Police State America
Volume Two
LARRY ROMANOFF
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Imaginary Rule of Law
Chapter 2 - Diplomatic Immunity, American-Style
Chapter 3 - Dealing With Dissidents
Chapter 4 - The Criminalisation of Protest in
America
Chapter 5 - Police Brutality
*
One more free e-book
from this author available at BOOKS
*
A sample of this book:
Chapter 3 - Dealing With Dissidents
Activists
gather at an Occupy Wall Street rally in New York City on October 11, 2011.
(Photo: Kurt Christensen)
America Deals
With Political Dissension
The Black
Panthers
Dr. Martin
Luther King
US Student
Protests are Met With Gunfire
Protesting
Racial Segregation in America
Bombing
Dissidents in Philadelphia
Jeremy Hammond
Steve Kangas
Gary Webb
Phillip Marshall
Pat Tillman
Karen Silkwood
Bradley Manning
Edward Snowden
Michael Hastings
America Deals With Political Dissension
We have already
seen the extensive and usually violent steps the US government took in the
first half of the 20th century to silence political dissension and labor unrest,
but there is much more, in each case consisting of widespread civil unrest
stemming from one form or another of government criminality and corruption,
often so serious as to challenge the legitimacy of the government itself. The
1960s and 1970s were another period of great social change and unrest in
America, with widespread civil defiance. The violence and illegality of the
Vietnam war were on every TV set; increasingly, the many lies of the US
government were becoming public knowledge. The general populace had lost faith
in government and the new generation were in rebellion and street protests
became widespread, especially among the universities. Many young Americans were
defying the establishment by burning their conscription notices or relocating
to Canada to avoid the military draft. As well, racial tensions originating in
the injustices of segregation were producing massive black rebellions in most
major US cities. Presidents Johnson and Nixon and Bernays' ruling elites
were becoming more fearful of a violent revolution. But contrary to its
carefully-polished international image as the homeland of freedom and political
democracy, the US government launched a prolonged campaign of domestic
terrorism intended to quell that dissent. In those decades, there was neither
freedom nor democracy in America, and precious little in the way of human
rights. And contrary to popular belief, the situation has not improved
measurably since.
The Black
Panthers
This was a
politically-inspired group that was active in the US in the 1970s, campaigning
for human rights in America and protesting against the rampant racial
discrimination against blacks. A Top-Secret Special Report provided to then
President Nixon claimed that the Black Panthers carried great respect among the
general population and were becoming a substantial political force in the
country. This was a force that the US government very badly wanted to
"neutralise", to destroy its social influence, and the FBI's method
of accomplishing this was to initiate years of domestic terrorist events that
resulted in the murders of about 50 Black Panther leaders. On one occasion,
two of the leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were shot to
death by Chicago policemen while sleeping in their beds. According to Special
FBI Agent Gregg York, "We expected about twenty Panthers to be
in the apartment when the police raided the place, but only two of those black
nigger fuckers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark". This was
a pure, police-state political assassination, and only one of many instigated
or performed by the FBI. Marlin Johnson, who was the FBI's Chicago
Special Agent in Charge of these events made clear that he viewed these
killings as a model for "successful" counterintelligence operations.
One Black Panther
leader, Elmer Pratt, was imprisoned for 27 years before a California
Court vacated his murder conviction. At the court, an FBI agent
testified that Pratt had been framed by both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police
Department, and that both knew he had been out of the area at the time the
murder occurred. In another case, a Black Panther leader who was already in
prison on false charges was shot dead on the accusation that he was helping
another prisoner to escape. But the testimony of the guard was that he had shot
the man from the top of a 20-foot tower, while the wound on the victim
indicated that the bullet had entered his back from below, travelled up his
spine, and exited through his head. No investigation was ever performed. All
of these, and many more, were simply gangland-style political executions, the
kind of thing "that would never happen" in democratic, freedom-loving
America. In fact, the secret government that controlled the US White
House, simply set out to exterminate, by either killing or imprisoning, an
entire political force that was deemed a threat to its power.
And it was more
than killing or imprisoning. Another method that has escaped American history
books is what was termed "psychosurgery", the performance of
frontal lobotomies on American political dissidents. Three Harvard University
professors put forward the thesis that individuals who engage in civil
disobedience possessed defective or damaged brain cells, receiving enormous
funding for almost 600 "research projects dealing with behavior
modification". These 600 'projects' were performed on American citizens
campaigning against racial discrimination, who were first arrested and
imprisoned on trumped-up charges then subjected to these medical procedures
against their will, and who all became virtual zombies from the
procedure. The doctors went so far as to recommend that "screening
centers" be established throughout the nation to identify and
"treat" all emerging political dissidents and activists, fully aware
that lobotomies would be an effective instrument of repression and social
control.
Dr. Martin Luther King
Dr. Martin Luther
King was a black preacher and human-rights activist who became a leader of the
human-rights movement in the US during this same period. The US government was
prepared to ignore Dr. King so long as he remained focused on the black
population, but the man became outstandingly popular among all of the
disadvantaged in America and was rapidly becoming a serious political threat
with his potential to attract a great many voters to his cause of equity among
people. FBI Director Hoover instructed his agents to develop a plan that
would "prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and
electrify" the emerging broad-spectrum political movement that encompassed
civil rights and religious groups, and Dr. King became a target.
The FBI was
concerned over King's widespread public support, noting that he was growing in stature daily,
and claiming that his civil rights agitation represented a clear "threat
to the established order" of the US. COINTELPRO specialist William
C. Sullivan wrote at the time, "We must mark King as the most
dangerous Negro in the future of this Nation ... it may be unrealistic to limit
[our actions against King] to legalistic proofs that would stand up in
court". All King was really looking for was equal treatment for blacks,
black voting rights and the removal of at least some of the US system of racist
segregation of blacks. In addition, King vehemently denounced the Vietnam War
and called the United States "the most violent nation in the world".
But to the US government and the elites, this was a serious threat to the
established order.
At first, the FBI
attempted many ways to discredit King, using their influence with the media to
denounce him.
They spread multiple rumors of sexual misbehavior and arranged for the IRS to
constantly harass him. Upon the announcement that King would receive the Nobel
Peace Prize for that year, the FBI became desperate and escalated their
campaign. One act was to create a complete set of fabricated tapes, supposedly
taken from wiretaps of his home and hotel rooms, that purported to document his
participation in many sexual orgies with prostitutes, claiming this
demonstrated "the depths of his sexual perversion and depravity."
In a scheme that truly defies belief, the FBI packaged and delivered the tapes
to King along with a letter informing him that the audio material would be
released to the media unless he committed suicide prior to presentation of the
Nobel Prize. When King declined this generous offer, the FBI presented the
doctored tape to the US media, but the newspapers and radio stations questioned
its authenticity, and wanted no part of it. Having failed in their attempts to
discredit, intimidate, and silence Dr. King, the US government and the FBI had
King murdered, shot by a sniper - a local Memphis police officer
- from a hotel balcony as he was giving a speech in Memphis. Even after his
death, the FBI continued for several years their attempts to blacken Dr. King's
reputation. They failed.
There were many
aspects of Dr. King's death that immediately pointed to a government conspiracy
and cover-up. One notable item was that a taxi driver saw the assassin crawling
over a wall after the shooting and, still carrying his rifle, climb into a
Memphis police car and drive away. The taxi driver assumed the assassin had
been apprehended and began spreading this good news. Shortly thereafter, he was
picked up by the local police and his dead body was found in an alley the next
morning. Interestingly, no record of the taxi driver's death has ever existed.
It is only his wife who can testify that he was indeed shot and killed, but
officially the man still lives.
Only the most
cursory investigation was done of Dr. King's death, and the matter was closed.
But much later, his family wanting closure on his death, initiated a private
investigation and filed suit against the US government and the FBI for his
murder. At the trial, most of the original witnesses were still available and
the evidence presented was damning. It took the jury only a few hours to
find the government and the FBI guilty of Dr. King's murder. The trial
jury concluded that the conspiracy to kill Dr. King included Hoover, the FBI,
Richard Helms, the CIA, the US military and the local Memphis police
department. The King family lawyer summed up the proceedings by stating
that Dr. King took on the most powerful forces in the nation, those that
dominated politics and money, and they had him killed because they could not
stop him. And still, there were no punishments for this crime; the US
government refusing to take any action against itself or the FBI, including
those agents directly responsible for the murder.
US Student
Protests are Met With Gunfire
Ohio National
Guardesmen fire on students at Kent State University at the height of a student
protest on May 4, 1970. Four students were killed; nine other people were
wounded. This photo was published in the May 13, 1970, Milwaukee Journal. Life
Magazine Photo, (C) Time Inc., via UPI
Another internal
FBI memorandum referred to American student protesters, claiming that "the
movement of rebellious youth, involving and influencing a substantial number of
college students, is having a serious impact on contemporary society with a
potential for serious domestic strife", the memo further claiming this
group intended to initiate a political revolution. The US government, and many
Americans, enjoy condemning the actions of other countries in dispersing
student protests or riots, but America has always been one of the most brutal
and violent in this regard. When the US had its long series of student protests
against racial segregation and especially the Vietnam war, in most cases
armed troops simply opened fire on innocent students, with no attempt at
dialogue or negotiation.
The Kent State
University Massacre was perhaps the best known, but there were many
others. In May of 1970, University students gathered on the Kent State campus
to protest the Vietnam war when soldiers opened fire, killing and injuring many
students. The soldiers said they fired because they were under attack, but
in fact the students were retreating, and most of them were shot in the back,
some from as far as 100 meters away. The soldiers were cleared of any
wrongdoing, and no charges were ever laid.
Documents later
unclassified suggest that then President Nixon, on advice from the 'secret
government' had personally ordered the killings to intimidate the students
into silence and forestall a potential popular revolution against the
government. But instead, the killings triggered the only national student
strike in US history. Over four million students protested from coast to
coast during the national student strike of May 1970, and hundreds of
universities were shut down.
Also, in May of
that year, a group of students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were
protesting the Vietnam war when they were confronted by 75 heavily-armed
city and state police who opened fire, killing many students and seriously
injuring many others. The police in this event appeared almost insane,
firing many thousands of shots, blowing out every window in nearby buildings
with shotguns, and causing extensive damage in addition to the deaths and
injuries. Again, the police claimed they were under attack by the students and
that there 'may have been' sniper fire. But a search for evidence of
snipers proved negative, and witnesses claimed there was no provocation for
the police to begin firing on the students. There were no charges or arrests of
the police involved. There were many more of these student killings over
several years, all following the same pattern, but Americans today discount
these events as irrelevant to their society, considering them as aberrations,
as some kind of simple mistake for which media attention provided absolution
and should therefore be forgotten.
Protesting
Racial Segregation in America
Civil
Rights March In Chicago
(Original Caption)
7/26/1965-Chicago, IL: Thousands of civil rights marchers led by Dr. Martin
Luther King walk toward Chicago's city hall in protest of defacto school
segregation and other racial issues. March started at Buckingham Fountain on
the lake front and was delayed more than an hour because Dr. King was ill.
Many similar events
in recent US history have been racially-motivated. At about the same time as
the above student killings, a crowd of young people in Orangeburg, South
Carolina, were protesting against racial segregation - the US custom of
forcibly separating blacks from whites in public places - when heavily-armed
local policemen fired into the crowd, killing 4 and seriously injuring 31
others. Most were shot in the back. After the shootings, many others
were severely beaten by police, including a pregnant woman who later had a
miscarriage due to the beating she received at the hands of the police. As
would become a standard defense, the police claimed they were under attack or
that there had been sniper fire, but all witness accounts discredited their
testimony. All officers were acquitted of all charges, while some of the
young black protestors were imprisoned for "rioting".
Another typical
example occurred in Augusta, Georgia, a classic American confrontation of young
black men attacked by police while protesting racial discrimination. During the
riot, six people were killed, all black men, each one shot in the back by police.
In addition to those deaths, 80 people were injured, 200 were arrested, and 50
businesses in the city’s center, many owned by Augusta’s Chinese residents,
were burned. Witnesses claimed to have watched while five of the dead
men were shot repeatedly in the back, and at close range by police who, it was
later proven, had covered their ID badges and nameplates with tape, and were
using private weapons, to avoid later identification for killings they had
clearly planned in advance.
One of the most
famous race-inspired events occurred in Los Angeles in 1992. A black man was
stopped by police for speeding, then pulled from his car, thrown onto the
ground and shot twice with a TASER gun, after which numerous LA police officers
gave him a merciless beating with their batons. Although the police denied the
event, it had been captured on video by a witness. The city was outraged at
the brutality of the local police, and when a white jury later acquitted all
officers, Los Angeles and other cities erupted in violent protest. All
that rage generated the worst single episode of urban unrest in American
history, and before it ended several days later it had left 53 people dead and
$1 billion in damage.
In another recent
example in 2008, A TV news helicopter captured video of more than a dozen
Philadelphia police officers surrounding a car and dragging out three black men
to give them what became a viciously excessive beating which involved the three
being kicked, stomped on, and struck up to 20 times each with night sticks.
This incident was one of many occurring in the US during the past decade. No
officers were found guilty of any crimes. Even more recently, it has
occurred repeatedly in various US cities that police have opened fire on an
unarmed black man and pumped more than 50 bullets into him and, in one case in
Miami, more than 100 bullets. In each case the courts ruled in favor of the
police, claiming this 'was not an excessive use of force'. In each case, no
charges were ever laid.
Bombing
Dissidents in Philadelphia
In the mid-1980s
there existed an organisation in Philadelphia called MOVE that was formed to
bring public attention to the acceleration of the unjust racially-oriented
arrests and imprisonment of blacks that had continued in that city for over 30
years. In May of 1985, the Philadelphia police mounted a massive operation to
silence this group by exterminating the members in their homes. It began with a
concerted attack with fire hoses, apparently attempting to drown the people in
their homes, followed with tons of tear gas shells fired into all nearby
buildings.
The damage on
either side of Osage Avenue in Philadelphia, after the confrontation between
MOVE and the police in 1985.Credit...Bob Sherman/United Press International,
via Getty Images
When these attacks failed to do the job, the
police department bombed the area with incendiary explosives, creating an
intense inferno that burned to the ground an entire city block, destroying 65
homes and killing many people. The fire department refused to extinguish the
flames, and people fleeing their burning homes were met with a barrage of
gunfire from the police. No charges were ever laid and no financial or other
assistance was offered to the newly-homeless (black) families. The only
person arrested was a female member of the group, on the apparent crime of not
burning to death with her family.
Jeremy Hammond
An American
activist named Jeremy Hammond was recently sentenced to 10 years in
prison for protesting, and for hacking into and releasing emails from Stratfor,
a private security intelligence firm that engages in "monitoring and
surveillance of protestors and dissidents" for governmental agencies and
corporations. At the time, Hammond's articles sparked mass protests in the US,
resulting in the courts immediately granting authorities a permanent injunction
against any kind of public protest, effectively stripping all persons of free
speech and assembly, and levying a fine of $25,000 per hour if the injunction
were violated. All political dissent was made illegal by one stroke of a
judge's pen. Hammond wrote, "I have tried everything from voting
petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want
the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power, we are ignored at best
and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that
does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights
of its own citizens or the international community". Journalist Chris
Hedges described Hammond’s actions as providing "chilling evidence
that anti-terrorism laws are being routinely used by the federal government to
criminalize nonviolent, democratic dissent and falsely link dissidents to
international terrorist organizations".
Steve Kangas
Steve
Kangas
"A timeline of CIA
atrocities"
Steve Kangas was a researcher and writer with prior
experience in the US intelligence community, employed mostly by the US military
in Europe. He resigned from the military and compiled in the 1990s a disturbing
list of CIA crimes around the world that he titled, "A timeline of CIA
atrocities". He was recently engaged in some deep research into what
were secret and undocumented CIA projects and activities, some of which
involved a man named Richard Mellon Scaife, a wealthy US businessman who had
been closely involved with the CIA for many years. In another apparent suicide
that was almost certainly another CIA murder, Kangas was found dead in the
small hours of the morning in a bathroom on the same floor as Scaife's office.
As is usual in these CIA-perpetrated murder-suicides, the story changed
rapidly, evidence disappeared, the official narrative didn't fit the facts, and
there was considerable evidence of a cover-up. First, a security guard found
Kangas lying on the floor of the bathroom, apparently wounded, with blood spattered
around, but he was still alive. The guard went to get some help, and when he
returned, he found Kangas seated on a toilet, fully-clothed, with no blood
apparent anywhere, and Kangas was dead. Then, the initial police report stated
that Kangas had been shot in the side of the head, but the government coroner
later stated he had shot himself through the roof of his mouth. His body was
quickly cremated, so no further examinations will ever be done as they were
with Frank Olson.
When the security
guard first found Kangas lying on the floor, there were no objects with him,
but the final death report conveniently catalogues an empty bottle of whiskey,
a gun and bullets, and three books, one of which was a copy of "Mein
Kampf" by Adolf Hitler. There was no explanation as to why Kangas would
have travelled from his home in Las Vegas to Pittsburgh, apparently with no
credit cards and only $14.63 in his pocket, just to kill himself. Kangas'
computer would likely have held files relating to his then-current research on
the CIA and on Scaife, but it seems that the computer was given to a
maintenance man who for some reason erased the entire hard drive, thereby
destroying whatever evidence might have existed. Kangas was a man who didn't
believe in guns and had never owned one, but the CIA produced a purchase
certificate showing that Kangas had bought a gun a short time prior to his
death. There was no explanation as to why a man who didn't believe in guns
would have been in possession of one, nor whether the apparent purchase records
of the gun were legitimate or had been forged. After the death began to attract
attention and suspicion, the authorities and involved parties attempted to
dismiss Kangas as a drunk, a drug addict and a penniless derelict who sold pornography
on the internet. All accusations were, of course, false. Given the
circumstances common to this and so many other deaths that have involved the
CIA, it appears Kangas was probing too successfully into secrets the CIA did
not care to have revealed.
Gary Webb
Dark Alliance Free E-Book
In an article by Don
Quijones in May of 2013 he stated, "On December 10, 2004, a
49-year-old man was found dead in his home in Sacramento, California. At first
glance the scene bore all the hallmarks of a run-of the-mill suicide case -
apart, that is, from one niggling little detail: the man had two gunshot wounds
in the head. That didn’t stop the coroner, however, from swiftly pronouncing
the cause of death as suicide. It was a verdict that would go universally
unchallenged by the US mainstream media, despite the fact that the man’s
enemies included some of the nation’s most powerful people." The man
involved, Gary Webb, had been one of the most talented and dedicated
investigative journalists in the US, who produced a damning and proven report
on the crack cocaine business in America, including the active involvement of
the CIA. In fact, he had revealed a memorandum of understanding
between the CIA and Justice Department that effectively freed the CIA from
legally reporting drug smuggling by its own personnel. His work was published
in a San Jose newspaper and titled "Dark Alliance", but Webb
soon encountered a massive character assassination campaign that left him
unemployed and unemployable; every effort was made by the US mainstream media
to destroy the man's reputation and credibility. "In short, one of the
most talented, dedicated and outspoken journalists of his generation had
effectively been silenced despite the fact that many of his claims about the
CIA smuggling cocaine and able to operate freely operate without threat of law
enforcement had already been substantiated." Then, he was found dead,
with two shots to the head, the government coroner claiming a distraught
unemployed man killed himself.
Phillip Marshall
The Big Bamboozle_ 9_11
and the War on Ter - Philip Marshall
Free E-Book
Phillip Marshall
was a former airplane pilot and author whose works included several volumes on
9-11, and whose decades of experience included not only the duties of an
airline captain, but as a "special activities" contract pilot
for various US government agencies including the DEA. He held captain
ratings on the Boeing 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767, and was eminently qualified
to write on the events of 9-11 and the challenges and capabilities of the
supposed terrorists to control those aircraft. Marshall was the leading
aviation expert on the 9-11 attack, and in 2012 published a definitive work
claiming it was Bush, Cheney and the Saudis who orchestrated that tragedy. Shortly
thereafter, he was found dead with himself, his two children and the family
dog all shot in the head. The local police department quickly released
their finding that this had been a murder-suicide, a report that by all
accounts emerged a bit too soon and appeared a bit too solid, apparently
without investigation.
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman was an
American football player who sacrificed a good life and abandoned a lucrative
professional career, sacrificing a multi-million-dollar salary to enlist in the
US Army after 9/11 because he felt a patriotic urge to defend his country. He
joined the US Army Rangers and served several combat tours there. As a result
of his fame and sacrifice and his masculine good looks, Tillman quickly became
a US poster child for the questionable and unpopular war in Afghanistan. Sadly,
before he had completed his last tour of duty, Tillman died in the war, in the
mountains of Afghanistan. The Army initially claimed that Tillman and his unit
were attacked in an apparent ambush on a road outside of a village near the
Pakistan border. According to the official story, an Afghan militia soldier was
killed, and two other Rangers were injured as well.
Tillman was awarded
a Purple Heart, a posthumous promotion, and the Silver Star
citation which gave a detailed account of his heroism, claiming he died "in
the line of devastating enemy fire". Ann Coulter, an extreme
Right-Wing columnist, called Tillman "an American original: virtuous,
pure and masculine like only an American male can be", and claimed
that Tillman "died bringing freedom and democracy to 28 million
Afghans." His funeral was on national television, his fate still being
sold as a hero’s death from enemy fire. Then-President Bush was boasting about
Tillman’s "inspiration on and off the field."
But his funeral had
hardly taken place when the unexpected happened: the news was released that
Tillman had not died in an enemy firefight but had been killed by
"friendly fire". In other words, in what was perhaps the
confusion of war, he had been accidentally shot by his own US army
colleagues. In a report in The Washington Post, it was claimed that
Tillman's superiors were fully aware of this fact before granting his military
awards, and before his funeral. Tillman's family was not informed of the true
facts until weeks after his memorial service, when they also discovered the
military had given orders to Tillman's comrades to lie to his family about the
circumstances of his death. Then more information began to emerge. Not only
were Army investigators aware that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire, but
the autopsy reported that he had been shot three times in the forehead, and
from only a few meters away. There was a further report that members of his
unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide these
facts.
In addition,
Defense Department documents indicate that there had never been any evidence of
even enemy presence much less enemy engagement, and that contrary to the
original story, no members of Tillman's group had been hit by enemy fire.
According to numerous reports, there were no Taliban anywhere near the area
where Tillman was killed. One revelation that the authorities tried to suppress
was that Tillman's squad encountered a group of US military snipers that
approached them. All the medical reports made the same observation - that
Tillman was killed by three closely-grouped shots to the center of his
forehead. The official story still claimed Tillman was supposedly killed by
"friendly fire" during an engagement with the enemy, but it was now
proven that there was no such enemy engagement, so how would it happen that, in
the absence of any conflict, somebody would put three closely-packed bullets
into the forehead of Pat Tillman from only a few meters distance? Army doctors
told the investigators that Tillman's wounds suggested murder and urged them to
launch a criminal investigation, but they were rebuffed. The doctor who
autopsied Tillman’s body tried to pursue an investigation into the murder but
was prevented from doing so by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.
There were further reports that Army medical examiners tried without success to
get authorities to investigate whether Tillman had been murdered. The
destruction of all evidence, including his personal journal, linked to her
son's death, led his mother to speculate that he was murdered. Mary Tillman has
long suggested that her son was deliberately murdered by his fellow soldiers. US
General Wesley Clark agreed that this was "very possible".
Of interest is the
content of some internal military communication where Army attorneys
congratulated each other in emails for impeding the criminal investigation to
the point where only administrative, or non-criminal, punishment was indicated.
Adding another layer of murk, the White House and President Bush claimed
"executive privilege" in refusing to release documents dealing with
Tillman’s death. We do need to ask who is being protected. Why would such a
thing happen? The answer is apparent. Despite his fame, Tillman did not want to
be used for propaganda purposes. He spoke to friends about his strong
opposition to President Bush and the Iraq war: "You know," he told a
close army buddy, "this war is so f--- illegal." The US poster boy
who had indeed been used in a propaganda campaign for the war, had now
experienced a change of heart and was violently opposed to the same war the
government had used him to promote. When Tillman discovered that the
invasion of Iraq was based on a mountain of lies and deceit and had nothing to
do with defending America, he became infuriated and was ready to return home to
become an anti-war hero. He was nearing the end of his tour of duty and had
made an appointment to meet with well-known government critic and the nation’s
leading anti-war crusader Noam Chomsky after his return. If that meeting
with Chomsky had occurred as scheduled, Tillman would likely have teamed up
with him to travel the country and jointly reveal and condemn the illegalities
and atrocities of that war. Tillman might even have become directly involved in
a political campaign, and in that event the US government's prized propaganda
creation would have, like Frankenstein's monster, turned against his creator.
That would have had a devastating effect on the US government's effort to shore
up support for what one writer called "our crazed foreign policy". And
that would undoubtedly have been the motive for the elimination of Pat Tillman.
All the evidence
points directly to the execution of Tillman by a US military sniper group
because of his threat to the government, and their motivation is clear. Tillman
was deliberately executed to prevent him from becoming an anti-war icon and
derailing public support in the United States for the ongoing occupations of
Iraq and Afghanistan. In a widely-seen TV appearance, US General Wesley
Clark stated that "the orders came from the very top" to cover-up the
nature of Tillman’s death, as he was a political symbol and his opposition to
the war in Iraq would have rallied the population around supporting immediate
withdrawal. Another author writing in a similar context, wrote, "These
American men of war are so morally deformed that anything is possible."
Karen Silkwood
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/silkwood/silkwoodlinks.html
The Kerr-McGee
Corporation was an American defense contractor with powerful political
connections not only to the government but to the US military and CIA as well
as local law enforcement officials. Karen Silkwood was a young chemical
technician at the Kerr-McGee plant making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor
fuel rods. She discovered numerous instances of company violations that exposed
workers to serious radioactive contamination, and in the summer of 1974
Silkwood testified to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about these issues,
alleging poor or no safety standards and claiming the company falsified
inspection records. A short time later, she discovered her body contained
almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium, resulting in her undergoing
many intense decontamination sessions, but after each one she was again found
to be dangerously contaminated. Health officials finally examined her home and
found plutonium deposits throughout her bathroom and kitchen, and even in her
refrigerator. A day later, Silkwood's body was found dead in her car, which had
run off the road and struck a culvert.
Silkwood had made
two serious mistakes. One was joining the company union and participating
in a strike to attract public attention to the severe safety hazards at the
plant, and the second was testifying against the company to the AEC. At the
time of the accident, Silkwood had just left a union meeting with an armful of
documents taken from the Kerr-McGee plant that proved the company's violations
and massive cover-up attempts, and also documented the large-scale
falsification of records, with proof that quality control of the dangerous fuel
rods had been compromised. Her revelations, if made public, would have
created a major scandal with enormous and wide-ranging implications. She
was on her way to deliver those documents to a New York Times
investigative reporter when her car ran off the road and she was killed. When
the police arrived at the scene, no documents were found in her car.
There is evidence
that the authorities had kept Silkwood under surveillance and her phone had
been tapped.
Someone had contaminated her apartment with plutonium in an attempt to kill her
while making it appear as an accident due to her own carelessness. And the
circumstances of her auto accident were highly suspicious, with damage to the
rear of her car strongly suggesting that it had been forcefully struck from the
rear and forced off the road. The auto accident was never satisfactorily
investigated or explained, nor did the company or military offer any
explanation for the presence of plutonium throughout her home. The official
narrative was that she had "fallen asleep while driving", but a
federal court jury awarded her family $10.5 million against the company, which
was deemed responsible for the plutonium contamination. A movie was made in
this woman's honor ("Silkwood", starring Meryl Streep), and a museum
was created in her home town to commemorate her courage. But she is still dead.
Bradley (Chelsea) Manning
By now, probably
everyone knows the story of the young US soldier Bradley Manning, who several
years ago leaked 250,000 US diplomatic cables and half a million army reports
to Wikileaks and the media. There has never been a bigger leak of classified
material in the history of the United States, nor one as volatile or shocking.
It was Manning who released to the world the dishonesty of the US war in Iraq
and the savage brutality of the American military in that country. It
was Manning's documents that first informed the world of the reality of the US
government's network of torture prisons and prison ships around the world, and
of the CIA's extensive network of kidnapping and rendition - shipping kidnap
victims outside US jurisdiction to be tortured, many to the death.
Among the videos
Manning released was one of an Apache helicopter conducting a bombing raid that
killed Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist, where the Iraqis on the ground
surrendered, only to be shot dead anyway. Manning said "The most
alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they
appeared to have", and an appalling "lack of value for human
life". In releasing that information, Manning did a great service
to the entire world, a world that needed to see in pictures and video the true
face of US foreign policy and the extent of US brutality toward non-whites.
Manning proved that US foreign policy depends on secrecy, not because of fear
of US enemies, but because the reality would horrify not only the American
people but the entire world. And horrify, it did. Manning's only real crime
was to have embarrassed the US government in its increasingly farcical claims
of being a defender of rights and freedoms and its adherence to rule of law.
Manning has for
years been in prison, where he has by all accounts been tortured, horribly
mistreated, and deprived of all human contact. He was kept naked, left without
privacy, awakened every five minutes day and night for apparently weeks on end,
and much more. Neither legal counsel nor the International Red Cross nor
human rights groups were ever permitted to visit or interview him. His
military trial was held behind closed doors with no media or public present on
the grounds that the trial would contain classified information. Of more than
passing interest is a claim that among the witnesses to testify against Manning
are members of the US Navy Seal Team #6 - the team that "doesn't
exist" - and that carried out the almost certainly fictitious raid
against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The reason this is curious is that all
members of this (perhaps imaginary) team were reported killed in a helicopter
crash, so even if they existed before, they certainly don't exist now. But
they will still testify against Manning. The Manning trial isn't the first
instance in which the United States under Obama has demonstrated its
willingness to do anything necessary to prevent the spread of unwelcome truths.
Former President Richard Nixon tried to use the Espionage Act to put the
leaker of the Pentagon Papers - about the planning of the Vietnam War - behind
bars.
The US makes an
enormous amount of sanctimonious noise about what it terms harsh treatment of
so-called dissidents in other countries whenever it finds political advantage,
however sleazy, in doing so. But when dealing with American dissidents, the
US has no hesitation in exercising the brutality and lack of conscience for
which it has become famous, and pays no attention whatever to world
opinion. Certainly, Bradley (Chelsea) Manning's life is over, a harsh warning
to those who would dare expose the brutal truths of the imperial master, and
a frightening reminder to the people of the world that the false smile painted
on the face of US foreign policy is only a mask that covers the most evil of
faces. Filmmaker Michael Moore stated in an article in The Huffington
Post that "all soldiers convicted of war crimes in Iraq and
Afghanistan have served less prison time in total than Bradley Manning faces by
himself". The United States of America specialises in political
prisoners.
Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden is
another US "dissident" who, acting from conscience, decided to tell
the world the truth of the US government's illegal espionage and law-breaking
on an almost unimaginary world-wide scale. The US government had for some
time flooded the worldwide media with accusations of hacking against China,
only to be revealed as the worst violator in the world by orders of magnitude.
It is worth noting that Snowden had a legal responsibility to report crimes
perpetrated by his superiors, but that responsibility is only propaganda and
utopian illusion. In real life, with this man and so many others in the US,
whistleblowers are viciously prosecuted while the perpetrators are protected.
Snowden was fortunate to have planned his escape in advance, but everyone,
most especially Snowden himself, knows the US will not rest until he has been
eliminated. Wherever Edward Snowden finds refuge, he will simply be waiting
for the arrival of that fatal shot. And it will come. The US is nothing if
not vengeful, and it has killed people for much smaller offenses.
We have read about
Snowden’s revelations, but the Western media failed to report Snowden’s
interview with a German broadcaster or to air the content of that interview in the
US. Notable among the comments in that interview were the US government threats
on Snowden’s life. One NSA official was quoted as saying, "(If I
weren't) restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill
him myself." A senior Pentagon official is quoted as saying:
"I would love to put a bullet in his head." A US military
intelligence officer declared in an interview that "Snowden could be
"poked" on his way home from buying groceries by a passerby who is
actually a US agent. Snowden thinks nothing of it at the time (and soon)
starts to feel a little woozy. And the next thing you know he dies in the
shower."
Michael Hastings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSY3wVuASg
…and
that there was no way the accident could have caused the engine to fly 60
meters from the car in the direction it did…
(You can see it in this video)
Michael Hastings
was 33 years old, an award-winning journalist and an accomplished war
correspondent and political reporter, perhaps best known for writing a critical
profile in the Rolling Stone magazine about US General Stanley McChrystal
that led to McChrystal's resignation. He was apparently working on another
important story that involved yet another major US military figure, General
David Petraeus of Iraq fame, and that implicated both the US Department of
Defense and the FBI. Hastings wrote about being approached by one of Gen.
McChrystal’s aides who told him "We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we
don’t like what you write". Hastings later wrote, "I wasn’t disturbed
by the claim. Whenever I’d been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it
was to kill people, one of them would usually mention that they were going to
kill me".
Just before his
death in July 2013, Hastings sent an SMS message to several friends, saying
"the FEDS" were watching him and contacting his friends and
associates, and that he was onto a big story and needed to disappear
"under the radar for a while". He died a few hours later when his
Mercedes, traveling at high speeds, smashed into a tree and caught fire. This
is the text of his message: "FBI Investigation, re: NSA - the Feds are
interviewing my "close friends and associates". Perhaps if the
authorities arrive, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any
conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related
journalism issues. Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radar
for a bit." Wikileaks made an online post that Hastings had consulted
with one of its lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, "just a few hours" before
his death, claiming that the FBI was investigating him. The FBI, in what may
be the first time, publicly - and quickly - denied having any interest in
Hastings.
There aren't enough
facts to form a judgment on this event, but the circumstances are sufficiently
suspicious to generate speculation about yet another murder of someone who
became troublesome. The fire that destroyed Hasting's car was recorded on
video, and that itself raises many questions. I have seen cars burn, and videos
of cars burning, the fire usually caused by a collision and the leakage of
fuel, but I have never seen a fire like this one. Auto fires are normally
localised, with either the engine compartment or the rear of the car severely
damaged, but Hasting's car was totally enveloped in flames and completely
destroyed. And I have seldom seen such an intense and violent conflagration
as the one that consumed this car. I don't believe anything could burn so
furiously and violently without accelerants. I don't know what the truth is, but
the flames that consumed Hasting's car were not from a gasoline fire.
Both police and
reporters claimed there were no skidmarks, the police claiming the car simply
left the road and drove into a tree at high speed, and caught fire. But when
the fire abated, the police immediately covered the entire car with a white
sheet, which is something I have never seen before. And news reports now
claim that both police and firemen who were on the scene have been ordered to
not discuss the matter with anyone, under any circumstances. Mercedes claims
its car could never have burned naturally in the manner in which it did, and
that there was no way the accident could have caused the engine to fly 60
meters from the car in the direction it did, which suggests both an explosion
and incendiary materials. Also, a man named Jose Rubalcava who witnessed
the entire crash, said he saw sparks coming out of Hastings' car before it
hit the tree and that it was traveling at very high speed, and had repeated
explosions after the collision. Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief
under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told the Huffington Post
that Hastings’s crash looked "consistent with a car cyber-attack".
To add to the
mystery, auto technicians have claimed that a car can easily be remotely
controlled and/or sabotaged by on-board software, and that it would technically
be quite easy to have accomplished Hastings' accident. In the August 12, 2013 issue of Forbes
Magazine, in an article titled "Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car
Attacks", Forbes staff writer Andy Greenberg took readers
through a tour of the vulnerabilities lurking in the electronics of today's
automobiles. These startling deficiencies and dangers were introduced to him by
two researchers named Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek who had
spent a year on this project. You should have alarm bells ringing in your head
when you learn that in 2012 Miller and Valasek received an $80,000-plus grant
from the research arm of the Pentagon known as the 'Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency', a grant for research ostensibly intended
"to root out security vulnerabilities in automobiles". Isn't that
interesting? The Pentagon, of all people, are interested in identifying and
eliminating software vulnerabilities in civilian automobiles. Unlikely. The
US military is quite uninterested in rooting out anything, but is desperately
interested in the weapons potential of such technology, as is the CIA. And this
relates directly to Google's 'driverless car' project.
Greenberg tells us
that as he drove a vehicle for more than an hour, Miller and Valasek
demonstrated that they had reverse-engineered enough auto software to deliver a
wide range of nasty surprises - with Greenberg at the wheel. They could sound
the horn, or slam on the brakes at high speed. They could kill both the brakes
and the power steering. They could make the GPS, the speedometer and odometer, wildly
inaccurate. They could violently jerk the steering wheel at any speed,
sufficient to send a car into a head-on collision, or off the road into - a
tree. Their focus, and that of the Pentagon, is hacking vehicles physically
and also by remote wireless devices, and this ability is already old news. A
team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of
California, San Diego, proved in 2010 that they could wirelessly penetrate
these same critical systems by using OnStar, Bluetooth, Android smartphones or
even a CD in the car’s stereo system. They claimed that obtaining remote-code
execution was not difficult for most vehicle functions.
Security analyst
Richard Clarke said it was easily possible for the authorities to have hacked
into Hastings' 2013 Mercedes C250 control system, and that such an attack
would be almost impossible to trace. He said the evidence available
publicly is consistent with a cyber-attack, but the problem is that it can't be
proven. We may never learn the truth about Michael Hastings, but this
wouldn't be the first time the US authorities have 'eliminated' a problem by
creating an 'accident'. And this apparent accident has FBI and US military
fingerprints all over it, especially their desperate attempt to discredit
Hastings' name with claims that were proven false of him having narcotics in
his system at the time of the crash.
There is another
element regarding General Motors that I find disturbing, this being GM's recent
infatuation with Israel and the establishment of various R&D centers in
that country. The simple fact of doing R&D in Israel is more or less irrelevant,
and Israel may well be a useful location for such an enterprise. The portion of
this I find disturbing is that, while the language appears to be cleverly
couched in neutral terms, my conclusion on reading the releases and media
articles was that this R&D appears to relate primarily to electronic remote
control of automobiles, the very same program of such great interest to the
FBI and CIA in the US to contain public protests and dissension and quite
possibly to create plausible examples of "death by auto accident",
of which we have already seen several. The articles referred to the development
of "alternative driving systems", "vehicle electronics and
communications systems", and various other kinds of "advanced
technology", none of which appeared related in any sense to automotive
development as such, but rather to electronic control and communication,
terms not so easy to misinterpret.
GM’s vice president
of global research and development, Alan Taub, spoke of this being
"the first true scientific research laboratory" for automotive
"Operations and Administration", and to tap that country's brightest
minds in a way similar to the US military outsourcing weapons research to
universities around the world. He spoke of using remote technology in the march
to ... "in some cases, intervention", i.e., authorities learning
to control vehicles remotely, using sensors to determine the surroundings.
He repeated Google's barely credible references to self-drive cars as being for
safety - but also available for remote control. In his words, "They use
the exact same technology". I don't find that comforting. Taub also
spoke of one such auto jointly designed by GM and Carnegie-Mellon University
that won the Urban Challenge event sponsored by the US Department of Defense. Anyone
who believes there is no military or civilian control agenda behind these
research efforts, is truly asleep. Taub also noted that Israel has a huge
amount of human talent in precisely the fields required by GM, and this very
much includes electronic espionage for which the Israelis are famous. One GM
source, Gil Golan, GM’s Israel site director, specified that GM will focus on
"advanced sensing, wireless enabling, allowing a vehicle’s systems to
use networks to ensure constant communication ... and vehicle control (by
whom?) ... for driverless navigation", with or without the driver's
permission, no doubt. The issue is not GM's designing the means for American
authorities to control dissent by rendering autos inoperable in the US, but
of inserting that technology into GM cars in China, thereby providing US
authorities with the same opportunity in China, yet one more weapon in their
"full-spectrum dominance" for warfare. If I want to declare war
on your country, the ability to disable every motor vehicle on your streets,
would be useful, no?
Before you dismiss
this too quickly as yet another conspiracy theory, the Times of Israel
carried articles in June of 2015 revealing that Hyundai of South Korea is
interested in precisely these things and is taking substantial initiatives to
obtain results, apparently intending to become a leader in this field. It
is worthy of note that Hyundai's first step is to conduct a national computer
hacking contest in Israel, in the hopes of identifying the top such talents who
will then receive research contracts with the company. The winners will be
selected on the basis of "creativity" and how they use the Internet
and other "connected technologies" including Bluetooth and GPS to "affect
the driving experience". Use your imagination. What does that mean,
'using creativity and connected technologies to affect the driving experience'?
The article stated that Hyundai was creating a "built-in cellular
modem" that will connect with a car and "its APPS" and, of
course, with all the vehicle's controls. The article stated Hyundai's auto
communications would permit the company to "implement numerous
long-distance features", exampled by drivers being able to call for
help - which they can easily do without Hyundai's help - or where "other
parties could connect" to the car. Think about that. What does that
mean, 'using communications to implement long-distance features where
"other parties" can connect to your car'. The article noted that
security was a concern, quoting studies by the US Senate and other proving
hackers can easily take control of key vehicle components remotely, stressing
that Hyundai "has gone to great lengths" to ensure that no one but
them will be able to intrude. Exactly: ensuring that 'no one but them' would
be able to take control of a vehicle. Apparently Jewish security experts
have considerable experience in this precise field, the article specifying that
these experts have worked on "closed operating systems" for
"Jewish phones". In other words, protecting themselves first from
others doing to them what they propose to do to others.
To read the full e-book please go to BOOKS
or
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Police-State-America-Volume-Two-.pdf
Copyright
© Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai,
Blue Moon of Shanghai,2023
