Indiscriminate Killing is 'Standard Operating Procedure' |

Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange set the record straight on frequent misreporting of the discovery of U.S. military atrocities.

Quote: The actions of the soldiers, the cover-up’s, the obstructionism and the media as a branch of government propaganda are all “standard operating procedure”, according to Mr. Greenwald. These aren’t ‘man, that’s some crazy shit’ circumstances, but, according to Mr. Assange, actually “another day at the office” for soldiers following orders that trickle down, directly or indirectly, from the White House and the Office of Legal Counsel and the Pentagon and the Justice Department and Central Command. There’s no reasonable dispute against this claim. Case and point: the Defense Department’s investigation of the New Baghdad Massacre, having the same videos we all saw, clearing all soldiers of any wrongdoing. [.pdf]

Second, many more than 12 civilians were killed in the New Baghdad Massacre shown the WikiLeaks video. A Hellfire missile struck an apartment complex with three families living in it, according to documents recovered by WikiLeaks...

...“And you see that, as Julian said, in the fact that every step of the way they got formal approval for what they wanted to do. And if you read the Defense Department investigations, which cleared the individuals involved, in every sense,… And you see that this is standard operating procedure. The military was not at all concerned about what took place. They didn’t even think there were remedial steps needed to prevent a future reoccurrence. They concluded definitively that the members of the military involved did exactly the right thing.

“This is what war is. This is what the United States does in these countries. And that, I think, is the crucial point to note, along with the fact that the military fought tooth and nail to prevent this video from surfacing, precisely because they knew that it would shed light on what their actual behavior is during war, and instead of the propaganda to which we’re typically subjected.”

Obama ‘Reserves the Right’ To Murder Millions

by Lew Rockwell on April 6, 2010 12:04 PM

He would only nuke Iran if it were necessary, of course–if he thought that non-warlike country might be able to stand up to US imperialism. He also claims the right to commit mass murder against countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (but surely not Israel).

Almost every president longs to copy Genghis Khan and build pyramids of skulls–that is, by and large, the sort of man who seeks world power–but Barack may be seeking to join the Lincoln-Wilson-FDR-Truman-LBJ-Nixon-Bush megadeath level. God save us.

And now: munis in deep red

Los Angeles Controller Says City to Run Out of Cash in a Month

Maybe the IMF will be needed to back loans to California? Good thing the US doesn’t need the IMF help to print money.

Los Angeles will run out of cash on May 5, city Controller Wendy Greuel said today in a release in which she requested a $90 million transfer of reserve funds to pay bills.

Source: bloomberg.com

N.Y. Budget ‘Shell Game’ Hides Deficits, Report Finds (Update1)
April 05, 2010, 5:11 PM EDT
By Michael Quint

April 5 (Bloomberg) — The state of New York’s history of budget manipulation is contributing to its chronic deficits and cash squeeze, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

“New York needs to stop playing games with the deficit,” DiNapoli said in a statement. By shifting money between accounts in a “fiscal shell game,” state officials and lawmakers “cover cash shortfalls and avoid making the difficult decisions needed to align spending with revenues,” DiNapoli said.

In the year ended March 31, the state used $6.4 billion of funds shifted and borrowed between accounts, and rolled $3 billion of payments into the current year, which began April 1, the report said. Lawmakers haven’t agreed on a plan to close a deficit of more than $9 billion this year in a $135.2 billion budget proposed by Governor David Paterson.

“We agree with much of the Comptroller’s report,” said Matt Anderson, a spokesman for the Division of Budget. “That’s why we are focused on recurring spending cuts to close deficits instead of one-time transfers,” he said. Paterson has said he wants 75 percent of the budget gap closed by reoccurring cuts that would also shrink future deficits.

The Division of Budget’s summary of spending begins with the state operating funds budget, which was $79.3 billion last year, “to help avoid the confusion of transfers with the general fund,” Anderson said. The general fund budget was $54.2 billion last year, and the all-government funds, a measure that includes capital spending and federal aid, was $134 billion.

More…

More: Here's The Bag Of Tricks New York Uses To Hide Its Crippling Deficit

More: Are Munis the Next Shoe to Drop?

And more: The No Payment Movement
What if Greece, and the Pennsylvania school system, and Jefferson County, Alabama, and the countless other municipalities and states that are wrapped up in these corrupt deals just decided to declare their debts illegitimate and back out?

CIA, Mossad and Soros behind Wikileaks???

[I believe that many secret services around the globe are really worried by Wikileaks, and that many of them tried to infiltrate it, likely succeeding, but for the moment the following seems quite far-fetched to me]:

from Wayne Madsen Report, updated april 1 2010
CIA, Mossad and Soros behind Wikileaks

Suspicions abound that Wikileaks is part of U.S. cyber-warfare operations

WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that there is a strong belief in some Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand, that the website Wikileaks, which purports to publish classified and sensitive documents while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers, is linked to U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad's own cyber-warfare activities.

Wikileaks claims to have decrypted video footage of a U.S. Predator air strike on civilians in Afghanistan and that covert U.S. State Department agents followed Wikileaks's editor from Iceland to Norway in a surveillance operation conducted jointly by the United States and Iceland. Iceland's financially-strapped government recently announced a policy of becoming a haven for websites that fear political oppression and censorship in their home countries. However, in the case of Wikileaks, countries like China and Thailand are suspicious of the websites' actual "ownership."

Wikileaks says it intends to show its video at an April 5 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC but that its presenters may be detained or arrested before that time. WMR's sources believe the Wikileaks "militancy" in the face of supposed surveillance appears fake.

Our Asian intelligence sources report the following: "Wikileaks is running a disinformation campaign, crying persecution by U.S. intelligence- when it is U.S. intelligence itself. Its [Wikileaks'] activities in Iceland are totally suspect." Wikileaks claims it is the victim of a new COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] operation directed by the Pentagon and various U.S. intelligence agencies. WMR's sources believe that it is Wikileaks that is part and parcel of a cyber-COINTELPRO campaign, such as that proposed by President Obama's "information czar," Dr. Cass Sunstein.

In January 2007, John Young, who runs cryptome.org, a site that publishes a wealth of sensitive and classified information, left Wikileaks, claiming the operation was a CIA front. Young also published some 150 email messages sent by Wikileaks activists on cryptome. They include a disparaging comment about this editor by Wikileaks co-founder Dr. Julian Assange of Australia. Assange lists as one of his professions "hacker." His German co-founder of Wikileaks uses a pseudonym, "Daniel Schmitt."

Wikileaks claims it is "a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing" [whose] primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources."

In China, Wikileaks is suspected of having Mossad connections. It is pointed out that its first "leak" was from an Al Shabbab "insider" in Somalia. Al Shabbab is the Muslim insurgent group that the neocons have linked to "Al Qaeda."

Asian intelligence sources also point out that Assange's "PhD" is from Moffett University, an on-line diploma mill and that while he is said to hail from Nairobi, Kenya, he actually in from Australia where his exploits have included computer hacking and software piracy.

WMR has confirmed Young's contention that Wikileaks is a CIA front operation. Wikileaks is intimately involved in a $20 million CIA operation that U.S.-based Chinese dissidents that hack into computers in China. Some of the Chinese hackers route special hacking program through Chinese computers that then target U.S. government and military computer systems. After this hacking is accomplished, the U.S. government announces through friendly media outlets that U.S. computers have been subjected to a Chinese cyber-attack. The "threat" increases an already-bloated cyber-defense and offense budget and plays into the fears of the American public and businesses that heavily rely on information technology.

It is also pointed out that on Wikileaks advisory board is Ben Laurie, a one-time programmer and Internet security expert for Google, which recently signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and has been charged by China with being part of a U.S. cyber-espionage campaign against China. Other Wikileaks advisory members are leading Chinese dissidents, including Wan Dan, who won the 1998 National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Democracy Award; Wang Youcai, founder of the Chinese Democracy Party; Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the advisory board of the International Campaign for Tibet, and commentator on the George Soros-affiliated Radio Free Asia; and Tibetan exile and activist Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang.

Our sources in Asia believe that Wikileaks ran afoul of their CIA paymasters after it was discovered that some of Wikileaks's "take" was being diverted to Mossad instead of to their benefactors at Langley. After a CIA cur-off in funding, "Daniel Schmitt" took over and moved the Wikileaks operation to Belgium and Sweden with hopes of making a more secure base in Iceland.

There are strong suspicions that Wikileaks is yet another Soros-funded "false flag" operation on the left side of the political spectrum. WMR has learned that after former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) decided to oppose Soros's choice of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy Mark Malloch Brown as President of the World Bank, succedding the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, Soros put the Wikileaks operation into high gear. "Daniel Schmitt" hacked into Coleman's supporters list, stealing credit card info, addresses, and publishing the "take" on Wikileaks. Democrat Al Franken, who was strongly backed by Soros, defeated Coleman in a legally-contested and very close election.

It is also believed by informed sources that Soros is behind the operation to move Wikileaks to Iceland. By becoming a power in Iceland, Soros can prevent Icelanders from paying back the British and Dutch investors in Icelandic online Ponzi scheme banking and continue his all-out war against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has, in turn, targeted Soros for betting against pound sterling.

Iceland is classic prey for Soros. The Icelandic krona has been decimated as a currency and has no where to go but up in value, especially if the British pound and the euro depreciate. Soros is currently talking down the euro, planning its fall and shorting it, just like he did versus the pound in London in the 1980s. After the UK's and Europe's currencies are devalued, Soros will buy every euro note in sight, thus making trillions.

Soros and his Wikileaks friends have in Iceland a practically unregulated banking system desperate for an influx of capital -- money that will come from the exiled Russian tycoons in Israel, London and the United States. Israeli investors like Bank Leumi, and awash in siphoned-off Bernard Madoff cash, will do their bit for this smash-and-grab operation by Soros's Quantum-linked hedge funds.

With Wikileaks firmly ensconced in Iceland, the "brave" and much-heralded information leakers will run an international blackmail operation against Soros's foes and launch computer break-ins against Soros's business rivals and non-Quantum banks. Wikileaks will be used as the info-hitmen against President Obama's and Rahm Emanuel's enemies in the 2012 re-election campaign.

From Iceland, Soros will be well-positioned to gain control over the massive mineral resources under the melting ice sheet of Greenland. Under the ice are the only major rare-earth deposits outside of China and with such minerals at his disposal, Soros can control the world's electronics industries. This past week's volcanic activity in Iceland could, however, disrupt or destroy Soros's plans to establish and control a North American-European gateway in Iceland.

The following are some of the emails Young revealed in his exposure of Wikileaks's CIA connections (as well as to the Russian "phishing" Mafia, an operation run by Russian-Israeli Jews using Israel as a base) [Note: in the second email, "JYA" is a reference to John Young Associates]:... Read all