Neo-Kagans: Return of the Pair Who Would Be Conquerors

The Kagans Are Back; Wars to Follow

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News

March 15, 2017

The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency.

Fmr Asst. Sec't of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland pushed Ukraine coup, helped pick post-coup leaders. (Wife of neocon theorist Robert Kagan.)

Back pontificating on prominent op-ed pages, the Family Kagan now is pushing for an expanded U.S. military invasion of Syria and baiting Republicans for not joining more enthusiastically in the anti-Russian witch hunt over Moscow’s alleged help in electing Donald Trump.

In a Washington Post op-ed on March 7, Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and a key architect of the Iraq War, jabbed at Republicans for serving as “Russia’s accomplices after the fact” by not investigating more aggressively.

Then, Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, and his wife, Kimberly Kagan, president of her own think tank, Institute for the Study of War, touted the idea of a bigger U.S. invasion of Syria in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on March 15.

Yet, as much standing as the Kagans retain in Official Washington’s world of think tanks and op-ed placements, they remain mostly outside the new Trump-era power centers looking in, although they seem to have detected a door being forced open.

Still, a year ago, their prospects looked much brighter. They could pick from a large field of neocon-oriented Republican presidential contenders or – like Robert Kagan – they could support the establishment Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, whose “liberal interventionism” matched closely with neoconservatism, differing only slightly in the rationalizations used for justifying wars and more wars.

There was also hope that a President Hillary Clinton would recognize how sympatico the liberal hawks and the neocons were by promoting Robert Kagan’s neocon wife, Victoria Nuland, from Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs to Secretary of State.

Then, there would have been a powerful momentum for both increasing the U.S. military intervention in Syria and escalating the New Cold War with Russia, putting “regime change” back on the agenda for those two countries. So, early last year, the possibilities seemed endless for the Family Kagan to flex their muscles and make lots of money.

A Family Business

As I noted two years ago in an article entitled “A Family Business of Perpetual War”: “Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.

Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. 

(Photo: Mariusz Kubik)

“This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.

“Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.”

But things didn’t quite turn out as the Kagans had drawn them up. The neocon Republicans stumbled through the GOP primaries losing out to Donald Trump and then – after Hillary Clinton muscled aside Sen. Bernie Sanders to claim the Democratic nomination – she fumbled away the general election to Trump.

After his surprising victory, Trump – for all his many shortcomings – recognized that the neocons were not his friends and mostly left them out in the cold. Nuland not only lost her politically appointed job as Assistant Secretary but resigned from the Foreign Service, too.

With Trump in the White House, Official Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment was down but far from out. The neocons were tossed a lifeline by Democrats and liberals who detested Trump so much that they were happy to pick up Nuland’s fallen banner of the New Cold War with Russia. As part of a dubious scheme to drive Trump from office, Democrats and liberals hyped evidence-free allegations that Russia had colluded with Trump’s team to rig the U.S. election.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman spoke for many of this group when he compared Russia’s alleged “meddling” to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor and Al Qaeda’s 9/11 terror attacks.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, Friedman demanded that the Russia hacking allegations be treated as a casus belli: “That was a 9/11 scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor scale event.” Both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 led to wars.

So, with many liberals blinded by their hatred of Trump, the path was open for neocons to reassert themselves.

Baiting Republicans

Robert Kagan took to the high-profile op-ed page of The Washington Post to bait key Republicans, such as Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was pictured above the Post article and its headline, “Running interference for Russia.”

Kagan wrote: “It would have been impossible to imagine a year ago that the Republican Party’s leaders would be effectively serving as enablers of Russian interference in this country’s political system. Yet, astonishingly, that is the role the Republican Party is playing.” 

Kagan then reprised Official Washington’s groupthink that accepted without skepticism the claims from President Obama’s outgoing intelligence chiefs that Russia had “hacked” Democratic emails and released them via WikiLeaks to embarrass the Clinton campaign.

Though Obama’s intelligence officials offered no verifiable evidence to support the claims – and WikiLeaks denied getting the two batches of emails from the Russians – the allegations were widely accepted across Official Washington as grounds for discrediting Trump and possibly seeking his removal from office.




Gen. David Petraeus posing before the U.S. 
Capitol with Kimberly Kagan, founder and 
president of the Institute for the Study of War. 
(Photo credit: ISW’s 2011 Annual Report) 

Ignoring the political conflict of interest for Obama’s appointees, Kagan judged that “given the significance of this particular finding [about Russian meddling], the evidence must be compelling” and justified “a serious, wide-ranging and open investigation.”

But Kagan also must have recognized the potential for the neocons to claw their way back to power behind the smokescreen of a New Cold War with Russia.

He declared: “The most important question concerns Russia’s ability to manipulate U.S. elections. That is not a political issue. It is a national security issue. If the Russian government did interfere in the United States’ electoral processes last year, then it has the capacity to do so in every election going forward. This is a powerful and dangerous weapon, more than warships or tanks or bombers.

“Neither Russia nor any potential adversary has the power to damage the U.S. political system with weapons of war. But by creating doubts about the validity, integrity and reliability of U.S. elections, it can shake that system to its foundations.”

A Different Reality

As alarmist as Kagan’s op-ed was, the reality was far different. Even if the Russians did hack the Democratic emails and somehow slipped the information to WikiLeaks – an unsubstantiated and disputed contention – those two rounds of email disclosures were not that significant to the election’s outcome.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. (NBC photo)

Hillary Clinton blamed her surprise defeat on FBI Director James Comey briefly reopening the investigation into her use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State.

Further, by all accounts, the WikiLeaks-released emails were real and revealed wrongdoing by leading Democrats, such as the Democratic National Committee’s tilting of the primaries against Sen. Bernie Sanders and in favor of Clinton. The emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta disclosed the contents of Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street, which she was trying to hide from voters, as well as some pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

In other words, the WikiLeaks’ releases helped inform American voters about abuses to the U.S. democratic process. The emails were not “disinformation” or “fake news.” They were real news.

A similar disclosure occurred both before the election and this week when someone leaked details about Trump’s tax returns, which are protected by law. However, except for the Trump camp, almost no one thought that this illegal act of releasing a citizen’s tax returns was somehow a threat to American democracy.

The general feeling was that Americans have a right to know such details about someone seeking the White House. I agree, but doesn’t it equally follow that we had a right to know about the DNC abusing its power to grease the skids for Clinton’s nomination, about the contents of Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street bankers, and about foreign governments seeking pay-to-play influence by contributing to the Clinton Foundation?

Yet, because Obama’s political appointees in the U.S. intelligence community “assess” that Russia was the source of the WikiLeaks emails, the assault on U.S. democracy is a reason for World War III.

More Loose Talk

But Kagan was not satisfied with unsubstantiated accusations regarding Russia undermining U.S. democracy. He asserted as “fact” – although again without presenting evidence – that Russia is “interfering in the coming elections in France and Germany, and it has already interfered in Italy’s recent referendum and in numerous other elections across Europe. Russia is deploying this weapon against as many democracies as it can to sap public confidence in democratic institutions.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria “Toria” Nuland, addresses Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 14, 2016. [State Department Photo]There’s been a lot of handwringing in Official Washington and across the Mainstream Media about the “post-truth” era, but these supposed avatars for truth are as guilty as anyone, acting as if constantly repeating a fact-free claim is the same as proving it.

But it’s clear what Kagan and other neocons have in mind, an escalation of hostilities with Russia and a substantial increase in spending on U.S. military hardware and on Western propaganda to “counter” what is deemed “Russian propaganda.”

Kagan recognizes that he already has many key Democrats and liberals on his side. So he is taking aim at Republicans to force them to join in the full-throated Russia-bashing, writing:

“But it is the Republicans who are covering up. The party’s current leader, the president, questions the intelligence community’s findings, motives and integrity. Republican leaders in Congress have opposed the creation of any special investigating committee, either inside or outside Congress. They have insisted that inquiries be conducted by the two intelligence committees.

“Yet the Republican chairman of the committee in the House has indicated that he sees no great urgency to the investigation and has even questioned the seriousness and validity of the accusations. The Republican chairman of the committee in the Senate has approached the task grudgingly.

“The result is that the investigations seem destined to move slowly, produce little information and provide even less to the public. It is hard not to conclude that this is precisely the intent of the Republican Party’s leadership, both in the White House and Congress. …

“When Republicans stand in the way of thorough, open and immediate investigations, they become Russia’s accomplices after the fact.”

Lying with the Neocons

Many Democrats and liberals may find it encouraging that a leading neocon who helped pave the road to war in Iraq is now by their side in running down Republicans for not enthusiastically joining the latest Russian witch hunt. But they also might pause to ask themselves how they let their hatred of Trump get them into an alliance with the neocons.



On Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, Robert Kagan’s brother Frederick and his wife Kimberly dropped the other shoe, laying out the neocons’ long-held dream of a full-scale U.S. invasion of Syria, a project that was put on hold in 2004 because of U.S. military reversals in Iraq.


Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to 
the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)


But the neocons have long lusted for “regime change” in Syria and were not satisfied with Obama’s arming of anti-government rebels and the limited infiltration of U.S. Special Forces into northern Syria to assist in the retaking of the Islamic State’s “capital” of Raqqa.

In the Journal op-ed, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan call for opening a new military front in southeastern Syria:

“American military forces will be necessary. But the U.S. can recruit new Sunni Arab partners by fighting alongside them in their land. The goal in the beginning must be against ISIS because it controls the last areas in Syria where the U.S. can reasonably hope to find Sunni allies not yet under the influence of al Qaeda. But the aim after evicting ISIS must be to raise a Sunni Arab army that can ultimately defeat al Qaeda and help negotiate a settlement of the war.

“The U.S. will have to pressure the Assad regime, Iran and Russia to end the conflict on terms that the Sunni Arabs will accept. That will be easier to do with the independence and leverage of a secure base inside Syria. … President Trump should break through the flawed logic and poor planning that he inherited from his predecessor. He can transform this struggle, but only by transforming America’s approach to it.”

A New Scheme on Syria

In other words, the neocons are back to their clever word games and their strategic maneuverings to entice the U.S. military into a “regime change” project in Syria.

The neocons thought they had almost pulled off that goal by pinning a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, on the Syrian government and mousetrapping Obama into launching a major U.S. air assault on the Syrian military.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped in to arrange for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to surrender all his chemical weapons even as Assad continued to deny any role in the sarin attack.

Putin’s interference in thwarting the neocons’ dream of a Syrian “regime war” moved Putin to the top of their enemies’ list. Soon key neocons, such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, were taking aim at Ukraine, which Gershman deemed “the biggest prize” and a steppingstone toward eventually ousting Putin in Moscow.

It fell to Assistant Secretary Victoria “Toria” Nuland to oversee the “regime change” in Ukraine. She was caught on an unsecured phone line in late January or early February 2014 discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt how “to glue” or “to midwife” a change in Ukraine’s elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Several weeks later, neo-Nazi and ultranationalist street fighters spearheaded a violent assault on government buildings forcing Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives, with the U.S. government quickly hailing the coup regime as “legitimate.”

But the Ukraine putsch led to the secession of Crimea and a bloody civil war in eastern Ukraine with ethnic Russians, events that the State Department and the mainstream Western media deemed “Russian aggression” or a “Russian invasion.”

So, by the last years of the Obama administration, the stage was set for the neocons and the Family Kagan to lead the next stage of the strategy of cornering Russia and instituting a “regime change” in Syria.

All that was needed was for Hillary Clinton to be elected president. But these best-laid plans surprisingly went astray. Despite his overall unfitness for the presidency, Trump defeated Clinton, a bitter disappointment for the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks.

Yet, the so-called “#Resistance” to Trump’s presidency and President Obama’s unprecedented use of his intelligence agencies to paint Trump as a Russian “Manchurian candidate” gave new hope to the neocons and their agenda.

It has taken them a few months to reorganize and regroup but they now see hope in pressuring Trump so hard regarding Russia that he will have little choice but to buy into their belligerent schemes.

As often is the case, the Family Kagan has charted the course of action – batter Republicans into joining the all-out Russia-bashing and then persuade a softened Trump to launch a full-scale invasion of Syria. In this endeavor, the Kagans have Democrats and liberals as the foot soldiers.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dave Lindorff, Patrick Henningsen, Janine Bandcroft, Christina Nikolic FundingDrive March 15, 2017

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

March 15, 2017

Welcome to the GR FunDriving Show! We'll be leaving the usual format today to enjoin the ballyhoo barking, as on the midways of old, all to excite and delight your ears and mind.

It's a census of listener sensibilities, and ultimately a question we seek you to answer; to wit: Do we make you happy? If the answer is "Yes," or better yet, "Hell, yeah!" then we're providing today the opportunity for you to prove your love in the only way our focus group could figure...with MONEY!

I'll touch base with a couple old Gorilla pals to get their take on independent journalism and the state of it, play some show clips of the year past, and feature some favoured musical clips.

Listen. Hear.

I'll be ably joined in this conspiracy of finance by CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft and local horticultural guru, Christina Nikolic. But first, here's a musical act I've played quite a bit as of late...Canada's own, Hawksley Workman.


1:02:00 5:00 Music Hawksley Workman - Old Cheetah - Teenage Cats

1:04:00 6:00 Blatherskite

Yes, it's the 2017 CFUV FundingDrive. I'm joined in studio by Winds of Change host, Janine Bandcroft, and long-time CFUV and Gorilla Radio supporter, the chef in the kitchen that is the Organic Gardener's Pantry, Christina Nikolic. Hey Janine we've been at this for a while now. You started contributing events listings to this show a way back in 2002; that's more than 700 episodes or so ago. And, you began your own show around the same time... How many Wings of Change episodes have you produced since?

Christina Nikolic, I really appreciate your support over the last nine years. Especially as this is the super busy time of year for your business, the Gardener's Pantry. What's with the weather, and how can gardeners get ready, while we wait for Spring's eventual sproing?

Two and half months into 2017 it sort of seems this year has dragged on forever, like a Canadian opera, or least favoured season that just wouldn't die. I blame Donald Trump. The inevitable human response to the endless deluge of crapulence coming from the south via the media mainline there is to batten tightly the hatch and drown the television in the bathtub. The problem with that is, local actors, the Trumpish filth column so to speak, are on the move too. Here in British Columbia, the news-weary risk missing the dirty doings of our own Madame Clark, as her troupe of mini-Trumps hatch plots to enslave BC's generations to come. With the election a mere 7 weeks away, a low voter turnout can only cement the province into a dystrumpian future of Mordor-like industrial devastation, where the orcs of profit-at-all-cost wreck havoc, impaling upon their tridents any impulse to human decency, while polluting our souls and despoiling every living creatures they encounter. Don't get me wrong; I know they can't help it. Like the scorpion said to the stung and dying toad, "It's just in my nature."

And, the federal political scene in this Canada is not a lot better. Those hoping Trudeau's Frodoian triumph over the Gollum-like Stephen Harper would usher a new dawn in Middle Earth have now discovered, what's precious to Justin is not a lot different from either the Harpy defeated, or the provincial Liberal namesakes. Namely, the Ring of Power.

The prime minister paid a visit to Victoria a couple weeks ago, and I went down to get a listen. Here's an edited down version of The Return of the Man Who Would Be the Ring's King.

1:10:00 4:44 Ape Goes to Peoples' Impromptu Meeting for Justin Trudeau Visit (stick)
1:15:00 6:00 Discussion w/ Dave Lindorff

Welcome back to GR's FunDriving extravaganza. Beyond being about raising money for CFUV, the theme of my show this year is how independent media producers manage to make and break stories against all odds.

Dave Lindorff is an old-school journalist who cut his teeth working the dailies Connecticut, Minneapolis and Los Angeles. Way back in 2004, Dave went digital in a big way, founding the news website, ThisCantBeHappening.net. As this site says, the site was begun

"[As] a blog by Dave Lindorff in a quixotic one-man effort to afflict the powerful. As the site gained recognition and readers, Dave realized that it would take more than one journalist to cause any significant degree of affliction. He approached three long-time friends, political comrades and colleagues -- John Grant, Linn Washington and Charles M. Young -- and asked if they would be interested in joining him to found a news collective, thus multiplying the site's afflictive power by 400%. All three, sharing Dave's profound frustration with the shallowness and the fawning complicity of the establishment corporate media (and with the establishment not-for-profit media, too), signed on with alacrity and a shared desire to raise hell." Since then, after the loss of Chuck to brain cancer, the collective has grown with the addition of Dave's brother Gary as resident poet, and two new journalists, radical MD Jess Guh of Seattle, and long-time Latino activist and journalist Alfredo Lopez."

Dave has shared his wisdom and insight on this show many times over these last crazy years. Welcome back to the show, Dave.

"Firstly Dave, what value an independent media?"

1:23:00 4:00 Music Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island - Gardenhead Leave Me Alone
1:27:00 1:00 Cart(s)
1:28:00 8:00 Left Coast News and Events Update with Janine and Christina
1:36:00 4:00 Music TRex - Electric Warrior - Mambo Sun
1:40:00 6:00 Discussion w/ Patrick Henningsen

Welcome back to GR, etc. Patrick Henningsen is a freelance journalist, co-founder of the online news site, 21st Century wire and host of its consciousness-expanding radio program Sunday Wire. Patrick and crew have, since 2009 worked to produce independent news, with an emphasis on international coverage that acts as counterpoint to the positions staked out by the corporate and state presses of the formerly Free World. He's reported from the middle east, and is even now trying to get back there, as the six-plus year old campaign to undo Syria and the greater region enters a new phase.

"Welcome back to the program, Patrick. Over the weekend, your Sunday Wire radio program hosted a special March Madness broadcast recognizing Fake News' Final Four. "Fake News" may be on every corporate news reporters lips now, but you've been all over the fakers for a long time. What do you think the expropriation of the 'Fake News' sobriquet means?"

1:46:00 4:00 Music Transworld Underground
1:50:00 5:00 Peter Verin Send-off (stick)
1:55:00 2:00 Blatherskite
1:57:00 3:00 Music Hawksley Workman - Old Cheetah - We're Not Beaten Yet
2:00:00 --:--                                                       -0-

Got Chemtrails?

Chemtrails: What's Going On?

by Dan Eden -  Viewzone

The word "chemtrails" is a knock off of the word "contrails." Contrails are trails of condensation that can be seen in the sky when a jet airplane is traveling at above 30,000 feet altitude.

Up there, almost 6 miles high, the air is thinner and colder- very cold. Outside temperatures can dip to -60 F and the air is often full of minute ice crystals that hang suspended and invisible.

When these ice crystals get sucked into a hot jet engine they turn into a gas, like steam, and can be seen as puffy white cloud-like lines that follow behind the jets. They usually dissipate and fade away as the moisture once again returns to form invisible ice crystals.

"Chemtrails" are something different. They are often formed behind jet aircraft at a much lower altitude and seem to persist in the sky. They often have a different color from contrails and frequently exhibit a rainbow spectrum if lit just right from the sun.

The confusion between these two kinds of phenomenon is what made us hesitate to write about them in Viewzone. We figured that with the dramatic increase in air transportation ther would naturally be many more contrails in the sky and that worrying about this was just another form of modern paranoia.

Breaking Video on Youtube: July 2013

In this article you will learn that chemtrails are real and contain aluminum particles. They have been sprayed in the atmosphere in an attempt to protect micro-circuitry and semiconductors -- primarily involved with avionics -- from atmospheric and solar radiation that causes them to fail.



A satellite photo taken January 29, 2004, showing aircraft trails over SE America.
[click for larger view]

In the photo above, not all of the white lines are "chemtrails." Probably most are regular contrails or "con"densation trails from jet commercial airline flights. It just illustrates the severity of the problem -- even without any conspiracy.

The conspiracy, however, adds another degree of complexity to the problem. It claims that certain trails are not a mere byproduct of modern aviation but rather a deliberate attempt to introduce cloud-like formations in the atmosphere, restricting our sunlight and possibly poisoning us with chemicals. Hence the term "chem"ical trails.

Chemtrails are real

The term "chemtrail" was first introduced by journalist, William Thomas, in 1997. He wrote about something that many people had been seeing in the skies above their homes all across America. It wasn't so much that people noticed the white trails from jets, or even that there appeared to more of them than they remembered in the past, but that the aircraft making these white lines were flying in unusual ways -- often in zig-zag patterns or making multiple parallel lines of white trails that tended to expand and eventually cover the sky with a canopy of clouds.

[Top: photo taken in Kentucky; Middle: photo taken in Washington;

Bottom: photo taken in Portland, Oregon]

Initially, people began to question the government, thinking it was some kind of weather control project, but NASA and NOAA and even the military have denied any knowledge or involvement in the phenomenon. Independent researchers, convinced that something is going on, have posed sinister theories which have gained acceptance from the government's apparent lack of interest and even ridicule of the idea that there is anything unusual.

Analysis of the trails is difficult, at least from the ground. But occasionally the trails have drifted to much lower altitudes and have apparently condensed to form strange residues that have been collected from trees, roofs and ponds.

Lab tests show chemtrails contain aluminum!

In 2008, samples around California's Lake Shasta and the Pit River Arm tributary were tested in a State Certified Lab following weeks of fly-overs and chemtrails. The results of the water samples showed 4,610,000 parts per million of aluminum -- 4610 times the maximum contaminant level! [6]

At another pond, filled with filtered water and confirmed to contain "0" aluminum, test revealed 375,000 parts per million of aluminum (375 times the maximum contaminant level) after only 18 months exposure to the aerial spraying.

The usually pristine snow pack from the Ski Bowl area of Mt. Shasta showed 61,000 parts per million of aluminum!

Why aluminum? Secrets revealed...

At first the logic of putting fine particles of aluminum in the atmosphere seems utterly strange. But a little research reveals that this plan was considered necessary many decades ago. In fact, the idea of spraying aluminum oxide from jet aircraft was patented by Hughes Aircraft in 1990 (see www.uspto.gov, patent #5003186). The plan proposed "to seed the metallic particles was to add the tiny particles to the fuel of jet airliners, so that the particles would be emitted from the jet engine exhaust while the airliner was at its cruising altitude."

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION: Patent #5003186

A method is disclosed for reducing atmospheric warming due to the greenhouse effect resulting from a greenhouse gases layer. The method comprises the step of seeding the greenhouse gas layer with a quantity of tiny particles of materials characterized by wavelength-dependent emissivity or reflectivity, in that said materials have high emissivities in the visible and far infrared wavelength regions and low emissivity in the near infrared wavelength region. Such materials can include the class of materials known as Welsbach materials. The oxides of metal, e.g., aluminum oxide, are also suitable for the purpose. The greenhouse gases layer typically extends between about seven and thirteen kilometers above the earth's surface. The seeding of the stratosphere occurs within this layer. The particles suspended in the stratosphere as a result of the seeding provide a mechanism for converting the blackbody radiation emitted by the earth at near infrared wavelengths into radiation in the visible and far infrared wavelength so that this heat energy may be reradiated out into space, thereby reducing the global warming due to the greenhouse effect."

But wait! There's more.

A more sinister use of aluminum

You would think that the government would be happy to announce that they had a plan to help reduce global warming. If spraying powdered aluminum oxide from jetliners would stave off the dire predictions of violent storms, melting icecaps and rapidly rising ocean, most people would likely have applauded their attempts. There would have been no need for secrecy and denying what people have been seeing in the skies over their communities.

So is there really another reason for the chemtrails? Absolutely.

It was the late Edward Teller, member of the Manhattan Project and father of the Hydrogen Bomb, co-founder and director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who proposed this geo-engineering technique together with Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood and who designed a variety of mixtures according to the specific tasks they have to perform, among which figure the deployment of "electrically-conducting sheets" or "metallic 'nets' of ultra-fine mesh-spacing" in the stratosphere.

But their concern wasn't global warming. It was the growing dependence on, and vulnerability to semiconductors.

In a paper presented to the US Air Force titled "Electromagnetic Pulse Threats in 2010", Major Colin R. Miller describes the dangers from atmospheric radiation which could shut down everything in America -- bringing us back to the stone age. Disruption of semiconductors in our present society could cause everything to cease -- from the basics like water and power to emergency services, all communication, transportation and our national security. He outlines vital importance of shielding of these circuits, both individually and globally. [1]

In a 2009 interview with Ludwig Glinz about 'Sferic Frequencies, Semiconductor Technologies and their effective Preservation and Protection,' Uwe Behnken, founder of LiveNet Concept 2010 and long time activist against Chemtrail Spraying, suggests that the massive injection of toxic substances into the stratosphere ever since the nineties bears a direct relation to the protection of highly sensitive semiconductor technologies.

"Natural electromagnetic pulses are known to everybody ever since the film 'The Day After' where we learnt what happens if these are created artificially by means of the explosion of an atom bomb. If an atomic weapon explodes, the electromagnetic pulse causes semiconductor technologies to stop functioning. The same electromagnetic pulses can be registered in the event of elevated sferic frequencies or nuclear electromagnetic pulses stemming from elevated sun activities, and from our perspective this is another reason why it is undertaken to repel these sferic frequencies with the help of toxic substances, like aluminium oxides and barium-chlorides so as to protect semiconductor technologies."[see http://www.lnc-2010.de/Linkpool/Sfericstandard.wmv]

Our vulnerability to radiation

Since the 1950's when silicon and germanium transistors were suddenly "discovered" by Bell Laboratories, electronic circuitry has become entirely dependent upon these semiconductors. Radios containing vacuum tubes were replaced by transistor circuits and expensive room size computers, which used magnetic relays and solenoids, were quickly reduced to desktop "appliances" that are now found in most every home.

As we round the corner of the first decade of the 21st Century, micro-circuits are in our cellphones, satellites, "fly-by-wire" cars and almost all of the communications devices used by the financial, business and military institutions. In just 50 years since their introduction, semiconductors have become a most vital part of our life and a necessity for our survival.

But there's a problem no one anticipated.

Because the circuits are so incredibly small and function of such extremely low voltages, they are highly vulnerable to outside radiation. Rays from our Sun, the atmosphere and even cosmic rays, can and do cause errors in these circuits that can have an impact on the lives and safety of everyone.

Three little sins

One of the problems related to semiconductor technology and as derived from some of its specific characteristics is, that upon exposure to various types of particles of atmospheric radiation -- alpha particles, various ions, protons, and neutrons which can 'hit' the device -- it can change state or alter its output, leading to an error. This phenomenon is widely known by the manufacturers and has been called 'Single Event Effect' (SEE), which, in turn, is classified in three basic categories: A soft error or 'single event upset' (SEU), a soft or hard error or 'single event latch-up (SEL) and a hard failure or 'single event burnout' (SEB).

The Single Event Upset happens when the flow of data ("1's" and "0's") is corrupted. Maybe when reading the binary code from a memory or processor an extra bit is added or lost. This is a fairly regular occurrence and is usually corrected within the device by a special code that counts the number of bits, checks to make sure the same number was received, and orders them to be repeated if there is a discrepancy.

The Single Event Latch is more serious. The external radiation causes one of the transistors to malfunction, allowing high voltage to enter the circuit and disabling the device either temporarily or permanently. The damage is usually localized and many critical circuits have built in redundancy to compensate for this.

The Single Event Burnout results when the radiation causes instantaneous yet large voltages to enter the circuit, burning the internal elements of the transistors and their surrounding components. When this happens the electronic circuits are permanently disabled.

All of the problems mentioned happen to semiconductor circuits when exposed to radiation. Manufacturers of commercial semiconductors do not design any protection against this and so our society -- our way of life -- is highly vulnerable. The protection from such things as solar radiation and cosmic rays has instead been to establish a conductive layer of metallic particles which cover and dissipate this radiation.

In an Atmospheric Radiation Effects Whitepaper by Ken Vranish, titled "The Growing Impact of Atmospheric Radiation Effects on Semiconductor Devices and the Associated Impact on Avionics Suppliers" the problem is put in perspective. The design and manufacturing of complex devices usually allow for flaws and malfunctions that are tracked statistically. A failure or malfunction that happens once in 40,000 hours could be thought of as negligible. But if the malfunction is in a life critical system, such as the navigation or engine control of a passenger aircraft, this could be deadly.

Next, complex designs usually take about a decade to reach production. The circuitry in use today was designed before the problem of radiation was well understood. So there is virtually no protection in individual circuits. This shifts the burden to a global solution, especially with regards to aviation electronics, such as atmospheric seeding with metallic substances.

All of the above is especially true for military applications of semiconductors.

"Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom demonstrated the potential of NCW, allowing unprecedented speed and lethality through digital command, control, communications, and computers (C4) integrated throughout the battlespace. The ability of microchip-enabled systems to leverage combat power was eye watering and in the future will be paramount. Data links, displays, satellite communications, computerized planning systems, GPS receivers, radios, smart munitions, vehicles, aircraft, and all other systems required to support the networked force will derive their power, and potentially their doom, from fragile electronic systems..."[2]

Public outcry?

No doubt the public will feel disrespected when they learn that this fact has been hidden from them. But perhaps they will also take note of the many unusual airline tragedies that appear to be the result of some sudden electronic failure. Perhaps they will understand why automobile manufacturers, like Toyota, have not been up front about the vulnerabilities of today's fly-by-wire automotive controls that should have Faraday shield, at the very least.

With the Solar Maximum approaching we can expect more and more failures of semiconductors, resulting is all sorts of malfunctions and potential burnouts. One strong Coronal Mass Ejection is all the it would take to trigger the dire scenario portrayed by Major Miller.

A history of lies and more lies...

Back in 2001, angry citizens had mustered enough physical evidence and thousands of photos and video tapes to make at least one congressman, Mr. Dennis Kucinich, include the phenomenon in a bill, (HR 2977) "The Space Preservation Act of 2001" where chemtrails were to be prohibited as an "exotic weapons system." After some closed door discussions, the bill was re-introduced (HR 3615) with this portion of the prohibition omitted.

A review of the average surface temperatures over the last decade shows a decrease of 0.5F, while atmospheric temperatures have undoubtedly been rising. Scientists attribute this to chemtrails.

Non-scientists have noticed that beautiful sunny days are often turned into overcast by the crazy zig-zag flights of jets and wonder if this could also cause droughts or respiratory illnesses. It's crazy, and no one in the government seems to want to address this.

The question remains unanswered: why won't the government come clean with the chemtrails? Is it because the aluminum and other metallic substances has also been responsible for poisoning our water and air? Is it because the need to shield military, corporate and business communications was a higher priority than the well-being of the average people? We need answers and we need them now.

 We encourage readers to comment and write to Viewzone's Editor.

Fasting for Yemen's Crisis: International Call for End to War and Blockade

Yemenis Endure World’s Largest, Rapidly Worsening Humanitarian Crisis While Subject to a Sea Blockade and Constant Bombing

by Kathy Kelly - Voices for Creative Nonviolence

March 14, 2017

Dear Friends, on April 10, 2017, members of the New York Catholic Worker community, the Upstate Coalition to End the Wars and Ground the Drones, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence will begin a week long fast in New York City.

We will jointly hold a public presence across from the United Nations at the Isaiah Wall.

As we fast from all solid foods, we urge others to join us in calling for a humane response to the deadly tragedy facing Yemeni civilians whose country, ravaged by civil war and regularly targeted with Saudi and U.S. airstrikes, is now on the brink of famine. The U.S. backed Saudi-led coalition is also enforcing a sea blockade on rebel-held areas. Yemen imports 90% of its food; because of the blockade, food and fuel prices are rising and scarcity is at crisis levels.

UNICEF estimates that more than 460,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition, while 3.3 million children and pregnant or lactating women suffer acute malnutrition.

 More than 10,000 people have been killed, including 1,564 children, and millions have been displaced from their homes.

At this critical juncture, all member states of the UN must urge an end to the blockade and airstrikes, a silencing of all guns, and a negotiated settlement to the war in Yemen.

While Yemeni children are starving, US weapons makers, including General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, are profiting from weapon sales to Saudi Arabia.

As U.S. citizens, we have the responsibility to ensure that the U.S.:

• Stops all drone attacks and military “special operations” within Yemen
• Ends all U.S. weapon sales and military aid to Saudi Arabia
• Provides compensation to those who suffered losses caused by U.S. attacks.

We will hold the public presence at the Isaiah Wall, on First Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. each day of the fast. We welcome people to join us during those times. The week will include a film screening and discussion, (we hope to screen the BBCNews film, Starving Yemen, at a place and time to be announced), presentations to local communities, and visits with community and faith-based leaders in New York City. Please contact us for more information.

Collaborating with us in this project are: Veterans for Peace NYC Chapter 34, Code Pink, World Beyond War, Kairos, Just Foreign Policy, Peaceworkers, New York Vets for Peace, Pax Christi Metro New York, Know Drones, World Can’t Wait, Granny Peace Brigade, NY, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, D.C., and Benincasa Community, NY (list in formation)

On March 10th, UN Humanitarian Affairs chief Stephen O’Brien wrote:

“It’s already the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and the Yemeni people now face the spectre of famine. Today, two-thirds of the population – 18.8 million people – need assistance and more than 7 million are hungry and do not know where their next meal will come from. That is 3 million people more than in January. As fighting continues and escalates, displacement increases. With health facilities destroyed and damaged, diseases are sweeping through the country.” 

In September, 2016, Andrew Cockburn wrote in Harper’s Magazine:

Just a few short years ago, Yemen was judged to be among the poorest countries in the world, ranking 154th out of the 187 nations on the U.N.’s Human Development Index. One in every five Yemenis went hungry. Almost one in three was unemployed. Every year, 40,000 children died before their fifth birthday, and experts predicted the country would soon run out of water.

Such was the dire condition of the country before Saudi Arabia unleashed a bombing campaign in March 2015, which has destroyed warehouses, factories, power plants, ports, hospitals, water tanks, gas stations, and bridges, along with miscellaneous targets ranging from donkey carts to wedding parties to archaeological monuments. Thousands of civilians — no one knows how many — have been killed or wounded. Along with the bombing, the Saudis have enforced a blockade, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, and medicine. A year and a half into the war, the health system has largely broken down, and much of the country is on the brink of starvation.

In December, 2017, Medea Benjamin wrote:

“Despite the repressive nature of the Saudi regime, U.S. governments have not only supported the Saudis on the diplomatic front, but militarily. Under the Obama administration, this has translated into massive weapons sales of $115 billion. While Yemeni children are starving in large part because of Saudi bombings, US weapons makers, including General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, are making a killing on the sales.”

Additional articles about U.S. and Saudi attacks against Yemen:

“Yemen is a complicated and unwinnable war. Donald Trump should stay out of it.” Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

Death in Al Ghayil. Iona Craig, The Intercept

“Congress Prepares for Another Showdown Over Saudi Arms Sales,” Julian Pecquet, Al Monitor

We urge the following actions:

Educate your family and friends about the worsening, preventable crisis in Yemen.

Do what you can in your local community to call for an end to the blockade and bombing.

Call the U.S. Mission to the UN 212 415 4062 and express your concern

Call the Saudi Mission to the UN 212 557 1525 and express your concern

Visit, call and write your elected representatives to make your concerns known and bring their responses back to your local community.

Visit local community and faith based representatives to enlist their support for ending U.S. and Saudi attacks on Yemen, lifting the blockade, and averting famine.

Write letters to the editor alerting your community to the humanitarian crisis and the responsibilities of U.S. citizens.

Organize education and outreach events at local schools, community colleges, universities, community centers, and faith-based houses of worship.

Hold vigils and fasts in your community.

Sign Just Foreign Policy‘s petition at MoveOn.

Below and attached are two maps. The first shows rates of Severe Acute Malnourishment in Yemen, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The second, from Harper’s Magazine, shows the extent of Houthi influence in Yemen from 2004 – 2016. Please let us know what actions you can organize from April 9th to 16th so we can publicize them.

Burying the Lead: Media Assiduously Misses Mark on 'Vault 7' Leak

The Misguided ‘Vault 7’ Whodunit

by Jesselyn Radack  - Consortium News

March 14, 2017

 It is the leakiest of times in the Executive Branch. Last week, Wikileaks published a massive and, by all accounts genuine, trove of documents revealing that the CIA has been stockpiling, and lost control of, hacking tools it uses against targets.

Particularly noteworthy were the revelations that the CIA developed a tool to hack Samsung TVs and turn them into recording devices and that the CIA worked to infiltrate both Apple and Google smart phone operating systems since it could not break encryption. No one in government has challenged the authenticity of the documents disclosed.

We do not know the identity of the source or sources, nor can we be 100 percent certain of his or her motivations. Wikileaks writes that the source sent a statement that policy questions “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency” and that the source “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyber-weapons.”

The FBI has already begun hunting down the source as part of a criminal leak investigation. Historically, the criminal justice system has been a particularly inept judge of who is a whistleblower. Moreover, it has allowed the use of the pernicious Espionage Act — an arcane law meant to go after spies — to go after whistleblowers who reveal information the public interest.

My client, former NSA senior official Thomas Drake, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, only to later be widely recognized as a whistleblower. There is no public interest defense to Espionage Act charges, and courts have ruled that a whistleblower’s motive, however salutary, is irrelevant to determining guilt.

The Intelligence Community is an equally bad judge of who is a whistleblower, and has a vested interest in giving no positive reinforcement to those who air its dirty laundry. The Intelligence Community reflexively claims that anyone who makes public secret information is not a whistleblower. Former NSA and CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden speculated that the recent leaks are to be blamed on young millennials harboring some disrespect for the venerable intelligence agencies responsible for mass surveillance and torture.

Not only is his speculation speculative, but it’s proven wrong by the fact that whistleblowers who go to the press span the generational spectrum from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to mid-career and senior level public servants like CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to early-career millennials like Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The lawbreaker does not get to decide who is a whistleblower.

Whistleblowing or Not

Not all leaks of information are whistleblowing, and the word “whistleblower” is a loaded term, so whether or not the Vault 7 source conceives of him or herself as a whistleblower is not a particularly pertinent inquiry. The label “whistleblower” does not convey some mythical power or goodness, or some “moral narcissism,” a term used to describe me when I blew the whistle.

Rather, whether an action is whistleblowing depends on whether or not the information disclosed is in the public interest and reveals fraud, waste, abuse, illegality or dangers to public health and safety.

Even if some of the information revealed does not qualify, it should be remembered that whistleblowers are often faulted with being over- or under-inclusive with their disclosures.

Again, it is the quality of the information, not the quantity, nor the character of the source.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, 
standing up for Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.

Already, the information in the Vault 7 documents revealed that the Intelligence Community has misled the American people. In the wake of Snowden’s revelations, the Intelligence Community committed to avoid the stockpiling of technological vulnerabilities, publicly claiming that its bias was toward “disclosing them” so as to better protect everyone’s privacy.

However, the Vault 7 documents reveal just the opposite: not only has the CIA been stockpiling exploits, it has been aggressively working to undermine our Internet security.

Even assuming the CIA is using its hacking tools against the right targets, a pause-worthy presumption given the agency’s checkered history, the CIA has empowered the rest of the hacker world and foreign adversaries by hoarding vulnerabilities, and thereby undermined the privacy rights of all Americans and millions of innocent people around the world. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and journalistic sources — whether they call themselves whistleblowers or not — are a critical component when the government uses national security as justification to keep so much of its activities hidden from public view.

As we learn more about the Vault 7 source and the disclosures, our focus should be on the substance of the disclosures. Historically, the government’s reflexive instinct is to shoot the messenger, pathologize the whistleblower, and drill down on his or her motives, while the transparency community holds its breath that he or she will turn out to be pure as the driven snow.

But that’s all deflection from plumbing the much more difficult questions, which are: Should the CIA be allowed to conduct these activities, and should it be doing so in secret without any public oversight? These are questions we would not even be asking without the Vault 7 source.

Jesselyn Radack is a national security and human rights attorney who heads the “Whistleblower & Source Protection” project at ExposeFacts. Twitter: @jesselynradack. [This article originally appeared at https://exposefacts.org/is-the-vault-7-source-a-whistleblower/ ]

Murder by Mercedes: Wikileaks and the Death of Michael Hastings

Was Michael Hastings Targeted by the CIA? Wikileaks Reveals Agency’s Covert Carjacking Ability

by MintPress News Desk

March 10, 2017

The untimely and violent death of award-winning journalist Michael Hastings sparked rumors for years that the CIA was somehow involved in the car crash that claimed his life. Now, Wikileaks’ “Vault 7” revelations have shown that the CIA has long had the ability to remotely hijack vehicles in order to conduct “undetectable assassinations.”

MINNEAPOLIS– A little more than four years ago, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings – a vocal critic of the Obama administration – died in a fiery high-speed automobile crash in west Los Angeles. Hastings’ death – at the time – generated suspicion among journalists due to the dubious circumstances surrounding his dramatic death.

Many of the theories surrounding his’ death focused on stories that he was set to publish in the coming months. Hastings gained infamy for his 2010 profile on General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, an award-winning piece that ultimately led to McChrystal being relieved of his command.

Immediately prior to his death, Hastings had published a strong critique of the Obama administration titled “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” which exposed the party’s hypocrisy regarding some of the civil liberty overreaches they had criticized under Bush but embraced under Obama.

San Diego 6 News reported that Hastings had been investigating CIA Director John Brennan for an upcoming exposé prior to the crash.

Several details regarding the crash itself also suggested the possibility that Hastings’ death was the result of foul play, despite official statements to the contrary. For instance, the car caused no damage to the median curb dividing the four-lane road where the crash occurred, nor were there any skid marks present – despite the fact that the car made a sudden 60-degree turn into a palm tree.

In addition, an eyewitness at the scene – a worker at a business located near the site of the crash – told San Diego News 6 that the car was traveling extremely fast and and that explosions could be heard coming from within the vehicle shortly before the crash.

Furthermore, police pointed out that the fire inside the car was unusual due to its intensity, commenting that it resembled a thermite burn. Hastings’ body was so badly burned that it took the coroner two days to identify him, another factor that is atypical for vehicle fires. The LAPD also refused to release accident or toxicology reports, nor did they allow Hastings’ car to be independently inspected, despite their assertion that there was no evidence of foul play.

While the evidence suggesting Hastings was murdered was more than circumstantial, it proved difficult to officially connect his demise to the powerful enemies he had made in government – mainly because the government’s ability to hack vehicles was only considered to be theoretically possible at the time.

The most well-known proponent of this theory was former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism Richard A. Clarke, who told the Huffington Post that the crash that killed Hastings was “consistent with a car cyber attack.”

“It’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag. You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard,” Clarke said.

However, as Clarke noted, “the problem with [car cyber attacks] is you can’t prove it.”

Hastings Sought To Expose Covert Hacking

Wikileaks has made the possibility of remotely hijacking vehicles for covert assassinations easier to prove, thanks to its recent release of the “largest ever publication of confidential documents” related to the CIA. On Tuesday, Wikileaks released a trove of documents code-named “Vault 7” that contain details regarding the CIA’s global covert hacking program. Within its press release, Wikileaks noted that “as of October 2014, the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”

While the Wikileaks documents confirm that this technology existed in 2014, there is reason to believe that the CIA was capable of hacking vehicles as far back as the late 1990s. Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, wrote in 2010 about what he termed the CIA’s “Boston Brakes” assassination technique. In the article, Duff noted that the deaths of Chilcot Inquiry witness Richard Waddington, anti-Zionist Austrian politicians Jorg Haider and even Princess Diana all involved car crashes where the vehicle crashed into objects like concrete abutments but left no skid marks – not unlike the Hastings crash. If Hastings really was the victim of CIA vehicle hijacking, it seems unlikely that he was the agency’s first victim of its “undetectable”
assassinations.

In addition, some of the other revelations found in “Vault 7” are rumored to be related to the very story Hastings was working on at the time of his death. According to a WhoWhatWhy story published in 2013 – long before “Vault 7” was made public – Hastings, through his connections to imprisoned journalist Barrett Brown, was said to have been working on exposing the CIA’s use of weaponized malware, as well as the agency’s ability to hack smartphones to access the communications of private citizens. Was Hastings killed for investigating the very revelations that Wikileaks has now made public?

AJE's New Vision for Digital Audio

Al Jazeera Media Network launches a new spoken audio initiative

by AJE

March 14, 2017

 Doha –  Al Jazeera Media Network launched today an experimental platform for digital radio. The platform – a first of its kind – consists of a Facebook Messenger bot and an iPhone app that work together to enable users to search, discover, share and listen to podcasts through smart phones, cars and home audio systems (Alexa and Google Home).

"This launch represents only a glimpse of upcoming digital products from Al Jazeera that will enable audiences to discover the world of podcasts in new innovative ways reflecting Al Jazeera’s digital vision which revolves around innovating in new technologies for natively produced content." Dr. Yaser Bishr, Executive Director of Digital for Al Jazeera, said.

In addition to investing in developing the technology, Al Jazeera is also investing in building a highly qualified team of content producers to create inspirational, engaging and shareable content.

"The English version will be launched by end of this Spring as part of the official launch, followed by the Arabic version."

"Our team has been working on several projects in digital audio that combine ease of discoverability and seamless sharing" Moeed Ahmad, Manager of Innovation & Research, remarked.

The key element in designing the new platform has been natural language interfaces and interactive sharing, as well as the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning which enhances search results and provide customized experiences.

"User participation and feedback in this experiment will help us shape the final product launch." he ended.

The details of the bot and the app are available on: http://canvas.aljazeera.com/kimchi/

Al Jazeera Media Network strives to deliver content that captivates, informs, inspires and entertains. Launched in 1996, Al Jazeera was the first independent news channel in the Arab world dedicated to providing comprehensive news and live debate. It challenged established narratives and gave a global audience an alternative voice - one that put the human being back at the centre of the news agenda - quickly making it one of the world’s most influential news networks. Since then the network has added new channels and services, with more than 70 bureaus around the world and a reach into 305 million homes worldwide.

For further information please contact pressoffice@aljazeera.net 

Character Assassins: Killing Black Men and Their Names

New Mike Brown Footage Discredits Ferguson Police Account

by TRNN

March 14, 2017

Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford says the police consistently manipulate public opinion with character assassinations and lies to justify the killing of black men.

Where the Truth Lies: When Disinfo. Is Truth

When ‘Disinformation’ Is Truth

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News

March 13, 2017

The anti-Russian McCarthyism that has spread out from the United States to encompass the European Union, Canada and Australia has at its core an implicit recognition that neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy have failed. When I recently asked a European journalist why this anti-Russian hysteria had taken root among mainstream European political parties, he answered with a question:

“Do you think they can run on their success in handling the recession and the refugees?”

A scene from “Dr. Strangelove,” in which the bomber pilot 
(played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb to its 
target in the Soviet Union. 

In other words, European voters are angry about the painful economic conditions that followed the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the destabilizing surge of immigrants fleeing from Western “regime change” wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan.

So, like the Democratic Party that doesn’t want to engage in a soul-searching self-examination about Donald Trump’s victory, the European “establishment” parties need a handy excuse to divert criticism – and that excuse is Russia, a blame-shifting that has allowed nearly every recent criticism of an establishment government official to be sloughed off as “Russian disinformation.”

It doesn’t even matter anymore that the criticism may be based on solid fact. Even truthful information is now deemed “Russian disinformation” or Russian-inspired “fake news.”

We saw that in the Canadian mainstream media’s denunciations of Consortiumnews.com for running an article that pointed out that Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland had misrepresented her family history to white-out her maternal grandfather’s role editing a Nazi newspaper in Poland that demonized Jews and justified the Holocaust.

Virtually every mainstream outlet in Canada rallied to Freeland’s side when she dismissed our article as Russian disinformation. Only later did a few newspapers grudgingly acknowledge that our story was true and that Freeland knew it was true. Still, the attacks on us continued. We were labeled “Russian disinformationists,” with no evidence needed to support the slander and no defense allowed.

Though arguably a small example, the Freeland story reflects what is happening across the Western mainstream news media. Almost every independent-minded news article that questions the establishment narratives on international affairs is dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” The few politicians, academics and journalists who don’t march in the establishment’s parade are “Moscow stooges” or “Putin apologists.”

The Russian Resistance

This anti-Russian hysteria began some years ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear that Russia would no longer bow to dictates from Washington and Brussels. Russia bristled at the encroachment of NATO on its borders, rejected the neoconservative agenda of “regime change” wars in Muslim countries, and resisted the U.S.-backed putsch ousting Ukraine’s elected president in 2014.



But the anti-Russian frenzy gained unstoppable momentum with the U.S. election in 2016. The Democrats, liberals and neoconservatives were horrified at the shocking upset of their presidential choice, Hillary Clinton, by the boorish and buffoonish Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton speaking at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona,

March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore) 

After this bitter defeat, the losers looked for scapegoats rather than order up a serious autopsy on how they lost to the “unelectable” Trump, i.e, by choosing a corporate candidate who was associated with neoliberal economics and neoconservative war policies. Blaming Russia became the easy excuse that could unify the various pro-Clinton camps.

So, the Obama administration – in an unprecedented step – sought to poison the well for its successor by having the U.S. intelligence community put out evidence-lacking allegations about Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election to elect Trump.

The promoters of this Russia-did-it narrative merged with the “#Resistance” movement to do whatever was necessary to push Trump out of office. It didn’t seem to matter that there was very little evidence that the Russians actually did meddle in the election.

The chief claim was that the Russians gave WikiLeaks the Democratic emails revealing the Democratic National Committee’s sabotage of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign and the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta exposing the contents of Clinton’s hidden speeches to Wall Street and some pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.

WikiLeaks denied getting the material from the Russians, but – more to the point – there was no evidence of collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, as even Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman have acknowledged. (The WikiLeaks disclosures also were not a major factor in Clinton’s defeat, which she primarily blamed on FBI Director James Comey briefly reopening the investigation of her using a private email server while Secretary of State.)

Still, the absence of evidence has not deterred Democrats, liberals and neocons from spinning a vast Russian conspiracy theory that ties together Trump’s past business dealings in Russia with the notion that somehow Putin foresaw that Trump would become U.S. president, an eventuality that nearly every American pundit considered an impossibility as recently as last year.

But skeptics of the Trump/Russia conspiracy — if they dare note that Putin would have needed the world’s best Ouija board to foresee Trump’s victory — must then prove that they are not “Russian propaganda/disinformation agents” for having these doubts.

New McCarthyism and Maddow

Given the emergence of this New Cold War, I suppose it made sense that we would soon have a New McCarthyism, although it may have come as a surprise that this witch-hunting is being led by the liberals and the mainstream media, albeit with important assistance from the neoconservatives who have long engaged in smearing the patriotism of anyone who doubted their geopolitical genius.



Remember back in 1984 when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, an early neocon, denounced traitorous Americans who would “blame America first.”

But it appears now that many liberals and even progressives are so blinded by their hatred of Trump that they haven’t thought through the wisdom of their new alliance with the neocons — or the fairness of smearing fellow Americans as “Putin apologists.”

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow

Meanwhile, mainstream news organizations have abandoned even the pretense of professional objectivity in their propagandistic approach toward anything related to Russia or Trump. For instance, I would defy anyone reading The New York Times’ coverage of Russia to assess it as fair and balanced when it is clearly snarky and sneering.

It also turns out that this New McCarthyism has become profitable for its leading practitioners. The New York Times reported on Monday that the ratings for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow are soaring with her frequent anti-Russian rants.

“Now, rattled liberals are surging back [to network television], seeking catharsis, solidarity and relief,” the Times wrote, citing a Kentucky woman explaining why she has become a devotee of Maddow:

“She’s always talking about the Russians!”

Frankly, for the past dozen years, I’ve wondered about Maddow. I first heard her on the radio in August 2005 when she was a summer fill-in at Air America reporting on President George W. Bush’s Katrina fiasco, which she partly blamed on the deployment of Louisiana National Guard units to Iraq, so they couldn’t help evacuate flooded New Orleans.

It was clear that Maddow was talented and her excoriation of the Iraq War was on point, although – by summer 2005 – it didn’t require a huge amount of journalistic courage to slam Bush over the Iraq War. As I watched her career rise through a regular Air America gig to her show on MSNBC and then to stardom as an anchor on the network’s election coverage, I always wondered whether she would put her lucrative corporate acceptance at risk and go against the grain at a tough journalistic moment.

Now, Maddow’s behavior in becoming a modern-day mainstream-media Joe McCarthy has put my doubts to rest. She is riding high in the ratings by keeping her whip hand coming down hard on the bash-Russia steed. She is putting her career or her politics ahead of journalism.

Like so many other Democrat/liberal/neocon activists, Maddow not only ignores the evidentiary gaps in the Russia-did-it conspiracy theory but she seems oblivious to the dangers of her opportunism. By stirring up this McCarthyistic frenzy, she and her “never-Trump” allies make a rational policy toward nuclear-armed Russia nearly impossible. Thus, she is contributing to the real risk of a hot war with Russia that could lead to the annihilation of life on the planet.

Thin-Skinned Trump

One of the bitter ironies here is that Trump’s critics correctly noted that his thin-skinned temperament made him unfit to possess the nuclear button, but they are now egging him into a mano-a-mano confrontation with Putin. If Trump doesn’t get the better of Putin in every situation, Trump will face renewed pummeling for “selling out” to the Russians.



Already, neocon Sen. Lindsey Graham has declared, “2017 is going to be a year of kicking Russia in the ass in Congress.” If Trump doesn’t go along, he will face battering from the likes of Maddow, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and pretty much every mainstream news outlet. So, Trump may have no political choice but to get tough. But what happens when Putin pushes back?

President Donald Trump being sworn in 
Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov) 

In the past when I’ve made this point about the recklessness of Russia-bashing, I’ve been told that I’m being alarmist, that “kicking Russia in the ass” and baiting Trump to join in the kicking won’t lead to a nuclear war, that the Russians aren’t that stupid.

While on the upside of this anti-Russia strategy, the anti-Trump activists insist it is the most promising route to get rid of Trump, which they view as justifying almost any action. It’s not for them to prove that Trump did conspire with Putin to rig the U.S. presidential election; it’s enough to raise the suspicion and use it to push for Trump’s impeachment.

As someone who has covered national security scandals since the 1980s, I am familiar with the kind of evidence that should be required for making serious allegations. For instance, when Brian Barger and I wrote the first story about Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking in 1985 for The Associated Press, we had about two dozen sources, plus documents. Most of the sources were insiders – i.e., inside the Contra movement and inside the Reagan administration – who described how the operation was run. We had this evidence before we made any public accusation.

In the case of the Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the U.S. intelligence community has presented almost no evidence of Russian “hacking” and admits that it has no evidence of Trump’s collusion with the Russians. As far as we know, there is no insider who has described how this alleged conspiracy occurred.

That is not to say that some evidence might not eventually surface that confirms the Russia-Trump suspicions, but that is true of all conspiracy theories. Who knows, maybe Joe McCarthy was right about all those Communists inside the U.S. government secretly working for the Kremlin? Maybe he did have a real list of names. But that is what “witch hunts” are all about – investigations designed to prove a point whether true or not.

In this current case, however, the downside is not “just” the destruction of people’s careers and a few imprisonments. The downside of playing chicken with nuclear-armed Russia is the end of life as we know it. At such a moment, journalists and politicians should demand the highest standards of proof, not no proof at all.

Sometimes, I envision the argument that I would hear as the mushroom clouds begin rising over U.S. and Russian cities. If not incinerated in the first moments of the cataclysm, the “smart” people of the mainstream U.S. media (and their liberal and neocon allies) would be insisting that it wasn’t their fault; it was someone else’s fault; blame-shifting to the end.

So, as the Democrats and liberals join with the neocons in launching this New McCarthyism over Russia – and with people like Rachel Maddow leading the charge – what is arguably the most depressing fact is that there appears to be no Edward R. Murrow, a mainstream journalist with a conscience, anywhere on the horizon.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).