Asset Forfeiture” STEALING AND ROBBING CITIZENS, YET ARRESTING SOMEONE FOR ROBBING A BANK...UH, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg
Land of the Unfree – Police and Prosecutors Fight Aggressively to Retain Barbaric Right of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”

Efforts to limit seizures of money, homes and other property from people who may never be convicted of a crime are stalling out amid a wave of pressure from prosecutors and police.

Their effort, at least at the state level, appears to be working. At least a dozen states considered bills restricting or even abolishing forfeiture that isn’t accompanied by a conviction or gives law enforcement less control over forfeited proceeds. But most measures failed to pass.

     – From the Wall Street Journal article: Efforts to Curb Asset Seizures by Law Enforcement Hit Headwinds
The fact that civil asset forfeiture continues to exist across the American landscape despite outrage and considerable media attention, is as good an example as any as to how far fallen and uncivilized our so-called “society” has become. It also proves the point demonstrated in a Princeton University study that the U.S. is not a democracy, and the desires of the people have no impact on how the country is governed.
Civil asset forfeiture was first highlighted on these pages in the 2013 post, Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas, in which I explained:

In a nutshell, civil forfeiture is the practice of confiscating items from people, ranging from cash, cars, even homes based on no criminal conviction or charges, merely suspicion. This practice first became widespread for use against pirates, as a way to take possession of contraband goods despite the fact that the ships’ owners in many cases were located thousands of miles away and couldn’t easily be prosecuted. As is often the case, what starts out reasonable becomes a gigantic organized crime ring of criminality, particularly in a society where the rule of law no longer exists for the “elite,” yet anything goes when it comes to pillaging the average citizen.

One of the major reasons these programs have become so abused is that the police departments themselves are able to keep much of the confiscated money. So they actually have a perverse incentive to steal. As might be expected, a program that is often touted as being effective against going after major drug kingpins, actually targets the poor and disenfranchised more than anything else.

Civil asset forfeiture is state-sanctioned theft. There is no other way around it. The entire concept violates the spirit of the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution. In case you have any doubt:

The 4th Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The 5th Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The 6th Amendment: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Civil asset forfeiture is a civil rights issue, and it should be seen as such by everyone. Just because it targets the entire population as opposed to a specific race, gender or sexual orientation doesn’t make it less important.
The problem with opposition in America today is that people aren’t seeing modern battle lines clearly. The greatest friction and abuse occurring in these United States today comes from the corporate-fascist state’s attack against average citizens. It doesn’t matter what color or gender you are. If you are weak, poor and vulnerable you are ripe for the picking. Until people see the battle lines clearly, it will be very difficult to achieve real change. Most people are divided and conquered along their superficial little tribal affiliations, and they completely miss the bigger picture to the peril of society. Which is why women will support Hillary just because she’s a woman, not caring in the least that she is a compromised, corrupt oligarch stooge.
In case you have any doubt about how little your opinion matters when it comes to the rights of police to rob you blind, read the following excerpts from the Wall Street Journal:

Efforts to limit seizures of money, homes and other property from people who may never be convicted of a crime are stalling out amid a wave of pressure from prosecutors and police.

Read that sentence over and over again until you get it. This is a free country?

Critics have taken aim at the confiscatory powers over concerns that authorities have too much latitude and often too strong a financial incentive when deciding whether to seize property suspected of being tied to criminal activity.

But after New Mexico passed a law this spring hailed by civil-liberties groups as a breakthrough in their effort to rein in states’ forfeiture programs, prosecutor and police associations stepped up their own lobbying campaign, warning legislators that passing such laws would deprive them of a potent crime-fighting tool and rip a hole in law-enforcement budgets.

Their effort, at least at the state level, appears to be working. At least a dozen states considered bills restricting or even abolishing forfeiture that isn’t accompanied by a conviction or gives law enforcement less control over forfeited proceeds. But most measures failed to pass.

“What happened in those states is a testament to the power of the law-enforcement lobby,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning advocacy group that has led a push for laws giving property owners more protections.

It seems the only people in America without a powerful lobby group are actual American citizens. See: Charting the American Oligarchy – How 0.01% of the Population Contributes 42% of All Campaign Cash

Prosecutors say forfeiture laws help ensure that drug traffickers, white-collar thieves and other wrongdoers can’t enjoy the fruits of their misdeeds and help curb crime by depriving criminals of the “tools” of their trade. Under federal law and in many states, a conviction isn’t required.

“White-collar thieves,” they say. Yet I haven’t seen a single bank executive’s assets confiscated. Rather, they received taxpayer bailout funds with which to pay themselves record bonuses after wrecking the global economy. Don’t forget:
The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

In Texas, lawmakers introduced more than a dozen bills addressing forfeiture during this year’s legislative session, which ended Monday. Some would either force the government to meet a higher burden of proof or subject forfeiture programs to more stringent financial disclosure rules and audits.

But only one bill, which law-enforcement officials didn’t object to, ultimately passed. It requires the state attorney general to publish an annual report of forfeited funds based on data submitted by local authorities. That information, at the moment, is only accessible through freedom-of-information requests.

This is what a corporate-statist oligarchy looks like.
Shannon Edmonds, a lobbyist for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said local enforcement officers and prosecutors “educated their legislators about how asset forfeiture really works in Texas.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan last month vetoed a bill that would, among other things, prohibit the state from turning over seized property to the federal government unless the owner has been charged with a federal crime or gives consent.
Remember, the terrorists hate us for our freedom.

Prosecutors said the Tenaha episode was an isolated breakdown in the system. “Everybody knows there are bad eggs out there,” Karen Morris, who supervises the Harris County district attorney’s forfeiture unit, told Texas lawmakers at a hearing this spring. “But we don’t stop prosecuting people for murder just because some district attorneys have made mistakes.”

When police aren’t out there stealing your hard earned assets without a trial or charges, they can often be found pounding on citizens for kicks. I came across the following three headlines this morning alone as I was the scanning news.

Cop Exonerated After Being Caught on Video Brutally Beating A Tourist Who Asked For A Tampon
Kids in Police-Run Youth Camp Allegedly Beaten, Threatened By Cops
Florida Cop Charged With On-Duty Child Abuse; Suspended With Pay
This is not what freedom looks like.

Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas

 

Armed robbery with a badge. The James Gang were born in the wrong century. Today, they would get a nice house and a pension.

Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road.
“Where are we?” Boatright remembers thinking. “Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?” Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears.
He says that a Tenaha officer told him, “Don’t even bother getting a lawyer. The money always stays here.”
– From Sarah’s Stillman’s New Yorker article “Taken”
The following article by Sarah Stillman in the New Yorker has been generating a lot of buzz in the past couple of days, and for good reason. Her piece titled “Taken,” is a stunning portrayal of the increasingly popular police theft tactic known as civil forfeiture.
In a nutshell, civil forfeiture is the practice of confiscating items from people, ranging from cash, cars, even homes based on no criminal conviction or charges, merely suspicion. This practice first became widespread for use against pirates, as a way to take possession of contraband goods despite the fact that the ships’ owners in many cases were located thousands of miles away and couldn’t easily be prosecuted. As is often the case, what starts out reasonable becomes a gigantic organized crime ring of criminality, particularly in a society where the rule of law no longer exists for the “elite,” yet anything goes when it comes to pillaging the average citizen.
One of the major reasons these programs have become so abused is that the police departments themselves are able to keep much of the confiscated money. So they actually have a perverse incentive to steal. As might be expected, a program that is often touted as being effective against going after major drug kingpins, actually targets the poor and disenfranchised more than anything else.
For example: “In 2011, he reports, fifty-eight local, county, and statewide police forces in Georgia brought in $2.76 million in forfeitures; more than half the items taken were worth less than six hundred and fifty dollars.”
Although lengthy, this is a very important article and I suggest reading the entire thing. If that’s too much for you, I’ve highlighted some key excerpts below. From the New Yorker:
When they returned to the highway ten minutes later, Boatright, a honey-blond “Texas redneck from Lubbock,” by her own reckoning, and Henderson, who is Latino, noticed something strange. The same police car that their eleven-year-old had admired in the mini-mart parking lot was trailing them. Near the city limits, a tall, bull-shouldered officer named Barry Washington pulled them over.
He asked if Henderson knew that he’d been driving in the left lane for more than half a mile without passing.
No, Henderson replied. He said he’d moved into the left lane so that the police car could make its way onto the highway.
Were there any drugs in the car? When Henderson and Boatright said no, the officer asked if he and his partner could search the car.
Mistake number one, allowing him to search the car. Although these days if you say no, the cops tend to falsely claim they smell drugs as an excuse to search it anyway.
The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station. In a corner there, two tables were heaped with jewelry, DVD players, cell phones, and the like. According to the police report, Boatright and Henderson fit the profile of drug couriers: they were driving from Houston, “a known point for distribution of illegal narcotics,” to Linden, “a known place to receive illegal narcotics.” The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)
The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services.
If that is not evil, I don’t know what is. What kind of sociopath threatens to take people’s children if they don’t fork over their cash?
“Where are we?” Boatright remembers thinking. “Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?” Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears.
Later, she learned that cash-for-freedom deals had become a point of pride for Tenaha, and that versions of the tactic were used across the country. “Be safe and keep up the good work,” the city marshal wrote to Washington, following a raft of complaints from out-of-town drivers who claimed that they had been stopped in Tenaha and stripped of cash, valuables, and, in at least one case, an infant child, without clear evidence of contraband.
In general, you needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence.
Owners who wish to contest often find that the cost of hiring a lawyer far exceeds the value of their seized goods. Washington, D.C., charges up to twenty-five hundred dollars simply for the right to challenge a police seizure in court, which can take months or even years to resolve.

“We all know the way things are right now—budgets are tight,” Steve Westbrook, the executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, says. “It’s definitely a valuable asset to law enforcement, for purchasing equipment and getting things you normally wouldn’t be able to get to fight crime.” Many officers contend that their departments would collapse if the practice were too heavily regulated, and that a valuable public-safety measure would be lost.
But a system that proved successful at wringing profits from drug cartels and white-collar fraudsters has also given rise to corruption and violations of civil liberties. Over the past year, I spoke with more than a hundred police officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and forfeiture plaintiffs from across the country. Many expressed concern that state laws designed to go after high-flying crime lords are routinely targeting the workaday homes, cars, cash savings, and other belongings of innocent people who are never charged with a crime.

In August, 2007, Tenaha police pulled Morrow over for “driving too close to the white line,” and took thirty-nine hundred dollars from him. Morrow told Guillory that he was on his way to get dental work done at a Houston mall. (The arresting officers said that his “stories of travel” were inconsistent, as was his account of how much money he had; they also said they detected the “odor of burned marijuana,” although no contraband was found in the car.) Morrow, who is black, was taken to jail, where he pleaded with authorities to call his bank to see proof of his recent cash withdrawal. They declined.
“They impounded my car, and they impounded me, too,” Morrow told me, recalling the night he spent in jail. When he finally agreed to sign away his property, he was released on the side of the road with no money, no vehicle, and no phone. He says that a Tenaha officer told him, “Don’t even bother getting a lawyer. The money always stays here.” But finally he decided “to shine a big ol’ light on them.”
It’s not just Texas of course…
The public records I reviewed support Rulli’s assertion that homes in Philadelphia are routinely seized for unproved minor drug crimes, often involving children or grandchildren who don’t own the home. “For real-estate forfeitures, it’s overwhelmingly African-Americans and Hispanics,” Rulli told me. “It has a very disparate race and class impact.” He went on to talk about Andy Reid, the former coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, whose two sons were convicted of drug crimes in 2007 while living at the family’s suburban mansion in Villanova. “Do you know what the headline read? It said, ‘the home was an “emporium of drugs.” ’ An emporium of drugs!” The phrase, Rulli explained, came directly from a local judge. “And here’s the question: Do you think they seized it?”
Two sets of rules. USA! USA!
Whether this should be the law—whether, in the absence of a judicial finding of guilt, the state should be able to take possession of your property—has been debated since before American independence. In the Colonial period, the English Crown issued “writs of assistance” that permitted customs officials to enter homes or vessels and seize whatever they deemed contraband. As the legal scholars Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen have noted, these writs were “among the key grievances that triggered the American Revolution.
Forfeiture remained an infrequent resort until 1984, when Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act. It established a special fund that turned over proceeds from forfeitures to the law-enforcement agencies responsible for them. Local police who provided federal assistance were rewarded with a large percentage of the proceeds, through a program called Equitable Sharing. Soon states were crafting their own forfeiture laws.
Just like the perverse and immoral incentives offered by private prisons, Equitable Sharing for civil forfeiture is clearly a horrible idea.
Revenue gains were staggering. At the Justice Department, proceeds from forfeiture soared from twenty-seven million dollars in 1985 to five hundred and fifty-six million in 1993. (Last year, the department took in nearly $4.2 billion in forfeitures, a record.)
But civil-forfeiture statutes continued to proliferate, and at the state and local level controls have often been lax. Many states, facing fiscal crises, have expanded the reach of their forfeiture statutes, and made it easier for law enforcement to use the revenue however they see fit. In some Texas counties, nearly forty per cent of police budgets comes from forfeiture. (Only one state, North Carolina, bans the practice, requiring a criminal conviction before a person’s property can be seized.)
There you have it folks. Just more proof that the U.S. has become nothing more than a third world, gangster-ridden, criminally insane, cesspool of corruption and immorality. From the canyons of Wall Street, to the corridors of Washington D.C. From the operating room, to small town police departments. We need a total systemic reboot.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

Kalifornia Set For A 10-Cent Gas Tax Hike

WE ARE ALREADY PAYING $1.38 PER GALLON IN TAXES ALONE.

If we could tax your corpse, we'd do it. Oh wait...

How Vermont's vaccine Exemption Was Lost, women have a right to abortion, but no one else has a right to refuse poisonous vaccines

MessiahMews Blogs: How Vermont's Philosophical Exemption Was Lost: Well, ONE more state has lost some of their exemptions.  You all have been warned months ago that this would happen.  It's not done unti...

FBI Uses Surveillance "Air Force" To Monitor US Citizens, AP Finds

In the wake of the violent protests, looting, and riots that shook Baltimore to its core and left parts of the city smoldering in late April, Benjamin Shayne — who had just sat down in his backyard to enjoy a radio broadcast of an Orioles game — inadvertently uncovered a secret FBI aerial surveillance program when he noticed a small plane circling overhead and asked Twitter if anyone could explain the aircraft’s low, circular flight pattern. As it turned out, one of Shayne’s followers had some answers:

@scanbaltimore It's registered to NG Research: http://t.co/mCWpUzvndp
For some other info: http://t.co/cbCehxiCS0 pic.twitter.com/eGXFIKXCgr

— Pete Cimbolic (@pete_cimbolic) May 3, 2015

That exchange would culminate in a Washington Post article which outlined the “aerial support” provided to the Baltimore Police Department by the FBI. 
We went on to take a closer look and, in “Meet The FBI’s Secret Eye In The Sky Overseeing The Baltimore Riots”, we postulated that the Cessna’s monitoring the riots may have been equipped with night vision equipment provided by Persistent Surveillance Systems, a company which has worked with the Baltimore PD in the past. Here’s a schematic (via WaPo):

On the heels of the revelations, AP followed up and has much more on the FBI’s aerial surveillance program.
Via AP:

The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. The FBI said it uses front companies to protect the safety of the pilots and aircraft. It also shields the identity of the aircraft so that suspects on the ground don't know they're being watched by the FBI.

In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

The FBI claims the program is "not secret" and does not aim to collect "mass surveillance", but as we discussed in depth in the article linked above (and as you can see from the graphic), it's difficult to believe that the equipment on the planes is powerful enough to be of use to the FBI but somehow not capable of the types of mass surveillance that the planes over Baltimore were capable of. More from AP:

"The FBI's aviation program is not secret," spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. "Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes." Allen added that the FBI's planes "are not equipped, designed or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance."



But the planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.

Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they're not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare.

AP discovered the names of many of the shell companies the FBI has used to conduct the operation and in an ironic twist, the government asked the news agency not to reveal the names because then the Bureau would simply have to create new companies, a process which would cost taxpayers money. In other words: "if you reveal this information to taxpayers, it will cost them."

U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI's fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government's involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI's request because the companies' names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.

At least 13 front companies that AP identified being actively used by the FBI are registered to post office boxes in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a regional airport used for private and charter flights. Only one of them appears in state business records.

The moral of the story: if you're ever in your backyard relaxing and listening to a baseball game and happen to notice a Cessna making concentric circles overhead remember, it's not paranoia if they're really watching you.

AS WE NOTICE FREQUENTLY WHEN OUT HIKING OR BIKING OR CAMPING.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-03/fbi-uses-surveillance-air-force-monitor-us-citizens-ap-finds

US Military Confirms Jade Helm 15 Is About Infiltration Of America As Blue Bell Ice Cream Caught In Huge Lie

 

By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die
BREAKING ON ANP! Another Florida Wal Mart Mysteriously Closes Tied To China's Secret Wal Mart Bunker Data Centers - Secret Translation: Jade Helm Means 'God's Hand'
Back on May 28th , 2015, in an attempt to debunk a story run on All News Pipeline called "Blue Bell Ice Cream Refrigerated Morgue Trucks Join Military Convoy In Colorado Weeks After Listeria Outbreak Shuts Down Ice Cream Production", Blue Bell representative Jenny Van Dorf (979-830-2180) sent ANP an official statement telling us the fact that Blue Bell trucks were seen in the military convoy was 'just a coincidence'. The videos below, 1st reported by the Fugazi Report, tell a different story.

However, the videos below from  DAHBOO777 and the Fugazi Report have COMPLETELY DESTROYED any credibility Blue Bell had remaining as ONCE AGAIN, we see Blue Bell Ice Cream trucks involved in the "Raider Focus" war games in Colorado, more proof that corporate America is lying to the American citizens as the United States Military prepares for SOMETHING HUGE in this country and as the 2nd video below clearly shows, whatever it is they are preparing for is MASSIVE as massive amounts of military hardware (and Blue Bell Ice Cream trucks) are seen on the streets of America. Additionally, we now have confirmation from a United States military representative that Jade Helm 15 is about the infiltration of America as shared below. 

Why Blue Bell (979-836-7977) would destroy their own credibility by lying when they could have easily told the truth is beyond our comprehension here at ANP and the mere fact that Blue Bell issued an official statement, a statement that has been proven as being mere propaganda, should tell everyone that something is terribly wrong here....why would Blue Bell Ice Cream issue an official statement that has been proven to be a lie and what is the real purpose of these trucks that are taking part in this exercise?

This is also more proof that since, officially, we are being told that Jade Helm are just 'exercises to prepare troops for overseas duty' while each and every day we are learning something different, should be enough to have every concerned American calling their Congressional Representatives and the White House at 202-456-1111 and DEMANDING answers. Sadly, our representatives in Washington DC have FORGOTTEN that they are MERELY SERVANTS to the American people, not dictators.
Aaron Wilson PhD recently had the opportunity to interview LTC Mark Lastoria of the US Military about Jade Helm 15 and what Lastoria told Wilson should end any talk about Jade Helm 15 being for overseas duty. Read this question and statement about Jade Helm by Lastoria carefully and then, lets have the United States military tell us that these 'drills' are about preparation for overseas duty. This statement clearly proves that Jade Helm is about the US military infiltrating America.:

Q. What is this "blending in" that you talked about in Bastrop (Texas)?

A. We want to get the Midwest mindset going, it is an adaptive technique, a subtly we need to master, quite different than Atlantic Coast style. (Which they have apparently already 'mastered'.)
In the 3rd video below from ANP friend American Contractor we learn more about the military rules and directives of Jade Helm 15 including the fact that they will be using live sniper fire and explosives and that the federal and local government and law enforcement are heavily involved in these 'exercises'.:

Established policy assigns responsibilities and provides procedures for planning coordinating and conducting RMT off federal real property in accidence with DODD 1322.18

The DoD will deepen collaboration with civilian law enforcement agencies to maximize military training opportunities that concurrently and legally support law enforcement and homeland security requirements. Such Mutually beneficial "dual effect" training will meet both military training requirements and the DoD role in support of law enforcement agencies in the performance of law enforcement missions. 

Interagency exercises - Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy. 

Coordination with civilian officials
Local and federal law enforcement agencies will be consulted.

Realistic Military Training (RMT) Off Federal Real Property

Download Document: 

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/co...

Jade Helm 15 To Conduct Live Fire Sniper Shots and use Explosives 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNiwI...
 

An ANP reader sent us the picture below out of Yuma, Arizona. Does America REALLY need this kind of hardware on American streets? This clearly looks like something we'd see in a 3rd world nation at war rather than a 'free' country.

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Clinton Foundation selling weapons of mass destruction = WMDs to rogue nation states!

As Hillary Clinton’s bid for The White House ramps up, contributions to The Clinton Foundation charities have come under increased scrutiny.
First, a Reuters investigation revealed that contributions from foreign governments had inexplicably disappeared from tax documents starting in 2010, prompting the charity to refile five years worth of returns. The ‘omission’ was characterized as a “mistake” by the foundation’s acting CEO who, in a lengthy blog post, promised that the organization had been careful to avoid conflicts of interest when Clinton was Secretary of State. It later turned out that Clinton may not have kept all of her promises to the Obama administration when it came to avoiding such conflicts.
Further investigative reports from the IBTimes outlined two particularly interesting cases where payments to the Clintons and/or their charities may have influenced policy decisions.
In one case, Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $200,000 for a speech before lobbying the Clinton-led State Department on Export-Import Bank legislation and on multiple occasions, foreign government donors to the Clinton Foundation were awarded arms deals which, when taken together, were worth more than $150 billion.
Now, the IBTimes is back at it, with a look at the Clinton State Departments’ chemical arms sales to Middle Eastern governments who gave to Clinton family charities. Here’s more via IBTimes:

The Clinton-run State Department’s approval of chemical and biological exports to the Egyptian government increased in volume just as dollars flowed from Mubarak-linked entities into the coffers of Clinton family concerns. A group closely associated with the Mubarak government paid Bill Clinton a $250,000 speaking fee in 2010, less than 4 months before the Egyptian revolution began. In 2012, a firm with an ownership stake in the company that manufactured the tear gas reportedly used by Egyptian security forces against the uprising paid $100,000 to $250,000 for another Bill Clinton speech.

The approval of American chemical weapons sales to Egypt as Mubarak’s associates were stocking Clinton family interests with cash is but one example of a dynamic that prevailed though Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.


(Clinton with Mubarak)

During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports -- defined as "toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment" -- to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.

That represented a 50 percent overall increase in such export approvals to the same countries over the two years prior to the Arab Spring, according to an International Business Times review of State Department documents. In the same time period, Arab countries that did not donate to the Clinton Foundation saw an overall decrease in their State Department approvals to purchase chemical and biological materials.

The reports released by Clinton's state department since 2010 disclose overall export numbers. For instance, in 2010, export authorizations to Egypt’s government for chemical and biological agents saw a one-year, 38 percent increase in the lead-up to the revolution against Mubarak’s government. That year, the Mubarak-aligned American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt paid Bill Clinton $250,000. Two close Mubarak allies were past presidents of the group, one of whom reportedly was sent to lobby Washington against a proposed resolution that would call on Mubarak to have free and fair elections.

In all, in the two years after Bill Clinton was paid by the Mubarak-aligned group -- and as uprisings against the Egyptian government swept the country -- the Clinton-led State Department backed a 12 percent increase in exports to Egypt in the biological and chemical agents category.

As discussed at length in these pages over the past several years, US foreign policy in Egypt has been a miserable failure. Washington — and Clinton specifically — were forced to reverse course on their support for Mubarak after the country "democratically" elected the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi. Egypt's honeymoon with democracy was short-lived however and Morsi, after an ill-fated attempt to grant himself "special" powers, was overthrown in a military coup. He was sentenced to death last month.

(Clinton with Morsi)
Here's a bit more color from the IBTimes report...

Some Clinton Foundation donors from the Middle East did not see an increase in authorizations for toxicological agents during the Arab Spring, but did see big increases earlier, soon after Clinton came into office in 2009. 

Algeria received just $2,110 worth of State Department authorizations in the chemical and biological weapons category in fiscal 2008. But the next fiscal year -- 80 percent of which was under Clinton’s tenure -- the country received more than $6 million worth of such Category 14 authorizations. Five-point-eight million dollars of the authorizations were for items classified as “tear gases and riot control agents.” The next year, the Algerian government gave the Clinton Foundation $500,000. Amid the Arab Spring revolts in 2011, Algerian security forces used tear gas on protesters in the capital.

...and here's a look at the numbers...

*  *  *
Do not be surprised to see further revelations surface as the Presidential race heats up.
US foreign policy in the Middle East is notoriously fraught as Washington routinely seeks to support whichever regime seems most likely to advance America's narrowly construed, short-term interests. This dynamic is complicated further when the nation's top diplomat is also effectively in charge of an organization that accepts tens of millions in donations from the same governments with which the State Department conducts business.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-03/under-hillary-us-sold-66-million-chemical-arms-clinton-foundation-donors-gassing-the

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