Author: Alicia

In an interview with Democracy Now! on Friday night, Nov. 20, former drone operator Michael Haas, one of the signers of the powerful letter opposing the drone killings, detailed the hideous policy and behavior toward killing civilians by remote control.  Haas told interviewer Amy Goodman, “the term ‘fun-sized terrorists’ was used to just sort of denote children that we’d see on screen.”  Haas then elaborated, “Other terms we’d use would be ‘cutting the grass before it grows too long,’ just doing whatever you can to try to make it easier to kill whatever’s on screen.  And the culture is, that mentality is very much nurtured within the drone community, because these,— every Hellfire shot is sort of lauded and applauded, and we don’t really examine who exactly was killed, but just that it was an effective shot and the missile hit its target.”

Haas is one of the drone operator whistleblowers who appears in the documentary, “Drone,” which opened at the AMC theater in Manhattan on Nov. 20 and will be playing this week in New York City and Toronto, Canada.

The movie team is running a high profile campaign to build support for stopping the drone murders.  On Friday night, Jeremy Scahill, one of the founders of The Intercept that published the “Drone Papers” secret documents, appeared with the film’s director, Tonje Hessen Schei, and former drone operator Brandon Bryant following the 7 PM screening.  On Saturday afternoon and evening, Bryant appeared again, first with the attorney for the whistleblowers, Jesselyn Radack, and then with the film’s producers for a question and answer session.

On the film’s website, dronethedocumentary.com, an advertisement quotes Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel U.S. Army (retired): “Our potential collective future. Watch it and weep for us. Or watch it and determine to change that future.” Wilkerson is the former aide to Colin Powell in the Bush/Cheney administration, who is an outspoken and frequent opponent of the perpetual war policy of both Bush and Obama, and who gave a lengthy interview to EIR in 2011.

Two other films exposing the drone program are also circulating. A 2013 documentary called, “Unmanned: The Drone Wars,” features interviews with victims of the drone attacks, including the brother of the innocent 16-year old Pakistani boy, Tariq Aziz. “Good Kill” (2014), a Hollywood movie starring Ethan Hawke, is a fictionalized account of the psychological breakdown of a drone operator who questions his role. 

Paul Driessen and Joe D’Aleo

A brutal cold spell could kill refugees. Paris COP21 delegates need to discuss this climate issue.

Even after the latest Paris massacres–and previous radical Islamist atrocities in the USA, France, Britain, Canada, Spain, India, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and elsewhere–politicians absurdly say hypothetical manmade global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity. In reality, fossil fuel contributions to climate change pose few dangers to people or planet, and winters kill 20 times more people than hot weather.

After being assured snowy winters would soon be something only read about in history books, Europe was shaken by five brutally cold winters this past decade. Thousands died, because they were homeless, lived in drafty homes with poor heating systems, or could not afford adequate fuel.

It could happen again, with even worse consequences. “Millions of desperate people are on the march,” Walter Russell Mead recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Sunni refugees driven out by the barbarity of the Assad regime in Syria, Christians and Yazidis fleeing the pornographic violence of Islamic State, millions more of all faiths and no faith fleeing poverty and oppression without end.”

Where are they heading? Mostly not into neighboring Arab countries, most of which have yanked their welcome mats. Instead, if they’re not staying in Turkey, they’re going north to Europe–into the path the extremely cold “Siberian Express” has increasingly taken. Germany alone could face the challenge of feeding and sheltering 800,000 to 1,000,000 freezing refugees this winter.

If a blast of frigid Siberian air should hit, temperatures in parts of eastern and northern Europe and the western Former Soviet Union could become 70 degrees F (39C) colder than cold spells in much of the Middle East. During the coldest Siberian outbreaks, it gets as lethally cold as -40F (-40C).

Northern and eastern Europeans are largely acclimated to such cold. However, for refugees from regions where winters average 20 to 30 degrees warmer, makeshift houses or tents will make their sojourn a bone-chilling experience. Europe’s exorbitant energy costs, resulting from its obeisance to climate chaos credos, could make this an even worse humanitarian crisis.

However, to listen to the UN, many world leaders, environmental NGOs, scientists from the climate alarm industry, and their sycophant media–especially on the eve of their Paris 2015 global warming summit–threats from cold weather are not supposed to happen. Just 15 years ago, the German paper Spiegel proclaimed, “Good-bye winter: In Germany bitter cold winters are now a thing of the past.” That same year, a British Climate Research Unit scientist said “children aren’t going to know what snow is.”

The media dutifully repeated similar claims each year, until unbelievably cold, snowy winters began hitting in 2008/09. In December 2010, England had its second-coldest December since 1659, amid the Little Ice Age. For five years, 2008-2013, snow paralyzed travel in England and northern and western Europe. Not surprisingly, the same media then blamed manmade global warming for the harsh winters.

In reality, natural Atlantic Ocean cycles lasting around 60 years control winter temperatures in Europe and Eastern North America. When the North Atlantic warms, “blocking high pressure systems” largely prevent warm Atlantic air from reaching Europe.

There is also a strong correlation between the sun’s geomagnetic activity and these blocking-induced cold winters in Europe. The five brutally cold winters ending in 2012/13 had the lowest level of solar geomagnetic activity in the entire record, dating back some 90 years.

When the North Atlantic is warm and the sun’s geomagnetic patterns are weak, these blocking patterns keep warmer Atlantic air out of Europe. Frigid air from off deep snows in Siberia can then more easily invade from the east, bringing sub-zero cold and heavy snows. That’s what happened from 2008 to 2013.

The ocean and solar factors eased in 2013, and the last two years have seen more Atlantic air and milder winters. However both solar and ocean patterns are starting to return to the situation where cold invasions are more likely. That could usher in nasty surprises for the Middle Eastern refugees.

Even this year’s early winter October cold brought news stories about Syrian children becoming sick amid exposure to colder weather than they were used to. In Austria, adults and children alike were already complaining about the weather and wishing they could go home.

In fact, cold weather kills 20 times more people than hot weather, according to a Lancet medical journal study that analyzed 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. It should be required reading for the 40,000-plus bureaucrats, politicians, activists and promoters who will soon descend on Paris, to enjoy five-star hotels and restaurants while blathering endlessly about dire threats of global warming.

They should ponder the fact that the Lancet study reflects normal societies in peaceful countries. Even there, many more people die each year during the four winter months than in the eight non-winter months. Indeed, there even the United States experiences some 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year.

In the United Kingdom, the winter death rate is about twice as high as in the USA: excess winter deaths range up to 50,000 per year–due to the UK’s poorer home insulation and heating systems, and much higher energy costs caused by its climate and renewable energy policies.

The refugees’ excess winter death toll could well be even greater, due to the high cost of European energy and the migrants’ extreme poverty, poor nutrition, inadequate clothing and blankets, preexisting diseases, and makeshift housing: tents, trailers and other dwellings that have little or no insulation or central heat.

Systematic misinformation about the dangers of fossil fuels and hot versus cold weather has helped make this crisis much worse than needs be. Climate alarmists will thus bear the blame for thousands of avoidable deaths among refugees this winter, especially if the Siberian Express invades once again.

The Paris climate conferees need to focus on humanity’s real and immediate dangers: this rapidly growing refugee crisis, abysmal EU economies and job losses–and the billions worldwide who still lack the adequate, reliable, affordable energy required to end their crushing poverty, malnutrition, disease and early death, by ensuring clean water, proper sanitation, modern hospitals, lights, refrigerators and plentiful food. The climate conferees must address the following much more pressing questions.

How is climate change more important than safeguarding refugees who are already suffering from cold weather? Should conferees be focused on hypothetical future manmade climate chaos, while EU nations squabble over who will take how many refugees and potential terrorists, amid a possible winter crisis? What contingency plans do they have for another bout of frigid weather possibly invading the continent?

When a million refugees are freezing in squalid conditions with inadequate shelter, food, heat, clothing and medical care, and 1.3 billion people still do not have electricity–why would the world commit to spending billions on alleged future global warming catastrophes? As Bjorn Lomborg puts it, why would the world also want to give up nearly $1 trillion in GDP every year for the rest of this century, to avert a total hypothetical (computer modeled) temperature rise of just 0.306 degrees C (0.558 F) by 2100?

Where will the money come from to combat growing war and terrorism, aid the millions displaced by these horrors, rebuild devastated cities, put millions of people back to work, and bring electricity and better lives to billions of others–if we continue this obsession over global warming? Do humans really play a big enough roll in climate change to justify these incomprehensible price tags? Where is the actual evidence? Not computer models or press releases–the actual evidence?

It would be an unconscionable crime against humanity, if the nations gathering in Paris implement policies to protect our planet’s energy-deprived masses from hypothetical manmade climate disasters decades from now, by perpetuating poverty and disease that kill millions more people tomorrow.

These are the real reasons climate change is a critical moral issue. We need to we recognize that, and stop playing games with people’s lives. We must acknowledge that horrific computer model scenarios do not reflect planetary reality–and must not guide energy policy.

Joe D’Aleo is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and American Meteorological Society Fellow and co-founder of The Weather Channel. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Climate experts Allan MacRae and Madhav Khandekar contributed to this article.

See the full story here.

After the Paris attacks, the question is being reopened about how the Obama administration and his hand-chosen lackeys in the intelligence community along with British MI6 and other secret services were arming the al-Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadi forces in Syria.  Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters at the G20 meeting that he possesses evidence of involvement of people in 40 different countries—including some G20 countries—that were funding and supporting IS and the Sunni extremists.  Friday, intelligence sources in Italy raised the question to EIR about whether the Belgian terrorists involved in the Nov. 13th attack were “protected” and allowed to move freely through EU to Syria.

EIR and LaRouche PAC have issued special reports and a Benghazi Fact Sheet issued in May 2013 and repeatedly updated, that document Obama’s ties to the British, Saudis, and the installing of al-Qaeda terrorists in power in Libya as part of the regime change war against Libya and murder of Qaddafi.

In the last week a June 2015 article in the Guardian has been reposted that indicates specific proof of British MI6’s role in financing and building up the Sunni terrorists in Syria. Journalist Seumas Milne reported on June 3rd that during that week, British prosecutors dropped a criminal case against Bherlin Gildo who was accused of terrorism in Syria.  The case “collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups” that Gildo was fighting with in 2012. “The British state was itself providing extensive support to the armed Syrian opposition,” including “the secret supply of arms on a massive scale.”

Then, linking his article to a 2014 exposé by U.S. reporter Seymour Hersh called “The Red Line and the Rat Line: Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian Rebels,” Milne says, “Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a rat line of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Qaddafi regime.”

There are no excuses for delay—Obama must be removed from office now.

Citibank’s Banamex USA subsidiary has been caught laundering drug money for the notorious Zetas and the Gulf Cartel in Mexico, and, once again, the Obama Administration has given top Citibank officials a free pass.  Bloomberg Business News gave a detailed account on Nov. 20 of Citibank’s repeated and long-running non-compliance with bank regulations about reporting suspicious activities.  In one instance, Antonio Pena Ageuelles, a drug money launderer for the Zetas, opened an account in 2005, claiming to run a small business with a projected $50 a month fund flow through the account.  All told, Pena Arguelles laundered $59.4 million through the account.  The bank failed to file any suspicious activity reports—even after Pena Arguelles’ brother was assassinated by the Zetas and accused of stealing some of the laundered cash in 2011, and even after Pena Arguelles was indicted by U.S. authorities for drug money laundering.

The Bloomberg article cited several other, equally egregious cases where Citibank, through Banamex USA, laundered drug money, failed to comply with compliance or due diligence laws, and only received slap-on-the-wrist cash fines. In one instance unrelated to drug money laundering, a unit of Citigroup had to plead guilty to a felony count of price manipulation of dollars and euros—but no official was sent to prison.  In the Banamex U.S.A cases, Citibank is expected to pay in the range of $100 million in fines—a small percentage of the profits the bank made through drug money laundering.

Citibank bought Banamex, Mexico’s third largest bank, in 2001 and soon opened Banamex USA branches all along the Texas-Mexico border.  It was through one of those branches in Laredo, Texas, that Sonia de Pau, a “Mexican housewife” opened a small account and soon laundered $1.44 million.  Her husband had been already indicted on drug money laundering charges, and once again, the bank failed to file any reports on the account. De Pau was laundering money for both the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, and had actually been arrested a year before she opened the Texas account for money laundering in Mexico.

Bloomberg pointed out that “Citigroup’s money-laundering issues, and the regulatory rancor they bring, go back decades. The bank helped Raul Salinas, the brother of Mexico’s President at the time, move as much as $100 million into Swiss and U.K. accounts in the mid-1990s.” Other cases of money laundering by Citibank were cited in Argentina and Japan.

If the climate change alarmists want to discuss the real environmental crisis on the horizon at the upcoming UN COP21 Paris climate extravaganza, they should be formulating a plan to prevent the freezing to death of tens of thousands of refugees in Europe. This is the theme of a new statement, “Terrorism and a Cold Winter Refugee Crisis,” posted Nov. 19 by scientists Paul Driessen and Joe D’Aleo, with Allan MacRae and Madhav Khandekar, on icecap.us, and now on many other sites.

As they explain, tens of thousands of European citizens have frozen to death during winters of extremely cold weather, which, in fact, is what Europe has experienced in much of the past decade. These dramatic swings in temperature are, in fact, caused not by human activity, but by the Sun and other related factors. But it is the action taken by policymakers that will make the difference between life and death.

The authors point out that in extremely cold years, the U.S. can experience about 100,000 excess deaths. Overall, they report, there are 20 times more deaths from extreme cold, than extreme heat. For the refugees, in “extreme poverty, [with] poor nutrition, inadequate clothing and blankets, pre-existing diseases, and makeshift housing,” the excess winter death toll could be staggering; even higher than the 50,000 excess winter deaths in the U.K.

Paul Driessen is an analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). A recent interview with Driessen appears in the new EIR Special Report, “Global Warming Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science.” Joe D’Aleo, an American Meteorological Society Fellow, co-founded The Weather Channel.

Four veterans of the U.S. Air Force with more than 20 years of experience between them in drone operations, three as sensor operators and the fourth as a communications technician, have written to President Obama calling on him to reconsider the policy of targeted killings by drone because, they say, it is a “driving force” behind ISIS and other jihadi groups. In an impassioned letter addressed to Obama, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan, they write that the tactic has “fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantánamo Bay.”

The oldest of the four, Brandon Bryant, who served from 2005 to 2011 in drone squadrons, told the Guardian that he was part of the team that tracked Anwar al-Awlaki by drone for 10 months shortly before he was killed. Bryant said that in his view, he had been made to violate his military oath by being assigned to a mission that killed a fellow American. “We were told that al-Awlaki deserved to die, he deserved to be killed as a traitor, but Article 3 of Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that even a traitor deserves a fair trial in front of a jury of his peers.”

They called the drone strategy self-defeating because the civilian casualties create hatred for the United States. “Right now it seems politically expedient,” said Cian Westmoreland, the communications technician. “But in the long term the bad side of a Hellfire missile and drones buzzing overhead is the only thing that a lot of these people know of the United States or Britain.”

The text of their letter follows:

The letter is signed by Brandon Bryant, sensor operator; Cian Westmoreland, RF Transmissions Systems technician;  Stephen Lewis, sensor operator; and Michael Haas, sensor operator. 

The Italian state television, RAI, broadcast a long interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Wednesday. Clips of the interview were broadcast in the prime time news, whereas the entire interview was broadcast on the all-news program Rainews24.

In the interview, Assad says that the Syrian people will decide whether he goes or stays, and that ISIS controls large parts of Syria, but these are mostly desert. He says that the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have created ISIS, and that with the Russian intervention the situation has changed. His meeting with Russian President Putin to discuss military strategy and the strategy from Vienna was very satisfactory.

However, even more important than the interview, itself, was the description of the meeting with Assad by RAI chairwoman Monica Maggioni, prior to the interview. Maggioni, before becoming head of RAI, was a war correspondent, then a political editor, and had interviewed Assad two years ago. Although this current interview was conducted by another journalist, it is clear that she, herself, arranged it.

Maggioni described their meeting in an article in Thursday’s La Stampa under the headline, “Calm and Self-Assured, Assad Seems To Be Strong in the Saddle.” Assad received her not in a bunker, but in his house in the center of Damascus, like any normal host.

Many people in rural areas of Syria joined ISIS either for money or to control the territory, and the government is making deals with such people. Maggioni says that this is a shift, “as two years ago he said that he would never negotiate with those who chose the armed struggle.”

An English translation of the full interview can be read here.

Tonight we continue our focus on Obama’s lead role in pushing a policy of mass murder as U.S. foreign policy. From arming “moderate” rebels in Syria, to regular drone killings of innocent civilians across the Middle East and Africa–both creating the effect of pouring fuel on an already raging fire–the Obama administration is not “making mistakes”, it is intentionally creating chaos by blowing up the world. As LaRouche has warned, remove him from office or face a bigger catastrophe.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed two resolutions which block key sections of the administration’s anti-coal program, which President Obama had planned to showcase at the COP21 “climate change” summit, which opens on Nov. 30 in Paris. The first resolution shot down the Environmental Protection Agency rule imposing a 32% cut in carbon emissions from coal-powered power plants in the U.S.; the second was against the EPA rule stating that no further coal-powered power plants will be constructed on the territory of the United States. Both resolutions passed by a vote of 52 to 46, with the backing of three Democratic Senators —Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who represent states where coal plays a major role in the economy.

Obama blustered that if the House passes similar resolutions, and they land on his desk, he will veto them.

Republican Senators then delivered the message the next day, that they have no intention of funding the U.S. share of the $100 billion (minimum) “Green Climate Fund” cooked up to bribe developing countries into signing onto “climate change” restrictions that will end their economic development. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) put it colorfully: “We want to make sure that any of these countries that think they’re going to have a check to cash because of an agreement that the President may make in Paris— they shouldn’t cash the check just yet.”

The venue for the message was a hearing of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, chaired by Sen. Jim Inofe (R-OK). Inhofe had tried repeatedly this Fall to get even one EPA, State Department, or Council of Environmental Quality official to testify before the committee on administration plans for the COP21 meeting, to no avail.

In opening the hearing, Inhofe warned Obama that Congress will not approve new money for the Green Climate Fund without first being able to review any deal struck in Paris:

“If the President wishes to produce something substantive from the Paris negotiations… there is no way around the Senate. However, if the President heeds the advice of other COP 21 participants and wishes to bypass Congress, then he will be limited to making a non-binding, political commitment with no means of enforcement, accountability, or longevity.

“Beyond the process, there is the financing element of these negotiations. Let me be very clear: this congress will not approve a cent of appropriations for the Green Climate Fund,” Inhofe added.

That’s not a small threat. The Queen’s own population-reductionist Hans Joaquim Schellnhuber told the London Guardian on Nov. 9 that the Queen’s climate hoax genocide could proceed without a binding agreement at Paris, but if the OECD nations refused to fund that Green Climate Fund, it could blow up any agreement at all.

On Saturday 14 November, members of the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC), the federally registered Australian political party allied with Lyndon LaRouche, were manning a booth at the annual Agricultural Show in Albany, Western Australia, to present their policies to the public, when a plain-clothed Federal Police officer, accompanied by five state police and security guards, swooped down on them. After grilling the activists, among them two 90-year-olds, in particular about the party’s “stance on Muslims”, the police served “move on” orders, demanding that they leave the city within an hour-and-a- half and cancel any activity planned for Albany or Perth during the 13-15 November visit of heir to the throne Prince Charles to Western Australia, upon pain of immediate arrest under anti-terrorism statutes.

CEC Western Australia State Secretary Jean Robinson, a frequent candidate for elected office, was instructed that if she were not 25 kilometres out of Albany by 11:15am, when Charles arrived at the airport, she would be arrested. Additionally, 93-year-old CEC supporter and Albany resident Vincenzo Zumbo, a veteran of the anti-fascist resistance in Italy in WWII, was ordered to return home and remain there until after Charles and Camilla left at 4pm. Asked why these unprecedented, draconian measures were being applied, the police responded, “What happened in Paris is a BIG deal”, referring to the ISIS attacks in Paris some hours earlier, and said that these were measures for Charles’s security while visiting Western Australia.

In response, CEC National Secretary Craig Isherwood on 16 November issued a statement accusing the police of targeting a political party that is known to be peaceful, on orders from Prince Charles. “We [the CEC] have been a national political party for 27 years and we and our policies are extremely well known in this country,” Isherwood said. “And given that the CEC is the Australian wing of the international movement led by Lyndon LaRouche—which every man and his dog knows has had sharp political disputes with Charles and his family for decades—the police knew whom they were dealing with in Albany. The order for this outrageous intervention into Australian politics therefore must have either come from or been cleared by Prince Charles himself. Everyone knows that our security agencies, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), are run by MI5 and MI6, respectively, who in turn report to the Crown. We are such a hot issue that the ‘locals’ would not have taken such an outrageous action on their own.”

In the days before this incident, the CEC attacked Charles in a widely distributed release, for his direct role in his mother’s outrageous 1975 sacking of Australia’s elected government, then led by Labor Party Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. The CEC has mobilized over the past 12 months to expose Charles as the point man for the British-Saudi terrorism apparatus, as well as for his close links to the paedophile ring that has operated for decades at the highest levels of the British establishment, including the Royal Family.