US – Page 18 – praag.org

US global terror warning inconsistent with weak al Qaida

The Obama administration’s sweeping response to an alleged al Qaida plot – closing diplomatic posts in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia – suggests a terrorist organization that’s capable of striking virtually anywhere, not the one U.S. officials have depicted as a group that’s near defeat.

Counterterrorism analysts said Monday that the U.S. government’s global response to a threat emanating from Yemen, home to al Qaida’s most active affiliate, was at odds with how dismissive President Barack Obama was in a speech in May, when he said that “not every collection of thugs that labels themselves as al Qaida will pose a credible threat to the United States.”

That was only one of a series of public statements by Obama and his Cabinet members that played down the capabilities of al Qaida-linked groups. For at least the past two years, the administration has sought to reassure Americans that al Qaida is “on the run,” while counterterrorism experts were warning about the semiautonomous affiliates that have wreaked havoc in North Africa, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

“The actions the administration is taking now are deeply inconsistent with the portrait of al Qaida strength the administration has been painting,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.

U.S. officials have been secretive about what precise information led to the worldwide travel advisory and embassy closings, but a Yemeni official told McClatchy on Sunday that authorities had intercepted “clear orders” from al Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri to Nasir al Wuhayshi, the head of the affiliate in Yemen, to carry out an attack.

On the campaign trail last fall, Obama touted the killing of Osama bin Laden during a covert U.S. raid in 2011 as a sign that, while the U.S. would have to maintain vigilance, “the truth, though, is that al Qaida is much weaker than it was when I came into office.” In his State of the Union address last February, the president called al Qaida “a shadow of its former self” and said the threat posed by its affiliates wouldn’t require large-scale U.S. military deployment.

In July 2011, Obama’s then newly appointed defense secretary, Leon Panetta, said he was “convinced in this capacity that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al Qaida.” – mcclatchydc.com

Obama hiding Benghazi survivors, changing their names

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) was on with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News on Thursday to discuss the Obama scandals.

This came after Jake Tapper at CNN broke the news that there were “dozens” of CIA operatives on the ground in Benghazi on 9-11 when the consulate came under attack and the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

Gowdy told Greta the Obama Administration is hiding the survivors, dispersing them around the country, AND changing their names.

“Including changing names, creating aliases. Stop and think what things are most calculated to get at the truth? Talk to people with first-hand knowledge. What creates the appearance and perhaps the reality of a cover-up? Not letting us talk with people who have the most amount of information, dispersing them around the country and changing their names.”

And, at the same time Obama is hiding the survivors around the country he’s calling Benghazi a ‘phony’ scandal.

The U.S. special mission in Benghazi was used to coordinate arms shipments and other aid to the so-called rebels fighting in Libya and later in Syria.

The scandal has garnered media attention since Sen. Rand Paul asked outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the claims that involve Stinger missiles during hearings over the Benghazi affair.

Clinton claimed she did not know whether the U.S. special mission was involved in gun-running.

Security sources have reconfirmed the use of the Benghazi mission in aiding al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups.

The slain U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, according to Egyptian security officials.

In November, Middle Eastern security sources further described both the U.S. mission and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi as the main intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to al-Qaida that was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Among the tasks performed inside the building was collaborating with certain countries on the recruitment of fighters – including jihadists – to target Assad’s regime, the security officials said. – gatewaypundit.com/WND

CIA was ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi’

The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.

Up to 35 CIA operatives were working in the city during the attack last September on the US consulate that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to CNN.

The circumstances of the attack are a subject of deep division in the US with some Congressional leaders pressing for a wide-ranging investigation into suspicions that the government has withheld details of its activities in the Libyan city.

The television network said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.

Sources said that more Americans were hurt in the assault spearheaded by suspected Islamic radicals than had been previously reported. CIA chiefs were actively working to ensure the real nature of its operations in the city did not get out.

So only the losses suffered by the State Department in the city had been reported to Congress.

“Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings,” CNN reported.

Frank Wolf, a US congressman who represents the district that contains CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is one of 150 members of Congress for a new investigation into the failures in Benghazi.

“I think it is a form of a cover-up, and I think it’s an attempt to push it under the rug, and I think the American people are feeling the same way,” he said. “We should have the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And there really isn’t any national security issue involved with regards to that.”

A CIA spokesman said it had been open about its activities in Benghazi.

“The CIA has worked closely with its oversight committees to provide them with an extraordinary amount of information related to the attack on US facilities in Benghazi,” a CIA statement said. “CIA employees are always free to speak to Congress if they want,” the statement continued. “The CIA enabled all officers involved in Benghazi the opportunity to meet with Congress. We are not aware of any CIA employee who has experienced retaliation, including any non-routine security procedures, or who has been prevented from sharing a concern with Congress about the Benghazi incident.”- The Telegraph

Pentagon awards contracts to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan

Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.

The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said today in a letter accompanying a quarterly report to Congress.

“I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,” Sopko said.

The 236-page report and Sopko’s summary provide one of the watchdog agency’s most critical appraisals of U.S. performance in helping to build a stable Afghanistan as the Pentagon prepares to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year.

“There appears to be a growing gap between the policy objectives of Washington and the reality of achieving them in Afghanistan, especially when the government must hire and oversee contractors to perform its mission,” said Sopko, whose post was mandated by Congress.

The Pentagon is scheduled to deliver its own Afghanistan status report to Congress today. Its appraisal, which is months late, will outline progress from October 2012 through March and concerns that deal with handing over security operations to the Afghan military.

Sopko said the Army “appears to believe that suspension or debarment of these individuals and companies would be a violation of their due-process rights if based on classified information” or on Commerce Department reports.

Regarding the 43 cases of contractors with militant connections, Sopko said the Army should “enforce the rule of common sense” in its suspension and debarment program.

“They may be enemies of the United States but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts,” according to the agency’s report. – Bloomberg

‘Libertarians are dangerous’

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Thursday offered a clear broadside against Republicans drifting toward a more libertarian view of foreign policy, lumping Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in with them and suggesting they explain their position to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The House earlier this week narrowly voted against a reduction in funding for the National Security Agency, as libertarian-leaning members from both sides joined together to vote for the amendment.

“As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.

Asked whether he includes Paul — a fellow potential 2016 presidential candidate — in his criticism, Christie didn’t back down.

“You can name any one of them that’s engaged in this,” he said. “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. … I’m very nervous about the direction this is moving in.”

Christie acknowledged that there will always be mistakes when it comes to national security and protecting privacy, but said Americans need to stay focused on what’s at stake.

He dismissed some of the current privacy/national security debates as “esoteric.”

“I think what we as a country have to decide is: Do we have amnesia? Because I don’t,” he said. “And I remember what we felt like on Sept. 12, 2001.”

Christie also praised the national security strategies of both President Obama and George W. Bush.

“I want to say that I think both the way President Bush conducted himself and the way President Obama has conducted himself in the main on those types of decisions hasn’t been different because they were right and because we haven’t had another one of those attacks that cost thousands and thousands of lives,” Christie said.

Christie appeared alongside Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R). The four GOP governors appeared side-by-side at a session hosted by the nonpartisan Aspen Institute.

The four of them are all considered among the GOP’s top potential presidential candidates in 2016, with each of them ranking on The Fix’s most recent list of the top 10 likeliest nominees.

The Republican Governors Association was holding its summer meeting in the mountainous resort town.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who was slated to appear, had to stay in his home state with the state legislature moving on legislation — including new abortion restrictions. – Washington Post

US welfare recipients shipping food stamp groceries overseas

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”

The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.

Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.

“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”

Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.

Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.

They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.

When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.

Last week, a woman stuffed dozens of boxes of macaroni and evaporated milk into a barrel headed for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. She said she didn’t have welfare benefits and bought the food herself.

“This is all worth more than $2,000,” she said. “I’ve been shopping since last December. You can help somebody else, someone who doesn’t live in this country.”

A man helping her pack the barrel said: “We’re poor here, and they’re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.” – NY Post

The militarization of American policing

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart’s former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart’s basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart’s father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Their usual aim is to “clear” a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education’s SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe’s emperors and monarchs. – WSJ

Former President and Commander-In-Chief: America no functioning democracy

One of Germany’s biggest newspapers – Spiegel – reports that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, in the wake of the NSA spying scandal criticized the American political system. “America has no functioning democracy,” Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the “Atlantic Bridge” in Atlanta.

Many other high-level U.S. officials have also warned that the U.S. is no longer a democracy.

Carter also said that the moral authority of of the U.S. has sharply declined due to excessive restriction of civil rights.

And – like many other top American officials – Carter also said that Edward Snowden’s revelations do not harm our national security, but are “useful”. – Washington’s blog

CIA backs study on controlling global climate

The Central Intelligence Agency is funding a scientific study that will investigate whether humans could use geoengineering to alter Earth’s environment and stop climate change. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will run the 21-month project, which is the first NAS geoengineering study financially supported by an intelligence agency. With the spooks’ money, scientists will study how humans might influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate, and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering attempts.

The total cost of the project is $630,000, which NAS is splitting with the CIA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA. The NAS website says that “the US intelligence community” is funding the project, and William Kearney, a spokesman for NAS, told Mother Jones that phrase refers to the CIA. Edward Price, a spokesman for the CIA, refused to confirm the agency’s role in the study, but said, “It’s natural that on a subject like climate change the Agency would work with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security.” The CIA reportedly closed its research center on climate change and national security last year, after GOP members of Congress argued that the CIA shouldn’t be looking at climate change.

The goal of the CIA-backed NAS study is to conduct a “technical evaluation of a limited number of proposed geoengineering techniques,” according to the NAS website. Scientists will attempt to determine which geoengineering techniques are feasible and try to evaluate the impacts and risks of each (including “national security concerns”). One proposed geoengineering method the study will look at is solar radiation management—a fancy term for pumping particles into the stratosphere to reflect incoming sunlight away from the planet. In theory, solar radiation management could lead to a global cooling trend that might reverse, or at least slow down, global warming. The study will also investigate proposals for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The National Academies has held two previous workshops on geoengineering, but neither was funded by the intelligence community, says Edward Dunlea, the study director for the latest project. The CIA would not say why it had decided to fund the project at this time, but the US government’s apparent interest in altering the climate isn’t new. The first big use of weather modification as a military tactic came during the Vietnam War, when the Air Force engaged in a cloud seeding program to try to create rainfall and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into muck, and thereby gain tactical advantage. Between 1962 and 1983, other would-be weather engineers tried to change the behavior of hurricanes using silver iodide. That effort, dubbed Project Stormfury, was spearheaded by the Navy and the Commerce Department. China’s “Weather Modification Office” also controversially seeded clouds in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, hoping to ensure rain would fall in the Beijing suburbs instead of over the Olympic stadiums.

Although previous efforts to manipulate weather and climate have often been met with mockery, many geoengineering proposals “are fundamentally doable, relatively cheap, and do appear to be able to reduce climate risk significantly, but with risks,” explains David Keith, a Harvard researcher and top geoengineering proponent.

But if geoengineering is cheap and “fundamentally doable,” as Keith claims, that suggests foreign countries, or even wealthy individuals, could mess with the climate to advance their own ends. “This whole issue of lone actors: Do we need to be concerned about China acting unilaterally? Is that just idle chatter, or is that something the US government should prepare for?” asks Ken Caldeira, a geoengineering researcher at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a member of the current National Academy of Sciences panel.

At least one individual has already tried modifying the climate. Russ George, the former head of Planktos, a company that works to develop technology to deal with global warming, seeded the Pacific Ocean off western Canada with iron to generate a plankton bloom that, in turn, was supposed to suck up carbon dioxide from the air. George’s effort was widely condemned, but at present there’s little to stop other individuals or countries from trying it or something similar. That’s part of what has the US intelligence community interested.

The CIA’s decision to fund scientific work on geoengineering will no doubt excite conspiracy theorists. The last time the government tried to do cutting-edge research related to the atmosphere—with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which aimed to protect satellites from nuclear blasts—people speculated that it might be a death ray, a mind control weapon, or, worst of all…a way to control the weather. – Mother Jones

Blacks benefit most from self-defense law in Florida

African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.

Nonetheless, prominent African Americans including Holder and “Ebony and Ivory” singer Stevie Wonder, who has vowed not to perform in the Sunshine State until the law is revoked, have made “Stand Your Ground” a central part of the Trayvon Martin controversy.

Holder, who was pressured by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other progressive groups to open a civil rights case against acquitted neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Martin, criticized Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in a speech Tuesday before the NAACP.

The law was not invoked by Zimmerman’s defense team but was included in instructions to the jury.

“We must confront the underlying attitudes, the mistaken beliefs and the unfortunate stereotypes that serve too often as the basis for police action and private judgments. Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhood,” Holder said to applause in his speech before the NAACP Tuesday.

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common-sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety,” Holder said.

“The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has victimized too many who are innocent. It is our collective obligation; we must stand OUR ground to ensure — (cheers, applause, music) — we must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent,” Holder said.

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012. – dailycaller.com

Goldman Sachs profits double on investment gains, lower tax rate

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) said quarterly profit doubled, boosted by investment gains and a lower tax rate.

Goldman’s investing and lending segment, which tracks its investments in private equity deals, publicly traded stocks, loans and bonds, produced nearly seven times as much revenue in the second quarter as in the same period last year, much more than analysts expected.

Investors questioned how much revenue growth the bank can generate by investing its own capital under new regulations. The Volcker rule, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, limits banks’ market wagers with their own money. But the industry has years to comply with the law, and Goldman believes most of its investing and lending activities already do.

Goldman’s effective tax rate dropped to 27 percent from 32 percent in part because the bank is electing to keep more of its international income permanently offshore, and because it earned more money overseas. Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz told analysts on a conference call that the lower tax rate was not likely to be repeated.

“It’s tough to get too excited about these numbers because they’re potentially unsustainable,” said Tom Jalics, senior research analyst at Key Private Bank, whose clients own bank shares.

The results underscore the difficulties Goldman and its rivals face in navigating the post-crisis world. With regulators pressing banks to boost capital levels, many of Goldman’s most profitable businesses are earning less. The bank’s return on equity, a measure of how effectively it wrings profit from shareholders’ money, was just 10.5 percent in the second quarter, a hair above what it would pay for equity funding.

Overall, Goldman’s net income rose to $1.86 billion, or $3.70 per share, in the quarter, from $927 million, or $1.78 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts on average had expected $2.82 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net revenue rose 30 percent to $8.61 billion.

The biggest contributor to revenue was fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) trading, which reflects trading with clients. Revenue there rose 12 percent to $2.46 billion.

Goldman’s results echoed similar trends in the investment banking units of JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N), whose fixed-income trading businesses also benefited from improvements in trading and underwriting revenue in the second quarter. – Reuters

It’s all about race: Zimmerman has an Anglo name

Establishment-encouraged anti-White hatred is at the core of the current ”Trayvon Martin killing” trial of mestizo George Zimmerman, as evidenced by the clear and obvious racial undertones and hypocrisy surrounding nonwhite crime.

The controlled media, encouraged by white-hating black “community leaders,” have hyped up Zimmerman as some type of “white racist” who murdered the “unarmed black youth” Martin in an unprovoked shooting.

The reality of the situation—namely that neighborhood watch patrolman Zimmerman is a mestizo Hispanic, and that Martin was a large black thug carrying burglary equipment and who violently attacked Zimmerman—has been completely covered up in yet another bout of frenzied anti-white hatred.

The fact is that if George Zimmerman had been named “Juan Garcia” or “Emilio Estefan,” the media would have paid the shooting only passing attention and he would be a free man today, and not facing a lifetime behind bars after a modern-day public lynching by the rodent press.

Instead, because this unfortunate mestizo has a German-sounding name, the media latched onto him as an example of “white racism” and even now, many of the major news networks refer to the shooting as an example of “whites shooting blacks.”

Yet nonwhites kill each other with monotonous regularity all over America, all the time—and these shootings only make it as far as local news stations

For example, concurrent to the time that the Martin shooting occurred, Fox News Chicago reported that there had been 38 shootings, and three fatalities in that city—all within a single weekend. Everyone of the shooters and almost all the victims were either black or Hispanic.

Yet the international media just ignored that outbreak of violence—because they could not twist it to try and blame “white racism.”

Even more telling of the anti-white hatred which underlays the media’s controllers, is the Mark Slavin case.

Not one person in ten million knows who Mark Slavin is, even though he was the victim of a brutal attack just a few miles away from where the Martin shooting took place.

Slavin, a 50 year old Caucasian, was attacked by two teenage blacks, one just a year older than Martin. The two black thugs beat Slavin with a hammer, and then took him into a nearby woods in his car, where they continued the senseless racial assault.

Investigators said a witness called 911 after hearing the victim’s cries for help and seeing the beating.

The two blacks, named Yahaziel Israel and Julius Bender, drove away in the victim’s vehicle before deputies arrived and they abandoned it nearby.

Deputies said they found the victim in the woods, barely conscious and with severe head injuries.
The two blacks were charged with attempted homicide, burglary with assault or battery, and armed burglary. Slavin’s injuries were reported as “life-threatening” and he was hospitalized at Orlando Regional Medical Center in critical condition.

Despite this brutal attack occurring at exactly the same time and nearly the same location as the Martin shooting, the controlled media has seen fit to cover up the incident completely—to the point of not reporting on the resultant trial or even what happened to the victim.

How different it would be if two whites had beaten a black man nearly to death with a hammer! By now, the whole world would have been informed, hundreds of times over, of the “evil racist attack” and blacks all over America would have been rioting and demonstrating against “white violence” etc.

Even now, despite Zimmerman being a mestizo, and not a white, the controlled media is still trying to incite blacks to engage in anti-white riots should he actually be acquitted of the outrageous charges against him.

The use of numerous anti-white racial epithets by witnesses in the Zimmerman trial (see Prosecution’s Star Witness In Zimmerman Trial Refuses to Say Term ‘Creepy-Ass Cracker’ Is Racial or Offensive” The Blaze, Jun. 27, 2013), even though reported on, passed without comment from the controlled media.

This contrasts dramatically with the same rodent press’s public lynching of Southern Belle cookery celebrity Paula Deen, who dared to use the word “nigger” 30 years ago, leading to the destruction of her career and sacking by all her major sponsors. – The New Observer

US ‘trying to save face on Snowden’

US President Barack Obama, meeting senior Chinese officials who were in Washington for annual wide-ranging talks, “expressed his disappointment and concern” over the Snowden case, the White House said in a statement.

Deputy secretary of state William Burns, one of the main US officials in the talks, said Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at their summit last month at the California resort of Sunnylands to cooperate over problems.

“That is why we were very disappointed with how the authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong handled the Snowden case, which undermined our effort to build the trust needed to manage difficult issues,” Burns said.

“We have made clear that China’s handling of this case was not consistent with the spirit of Sunnylands or with the type of relationship – the new model – that we both seek to build,” Burns said at a joint press event.

State councilor Yang Jiechi, speaking next to Burns, defended decisions on Snowden, whose allegations of US snooping in Chinese internet networks caused a stir in Beijing.

“The central government of China has always respected the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s handling of cases in accordance with the law,” he said.

Hong Kong “handled the Snowden case in accordance with the law and its approach is beyond reproach”, said Yang, a central figure in Chinese foreign policy.

Snowden was allowed to leave Hong Kong, a territory of China that enjoys a large amount of autonomy, for Russia.

“The Americans are just trying to save face,” said Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo, dismissing the rebuke from Washington as “diplomatic talk”.

“The Chinese didn’t exactly invite Snowden to come to Hong Kong,” Mo said.

Hong Kong executive council member Bernard Chan was also critical of Washington, saying “Hong Kong and China were not the ones at fault”.

“It was the US, not Hong Kong, that decided to operate a global electronic spying operation, which even some Americans now believe is out of control,” Chan wrote in the South China Morning Post.

“It was the US, not Hong Kong, that decided directly or via outsourcing to use the services of a young man who turned out to be disloyal.”

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s Interfax news agency said the US had stopped pressing Russia to extradite Snowden, quoting a source close to the situation.

“There has not been any request either through official or unofficial channels for several days now,” the source told the agency.

Snowden has applied for asylum in 27 countries.

Although many of them have already turned down his request, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro offered “humanitarian asylum” to Snowden last week.

But the country’s foreign minister Elias Jaua said on Thursday that Snowden had yet to accept his country’s offer.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Mercosur trade bloc summit in Montevideo, he said his government had had no contact with Snowden.

Earlier, Jaua said that Mercosur leaders, when they meet on Friday, would release a resolution denouncing the diversion of the jet carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales home from Moscow last week.

Morales, who accused four European nations – France, Italy, Portugal and Spain – of denying their airspace because they believed Snowden was hiding on his plane, has been invited to the Mercosur summit. – AFP

Obama: ‘Moral imperative’ to feed Africa

Obama on the tired old theme of African hunger

President Barack Obama, wrapping up the first leg of an African tour, said on Friday Washington had a “moral imperative” to help the world’s poorest continent feed itself and he then left for South Africa hoping to see ailing Nelson Mandela.

White House officials hope Obama’s three-nation tour of Africa – his first substantial visit to the continent since taking office in 2009 – will compensate for what some view as years of neglect by America’s first black president.

Before departing Senegal after a two-day stay, Obama met farmers and local entrepreneurs to discuss new technologies helping to raise agricultural output in West Africa, one of the world’s most under-developed and drought-prone regions.

Standing in front of the agricultural displays at an event hosted by “Feed the Future”, the U.S. government’s global hunger initiative, Obama said his administration was making food security a top priority of its development agenda.

“This is a moral imperative. I believe that Africa is rising and wants to partner with us: not be dependent but be self sufficient,” he told reporters. “Far too many Africans endure the daily injustice of poverty and chronic hunger.

“When people ask what’s happening to their taxpayer dollars in foreign aid, I want people to know this money’s not being wasted. It’s helping feed families.”

But the health of Mandela, the 94-year-old former South African president and anti-apartheid hero clinging to life in a Pretoria hospital, dominated Obama’s day even before he arrived in Johannesburg.

Trade unionists, student activists and Communist Party members protesting against American foreign policy gathered on Friday a few blocks from the hospital where Mandela is being treated for a lung infection.

Like Mandela, Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize and both men were the first black presidents of their nations.

Air Force One departed Senegal’s coastal capital Dakar just before 1100 GMT (0700 AM ET) and was due to arrive in South Africa around eight hours later. On Friday evening, Obama has no public events scheduled and could go to the hospital then.

He is scheduled to visit Robben Island, where Mandela spent years in prison under South Africa’s former white minority regime, later during his trip. Obama’s last stop on his tour will be Tanzania in East Africa.

Food security, along with anti-corruption measures and trade opportunities for U.S. companies, are topics the White House wants to highlight on Obama’s eight-day tour.

Food security and public aid are two of the issues the Obama team believes are success stories. USAID head Raj Shah told reporters that Africa had seen a steady increase in resources under Obama’s administration despite a tough budget environment. – Reuters