Category Archives: Things that aren’t what they seem

Was Senator Paul Wellstone Assassinated?

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Wellstone!

Snowshoe Films (2009)

Film Review

 

This documentary assesses the physical evidence suggesting the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone in October 2002 was actually an assassination. Wellstone, elected by Minnesota’s Democratic Farm Labor Party, was a true populist like Bernie Sanders. In addition to being the only candidate running for re-election who opposed the US invasion of Iraq, he was also raising questions about the official version of 9-11.

With his death – only 10 days before election day – his seat passed to his Republican opponent – granting Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress.

Among the anomalies explored in this film are

  • the strange electrical fire (which the National Air Safety Board neglects to mention in their report) that melted copper components in the instrument panel.
  • the loss of strobe and other warning lights (which the NASB report also neglects to mention), pointing to electrical failure preceding the crash.
  • the mysterious disappearance of the cockpit voice recorder (black box)
  • the discrepancy between witness statements and the NASB report about the altitude of the plane when it stalled out (according to eyewitnesses it was 75-90 feet, while the report indicates 1,000 feet).
  • the failure of the pilots to call in a warning of the crash to air traffic controllers.
  • the failure of the NASB (or FBI investigators) to mention links between one of the pilots, Michael Grass, and the “20th 9-11 hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui’s computer, the one FBI investigator Colleen Rawley failed to get a warrant for, had Michael Guess’s aviation instruction software on it.
  • the failure of the NASB to hold a public hearing on the crash, which is routine in high profile cases.
  • the conclusion reached by the NASB that Wellstone’s plane crashed due to “pilot error” without presenting a shred of evidence to support this conclusion.

Independent forensic experts who reviewed both the evidence and the NASB report concluded that Wellstone’s plane crashed because the pilots were incapacitated in some way. There were a number of odd electronic anomalies reported in the vicinity of the crash that Minnesota assassination researcher Jim Fetzer believes are compatible with a directed electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or microwave weapon similar to those the Pentagon was experimenting with in Iraq.

At exactly 10.18 (two seconds before the aircraft stalled) a Duluth lobbyist traveling to the same funeral as Wellstone and his family heard a loud wailing/humming sound on his cellphone. At the exact same time a number of residents south of the airport reported garage doors mysteriously opening. In addition, a local meterologist reported a large hole in the ice clouds immediately above the crash area. This, too, would have been consistent with a directed EMP weapon.

Doping: the Ugly Truth About the Sports Industry

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The Dark Side – Secrets of the Sports Dopers

Al Jazeera (2015)

Film Review

The Dark Side is a 2015 documentary about the health professionals who assist Olympics and professional athletes acquire performance enhancing drugs, as well as helping them avoid detection on drug testing. Liam Collins, a British track star, goes undercover for Al Jazeera and easily obtains growth hormone, insulin, EPO (erythropoetin)*, HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), clomiphene and Delta-2 and other anabolic steroids from unscrupulous doctors, naturopaths (who have prescribing authority in the US and Canada) and pharmacists. He also learns the name of prominent baseball and NFL players who are illegally using these banned substances.

Prior to the release of this documentary, an estimated 40% of professional baseball players were using banned substances. In the past baseball authorities have been somewhat lackadaisical about drug testing. Public interest in baseball was flagging, and the big increase in home runs turned this around.

*EPO stimulates red blood cells, enabling the blood to carry more oxygen.

**HCG, a pregnancy hormone that stimulates placental development, increases testosterone in men.

***Chlomiphene is an anti-estrogen that stimulates ovulation in infertile women. In men, it accelerates testosterone production.

Deportees in Mexico: Unwanted by Either Side

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US and The Wall: Deportees in Mexico Unwanted by Either Side

RT (2017)

This documentary explores the plight of newly deported immigrants  – many of whom have lived in the US more than 20 years and speak no Spanish. Most end up in Tijuana which, run by drug cartels, is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Because they’re not local, it’s fairly common for Mexican police to detain deportees and steal their money.

The film profiles three main groups, volunteers who leave gallon jugs of water in the desert to prevent migrants from dying of thirst; armed vigilantes, drawn from former military and police personnel, who patrol the Arizona desert hunting down illegal immigrants; and US veterans who have started a shelter in Tijuana for veterans deported after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most were enticed to enlist with a promise of citizenship – only to be deported for minor crimes such as DUIs, drug possession, bad checks or firearms offenses. One veteran talks of pleading guilty based on a broken promise he wouldn’t be deported.

During the filming, the shelter is visited by seven Congress people concerned about the plight of deported veterans.

New Zealand: Polluted Paradise

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New Zealand: Polluted Paradise

Directed by Naashon Zalk (2017)

This documentary is about the extreme degradation of New Zealand rivers and streams, regarded by many environmentalists as the most contaminated in the world.* The international OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development blames this country water contamination on dairy intensification subsidized by the government’s free irrigation scheme. In a country of 4.5 million people, dairy cows produce as much effluent as 90 million people. All this directly contradicts the “100% Pure” image promoted by New Zealand’s tourism industry.

The problem is aggravated by a fair amount of government corruption, which the film documents. For example, in 2010 the New Zealand government sacked the democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council when they opposed an intensive government irrigation project in a region totally unsuitable to dairying due to poor soil and low rainfall. The Council was replaced by government-appointed commissioners who implemented the irrigation project.

*Every year over 45,000 New Zealanders have their tap water contaminated with animal feces. In 2016 5,000 residents of Hawke’s Bay became seriously ill with feces-related pathogens.

Weapons of Mass Migration

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Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? – Merkel’s Migrant Bomb

by J Michael Springmann

Daena Publications (2017)

Book Review

In Goodbye Europe? Hello, Chaos? Springmann analyzes evidence suggesting that US intelligence may be organizing the mass migration of millions of refugees as a form of asymmetric warfare.* As a former State Department diplomat, Springmann was exposed to a different form of asymmetric warfare when he was ordered to issue US visas to Saudi jihadists, allowing them to undergo training in the US. He writes about this in his 2015 book Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World.

Springmann first learned about mass migration as a form of asymmetric warfare from Kelly Greenhill’s 2010 book Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy. Describing Greenhill as an academic with “close national security ties,” he quotes her extensively in describing prior uses of mass migration to destabilize world powers. Among others, he lists the 1992 Cuban Rafter and the 2004 Haitian Boat People crisis (both aimed at destabilizing the US); the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict (aimed at destabilizing Western Europe); and a (unsuccessful) 2002-2005 attempt by the CIA to destroy the North Korean regime by setting up a refugee camp on the North Korea/China border.

Both Greenhill and Spring emphasize that countries can be destabilized by either a massive inflow or outflow of refugees. The CIA’s goal in 2002 was to depopulate North Korea by encouraging a flood of refugees to escape into China.

Springmann also quotes anonymous intelligence sources who claim the mass migration into Europe is being coordinated by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), MI6 (Britain’s secret intelligence service) and Turkish secret services, with financing from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. He also alleges routine collaboration between CIA case officers and human rights and pro-migrant groups to pay off people smugglers.

I have often wondered how hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers from a broken Syrian economy could come up with the $5,000-10,000 smugglers charge to ferry migrants across the Mediterranean.

Who Pays for Their Smart Phones?

There’s the equally perplexing question of where they the money to buy Smart Phones (costing three to six times Syria’s average monthly wage) to access the apps that guide them along the best routes into Germany and Austria, their primary destinations of choice.

Greece, Italy and Eastern European countries, which are migrants’ main entry point, have all developed extensive wifi networks, with the help of George Soros-funded Central European University and Cisco Systems. The university also funds dozens of convenient charging stations along the recommended migrant routes.

Syrian Passports on Demand

Springmann also raises embarrassing questions about the role of France, Qatar and Germany’s Syrian embassy in printing Syrian passports on demand – without requiring any form of identification. And a bizarre Twitter storm launched in 2015 by netbots located in the US, UK and Australia. The latter lavishly promoted Germany and Austria as the most migrant friendly countries.

Citing the Wolfowitz Doctrine, Springmann suggests the main purpose of this mass migration/destabilization is to weaken the EU as a US economic competitor and to discourage German-Russian economic or political collaboration.

*Asymmetric warfare is defined as war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

**Paul Wolfowitz was George W Bush’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. The so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine called for “curbing” the EU to facilitate US world dominance.

The End of Globalization

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From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalisation

by Finbarr Livesey

Profile Books Ltd (2016)

Book Review

In From Global to Local: The Making of Things and the End of Globalisation, Finbarr Livesey challenges the common neoliberal claim that globalization is the be-all and end-all of global prosperity.

Livesey’s premise, which he supports with an impressive array of data, is that globalization peaked shortly after 2008 and the world economy is in a period of deglobalization. World trade is slowly declining as a percentage of GDP, and many companies who moved factories to the third world are improving their bottom line by reshoring them to the US and Europe.

Livesey contends that, to a large extent, last year’s vote for Britain to leave the EU and for a US president who promised to withdraw from the TPP and bring back American jobs, merely reflect an economic trend that began nearly a decade ago.

The present deglobalization was triggered by the 2008 financial crash that sucked trillions of dollars out of the global economy. However, Livesey identifies a number of other factors that influence this trend – chief among them the volatility of oil prices and shipping costs (containers must be booked months in advance) and the growing cost of labor in China and neighboring countries. At the same time, technological advances, including 3D printing and “additive manufacturing,” have led to an upsurge in “on demand” industries and consumer frustration with being limited to millions of identical mass produced items.

At present many companies find it more profitable to shorten their supply chain by producing most or all component parts locally or regionally. Between 2010 and 2015, over 1300 companies brought production back to the US. Even Apple and Google have started to reshore significant manufacturing operations.

At present three-fourths of everything bought in the US is made in the US.

Originally published in Dissident Voice

Anatomy of Modern Corruption: The Clinton Foundation and the Superdelegates

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What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Empire Files (2016)

Film Review

This early 2016 documentary is a virtual encyclopedia of Clinton family corruption. Based entirely on publicly verifiable information, it reveals how Hillary, especially, has based her political career on supporting legislation that specifically benefits her corporate and foreign donors. It also explores the identity of some of the 700 Democratic “superdelegates” who helped deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination – despite overwhelming support he received from voters.

The Clinton Foundation was founded in 1997 with the alleged purpose of providing humanitarian relief after international disasters. Its real purpose, however, was to engage in “crisis capitalism,” a term coined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Following a disasters, such as the 2001 earthquake in India, the Clinton Foundation would waltz in and create a variety of for-profit projects enabling further exploitation of third world resources and labor by Clinton Foundation donors.

Major donors to the Clinton foundation included Exxon, Walmart, Pfizer, Dow, Monsanto, General Electric (GE), Fox News, the Soros Foundation, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As senator, Clinton rewarded the latter two donors by supporting deregulation that would lead to their bankruptcy in 2008 and a massive taxpayer bailout.

As Secretary of State, Clinton would grant similar favors to Boeing and GE by facilitating overseas sales of their military hardware and to Exxon by heavily promoting the spread of fracking throughout the world.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Republic and Qatar were also big donors to the Clinton Foundation. In all 181 Clinton Foundation donors lobbied Clinton as Secretary of State and most were successful in getting the policies they advocated enacted.

Many of the 700 superdelegates appointed by the Democratic National Committee (to help ensure their hand picked candidates won the Democratic primary) were also corporate lobbyists hoping to benefit financially from a Clinton presidency: among others, the corporate lobbies represented included the Excel pipeline, the private prison industry, Big Pharma and the four main Wall Street banks (City Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase).

Exposing Scientology as a Cult

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Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Directed by Alex Gibney (2015)

Film Review

Last night Maori TV aired Alex Gibney’s startling expose Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. People can view it free at the Maori TV website for the next two weeks:  Going Clear

This documentary leaves absolutely no doubt that the Church of Scientology is a cult, founded (in 1954) and tyrannically run by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard and following his death (in 1986) by David Miscavage.

Gibney begins by tracing Hubbard’s early life as a science fiction writer and naval officer. A clear weakness of the film is its failure to mention Hubbard’s background in naval intelligence. Ex-intelligence officer Fletcher Prouty has always maintained Hubbard’s military records were falsified to conceal his intelligence activities

The documentary does, however, detail his bizarre relationship with Jet Propulsion Lab scientist Jack Parsons. Together they engaged in bizarre black magic rituals Parsons had learned from Alistair Crowley (best known as the founder of modern occultism), who worked for British intelligence.

Most of Going Clear centers around the testimonials of long time high level Scientology officers who became disenchanted and left the organization – some after 20 years or more. They all describe a highly evolved system of brainwashing, mind control and cultic manipulation, coupled with systematic emotional, physical and sexual abuse, financial extortion, psychological harassment, blackmail, stalking, covert break-ins, kidnapping and involuntary imprisonment in “rehabilitation centers.” These more extreme measures kicked in whenever long time high level officers express doubts or attempt to leave.

Describing Scientology as the largest intelligence operation in the world, the film depicts how they used these capabilities to muscle the IRS into granting them non-profit status (as a “church”) in 1993. The organization keeps massive personal files on all their members, who are required to undergo frequent “auditing” sessions. During auditing, they’re pressured to reveal their deepest personal secrets and innermost feelings an “auditor” who keeps detailed records of these sessions on behalf of the leadership.

For new members, on the surface auditing appears to resemble Freudian-style catharsis directed at resolving traumatic memories that hold people back in their lives. However as advanced Scientologists work themselves up the ranks (at great personal expense), they eventually engage in OT (Operation Thetan) level audits. At OTIII, which is only reached after many years of dedication and financial investment (OT sessions typically cost $1,000 or more each), initiates are finally brought into Scientology’s carefully guarded creation myth. The latter involves the possession of the human species by alien demons known as “thetans.” From this point forward, members are expected to use their auditing sessions to rid themselves of these thetans.

Typically it’s at this point members begin to have doubts about Scientology and are subjected to escalating coercive tactics to prevent them from leaving.

Gibney also explores John Travolta’s and Tom Cruise’s bizarre and troubled relationship with Scientology – as well as the vicious attach of the organization’s intelligence arm against Cruise’s ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

 

Ukrainian Soldiers Caught Planting Car Bombs in Donbass – Guess Who Trained Them?

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The “mystery” behind the long list of assassinated rebel leaders in Donbass might now be solved.

Two Ukrainian soldiers have been captured with weapons and bomb-making materials by Lugansk authorities.

The two soldiers, both allegedly part of Ukraine’s Special Forces, confessed to assassinating the rebel commander Oleg Anashchenko last month.

Partial list of prominent rebel leaders who have been assassinated:

  • May 23, 2015: Luhansk rebel leader Aleksey Mozgovoy is assassinated in East Ukraine (his car was ambushed).
  • October 16, 2016: Donetsk rebel leader Arsen Pavlov, aka “Motorola”, is assassinated by a bomb.
  • February 8, 2017: Donetsk rebel leader Mikhail Tolstykh, aka “Givi”, is assassinated by some sort of explosive projectile or bomb.

 

 

Putin: A Russian Primetime TV Documentary

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Exclusive: Fantastic Russian Prime Time 2 HR Putin documentary

Masterskaya (2016)

English subtitles

Film Review

This film, despite being an obvious pro-Putin propaganda piece, provides interesting historical background on his role in thwarting western efforts to turn Russia into a third world sweatshop.

The beginning of the documentary, describing the plans laid by Putin’s cabinet to remove the oligarchs from power (see How Putin Outwitted the Russian Oligarchs ), confirm what I have always suspected: that his rise to global prominence relies heavily on his ability to choose skilled advisors.

This documentary also clearly conveys that he’s as much a populist as Donald Trump – though a far more skilled one. An amazingly effective speaker, his ability to influence and manage large groups is unparalleled among world leaders.

Although he tends to be extremely guarded about disclosing personal feelings, the film contains a few revealing clips from TV interviews. In one, he admits to his mistaken belief as a KGB agent that political conflict with the West would dissolve once Russians abandoned their Communist ideology. He now realizes that Russia will always have tension with the West based on competing geopolitical interests (ie competing demands for resources, markets, labor etc).

I was also intrigued to hear him discuss his enormous debt to teacher and mentor Anatoly Sobchak. Sobchak was a legal scholar and politician who co-wrote the constitution of the Russian Federation and was the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg. He died under suspicious circumstances in 2000.

The film’s main weakness is its total dismissal of Russia’s opposition movement as being too chaotic and disorganized for Putin to take seriously. While there is good reason to suspect CIA involvement in various anti-Putin street protests, it seems to be there would also be legitimate protest against the enormous obstacles to registering new political parties in Russia, as well as major censorship by the mainly state-controlled media.

I was also irritated by the repeated emphasis on Putin being a self-sacrificing leader with no interest whatsoever in personal wealth or power. According to various former insiders, Putin has immense personal wealth and may be one of the richest men in the world. See Putin Corruption: Five Things We Learned About the President’s Secret Wealth