SPECIAL REPORT. CIA "Torture Queen" Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein likely appeared in iconic White House "Bin Laden" killing photo by Wayne Madsen

SPECIAL REPORT. CIA "Torture Queen" likely appeared in iconic White House "Bin Laden" killing photo

CIA counter-terrorism officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein, who headed the CIA anti-Bin Laden "Alec Station," has been a mystery until the last few days when NBC News mentioned her, without giving her name, as the rambunctious CIA officer who personally witnessed acts of waterboarding. The recently-released Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture anonymously identified Bikowsky as a key part of the torture program and its primary defender.

Bikowsky, a former CIA Soviet analyst, succeeded Michael Scheuer as the head of Alec Station in 2003 and remained its chief until the station's closure in 2005. She had been with Alec Station since its formation in 1996. Until 2011, Bikowsky reportedly was the head of the CIA's "Global Jihad" element.

The media has been reticent to expose Bikowsky. It is clear that Bikowsky and her assistant at Alec Station, Michael Anne Casey, ordered FBI liaison agents Doug Miller and Mark Rossini not to share information with FBI headquarters and its chief counter-terrorism agent John O'Neill, about the arrival from Malaysia in San Diego of two of the future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Both future hijackers were financially supported during their stay in California by the Saudi embassy in Washington then headed by Bandar bin Sultan, also known as "Bandar Bush" because of his close links to the Bush family. Details of this link between the Saudi embassy and the two hijackers are contained in the still-classified and redacted 28 pages from the Senate Intelligence Committee report on 9/11 failures.

Although CIA co-workers, who describe Bikowsky as a "bitch on wheels," said she had no legitimate reason to be present at the CIA's BLUE detention site in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland during the waterboarding of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bikowsky insisted on being there. Bikowsky also ordered German citizen Khalid el-Masri, who was illegally rendered to Afghanistan to Macedonia in 2004 to be tortured. Bikowsky was vetoed for the position of CIA station chief in Baghdad in 2007. The reason for the decision was apparently Bikowsky's inability to work amicably with co-workers.

After el-Masri was identified as an innocent German caught up in the CIA rendition program, Bikowsky insisted that he be kept in detention in Afghanistan despite the CIA Inspector General's determination that there was no legal justification to continue holding him. Bikowsky was not reprimanded for her actions because then CIA director Michael Hayden, who served previously as National Security Agency director, was reluctant to discipline senior female officials because he considered himself ultimately as a "lady's man."

Hayden's chief of the NSA Signals Intelligence Division prior to 9/11 was Maureen "Mo" Baginsky who just so happened to miss alerting on two September 11, 2001 intercepted messages that concerned the attack planned for the following day. Baginsky also took no action to concentrate NSA's pre-9/11 surveillance capabilities on al-Mihdhar's phone number in San Diego, which it maintained in its database, and the switchboard for an Al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen.

One can now point to Baginsky and Bikowsky as the two primary females in the intelligence infrastructure responsible for the 9/11 intelligence failure. However, were they merely "fumbling females" or agents-of-influence placed at both agencies in senior positions to scuttle any chance of recognizing the attack beforehand?

The White House, as with the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein, has been absolutely averse to providing information about Bikowsky. In 2011, journalists Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, in an audio documentary titled "Who is Richard Blee?" planned to identify Bikowsky and Casey as largely responsible for withholding critical information from the FBI prior to 9/11. The CIA threatened to prosecute the two journalists for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). The Associated Press was only able to refer to Bikowsky as "Frances" in a 2011 report.

However, it can now be reported that Bikowsky was likely shown in the iconic White House Situation Room photograph taken as the Navy's SEAL team stormed the alleged Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011 in Operation Geronimo. A Timemagazine story this past May identified a short woman in the photograph seen standing between then National Security Council deputy director (and current CIA chief) John O. Brennan and Vice President Joe Biden's national security adviser Tony Blinken as Audrey Tomason who was reportedly a National Security Council counter-terrorism official. However, even Time concluded that Tomason was a "mystery woman." The White House would only say that the woman's name was "Audrey F. Tomason, director of counter-terrorism" for the National Security Council. When the iconic White House Situation Room photo was released, everyone was identified, except for the woman said to be Audrey F. (Frances) Tomason. It is also noteworthy that "Tomason" was the only person wearing a couple of security badges other than deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, the current White House chief of staff who is pictured with a badge lanyard around his neck. The multiple badges would indicate that Tomason was a White House visitor. An Intellius search on Audrey Thomason results in an Audrey ELIZABETH Tomason, not Audrey FRANCES as revealed by the White House, with the job of "Counterterrorism BLOG National Security Council."



The CIA's "Torture Queen" is identified as Audrey Tomason in this photograph. However, as seen from her high school album, it is actually Alfreda Frances Bikowsky Silverstein.

Although little information was made available about "Tomason," it was known that she attended postgraduate school at Tufts University and earned a Master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard. Some Internet sites reported that the mystery woman, Tomason, was actually a covert agent outed by the photograph. Others speculated that the woman was the "Frances" who was responsible for illegally holding el-Masri in Afghanistan. Yet other bloggers said the woman in the photograph regularly briefed CIA director Leon Panetta, which would have been odd for a staffer at the National Security Council.

The South Garland High School, Texas alumni lists Bikowsky's address, as of 2012, in Alexandria, Virginia. Her second surname is listed as Silverstein. Bikowsky is said to have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor's degree and from Tufts Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy. She married Tufts classmate David Silverstein, who has written for the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation. Silverstein currently works for the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. An Intellius search for Bikowsky yields previous residences in McLean, Virginia (location of CIA headquarters); Alexandria, Virginia (where Alfreda Bikowsky Silverstein lived until 2012); Garland, Texas (where she went to high school); Arlington, Virginia; Medford, Massachusetts (the location of Tufts), and Philadelphia (the location of her undergraduate college, the University of Pennsylvania). Intellius also reports that Bikowsky's previous job as "Central Intelligence Agency Soviet Desk." Bikowsky is 49 years old.

Since Ms. Bikowsky has been identified as a lawbreaker and a violator of the Nuremberg War Crimes Accords and the Geneva Conventions, WMR has no problem in violating the IIPA so that this war criminal will always have to "look over her shoulder" as did Adolf Eichmann when he lived in Buenos Aires.

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro by Wayne Madsen

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro
John Brennan's long familiarity with Saudi Arabia, owing to the time he spent there as the CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and his knowledge of Saudi oil operations, has paid off. WMR has learned that Brennan's agents inside Saudi Aramco convinced the firm's management and the Saudi Oil Ministry to begin fracking operations to stimulate production in Saudi Arabia's oldest oil fields. By pumping salt water into older wells, some at a depth of 3 to 6 thousand feet, an inordinate amount of pressure was built up. The CIA's oil industry implants knew what would occur when the fracking operations began. Due to the dangerously high water pressure, the Saudis were forced continuously pump oil until the pressure became equalized. That process is continuing. If the Saudis ceased pumping oil, they would permanently lose the wells to salt water contamination. In the current "pump it or lose it" situation, the Saudis are forced to pump at a rate that may take up to 5 years before they can slow down production rates.

The net result of the CIA-inspired fracking operations, which the Saudis were warned not to pursue by petroleum engineers working for some foreign-based firms like Schlumberger, is that there will be an oil supply glut for the next 5 years. The glut will be followed by a reduction in Saudi oil production unless new oil fields are brought on line. There is now a major push by U.S. and Canadian oil companies to bring the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the United States to offset the expected sharp rise in oil prices in five years.

The CIA operation to frack Middle Eastern oil fields was not only limited to Saudi Arabia. WMR has learned from oil industry sources that similar fracking caused over production problems in Kuwait and Iraq.


CIA engineered Saudi overproduction by fracking old wells.

The result of the sudden decline in oil prices has resulted in heavy damage to the economies of the CIA-targeted countries of Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. Brennan and his economic warfare operatives banked on the Saudi over-production to harm the economies of all three countries and the CIA has not been disappointed. The CIA figures that the governments of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela will have long since collapsed and been replaced by pro-Western regimes within 5 years. Already, from his base in Switzerland, exiled Russian tax evader billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky has called for Putin's overthrow and even his assassination. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have taken cues from the CIA to impose devastating economic sanctions on both Russia and Venezuela. Similar congressional legislation to increase sanctions on Iran is pending.

Russia has been harmed the most by the CIA's Saudi oil production scheme. The Russian ruble fell 56 percent in value against the U.S. dollar while Russian interest rates climbed to 17 percent. The price of shares of Russia's largest lending bank, Sberbank, fell 18 percent. Although the Russian economic collapse has resulted in financial ripples around the world, with Austrian and French banks losing their stock values and the value of the Polish zloty and Hungarian forint falling against the dollar, the Obama administration says that there will be no easing on economic sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine. Obama has put the investments of American holders of Russian bonds in dire jeopardy.

The Pacific Investment Management Company's (PEBIX) Emerging Markets Bond Fund, which holds over $800 million in Russian bonds, has lost almost 8 percent in value in the past few weeks.

Russian Central Bank vice chairman Sergei Shvetsov said, "What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago."

Meanwhile, basic staples in Venezuela, including cooking oil, rice, and corn flour, are becoming hard to obtain. The U.S. dollar has jumped 1700 percent in value against the Venezuelan bolivar on the black market. The CIA is using the financial collapse to push for an undemocratic overthrow of the Venezuelan government.

Iran, which has been under punitive Western economic sanctions for a number of years over its nuclear power program, is probably best able to weather the storm. Iran has built up a rather impressive domestic food production, telecommunications, and oil industry infrastructure to survive the sanctions. However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appears very aware of the Saudi role in the conspiracy to drive down oil prices. Rouhani recently said, "The main reason for [the oil price plunge] is [a] political conspiracy by certain countries against the interest of the region and the Islamic world and it is only in the interest of some other countries . . . Iran and people of the region will not forget such conspiracies, or in other words, treachery against the interests of the Muslim world.”

Brennan's and the CIA's industrial sabotage of the Saudi and other Middle East oil industries will continue to have far-reaching effects on the world economy. Oil industry insiders fear that the CIA has unleashed something that may deal a devastating blow to the global economy.

The New Opening With the USA by RAUL CASTRO

Learning the Art of Coexistence

The New Opening With the USA

by RAUL CASTRO

Since my election as President of the State Council and Council of Ministers I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally with a wide variety of topics without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people.

This stance was conveyed to the US Government both publicly and privately by Comrade Fidel on several occasions during our long standing struggle, stating the willingness to discuss and solve our differences without renouncing any of our principles.

The heroic Cuban people, in the wake of serious dangers, aggressions, adversities and sacrifices has proven to be faithful and will continue to be faithful to our ideals of independence and social justice. Strongly united throughout these 56 years of Revolution, we have kept our unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of our principles since the beginning of our independence wars in 1868.

Today, despite the difficulties, we have embarked on the task of updating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism.

As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in the solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations.

As Fidel promised on June 2001,when he said: “They shall return!” Gerardo, Ramon, and Antonio have arrived today to our homeland.

The enormous joy of their families and of all our people, who have relentlessly fought for this goal, is shared by hundreds of solidarity committees and groups, governments, parliaments, organizations, institutions, and personalities, who for the last sixteen years have made tireless efforts demanding their release. We convey our deepest gratitude and commitment to all of them.

President Obama’s decision deserves the respect and acknowledgement of our people.

I wish to thank and acknowledge the support of the Vatican, most particularly the support of Pope Francisco in the efforts for improving relations between Cuba and the United States. I also want to thank the Government of Canada for facilitating the high-level dialogue between the two countries.

In turn, we have decided to release and send back to the United States a spy of Cuban origin who was working for that nation.

On the other hand, and for humanitarian reasons, today we have also sent the American citizen Alan Gross back to his country.

Unilaterally, as has always been our practice, and in strict compliance with the provisions of our legal system, the concerned prisoners have received legal benefits, including the release of those persons that the Government of the United States had conveyed their interest in.

We have also agreed to renew diplomatic relations.

This in no way means that the heart of the matter has been solved. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.

Though the blockade has been codified into law, the President of the United States has the executive authority to modify its implementation.

We propose to the Government of the United States the adoption of mutual steps to improve the bilateral atmosphere and advance towards normalization of relations between our two countries, based on the principles of International Law and the United Nations Charter.

Cuba reiterates its willingness to cooperate in multilateral bodies, such as the United Nations.

While acknowledging our profound differences, particularly on issues related to national sovereignty, democracy, human rights and foreign policy, I reaffirm our willingness to dialogue on all these issues.

I call upon the Government of the United States to remove the obstacles hindering or restricting ties between peoples, families, and citizens of both countries, particularly restrictions on travelling, direct post services, and telecommunications.

The progress made in our exchanges proves that it is possible to find solutions to many problems.

As we have reiterated, we must learn the art of coexisting with our differences in a civilized manner.

Raul Castro is president of Cuba.

This is the text of Cuban President Raul Castro’s address to the nation this Wednesday broadcast on radio and television on the recent developments in the Cuba-US relations.

CIA has history of blanket denials, even drug running by Wayne Madsen

CIA has history of blanket denials

The Central Intelligence Agency, which lives and breathes according to the mantra of "plausible deniability," has a long history of denying wrongdoing. The current CIA director, John Brennan, has joined with past directors to reject the allegations of torture contained in both the Senate Intelligence Committee report and a classified key findings and conclusions of an internal CIA review commissioned by former CIA director Leon Panetta. The latter information was revealed by Senator Mark Udall when he read on the Senate floor the classified passages into the Congressional Record, an act that automatically and legally declassified the information. Udall said the Panetta Review revealed that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information on its interrogation program to the Congress, the President, and the public.

In November 1972, the CIA, in an internal memorandum, denied allegations leveled against the agency by reporter Seymour Hersh in a conversation with Representative Lucien Nedzi, the CIA-friendly chairman of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, the forerunner of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Nedzi was discovered to be so close to the CIA, he resigned his chairmanship and was replaced by the more CIA-hostile Otis Pike.

There was one press allegation that the CIA managed to have "successfully conned all of our congressional oversight committees." The agency's response was "Interesting, if true."

When confronted with Hersh's allegations that CIA director Richard Helms was so ineffective as CIA director that the agency was experiencing unprecedented leaks of information, the CIA countered by blaming "mischievous and troublesome leaks" on three ex-employees. Only Victor Marchetti's name is unredacted, however, one of the other CIA ex-employees is clearly Phil Agee, and the third is Marchetti's former State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research co-author John D. Marks.

The CIA rejected accusations that it failed to keep the Nedzi committee and other committees "adequately informed" of its operations in Laos. The agency also rejected allegations that Helms was a "strong advocate of the so-called 'dirty tricks' component of the Agency." However, the CIA also stated that because of Helms's "long experience in clandestine operations, he occasionally does indeed take an active part in the direction of such operations."

The agency also declared that the "allegation of Agency involvement with the Special Forces to carry out assassinations and sabotage missions in South America have appeared in various forms in the press [REDACTED]. They are completely false." However, the CIA record shows that this statement was a flat out lie and the CIA had been involved in assassinations and terrorist operations in Chile, where the Chilean Army Chief of Staff General René Schneider was shot to death in a botched CIA-led kidnapping operation in 1970, as well as in Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina.

The CIA rejected a report by Jack Anderson that Rocky Mountain Airline, a CIA proprietary, was transporting heroin. The CIA admitted there was a "Rocky Mountain Airways" based in Colorado but that it had "no Agency connection." However, the CIA was being purposefully pedantic. There was an Agency proprietary airline called "Rock Mountain Air" that was based near Phoenix and which was established by the CIA's airline chief, George Doole.

As far as a press report that the U.S. bombed Communist-controlled poppy fields in Laos in order to drove the price up to benefit the CIA-led army of Laotian General Vang Pao. The CIA stated this was "totally false." It was later determined that the CIA, using its proprietary Air America airline, was routinely smuggling heroin out of Laos. The CIA contended that "CIA involvement in the drug traffic have been repeatedly investigated and in each case found to be completely without substance." Evidence of CIA involvement in smuggling drugs continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, especially with regard to U.S. operations in the 1980s in Central America and Colombia. More recently, the agency has been accused of protecting the opium trade in areas of Afghanistan controlled by pro-American war lords.

There was an allegation by Hersh that Representative Bertrand Podell (D-NY) received $10,000 in cash from Israel in return for his "public criticism of the Soviet treatment of Jews." The CIA memo states that Nedzi said "he wouldn't be surprised if this was true," although the CIA claimed it had "no information." In 1973, Podell was indicted on 10 federal corruption counts, including a charge that he received $41,350 in a bribe to ensure that a small Florida airline received government permission to fly a route to the Bahamas. Podell pleaded guilty and served four and a half months in prison.

The CIA said the U.S. Navy was the only government agency that was in a position to comment on a press allegation that "a U.S. submarine on a reconnaissance mission ran aground at Murmansk harbor in 1967, and the U.S. is conducting electronic and photographic reconnaissance in the harbors of both Murmansk and Vladivostok." The CIA claimed it was not in a position to comment. However, in a June 1968 memo, the CIA stated it was well aware that the USS Scorpion, a nuclear submarine, was lost after two acoustic explosions were detected on May 22, 1968. The Scorpion had been diverted from its course back to Norfolk in order to investigate Soviet submarine mine "seeding" operations near the Canary Islands. Such tasking would have involved the CIA as would have submarine espionage missions in Soviet naval ports. The Navy, for two weeks, claimed that the submarine was merely overdue in port and not lost at sea. The CIA's "no comment" on U.S.-Soviet undersea confrontations in Murmansk harbor certainly lends credence to the belief that the Scorpion and a few Soviet submarines sank as a result of hostile actions by the other side.


CIA: a long history of lies and denials

The CIA even rejected reports that "CIA spooks" regularly met at Pouget's Restaurant in downtown Washington, DC to chat freely about CIA operations. The CIA said that when the CIA was headquartered downtown before it moved to Langley, Virginia twelve years earlier, the allegation of CIA lunches at Pouget's was true. However, the agency said that after it moved to Virginia, CIA employees no longer lunched at Pouget's. However, Pouget's was not even located near CIA buildings in Washington but was on Connecticut Avenue in the Cleveland Park neighborhood. The CIA even lied about the fact even after the move to Langley its employees continued to dine at the restaurant for lunch and dinner.

Senate Torture Report exposes bizarre sexual voyeurism of Cheney, others by Wayne Madsen

Senate Torture Report exposes bizarre sexual voyeurism of Cheney, others

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, otherwise known as the "Torture Report," contains a number of references to male sexual abuse also seen in past reports about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo.

The sexual abuse centers around inserting objects into the rectums of detainees. In the recent Senate report this activity also borders on coprophilia, a fetish that WMR exposed in the past on this website as one of Vice President Dick Cheney's more prurient interests. Coprophilia is defined as "paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from feces." Upon its release by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Cheney was quick to defend the interrogation and detention practices revealed in the report.

Not only does the report state that detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, were subject to frequent rectal examinations but they were also subjected to "rectal fluid resuscitation" for "partially refusing liquids." The report states that Majid Khan, a legal resident of the United States from Pakistan, was "very hostile to rectal feeding and removed the rectal tube as soon as he was allowed to."

In addition, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, charged as the planner of the 9/11 attack, was "subjected to rectal rehydration without a determination of medical need, a procedure that KSM interrogator and chief of interrogations, [redacted] would later characterize as illustrative of the interrogator's 'total control over the detainee.'" Another detainee, Marwan al-Jabbur, a native of Pakistan who was later released after being held at various CIA black sites, was subjected to what was originally called an "enema," but was later acknowledged to be rectal rehydration. The report states that Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, charged with being the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and Majid Khan were subjected to rectal feeding. The CIA destroyed tapes of al-Nashiri being waterboarded at the CIA black site, called the "Blue Site," in Poland. Three detainees, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khallad bin
Attash, and Adnan al-Libi, were threatened with rectal rehydration.

Medical professionals contacted by WMR said there is no evidence that any nourishment can be achieved by giving someone a colonic enema or rectal infusion of food matter. The Senate report states that Majid Khan was infused rectally with a pureed "lunch tray" of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins. The CIA's June 2013 Response to the Senate committee failed to address the use of rectal feeding with CIA detainees, but defends the use of rectal rehydration as a "well acknowledged medical technique." Doctors WMR consulted rejected the CIA's statement as nonsense. The report also states that the "CIA leadership, including General Counsel Scott Muller and DDO James Pavitt, was also alerted to allegations that rectal exams were conducted with 'excessive force' on two detainees at DETENTION SITE COBALT [located in Afghanistan and known as the "Salt Pit"]. CIA attorney [redacted] was asked to follow up, although CIA records do not indicate any resolution of the inquiry. CIA records indicate that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic prolapse." Al-Hawsawi, charged with being the financier of the 9/11 attack, remains in detention in Guantanamo.

According to the report, it is quite likely that the "rectal infusions" were contained in CIA videotapes of the interrogations of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. It is also known that live video streaming of interrogations was viewed by senior U.S. government officials. According to the report, "CIA officers were observing the foreign government interrogations of Ammar al-Baluchi via video feed." Al Baluchi, a native of Kuwait accused of being an Al Qaeda financier in Pakistan and Dubai, was held in a CIA black site and is currently in Guantanamo.

After the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed interest in the torture videotapes, the CIA destroyed them on November 9, 2005, according to the report. The number of videotapes held by the CIA and destroyed is not disclosed. The report indicates that other videotapes of torture were destroyed by the CIA beginning in December 2007.

WMR previously reported that live video streaming equipment used by Vice President Cheney and his aides to view torture sessions in his Old Executive Building office was destroyed by a suspicious fire. On May 28, 2009, WMR reported: "On December 22, 2008, WMR reported on the high-tech support provided the Bush-Cheney White House by Mike Connell's GovTech Solutions and his close colleague Jeff Averbeck's firm SmarTech. Connell died last December when the plane he was piloting crashed short of landing in Akron, Ohio. We have now learned that Connell and Averbeck may have been behind the installation of live streaming black boxes in the White House and the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building used to stream live video of torture sessions in Guantanamo, Cuba and Abu Ghraib to the Old Executive Office Building office of Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief Counsel David Addington and into the White House, itself."

Addington is mentioned a number of times in the Senate report as being a key player in the torture program.  WMR's May 28, 2009 report continued: "The fire that broke out in an 'electrical closet' in the Old Executive Office Building on December 19, 2007, near Cheney's ceremonial office likely contained the live streaming boxes used to stream torture sessions from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, according to our sources who added that SmartTech and Airnet have been in the live streaming video business since 2002. With the recent statement of retired U.S. Army General Antonio Taguba that rape and other sexual molestation sessions were prevalent at Abu Ghraib and that they were photographed, the stories of the suspicious death of Connell and the White House fire have taken on new relevancy. As reported by WMR on January 10, 2008: 'Army Major General Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse stated that the abuse included 'A male MP guard 'having sex' with a female detainee.' 'Having sex' was an obvious attempt to avoid the use of the word 'rape.' It is obvious that Taguba's report was either altered or some evidence was not shared with him and his investigators . . . Another investigation conducted by Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones and Maj. Gen. George Fay of Abu Ghraib reported male homosexual rape of prisoners but not the rape of female prisoners."

The Taguba report on detainee abuse in Iraq also stated that detainees were sodomized with glow sticks. WMR also reported that U.S. sodomized underage teen at Iraqi detention facilities with broom sticks and flashlights and that videotapes of this abuse were made available to senior White House staff for "entertainment" purposes.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also personally oversaw sexual abuse of at least one detainee. A December 2005 internal US Army Inspector General report leaked to the on-line publication Salon.com described how  Rumsfeld personally monitored by telephone the interrogation of Saudi detainee Mohamed el Qahtani, described as the "20th hijacker." Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt reported to the Inspector General that the abuse  of Qahtani "looked like Abu Ghraib." Qahtani was forced to wear women's underwear, perform sex acts in front of a woman, and perform "dog tricks" while wearing a leash. The nudity and "stress position" acts were personally approved by Rumsfeld in December 2002.

However, it is Cheney who has been quick to defend the sexually perverse interrogation practices from which he appears to have derived personal gratification. On October 26, 2006, WMR reported that people who knew Dick Cheney in Wyoming before he served in the Nixon administration claimed he always had an unusual penchant for hanging around young girls, some as young as seven-years old. Cheney reportedly walked around his Wyoming home in his underwear, sometimes when his two young daughters' friends were visiting. Cheney did not seem to mind that his activities around his home would inevitably expose his penis to the young girls.


Senate Intelligence Committee report on rectal rehydration appears to match Dick Cheney's most prurient sexual interests. Cheney's staff suppressed the above edition of The Globe from DC metro area supermarkets.

WMR also reported: "Cheney served as a Congressman from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989. This was during a time when two major page scandals, both involving Republican members of Congress, rocked Capitol Hill. They were the Koreagate scandal and the page/prostitutes visiting the White House in the late 1980s. In 1981, Lynne Cheney wrote "Sisters," an Old West novel containing lesbian themes. Dick Cheney's close friend and former chief of staff Scooter Libby penned a novel called "The Apprentice." The following is an excerpt from Libby's book, which features its main character, Yukiko, drawing hair on the 'mound' of a little girl: 'At age 10 the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.'"

In 2002, Cheney held a reception for the publication of the second edition of Libby's book at the vice president's mansion.

On June 5, 2007, WMR reported on bizarre and kinky sexual practices engaged in by top Bush administration and other Republican officials by clients of "DC Madam" Jeane Palfrey's Pamela Martin & Associates escort service and other services: "The Bush administration's increasing nervousness about Deborah Jeane Palfrey's phone list is understandable after more details have emerged about some of the more bizarre prurient appetites of some past clients of Pamela Martin & Associates clients, said to include top officials of the Bush administration, Congressional members and staffers, and at least two well-known Washington, DC journalists.

Some escorts regularly paid visits to clients with whips and handcuffs as part of their regular ensemble.

Prostitutes hired by Louisiana Senator David Vitter in New Orleans are reporting that Vitter had a bizarre sexual fetish -- he liked to wear diapers during his trysts.

While that may be weird, some other prostitution clients due to be outed in Washington would appear much more bizarre. WMR has learned that certain VIPs who engaged the services of 'fantasy' escorts enjoyed what is known as 'water sports' -- firstly, practices that involve urination and, 'number two,' activities that are even worse.

Cheney's coprophilia fetish was the subject of WMR's April 11, 2008 report, "Cheney, according to knowledgeable sources involved in the Palfrey trial, paid at least one escort to straddle a glass top table and defecate on it while Cheney peered at the bowel "evacuation" from underneath" The act was performed before Cheney became vice president at a town home next door to his own residence at Madison of McLean, an upscale housing development in McLean, Virginia close to the CIA's headquarters. Palfrey, had been found guilty of racketeering, mail fraud, and money laundering on April 15, 2008, just four days after WMR published its report about her escorts being involved in coprophiliac activities with Cheney. On May 1, 2008, Palfrey was found hanging in a utility shed at her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Police ruled the death a "suicide."

After WMR's report on Cheney's use of Palfrey's escorts ran on the front cover of The Globe supermarket tabloid, the editor was informed that Cheney's aides pressured two local retailers, Giant Food and Safeway, not to carry that issue. However, CVS pharmacy did sell the issue.

The bottom line on the rectal abuse at the CIA black sites, Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib is that it was performed not to extract any meaningful intelligence but for the sexual gratification of coprohiliacs like Dick Cheney and his closest associates. While squirting a puree of hummus, pasta, nuts and raisins into the rectums of U.S. detainees had no nutritional value for prisoners who refused to eat, the prurient nature of the procedure is in keeping with the bizarre sexual appetites of Mr. Cheney and his entourage.

The CIA-French Gladio plot to kill Eisenhower and Khrushchev by Wayne Madsen

The CIA-French Gladio plot to kill Eisenhower and Khrushchev
WMR has discovered buried deep within the Central Intelligence Agency's declassified archives a file on a proposed operation to be carried out by the CIA under Allen Dulles and right-wing members of France's Gladio "stay behind" network. The operation was to assassinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and bring about an all-out war between the two nations.

Details of a secret White House National Security Council report on the plot were leaked to the French Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité, which published a story on the conspiracy in its March 19, 1960 edition. Although White House Press Secretary James Hagerty called the report "communist propaganda," the French government ordered all editions ofL'Humanité seized before they went on sale. Moreover, the author of the report, General Andrew Goodpaster, was tipped by Eisenhower to be the next CIA director after Eisenhower fired Dulles for his involvement in what would have been a coup against the U.S. and Soviet governments. Eisenhower never did fire Dulles and replace him with Goodpaster. That task was left to Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, who sacked the CIA chief after the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Goodpaster would later become the supreme commander of NATO under President Richard Nixon.

The planned assassination of Ike and Khrushchev would not be the first time that America's deep state would plan a false flag attack designed to trigger war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1962, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer proposed a series of false flag attacks on U.S. and foreign interests in the Caribbean designed to make it appear that Cuba was behind the incidents. Known as Operation Northwoods, the plan was composed of Operation Bingo, a plan to stage an attack on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay and make it appear that Cuban troops had carried it out; Operation Dirty Trick, which would blame Cuba for electronically interfering with John Glenn's Mercury launch had it been destroyed in an accident; and the hijacking of commercial planes and carrying out attacks on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and blaming it all on Cuba. The plan was never carried out. The Northwoods attacks would give the United States a reason to attack Cuba, an event that would have likely resulted in a wider world war.

The French rightist military elements were attached to Gladio units in France designed to carry out attacks against Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe. These French units included La Rose des Vents, Arc-en-ciel ("Rainbow"), the
Western Union Clandestine Committee that worked closely with the FrenchExternal Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE), and the 11th Choc parachutist regiment of the French Army. In 1961, many of these units formed the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) (Secret Army Organization), which was opposed to Algerian independence and tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.

Contained in the Goodpaster report was a statement from a plot informant: "Obsessed by the idea that a carefully planned political assassination always leads to the necessary war, these officers always are constrained to think of all possible forms of a final action, of which the result could be the assassination by a fanatic of the Russian or American chief of state."

 
Dulles's and French Gladio's fingerprints on plot to assassinate Ike [left] and Khrushchev [right], bringing about World War III.

The Goodpaster report also stated: "Army officers -- those stationed in Algeria as well as those stationed in the south of France -- involved with right-wing Algerian activists, constitute a sort of secret society that is very well hidden."

Later on March 19, 1960, L'Humanité published a special edition but the article on the plot to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was deleted.

One member of the secret French army group that was to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was Jean Souetre, aka Michel Roux and Michel Mertz, a Corsican assassin who was deported by the FBI from Dallas, Texas within 48 hours of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. De Gaulle was certain of the "French connection" to Kennedy's assassination. The Washington Post, which originally reported on the Goodpaster report on March 20, 1960, never followed up on Souetre's connection to the OAS and the hit team that was to assassinate Ike and Khrushchev. Allen Dulles was named by President Lyndon Johnson as a member of the Warren Commission that allegedly fully investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.

The CIA Torture Report

CIA Torture Report

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did not want the Senate Intelligence Committee report on U.S. torture of detainees released. Barack Obama and John Kerry wanted the report's release delayed. They are all culpable to varying degrees in covering up huge crimes and violations of law.



Read the entire report by clicking here.

THE ROVING EYE - Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar

Washington plays Russian roulette

THE ROVING EYE Washington plays Russian roulette By Pepe Escobar These are bleak times. I've been in serious conversation with some deep sources and interlocutors - those who know but don't need to show off, privileging discretion. They are all deeply worried. This is what one of them, a New York strategic planner, sent me: The propaganda attack against Putin equating him with Hitler is so extreme that you have to think that the Russians cannot believe their ears and cannot trust the United States anymore under any circumstances. I cannot believe how we could have gotten ourselves into this situation to protect the looters in the Ukraine that Putin would have rid the Ukraine of, and even had the gall to place in a leadership role one of the worst of the thieves. But that is history. What is certain is that MAD [mutually assured destruction] is not a deterrent today when both sides believe the other will use nuclear weapons once they have the advantage and that the side that gains a decisive advantage will use them. MAD is now over. That may sound somewhat extreme - but it's a perfectly logical extension, further on down the road, of what the Russian president intimated in his already legendary interview with Germany's ARD in Vladivostok last week: the West is provoking Russia into a new Cold War. [1] Mikhail Gorbachev just stressed a few days ago the new Cold War is already on. Princeton's Stephen Cohen says the Cold War in fact never left. The Roving Eye reported about Cold War 2.0 months ago. Brits - still stranded in the 19th century new Great Game - prefer to spin the "strident toxic personality" of "diminutive Putin"; [2] he is the "ruthless, charming and ultimately reckless" man who "put the cold war back in vogue". The Council on Foreign Relations, predictably, mourns the end of the post-Cold War world, blasts the current "disorder", and dreams of the good ol' unchallenged exceptionalist days. [3] For arguably the best detailed background on how we came to this perilous state of affairs, it's hard to beat Vladimir Kozin of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. [4] Read him carefully. And yes, it's Cold War 2.0, the double trouble remix; between the US and Russia, and between NATO and Russia. Seeing red In his ARD interview, Putin stuck to actual facts on the ground: "NATO and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing ? Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy special operations forces, again in close proximity to our borders. You have mentioned various [Russian] exercises, flights, ship movements and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed." For the Russia-demonizing hordes, it's always convenient to forget that NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine was clinched at a NATO meeting in Bucharest in April 2008. The Georgia op spectacularly failed in the summer of 2008. Ukraine is a work in progress. Crucially, in the ARD interview, Putin also told the EU coalition of the clueless/vassals/puppets/ that Russia can bring down the Ukraine House of Cards in a flash; Moscow just needs to emphasize it's time to collect the humongous amounts of cash it is legally owed. Putin also made it very clear Moscow won't allow - and that was categorical: won't allow - Donbass to be overrun/smashed/ethnic-cleansed by Kiev: "Today there is fighting in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian central authorities have sent the armed forces there and they even use ballistic missiles. Does anybody speak about it? Not a single word. And what does it mean? What does it tell us? This points to the fact, that you want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there, all of their political foes and opponents. You want that? We certainly don't. And we won't let it happen." [5] According to Kiev's own figures, no less than 65% of residential buildings and 10% of schools and kindergartens in Donbass have been destroyed. Over 40,000 medium-sized companies are paralyzed. Unemployment - Ukraine-wide, is over 40%. External debt may reach US$80 billion - and don't expect the International Monetary Fund, which now owns Ukraine, to go philanthropic. Most of all, Kiev can't pay its billionaire gas bills to Gazprom because it spends a fortune terrorizing eastern Ukraine citizens. This Poroshenko rant sums it all up - with the US and EU fully complicit. So NATO has been warned about Russia's real red lines. Still, substantial sectors of the Washington/Wall Street elites can't get enough of war. And they like it hot. [6] No one should ever underestimate the unlimited stupidity of the Return of the Living Neo-con Dead using their favorite pulpit, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. The "logic" behind Cold War 2.0 - now in full swing - couldn't give a damn about European stability. The Obama administration launched it - with NATO as the spearhead - to in fact prevent Eurasian integration, building a New Berlin Wall in Kiev. The immediate target is to undermine Russia's economy; in the long run, regime change would be the ultimate bonus. So the logic of escalation is on. The economically devastated EU is a joke; the only thing that counts for the US is NATO - and the overwhelming majority of its members are in the bag, sharing the prevailing mood in Washington of treating Putin as if he were Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi. There are no signs whatsoever Team Obama is willing to de-escalate. And when the Hillarator President-in-Waiting ascends to the throne, all bets are off. Notes: 1. Putin's Sunday Interview on German TV (Dubbed + Transcript), Russian Insider, November 19, 2014. 2. The new cold war: are we going back to the bad old days?, The Guardian, November 19, 2014. 3. The Unraveling: How to Respond to a Disordered World, foreignaffairs.com, December 2014 issue. 4. See here. 5. The broken-down beauty of Eastern Ukraine, 25 years after the end of the USSR, Quartz, November 15, 2014. 6. The Wall Street Journal Wants the US to Go To War in Ukraine, Russia Insider, November 18, 2014. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Hollywood, FL -- Thirteen years later, focal point of 9/11 investigation is no more by Wayne Madsen

Hollywood, FL -- Thirteen years later, focal point of 9/11 investigation is no more

After the 9/11 attack, FBI agents showed up at Shuckum's Oyster Bar located off the main downtown circle in Hollywood, Florida. The agents passed around photographs of two of the men who had been identified as among the reported hijackers of passenger planes on September 11, 2001. Night manager Tony Amos and waitress Patricia Idrissi stated that Mohammed Atta and two other men had come into the bar on the evening of September 7. The other two men were later identified by the FBI as alleged hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdulaziz al Omari. Al Shehhi drank rum and cokes and Atta pounded back five Stolichnayas and orange juice. After given their tab of $48, Atta began arguing over the bill. Amos asked him if he was able to pay and Atta, pulling from his pocket a roll of cash, said that he was an "American Airlines pilot" and was certainly able to pay. The three patrons then left with Atta leaving a $3 tip. Idriss also recounted that Atta had been playing the video arcade games of Trivial Pursuit and blackjack.

  
Today, many residents of Hollywood are not aware that their town was a major focal point of the 9/11 investigation.

Today, Shuckum's is closed. Moreover, employees of nearby establishments told WMR that the restaurant changed its names and staff some "10 times" over the past several years.

The last reported name of Shuckums was Harpoon Harry's. The windows and front door are blacked out with a notice on the door warning of hazardous materials contained in leased equipment inside the establishment belonging to Multi-Flow Industries of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. The firm provides soda and other fountain canisters for restaurants.


There is sitll a heavy Israeli presence in Hollywood as this repair shop for Mercedes and BMWs attests.

There was another less-reported factor in the story of the alleged hijackers' stay in Hollywood. In the months preceding 9/11, the Drug Enforcement Administration began compiling a dossier on the activities of at least 120 Israeli "art students" who had attempted to gain access to various federal buildings and the homes of federal employees and officials around the country. The art students claimed to be selling Israeli art to finance their educations in Israel. However, one of the art colleges some of the Israelis said they attended did not exist and the other had no record of their enrollment. WMR covered this story extensively in a 2005 special report.
 
Shuckums [left], a hangout for three of the alleged hijackers, including "lead hijacker" Mohammed Atta, is now closed after changing names several times since 9/11. An ominous warning sign cautions that there are hazardous materials in leased equipment inside the closed restaurant. [right]

One of the Israelis, Hanan Serfaty, lived at 701 S. 21st St. in Hollywood, around the corner from Shuckums. He also lived at the Emerald Greens Apartments at 4220 Sheridan Street, Apartment 303, practically across the street from Mailbox Rentals, where Omari and Al Shehhi, as well as two other hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Walid al Shehri, maintained a mail drop. Serfaty's residences were close to where Atta and Al Shehhi lived on Jackson Street. Atta and Al Shehhi also lived a few blocks from the downtown area at Apartment 8, Bimini Motel, on North Ocean Drive along Hollywood beach.


Apartment where Israeli suspect Serfaty lived close to mail drop rented by Atta and his team.

Israel: Human Rights Abuser Writ Large by Stephen Lendman #JSIL

Israel: Human Rights Abuser Writ Large

by Stephen Lendman

Israeli policy is longstanding. Reflecting anti-Palestinian state terror. Institutionalized racism writ large. Vicious repression.

Brutalizing Muslims for not being Jews. Enforcing militarized occupation harshness. Denying Palestinians rights everyone deserves.

According to Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) director Jeff Halper:

"…(T)he 'Zionist answer' to the downward cycle of senseless violence in which Jerusalem finds itself" includes:

"house demolitions, mass arrests, revoking the 'residency' of native-born Jerusalemites, closing Palestinian neighborhoods with concrete blocks, arming Israeli Jewish vigilantes and cheap shots at the last person who believes in a two-state solution, Abu Mazen (Abbas)." 

"Everything, that is, except an end to occupation and a just political solution." 

"This is what happens when a powerful country forgoes any effort to address the grievances of a people under its control and descends into raw oppression."

Netanyahu lied. He's a serial liar. Everything he says lacks credibility. Big Lies substitute. Claiming Israel locked in "the grip of a terrorist onslaught." 

Palestinians face brutalizing Israeli state terror. Police state barbarism writ large. Provoking justifiable Palestinian anger.

Inciting violence. Able to boil over uncontrollably any time. Perhaps into a third intifada. Or pretext for Israeli all-out war on millions of Palestinians.

Risking carnage and displacement matching Israel's so-called War of Independence. Western leaders able to intervene responsibly turn a blind eye. Ignore Israel's worst crimes.

Palestinians isolated on their own. Defenseless against Israel's onslaught. Its killing machine.

Palestinian human rights group Al Haq reported PA forces abusing civilians. Instead of defending them against Israeli state terror.

Targeting peaceful protestors. Demonstrating against IDF and police brutality.

Longtime Israeli collaborator Mahmoud Abbas unleashing PA forces against his own people. Imad Addin Jamal Amro one of many victims.

After Friday, November 7 prayers. Accosting him. Beating him viciously. Until no longer able to stand. Preventing bystanders from helping him.

Arresting him. Beating him severely at Preventive Security headquarters. An officer shouting "die, die." Accusing him of offenses he didn't commit.

Al Haq expressing outrage. Citing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Articles 7, 9 and 14 prohibiting arbitrary arrests and mistreatment.

Article 19 affirming freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Without interference. Prohibiting coercing practices denying them.

Regardless of views. Respecting those of others. In writing, print or orally.

Article 20 prohibiting incitement, discrimination, hostility, violence, and state-sponsored propaganda for war.

Article 21 affirming the right of peaceful assembly. Prohibiting any restrictions.

Article 19 of Palestinian Basic Law affirming free expression rights. Mandating criminal punishment for violators.

Article 11 affirming personal freedom as a natural right. Article 13 stating "no person shall be subject to any duress or torture, and that detainees should receive proper treatment."

Israel violates ICCPR and other human rights laws unaccountably. So do PA forces against their own people. 

It bears repeating. Abbas is a longtime Israeli collaborator. Abusing his own people for special benefits he derives.

According to an unnamed PA source, he ordered no public discussions of Tuesday's synagogue attack.

Canceling media appearances. Issuing a statement following John Kerry saying:

"The Palestinian leadership must condemn this and they must begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement." 

Abbas then "condemn(ing) the killings of worshipers at the synagogue in Jerusalem and condemn(ing) acts of violence no matter their source."

Equating Tuesday's incident with terrorism. Ignoring Kerry saying:

"To have this kind of act, which is a pure result of incitement, of calls for 'days of rage,' of just irresponsibility, is unacceptable."

Kerry turning a blind eye to daily Israeli state terror. Brutalizing millions of Palestinians.

Murdering them. Torturing them. Including young children. 

Incarcerating thousands in gulag prison hell. Unaccountably. For demanding fundamental democratic freedoms.

Dominating Palestinians through repressive control. Kafkaesque and then some.

Physical control through land theft. Home demolitions. Settlements. Checkpoints. Ghettoization. Agricultural restrictions. 

Permit permission for virtually everything. Military zones. Jews only development. Resource theft.

Borders, air space and offshore waters control. Jews only public spaces. Separation Wall repression. Harassment and intimidation.

Diaspora Palestinians prevented from returning. Claiming Jerusalem as Israel's exclusive capital.

Gazans locked in the world's largest open-air prison. Bureaucratic/legal/militarized control. Including hundreds of restrictive policies. 

Covering virtual all aspects of Palestinian life. Imposing politically motivated conditions virtually impossible to live with. Including:

• allowable home and village construction; 

• building permit restrictions;

• home demolitions for any reason or none at all;

• land expropriation designated for Israeli "public purposes;"

• agricultural restrictions;

• crop destruction for violations;

• licensing and inspection of Palestinian businesses;

• closures anywhere, any time, for any reason; and

• movement and travel restrictions within and outside Israel and Occupied Territories.

Denying fundamental international law guaranteeing human and civil rights. Brazenly ignoring dozens of UN resolutions. Going back decades. 

Condemning or censuring Israeli lawlessness. Deploring its actions. Demanding state-sponsored repression end.

Israel flaunts rule of law principles with impunity. Arrogating to itself the right to do what it damn pleases.

Law or no law. Because Western leaders able to change things do nothing. Turning a blind eye to Israel's worst crimes. 

Washington partnering through military aid. Political support. Mindless of fundamental Palestinian rights. Horrific Israeli mistreatment.

Using violence. Other forms of repression for political, economic and social control. 

Flagrantly violating core international humanitarian and human rights laws. Police state harshness writ large.

In November alone, lawlessly arresting nearly 400 Palestinians. Including young children. In largely pre-dawn raids,

In West Bank and East Jerusalem communities. Around two dozen detained on Thursday alone. Collective punishment writ large. Mass arrests and detentions continue.

Following Operation Protective Edge. Premeditated naked aggression. Murdering over 2,200 Palestinians. Injuring about 11,000 more. 

Affecting hundreds of young children, women, the elderly and infirm. Unrelated to Hamas rockets. Or Israeli national security. 

Launched to prevent Palestinian self-determination. Maintain occupation harshness.

Continue Gaza's blockade. Sabotage Fatah/Hamas unity. Facilitate longstanding Israeli slow-motion genocide. 

Get away with mass murder and then some. Violate international law with impunity.

Academically lynched University of Illinois Professor Steven Salaita calling Israel the only nation able to murder hundreds of Palestinian children and claim victimization.

Western leaders able to make a difference turning a blind eye.

Horrific Palestinian suffering continues. 

Widespread Israeli crackdowns followed Tuesday's synagogue incident. Responding to longstanding Palestinian mistreatment. 

Especially vicious under Netanyahu. Exceeding the worst of Sharonian evil. 

Including extremist settler violence. Notably against children. At play. To and from school. Running errands for parents.

Targeting Palestinian communities. Farmers in fields. Committing vandalism. Mistreatment. At times murder. Unaccountably.

Israeli security forces able to intervene responsibly do nothing. Facilitating wrongdoing.

B'Tselem calling Israeli punitive home demolitions "fundamentally wrong." Ineffective. 

Contravening "basic moral standards." Punishing "people for the of misdeeds of others." Without just cause. Flagrantly violating human rights laws.

Following Tuesday's incident, Israeli security forces are everywhere. Harassing Palestinians. Intimidating them. 

Ignoring settler provocations. Helicopters and drones monitor things overhead. Police violence against Palestinian women in Jerusalem increased.

Dozens of children arrested. Brutally interrogated. Detained without just cause.

Tuesday's incident a pretext for escalated Israeli repression. Its ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, equating Palestinian resisters with Nazis. Terrorists.

Ignoring decades of occupation harshness. Longstanding Israeli crimes of war and against humanity. Slow-motion genocide.

Dermer outrageously suggesting Palestinians intend targeting America. Hamas no different from IS.

Neocon US Senator Ted Cruz (R. TX) expressing "unequivocal support as the Israeli people continue the fight against the terrorists who have declared war on both our nations."

CNN shamelessly giving him air time to express outlandish views. Other media scoundrels operating the same way.

Reporting one-sided views. Proliferating Big Lies. Burying hard truths. 

Ignoring Israeli high crimes. Vilifying Palestinians unjustly. Equating Tuesday's incident with terrorism. 

Indicting all Palestinians for crimes of the few. Turning a blind eye to Israel holding entire communities hostage. 

Collective punishment. State-sponsored terrorism.  Mindless of international law. Palestinians isolated on their own. Victimized for not being Jews.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.