How IMF-ECB Austerity is Destroying Greece, and the Need for a Debt Freeze Inside the Euro-Zone


Webster G. Tarpley Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net – World Crisis Radio
March 17, 2012
Guest: Michael Chiotinis, blogger, Athens, Greece
A first-person look at how IMF austerity is wrecking the Greek economy with a leading Greek blogger.
Other topics include Hillary Clinton’s war ultimatum given to Sergei Lavrov for Iran, and Rand Paul’s support of the draconian Iran sanctions. From Syria: more splits in the “Syrian National Council,” while pro-Assad forces finish mopping up the armed resistance and huge pro-Assad demonstrations penetrate even the controlled western media. Has the US undergone a self-inflicted, slow motion Tet debacle in Afghanistan leading to the iplementation of the CIA’s Devine Plan? The BRICS summit to meet in India, March 29: ways to finance international trade outside of the dollar. The Carterization of Obama as he wallows in malaise and calls on Americans to “use less.” Obama’s bind: he fears alienating radical environmentalists by increasing oil production, and refuses to attack Wall Street speculators who are driving up the oil price for us “muppets.” A catalogue of the measures a real President would to cut the price of oil. Ron Paul teams up with Romney to prevent a GOP debate in Oregon.

Demand Investigation into Obama Eligibility Requirements for President and Second Term Run


Petition2Congress
March 23, 2012
WE the People demand that the House and Senate launch Immediately a FULL scale Investigation into President Obama’s eligibilty to be President of the United States and his eligibility to run for office for a second term. It is time you do your jobs,. We Demand to know “Do you support the Constitution of the United States and the People”. The American people deserve to know the truth, if President Obama is eligible and it is YOUR JOBS TO FIND OUT. House Speaker Boehner we will be waiting to hear from you. Senator Reid we will be waitng to hear from you.
United We Stand Divided We Fall: Dakota
____
An investigative “Cold Case Posse” launched six months ago by “America’s toughest sheriff” – Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County – has concluded there is probable cause that the document released by the White House last year as President Obama’s birth certificate is a computer-generated forgery.
The investigative team has asked Arpaio, who is at a news conference in Phoenix live-streamed by WND TV that began at 3 p.m. Eastern time, to elevate the investigation to a criminal probe that will make available the resources of his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
The posse says it has identified at least one person of interest in the alleged forgery of Obama’s birth certificate.
Arapaio, known for his strict enforcement of immigration laws, commissioned the investigative team after local citizens presented him with a petition expressing concern that Obama might not be eligible for Arizona’s presidential ballot.
The posse, comprised of former law enforcement officers and lawyers with law enforcement experience, has interviewed dozens of witnesses and examined hundreds of documents. It also has taken numerous sworn statements from witnesses around the world.
Mike Zullo, Arpaio’s lead investigator, said his team believes the Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in a systematic effort to hide from public inspection any original 1961 birth records it may have in its possession.
“Officers of the Hawaii Department of Health and various elected Hawaiian public officials may have intentionally obscured 1961 birth records and procedures to avoid having to release to public inspection and to the examination of court-authorized forensic examiners any original Obama 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may or may not have,” Zullo said.
The investigators say the evidence contained in the computer-generated PDF file released by the White House as well as important deficiencies in the Hawaii process of certifying the long-form birth certificate establish probable cause that a forgery has been committed.
To continue reading click on link

New Ron Paul Ad Slams ‘Etch-a’Sketch’ Idiocy


While the other candidates are playing games, Paul is fighting to Restore America Now
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
March 23, 2012

For the past week the media, along with GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, as well as the incumbent president, have fixated on a throw away remark about an ‘etch-a-sketch’ by a Romney communications advisor.
That’s right, while the economy continues its seemingly never ending spiral into a black hole, while innocent people continue to be slaughtered needlessly in Afghanistan, while the rhetoric over attacking Iran increases, and while everyday Americans are stripped of more and more basic freedoms, the candidates have held up plastic toys and beat the American voting public around the head with a distinctly average metaphor.
Enough is enough for Ron Paul, who today released a new ad outlining the idiocy of the spectacle and how it reflects a wider picture where the presidential race is concerned.
The internet only ad uses cringe inducing clips of Santorum and Gingrich brandishing Etch-a-Sketches at campaign events, along with corporate media hacks relentlessly filling their already comatizing schedules with fluff and nonsense about the children’s game.
“Tired of the games?” the hollywood trailer style video asks, before touting Paul as the only candidate who is “principled” and “consistent” with a “serious” plan to address the real problems America faces.
The ad “will be pushed to conservative email lists” and websites, according to a press release from the Paul campaign.
“In the context of $15 trillion in federal government debt, 12 million Americans jobless, and a country perpetually at war there is zero justification for treating the election as something to be toyed with.” the statement reads.
“Conservatives and Constitutionalists have long been concerned about Mitt Romney’s track record of position changes and flip-flops, and his top adviser’s slip of the tongue only reinforces this suspicion,” said Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton.
“It is equally off-putting to see Santorum and Gingrich react like carnival barkers, not the statesmen America sorely needs. But, none of this is surprising,” added Mr. Benton.
“While the other candidates and the political chattering class are obsessed with horse-race politics and scoring public relations points, Dr. Paul stands alone in offering real solutions to difficult problems. He is the only candidate with a ‘Plan to Restore America’ that cuts real spending and balances the budget in one term, ends the foreign wars and nation-building, cuts taxes and regulations to create jobs, and reigns in the Federal Reserve,” the statement concludes.
Watch the Etch-a-Sketch ad below:
—————————————————————-
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.


Proposed UN Environmental Constitution For The World Would Establish An Incredibly Repressive System Of Global Governance


Endoftheamericandream.com

March 23, 2012
Most people have no idea that the United Nations has been drafting an environmental constitution for the world that is intended to supersede all existing national laws.  This document has a working title of "Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development" and you can read the entire thing right here.  Work on this proposed world environmental constitution has been going on since 1995, and the fourth edition was issued to UN member states on September 22nd, 2010.  This document is intended to become a permanent binding treaty and it would establish an incredibly repressive system of global governance.  This "covenant", as it is being called, claims authority over the entire global environment and everything that affects it.  Considering the fact that everything that we do affects the environment in some way, that would mean that this document would become the highest form of law for all human activity.  This proposed UN environmental constitution for the world is incredibly detailed.  The U.S. Constitution only has 7 articles, but the UN document has 79 articles.  If the U.S. eventually ratifies this treaty, any national, state or local laws that conflict with this covenant will be null and void.  This is potentially one of the greatest threats to our national sovereignty that we have ever seen and we need to warn the American people about it.
Essentially what this proposed environmental covenant does is it takes the sustainable development principles underlying Agenda 21 and turns them into global constitutional law.
All parties to this new constitution would be forced to turn their nations into centrally-planned societies where all decisions abouteverything are evaluated within the framework of sustainable development.
If the United States became a party to this treaty, America would become a paradise for control freaks.  Basic decisions about what you eat, about what you wear, about where you live, about how big a family you can have and about what activities you could engage in on a daily basis would be dictated by the mandates in the global constitution.
If you doubt this, just read the document.
Let's take a closer look at some of the wording in this proposed constitution for the world....

Intelligence Agencies Pass New Police State Spying Guidelines

The New American
March 23, 2012


Maybe now we know the true purpose for that giant domestic spy complex being built by the NSA in Utah.
 Attorney General Eric Holder approved a new list of guidelines for how long agencies of the federal government tasked with combatting “terrorism” may retain data gathered about American citizens. Basically, this information may be saved even if it contains no connection to criminal activity whatsoever.
 
According to the new regulations, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) (headquartered at the Liberty Crossing complex in McLean, Virginia, left)  can store and “continually assess” this information “for a period of up to five years.” Before the promulgation of these new guidelines, the NCTC was under instructions to destroy “promptly” (typically defined to mean within 180 days) this cache of material gathered from U.S. citizens if there was nothing related to terrorism found in it.
 
Speaking fondly of the new time restraints, Paul Rosenzweig, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, was quoted in the Washington Post saying:
 
Five years is a reasonable time frame. I certainly think 180 days was way too short. That’s just not a realistic understanding of how long it takes analysts to search large data sets for relevant information.
 
The Washington Post quoted other “officials” as saying that the new framework has been under construction for more than a year.
 
An indicated by the text of the guidelines, Matthew Olsen, the head of the NCTC, and James Clapper, director of U.S. National Intelligence, approved them on Wednesday and Attorney General Eric Holder followed suit on Thursday.
 
As expected, such an extraordinary expansion of the power of the federal government over private information and communications of citizens not suspected of committing a crime has riled up the segment of our Republic concerned with the rapid repeal of our civil liberties.
 
The New American faithfully has reported these frequent assaults on constitutional freedom. For example, there is the story that:
 
[t]he Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center (NOC) released its Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative last year and in that report the intelligence-gathering arm of the DHS, the Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) gives itself permission to “gather, store, analyze, and disseminate” data on millions of users of social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and business networking sites (Linkedin).
 
Other federal affronts to privacy, security, and the Bill of Rights are listed in the Washington Post piece:
 
Those [civil liberties] advocates have repeatedly clashed with the administration over a host of national security issues, including its military detention without trial of individuals in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, its authorization of the killing of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, and its prosecution of an unprecedented number of suspects in the leaking of classified information.
 
As readers will recall, al-Awlaki was assassinated by a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA Predator drone — and his son was killed by the same type drone two weeks later — on orders from President Obama, who had included the names of the two Americans on his infamous kill list. Notably and tragically, neither of these men was ever accused of a crime (other than speaking against American foreign policy) nor afforded any of the due process protections guaranteed by the Constitution.
 

'Where's YOUR birth certificate?': Obama jokes with woman who claims she was born at same Hawaiian hospital


Meghan Keneally
Daily Mail
March 22, 2012
President Barack Obama has been keen to move the political conversation away from the question of whether or not he was born in the United States.
But today, he was the one that brought it up, albeit as a joke.
At the end of an event in Oklahoma on Thursday, a female audience member approached him and said that she was born at the same hospital as the president in Hawaii.
He responded: ‘Do you have YOUR birth certificate?’

9/11 Insider Trading – the Facts Laid Bare


Lars Schall
Global Research

March 21, 2012
Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?
Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutor’s Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. [i]
PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost “magical” abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various people/institutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. [1]
One of the “magical” capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset “able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed.” [2]
And then it becomes really interesting:
What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand every major language in the world, that provided peep-holes into everyone else’s computer “dressing rooms”, that could insert data into computers without people’s knowledge, that could fill in blanks beyond human reasoning, and also predict what people do – before they did it? You would probably use it, wouldn’t you? [3]
Granted, these capabilities sound hardly believable. In fact, the whole story of PROMIS, which Mike Ruppert develops in the course of his book Crossing the Rubicon in all its bizarre facets and turns, seems as if someone had developed a novel in the style of Philip K Dick and William Gibson. However, what Ruppert has collected about PROMIS is based on reputable sources as well as on results of personal investigations, which await a jury to take a first critical look at.
This seems all the more urgent if you add to the PROMIS capabilities “that it was a given that PROMIS was used for a wide variety of purposes by intelligence agencies, including the real-time monitoring of stock transactions on all the world´s major financial markets”. [4]
We are therefore dealing with a software that
a) Infiltrates computer and communication systems without being noticed.
b) Can manipulate data.
c) Is capable to track the global stock market trade in real time.
Point c is relevant to all that happened in connection with the never completely cleared up transactions that occurred just before September 11, [5] and of which the former chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank Ernst Weltke said “could not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledge”. [6]
I specifically asked financial journalist Max Keiser, who for years had worked on Wall Street as a stock and options trader, about the put option trades. Keiser pointed out in this context that he “had spoken with many brokers in the towers of the World Trade Center around that time. I heard firsthand about the airline put trade from brokers at Cantor Fitzgerald days before.” He then talked with me about an explosive issue, on which Ruppert elaborated in detail in Crossing the Rubicon.
Max Keiser: There are many aspects concerning these option purchases that have not been disclosed yet. I also worked at Alex Brown & Sons (ABS). Deutsche Bank bought Alex Brown & Sons in 1999. When the attacks occurred, ABS was owned by Deutsche Bank. An important person at ABS was Buzzy Krongard. I have met him several times at the offices in Baltimore. Krongard had transferred to become executive director at the CIA. The option purchases, in which ABS was involved, occurred in the offices of ABS in Baltimore. The noise which occurred between Baltimore, New York City and Langley was interesting, as you can imagine, to say the least.
Read the entire article 

Feeding The Homeless BANNED In Major Cities All Over America


The Economic Collapse
Thursday, March 22, 2012
What would you do if you came across someone on the street that had not had anything to eat for several days?  Would you give that person some food?  Well, the next time you get that impulse you might want to check if it is still legal to feed the homeless where you live.

Sadly, feeding the homeless has been banned in major cities all over America.  Other cities that have not banned it outright have put so many requirements on those that want to feed the homeless (acquiring expensive permits, taking food preparation courses, etc.) that feeding the homeless has become “out of reach” for most average people.  Some cities are doing these things because they are concerned about the “health risks” of the food being distributed by ordinary “do-gooders”.  Other cities are passing these laws because they do not want homeless people congregating in city centers where they know that they will be fed.  But at a time when poverty and government dependence are soaring to unprecedented levels, is it really a good idea to ban people from helping those that are hurting?
This is just another example that shows that our country is being taken over by control freaks.  There seems to be this idea out there that it is the job of the government to take care of everyone and that nobody else should even try.
But do we really want to have a nation where you have to get the permission of the government before you do good to your fellow man?
It isn’t as if the government has “rescued” these homeless people.  Homeless shelters all over the nation are turning people away each night because they have no more room.  There are many homeless people that are lucky just to make it through each night alive during the winter.
Sometimes a well-timed sandwich or a cup of warm soup can make a world of difference for a homeless person.  But many U.S. cities have decided that feeding the homeless is such a threat that they had better devote law enforcement resources to making sure that it doesn’t happen.
This is so twisted.  In America today, you need a “permit” to do almost anything.  We are supposed to be a land of liberty and freedom, but these days government bureaucrats have turned our rights into “privileges” that they can revoke at any time.
The following are some of the major U.S. cities that have attempted to ban feeding the homeless….
Philadelphia
Mayor Nutter recently banned feeding homeless people in many parts of Philadelphia where homeless people are known to congregate….
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has announced a ban on the feeding of large numbers of homeless and hungry people at sites on and near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Mayor Nutter is imposing the ban on all outdoor feedings of large numbers of people on city parkland, including Love Park and the Ben Franklin Parkway, where it is not uncommon for outreach groups to offer free food.
Nutter says the feedings lack both sanitary conditions and dignity.
Read the entire article 

SPECIAL REPORT-Chinese firm helps Iran spy on citizens

Reuters

March 22, 2012



(Reuters) - A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.
The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($130.6 million) contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen, China-based ZTE Corp (000063.SZ)(0763.HK) to the Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI), according to the documents. Government-controlled TCI has a near monopoly on Iran's landline telephone services and much of Iran's internet traffic is required to flow through its network.
The ZTE-TCI deal, signed in December 2010, illustrates how despite tightening global sanctions, Iran still manages to obtain sophisticated technology, including systems that can be used to crack down on dissidents.
Human rights groups say they have documented numerous cases in which the Iranian government tracked down and arrested critics by monitoring their telephone calls or internet activities. Iran this month set up a Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said it would protect "against internet evils," according to Iranian state television.

The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: 'There is no real hunt. It's fixed'

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau's more ethically murky practices 


Craig Monteilh: 'It is all about entrapment.' Photograph: The Washington Post 
Guardian
March 21, 2012



Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.
"They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did," Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.
It is an astonishing admission that goes that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.
Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of "confidential informants" in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist "attacks" at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.
In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

Peter Schiff: "This is a Phony Recovery"

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
March 22, 2012


March 18, 2012 -Schiff Report
Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, discusses the myth of the economic recovery being lauded by the Obama administration and the mainstream media.
" ... alot of people have begun to talk about the U.S. recovery as if it is really firmly taking hold, that the much anticipated recovery is finally here, the stimulus is kicking in - of course all of this is complete fiction."


Schiff report

 Peter argued that some of the positive talk by the media was partly sparked by the recent jump in the jobs data, yet although there were more jobs reported, those jobs are not making Americans richer, but poorer instead.

The same day that the positive jobs data was reported, what was under-reported was the worse than expected trade deficit numbers.
"The deficit for January swelled to $52.4 billion. That was the highest monthly trade deficit, I believe since July or August of 2008, just before the financial crisis, so if  the jobs that we were adding were productive jobs the trade deficit would be smaller, but it's not. It's getting bigger..." 
Peter stated that the last bubbles were in the housing and stock markets, but he believes the next collapse will be in the bond market and the U.S. dollar.
"I think before too long, people are going to start to appreciate that this is a phony recovery, .. that the rally in the stock market is simply a reflection of inflation, not economic growth..."

Forgerygate: Media Threatened With Federal Investigations If Obama Birth Certificate Story Reported

Sheriff  Joe Arpaio
WesternJournalism.com
March 20, 2012



Individuals and member organizations of the American media were threatened with FTC and FCC investigation if information gathered by Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse concerning the forgery of Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate were passed on to the American public.
It was Posse lead investigator Mike Zullo who made this stunning revelation, stating “During our investigation, we actually were told [that media] had been threatened with FTC investigations. Commentators [had been] threatened with their jobs.”
And Jerome Corsi, author of “Where’s the birth certificate,” the book whose imminent publication was responsible for forcing Barack Obama to quickly create and place the fraudulent long form birth certificate on the White House web site, has said that “Testimony is being developed that the White House is intimidating, in a systematic way, the mainstream media and if any broadcasters dare go into this birther story, they’re going to risk FCC investigations… people are going to have careers ruined… thrown off the air.”
Zullo went on to say the threats actually caused some individuals to “…quit their positions over safety concerns for their families.”
Those who tuned in to the web-cast of the Cold Case Posse report will recall that the scant few media members in attendance made it their business to represent the President rather than report on the information presented about the fraudulent birth certificate. Each “reporter” in his turn questioned the motives of Sheriff Arpaio and the political leanings of Mike Zullo, clearly far more interested in developing a tale of “right-wing conspiracy” than in the facts reported by Posse investigators.

Obama Chides ‘Birthers’ While Media Spikes Ayers Bombshell


Postman says Ayers’ parents put ‘foreign student’ Obama through school
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Barack Obama chided so-called ‘birthers’ with a sardonic remark yesterday, but the smile could soon be wiped off his face if a developing news story concerning how domestic terrorist Bill Ayers’ parents paid for “foreign student” Obama’s education is able to get traction.
While receiving a formal certificate of Irish heritage at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration yesterday, Obama joked that the certificate would “have a special place of honor alongside my birth certificate,” a jab at the ‘birther’ movement which asserts that a deluge of evidence suggests Obama was not born in the United States.
However, one of the leading figures of that movement, Jerome Corsi, has dropped another bombshell story which threatens to become 2012′s version of the ‘Swift Boat’ controversy that sunk John Kerry’s presidential aspirations in 2004.
According to retired Illinois postman Allen Hulton, who used to deliver mail to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers’ parents house in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tom and Mary Ayers bragged about how they were paying for a “foreign student” to be put through school.
“He says that Mary Ayers told him the student’s name, but that it was a “strange name” that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him,” writes Corsi.
“I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him,” Hulton says. “And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection.”
Given Bill Ayers’ documented close relationship with Barack Obama, that “foreign student” could only have been the future President himself.
Indeed, Hulton later met the “foreign student” outside the Ayers house, a well-dressed young black man who assured him with complete confidence that he was going to be “President of the United States.”
“There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged,” said Hulton.
“The facial and physical characteristics, as well as candidate Obama’s voice, matched that of the young black male I met in front of the Ayers’ home,” Hulton says in the affidavit he signed Nov. 12, 2011, for Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigation.
The only major media platform to pick up the story was the Drudge Report, pushing it into the top five of the most read news stories for that day. The rest of the corporate media have completely ignored the issue besides the usual smattering of Soros-backed leftist blogs like Media Matters who attacked Corsi and Drudge for daring to run it.

US Mercenary 'Took Part' in Gaddafi Killing; Sent to Assist Syrian opposition


Alakbar English
March 21, 2012

US government officials requested that an American private security firm contact Syrian opposition figures in Turkey to see “how they can help in regime change,” the CEO of one of these firms told Stratfor in a company email obtained by WikiLeaks and Al-Akhbar.

James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater, is currently the Chief Executive of SCG International, a private security firm with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In what appears to be his first email to Stratfor, Smith stated that his “background is CIA” and his company is comprised of “former DOD [Department of Defense], CIA and former law enforcement personnel.”

“We provide services for those same groups in the form of training, security and information collection,” he explained to Stratfor. (doc-id 5441475)

In a 13 December 2011 email to Stratfor’s VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton, which Burton shared with Stratfor’s briefers, Smith claimed that “[he] and Walid Phares were getting air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick to engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari) on a fact finding mission for Congress.”

Walid Phares, named by the source as part of the “fact finding team,” is a Lebanese-American citizen and currently co-chairs Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Middle East advisory group.
In a profile of Walid Phares published in Salon, As’ad AbuKhalil details Phares’ history with right-wing militias during the Lebanese civil war.

Sue Myrick, who allegedly was providing “air cover” for the “fact finding team”, is a Republican Congresswoman from North Carolina who has a track record of extremist pro-zionist and anti-Islamic views.
These include leading the charge against Dubai Ports World’s attempt to buy major American ports in 2006 – labeling the Islamic Society of North America as a group of “radical jihadists” – and demanding that former President Jimmy Carter’s citizenship be revoked for daring to meet with Hamas leaders in 2008.

Currently, Myrick is a member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a congressional committee charged with overseeing the American intelligence community, and is also involved with the Department of Defense and the US military.

In his email, the “true mission” for the “fact finding” team, Smith told Burton, was how “they can help in regime change.”

Furthermore, the email added that Smith intended to offer “his services to help protect the opposition members, like he had underway in Libya.” He also said that Booz Allen Hamilton, an American consulting firm regularly contracted by the US government for civil and defense projects, “is also working [with] the Agency on a similar request.” (doc-id5331882)

Smith had originally contacted Stratfor through an email to its founder George Friedman on 15 February 2011 in order to thank the private intelligence firm for its “excellent service of intelligence reporting and analysis.”
“Outstanding just doesn’t cut it – professionally competent, salient, germane, concise are all descriptors that describe your organization’s work product,” he added quite lovingly. (doc-id 257534)

This email was forwarded by Friedman to Burton, who gradually built a friendly relationship with Smith.

Read More...

Vatican bank image hurt as JP Morgan closes account

Reuters
March 19, 2012


* Latest in series of image problems for Vatican bank
* Vatican bank trying to meet EU's transparency rules
VATICAN CITY/MILAN, March 19 (Reuters) - JP Morgan Chase is closing the Vatican bank's account with an Italian branch of the U.S. banking giant because of concerns about a lack of transparency at the Holy See's financial institution, Italian newspapers reported.
The move is a blow to the Vatican's drive to have its bank included in Europe's "white list" of states that comply with international standards against tax fraud and money-laundering.
The bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), enacted major reforms last year in an attempt to get Europe's seal of approval and put behind it scandals that have included accusations of money laundering and fraud.
Italy's leading financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported at the weekend that JP Morgan Chase in Milan had told the IOR of the closing of its account in a letter on Feb. 15.
The letter said the IOR's account in Italy's business capital would gradually be phased out starting on March 16 and closed on March 30.
In Milan, JP Morgan Chase declined to comment and the Vatican also had no comment. It was not possible to contact IOR officials because Monday was a holiday in the Vatican.
Il Sole said JP Morgan Chase informed the IOR that the account was being closed because the bank's Milan branch felt the IOR had failed to provide sufficient information on money transfers.
The financial newspaper, which gave the number of the IOR account, said some 1.5 billion euros passed through it in about 18 months. It said the account was a "sweeping facility," meaning that it was emptied out at the end of each day with funds transferred to another IOR account inGermany.