HIGHLY POTENT NEWS THAT MIGHT CHANGE YOUR VIEWS

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FLASHBACK: Spreading NAFTA’s Love Across the Atlantic

by Dana Gabriel
BE YOUR OWN LEADER
August 26, 2012

(Originally published in October of 2008)


Canada and the European Union (EU) are set to begin preliminary discussions on deeper economic integration a mere three days after the election. It has been reported that the proposed trade deal will far exceed NAFTA. Some see this as an opportunity to possibly update the 15 year-old accord. Stephen Harper is busy telling Canadians that only a Conservative majority government will be able to bring confidence back and stabilize the economy. That is why I find it a little strange that this has not become a pillar of the Conservatives economic platform. Harper has decided not to release the full text of the draft proposal until after the election on October 14. The reality is that such an agreement with the EU will be no different than NAFTA in the sense that it will be used to further advance corporate interests.

For the past several months, Canadian officials have been hard at work negotiating with EU representatives. They have compiled a detailed study that will be unveiled after the election. Talks could begin as early as October 17 at a summit in Montreal , with formal negotiations set to begin in 2009. Just as the case with the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) labour, citizen groups and the public at large have been excluded from any discussions. Many support this trade initiative because they wish to lessen Canada’s dependency on the American economy. This agreement has a better chance of succeeding if Harper is re-elected Prime Minister. There still remains much secrecy surrounding trade talks with the EU, and up to this point, Harper appears to be reluctant to make this an election issue.

French and current rotating EU president Nicolas Sarkozy has said that he wishes economic integration with Canada to be part of his lasting legacy. Europe sees Canada’s energy resources as a possible solution to easing their dependency on Russian oil and gas. In a commentary that appeared in the Globe and Mail, Alan Alexandroff, co-author of the C.D. Howe Institute paper titled Still Amigos, writes, “If the EU and Canada can forge an accord that covers services, government procurement and skilled labour that could well set the table for reviving the original NAFTA.” He went on to say, “If the EU and Canada join hands, the U.S. and Mexico will be eager to join the party.” Some believe that such an agreement will further advance North American integration while spreading NAFTA to Europe. A Canada-EU trade deal could be used as the model for future bilateral accords and as a way to further renew U.S.-EU relations.

There are calls to further deepen the U.S.-EU partnership with a new sense of multilateralism in areas of trade, climate change, and fighting terrorism. In April of 2007, it was announced with very little fanfare that the U.S.-EU had reached a deal on a new Trans-Atlantic Economic Partnership. They agreed to set up an economic council and further boost trade and investment by harmonizing services, business takeovers, and intellectual property. They also agreed to continue working towards eliminating non-tariff barriers to trade, which could eventually lead to a U.S.-EU single market.

Economic integration was a first step in the creation of the EU, and a similar stealth approach is being used to advance a North American Union. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso recently said in a speech, “We have to make room at the top table for others, because that is the only way we can consolidate and strengthen a stable, multilateral world, governed by internationally agreed rules.” He also stated, “the time has come to start thinking of an Atlantic Agenda for Globalisation.” With the further erosion of national sovereignty and continued economic, social, cultural and environmental integration, we are on an undeniable path towards world government.

With the collapse of the WTO talks, more bilateral trade agreements will be used in advancing the New World Order’s agenda. The global elite, pushing for world government, are using the current financial turmoil to acquire more wealth and power. Economic uncertainty could also be used to usher in a North American Union with its own currency. A Canada-EU trade deal is yet another incremental step towards global governance.

Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, security, as well as other issues. Contact: beyourownleader@hotmail.com Visit his blog at Be Your Own Leader


Surveillance Plane Now Patrolling Lancaster, CA “7 Days a Week” – Aug. 26, 2012 [video]

SheilaAliens.net
August 26, 2012

CREEPY MUCH? … This launched a couple days ago. Sorry for the video issues, couldn’t rip the video directly – had to screen capture. Here is the original link.

“The city of Lancaster plans to launch a new aerial surveillance system to monitor neighborhoods for crime.

The technology, called the Law Enforcement Aerial Platform System, will be attached to a piloted single-engine Cessna.

It’s basically a radar system that will give deputies a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening on the ground.” Read more
——————————————————————————————————-

IMO:

The stupid thing can only have its eye on one crime at any given moment, not that much of a help. Criminals can also easily distract it with a precursor crime just to make sure its not going to be available during whatever dastardly deeds they have planned.


FBI sharing facial recognition software with police departments across America

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
August 24, 2012

It is no secret that facial recognition technology is on the rise with amazing leaps forward in efficiency, nor is it a secret that the federal government maintains a centralized biometric database.

This program is so massive and coordinated that even governors have been overridden in the federal government’s quest to create a comprehensive database.

Now police departments across the entire United States will receive facial recognition software developed by none other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The software, known as “Universal Face Workstation software,” will be provided to police departments free of charge by the FBI under the expanding pilot program.

The software allows local law enforcement agencies to compare their photographs with those of the FBI’s database, which the FBI expects will contain at least 12 million photographs by 2014.

One of the many troubling aspects of this technology is the fact that the results are sent back to the querying state or local agency automatically without any human having to check the results.

This means that wildly inaccurate results could be returned to the local agency, which would not be anything new for facial recognition technology.

Michigan was the first American state to get brought into the FBI’s pilot project earlier this year while five other states have already signed up.

These states include Hawaii, New Mexico, Maryland, Ohio and South Carolina, while Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Tennessee have all expressed interest in participating in the FBI program.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Oregon might also be involved in the constantly ramping up Next Generation Identification (NGI) Facial Recognition Program.

The plans for the NGI are nothing short of shocking. One must realize that the federal government actually plans to include highly sensitive biometric and biographical data belonging to over 100 million Americans.

Some are already expressing concerns over the program, including U.S. Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat.

However, I wouldn’t be all too quick to praise Senator Franken given that he voted for S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 when it allowed for the indefinite detention of Americans, something which Obama is now fighting to keep.

That being said, Franken did reverse his stance and eventually vote against the final language of the NDAA, but I am quite skeptical of his trustworthiness. This might be a case of looking a gift horse in the mouth but I encourage a healthy distrust of our so-called representatives even when they appear to be working for the interests of the American people.

“Facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that fingerprints do not,” Franken rightly stated at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law, according to AllGov.

“Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online,” Franken added.

I’m quite grateful Franken brought up the social networking aspect of this issue in his statement. With Facebook’s acquisition of Face.com, the Israeli facial recognition firm, the future of facial recognition in social networking is looking quite bright indeed, at least for those who are on the winning side of the equation.

Franken also expressed concerns that the FBI’s software “could be abused to not only identify protesters at political events and rallies, but to target them for selective jailing and prosecution, stifling their First Amendment rights.”

This is far from a misplaced concern given that we saw Occupy Wall Street protesters being illegally pressured into submitting to iris scans, which is just another biometric tool in the FBI’s arsenal.

The troubling alacrity with which this technology is being spread to local agencies across the United States appears to just be increasing and unless the American people actually start expressing some concern over this, I seriously doubt it will slow down any time soon.

Did I forget anything or miss any errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips, questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your fancy.

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David Icke: “Stuff Your Foreclosure, We Ain’t Moving!” [video]

We Are Change
August 16, 2012

Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange talks to David Icke about how we, together, can fight back against the controllers & manipulators of society.

Follow Luke @ http://www.twitter.com/lukewearechange

Become a WeAreChange Sponsor and get exclusive behind the scenes content while helping us grow! http:///www.wearechange.org/donate


Globalist Rag Gives “Two Cheers” for Terrorism

Land Destroyer

Foreign Policy plums new depths of own legendary depravity. 
by Tony Cartalucci

August 24, 2012 – Foreign Policy published a recent article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” In it, general editor of the Neo-Con Middle East Forum Gary Gambill concedes that the Syrian government “would not be in the trouble it’s in today were it not for the Islamists,” revealing what the West and its media houses have attempted but failed at obfuscating – that the violence in Syria is the work of sectarian extremists, not “pro-democracy activists.” The latter’s existence was amplified by the Western media specifically to provide cover and legitimacy for the violence and subversion of the former.

 Image: Must be seen to believe – screenshot of FP’s article literally titled, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” The writer, Gary Gambill, comes from the Middle East Forum which regular features the warmongering rants of Neo-Cons like Daniel Pipes and Islamophobia-propagandist Robert Spencer. 

….

Gambill continues his “two cheers” for terrorism in perhaps the most perverse statement found to-date in the Western press on the subject:

“Islamists — many of them hardened by years of fighting U.S. forces in Iraq — are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts. Assad has had extraordinary difficulty countering tactics perfected by his former jihadist allies, particularly suicide bombings and roadside bombs.”

Gambill is gushingly praising men who have killed Western troops, admiring their prowess on the battlefield through their use of indiscriminate terrorist tactics which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the Arab World.

The Big Lie

Gambill continues by stating, “The Sunni Islamist surge may also be essential to inflicting a full-blown strategic defeat on Iran,” before concluding at length as to why the US should support terrorism in Syria:

“For the foreseeable future, however, Iran constitutes a far greater and more immediate threat to U.S. national interests. Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people, any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran unthinkable, it won’t have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington.

So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies, we should quietly root for them — while keeping our distance from a conflict that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames. ” –Gary Gambill, “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists,” (2012)

In this, Gambill divulges the true agenda behind destabilizing Syria – the isolation and undermining of Iran to the east, and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the West. Gambill also mentions the destruction of Syria as a means of realigning Iraq to US interests.

Gambill disingenuously claims that the US can do “little about” what he calls the “political ascendancy” of these sectarian extremists, portraying the rise of violence across the Levant and the miraculous resurrection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab World as coincidentally aligned to American interests, and something that should be allowed, even encouraged, to run its course.

Gambill fails to mention, however, that this “political ascendancy” was planned, funded, armed, and organized by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia as far back as 2007, according to a detailed, 9-page report published by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker titled “The Redirection.”

In the report, it explicitly states:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.” –Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)

Hersh’s report would also include:

“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.” –Seymour Hersh, The Redirection (2007)

In essence, Gambill’s gushing support for terrorism – and in particular, terrorists who have fought and killed Americans – is but the latest in an attempt to spin and repackage Al Qaeda and the fraudulent “War on Terror” as public awareness outgrows the fallacious “humanitarian pretenses” the operation has been couched within hitherto.

Gambill’s material support for terrorism echos a recent article titled, “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a premier Fortune 500-funded US think-tank, which stated:

“The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime’s superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.”

Why is Gambill Writing This?

Consider the audience of Foreign Policy. It is not propaganda fit for the masses. Rather it is for aspiring, as well as low to mid-level members of the global corporate-financier establishment. Western involvement in both Libya and Syria have undermined the governments, institutions, and organizations many of these people work for, and as public awareness (and anger) grows, it will be these low to mid-level members who bear the brunt of the system’s collapsing legitimacy. Many are already expressing doubts over the viability and nature of the West’s global agenda as it unfolds.

It must be remembered that the terrorists Gambill is “cheering” for had ensnared millions of Western troops for over a decade in the so-called “War on Terror.” It has killed thousands of troops, tens of thousands were maimed both physically and psychologically, and hundreds of thousands have forever lost time they could have spent at home with their loved ones. As public awareness grows of Western support for these very terrorists, it would be almost inconceivable that there would not be a profound, perhaps even violent backlash against people like Gambill and the establishment he represents.

Gambill’s cheerleading is designed to rally the lower ranks of the establishment around this new narrative as he and fellow warmongers attempt to flee forward through Syria and then into Iran. Eventually, the reckless promotion of terrorism Gambill and others are committed to will once again call US soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen into harms way – either to fight nations defending themselves against US-sponsored terrorism, or to liquidate US-supported terrorists when their services are longer needed.

Gambill by causally saying, “there will be plenty of time to tame the beast after Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames,” means specifically more US troops will be deployed, and will most certainly die, all in the pursuit of corporate-financier interests in the Middle East. Gambill specifically refers to “hegemonic ambitions,” not any conceivable threat to US defense, as the impetus for cheering on terrorism, a theme that is omnipresent throughout US policy papers on Iran.

Legendary US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once said “war is a racket.” For an increasing number of people worldwide, they are beginning to understand why.


Important NOAA Updates on Trop. Storm/Hurricane Isaac as of 9 A.M. Aug. 26, 2012 [video]

SheilaAliens
August 26, 2012

http://sheilaaliens.net/Isaac.php Captured screen recording of video via http://tornadovideos.net/live


France Preparing For No-Fly Zone Over Syria

Stop NATO
August 24, 2012

RT
August 24, 2012

France preparing for no-fly zone in Syria?


Rafale fighters


Mirages

Paris said it is considering helping to enact a partial no-fly zone over Syria, proposed earlier by the US. The move adds yet more pressure on Damascus as the fiery rhetoric increases.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian signaled that the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone in the area, between the Turkish border and the flashpoint city of Aleppo, should be considered.

“The idea of a no-fly zone over a particular part of Syria, as suggested by Hillary Clinton, should be examined,” he said in an interview with France24.

Le Drian stressed that the Syrian crisis would never be resolved unless President Bashar Assad steps down.

Noting that the Syrian opposition is “is not yet entirely solidified”, the Defense Minister reasserted France’s support of anti-government forces.

“We are increasing our efforts to support a robust Syrian opposition that is capable of taking the reins of the country…,” he said.

The statement comes after the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, indicated earlier this month that a no-fly zone was an option in resolving the ongoing crisis.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to oppose any military action against Syria and calls for a peaceful solution and further dialogue

On Thursday, Moscow said it was working closely with Damascus to ensure that its arsenal of chemical weapons remains under firm control and has won promises that the weapons of mass destruction will not be used or relocated, AP reports, citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov.

Last week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that military action in Syria will end in catastrophe and stressed that the solution to the ongoing conflict is the Geneva accord peace plan.

“Statements, saying the document [Geneva accord] is as good as dead imply that someone seeks a pretext for military intervention. This is worrying as it can only lead to catastrophe in the region,” Lavrov said in an interview with Sky News Arabic.

Back in June the international community reached an agreement at a summit in Geneva, calling for a transitional government in Syria to bring an end to the ongoing conflict in the country.