Declassified 1952 Footage of the U.S. Navy’s Plans for “Offensive Biological and Chemical Warfare” is Released

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Earlier this year, I published a post titled, Conspiracy Fact – How the Government Conducted 239 Secret Bioweapon Experiments on the American People. Here are a few excerpts:

It all began in late September of 1950, when over a few days, a Navy vessel used giant hoses to spray a fog of two kinds of bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii — both believed at the time to be harmless — out into the fog, where they disappeared and spread over the city.

The unsuspecting residents of San Francisco certainly could not consent to the military’s germ warfare test, and there’s good evidence that it could have caused the death of at least one resident of the city, Edward Nevin, and hospitalized 10 others.

Over the next 20 years, the military would conduct 239 “germ warfare” tests over populated areas, according to news reports from the 1970s.

These tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport just outside Washington, D.C.

So how seriously was the U.S. military planning for offensive biological and chemical warfare? Very seriously, as this recently declassified 1952 video demonstrates (h/t to Motherboard for highlighting this):

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Merkel “Surprised” as Hundreds of Thousands March in Berlin Against TTIP “Corporate Dictatorship”

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In what is being described as the largest German protest in recent years, hundreds of thousands of enraged citizens descended upon Berlin over the weekend to voice their collective displeasure at the government’s attempt to consolidate corporate dictatorship by passing a democracy killing agreement being marketed as a “free trade” deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The TTIP is basically the TPP but between the U.S. and Europe as opposed to the U.S. and Asia and parts of Latin America. Like the TPP, it further consolidates corporate power, destroys consumer protections and has been negotiated entirely in secret. For prior articles on the TPP, see:

How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship

U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

It seems the Germans aren’t prepared to take this assault lying down. We learn from Reuters that:

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How the DEA Uses “Parallel Construction” to Hide Unconstitutional Investigations

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Earlier this year, I highlighted the fact that unconstitutional surveillance was in many ways birthed by the pointless, misguided and utterly failed, “War on Drugs.” Here’s an excerpt from that post, titled, How NSA Surveillance Was Birthed from the Drug War – The DEA Tracked Billions of Phone Calls Pre 9/11:

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.

The similarities between the NSA program and the DEA operation established a decade earlier are striking – too much so to have been a coincidence, people familiar with the programs said. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, “It’s very hard to see (the DEA operation) as anything other than the precursor” to the NSA’s terrorist surveillance.

The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. “This was aimed squarely at Americans,” said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That’s very significant from a constitutional perspective.”

In light of this, it should surprise no one that the DEA continues to use unconstitutional, “classified” methods when targeting suspects. Since the collection of this evidence would be questioned in a courtroom, the DEA suggests using a procedure known as “parallel construction” to avoid any controversy in the public record. This is how it works.

From Muckrock:

Drug Enforcement Administration training documents released to MuckRock user C.J. Ciaramella show how the agency constructs two chains of evidence to hide surveillance programs from defense teams, prosecutors, and a public wary of domestic intelligence practices.

In training materials, the department even encourages a willful ignorance by field agents to minimize the risk of making intelligence practices public.

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So Who Are the Syrian Moderates Anyway? (Hint: Al Qaeda)

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You don’t need me to tell you how disastrous the Obama Administration’s Syria “strategy” has been. After all, he pretty much admitted as much by announcing a pullback earlier today.

While the retreat in itself is garnering all the headlines, with people superficially focused on how “Putin outmaneuvered Obama,” the truth is far more disturbing. Putin didn’t so much outmaneuver Obama, as much as he called bullshit on the entire operation. Putin basically said that Russia would begin bombing terrorists in Syria, but the problem is that the U.S. is supporting terrorists in Syria. This is undoubtably true, which is the real reason Obama is pulling back. He needs to get out now before Putin proves to the whole world that the CIA is fighting with al-Qaeda in Syria.

For a dose of hard-hitting truth, I once again turn to one of the best sources out there, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed.

Here is some of what he published at Middle East Eye:

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Ranking the Peasants – China Introduces Orwellian “Citizen Scores”

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The following is extraordinarily creepy and disturbing. It’s also extremely clever, from a jackbooted, fascist thug perspective. When massive censorship itself isn’t enough…

TechDirt reports:

China’s plan to control the hearts, minds and internet connections of its citizens continues unimpeded. That’s the great thing about authoritarian regimes: rollout of mandatory programs is usually only a problem of logistics, not opposition.

The Chinese government has mandated a rating system for all of its connected citizens. It looks like a credit rating but goes much deeper than just tying a measurement of financial risk to a number. It’s a way of defining who someone in terms of the government’s desires and aims. And its desires aren’t all that honorable.

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Saudi Arabia Bombs Second Yemeni Wedding in a Week – At Least 23 Dead

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Saudi Arabia, the recently crowned head of a UN human rights panel and close U.S. government ally, has now bombed two wedding parties in Yemen in just over a week. Yes, you read that right.

The New York Times reports:

SANA, Yemen — Airstrikes by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia hit a house south of the capital on Wednesday, killing at least 23 people who were attending a wedding party, said witnesses and a local medical worker.

The attack was the second airstrike on a wedding in Yemen in a little over a week, and it added to growing criticism over the coalition’s air campaign, which has killed more than 1,100 civilians over the past six months, according to the United Nations.

On Sept. 28, coalition warplanes bombed wedding tents on the Yemen’s Red Sea coast, killing at least 70 people.

Saudi Arabia launched a military offensive in March against rebels known as the Houthis after they drove the Saudi-backed government from power. As war has spread throughout the country, more than 2,355 civilians have been killed — the majority of them in coalition airstrikes, human rights workers say.

Interestingly, this indiscriminate murdering of civilians is finally starting to get some attention in Washington D.C. We learn from Al-Monitor that:

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When it Really Mattered, Ben Bernanke Coddled, Protected & Bailed Out Financial Criminals

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Most of you will have seen Ben Bernanke’s recent crocodile tears regarding how he wished more individuals were held responsible, for you know, destroying the American middle class and handing over the nation to a handful of criminal oligarchs.

As David Dayen notes, he is completely full of shit. As usual.

From the Intercept:

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke joined practically everyone in America by saying in his new memoir, The Courage to Act, that more Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for criminal misconduct that led to the financial crisis.

“It would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm,” he wrote.

Unlike practically everyone else in America, however, Bernanke was in a pretty good position to actually facilitate criminal misconduct proceedings, if he wanted to see them so badly — as  head of the nation’s most powerful bank supervisory agency from 2006 to 2014.

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How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship

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On Monday, we learned that global “leaders” had come to an agreement on the infamous Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP. While discouraging, this doesn’t mean the game is over — far from it.

Although politicians have come to a secret agreement, this democracy killing, corporate monstrosity still has to pass the U.S. Congress. So it’s now up to all of us to create an insurmountable degree of opposition and make sure this thing is dead on arrival.

The more I learn about the TPP, the more horrified I become. In case you need to get up to speed, check out the following:

U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

If that wasn’t enough to concern you, here’s the latest revelation.

From Common Dreams:

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Welcome to the Recovery – Homelessness Amongst Students Doubles Since Before the Recession

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How’s that recovery going for you? That’s what I thought.

Here’s the latest data point from the ongoing oligarch crime spree shamelessly marketed to the masses as an “economic recovery.”

From Five-Thirty-Eight:

The number of homeless students in the country’s classrooms has more than doubled since before the recession, according to recently released federal data. That’s an alarming trend, but a new report offers some hope: At least part of the increase, the authors say, is not because more students have become homeless, but because states have gotten better at identifying homeless students.

Here’s a visual representation of America’s Banana Republic neo-feualism for those of you so inclined:

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Activists Fly Drone Over NSA Facility in Germany, Drop Fliers Encouraging Employees to Quit

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You probably haven’t heard of Intelexit, but you probably should. It’s an organization which describes itself as follows on its website:

Intelexit is an initiative that helps people leave the secret service and build a new life. It is civil society’s response to the lack of oversight and undemocratic practices of intelligence agencies.

In recent weeks, the organization’s members have embarked on creative protests that encourage  current intelligence employees to follow their conscience and quit. Their latest stunt, over an NSA facility in Germany, involved a drone and fliers.

Here’s some more from the Intercept:

A group of activists flew a drone over a key National Security Agency complex in Germany on Friday, dropping leaflets encouraging the intelligence workers inside to quit in protest over invasive surveillance.

The site of the drone fly-by, the Dagger Complex, is a U.S. military installation south of Frankfurt. It houses the European Cryptologic Center — a major source of signals and communications intelligence in Europe for the NSA. According to German media, its 1,100 employees monitor massive amounts of communications with tools such as XKEYSCORE, one of the programs revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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