Category: America

Air Force General blows whistle on Obama, but media deaf

General Shelton told lawmakers that he was pressured to be less than honest by the White House when he gives testimony before Congress. Credits: DoD File Photo

Jim Kouri, Law Enforcement Examiner

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“If an Air Force general blows the whistle on the Obama White House, does anyone in the media hear the corruption?”

A United States Air Force general is blowing the whistle on another alleged White House scandal, but few in the news media seem to be listening.

According to General William Shelton, the commanding officer of U.S. Air Force’s space command, he was told to alter his testimony before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding an Obama White House attempt to award a defense contract to the Lightsquared firm.

Lightsquared is a high-tech company doing business in Virginia that’s owned by billionaire Philip Falcone, an Obama friend and campaign contributor.

According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Phil Falcone had visited the White House and made large cash contributions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted his LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.

Republican lawmakers say that after Falcon’s visit, the Obama White House allegedly tried to push through a Lightsquared’s proposed wireless network regardless of the objections emanating from military commanders who believed the project could disrupt key U.S. satellite systems.

At a hearing on Thursday, lawmakers on strategic forces subcommittee, especially the Republican chairman, Michael Turner, requested that the House Oversight Committee investigate if Falcone’s company garnered any type of special treatment from the White House or from Obama appointees.

The hearing came after a report by a blogger on a news and commentary web site alleged that the Obama White House pressed General Shelton to downplay his concerns about the proposed Lightsquared system.

According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Phil Falcone had visited the White House and made large cash contributions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted his LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.

“Under extremely unusual circumstances, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently granted a company called LightSquared the right to use wireless spectrum to build out a national 4G wireless network. LightSquared will get the spectrum for a song, while its competitors have to spend billions,” according to NLPC’s Ken Boehm.

President Obama’s underlings deny any wrongdoing, and officials at Lightsquared denied the charges that it is receiving preferential treatment from President Obama or his staff.

Republican staff members on the subcommittee say that the decorated General Shelton told the lawmakers that Obama administration officials urged the general to describe Lightsquared’s system favorably during his congressional testimony.

During the hearing, General Shelton told committee members that the wireless broadband network manufactured by Lightsquared would have a negative impact on the current Global Positioning System (GPS) relied on by both the U.S. military and private sector users of the GPS.

General Shelton told the committee members: Tests with Defense Department experts, civilian agencies and others “indicate the LightSquared terrestrial network operating in the originally proposed manner poses significant challenges for almost all GPS users.”

The general insisted through his spokesperson on Friday that he had not “watered down his testimony due to alleged White House pressure.”

According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama’s appointees at the Defense Department.

Another occurrence being probed is that the allegation that Lightsquared at first offered to sell satellite phones on its network, however the Federal Communications Commission allegedly issued a special waiver to the firm thus allowing sell terrestrial-based wireless service to other companies.

Department of Defense officials. such as General Shelton, in the past have raised concerns about interference with GPS users, and the FCC would then promise to disallow a firm to begin operating their network until after intense testing is carried out to ensure there is no disruption to satellite navigation.

The head of the FCC declined to appear before the committee on Thursday, which the chairman, Turner, called an “affront” to the panel.

Meanwhile, Falcone and Lightsquared executives are taking the offensive by giving Obama-friendly journalists at Politico exclusive interviews.

LightSquared CEO. Sanjiv Ahuja, and its billionaire backer, Phil Falcone, denied all allegations that the wireless company used its political pull with the Obama administration to secure approval of its business plans with the Defense Department.

“It’s just very disappointing that people are not seeing the facts here, and [that] this has become a real political issue,” Falcone, a senior executive at the hedge fund firm Harbinger Capital, said during his Politico interview. “It’s not a function of being a Democrat or a Republican, it’s about trying to be an innovator. … It’s very disappointing and frustrating that we are getting stonewalled like this. … I kinda scratch my head every single day and say I can’t believe this is happening.”

Falcone and Ahuja denied receiving special treatment from the White House or the FCC in their ongoing quest to become the nation’s first wholesale wireless broadband provider, according to Politico.

But some observers see things differently. Mike Baker, a political strategist and a former military officer, believes that this investigation needs to be taken to wherever or whomever it leads. He’s like to see a special prosecutor appointed.

“This is a very important national security issue, not some politically-motivated witch hunt like the Valerie Plame-CIA case. But we all know that with the news media protecting this president, the chances of anything being done are slim or none,” he quipped.

“First of all, we know what motivates politicians and big business. In the middle you have a career officer who is a four-star general. Whom would you believe? What’s in it for General Shelton to make up stories?” Baker asks.

“Let’s hope General Shelton sticks to his guns and that more Pentagon and Justice Department officials decide enough is enough from this administration,” Baker added.

www.examiner.com, September 17, 2011

September 19, 2011
“OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST”, TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT

Speaker: We’re going to make our own Tahrir square here

Speaker: We're going to make our own Tahrir square here

The corrupt fear us. The honest support us. The heroic join us.

AT LEAST 70,000 AND COUNTING… BIG MEDIA BLACKOUT “Occupy Wall Street”

10 questions about “Occupy Wall Street” that should be answered urgently:

1. Why are peaceful protesters being treated as if they are criminals?

2. Why are thousands of police, and SWAT teams and police dogs, being mobilized to protect Wall Street bankers?

3. Why are almost all the mainstream media outlets in America ignoring a major civil protest in the heart of New York?

4. Why do the police not pursue criminal bankers and business leaders with the same venom and force that they use when pursuing protesters who have so far done nothing wrong?

5. Why is nothing being done to address the genuine economic problems in America? Why, instead, is the old system – the one that failed disastrously in 2008 – being rebuilt brick by brick, fault by fault?

6. How much longer will the doctrine of ‘plausible denial’ be allowed to act as an excuse for widespread corruption and criminality?

7. Why (if true) was the Occupy Wall Street protest treated as a police code 1-34, which is used for riots? Are all protests now riots?

8. Why has not one banker or corporate leader emerged to talk to the protesters or debate with them?

9. Is it a coincidence that many people in the heart of the protest have had trouble getting mobile / cellphone / internet signals?

10. Does the government genuinely believe the pent-up anger and frustration will simply go away?

David Wendt ⋅ September 17, 2011

#OccupyWallStreet #takewallstreet

Aljazeera Coverage:

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September 18, 2011
US Wary of Turkey’s Financial Dealings With Iran

US Wary of Turkey’s Financial Dealings With Iran

Dorian Jones | Istanbul

Turkey and its U.S. and European allies could be on a collision course over Iran. Despite international efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program, Turkey has deepened trade and financial relations with Tehran. A Turkish state bank recently helped transfer a multi-billion-dollar payment to Iran. The deal comes in the face of Washington’s calls on Ankara to stop cooperation.

The Turkish state-owned Halkbank recently has helped India transfer part of a $5 billion payment to Iran for oil deliveries. The intervention of the Turkish bank is a major boost to Tehran, according to Turkey-Iran expert Mehrdad Emadi.

“This money was very badly needed and it actually had caused shortage of hard currencies in Tehran,” said Emadi. “So in that sense, it actually gives a new lease of life to regime.”

The Indian payment had been delayed by increasingly tightening Western sanctions on Iran. The West suspects Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is for peaceful energy development.

Jamshid Assadi of France’s Burgundy Business School says Washington is increasingly successful in stopping Western financial dealings with Tehran.

“The sanctions is much harder for Iran, in the financial flows because the financial networks are much globalized. And when it’s globalized, American banks are very powerful on it. For financial transactions, it’s very difficult,” said Assadi.

In a recent a visit to Turkey, senior U.S. treasury official Roger Cohen spelled out Washington’s concerns. “As trade increases, as financial ties expand, it runs counter to the international community’s desire to constrain Iran and to ensure the choice that has been put to the Iranian leadership between continued defiance and integration with the international community, is as sharp as possible,” he said.

Cohen cited Iran’s Mellat bank, which operates in Turkey, as helping to foster Tehran’s nuclear program. Despite Western calls for its activities to be restricted, the Turkish branch recently announced increased profits and growth.

Washington has reportedly warned Turkish banks operating in the U.S. that they could face prosecution if they violate Iran sanctions. According to a diplomatic source, at least one Turkish bank is under investigation by U.S. authorities.

But Ankara has mostly refused to abide by sanctions on Iran. Bilateral trade has continued to grow.

Turkish politician Volkan Bozkir, who heads the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, dismisses U.S. threats.

“Countries should be careful in warning Turkey [that] it’s the not the country of 10 years ago. Is there any rule in the world that the U.S. can impose any sanctions without any U.N. support or legal institutions? It’s only the U.N. which can impose sanctions. We will abide with the U.N. sanctions.”

Still, Ankara is wary of harming relations with Washington, says former Turkish diplomat Murat Bilhan, especially when it come to military alliances.

“Turkey does not feel any threat from Iran, but I would definitely say Turkey would not hurt Turkish-American relations just for the sake of Iran. Because Turkey does observe the interest of the United States, as you have seen that in the missile shield,” said Bilhan.

Bilhan is referring to Ankara’s decision to allow the placement of U.S. radar on its territory as part of NATO’s anti-ballistic missile system aimed at detering Iran. The decision was praised by Washington this week and condemned by Tehran.

via US Wary of Turkey’s Financial Dealings With Iran | Middle East | English.

September 17, 2011
Obama to discuss Israel with Turkey’s Erdogan

WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 16, 2011 12:40pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week and urge him to repair relations with Israel to mend a damaging split between two key U.S. allies in the region.

White House National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes told reporters that Obama also anticipated a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s three-day U.N. visit which starts late Monday.

“We have encouraged Israel and Turkey, two close friends of the United States, to work to bridge their differences, so we’ll have an opportunity to discuss those issues,” Rhodes told a news briefing.

Washington has watched with concern as Turkey’s relations with Israel began to unravel in late 2008, after Erdogan voiced outrage at an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Palestinian Islamist Hamas group.

Turkey reacted angrily this month to Netanyahu’s refusal to apologize for an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine Turkish citizens in May 2010.

After the release of a U.N. report on the flotilla, which aimed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, Erdogan’s government expelled Israel’s envoy, froze military cooperation and warned that the Turkish navy could escort future aid flotillas — raising the prospect of confrontation between NATO-member Turkey and the Jewish state.

Erdogan kept up a stream of harsh rhetoric on Israel, using a tour of Arab states this week to support a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations and dismissing Israel as a spoiled client of the West.

The two countries previously had worked closely together on military cooperation and intelligence sharing, as both had sought reliable partners in a volatile neighborhood.

The meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly is expected to give Obama and Erdogan the chance to compare notes on Israel as well as the broader political turmoil across the Arab world and especially in Syria, Turkey’s immediate neighbor.

“Turkey has been a close partner of ours on issues related to the Arab spring and I anticipate the two leaders will talk about events in Syria, where we share great concerns with the Turks about the actions of (Syrian) President (Bashar al-) Assad,” Rhodes said.

(Reporting by Alister Bull; Writing by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Vicki Allen)

via Obama to discuss Israel with Turkey’s Erdogan | Reuters.

September 17, 2011
Facebook vs US establishment: who controls whom?

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (R) during a town hall style meeting at Facebook headquarters. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP)

As Facebook continues to hire current and former White House employees to enhance its lobby in state structures, concerns over the privacy policies and security practices of the world’s largest social networking site are on the rise.

The man behind the US $750 million site, Mark Zuckerberg, appears to be hatching a fresh scheme to establish reliable links with both the Congress and the White House, dropping any pretence of party preferences.

A whole team of advisors from Republican and Democrat camps have joined the ranks of Zuckerberg’s army ready to push, pull and protect the company’s interests at any given level of the American bureaucratic hierarchy.

Facebook shares key positions with White House

At first, hirings of former top civil servants were few and far between, occurring only about once a year. This was the deal back in September 2008 when Ted Ulloyt, a George W. Bush loyalist, was appointed to vice president and general counsel, reports The Washington Post.

Two years later in June 2010, Marne Levine, a member of President Barack Obama’s staff, was hired to guide the social network’s policy issues from Washington.

The current year has been seen a remarkable number of prominent government figures entering the Facebook corporation.

In May 2011, Facebook called a former aide to President George W. Bush – the Republican Joel Kaplan – to head its Washington office.

In June this year, a former spokesman for President Bill Clinton’s administration, Joe Lockhart, was recruited to head Facebook’s communications team.

President Obama’s special assistant for legislative affairs (who was also Vice President Biden’s former deputy chief of staff) Louisa Terrel is now to define Facebook’s public policy, a job she once did for Yahoo.

Sheryl Sandberg, who used to work in the Treasury Department under Barack Obama’s Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers, is now employed as Faceboook’s chief operating officer.

A new senior policy adviser and director of privacy, Erin Egan, will come to Facebook in October. She is currently co-chair at Covington & Burling’s global privacy and data security, a company ranked as being in the top ten for its privacy practices.

Only last week, Zuckerberg introduced President Clinton’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, to Facebook’s board.

All these people are to ensure that Facebook remains the industry leader, obsessed with the data security and privacy safety of its hundreds of millions of clients.

At the same time, to an unbiased observer, the processes going on in the internet technology giant cannot but resemble putting a highly-successful company under full governmental control.

Considering the unprecedented prospects the project opens in the field of global data collection, it appears only natural that the American government should promote its top people to key positions of responsibility with regard to Facebook’s data security.

But RT guest Steve Rambam, founder and CEO of Pallorium Inc., an international online investigative service, has stated openly that companies like Facebook, Google or MySpace are “aggregating data on each of us bit by bit and before you know it, your entire life is on a disk.”

Europe enforces its own rules

In Europe, Facebook’s position appears somewhat shaky after it emerged that it had been used to organize some of the violence that erupted in London at the beginning of August.

Despite active lobbying – the company hired former MEP Erika Mann as spokesperson for all EU institutions – the American giant is to appear before a British Home Affairs Select Committee on “policing large-scale disorder.”

Facebook will not be alone: Twitter and BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion will stand alongside it to face the music over riots in the UK and the role these three technology companies played in the disorder, allegedly providing rioters with the means to organize and plan choreographed disorder and looting.

But as predicted in August, the rioters’ trust in BlackBerry’s encrypted messaging has already backfired. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion appears to be fully co-operating with British detectives investigating the disorder and there is little doubt that Facebook and Twitter will follow suit.

www.rt.com, 14 September, 2011

September 15, 2011
U.S. Ambassador to Syria in charge of recruiting Arab/Muslim death squads

Robert Ford, US Ambassador to Syria

by Wayne Madsen

WMR has been informed by reliable sources that the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, is the key State Department official who has been responsible for recruiting Arab “death squads” from Al Qaeda-affiliated units in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Chechnya to fight against Syrian military and police forces in embattled Syria. Ford served as the Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006 under Ambassador John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte was a key figure in the covert U.S. program to arm the Nicaraguan contras and his support for vicious paramilitary units in El Salvador and Honduras earned him the nickname of “Mr. Death Squad.”

Negroponte tasked Ford with implementing the “El Salvador option” in Iraq, the use of Iraqi Shi’a irregulars and Kurdish Pesh Merga paramilitary forces to target for assassination and kidnapping/torture Iraqi insurgency leaders in Iraq and across the border in Syria. The operation was named for Negroponte’s death squad operation in Central America in the 1980s.

Ford has become the point man in the recruitment of Arabs and Muslims from the Middle Eastand beyond to battle against the security forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The U.S.-backed terrorists have not only carried out attacks on Syrian security forces but have also massacred civilians in “false flag” operations later blamed on Syrian government forces. WMR has been informed that Ford’s operations in Syria are being carried out with the assistance of Israel’s Mossad.

The “El Salvador” option has also been used in Libya, where Al Qaeda irregulars, drawn from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, have been carrying out murders of Libyan civilians, especially black Libyans and African guest workers, on behalf of the Libyan rebel government. Some of the murders of civilians have been blamed on pro-Muammar Qaddafi forces but they have, in fact, been carried out by Al Qaeda units fighting with the rebels and which are being directed by CIA and MI-6 advisers. Ford has been providing advice to the Libyan rebels on how to carry out their death squad attacks.

From 2006 to 2008, Ford served as U.S. ambassador to Algeria, a nation that opposes the Libyan rebel government and a nation that has begun to see a re-surgence of “Al Qaeda” terrorist attacks against Algerian government targets. In fact, Algeria is viewed as the next domino to fall as the U.S. seeks to establish total military and political hegemony over North Africa.

WMR has learned from a source who was recently in Libya that the Libyan rebel transitional government has agreed to allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Libya, including on the Algerian border. The rebels have also agreed to permit an American to serve as the chief political officer for the planned Libyan transitional advisory body due to be organized by NATO and the United Nations. The body will be modeled on the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

www.opinion-maker.org, 12. Sep, 2011

September 15, 2011