Putin: Trade in Rubles & Yuan Will Weaken Dollar’s Influence

Putin: Trade in Rubles & Yuan Will Weaken Dollar’s Influence
By Vladimir PutinNovember 12, 2014 "ICH" - Vladimir Putin took part in a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum’s CEO Summit on the Asia-Pacific region’s significance for Russia.

Mr Putin said, in particular, that Russia views cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region as a strategic priority. The President also told summit participants about Russia’s plans to expand its cooperation with Asia-Pacific region countries, including through increased trade and investment incentives.

Transcript of APEC CEO Summit meeting

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Ladies and gentlemen,

The APEC CEO Summit is traditionally considered one of the most representative forums for broad discussions on economic issues. I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on a subject of great importance for us – developing Russia’s cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region.

The twenty-first century has already been called ‘the Pacific century’. As part of the Asia-Pacific region, Russia must make use of the competitive advantages offered by this fast-growing economic, technology and innovation centre.

In turn, Russian regions such as Siberia and the Far East offer a unique chance for this vast region’s countries to effectively develop and make use of the opportunities there and further strengthen their potential.  

Cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region is one of Russia’s strategic priorities. The overall constructive spirit that characterises our relations with the vast majority of countries in the region is very important. We value this spirit greatly and will do everything possible to develop bilateral and multilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas. 

Many Asia-Pacific region countries offer successful examples of roads to follow in developing their competitive abilities. They have taken the lead in innovation sectors and have considerable financial and investment resources at their disposal. Even faced with the negative global trends of recent years, they have kept up a good pace and had only a slight slowdown in growth.

At the same time, in order not to end up caught in a more protracted slowdown, countries in the region will need to carry out significant structural reforms. It is not by chance that our Chinese friends, for example, have made this issue one of the priorities for the APEC presidency.

Russia is no exception here. Structural economic transformation is one of our top priorities. Trade with the Asia-Pacific region countries represents more than a quarter of Russia’s total trade today.

We want to increase this share to 40 percent and we are taking concrete steps to expand the geography of our exports and increase the share of non-raw materials and high-tech goods.

In the Far East, we plan to establish a network of fast-growth zones offering tax incentives and simplified administrative procedures. The plan is that the companies located here will focus on narrow exports of non-raw materials, above all to the Asia-Pacific region.  

Ladies and gentlemen, let me take this occasion to invite you to make use of the opportunity opening up to organise production operations in Russia’s Far East. Let me say again that we are ready to offer you the best and most competitive conditions for your work. Direct foreign investment from Asia-Pacific region countries in the Russian economy has doubled since 2009 and now comes to nearly $10 billion.

Russian investment in the Asia-Pacific region countries is more modest and came to slightly more than $1 billion as of the end of last year. We will work actively to correct this imbalance. We hope in particular that the establishment of the National Coordination Centre for Developing Economic Relations with the Asia-Pacific Region Countries will make it possible to launch new projects with Russia’s involvement.

The People’s Republic of China is one of our key partners in the region. We will make greater use of settlements in our national currencies in our trade with China. We are already carrying out our first deals in rubles and yuan. Let me say that we are ready to extend such possibilities to trade in the energy sector too.

Our experts are currently studying these options. An intergovernmental Russian-Chinese commission on investment cooperation is also at work. Its main task is to promote investment projects in sectors other than energy on the basis of mutually advantageous cooperation.

We plan to use similar formats for developing our dialogue and practical cooperation in the investment sector with other partners too. Economic integration is clearly taking the fore on the APEC agenda today.

We believe that a major achievement of the Chinese presidency has been securing agreement on concrete steps towards establishing a future Asia-Pacific free trade zone. This plan should take into account the interests of all future participants, the unique features of our economies and the considerable differences in our development. Naturally, the future Asia-Pacific free trade zone should work together with other big regional economic associations. 

Let me remind you in this respect that the Eurasian Economic Union will begin operation on January 1, 2015, and will bring together Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia, which is in the process of joining. This creates a large new regional market built on WTO principles. It offers free movement of capital, goods, services and labour and broad opportunities for coordination and exchange of technology and investment.

One of the Eurasian Economic Union’s strategic goals is to take part in the integration processes underway in the Asia-Pacific region. I am sure that this opens up prospects of interest to many of our colleagues in the region. The Union is already holding talks on a free trade zone with Vietnam and is open to substantive dialogue with other countries in the region.  

Ladies and gentlemen, the region’s biggest companies are represented at today’s summit. Some of you already have a presence in Russia and some of you are studying the possibility. Let me therefore address in more detail some of the issues that are usually uppermost on investors’ minds.

Let me stress that our long-term development goals remain unchanged. Russia has retained its macroeconomic stability and we consider this one of our greatest achievements. We will continue to value this and will follow a carefully balanced budget policy.

We are not going to increase our sovereign debt. We plan to keep this debt at the safe and controllable level of less than 15 percent of GDP. 

We are aware that our national currency, the ruble, is undergoing considerable fluctuation at the moment and we are working with our financial authorities to take the necessary measures. Our Central Bank is continuing its inflation target policy and will not change this.

Let me add that our Central Bank is also working actively on cleaning up banks’ balances. This was something that long needed doing. I think that investors would have no trouble understanding the need to take such of measures to clean up the credit and financial system in general.

What is important is that our basic indicators such as gold and currency reserves and our balance of payments are still at a good level. This makes it possible for us to control the situation without needing to resort to extraordinary measures. Let me say again too that we have no intention of introducing capital controls.

We place great importance on developing a favourable business environment and spreading best practice in working with investors at the regional and municipal level. The main thing is that businesspeople and investors, including our foreign friends, are noticing the positive changes themselves. The international experts have also recognised our efforts. Russia has had a two-fold rise in its ranking on the well-known Doing Business rating since 2010. 

To attract investors, reduce risks, and co-finance projects, we will use development institutes and also some of the reserves we have built up in our sovereign funds – money from the federal National Welfare Fund and other resources. We will improve access to credit resources. We are completing work on a mechanism for project financing and we plan to support major long-term projects.

Starting next year, a new organisation, the Industrial Development Fund, will be responsible for pre-bank financing of companies. We plan to invest significant resources in modernising the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways and see them as the base for a transcontinental bridge between Asia and Europe.

These railways’ reconstruction is linked in with development of port facilities in the Far East, introduction of a railway traffic management system based on the latest technology used by GLONASS, Russia’s global navigation system, and the creation of the so-called land ports – transport and logistics centres. All of this will make it possible to considerably speed up transit of goods.

Let me add too that we are actively at work on developing the Northern Sea Route’s infrastructure. It will become a modern, safe and economically competitive transport corridor with a particular focus on goods from the Asia-Pacific region countries.

We also offer our partners cooperation in developing energy and telecommunications infrastructure. These are priority areas for the entire Asia-Pacific region today. Friends and colleagues, by combining our efforts and capabilities we could achieve benefit all round. 

Russia is showing an example of investment openness in the sensitive energy sector. Let me remind you in this respect of the big Sakhalin oil and gas projects (Japan has a 30-percent stake in the Sakhalin-1 project and a stake of more than 22 percent in the Sakhalin-2 project, for example) and our agreements with China on building infrastructure for natural gas supplies. We are also examining possibilities for our Chinese partners to acquire stakes in some of our biggest production assets.

Ladies and gentlemen, Russia’s location in Eurasia determines its role as a major factor for bringing Western and Eastern civilisation closer together, and we therefore want to strengthen our relations with all Asia-Pacific region countries and play an active part in building a free trade system and in economic and investment cooperation.

We are open for dialogue and discussion and for practical work too. We are ready to carry out joint programmes in the Asia-Pacific region and are sincerely interested in seeing businesspeople from this region come to Russia and achieve success there. We have huge, truly inexhaustible opportunities for work together.

In conclusion, let me invite you, ladies and gentlemen, to the next St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which will take place next year on June 18-20. I hope that we will continue the substantial dialogue on all issues of mutual interest and will open the way for new and interesting big projects.

Thank you for your attention.

QUESTION: Mr President, you mentioned the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, which will come into force on January 1, 2015. Could you talk in more detail about the concrete opportunities that will open in this regard to APEC businesspeople and APR nations?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: We have talked about this a great deal. It is one of our biggest integration projects in the post-Soviet space. I have already said that its participants are the Russian Federation, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Now, Armenia is in the final phase of joining this Union. This has essentially happened already: Armenia’s Accession Agreement has been signed.

For a nation like China, the numbers I provide may not seem impressive, but nevertheless, for example, for the European region, this is a market of 170 million people. What’s most important is that all these nations (at least, Russia and Kazakhstan) have large, not to say enormous, mineral resources and transport opportunities. Belarus brings us closer to the European market. The scientific potential is very high. But what’s most important is that the principles laid into the foundation of the Union’s work are built around the framework requirements of the World Trade Organisation, fully meeting them.

As I said in my address, we have transitioned to a higher phase of interaction and integration. We are removing customs regulation almost entirely between member states in this integration process. We are transitioning to the free movement of capital, services and labour. We are synchronising our tax and financial legislation and progressing to joint regulation of the financial markets.

In my view, all this creates excellent conditions for businesses to feel confident and secure working on this fairly large market. It gives them the opportunity to forecast their activities and receive good returns, to feel protected. I am referring (again, I repeat, this is a very important aspect) to the fact that the principles fully correspond with the requirements of the World Trade Organisation. We believe our partners from all regions of the world, including the Asia-Pacific region, will appreciate this very soon.

QUESTION: I would like to ask Mr President a question about improving Russian legislation.

We have business in Russia, and we would very much like to organise joint enterprises with Russia, but we have studied the Russian laws about foreign investments – in other words, investments by foreign states into Russia. It seems not everything is entirely clear, especially with regard to the fact that state authorities have very extensive powers with regard to foreign investors. Will there be any improvements in this area in Russia?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I already said it in my address and I would like to stress this again: we feel, first, that this is one of our main objectives – namely, to create favourable conditions for investing and generally doing business in Russia. We have a whole programme of action that was developed not just by state officials, but in constant dialogue with our business community.

We have a roadmap for eliminating administrative barriers. And as I said earlier, overall, the situation is changing for the better. We have advanced significantly in the Doing Business ranking. But it’s not just about rankings. It is, of course, a matter of the practical reality.

We are talking about making it easier to register companies. We are talking about making it easier to get connected to infrastructure, first and foremost, energy infrastructure. We are talking about decreasing pressure from, to put it bluntly, the law enforcement system. All of this is constantly in our field of vision. An analysis of what is happening in the market, the feedback from the business community gives us the foundation to believe that the process is moving in the right direction.

There is not doubt that much remains to be done still, but we are fully aware of what to do, and how. I am talking about fundamental issues, which I already mentioned, first and foremost, the budget policy, maintaining macroeconomic indicators and the overall principles of macroeconomic policy. I am talking about our support for exports. Here, unfortunately, we are at the start of this path, but we understand what needs to be done in this direction as well.

I repeat, we are talking about supporting export. So if you come to Russia, the opportunities there extend beyond working in the Russian market. There are also options to work in third country markets through Russia. I want to stress, each of the segments of this plan is under our constant attention, jointly with Russia’s business community. We will continue to improve all these mechanisms.

QUESTION: Mr President, I am from the Beijing Chamber of Commerce. Our members include over 200 companies, particularly businesses engaged in the so-called upstream, in other words, oil exploration and extraction. We also accompanied the Chinese Prime Minister’s on his visit to Russia. We also plan to build production facilities and a research centre in Russia.

I have a question. You talked about direct transactions in rubles and yuan, the possibility of exchange. But the question is about liquidity – in other words, will it be possible to conduct such calculations more freely?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: You touched on a very important issue that concerns global finances and global energy. I believe that payments in national currencies, in any case, between such partners as China and Russia, are a very promising direction for our cooperation, which will help broaden our options for mutual trade and significantly influence global financial and energy markets.

We are currently examining a project for Chinese partners to join one of our major extraction companies with payments made in yuan. Of course, we must understand how we will use the extensive resources that the Russian partner will have when receiving Chinese national currency, but given that the Chinese economy is generating a great deal of goods that are in demand in the Russian goods market, we feel that such settlements are entirely possible.

Moreover, the Russian ruble has a number of advantages in that it is essentially a freely convertible currency, and as I said earlier, we are not going to restrict the movement of capital. Today, we are observing speculative jumps in the exchange rate, but I believe that this will end soon – I am referring to the actions that the Central Bank is taking in response to the actions of profiteers.

I must say that the events on the currency market that we are currently observing in Russia are absolutely unrelated to fundamental economic reasons and factors. All this will come into balance, but it is currently opportunistic in nature, and in the long-term, of course, calculations in rubles and yuan are very promising. This will mean that if we transition to such large-scale cooperation, the effect of the US dollar, say, on global energy, will decrease markedly.

In truth, this is not bad for the global economy, nor for global finances or global energy markets, nor for the dollar itself, because the more versatile payment options are available in this area, the more stable the situation will be in global finances and global energy. Ultimately, I think this can have a favourable effect on the dollar as a global reserve currency. Naturally, the dollar will later participate in exchange operations – this is true of the ruble and the yuan. So I think that this is a very good, entirely realistic perspective, and not a distant one; we will be able to see and hear this in the near future.

QUESTION: Mr President, my name is Yana, I represent a major Chinese investment project, the Greenwood Business Park in Moscow. We have already been working in Moscow, in Russia, for over 15 years. My question: how do you feel the successful experience of Chinese projects in Russia can be used to attract new Chinese investors?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you talk at forums like this one about your success in Russia, this will encourage others your partners and our friends to enter the Russian market and set up businesses there. What you just said is already an excellent advertisement for working in the Russian market. I would happily give you a hug. Thank you very much.

REMARK: Thank you. And in addition, I would like to say that currently, there are over 370 companies from 13 countries around the world working at the Greenwood Business Park. It would be our pleasure to invite you on an official visit to the Greenwood Business Park, a Chinese project.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you. I will certainly come visit.

QUESTION: Good afternoon, Mr President. I represent a Chinese company. I have two questions for you.

First, investment in Russia. All Chinese companies are still somewhat concerned, mainly over issues of law and order and safety in the streets. This is my first question.

The second question. Russia is a major producer of timber. There are still significant barriers in this area. How can Chinese companies gain access to the Russian timber market?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: First, regarding security, especially safety in the streets. I assure you that Russia is no more dangerous than any other country, including China, the United States or a number of European states.

Incidentally, today is November 10, and we are marking the professional holiday of employees of the Russian Interior Ministry. Therefore, this is a very timely question. Let us all congratulate them on their professional holiday, so they know that even here at the APEC Summit we are talking about the quality of their work. And let’s hope that their work continues to improve.

Thank you.

As for timber, the issue you are so interested in. I understand the subtext of your question. However, I am sure that you will also understand me when I say that any country (and Russia is no exception here) wants to have the raw materials produced on its territory to be processed there as well, so that the nation’s economy generates greater added value, new jobs are created and taxes are collected in Russia.

Therefore, our legislation has been making slow progress lately, considering our partners’ desire to buy round timber. However, the overall tendency is that we need to process timber on the territory of the Russian Federation, and we will continue working in this direction.

In response to your question regarding how to ensure the interests of foreign companies, including the interests of our friends in China, I would like to say that the answer is very simple: you can come to Russia and invest in timber processing facilities.

QUESTION (retranslated): Mr President, I head a company in China. We are involved in electronic trade, helping small and medium sized companies do business online. Therefore, regional cooperation is not an empty phrase for us, and my question has to do with it. We all know that regional cooperation is the focus of APEC’s efforts. How would you assess its current state and prospects?

Thank you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Are you referring to the state of online trade or our cooperation with China? I did not really understand your question.

REMARK: Since we help small and medium-size businesses, we would of course like to see regional cooperation within APEC develop. This would make our work easier, because electronic trade helps small and medium-size companies access world markets and receive funding.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I see.

First, regarding regional cooperation. I believe this is a key area of our cooperation; moreover, cooperation between regions of the Russian Federation and regions of the People’s Republic of China is developing successfully. I won’t quote any numbers now regarding the growth of regional trade, but it is increasing day by day and year by year. We have established very good direct relations between the heads of Russian and the Chinese regions. This is a very good factor in favour of closer relations between companies.

Your professional question concerning online trade is also very important. We believe this is a significant segment of world trade, specifically for the development of small and medium-sized businesses. However, we proceed from the notion that in Russia taxation of this type of activity should not noticeably differ from the practices that exist in other countries.

True (I understand what you are hinting at), there is a discussion underway regarding the taxation that should be applied to electronic trade in the Russian Federation. The scope of electronic trade in Russia is large and keeps growing. The state should definitely maintain its interests and our fiscal policy should correspond to both the development of this segment of trade and its demands.

There is an issue we will have to resolve within the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union, which is to be launched on January 1, 2015. Your colleagues have already asked about it. We need to synchronise our tax rates, bearing in mind that if the tax rates in Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Belarus are different, all the businesses will move to the country with the lowest taxes.

We are working on this with our colleagues, but we must maintain a balanced approach to avoid any serious blows to business; moreover, we must retain favourable operating conditions for them, while protecting the state’s financial interests. We will make sure we make this known in advance. This will be a free, open discussion conducted, among other places, in the Parliaments of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

I know I should give my colleagues a chance to come to this stand. I would like to have a longer discussion with you on these and other issues; I know you have quite a few questions. I would like to thank you for your interest in this conversation with me as a representative of the Russian Federation. 

I invite you all to Russia and wish you all the best.

Thank you very much.

SPECIAL REPORT. Treasury Department Neocons and Zionists play dangerous games in Yemen by Wayne Masen

SPECIAL REPORT. Treasury Department Neocons and Zionists play dangerous games in Yemen
David Cohen, the Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and his band of neocon Zionists who randomly freeze accounts and bring sanctions against foreign officials and businessmen who do not comport with neocon diktats have now targeted Yemeni leaders. Cohen has systematically brought sanctions against any leaders who pose a threat to Zionist designs, whether they are leaders of Yemen who reject a Zionist plan conceived by former U.S. ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein to carve up Yemen into six provinces dominated by a pro-U.S. government, Hungarian anti-European Union nationalist politicians, or Russian-speaking leaders of Crimea and eastern Ukraine,

In his zealous pursuit of Iranian sanctions, Cohen and his team have targeted third countries that have economic ties with Iran, including Belarus, Switzerland, Venezuela, and China.

Ever since the Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence position was created in 2004, it has been in the hands of neocons. The first under secretary was Stuart Levey, whose favorite sanctions targets were Iran and Syria. Levey has since become the Chief Legal Officer for the scandal-plagued HSBC bank.

The director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces Cohen's orders, is Adam J. Szubin, yet another neocon Zionist with the power to engage in financial subterfuge in countries around the world.

The sanctions brought by Cohen's operation against three Yemeni leaders were authorized by President Obama's Executive Order of May 16, 2012, titled "Blocking Property of Persons, Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen." The first three targets were not members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose size and influence in Yemen have been vastly overblown by U.S. intelligence agencies, but against former Yemeni President  

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Ali Abdullah Saleh and two Houthi rebel commanders, Abdullah Yahya al-Hakim and Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi. The Houthis are Zaidi Shi'a Muslims with close links to Iran. Cohen's actions have extended from Syria to Yemen what has been a virtual U.S. war against Shia Islam. Saleh and the Houthi rebel commanders, who walked out of a shaky unity government, were charged by Cohen's office "for engaging in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security, or stability of Yemen." Saleh was said by Cohen of
"reportedly [becoming] one of the primary supporters of violence perpetrated by individuals affiliated with the Huthi group." Hakim was charged by the Treasury unit of "plotting a coup attempt against Yemen President Mansur Hadi as the Huthi forces sought to take over Sanaa, Yemen's capital."

The Houthi rebellion was triggered by incessant attacks on Zaidi Shi'a civilians in the north of Yemen carried out by the Yemeni central government's military, which was assisted by Saudi Arabia, the United States, and, extremely covertly, by Israel.

Contravening the orders of Washington, Saleh withdrew the ministers of his General People's Congress party from the unity cabinet led by Khaled Bahah, a former Yemeni ambassador to the United Nations and neocon-led Canada and an ardent fan of such social networking programs as Facebook and LinkedIn. Bahah, who hails from the secessionist south of Yemen but favors a unified Yemen, rose up in opposition to the Saleh government in March 2011. Saleh was ousted in a George Soros/Gene Sharp-style "themed revolution."

Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansor Hadi appointed Bahah prime minister after Houthi rebels descended from their northern Yemeni stronghold along the Saudi border and occupied government buildings in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital. The Saudis, under orders from the United States and with the ascent of Israel, have waged an aerial bombing campaign against the Houthis from bases in Saudi Arabia. The United States reportedly hit Houthi positions from drones launched from Djibouti, across the Red Sea.

Ali Salim al-Beidh and other leaders of the former People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, or South Yemen, have given quiet support to the Houthis. Abdulrahman al Jifri, the former vice president of South Yemen, recently returned from exile in Saudi Arabia to a thunderous welcome at Aden International Airport. Jifri called for the restoration of the south's independence and he warned the Houthis not to encroach on the territory of South Yemen. The possibility that South Yemen could re-emerge as an independent state with a number of leaders of the former pro-Soviet republic in charge has definitely alarmed the United States and Israel's agents-of-influence in the Obama administration.

Cohen's sanctions order against Saleh and the Houthis stated "the U.S. supports Yemen in its efforts to make economic reforms and "will hold accountable" anyone who threatens the country's stability." There is a clear warning that Cohen and his colleagues are prepared to extend sanctions to others who oppose the Yemeni federation plan cooked up by the neocons and Zionists.

The Houthi takeover of Sana'a put a nail in the coffin of the Yemen federation plan conceived by Cohen's co-ideologues -- Feierstein and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. Now the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Political Affairs, Feltman was an early opponent of any type of self-determination for southern Yemenis who wanted their independence restored or the Zaidi Shi'a Houthis of the north. According to a leaked February 23, 2010, U.S. embassy Muscat, Oman cable to the State Department, Feltman, in February 17 discussions with the Sultan of Oman and his advisers, stressed U.S. opposition to independence restoration for South Yemen. Omani Sultan Qabus bin Said gave Feltman a lesson on the history of South Yemen. The Sultan stated that "he had been personally involved in efforts to avert the 1994 civil war. The south entered the union because it calculated it would dominate the government, a calculation that proved wrong. The situation has been exacerbated because the north has neglected the south, especially after the north's victory in the war. Consequently, in the south today there are two schools developing. One is seeking greater autonomy within a united Yemen, and the other seeks independence."

However, things have changed since 2010 in the South. Officials of the former Marxist-led South Yemeni government have made common cause with the sultans and sheiks they toppled upon independence from Britain in 1967. Moreover, there are historical and traditional links between Oman and Saudi Arabia and the former sultanates of South Arabia.

There have been contacts between Saudi intelligence and Ageel bin Muhammad al-Badr Hamidaddin, the pretender to the Mutawakkilite throne of the former Kingdom of Yemen. Al-Badr, who is exiled in London, would command the instant loyalty of many Yemenis if he were to become the leader of the restored kingdom ruling over north Yemen. Al-Badr would also be well-disposed to the status quo ante of the restored independence of South Yemen in the form of a federation of Aden and the restored sultanates of the Hadhramaut region or as four separate countries: South Yemen or South Arabia, the Qua'iti State of Hadhramaut, the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra, and the Kathiri State of Seiyun. In addition to the exiled pretender king playing more of a role in Yemeni affairs, Mohammad Hameed Al-Din, the grandson of Yahya Hameed Al-Din, the imam who ruled north Yemen from 1911 until 1948, recently returned to Yemen from exile in Saudi Arabia.


Stamp issued by the Kingdom of Yemen in 1963 depicting the once and possible future flag of Yemen.

The leaders of the three largest former sultanates of eastern South Arabia are now flexing their political muscles along with the pro-South independence movement Al-Hirak. The new "unity" government in Sana'a even includes members of Al-Hirak, which has taken control of the important Oil Ministry. Throughout Aden and other South Arabian cities, the flags of the former South Yemen and even the former sultanates are seen more than the discredited flag of Yemen. Al-Hirak has formed the Supreme Council of the Revolutionary and Peaceful Southern Movement. The council has demanded that the former president of South Yemen, Al-Beidh, be restored as the president of the South. The name "Yemen" is so unpopular in the south that those who demand independence restoration merely refer to the aspiring nation as the "South." Others use its former pre-independence name of "South Arabia."

Sultan Ghalib II bin Awadh al-Qu'aiti of the Qu'aiti State in Hadhramaut; Abdullah bin Isa, the would-be restored Sultan of the Mahra Sutanate of Qishn and Socotra, the latter a strategic island in the Gulf of Aden long sought by the U.S. Navy as a base; and Husayn ibn Ali, the aspirant restored sultan of the Kathiri State of Seiyun in Hadhramaut have all initiated plans to see the independence or autonomy of their sultanates restored in either an independent Hadhramaut federation or as part of a loose federal South Yemen/South Arabia with its capital in Aden.


    

Left to right: The Qu'aiti Sultan Ghalib II, Abdullah bin Isa of the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra, Sultan Husayn ibn Ali with the flag of the Kathiri State; Abdullah bin Isa surrounded by Mahra flags; and a sign denoting the border of Yemen and the Mahra Sultanate.


The Hadhramaut First/Hadhramaut League Forces emblem. The group seeks independence of the Hadhramaut. 

It is clear that Cohen and his Zionist colleagues' warning that further sanctions will be applied to "anyone who threatens the country's stability" is directed at the former monarchs -- imams, sultans, and sheiks of Yemen -- as well as the leaders of the Southern Movement (Al-Hirak) who reject the Feierstein plan. The Obama administration, in general, ignores the legitimate rights of the former South Yemen, the Hadhramaut, the Houthis, and the former Mutawakkilite kingdom. Some of the royalists and former Marxist South Yemeni republic leaders have sizable assets in London, Jeddah, Beirut, and other cities and Cohen's threat of seizing bank accounts is clearly not limited to Saleh and the two Houthi commanders.

Cohen is merely stepping into the shoes of the British Foreign Office, which solf South Arabia down the drain in 1967 when Britain, hasty to withdraw its forces from "East of Suez," left local administrations in South Arabia to fend for themselves amid a guerrilla war waged by nationalist independence forces. The communiqués between the Qu'aiti Sultan and London speak volumes of the treachery of Britain. Today, for South Arabia, that treachery has been assumed by the United States with the guiding hand of neocons and Zionists who take their orders from Jerusalem and George Soros.


The flag of the Qu'aiti Sultanate (not to be confused with the Emirate of Kuwait in the northern Persian Gulf) is being seen again in South Arabia.



Sultan Ghalib II once faced arbitary policies from London. He and his colleagues now face them from Washington.



Britain's 1967 treachery in South Arabia now being repeated by grotesque interference in Yemeni affairs by Zionists in the U.S. Treasury Department.




The Central Intelligence Agency has falsely claimed that the resurgence of nationalism by sultanate-based tribes in South Yemen is the work of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The charge is a bogus excuse for the CIA to attack the tribes with drones to extinguish their drive for self-determination. For the CIA, the attacks on the tribes are no different than the U.S. cavalry's genocide directed against the Native American tribes.


The CIA and Zionists like Feierstein, Cohen, and Szubin are determined to lie about tribal  restoration of states like Upper Yafa in South Arabia by calling it all "Al Qaeda." Zionists have always specialized in the "Big Lie."

U.S. contemplated viral weapons in 1969 by Wayne Madsen

U.S. contemplated viral weapons in 1969


At a hearing on June 9, 1969, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations heard testimony from Pentagon chemical and biological warfare officials calling for the inclusion of funds in the 1970 Defense Appropriations bill for the creation of "a new infective microorganism" that would be invulnerable to human immune systems. Dr. Donald M. MacArthur, the Deputy Director of the Department of Defense's Research and Engineering branch, testified that his efforts to create such a microorganism weapon that could defeat human immune defenses would cost $10 million over a five to ten year period. MacArthur was in charge of 76 Department of Defense laboratories at the time of his testimony.

Some ten years later, the world would be plagued by the Human Immondeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which plagued Africa, the gay community, heroin addicts, and hemophiliacs. More, recently, Ebola reached epidemic proportions in West Africa, with the virus being called "AIDS on steroids." The first case of Ebola was recorded in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1976.

MacArthur stated, on the record:
"Molecular biology is a field that is advancing very rapidly, and eminent biologists believe that within a period of 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."

The official also stated, "Within a period of 5 to 10 years it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease…. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million."

The program to jointly develop a synthetic microorganism weapon by the Department of Defense and the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC)was postponed over the previous two years because of decreasing funding for the chemical and biological weapons program, "growing criticism" of the program, and a reluctance to involve the civilian NAS and NRC in the project.

MacArthur was joined in providing testimony to the subcommittee by Dr. B. Harris, Deputy Assistant Director for Chemical Technology within the Research and Engineering office; Dr. K. C. Emerson, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Engineering; Brig. Gen. W. S. Stone, Jr., Director of Materiel Requirement for the Army Materiel Command; and Col. J. J. Osick, Chief of the Systems and Requirements Divsion of the Directorate of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Operations of the office of the Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development.

MacArthur's information was in answer to questions posed by Representative Robert Sikes (D-FL). Sikes represented the Florida panhandle where a number of military bases were located, including Pensacola Naval Air Station, Hurlburt Field, and Eglin Air Force Base. Sikes was known as a corrupt king of pork barrel projects and he was reprimanded in 1976 by the House for owning stock in defense companies that benefited from contracts he earmarked for his district.
  
Was the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick ground zero for the viral weapons of HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and deadly E-Z measles vaccine?

In addition to HIV/AIDS first being detected in Cuban troops returning from Angola, where they were fighting against Central Intelligence Agency-supported guerrillas, and in Zaire and Sudan in 1976, the Edmonston-Zagreb (E-Z) vaccine for measles administered by the World Health Organization in the late 1980s and early 1990s to infants in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Vietnam, Mexico, Philippines, Egypt, and Argentina. Infant girls in Africa were given twice the dose as boys and, because their immune systems were suppressed from 6 months to years, many of the female infants died. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente administered the E-Z vaccine to largely African American and Latino infants in Los Angeles. The parents of the infants in Los Angeles were never told that the measles vaccine was experimental. Dr. David Satcher, the director of the CDC, said, "a mistake was made," adding, "it shocked me." The U.S. military's development of microorganism weapons in the 1970s may have behind Satcher's reaction of shock to such testing programs on unwary individuals in Los Angeles and in Third World countries around the world.

As WMR reported on October 22, a leaked December 15, 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in Berlin to the U.S. State and Defense Departments revealed that German authorities hesitated to permit the transfer of hemorrhagic fever cultures from a German bio-research firm to the suspected biological warfare laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland because the Germans feared the Army might "weaponize" the cultures. The German government specifically stated that the ability of Fort Detrick to "create replicating recombinant infectious species" of dangerous hemorrhagic viruses could violate international controls on the export of dangerous weapons of mass destruction that are enforced by the Australia Group of signatories to biological, chemical, and nuclear export treaties.
On October 16, the White House announced that it was cutting off funding to risky government experimentation that studied certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous.

THE ROVING EYE - Lame-duck Obama's brave new world By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Lame-duck Obama's brave new world By Pepe Escobar Fresh out of his latest Congressional election shellacking delivered by the minority who bothered to vote in the United States, the formerly most powerful leader in the world, US President Barack Obama, will star in a thriller this weekend, appearing in the same room with China's Xi Jinping, Japan's Shinzo Abe and - fasten your seat belts - Russia's Vladimir Putin. What a drag - the Bomber-In-Chief must be musing. The global economy is mostly a disaster. China, even growing at "only" 7% a year, keeps eroding his "indispensable nation" aura. Japan has decided to copy the Federal Reserve and embark on its own kamikaze version of quantitative easing. Numerous Southeast Asian nations keep freaking out about a few rocks in the South China Sea. And last but not least, Obama's nemesis, pesky Vlad "the Hammer" Putin, has just been crowned Most Powerful Leader in the world - even if for the most stupid reasons ("unpredictable" head of a "rogue state") [1] - while he, the Nobel Peace Prize leader of the exceptionalist, indispensable nation, is now nothing but a pitiful lame duck. The get-together, extended to Monday and Tuesday, will be the highlight of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing - actually, outside of Beijing, so presumably unpolluted blue skies may also have a chance at the photo op. This is APEC's 25th birthday. And the 20th birthday of the Indonesian summit in Bogor - I happened to be there - which, under Bill Clinton's flowery charm, set the 21-member APEC nations a goal of "free" and open trade and investment by 2020. "Free" as in US corporations dictating the rules, of course. What the whole planet really wants to know about APEC is whether The Lame Duck with meet The Bear face to face, one on one. The White House remains mum. The Kremlin did not rule it out. Well, there's always Plan B: the Group of 20 summit on November 15-16 in Brisbane, Australia. What the whole planet already knows is that the new slimy show premiering on Capitol Hill on January 2015 has a top priority: the Republicans will do everything in their power to make the lame duck cry for mercy over and over again. So what will this mean in terms of Obama's self-styled "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine, which that 2016 juggernaut known as "The Hillarator" has already derided as a "non-organizational principle"? Just extra layers of cosmic stupidity, or something more substantial? That old axis of evil Let's start with The Caliph, aka Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Obama already said, after his shellacking, he is going to seek Congressional authorization for his coalition of the cowards bombing IS - aka Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Daesh, the jiahdi outfit's Arabic acronym Now that's not a dumb move. If Republican-ruled Congress says "yes", they will be responsible for the fiasco (and it's already a fiasco). If they say "no", the fiasco can be attributed to their irresponsibility. Republicans are immersed in their own internal split - the boots-on-the-ground favored by the establishment against the non-interventionist Tea Party. So in the end, the lame duck may profit from it after all. Iran is a much dicier proposition. It all depends on a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) being reached in a little over two weeks, on November 24. That's a taller-than-the-Himalayas order, although feasible. The Obama administration is desperate for a deal - as the leak of a "secret letter" from Obama to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei attests. But a deal under Washington's terms, which for Tehran is unacceptable. [2] The new US Senate only takes over in January. Obama has already stressed he won't ask the Senate to ratify the deal. Once again, the problem is what deal? Obama's idea of a grand design in the Middle East is to use a "responsible" - according to US standards - Tehran to balance the Sunni-Shi'ite divide and get rid of the current proxy wars, the whole thing arbitrated by Washington. This is a pipe dream. But it's what the lame duck wants. Needless to say, Republicans - for whom Tehran never left the "axis of evil" - will try to bomb the dream, pipelines and all, for instance by passing legislation preventing the lifting of key sanctions. Sparks will fly. Tehran won't accept a nuclear deal where Washington just says "take my word for it, we will lift sanctions"; this has to be in the letter of the agreement. After all they have vast experience of dealing with gun-crazy Republicans in power. Nothing will change on Russia - even as the Obama administration needs Moscow to get a deal with Tehran. The relentless demonization of Putin and the resurgence of the same old Cold War meme, "The Russians are Coming", are guaranteed to keep propelling stupidity 24/7 to intergalactic spheres. Capitol Hill will go on overdrive. After all, Russia demonization is a bipartisan sport in Washington. The only "solution" would be regime change. Not only is Putin not going anywhere, but he's ratcheting up his defiance of the Empire of Chaos. This implies increased problems with Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel keeps appeasing the Americans while German businesses want increased trade with Russia and Eurasia as a whole. Another China win-win?  On trade, here's where APEC collides with the two-pronged US version of an economic NATO: the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Asia. What the Obama administration is fighting for is nothing less than a totally unregulated global marketplace. Imagine the "free" market - as Bill "Bubba" Clinton was already parading in Indonesia two decades ago - setting all sorts of standards on everything from working conditions to the environment. In theory, that's exactly what Republicans love. So here Obama would be right in their alley, which implies an easy Senate ratification. It's actually way more complicated. Republicans simply cannot stomach an Obama victory. That means this upcoming Senate won't give him the fast track he needs to clinch the TPP deal. That happens to be exactly what China wants. Beijing will use APEC to promote the road map for its own, anti-TPP trade deal, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). TPP involves 12 APEC members - but not China. And even inside TPP there's a monster revolt; Tokyo is battling the US because they Japan is sure its auto industry and agriculture may be devoured by US corporations. So we're right into a titanic Transformer-style Battle of the Deals. In fact any deal is problematic, as China, Japan and South Korea may want, in principle, broader economic cooperation. But on trade, in so many levels, they are fiercely competing against each other - as in the auto industry and agriculture, for instance - not to mention that heavy historical baggage between Japan and China and Japan and South Korea. The Chinese charm offensive at APEC in Beijing is all about "innovative development", "building infrastructure investment" and "comprehensive connectivity". It's all a mirror image of the extremely ambitious New Silk Roads proposed by President Xi to connect Eurasia. Beijing is proposing a new "connectivity framework" into three key areas - "physical connectivity, institutional connectivity, and people-to-people connectivity". But still no one knows how this will work out in practice towards Asia integration. Washington doesn't care; it just wants a "free" unregulated mega-market for US corporations. Beijing sees Asian economic integration as APEC facilitating an FTAAP by 2025. Needless to say, the US and a few vassals aboard the TPP have been adamant that no regional deal jeopardizes TPP. Washington was betting on TPP being signed before APEC. It didn't happen. So Plan B is to boycott FTAAP until TPP is signed. And that Beijing won't allow. The lame duck will have to duck a lot on his one-on-one with Xi in Beijing. Finally, what about the Obama-Capitol Hill battle on the climate-change field? For the absolute majority of Republicans, climate change and global warming are nothing but an evil conspiracy. End of story. The lame duck and Capitol Hill at least may agree on - what else - the Global War on Terror. Pentagon supremo Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently said the US should get ready for endless wars, as "tyranny", "terrorism", national security challenges and - surprise! - climate change pose a substantial "threat". Since 2002, the Pentagon has been saying to anyone who was bothered to listen that Endless War is the only deal in town - or the universe, for that matter. The lame duck might even fraternize about it with his Republican nemeses over the odd round of golf. What a wonderful (lame duck) world this would be. Notes: 1. Putin Vs. Obama: The World's Most Powerful People 2014, Forbes, November 5, 2014. 2. Obama Wrote Secret Letter to Iran's Khamenei About Fighting Islamic State, Wall Street Journal Online (subscription). 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.

The coming neo-con troublemaking for U.S. foreign policy by Wayne Madsen (Americans voted for the war party. They will have war.)

Americans voted for the war party. They will have war.

The coming neo-con troublemaking for U.S. foreign policy
Perhaps already anticipating pressure from Senator John McCain and other pro-Israeli Republican neo-cons, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, only days after the Republican electoral victory, told the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs that he thought that "Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties" in Gaza. Dempsey’s opinion was in marked contrast to previous statements in which he said the U.S. must not fight Assad in Syria while also battling the Islamic State. McCain has called Dempsey’s public affairs spokesman at the Pentagon, Rear Admiral John Kirby, an “idiot.” The former prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, who allegedly gave his North Vietnamese captors six months of future U.S. naval bombardment schedules, has been a vocal critic of Dempsey and his boss, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Although Hagel supported McCain’s run for the presidency in 2000 and was his friend, the two Vietnam War veterans have had a bitter falling out. Dempsey’s recent comments about Israel’s attack on Gaza is obviously intended to ingratiate himself with McCain and his "partner," South Carolina’s Senator Lindsey Graham, who is slated to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations. Graham will be sure to place procedural roadblocks on any of Obama’s ambassadorial nominations that do not pass muster with the neo-con policy laundries in Washington. These policy “boiler shops” include the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
  
Senate neocons seek to confront Russia and Iran militarily and they think nothing of playing with nuclear fire.

The first volleys in the upcoming skirmishes by congressional Republicans to push for U.S. military action in the Middle East came after it was revealed that President Obama sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in October urging U.S.-Iranian cooperation in battling the forces of the Islamic State. The Obama policy was immediately condemned by congressional Republicans after details of the letter were leaked by an administration source to the neo-con propaganda daily, The Wall Street Journal. While in Tehran in late September, this reporter urged Iranian officials close to Khamenei to respond favorably to White House entreaties over jointly combating the Islamic State. However, any rapprochement between Washington and Tehran is anathema to the Israelis and their neo-con supporters in the United States, as well as to the Saudis, Turks, and Qataris, who, like Israel, support the Islamic State financially, militarily, or logistically.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who publicly supported the Republicans in the election, will use surrogates like McCain, Graham, Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk (who attacked this reporter on his Senate website during my visit to Iran), and incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee to ensure that the U.S.-Iranian rapprochement over the Islamic State is dead-on-arrival. The Senate neo-cons, who put Israel's interests ahead of those of the United States, will also do their very best to ensure a complete breakdown of the P5+1 nuclear talks between Iran, the United States, and the European Union. The congressional neo-cons will also push for U.S. military intervention in Ukraine on the side of the Kiev regime and a military showdown with Russia.

Control of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs may go to Senator Jim Risch from the extremely conservative state of Idaho. His political campaign coffers can be expected to swell with out-of-state money from Jewish contributors from New York City, Los Angeles, and south Florida. There will be intense jockeying for this chairmanship considering the Jewish donor money that goes along with it.

Americans have voted to install a war party in control of the legislative branch of their government. They will have war unless the generally anti-neocon Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky can prevail on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to reign in the neocons. Paul came to McConnell's assistance during his primary challenge by a Tea Party candidate and McConnell owes Paul a huge political debt. However, as Paul ratchets up his 2016 presidential campaign, there is every likelihood that the junior senator from Kentucky will start to waddle and quack like a "neocon-lite" duck.

In that event, a multi-front war is inevitable.

Special Report. The "Grand Old Pedophile" party returns to power in DC by Wayne Madsen

Special Report. The "Grand Old Pedophile" party returns to power in DC

Nebraska's new GOP Senator, Ben Sasse, was a proctor and tutor for the House of Representatives pages who helped cover up a sex scandal involving Representatives Mark Foley (R-FL) and Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) in the late 1990s. Sasse will now represent in the Senate a state with a long history of promoting pedophilia and child prostitution involving top Republicans. In the 1980s, Nebraska and its iconic Boy's Town orphanage were "ground zeros" in the infamous Franklin Credit Union scandal involving rising GOP African-American star Lawrence King.

King was later convicted for embezzling funds from the minority-owned Franklin Credit Union, but thanks to pressure from the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, there were never any prosecutions for child molestation and trafficking across state lines. Several witnesses came forward to accuse King of running a virtual underage teen prostitution service for top GOP officials in Omaha and Washington, DC.

From 1996 to 1998, Sasse was a tutor and proctor for the U.S. House of Representatives page program, which experienced its own pederasty scandal. Prior to that stint, Sasse worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Mitt Romney's and Binyamin Netanyahu's old firm.

ne of the members of the House Page Board while Sasse served as a tutor and proctor was Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who once served as a page in the Senate. Sasse had the responsibility to protect the underage teen House pages from among other threats, predatory members of Congress.

The chair of the House Page Board in 1998, Sasse's final year as proctor/tutor, was Representative Tillie Fowler (R-FL). Fowler died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage on March 2, 2005, after allegations about the sexual abuse of pages first hit the front pages.

In 1996, while Sasse was a proctor and tutor for the pages, Kolbe, a member of the oversight House Page Board, took two 17-year old male pages on a three-day Independence Day camping trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Kolbe also said he was aware of ex-GOP Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) e-mails to underage male pages as early as 2000. However, Foley's indiscretions with the pages reportedly began as early as 1998, while Sasse was still a proctor/tutor. Foley later resigned after it was publicly revealed that he had made sexual advances toward male pages, including attempts to coax them from their dormitory on Capitol Hill.

Kolbe later stepped down as chairman of the House Page Board after questions were raised about his camping trip with the pages. Sasse, as a proctor and tutor for the pages, had the responsibility of stopping Kolbe from taking the pages out of state for possible illegal purposes. Sasse's closeness to the House Page Sex Scandal begs the fabled Washington scandal question: "What did Sasse know and when did he know it?" If Sasse was unaware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley with House pages between 1996 and 1998, why did he not know? As a proctor and tutor, it was his job to know. If Sasse was aware of the activities of Kolbe and Foley and chose not to report it to the House leadership, that makes Sasse an accessory to criminal behavior.

As a result of repeated sex scandals involving House pages, the House of Representatives in 2011 announced the House Page Program would be abolished due officially to "cost" issues. However, Senator Sasse will continue to enjoy the presence of pages in the Senate, which opted to continue the program.


Michael Centanni [right], a major GOP fundraiser recently arrested by DC police for possession of child pornography, seen with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (left].

Sasse also served as chief of staff for Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) at the same time that another rising GOP staffer, Ryan Loskarn, was honing his political skills under Representatives Wally Herger (R-CA) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Loskarn then moved to the Senate where he served as the chief of staff for Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who was just re-elected in the Republican electoral sweep. Earlier this year, Loskarn allegedly committed suicide in his parents' Maryland home after he had earlier been arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. The arrest appeared to have been a part of an international investigation of child pornography launched by the Toronto police as part of Operation Spade. Several politicians in Canada, the United States, and Europe were caught up in the arrest of the proprietors of Azov Films of Toronto and Stafford, Virginia, which is close to Washington, DC and was a leading distributor of child pornography images and videos.

The arrest of Loskarn also focused attention on Alexander's for-profit Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Inc., a child welfare and emergency care services firm that resulted from a corporate merger in 1986 of Bright Horizons, founded by an employee of Mitt Romney's old firm, Bain Capital of Boston, and Corporate Family Solutions (CFS), Inc, co-founded in 1987 by Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and Alexander. Bright Horizons operates 750 child development centers for 850 corporate clients in 40 states, as well as Europe and India. Bright Horizons' founder was also involved in charitable assistance for homeless children and child refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border and Sudan. Orphanages on the Thai-Cambodian border are nexuses for pedophiles, as previously reported by WMR in our exposé of U.S. diplomat pedophiles in Southeast Asia.

  
Base Connect may have been connecting to a lot more than deep-pocketed GOP donors. Its executive, Michael Centanni, appears to be part of a major pedophile ring operating within Republican congressional ranks and the Republican Party.

The return of GOP pedophiles and their enablers to positions of influence in the Senate was heralded by the October 31 arrest by Washington, DC police of Michael Centanni, a top GOP conservative fund raiser. Centanni, like Loskarn, was arrested after an investigation of Gnutella "peer-to-peer" file sharing by child porn customers of Azov Films by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Homeland Security Department. Centanni is a major figure in the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Washington and was a partner at the GOP political fundraising company Base Connect, which occupies an office next to the upscale Madison Hotel in downtown Washington. Police discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Centanni's home which was pointed at the shower.


CPAC 2010 featuring moderator Michael Centanni

Base Connect, formerly BMW Connect, suspended Centanni but it is not the first time the company has been involved in scandal. Although it has raised millions of dollars for Republican candidates, it has also been accused of fleecing its GOP clients by grabbing large portions of campaign donations as its "fees." Many critics call the usurious fees "kickbacks." One of those who charges the firm with malfeasance was Dr. Ada Fisher, a Jewish African-American Republican House candidate who tried to unseat Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) in 2006. Fisher said she received only 7 percent of the money BMW, now Base Connect, received in her name. The firm was accused of also fleecing African-American House candidate Deborah Honeycutt in her 2006 campaign against Representative David Scott (D-GA) and Republican Representative Joseph Cao (R-LA) in his 2010 campaign.

Base Connect is also linked to the Freedom's Defense Fund Political Action Committee, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, the same city that hosts the "Fellowship," the group of wealthy corporate Republicans whose leader, Doug Coe, has been known to excuse pedophiles as long as they "accept Jesus." Freedom's Defense, in turn, is linked to prominent Islamophobes, including Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

Centanni's arrest followed by a few weeks the arrest by Washington, DC police of Rabbi Barry Freundel for allegedly installing hidden cameras in the women's "mikvah", or ritual bath, at the Orthodox Jewish Temple Kesher Israel in Washington, DC. It is not known whether the arrest of Freundel, who counted former Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) among his congregants, was, in any way, connected with the arrests of Centanni and Loskarn. However, mikvahs are not only used by adults to bathe but also by children.

However, after Loskarn's arrest and "suicide," The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus urged "compassion" for individuals like Loskarn. In a February 6, 2014,  editorial, Marcus wrote, "We should use this sad episode to call attention to the need for mental health services — although Loskarn’s problem was not lack of access but lack of willingness to accept the help available . . . But we should also use the moment to remind ourselves that reality is more complex than our cursory assumptions acknowledge, and that before we rush to condemn we might pause to consider the possibility of compassion." Marcus, who is Jewish, may have been setting the stage for more arrests of Washington's "high-and-mighty" later caught up in the Operation SPADE investigation. The mother and business partner of Azov Film's arrested proprietor, Brian Way, Sandra Waslov, who is reportedly Jewish, remains at large.

Freundel claims to have coined the Republican Party's phrase "family values," as well as authoring the Pentagon's now-discarded "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in uniform. Freundel was especially fond of asking converts to Judaism to take a "practice" bath in his synagogue's mikvah.


Rabbi Barry Freundel was freed after his arrest without having to post bond.

The news of Centanni's arrest came a few days before the arrest of Molly Shattuck, the estranged wife of Exelon chairman Mayo Shattuck III. Mrs. Shattuck, noted for being the oldest Baltimore Ravens' cheerleader, was arrested after a 15-year old male alleged that she raped him at a Bethany Beach, Delaware rental home over the Labor Day weekend.

Mayo Shattuck was the president and chief operating officer of Alex, Brown & Sons under the chairmanship of Baltimore-native A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. who would be appointed executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency in March 2001. Krongard was later accused of profiting on the 9/11 attack by placing "put options" on American and United Airlines stock, as well as on other companies adversely affected by the terrorist attack. Shattuck was the President and CEO of Constellation Energy and shepherded the firm's acquisition by Exelon.


Former Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, estanged wife of CIA-connected businessman, charged with raping a 15-year old boy.

Mayo and Molly Shattuck were friends with Carter Beese, Jr., a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and director of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George H. W. Bush. From 1994 to 1997, Beese was chairman of Alex, Brown, a company close to three generations of the Bush political dynasty. Beese also served as vice chairman of the CIA-connected Bankers Trust and president of Riggs Capital Partners, a division of Riggs Bank. Beese was appointed by George W. Bush to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. Beese, a resident of Owings Mills, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, was found hanging in a bungalow on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu in April 2007. Police ruled Beese's death a "suicide."

The President of Riggs Investment from 1997 to the sale of Riggs Bank to PNC in 2005 was Jonathan Bush, brother of George H. W. Bush and uncle of George W. Bush. Jonathan Bush provided "services" for a number of embassies in Washington, DC and he assumed control of Riggs during its acquisition by PNC after Riggs was accused of laundering money for such CIA clients as the Saudi royal family, President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The recent arrest of Centanni indicates that the final chapter on Operation Spade, Azov Films, and GOP pedophilia has yet to be written.

Electing more vermin for a rotten carcass by Wayne Madsen

Electing more vermin for a rotten carcass
As Americans go to the polls today to elect, or re-elect, members of Congress, governors, and other officials, WMR is relating some anecdotal information from a top Republican aide to Ronald Reagan. In late 1972, according to the Reagan friend who had known the actor-turned-California governor since his run for the state house in 1966, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller requested that Governor Reagan meet with his representatives in Los Angeles.

Reagan, no fan of Rockefeller or his family who he considered "too liberal" and who represented the "eastern establishment," demanded that Rockefeller's people meet with him at his Simi Valley ranch home. Reagan was increasingly wary of Rockefeller after David Rockefeller announced at the April 1972 Bilderberg Conference in Belgium the planned formation the following year of the Trilateral Commission, which would include Japan in an elitist political-financial group representing North America and Western Europe. WMR learned from another informed source that Reagan learned of the evils of the Trilateral Commission from then-Democratic Party renegade and political activist Lyndon LaRouche while both were attending a political seminar in California. Reagan told LaRouche that he had been an avid consumer of information in LaRouche's newsletters, whereupon the quasi-Marxist economics professor arranged with Reagan to have future copies sent directly to Reagan's ranch home.

Richard Nixon had just been re-elected in a landslide in 1972 and Rockefeller was planning on claiming his political "legacy" by running for the White House in 1976. Rockefeller was aware that Reagan had inherited the support of the conservative supporters of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who was roundly trounced by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. Reagan was also preparing to run for the presidency in 1976 after his gubernatorial term expired in 1974.

Our source, a senior executive for the Walt Disney Company, as well as Trans America Corporation president John R. Beckett, attended the meeting between Reagan and Rockefeller's people. The Rockefeller team was confident that Nixon's 1972 campaign, called the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), could be transformed into a permanent fundraising and political team that would eventually ensure that the Republican Party would become the only meaningful political party in the United States and herald America becoming a one-party state.

Reagan was told that CREEP's new incarnation would be used to elect Nelson Rockefeller as president in 1976, thus providing the nation with the prize of the presidency long sought by the Rockefeller family. Reagan would have to agree not to run for the GOP nomination in 1976, paving the way for Rockefeller to easily wrest the nomination and serve as president for 8 years. Reagan would then receive Rockefeller and his team's support for a run for the presidency in 1984.

However, by 1973, it was clear that CREEP was very much a part of the Watergate scandal. Eventually, all the top CREEP officials, including its director, former Attorney General John Mitchell; Treasurer Maurice Stans, the former Commerce Secretary; deputy director Jeb Stuart Magruder; Deputy Treasurer Herbert Kalmbach; and Watergate burglars James McCord, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt, as well as dirty tricks operative Donald Segretti and White House special counsel Charles Colson, all ended up in prison for their respective criminal roles in the Watergate operation.

Reagan had been warned by his aides that the meeting was nothing more than a Rockefeller "ambush." Rockefeller had no intention of allowing Reagan to succeed him. One of Reagan's aides tipped off the news media that a meeting was taking place with Rockefeller's people at his ranch. After the Rockefeller team departed, Reagan told reporters, "I will not be a kingmaker." Reagan was telling Rockefeller publicly that there would never be a deal and that the Republican Party could expect a Reagan candidacy for the White House in 1976.

Reagan saw Rockefeller; Gerald Ford, who would succeed Nixon as president and name Rockefeller as his vice president; and the man who would be forced on to Reagan's 1980 ticket, George H. W. Bush, as embodiments of the "eastern establishment," which Reagan detested. Even Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who Reagan lauded in his famous speech at the 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco, did not escape Reagan's distaste for moneyed oligarchs. Reagan told our source that although he appreciated Goldwater's supporters and Goldwater's policies, Reagan felt that the GOP's so-called "Mr. Conservative" was influenced primarily by money, which dictated the policies of "all Jews like Goldwater." When it was pointed out to Reagan that Goldwater, whose father's Jewish family owned Goldwater's department store in Phoenix, was an Episcopalian, Reagan replied that it didn't matter because when Jews like Goldwater "gather in synagogues on Saturdays, all they discuss is business and money." As president, Reagan never visited Israel, a distinction he shared with Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and George H. W. Bush.

Reagan's distaste for Jews arose during his anti-communist activism during the Senator Joseph McCarthy Red-baiting era in Hollywood. Reagan also served as an informant for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hollywood's anti-communist stars were members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI), which identified a number of alleged communists in Hollywood and sent their names to the FBI. Since a number of the identified communists also happened to be Jewish, the zeal of MPAPAI earned it the appellation of "anti-Semitic" by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and other Jewish organizations. One of MPAPAI's most active members was Reagan. Others included John Wayne, Walt Disney, Cecille B. DeMille, Gary Cooper, Ginger Rogers, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne, Adolphe Menjou (who was about as right wing as the late führer with the same first name), George Murphy (a future U.S. senator from California), columnist Hedda Hopper, Ward Bond, King Vidor, and Victor Fleming. The group also included Ayn Rand and Morrie Ryskind, both of whom were Jewish.

Many of these Hollywood notables were members of MPAPAI in order to placate Hoover, who had extensive dossiers on many of the actors that included details of homosexual liaisons. According to Hollywood biographer Darwin Porter, Nixon once told Reagan during the red scare era: "Isn't it ironic that Hoover and McCarthy are chasing after Reds and faggots . . . and both of them, the senator and director, have sucked more cocks than your secret girlfriend, this Marilyn Monroe thing." Nixon was also letting the increasingly politically-active Reagan know that he and Hoover had interesting dossiers on the Democrat-turned-Republican actor.

After Nixon was consumed by Watergate in 1973, Rockefeller's team arranged to have House Minority Leader Ford installed as vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, who resigned in October of that year amid a bribery scandal. After Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, Ford, in a deal worked out in the eleventh hour of the Nixon administration, agreed to nominate Rockefeller to be his vice president. The deal also included a full pardon for Nixon and keeping Henry Kissinger, a longtime Rockefeller operative, as Secretary of State.

Reagan, knowing full well that the Ford-Rockefeller seizure of the White House was a prelude to Rockefeller's one-party state plan, decided to challenge Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976. Realizing that both he and Ford were unelected, Rockefeller decided not to seek the vice presidential nomination in 1976. Ford chose Kansas Senator Bob Dole to be his running mate. Dole had received Rockefeller's blessing. In the primaries, Ford barely eked out victories over Reagan in Iowa and New Hampshire but eventually Ford amassed enough delegates to win the nomination. In the general election, the peanut farmer governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, defeated Ford for the presidency.


Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, responding to a group of pro-Reagan hecklers at a 1976 campaign event in Binghamton, New York. Vice presidential nominee Bob Dole laughs. 

On January 26, 1979, Rockefeller, age 70, died of a heart attack at a Manhattan townhouse while reportedly engaged in sexual intercourse with his 25-year old aide, Megan Marshack. When medical personnel arrived at the home they discovered Rockefeller had been propped up on a chair with his shoes on the wrong feet, holding The Wall Street Journal upside down, along with a clearly visible penis rod protruding from under his trousers. No autopsy was performed on Rockefeller to determine the actual cause of death.

When our source met with Reagan after Rockefeller's death was announced, he asked the prospective Republican presidential candidate what he thought. Reagan replied, "many leaders have been known for their final words on their death beds." Then, Reagan, clutching his chest and wheezing and groaning profusely, laughed and said, "that's what Rockefeller's last words were while he was screwing a god-damned hooker!"

A number of Americans practically worship GOP icons like Rockefeller, Goldwater, Ford, and Reagan. The unblemished history, however, suggests that the current lot of political candidates are merely the heirs of unsavory political forebears.

Domestic intelligence operations ratcheted up against whistleblowers by Wayne Madsen

Domestic intelligence operations ratcheted up against whistleblowers

The Obama administration is already known as the most hostile in U.S. history toward whistleblowers and leakers, so it should come as no great surprise that the number of "black bag" breaking and entering incidents directed against public and private sector whistleblowers are increasing. Under the USA-PATRIOT Act, "National security letters" unsigned by federal judges are all that are required for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to conduct "sneak and peek" operations inside the offices and homes of surveillance targets.

The CIA under its thuggish director John Brennan, the man who originated the agency's controversial rendition, detention, and interrogation program, has been turning up the heat on whistleblowers and leakers. The CIA hacked into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee and sent agents, masquerading as committee staffers, to determine what information the committee had on the CIA programs. Brennan later apologized for spying on committee computers but earlier he had denied such surveillance was taking place.

WMR has learned over the past few weeks that unknown parties have entered the South Carolina home of one protected witness who has both knowledge of and documentation on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" or torture program in Iraq. Compact disks and paper copies of email to and from Iraq were found strewn on the floor of the residence. The individual has been threatened in the past by contractors for the firms CACI and Titan for revealing their role with the CIA's and Pentagon's interrogation program in Iraq. In addition, the whistleblower is aware that many of the leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were not only detainees at U.S. military prisons in Iraq but were turned into U.S. intelligence assets after their release.

Not only is Brennan spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee to ascertain what it knows about the CIA's past role with some of ISIL's leaders but he is now willing to conduct "sneak and peek" operations on private residences.

WMR is aware of another case in which an individual with detailed knowledge of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center has experienced at least one recent breaking and entering of his residence.

WMR's editor has received a series of unusual phone calls from unidentified individuals inquiring as to where we received our information on the U.S. military's weaponization of the Ebola virus. After describing the contents of the main document, a 2009 U.S. embassy Berlin cable to the State Department and Pentagon stating that the German government was withholding permission for a German medical firm to export Ebola and other dangerous hemorrhagic viruses to the U.S. bio-laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland unless assurances were given that the cultures would not be weaponized, the inquiring individuals on the phone responded by saying that the cable was insufficient documentation to prove a "conspiracy theory."

There is ample evidence that the U.S. pursued the development of biological warfare agents long after signing the 1972 convention with Britain and the USSR outlawing such weaponry. The "Gulf War Syndrome" of as British troops call it, "Desert Fever," suffered by many veterans of Operation Desert Storm may have been the result of U.S. attacks on stockpiles of biological agents supplied to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s by then Special Envoy to Iraq Donald Rumsfeld. The Pentagon long denied that Gulf War Syndrome was associated with any weapons or vaccines administered to U.S. troops but Secretary of Defense Les Aspin confirmed the presence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia of banned Sarin and mustard gas. There were also reports at the time that U.S. forces, under the orders of then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, deployed banned chem-bio weapons to the theater to "prove" that Saddam Hussein not only had them in his possession but had used them against allied forces. Saddam's use of the weapons would be used as a predicate to justify an allied occupation of Iraq in 1991. However, George H W Bush and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell would not go along with the neocon plan to toppled Saddam and the new CIA line was that no chem-bio weapons were used or accidentally released during Desert Storm. CIA director John Deutch actually disputed Aspin's proof of past use of chem-bio weapons.


At a 1993 press conference, Defense Secretary Les Aspin shows the locations where chem-bio weapons were detected during Desert Storm. He contradicted denials from his own deputy and later CIA director John Deutch that such weapons were detected by U.S., British, and Czechoslovak units. In December 1993, Aspin suddenly resigned for "personal" reasons, said to be health-related. In May 1995, Aspin suffered a sudden stroke and died. 

WMR is providing the documentation on the U.S. weaponization of hemorrhagic fevers. We have made it clear many times to various agencies of the U.S. government that any and all forms of intimidation and/or harassment are studiously ignored.

Click here for U.S. Embassy Berlin cable.

Click here on August 28, 1975 CIA memo to CIA director from deputy director of CIA for plans Thomas Karamessines on the CIA's stockpile of bio-weapons at Fort Detrick, including anthrax, tuleremia, encephalitis, Valley Fever, brucellosis, tuberculosis, salmonella, smallpox, botulism, paralytic shellfish poison, lethal snake venom, intestinal influenza, and toxiferine.

Other bio-weapons used by the CIA included African swine fever deployed against Cuba's swine stock; blue tobacco mold and cane smut used against Cuba's tobacco and sugar cane crops, respectively; Dengue fever used against Cuba's human population; malaria, yellow fever, crop-destroying Thrips palmi insects used against Cuba; and the HIV/AIDS virus used against Cuban troops fighting in Angola.

Click here for U.S. patent application by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for Ebola Bundibugyo (Uganda) strain: