Evidence points to another Snowden at the NSA

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By James Bamford

Source: Reuters

In the summer of 1972, state-of-the-art campaign spying consisted of amateur burglars, armed with duct tape and microphones, penetrating the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Today, amateur burglars have been replaced by cyberspies, who penetrated the DNC armed with computers and sophisticated hacking tools.

Where the Watergate burglars came away empty-handed and in handcuffs, the modern- day cyber thieves walked away with tens of thousands of sensitive political documents and are still unidentified.

Now, in the latest twist, hacking tools themselves, likely stolen from the National Security Agency, are on the digital auction block. Once again, the usual suspects start with Russia – though there seems little evidence backing up the accusation.

In addition, if Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alone put them up for sale. It would be like a safecracker stealing the combination to a bank vault and putting it on Facebook. Once revealed, companies and governments would patch their firewalls, just as the bank would change its combination.

A more logical explanation could also be insider theft. If that’s the case, it’s one more reason to question the usefulness of an agency that secretly collects private information on millions of Americans but can’t keep its most valuable data from being stolen, or as it appears in this case, being used against us.

In what appeared more like a Saturday Night Live skit than an act of cybercrime, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers put up for bid on the Internet what it called a “full state-sponsored toolset” of “cyberweapons.” “!!! Attention government sponsors of cyberwarfare and those who profit from it !!!! How much would you pay for enemies cyberweapons?” said the announcement.

The group said it was releasing some NSA files for “free” and promised “better” ones to the highest bidder. However, those with loosing bids “Lose Lose,” it said, because they would not receive their money back. And should the total sum of the bids, in bitcoins, reach the equivalent of half a billion dollars, the group would make the whole lot public.

While the “auction” seemed tongue in cheek, more like hacktivists than Russian high command, the sample documents were almost certainly real. The draft of a top-secret NSA manual for implanting offensive malware, released by Edward Snowden, contains code for a program codenamed SECONDDATE. That same 16-character string of numbers and characters is in the code released by the Shadow Brokers. The details from the manual were first released by The Intercept last Friday.

The authenticity of the NSA hacking tools were also confirmed by several ex-NSA officials who spoke to the media, including former members of the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit, the home of hacking specialists.

“Without a doubt, they’re the keys to the kingdom,” one former TAO employee told the Washington Post. “The stuff you’re talking about would undermine the security of a lot of major government and corporate networks both here and abroad.” Another added, “From what I saw, there was no doubt in my mind that it was legitimate.”

Like a bank robber’s tool kit for breaking into a vault, cyber exploitation tools, with codenames like EPICBANANA and BUZZDIRECTION, are designed to break into computer systems and networks. Just as the bank robber hopes to find a crack in the vault that has never been discovered, hackers search for digital cracks, or “exploits,” in computer programs like Windows.

The most valuable are “zero day” exploits, meaning there have been zero days since Windows has discovered the “crack” in their programs. Through this crack, the hacker would be able to get into a system and exploit it, by stealing information, until the breach is eventually discovered and patched. According to the former NSA officials who viewed the Shadow Broker files, they contained a number of exploits, including zero-day exploits that the NSA often pays thousands of dollars for to private hacking groups.

The reasons given for laying the blame on Russia appear less convincing, however. “This is probably some Russian mind game, down to the bogus accent,” James A. Lewis, a computer expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, told the New York Times. Why the Russians would engage in such a mind game, he never explained.

Rather than the NSA hacking tools being snatched as a result of a sophisticated cyber operation by Russia or some other nation, it seems more likely that an employee stole them. Experts who have analyzed the files suspect that they date to October 2013, five months after Edward Snowden left his contractor position with the NSA and fled to Hong Kong carrying flash drives containing hundreds of thousands of pages of NSA documents.

So, if Snowden could not have stolen the hacking tools, there are indications that after he departed in May 2013, someone else did, possibly someone assigned to the agency’s highly sensitive Tailored Access Operations.

In December 2013, another highly secret NSA document quietly became public. It was a top secret TAO catalog of NSA hacking tools. Known as the Advanced Network Technology (ANT) catalog, it consisted of 50 pages of extensive pictures, diagrams and descriptions of tools for every kind of hack, mostly targeted at devices manufactured by U.S. companies, including Apple, Cisco, Dell and many others.

Like the hacking tools, the catalog used similar codenames. Among the tools targeting Apple was one codenamed DROPOUTJEEP, which gives NSA total control of iPhones. “A software implant for the Apple iPhone,” says the ANT catalog, “includes the ability to remotely push/pull files from the device. SMS retrieval, contact-list retrieval, voicemail, geolocation, hot mic, camera capture, cell-tower location, etc.”

Another, codenamed IRATEMONK, is, “Technology that can infiltrate the firmware of hard drives manufactured by Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital.”

In 2014, I spent three days in Moscow with Snowden for a magazine assignment and a PBS documentary. During our on-the-record conversations, he would not talk about the ANT catalog, perhaps not wanting to bring attention to another possible NSA whistleblower.

I was, however, given unrestricted access to his cache of documents. These included both the entire British, or GCHQ, files and the entire NSA files.

But going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find a single reference to the ANT catalog. This confirmed for me that it had likely been released by a second leaker. And if that person could have downloaded and removed the catalog of hacking tools, it’s also likely he or she could have also downloaded and removed the digital tools now being leaked.

In fact, a number of the same hacking implants and tools released by the Shadow Brokers are also in the ANT catalog, including those with codenames BANANAGLEE and JETPLOW. These can be used to create “a persistent back-door capability” into widely used Cisco firewalls, says the catalog.

Consisting of about 300 megabytes of code, the tools could easily and quickly be transferred to a flash drive. But unlike the catalog, the tools themselves – thousands of ones and zeros – would have been useless if leaked to a publication. This could be one reason why they have not emerged until now.

Enter WikiLeaks. Just two days after the first Shadow Brokers message, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sent out a Twitter message. “We had already obtained the archive of NSA cyberweapons released earlier today,” Assange wrote, “and will release our own pristine copy in due course.”

The month before, Assange was responsible for releasing the tens of thousands of hacked DNC emails that led to the resignation of the four top committee officials.

There also seems to be a link between Assange and the leaker who stole the ANT catalog, and the possible hacking tools. Among Assange’s close associates is Jacob Appelbaum, a celebrated hacktivist and the only publicly known WikiLeaks staffer in the United States – until he moved to Berlin in 2013 in what he called a “political exile” because of what he said was repeated harassment by U.S. law enforcement personnel. In 2010, a Rolling Stone magazine profile labeled him “the most dangerous man in cyberspace.”

In December 2013, Appelbaum was the first person to reveal the existence of the ANT catalog, at a conference in Berlin, without identifying the source. That same month he said he suspected the U.S. government of breaking into his Berlin apartment. He also co-wrote an article about the catalog in Der Spiegel. But again, he never named a source, which led many to assume, mistakenly, that it was Snowden.

In addition to WikiLeaks, for years Appelbaum worked for Tor, an organization focused on providing its customers anonymity on the Internet. But last May, he stepped down as a result of “serious, public allegations of sexual mistreatment” made by unnamed victims, according to a statement put out by Tor. Appelbaum has denied the charges.

Shortly thereafter, he turned his attention to Hillary Clinton. At a screening of a documentary about Assange in Cannes, France, Appelbaum accused her of having a grudge against him and Assange, and that if she were elected president, she would make their lives difficult. “It’s a situation that will possibly get worse” if she is elected to the White House, he said, according to Yahoo News.

It was only a few months later that Assange released the 20,000 DNC emails. Intelligence agencies have again pointed the finger at Russia for hacking into these emails.

Yet there has been no explanation as to how Assange obtained them. He told NBC News, “There is no proof whatsoever” that he obtained the emails from Russian intelligence. Moscow has also denied involvement.

There are, of course, many sophisticated hackers in Russia, some with close government ties and some without. And planting false and misleading indicators in messages is an old trick. Now Assange has promised to release many more emails before the election, while apparently ignoring email involving Trump. (Trump opposition research was also stolen.)

In hacktivist style, and in what appears to be phony broken English, this new release of cyberweapons also seems to be targeting Clinton. It ends with a long and angry “final message” against “Wealthy Elites . . . breaking laws” but “Elites top friends announce, no law broken, no crime commit[ed]. . . Then Elites run for president. Why run for president when already control country like dictatorship?”

Then after what they call the “fun Cyber Weapons Auction” comes the real message, a serious threat. “We want make sure Wealthy Elite recognizes the danger [of] cyberweapons. Let us spell out for Elites. Your wealth and control depends on electronic data.” Now, they warned, they have control of the NSA’s cyber hacking tools that can take that wealth away. “You see attacks on banks and SWIFT [a worldwide network for financial services] in news. If electronic data go bye-bye where leave Wealthy Elites? Maybe with dumb cattle?”

Snowden’s leaks served a public good. He alerted Americans to illegal eavesdropping on their telephone records and other privacy violations, and Congress changed the law as a result. The DNC leaks exposed corrupt policies within the Democratic Party.

But we now have entered a period many have warned about, when NSA’s cyber weapons could be stolen like loose nukes and used against us. It opens the door to criminal hackers, cyber anarchists and hostile foreign governments that can use the tools to gain access to thousands of computers in order to steal data, plant malware and cause chaos.

It’s one more reason why NSA may prove to be one of Washington’s greatest liabilities rather than assets.

 

About the Author

James Bamford is the author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine.

 

Confirmed: “Draw Mohammed” Contest Attackers Were Managed by FBI

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Anti-Muslim activists Pamela Geller and David Yerushalmi

UPDATE: Readers should backtrack to CNN’s 2015 coverage of the Garland, Texas shooting to see just how badly they are being deceived. As readers watch CNN’s video coverage and read the article, they must keep in mind that the FBI had been in contact with the suspects for years, and encouraged them to carry out the attack.

By Tony Cartalucci

Source: Land Destroyer

To some the 2015 shooting in Garland Texas at a “Draw Mohammed” contest organized by state-sponsored agitators seemed all too convenient.

The protest was meant to prove Muslims were irrational and violent, and amid the protest two armed men did indeed attack, both killed by police who were already on the scene.

The event was meant to reinforce the narrative that Islam is an irrational and dangerous ideology, that Muslims pose a danger to America and the West in general, and that both Islam and Muslims should be actively resisted culturally, politically, and militarily.

It was the culmination of years of agitation through networks maintained by Washington politicians and policymakers, particularly those who have – ironically – not only engineered America’s various and unending wars begun during the so-called “War on Terror,” but who have also armed and funded some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on Earth via America’s Persian Gulf allies.

Now it is revealed that not only was the protest organized by politicians and organizations associated with Washington, but the shooting was as well.

The two suspects were being directed by undercover FBI agents, one of which reportedly told one of the shooters shortly before the attack to “tear up Texas.”

The Daily Beast in its article, “FBI Agent Apparently Egged on ‘Draw Muhammad’ Shooter,” would report that:

Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. 

“Tear up Texas,” the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.

The Daily Beast would also report:

That revelation comes amidst a national debate about the use of undercover officers and human sources in terrorism cases. Undercover sources are used in more than half of ISIS-related terror cases, according to statistics kept by the George Washington University Program on Extremism, and civil liberties advocates say some of those charged might not have escalated their behavior without those interventions.

This latest development regarding the 2015 incident reveals how the entire event and attack were organized by the state for the expressed purpose of creating fear, hysteria, and division within American society. It is very likely that similar attacks both in the United States and across Europe are also the work of concerted efforts by Western governments to manipulate public perception.

The toxic climate created by a phenomenon known as “Islamophobia” is helping the West justify an increased police state at home and wider wars abroad. It is also playing a role in helping to radicalize Muslims sorely needed to fill the ranks of the West’s militant fronts in nations like Syria where they are being used to target and overthrow governments obstructing American special interests.

Despite the rhetoric, there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims on Earth today, meaning that if even 1% were truly as they are characterized by state-sponsored propaganda – as violent fanatics bent on global conquest – that would constitute an army of some 16 million strong – or in other words – an army larger than all of the military forces of the industrialized world combined.

In reality, the number of extremists is extremely low – a fraction of 1% of the total global Muslim population – and the vast majority of these extremists are indoctrinated by US-Saudi funded and facilitated “madrases,” trained, funded, and armed by US and its Persian Gulf allies, and “coincidentally” waging war on all of the West’s enemies – ranging from the now toppled government of Libya to the current governments of Syria and Iraq, as well as even Russia and China.

Those feeding into Islamophobia – then – are in fact aiding and abetting the cycle of violence, ignorance, and fear that keeps viable the West’s use of terrorism as a geopolitical tool both at home and abroad. It is particularly ironic that the “radical Islam” many Westerners are now paralyzed in fear over, is in fact a creation of the modern Western state, springing out of Washington-based policy papers, not the pages of the Qu’ran.

Fellow Americans, Wake Up & Escape The Matrix

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Where Do Matters Stand?

On the eve of World War II the United States was still mired in the Great Depression and found itself facing war on two fronts with Japan and Germany. However bleak the outlook, it was nothing compared to the outlook today.

By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Has anyone in Washington, the presstitute Western media, the EU, or NATO ever considered the consequences of constant military and propaganda provocations against Russia? Is there anyone in any responsible position anywhere in the Western world who has enough sense to ask: “What if the Russians believe us? What if we convince Russia that we are going to attack her?”

The same can be asked about China.

The recklessness of the White House Fool and the media whores has gone far beyond mere danger. What do the Russians think when they see that the Democratic Party intends to elect Hillary Clinton president of the US? Hillary is a person so crazed that she declared the president of Russia to be “the new Hitler” and organized through her underling, neocon monster Victoria Nuland, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine. Nuland installed Washington’s puppet government in a former Russian province that until about 20 years ago was part of Russia for centuries.

I would bet that this tells even the naive pro-western part of the Russian government and population that the United States intends war with Russia.

Ever since Russia stood up to Obama over Syria, the Russians have been experiencing hostile propaganda and military operations on their borders. These provocations are justified by Washington and its NATO vassals as a response to “Russian aggression.” Russian aggression consists of nothing but obviously false assertions that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Poland, and Romania and recreate the Soviet Empire, the Eastern European part of which, together with the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine, now belong to the American Empire.

The Russians know that the propaganda about “Russian aggression” is a lie. What is the purpose of the lie other than to prepare the Western peoples for war with Russia?

There is no other explanation.

Even morons such as Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron should be capable of understanding that it is extremely dangerous to convince a major military power that you are going to attack. To simultaneously also convince China doubles the danger.

Clearly, the West is incapable of producing leadership capable of preserving life on earth.

What can be done when the entire West demonstrates a death wish for Planet Earth?

Until the criminal regimes of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, American presidents from John F. Kennedy forward worked to reduce tensions with the Soviets. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to reduce tensions caused by US missiles in Turkey and Soviet missiles in Cuba. President Nixon negotiated SALT I (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. President Carter negotiated SALT II, which was never ratified by the US Senate but was observed by the executive branch. President Reagan negotiated with Soviet leader Gorbachev the end of the Cold War. President George H.W. Bush in exchange for Gorbachev’s agreement to the reunification of Germany promised that NATO would not move one inch to the East.

All of these achievements were thrown away by the neoconized Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, each a criminal regime on par with Nazi Germany.

Today life on Planet Earth is far less secure than during the darkest days of the Cold War. Whatever threat global warming poses, it is miniscule compared to the threat of nuclear winter. If the evil that is concentrated in Washington and its vassals perpetrates nuclear war, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

I have been warning about the growing danger of a nuclear war resulting from the arrogance, hubris, ignorance, and evil personified by Washington. Recently, four knowledgable Russian-Americans spelled out the likely consequences of trying to drive Russia to submission with war threats: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/06/03/41522/

See also: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/05/28/as-our-past-wars-are-glorified-this-memorial-day-weekend-give-some-thought-to-our-prospects-against-the-russians-and-chinese-in-world-war-iii/

Don’t expect the brainwashed American population to have the moral conscience and fortitude to prevent nuclear war or even the intelligence to prevent their own vaporization. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino report that 59% of the US population support attacking Iran with nuclear weapons in the event that Iran sank one US Navy ship: http://www.wsj.com/articles/would-the-u-s-drop-the-bomb-again-1463682867

Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to approve attacking Iran with nuclear weapons with 81% of Republicans approving nuclear war compared to 47% of Democrats. Yet, the Democrats are behind Hillary who would be the first to use nuclear weapons. After all, a feminized woman has to prove how tough she is, just as Margaret Thatcher was “the Iron Lady.”

Before it is too late for Americans and all of humanity, arrogant Americans need to recall that “those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

The economic picture is equally dismal and unpromising. The latest payroll jobs report was even more awful than reported. Hardly any new jobs were created, but what largely escaped reporting is the fact that the economy actually lost 59,000 full-time jobs.

Increasingly the US economy consists of part-time jobs that cannot support an independent existence. Thus, more Americans age 19-34 live at home with parents than independently with spouses or partners. Fully half of 25-year old Americans live in their childhood rooms in their parents’ homes.

This is the “New Economy” that the filthy lying neoliberal economists promised would be reward for the American work force giving up their manufacturing and professional skill jobs to foreigners. What a monstrous lie the neoliberal economists told so that corporate executives and shareholders could put into their own pockets the living wage of the American work force. These neoliberal economists, and, alas, libertarian “free market” ones, have not been held accountable for their impoverishment of the American work force deeply buried in debt with no future prospects.

Those few Americans who have any awareness are beginning to realize that the One Percent and the western governments that serve them are re-establishing feudalism. The brilliant and learned economist, Michael Hudson, has labeled our era the era of neo-feudalism.

He is correct. The majority of young Americans come out of university heavily indebted, primed for debtor prison. When half of 25-year olds cannot marry and form households, how can anyone believe that housing sales and prices are rising except as a result of speculative investors banking on rental income from a population that cannot even pay its student loans.

The United States is the sickest place on earth. There is no public or political discussion of any important issue or of the multiple crises that confront America or the crises that America brings to the world.

The American people are so stupid and unaware that they are capable of electing a criminal and a warmonger like Hillary president of the United States and be proud of it.

These “tough” Americans are so frightened of hoax dangers, such as “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggression” that they willingly sacrificed their depleted pocketbooks, the Constitution of the United States—an act of treason on the part of the American people who utterly failed their responsibility to protect the Constitution—and their own liberty to a universal police state that has all power over them.

It is extraordinary that once-proud, once-great European peoples look for leadership from a country of moronic non-entities who have pissed away the liberty, security, and prosperity that their Founding Fathers gave to them.

Fellow Americans, if you care to avoid vaporization and, assuming we do avoid it, live a life other than serfdom, you must wake up and realize that your most deadly enemy is Washington, not the hoax of “Russian aggression,” not the hoax of “Muslim terrorism,” not the hoax of “domestic extremism,” not the hoax of welfare bankrupting America, not the hoax of democracy voting away your wealth, which Wall Street and the corporations have already stolen and stuck in their pockets.

If you cannot wake up and escape The Matrix, your doom will bring the doom of the planet.

2016 election decides who controls the drug trade

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By Daniel Hopsicker

(Mad Cow Morning News)

In the Presidential Election of 2016, Republican and Democratic insiders are wrestling like two dogs over a bone over who controls the illegal drug trade.

To the victor go the spoils. Who wins the election wins control of America’s vast drug bazaar, largest in the world, whose proceeds prop up lucky bankers and politicians lapping at the trough of  the biggest richest slush fund in the history of the world.

It’s the smart play

It’s the biggest business in the world, and the No. 1 industry on the face of the planet, in terms of foreign trade. And if you didn’t know that about the illegal drug trade, then the vast amounts spent on propaganda and disinformation every year in the so-called “War on Drugs” is working.

The first industry to globalize vertically was the illegal drug business. It’s an open question whether drug trafficking drove globalization, or the other way around.

Negotiated by Bill Clinton, the chief beneficiary of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)—by dollar volume and impact on the economy—was the drug trade.

The Democrats, committed to globalization, will continue to farm out transportation and money laundering to, among others,  minions of Mexico’s President Enrique Nieto Pena, cronies of retired Colombian strongman Alvaro Uribe, and a host of eager bankers from the world’s largest banks.

Will a Republican victory will bring back Oliver North? No, it’ll be a Trump Administration appointee with a certain erect posture and short-but-stylishly-cut hair,  chosen to occupy the Oliver North seat on the National Security Council.

The Enterprise Lives. And prospers.

Why there’s no Global War on Johnnie Walker Red

Although America’s sun is slowly sinking  below the horizon, the country still boasts the biggest and the best illegal drug delivery pipeline on the planet, so efficient it’s sick, the and envy of the world. The UK and Europe may be nipping at our heels, growing bigger vis a vis the U.S. as drug consumers, but the U.S. remains the biggest market.

This market is what we sell to the world; one of a few businesses where we’re still No. 1, along with financial services, which basically means meaning laundering drug money, and movies based on comic books.

Here’s a statistic from the UN’s World Drug Report for 2016:

207,000 drug-related deaths globally.

Compare that with this fact from the UN’s World Health Organization:

“In 2012, 3.3 million deaths, or 5.9 percent of all global deaths, were due to alcohol consumption.”

If the U.S. cares about the health of its citizens we’ll soon have a Liquor Enforcement Administration(an LEA), with approximately sixteen times the funding that the War on Drugs receives every year, which is 40 billion dollars.

That’s within reach of the Pentagon budget; its safe to say it ain’t gonna happen.

It doesn’t happen, becauses of the banks, and also because, as the UN World Drug Report also states, and flatly, worldwide people spend more money on drugs every day than on food.

Yup. You can look it up.

An even bigger reason: Global Too Big to Jail Banks.

London’s Financial Times has warning for global elite

Even when you think you’re talking about something else, you’re talking about drugs, even if you don’t know it. London’s Financial Times briefly surfaced from the 19th Century with a headline reading “Global elites must heed the warning of populist rage’

“The explanation for the prolonged stagnation in real incomes are repeated financial crises and subsequent weak recoveries, which have destroyed popular confidence in the competence and moral principles, honesty, and decency of the elite.”

The greedy parasitic elite that betrayed the middle class, and the country.

The Times continues, “The role of finance is excessive. The financial system remains riddled with perverse incentives.”

Without drug money there is no financialization. Because the banks by themselves don’t have the capital. Some say that sounds like a good thing.

“Air America meets  Traffic meets Pineapple Express”

A steady diet of movies like the upcoming ‘Mena’ starring Tom Cruise playing the supposedly-swashbuckling former Air America  pilot Barry Seal, has given the movie-going public the idea that the real action in the illegal drug trade is in drug trafficking.

That’s not the case. The real action is in money laundering. Because if you can’t wash clean the money you end up with, it quickly becomes useless to anyone with more long-term goals than throwing the biggest party or longest orgy the world has ever seen. And because money weighs more than drugs—and is way more bulky unless you’re smuggling marijuana which is today considered more out of the stone age than old school.

So there’s a problem. Providing a solution are casinos, bodegas, cambios, Western Union, grocery stores, restaurants, even dry cleaners, and banks. Especially banks. In fact it they weren’t for laundering drug money, HSBC, JP Morgan, Barclays and Bank of America would have already gone the way of Mario Brothers or YAHOO, which only makes news anymore when pieces are sold off in foreclosure.

Three brief moments  in time in the drug trade

A Turkish boat carrying a massive 3.2 tonnes of high purity cocaine hidden in a ballast tank at the front of the MV Hamal was busted 100 miles east of the Aberdeenshire coast.

It was a record $673 million (£512 million) cocaine haul.The captain and second in command—Mumin Sahin and Emin Ozmen—were convicted, and sent to prison.

The Captain and the second in command” are the drug trade’s equivalent of David Letterman Show favorites Mujibur and Sirajul, who ran a t-shirt shop in a tiny frontage near the Ed Sullivan Theater. They were ordinary people who Letterman found exceptional just because there were so ordinary.

Is there a shortage of people ready to take a chance smuggling a half-billion cargo?  Is that the plan?

“Operation SCREENPLAY” gets a tentative green light

OPERATION Screenplay will go down as one of the all-time great UK drug busts,” enthused John McGowan, head of border investigations.

“To put it in perspective, the total seizure of cocaine by all police forces in England and Wales in 2014-15 was 3.4 tons. That was for everything.  This single seizure was 3.2 tons.”

In a blatant pitch for more government funding—so that he could presumably really go to town, he added, “And all we had was intelligence from the French that there was a considerable quantity of cocaine on board.”

The paper seemed not so sure. The report ended, “Despite the size of the seizure, anecdotal evidence suggests police did not record a dip in the amount of cocaine on our streets.”

Playing whack-a–mole around the world

An expert who testified at their trial about “recognised trade routes” for shipping cocaine was perhaps a little too candid. He told the jury:

“It is now south of Venezuela and Guyana because of a lot of enforcement activity by the USA patrolling the coast. It’s massive importation – unprecedented in my experience.”

Those sneaky traffickers. Always playing whack-a-mole.

Cocaine production in Colombia increased dramatically—shooting up a staggering 46 percent—last year.  The country now has the resources to produce 712 tons of cocaine annually. Growth exploded in lawless areas in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the north and in the Amazon region, on the Venezuelan and Ecuadorean borders and along the Pacific coast.

But cultivation dropped in central Colombia, where the people running  both Colombia’s government and drug trade of Colombia.

Huh. Imagine that.

The Mexican Navy left with many barrels of zesty condiments

The Mexican navy found 13 tons of cocaine inside barrels of hot sauce in Manzanillo, 500 miles west of Mexico City. The barrels full of zesty condiment and cocaine were believed to belong to the Sinaloa Cartel.

A week earlier, busy Mexican sailors discovered almost a ton of cocaine—more than 900 keys—floating in the open sea off the coast of Chiapas.

A ton of cocaine. Just… floating…100 miles from shore.

The world’s richest industries

How much money an industry makes is the best rule of thumb for how much clout that industry exerts on the countries in which it operates. The illegal drug trade has yearly revenues exceeding the 946 billion in annual revenue of Walmart, Microsoft, Google, Ebay, and British Petroleum, combined.

In the U.S., and almost everywhere else, it’s a cash cow of almost unimaginable proportions.

The richest industries are all based on at assets we use in our lives every day, from computers to entertainment, to oil, to shopping, to drugs. According to therichest.com, “They are industries we give our hard-earned money to out of necessity, desire, or a mix of the two. And they also tend to be the most valuable, and not just from a monetary standpoint.  Their value lies in the fact that they’re needed to help society advance and function smoothly.”

Imagine several hundred million people trying to get through Monday morning with coffee. Luckily, that won’t ever happen.

 

About Daniel Hopsicker

Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist dubious about the self-serving assertion of U.S. officials that there are no American Drug Lords.

‘Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid, America: Political Fiction in an Age of Televised Lies’

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By John W. Whitehead

Source: A Government of Wolves

“We’ve got to face it. Politics have entered a new stage, the television stage. Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans—‘Time for a change’—‘The mess in Washington’—‘More bang for a buck’—punch lines and glamour.”— A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Politics is entertainment.

It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. It is the end result of a culture that is moving away from substance toward sensationalism in an era of mass media.

As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed, “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.” In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

Tune into a political convention and you will find yourself being sucked into an alternate reality so glossy, star-studded, emotionally charged and entertaining as to make you forget that you live in a police state. The elaborate stage show, the costumes, the actors, the screenplay, the lighting, the music, the drama: all carefully calibrated to appeal to the public’s need for bread and circuses, diversion and entertainment, and pomp and circumstance.

Politics is a reality show, America’s favorite form of entertainment, dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality and guaranteed to ensure that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.

After all, who cares about police shootings, drone killings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can listen to the croonings of Paul Simon, laugh along with Sarah Silverman, and get misty-eyed over the First Lady’s vision of progress in America.

But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.

In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, America.

The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government. All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.

Nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.

The government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

With roughly 22 lobbyists per Congressman, corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our elected representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service. Just consider: it’s estimated that more than $5 billion will be spent on the elections this year, yet not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.

And the military industrial complex will continue to bleed us dry. Since 2001 Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s also the $2.2 million spent every hour on maintaining the United States’ nuclear stockpile, and the $35,000 spent every hour to produce and maintain our collection of Tomahawk missiles. And then there’s the money the government exports to other countries to support their arsenals, at the cost of $1.61 million every hour for the American taxpayers.

Then again, when faced with the grim, seemingly hopeless reality of the American police state, it’s understandable why Americans might opt for escapism. “Humankind cannot bear too much reality,” T. S. Eliot once said. Perhaps that is one reason we are so drawn to the unreality of the American political experience: it is spectacle and fiction and farce all rolled up into one glossy dose of escapism.

Frankly, escapism or not, Americans should be mad as hell.

Many of our politicians live like kings. Chauffeured around in limousines, flying in private jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the American taxpayer, they are far removed from those they represent. Such a luxurious lifestyle makes it difficult to identify with the “little guy”—the roofers, plumbers and blue-collar workers who live from paycheck to paycheck and keep the country running with their hard-earned dollars and the sweat of their brows.

Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.

People get the government they deserve.

No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms, “Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.” As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?

Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity. Just stop.

Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.

Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.

Stop buying into the lie that your vote matters. Your vote doesn’t elect a president. Despite the fact that there are 218 million eligible voters in this country (only half of whom actually vote), it is the electoral college, made up of 538 individuals handpicked by the candidates’ respective parties, that actually selects the next president. The only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic. What we have is a dictatorship, or as political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term it, we are suffering from an “economic élite domination.”

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

It takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain. We must act—and act responsibly—keeping in mind that the duties of citizenship extend beyond the act of voting.

Most of all, it takes a citizenry that cares enough to get mad and get active. As Howard Beale declares in the 1976 film Network:

“I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it.”

 

Google’s lemmings: Pokémon go where Silicon Valley says

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An analysis of Ingress and Pokémon Go reveals important truths about corporate control and the ability of our mobile phones to organize our desires.

By Alfie Brown

Source: ROAR Magazine

his article has a clickbaity title but a sobering and concerning point to make. In 2010, Google started up what is now a very important subsidiary, Niantic Inc. Google starts up a lot of companies each year and acquires a great many more, so there is nothing special in this. What is important is that whilst most of us see Google’s acquisition of every “start-up” and endless development of “subsidiary” companies with different names as simply an attempt to completely monopolize the market, the case of Niantic shows us that there is more to the extent of Google’s power.

Six years on from its inception with the launch of its biggest game yet, Pokémon Go, Niantic has hit the headlines and people are finally paying attention to the company, with some apparent leftists even claiming we ought to boycott Pokémon Go. In fact, Niantic have been working on mobile phone psychology and social organization for several years. An analysis of the company’s two big games, Ingress and Pokémon Go, shows us some important truths about the world we are living in, about corporate control and about the ability of our mobile phones to organize our desires.

Niantic developed their first major game, Ingress, in 2011. The game, one of the most important of recent years, is a key ideological tool for Google — one that, unlike Pokémon Go, is little publicized. Ingress has seven million or more players and Ingress tattoos show the degree to which people define themselves by the application. Some players even describe Ingress as a “lifestyle” rather than a “game”. The reader can be forgiven for thinking: “I don’t play it, so why would this apply to me?” But the entertainment coming out of Google via Niantic is in line with Google’s wider project of regulating our movements and experiences of the physical world; unless you don’t use Google or any of its applications, many of which come built-it to our phones and cannot be uninstalled, this applies to you.

Ingress reflects a trend of mobile phone application development (which includes Google Maps and Uber, among other well-known apps) designed to regulate and influence our experience of the city, turning the mobile phone into a new kind of unconscious: an ideological force driving our movements while we remain only semi-aware of what propels us and why we are propelled in the directions we are.

I first considered the importance of mobile phone games to be about a kind of “distraction” — an argument I made in my book and related article in The New Inquiry. Later, when playing Ingress for the first time, I realized there was a lot more to it than this. Ingress, rather than simply distracting us from the city around us, actually trains us to become Google’s perfect citizens. In Ingress, the player moves around the real environment capturing “portals” represented by landmarks, monuments and public art, as well as other less-famous features of the city. The player is required to be within physical range of the “portal” to capture it, so the game constantly tracks the player via GPS. Importantly, it not only monitors where we go, but directs us where it wants us to move.

As such it is very much the counterpart of Google Maps, which is also developing the ability not only to track our movements but to direct them. Of course, Google’s algorithms have long since dictated which restaurants we visit, which cafés we are aware of and which paths we take to get to these destinations. Now though, Google is developing new technology that actually predicts where you will want to go based on the time, your GPS location and your habitual history of movement stored in its infinitely powerful recording system. This, like Ingress, shows us a new pattern emerging in which the mobile phone dictates our paths around the city and encourages us, without realizing it, to develop habitual and repetitious patterns of movement. More importantly still, such applications anticipate our very desires, not so much giving us what we want as determining what we desire.

Here again, the connection with the concept of the unconscious is useful. While some have seen the unconscious as a morass of unregulated desires, followers of Freud and later of Lacanian psychoanalysis have been keen to show precisely how structured the unconscious is by outside forces. Our mobile phones pretend to be about fulfilling our every desire, giving us endless entertainment (games), easy transport (Uber) and instant access to food and drink (OpenRice, JustEat) and even near-instantaneous sex and love (Tindr, Grindr). Yet, what is much scarier than the fact that you can get everything you want via your mobile phone is the possibility that what you want is itself set in motion by the phone.

Into precisely this atmosphere enters Pokémon Go, out just days ago, and already the most significant mobile phone release of 2016. The game is, of course, made by none other than Niantic Labs. A series of hysterical events have already arisen from the ethical minefield that is Pokémon Go. In the case of Ingress, academic study has already been dedicated to the fact that the game has sent young children into unlit city parks at 3am. With Pokémon Go, Australian police have had to respond to a bunch of Pokémon trainers trying to get into a police station to capture the Pokémon within and some people found a dead body instead of a Pokémon. It has already been suggested that Pokémon Go is eventually going to kill someone — and since that article was published someone has crashed into a police car and another has been run-over while hunting Pokemon. But, as with Ingress, it is not the occasional mad story to emerge that should concern us, but the psychological and technological effects of every user’s experience.

The premise of Pokémon Go is simply that you use your GPS to find Pokémon in the real environment and then your camera to make the Pokémon visible, so that the world is enriched by looking through the screen at what lies behind it, as in the image below:

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The Pokémon itself is an incredible phenomenon deserving of a book length study. Perhaps for now we can say that the Pokémon is the perfect example of what Jacques Lacan called the objet a, that perfectly cute fetishised but illusive object of desire that would truly make us happy if only we could just get our hands on it. We never do, because there is always a newer, cuter and harder to capture version that we just have to catch!

Dystopian visions of what technology and videogames would lead to seem to have got something completely wrong. Depictions of the dystopian videogame future have always tended to see the future as involving each individual isolated from the rest and sat quietly alone in a small room hooked up into a computer through which their lives are exclusively lived. In other words, the importance of the physical environment recedes in favor of the imaginary electronic world. On the contrary to these predictions of the future, we now live in a dystopia where Google and its subsidiaries send us madly around the city almost non-stop in directions of its choosing in search of the objects of desire, whether that be a lover on Tindr, a bowl of authentic Japanese ramen or that elusive Clefairy or Pikachu.

In the 1990s parents could ask their children to “get outside more” to escape the videogame space, but now it is the games that make us charge around the city capturing portals and collecting Pokémon and going on dates. Putting aside the full access that Google gets to your accounts via Pokémon Go, this shows us something really dangerous. It points to the increasing reality that there really is no escape from Google — and that while we are doing what we think we want, believing that we are just using our phones to help us get it, in fact Google has an even greater power, a truly revolutionary one: the ability to create and organize desire itself.

It is this truly revolutionary power that is important when it comes to Pokémon Go and Ingress. To say that these games are revolutionary is not to say that they are doing any good, nor that they are “radical”, and certainly it is not to say that they are left-wing — on the contrary, the revolution in desire appears to be corporate, hegemonic and centralized. If the left is to have any hope, however, it must not resist Pokémon Go, as Jacobin have now famously suggested, but understand and perhaps even embrace the power of the mobile phone to re-organize desire and look for ways forward from here.

 

Alfie Bown is the author of Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero, 2015) and The PlayStation Dreamworld (Polity, forthcoming 2017). He is the co-editor of the Hong Kong Review of Books and writes on the politics of technology and videogames for many publications.

FBI Whitewashes Serious Hillary Criminality

After President Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a secret meeting, Lynch's Justuce Department announced that it would not indict Hillary Clinton for her private email server and destruction of public dcuments, because she had no obvious intent to break the law, just extreme carelessness for it. Whatever happened to "ignorance of the law is no excuse"?

After President Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a secret meeting, Lynch’s Justice Department announced that it would not indict Hillary Clinton for her private email server and destruction of public documents, because she had no obvious intent to break the law, just extreme carelessness for it. Whatever happened to “ignorance of the law is no excuse”?

By Stephen Lendman

Source: SteveLendmanBlog

Reacting to FBI director James Comey whitewashing Hillary’s criminality serious enough to send ordinary people to prison, Trump was right calling the system “rigged.”

In a Tuesday afternoon statement, he said she “compromised the safety of the American people by storing highly classified information on a private email server with no security.”

“Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on (her), and this fact alone disqualified her from service.”

She lied saying she didn’t use her home server to maintain or send classified information. Comey confirmed over 100 emails classified when sent, including top secret ones.

Deleting thousands of emails compounded her criminality, ordinary Americans held to one standard, figures like Hillary and husband Bill another.

The system isn’t just rigged. It’s too debauched to fix. So far, Bernie Sanders remains noticeably silent on Comey’s whitewash. He acknowledged support for Clinton earlier, saying through a spokesperson the FBI’s decision won’t affect his campaign.

House Speaker Paul Ryan indicated Comey may be called before Congress to testify, saying “(w)e’re going to have hearings. There are a lot of unanswered questions here…”

“What really just mystifies me is the case he makes and then the conclusion he draws. This certainly does underscore the belief that the Clintons live above the law.”

“He shredded the case she had been making all year long. I think we need to know more…” She should be “block(ed) from access to classified material” as a tainted candidate.

“Based on (Comey’s) own statement…damage (was) done to the rule of law.” On the same day, Obama campaigned with Hillary in North Carolina, stumping for her for the first time – leading the crowd in chanting “Hill-a-ry,” adding he’s “fired up! Ready to go for her!”

“I’m here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton, and I want you to help elect her to be the next president of the United States of America,” he ranted, ignoring Comey’s whitewash.

Instead he lied, saying “there has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton. Ever.”

One unindicted war criminal endorsed another. As secretary of state, she orchestrated naked aggression on Libya and Syria, raping and destroying both countries – responsible for mass slaughter, destruction and unspeakable human misery.

Her deplorable rap sheet includes numerous other high crimes, including involvement in toppling foreign leaders, rigging Haiti’s election to install a US-controlled puppet, and racketeering – the Clinton Foundation a self-enrichment, influence peddling, money-laundering scheme masquerading as a charitable NGO.

Her record in office and since leaving government shows support for imperial lawlessness, indifference to human suffering, and addiction to self-aggrandizement, along with using her high office to accumulate great wealth.

She’s the only presidential aspirant in US history responsible for multiple high crimes demanding prosecution, yet favored to succeed Obama, things likely rigged to assure it.

With Democrats meeting later in July to nominate her their standard bearer, there was virtually no chance of Comey throwing party politics into disarray by recommending she be charged and prosecuted.

A loyal soldier, he’ll likely be asked to remain FBI director in a Clinton administration if she’s elected. Reportedly so will ethics-challenged Attorney General Loretta Lynch, longtime close Bill and Hillary ally – virtually certain not to indict her on other major charges.

Her non-recusal recusal gives her final say, Bill and Hillary free from prosecution despite committing high crimes too serious to ignore.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

Howell and Four Other Suspects Involved in Planned Sunday Massacres

 

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By Brenda Corpian

Source: Get Off the BS

Sources within the Santa Monica police department claim that James Wesley Howell, an Indiana man who was caught with explosives and weapons on Sunday Morning, told the Santa Monica police that as many as five people were involved in planned attacks on gay communities in both Florida and California.

According to the LA Times, Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially said on Twitter that the 20-year-old Indiana man (James Howell) told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted “to harm the Gay Pride event.”

However, after the FBI quickly took over the case, a Santa Monica police spokesman Saul Rodriguez indicated that Seabrooks was mistaken and offered that the Santa Monica detectives who were working the case are “not aware of what the suspect’s intentions were at this point.”

The official version of this story released by the LA Times falsely claims that on early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler who was knocking on a resident’s door and window about 5 a.m. in the 1700 block of 11th Street, Santa Monica police said.

Patrol officers responded and encountered Howell, who was sitting in a car registered in Indiana, police said. Officers inspected the car and found three assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket containing “chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device,” police said.

A law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the contents of the bucket included Tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create pipe bombs.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, said authorities also found camouflage clothing in the car.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said the suspect told police he was going to the Pride parade to look for a friend. Authorities were looking for that individual.

The real truth of the story was released to a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who works for Get Off the BS by two Santa Monica police officers that have been issued gag orders under threat of Federal prosecution for talking further talking about the incident.

According to two department sources, Howell called the Santa Monica police on Sunday morning claiming that he needed protection from the CIA. Howell further elaborated to the dispatcher stating that he “had been set up by the CIA – they are going to kill me.”

According to Howell, he was in LA to meet with another person in a collaborated attack on the gay communities in both Florida and Los Angeles.

Howell additionally stated that, “everything has gone south. Dan was gone when I got here. They killed the leader of the Florida attack this morning. They are going to kill me. I need protection.”

According to sources within the police department’s investigation Howell indicated to officers who first made contact with him that Howell claimed he was one of five people involved in a planned Sunday attack on both the east and west coasts.

Howell stated that he was suppose to “hook up” late Saturday night with his contact in LA who was suppose to have more weapons and chemicals to mix with the Tannerite he was in possession of.

“When I got here, Dan was gone. I went to his apartment and he had cleared out….I tried calling him but he never answered me,” said Howell.

When questioned about the other four people involved in the plot, Howell was only familiar with the first names of three of the alleged suspects, naming his contact in LA – Dan and two of the three contacts in Florida, Omar and Brandy

Speaking of the suspect killed in the Pulse Bar massacre in Florida, Howell stated, “Omar was not suppose to be killed. They lied to us – Omar and Brandy were suppose to get away.”

When Howell was questioned about how he and his conspirators knew each other, he said that,

“We were all familiar with each other through an online fundamental Islamic knowledge seminary course[1] – we were recruited through the course and trained together at a camp in Virginia – we were taught how to shoot and make bombs – everyone knew their part – something went wrong….”

Before the officers could further question Howell, agents working for the Los Angeles office of the FBI quickly swept in and took over the case. Santa Monica detectives were never allowed to talk with Howell.

In summary, it appears that Howell was on his way to “hook up” with another conspirator (Dan) to set off explosives and shoot people at the gay pride parade in Hollywood California on Sunday.

Finding his contact missing when he got to LA and having heard that Omar Matteen had been killed by a FBI SWAT teem in Orlando, Howell determined he had been double crossed by the CIA and feared for his own life.

Howell was taken in to custody by the FBI before Santa Monica police officers could further question him about the motives behind killing gay people on both coasts of the US on Sunday.

However, in absence of further information and or anyone who will officially go on the record, there is no doubt that the America public is not being told the truth about the Orlando Florida shooting and the arrest of Howell on Sunday.

It is a shame that the Fed’s got to the Santa Monica police chief on Sunday before she was silenced, however we are very thankful that at least two officers have risked their jobs and freedom to reveal what she would of most likely Tweeted had the Fed’s not got to her.

 

Authors Comments:

The official story released by the LA Times would not have held up for long with most people. It will most likely either disappear or be amended by the Times.

The mainstream media’s version of the police showing up to a Santa Monica apartment because someone in the neighborhood allegedly claimed that a person was “knocking on a neighbors door and windows” is almost comical.

When they added the police found the suspect at the scene and discovered weapons and explosives in his car, I almost peed myself laughing.

I use to live in Santa Monica. The likelihood of the police showing up to the apartment over a suspected prowler call within 2 hours, is about one in ten million.

However, for arguments sake let us assume that the police hurried right over to the apartment and found Howell there. (LMAO)

The likelihood that Howell drove all the way from Indiana to California to be found by the Santa Monica police with explosives, ammunition, and assault rifles in plain view in his car is about one in ten trillion.

Would you like to make odds that it was just a “coincidence” as the mainstream media reports, that Howell armed to the teeth with assault rifles and explosives, was on his way to a gay pride parade the same day as the massacre in Florida?

Folks, for those who know me, you know that I don’t make up stories. Everything I have written is true. However, for those of you who don’t know me, please use your common sense in this matter – the mainstream media and the fed’s are lying in this matter – there is no way that Howell’s arrest and the shooting in Orlando Florida is a coincidence.

Everyone would be well advised to hide your weapons before the Fed’s come knocking at your door to take them.

 

Story updates:

Shortly after the posting of this story, USA News shed light on the Online Islamic Fundamental course Howell spoke of.

Omar Mateen Did Not Act Alone! Proof of False Flag Conspiracy

The Father of the Orlando Shooter Recently Visited Congress, State Department, Writes Open Letters To President Obama

He laughed as he shot us‘: Sole survivor of 30 hiding in gay club bathroom reveals how he was hit four times but escaped by climbing over friends’ bodies

Links between Shooting events. All CIA patsies.

Omar Mateen: Orlando gunman was familiar face at club, performer says

Trump Right Again Omar Matteens’ Wife Had Prior Knowledge Of Orlando Massacre

FBI Introduced Florida Shooter to “Informants”