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What in the World is Happening in Macedonia?? by Brando Turbeville

What In The World Is Happening In Macedonia?

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By Brandon Turbeville

In May 2015, protests began erupting in Skopje, Macedonia against the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his government. The protests, led by Zoran Zaev, were allegedly in response to the massive spying and surveillance of Macedonian officials and other individuals as well as an alleged cover-up of a killing of a young man by police in 2011. The protests were largely focused on the issue of government corruption, with tens of thousands of people in the streets of Skopje, demanding the Prime Minister’s resignation as well as that of other members of his government.

A major protest occurred on May 5 and several other anti-government protests have taken place since then. While some protests have remained peaceful, there has been widespread violence from other demonstrations. On the May 5 protest alone, violent clashes took place between protesters and police with injuries taking place on both sides.

In the days that followed, several Macedonian ministers resigned from their posts, including the Interior Minister. Prime Minister Gruevski, however, has refused to resign, characterizing such a move as cowardly behavior.

On May 17, thousands of protesters once again descended upon the streets of Skopje to demand the ouster of the current government. On May 18, however, thousands more took to the streets to protest in support of the current government and Prime Minister Gruevski.

An anti-government, anti-Gruevski camp has been set up outside government offices and remains there indefinitely with several hundred inhabitants on average.

With such social unrest taking place in Macedonia, one need only look to the NATO/US and George Soros-funded networks to see the hidden hand of the Western Color Revolution apparatus at work.

Macedonia may at first seem an unlikely target of the Anglo-American color revolution apparatus, but the truth is that the small country is now the latest battleground in a proxy war between Russia and the West. Not only are the two sides competing for influence over the domestic affairs and political decisions of the Macedonian government, there is also the question of geopolitical positions and the agenda of the creation of micro-states and mini-states. Most notably, however, is the interest regarding the Balkan Stream pipeline (aka the Turkish Stream Pipeline).

George Soros, NATO, US Color Revolution Apparatus Behind the Unrest In Macedonia

George Soros is most well-known for playing a major role in the funding and facilitating of the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Serbia that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” of 2003, the 2006 push to move Turkey toward a more Islamist governing structure, and even the Occupy movement in the United States among a great many others – none of which brought anything other than greater misery, impoverishment, and police state mechanisms to bear on the general public. The Occupy movement, being the only exception, still brought nothing to its participants except the opportunity to burn off excess anger and energy along with a few cracked protester skulls. It was otherwise an incredible waste of time.

In addition, George Soros has been heavily involved in the social unrest and movement-wrecking activity that has taken place all across the United States in recent months. From Florida to Ferguson and then on to Baltimore, George Soros’ Foundations have been involved in making sure that not only are American citizens unable to overcome racial divisions with mutual cooperation but that even the racially isolated participants are unable to accomplish anything of substance.

In Macedonia, like in the United States, Soros organizations work under the pretense of left cover. In other words, Soros NGOs fund and operate organizations and movements that are seen as Left in nature but are, in reality, revolutionary organizations designed to push a political agenda, change Macedonian culture, install puppet regimes, and ultimately serve the purpose of the Anglo-American oligarchy.

George Soros’ most well-known NGO is the Open Society Institute, is highly active in Macedonia and itself works with a plethora of “civil society organizations” throughout the country that function as the OSI (and hence the West’s) tentacles in Macedonian society. This is what has prompted some in Macedonia to say in regards to Soros that “Soros came into Macedonia like a Trojan horse, and now he is an octopus.”

The OSI has been active in Macedonia for some time, with Vladimir Milcin heading the organization for nearly twenty years. Milcin was a former police informant in the days of Communism. Milcin was instrumental in ratting out a dissident actor Risto Siskov.

The Soros networks in Macedonia are extremely powerful. As Jay Nordlinger reported for the National Review after having traveled to Macedonia,

In America for the past many years, we have had a plethora of Soros-funded groups: MoveOn.org, Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, etc. Macedonia has its rough equivalents. But they mean more in Macedonia than the Soros-funded groups do in America. Back home, we have a zillion conservative groups to counter the Soros groups. The Left has its billionaires, we have ours. You hit me with Soros? Okay, I’ll hit you with a Koch or two. In Macedonia, I’m told, there is no tradition of donating money to a cause. There aren’t think tanks and activist groups and the rest on the right. So, the “Sorosoids” own the field. 

While this may be a bit of an exaggeration – the Right clearly has its own agents of control and dissemination – it is clearly true that the Soros influence extends far beyond being able to drive public opinion through clever networking ideas Indeed, through a much tighter grasp upon media outlets themselves, Soros is vastly more influential in the way that news and events are reported than in other locations, even those located in Eastern Europe.

That being said, it should be pointed out that Macedonian news outlets like Telma and 24 Vesti are both major players in promoting the anti-government protests (in addition to other operations). Both of these outlets are funded by George Soros.

Indeed, even “opposition leader” Zoran Zaev is a notorious Soros-funded agent with close connections to the CIA. Not only Zaev, but his entire Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) party (the former Communist party) has been entirely taken over by the Soros machine. As Wayne Madsen writes,

Zaev and [Radmila] Sekerinska are said by Macedonian insiders to be nothing more than fronts for former Prime Minister and President Branko Crvenkovski who continues to head up the SDSM and accept large amounts of largesse from such CIA NGO laundry operations as the National Democratic Institute (NDI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House, and Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI) to foment a themed revolution against Gruevksi’s right-of-center VMRO-DPMNE government.

It is also a known fact that the OSI receives are large amount of money from the US State Department’s USAID.

Interestingly enough, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, has been charged by Macedonian intelligence of conspiring with Zaev of the SDSM.

Wayne Madsen further describes the role of Victoria Nuland by writing:

The unapologetic foul-mouthed Nuland met on the side of the 51st Munich Security Conference in Germany with Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki and President Gjorge Ivanov to express her displeasure at Gruevski’s insurrection charges against her friend Zaev and his SDSM co-conspirators. Earlier, Nuland had offered to mediate a long-standing dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the latter’s use of the name Macedonia, which some Greeks consider to be a solely Greek name. Macedonian observers viewed Nuland’s interest in the name dispute to be a trap that would enable a pro-U.S. government, along with the Zionist and global banker baggage that comes with any such «themed» coup d’etat, to seize power in Skopje. Nuland and her co-conspirators were hoping for a replay of Kiev in what can be termed «Kiev Version 2.0.» 

Nuland and her co-conspirators in Skopje are alarmed over the speed at which the Macedonian security services rounded up the coup plotters. Macedonian police, in raids conducted in Skopje and Veles, seized five laptop computers, three desktop computers, 19 mobile phones, 100 CDs and DVDs, 17 hard disks, and 9 savings deposit books used by the coup plotters, including a number linked to Soros-financed NGOs. The bank accounts of the plotters reportedly were flush with healthy cash deposits from the CIA as the date of the planned coup approached. 

The use of social media by the Soros/CIA coup plotters should come as no surprise. Social media served at the very core of the themed revolutions sponsored by the CIA and Soros twice in Ukraine (Orange Revolution and Euro-Maidan uprising), Jasmine Revolution (Tunisia), Lotus Revolution (Egypt), Rose Revolution (Georgia), Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyszstan), and Green Revolution (Iran). In the case of Macedonia, there are clear indications that the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) Thomas Melia, responsible for DRL’s work in Europe, including Russia, as well as the Middle East and North Africa, conspired directly with Zaev to mount a coup against the Gruevski government. Melia is the former deputy director of Freedom House, a Cold War-era neoconservative bevvy of U.S. war hawks based in New York. Although founded in 1941 by such progressives as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ralph Bunche, journalist Dorothy Thompson, novelist Rex Stout (creator of Nero Wolfe), and Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie (who would be considered by today’s Republicans in the U.S. as a stark-raving liberal), Freedom House has devolved into a neoconservative chatter source having employed as their board members in recent years such war hawk cretins as Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Adelman, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Donald Rumsfeld, and Otto Reich. Freedom House has been caught red-handed funneling CIA money to opposition groups in Iran, Sudan, Russia, and China. In essence, Freedom House, like Soros’s NGOs, serves as a conduit for CIA support for rebellious opposition forces in dozens of countries around the world, countries that now include Macedonia, as well as Hungary, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and Cuba.

In addition, it has been reported by a number of media outlets, most notably the Russian and Macedonian press, that George Soros has tapped into the Canvas network, enlisting the organization to “help” in Macedonian protests.

According to Macedonia Online,

Canvas members have managed to get themselves permanently banned from ever entering Russia, but they are welcome in the Macedonian capital. Soros Open Society Institute and the CIA via its fronts (PNAC, NED, USAid) have hired Canvas to do work in Macedonia. Canvas issued a memo to Macedonian students (three weeks prior to protests) that they would award the two best protest ideas with $1,500. 

The ideas were sent to Sonja Ismail, daughter of Guner Ismail, a popular SDSM member and official.

Macedonia Online further describes the Canvas organization by stating the following:

The gang pretending to be NGOs and trained to overthrow Governments and stage Coups around the world is paying $1,500 for ideas how to better organize demonstrations, reports Vecer. 

That gang is Soros’ Open Society Institute, USAid (Front for the CIA) and the Forum Group (another Soros “NGO”). This group has already backed and financed not just the Macedonian opposition SDSM, but their activists & protests, dating back to 2011.
Serbian based Canvas led by Srgja Popovic who specializes in demonstrations has been hired both by Soros and the CIA to “help” in Macedonia. Canvas has gained quite the notoriety. Namely, the UAE has listed Canvas in the same ranks as Al-Qaeda, it is the only non-muslim terrorist organization! 

Canvas and Srgja Popovic were instrumental in bringing chaos to Ukraine (look at Ukraine today) and in removing Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak from power (look at Egypt now). 

[…]

Canvas first earned its notoriety for bringing down Milosevic. But it didn’t stop there. Canvas was repeatedly hired by the CIA to organize protests in Gruzia, Moldavia, the Maldives, Lebanon, Egypt, Ukraine…. Canvas first appeared in Macedonia in 2009, when it became apparent the SDSM will be in opposition once again. The thug for hire himself Srgja Popovic was present in Ohrid to christen the opening of a “Canvas Academy” where future protesters and activists would be trained and be called upon when the time is right.

Who was the financier of this academy? USAID and Soros. Soros employees Gjuner Ismail and Sasho Ordanovski were the promoters. 

“Students were paid and agrgresively trained on how to protest in December of 2014 and January of 2015. Srgja Popovic himself showed up and met with Zaev in March, April and early May 2015. On May 6th Canvas (SDSM) activists violently attacked policemen, injuring 38”, reported Vecer. 

Canvas was heavily involved in the death of Russian opposition leader Nemtsov, just few days before the opposition protest. The goal was to destabilize the situation, create internal conflict. But most Russian saw through the orchestrated murder for what it was, an ordered hit. When one takes into account the wife of Canvas’ leader worked at Stratfor (another CIA front), then things become clear, says Vecer. 

Prior to Canvas, Serbia had another group created by undercover NGOs. It was called “Otpor”, financed by Freedom House, another front for the CIA. Even the UN investigated Freedom House for their ties to the CIA. Members of Otpor have today joined the ranks of Canvas.

Macedonia Online only echoes a report written by Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer Report in 2011 entitled “CIA Coup-College,” where Cartalucci exposed Canvas by writing

After its success, Serbia’s Otpor would continue receiving funds from the West and become a “CIA-coup college” of sorts, under the name CANVAS, or “Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies.” It appears that after the Egyptian April 6 Youth Movement finished attending the US State Department funded confab in New York City in 2008, it would make a trip to visit CANVAS in 2009. From there, it took CANVAS’s “curriculum” and apparently their logo, and began assembling a US-funded mob in Egypt. 

Amongst CANVAS’s current “partners” are the Albert Einstein Institution, Freedom House, and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The IRI includes amongst its board of directors John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Brent Scowcroft. When John McCain says “We should have seen this coming,” in regards to the unrest in Egypt, he obviously isn’t talking about himself since he helped make it happen. 

[…]

A final note to consider is that CANVAS is on record in Foreign Policy magazine’s article “Revolution U,” assisting the “Rose Revolution” of Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” of the Ukraine, and is currently working with networks from Belarus, Myanmar (Burma) and 50 other countries. Taking a look at their activities and the overall globalist agenda, it is clear they are involved in regime change that will directly assist the globalists in their encirclement of Russia and China.

Who Wiretapped Whom?

While the justification for the protests has been presented as a wiretapping and surveillance scandal, there is a great deal of question as to who actually surveilled whom. For instance, while the Western and Soros-funded press is clear that the Macedonian government wiretapped the “opposition” and additional officials, other evidence suggests that it was the other way around and that the “opposition” actually wiretapped members of the Macedonian government.

For instance, as NPR has reported with the certainty of Macedonian government’s guilt,

The small Balkan country of Macedonia is in turmoil after it was revealed that the government wiretapped 20,000 people. . . . . On Sunday night, tens of thousands of people surrounded this building, demanding the resignation of Gruevski, the conservative who has run this country for the last nine years. They say Gruevski’s government has paid off judges, rigged votes and framed political opponents for crimes. A leftist opposition leader, Zoran Zaev, says it’s all on tape. He released 670,000 secretly recorded conversations from 20,000 Macedonian phone numbers. Shumanska says the government is spying on its own citizens.

But, as Wayne Madsen points out, the true nature of the wiretapping scandal may be more complicated than what is being presented in the Western media. In fact, it may have been the “opposition” who was responsible for the wiretapping to begin with. Madsen writes,

In response to Zaev’s charge that Gruevski wiretapped 20,000 Macedonians, including taping phone calls between Zaev and his young daughter, the Macedonian government charged that it was Zaev and his associates, working with a foreign intelligence agency believed to be the CIA, to overthrow Gruevski’s government. An obvious flight risk, Zaev was ordered to turn in his passport to the authorities. Others, in addition to Zaev, accused of working with the CIA to oust Gruevski include Zaev’s associates Sonja Verusevska and Branko Palifrov, as well as the former director of the Office of Security and Counter-intelligence (DBK), Zoran Verusevski. Gruevski charged that Zaev threatened to disclose sensitive information about his government provided to the SDSM by the CIA, referred to as “the bomb” in the Macedonian media, unless Gruevski appointed a caretaker government that would lead to early parliamentary elections. Gruevski has called Zaev’s gambit nothing more than blackmail pressure in order that a snap election be called. As far as pressuring the Gruevski government to resign and call early elections, Nuland resorted to the same gambit that was used in Kiev to oust Yanukovych. 

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reporter Michael Martens, who reported on the Macedonian coup plot, claimed in an interview with Macedonian television that his initial report on the wiretapping issue had been altered by certain parties inside Macedonia. Martens said that with a population of 2 million, to wiretap 20,000 people would have even far exceed the capabilities of the East German Stasi. In any event, Martens said the 20,000 figure was not true and that Macedonian media and politicians had misquoted him and his article. However, the truth has never been on the side of provocateurs like Nuland and her neoconservative cabal of plotters and disinformation specialists.

The Methods Of Color Revolution In Macedonia

Macedonia unfortunately finds itself in an ethnically and nationalistically susceptible state. Since its formation in 1991, Macedonia has found itself at odds with Greece and Bulgaria (two bordering states) over a naming and territorial controversy as well as with Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania (three other bordering states) in regards to “ethnic Albanians,” from whom a movement has emerged that often flirts with separation. While the Albanians are a minority in Macedonia, they are about 25% of the population according to some statistics, large enough to cause a stir when agitated. Because these Albanians mostly live near the Albania-Kosovo border, they can be tempted to push for a “greater Albania” on the same model as the Kurds inhabiting Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey push for a Kurdistan.

In addition, because of the firm grip that George Soros and his networks have on the Macedonian media, it is much easier to disseminate a certain viewpoint to the population than in a country with competing viewpoints. This is especially relevant when one considers that the total population of Macedonia is only about 2 million people, thus making the goal of reaching the majority of the population with that message a possibility that is all the more real.

Journalist and Geopolitical analyst, Andrew Korybko describes the situation on the ground inside Macedonia as ripe for a color revolution precisely because of these elements, also pointing out that

the ‘opposition’ was already boycotting the Parliament as it was, thereby creating the perfect social situation for a Color Revolution to took root and be ‘convincingly’ broadcast to outside audiences. All of these factors came together to create a situation that the West couldn’t’ resist destabilizing, if only for the fact that its demographics provide it with easily controllable variables to that make for a perfect Color Revolution test scenario.

The Reasons For The Color Revolution

While geopolitical positioning, geostrategic jostling, and the desire for political influence are most certainly reasons for the destabilization of the Macedonian government, the most acute issue regarding Macedonia is the question of the Balkan Stream Pipeline (aka the Turkish Stream Pipeline).

The Balkan Stream, of course, is a Russian restart of the South Stream Pipeline, which would have stretched from Russia through the Black Sea to Bulgaria to Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Austria. The oil and gas would then have been delivered to Europe. This project was abandoned after Bulgaria was bullied by the EU (and the United States) into reneging on its promise to participate.

The Balkan Stream is now a plan to take that Russian gas and oil from Russia and bring it through Turkey, into Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, and in to Austria. It will be a replacement for the South Stream pipeline and an alternate route to provide oil and gas to Europe, particularly now that the decision has been made to begin bypassing Ukraine in 2019.

Currently, Russia provides Europe with about 30% (or 1/3) of its energy. This provides not only the obvious benefits of profits and services to both countries but it also ensures that Russia has Europe over a barrel, the EU being dependent upon the oil and gas rich nation for a wide variety of energy sources. Thus, it ensures dependence upon Russia and thus better (theoretically) international conduct between the two countries if for no other reason than the EU would be hesitant to provoke Russia for fear of having its oil and gas cut off.

The US and NATO have been frantically trying to remove this leverage over Europe by attempting to sabotage oil pipelines in the Middle East that might benefit Iran in favor of oil deals that would benefit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf State feudal monarchies, all essentially satellites of the Anglo-American oligarchy. It is precisely why the US was so adamantly opposed to Bulgaria’s participation in the South Stream project.

As Andrew Korybko comments,

I think that the harsh reaction is definitely due to the fear that Russian influence in the Balkans can serve as the backdoor to soft influence over the rest of Europe. In reality, however, the completion of Balkan Stream would at the very least be a continuation of the existing state of affairs where Russia provides around 30% of the EU’s energy needs. Balkan Stream is basically a replacement for South Stream, which for its own part would have been a replacement for the Ukrainian-bypassing pipelines that will be phased out by 2019. The discomfiting fact that EU policy makers try to forget is that they can’t survive without Russian gas – it’s impossible. The EU and Russia are natural partners by virtue of their geography and history, and the completion of Balkan Stream will reinvigorate their positive bilateral relations. 

The conflict, however, is that the US absolutely does not want this to happen since it understands that it would lessen its control over Europe, and consequently Eurasia. One needs only to reference former National Security Advisor and noted Polish-American geostrategic Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ‘The Grand Chessboard’ to see this explicitly stated. Therefore, the US wants to use its proxy EU elites to enforce pressure on whichever leader or country wants to build pragmatic relations with Russia, hence the current externally driven destabilization in Macedonia. The future of the Balkans runs through Macedonia, and the country is now the latest flashpoint of the New Cold War.

Of course, it is also important to point out that the question of the creation of “micro-states” and “mini states” on the Brzezinski model is, as always, readily present. This method is essentially both a strategy of tension and a goal of creating a world where previously united nations are reduced to petty impotent and squabbling pseudo-states incapable of standing up to any major government, corporation, or bank. Likewise, a planet of peoples who are incapable of viewing anything other than the convenient scapegoat given to them by the world oligarchy will be incapable of resisting the power and will of that oligarchy. In the absence of a fully formed “micro state,” the ability to use poorly drawn borders, ethnic conflicts, racial tension, and religious fundamentalism/antagonism provides this oligarchy with the ability to play national governments and their populations like a fiddle.

Macedonian Reception

The attempt to present the Macedonian color revolution as the legitimate will of the Macedonian people – as in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and others – can easily be disproven by talking with Macedonians. Unlike Western audiences, the Macedonian public is somewhat more hesitant to believe their billionaire owned media outlets.

If speaking with Macedonians is not convincing enough, one can simply witness the massive pro-government demonstrations now taking place in response to the anti-government protests. For instance, on May 18, tens of thousands of Macedonians marched in Skopje expressing support for Prime Minister Gruevski and the Macedonian government. These marches might not be interpreted as love for the government and its politicians so much as a response to the obvious color revolution apparatus at work inside their country. It is more of a statement of rejection of outside influence in Macedonian domestic affairs than support for the status quo.

Conclusion

The unrest taking place across Macedonia over the last few months and currently bringing tens of thousands of Macedonians out into the streets is the result of a the deployment of the Western-engineered color revolution apparatus designed to destabilize and overthrown the Macedonian government, who has agreed to work with Russia to build the Balkan Stream pipeline through the country. This color revolution, created and deployed by Western governments, NATO, and the Soros networks of NGOs, Foundations, and “civil society groups” is an attempt to remove any leverage Russia may have over the EU and to expand the hegemony of the world oligarchy.

We must support the Macedonian people in their resistance to this color revolution and oppose such illegal and unjust intervention here at home.

Recently from Brandon Turbeville:

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

This article may be re-posted in full with attribution.

Category:

Balkan, Center for American Progress, CIA, color revolution, Ferguson, Macedonia, Media Matters, Move On, NATO, Open Society, regime change, Russian, soros

Why Do People Riot? Baltimore? Boston Tea Party?

NANA BAAKAN”S COMMENTARY


In reality, when folks are connected to that which is around them, they are less likely to tear it up. But when you have disenfranchised people who are neither cared about or engaged and encouraged to be apart of what is around them in their environment, but instead are told to walk here, be there, leave this and don’t interfere with that, they are alienated. How many of those who riot are gainfully employed by the establishments that surround them? How many of them own the property? How many of them are even co-owners? How many of them care and how many of them are “unaware” that these establishments have insurance to cover damages.

What Ferguson Cops Can Learn From LAPD Response to Rodney King Riots

By Monica Alba

“The Los Angeles Police Department’s response to the Rodney King riots 22 years ago could provide a blueprint for what happens in the coming months and years in Ferguson, Missouri, as police work to repair their reputation in the wake of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting, according to experts on the LAPD’s transformation.” READ MORE


When people are policed and restrained, ordered and separated, they will not feel attached to their environment. They will see the environment as much of the enemy as they will see the Police or the so-called “Authority that Polices them”. They will not see or feel a connection to their environment but will feel caged and imprisoned by it.

Systemic racism and re-gentrification alienates the inhabitants of the community, particularly as business and corporations set up shop in the communities they do not live in. They are more representative of the oppressors than they are considered neighbors. The businesses set up in these communities have an ingrained attitude about the inhabitants of the communities that they are financially benefited by. They do not see them as humans but more as commodities. They are as alienated from those whom they depend on to support them financially as those who spend their money there.

19 Shocking Images from the Baltimore Riots

Apr 28, 2015 at 1:20 pm | By  

EXCERPT: “There was an uprising on social media calling for a violent protest to take place, and resultantly things exploded yesterday afternoon in northwestern Baltimore around the area where Gray’s funeral had taken place that morning. Images of looting, destruction, arson, and violence have since streamed from the area as the city was placed under a state of emergency.”

It may appear reckless to riot but rioting is a deeper sign of an even deeper chasm between the haves and the have-nots. When people are actively involved in their own communities that they feel an ownership of and an ability to control, they are less likely to be destructive. It’s simply human nature, and to expect what happened in Baltimore to fall outside of the confines of human nature is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is denial of what is truly the cause of what is happening when people riot.

Black Time Travel | Rioting isn’t new. In fact, America was founded on rioting

By Evette D. Champion
EXCERPT: In the midst of the rioting that is going on in Baltimore, many people are thinking that rioting and looting is something that has only been done within the past 50 years to show civil unrest. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Did you know that this country was founded on looting and riots?
During the 1760s in Boston, Massachusetts, there was a lot of political activity going on that rose a lot of eyebrows and ruffled a few feathers. The early settlers were in the midst of constant and violent protests against the British. A lot of the credit for the Revolution belongs to Sam Adams and the group called “Sons of Liberty.” READ MORE

EXCERPT: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” the part of the curriculum pertaining to the Boston Tea Party reads, according to CBS Houston. “Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities.” READ MORE

Category:

Baltimore, Black Revolution, criminal justice system, disenfranchised, Ferguson, frustration, Marlyn Mosby, martial law, police brutality, police state, riots, Rodney King

Undercover Cop Pulls Gun and Threatens Oakland Police Brutality Protesters | Alternet

Hysterical!

LOL, these assholes, sorry my bad language, but if they are trying to have an American Spring, they are really doing it all wrong. That stuff worked in the Middle East. 

People here have seen them do it over there, so now they are very suspicious and are ready with easy social media access to tell all. 

What part of retarded do they not understand? Even switching sides is retarded. LOL, now they can go from breaking the law to keeping the law, when they were just seen tearing up shit??? I’m sorry, but sometimes 4 letter words says it all!!


Undercover Cop Pulls Gun and Threatens Oakland Police Brutality Protesters | Alternet

December 11, 2014  |  
(Editor’s Note: This report has been updated with new developments at 8.30 PM PST on Thursday).
A white undercover California Highway Patrol (CHP) detective pulled a gun and threatened protesters at Wednesday night’s march to end racist policing and police brutality in Oakland, California.
He was seen losing his cool and pointing the gun at protesters and a photographer before other uniformed police arrived to arrest a black protester, as can be seen on numerous videos of the incident on the Twitter feeds, #berkeleyprotest and #oaklandprotest.
The incident was photographed and posted to storify.com and #oaklandprotest, where it quickly went viral. These Twitter feeds have been documenting the ongoing East Bay protests following the two grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, in which white officers who killed unarmed black men escaped facing charges.
Late Thursday, the Los Angeles Times extensively quoted California Highway Patrol Chief Avery Browne discussing the incident, where Browne concluded that “no one has provided any evidence that the officers were inappropriate in what they did.”
Browne recounted his chronology of the event. He said the gun-pointing detective was one of several undercover cops posing as demonstrators at Wednesday’s march in Oakland. He the detective said a fellow undercover officer had been “attacked” by protesters. He said the detective who pulled the gun told him, “Chief, I didn’t know if I was going to make it out of this thing alive.”
That line of defense–that a police officer is entitled to use deadly force while doing his job if he fears for his life–is the standard in law that absolves police officers from facing charges for harm caused by excessive force. That was seen as the legal linchpin that allowed two grand juries to exonerate the white officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island.
The protests across the country demand, among other things, that this standard protecting police who lose control and use excessive force must be changed. They say, as the LA Times’ report indicates, that police who too quickly rely on deadly weapons know that they can say those magic words–they feared for their lives–and escape accountability.
The CHP Browne made another telling admission to the LA TImes, saying that many undercover officers were spooked by protesters who recognized that they were cops and called them out in front of other protesters. The Times wrote:
“The CHP and other law enforcement agencies have been using plainclothes officers to observe and gather information about the protests, and Browne said tensions have risen among officers as several protesters have posted pictures of themselves on social media claiming to be armed with handguns, rocks and explosive devices.
“Despite Wednesday’s incident, Browne said he will continue to deploy plainclothes officers to gather intelligence from protesters. Officers have also been creating Twitter accounts, on which they don’t identify themselves as police, in order to monitor planned demonstrations.”
This video, posted by WeCopWatch on YouTube on Thursday, identified two other undercover Oakland police officers who posed as protesters and were unmasked by marchers. However, there is nothing in that exchange that can be described as threatening.
The Oakland incident comes after police in nearby Berkeley rioted this past Saturday night, lunging into the crowd and using smoke bombs, nightsticks and tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred protesters. That confrontation led the Berkeley police to reconsider their tactics during protests on the following nights.
But as the protest marchers crossed into other police jurisdictions, closing several interstate highways, other police agencies, such as the California Highway Patrol, said they would respond forcefully.
This latest development shows that police are not changing their use of excessive force as the protesters have been demanding. It is a sobering reminder of how entrenched police policies and practices are, which is one reason that the protests are continuing.
 Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008).

Category:

Alternet, American Spring, Berkley, CA, CHP, Ferguson, Michael Brown, oakland, police, protestors, riot, rubber bullets, tear gas, unarmed, under cover cops, WeCopWatch

Activist Post: We Are the Enemy: Is This the Lesson of Ferguson?

We Are the Enemy: Is This the Lesson of Ferguson?

John W. Whitehead
Activist Post

If you dress police officers up as soldiers and you put them in military vehicles and you give them military weapons, they adopt a warrior mentality. We fight wars against enemies, and the enemies are the people who live in our cities — particularly in communities of color. — Thomas Nolan, criminology professor and former police officer.

Ferguson matters because it provides us with a foretaste of what is to come. It is the shot across the bow, so to speak, a warning that this is how we will all be treated if we do not tread cautiously in challenging the police state, and it won’t matter whether we’re black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. In the eyes of the corporate state, we are all the enemy.

This is the lesson of Ferguson.

Remember that in the wake of the shooting, Ferguson police officers clad in body armor, their faces covered with masks, equipped with assault rifles and snipers and riding armored vehicles, showed up in force to deal with protesters. Describing that show of force by police in Ferguson, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, stated, “This was a military force, and they were facing down an enemy.”

Yes, we are the enemy. As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, since those first towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

There was a moment of hope after Ferguson that perhaps things might change. Perhaps the balance would be restored between the citizenry and their supposed guardians, the police. Perhaps our elected officials would take our side for a change and oppose the militarization of the police. Perhaps warfare would take a backseat to more pressing national concerns.

That hope was short-lived.

It wasn’t long before the media moved on to other, more titillating stories. The disappearance of a University of Virginia college student and the search for her alleged abductor, the weeks-long man-hunt for an accused cop killer, the Republican electoral upset, a Rolling Stone expose on gang rapes at fraternity parties, Obama’s immigration amnesty plan, and the rape charges against Bill Cosby are just a few of the stories that have dominated the news cycle since the Ferguson standoff between police and protesters.

It wasn’t long before the American public, easily acclimated to news of government wrongdoing (case in point: the national yawn over the NSA’s ongoing domestic surveillance), ceased to be shocked, outraged or alarmed by reports of police shootings. In fact, the issue was nowhere to be found in this year’s run-up to Election Day, which was largely devoid of any pressing matters of national concern.

And with nary a hiccup, the police state marched steadily forth. In fact, aided and abetted by the citizenry’s short attention span, its easily distracted nature, and its desensitization to anything that occupies the news cycle for too long, it has been business as usual in terms of police shootings, the amassing of military weapons, and the government’s sanctioning of police misconduct. Most recently, Ohio police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was seen waving a toy gun at a playground.

Rubbing salt in our wounds, in the wake of Ferguson, police agencies not only continued to ramp up their military arsenals but have used them whenever possible. In fact, in anticipation of the grand jury’s ruling, St. Louis police actually purchased more equipment for its officers, including “civil disobedience equipment.”

Just a few weeks after the Ferguson showdown, law enforcement agencies took part in an $11 million manhunt in Pennsylvania for alleged cop killer Eric Frein. Without batting an eye, the news media switched from outraged “shock” over the military arsenal employed by police in Ferguson to respectful “awe” of the 48-day operation that cost taxpayers $1.4 million per week in order to carry out a round-the-clock dragnet search of an area with a 5-mile-radius.

The Frein operation brought together 1,000 officers from local, state and federal law enforcement, as well as SWAT teams and cutting edge military equipment (high-powered rifles, body armor, infrared sensors, armored trucks, helicopters and unmanned, silent surveillance blimps) — some of the very same weapons and tactics employed in Ferguson and, a year earlier, in Boston in the wake of the marathon bombing.

The manhunt was a well-timed, perfectly choreographed exercise in why Americans should welcome the police state: for our safety, of course, and to save the lives of police officers.

Opposed to any attempt to demilitarize America’s police forces, the Dept. of Homeland Security has been chanting this safety mantra in testimony before Congress: Remember 9/11. Remember Boston. Remember how unsafe the world was before police were equipped with automatic weapons, heavily armored trucks, night-vision goggles, and aircraft donated by the DHS.

Contrary to DHS rhetoric, however, militarized police — twitchy over perceived dangers, hyped up on their authority, and protected by their agencies, the legislatures and the courts — have actually made communities less safe at a time when violent crime is at an all-time low and lumberjacks, fishermen, airline pilots, roofers, construction workers, trash collectors, electricians and truck drivers all have a higher risk of on-the-job fatalities than police officers.

Moreover, as Senator Tom Coburn points out, the militarization of America’s police forces has actually “created some problems that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.” Among those problems: a rise in the use of SWAT team raids for routine law enforcement activities (averaging 80,000 a year), a rise in the use and abuse of asset forfeiture laws by police agencies, a profit-driven incentive to criminalize lawful activities and treat Americans as suspects, and a transformation of the nation’s citizenry into suspects.

Ferguson provided us with an opportunity to engage in a much-needed national dialogue over how police are trained, what authority they are given, what weaponry they are provided, and how they treat those whom they are entrusted with protecting.

Caught up in our personal politics, prejudices and class warfare, we have failed to answer that call. In so doing, we have played right into the hands of all those corporations who profit from turning America into a battlefield by selling the government mine-resistant vehicles, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and drones.

As long as we remain steeped in ignorance, there will be no reform.

As long as we remain divided by our irrational fear of each other, there will be no overhaul in the nation’s law enforcement system or institution of an oversight process whereby communities can ensure that local police departments are acting in accordance with their wishes and values.

And as long as we remain distracted by misguided loyalties to military operatives who are paid to play the part of the government’s henchmen, there will be no saving us when the events of Ferguson unfold in our own backyards.

When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter whose “side” you’re on as far as what transpired in Ferguson, whether you believe that Michael Brown was a victim or that Darren Wilson was justified in shooting first and asking questions later.

What matters is that we not allow politics and deep-rooted prejudices of any sort to divert our efforts to restore some level of safety, sanity and constitutional balance to the role that police officers play in our communities. If we fail to do so, we will have done a disservice to ourselves and every man, woman and child in this country who have become casualties of the American police state.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute where this article first appeared. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto.

Category:

casualties, conspiracy, Darren Wilson, enemies, excessive force, Ferguson, law enforcement, martial law, Michael Brown, military operatives, Obama, police brutality, police state, state terrorism, wars

Robin Williams, Dead, Suicide? Depression? So What?

“Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair” Alan Alda

Sometimes, I just can’t understand the rationale that we stand on when a celebrity dies. It’s as if they have some sort of super power, some beyond human experience, existence that makes them more of an IDOL, than a real living breathing human.
The adoration and adulation is so displaced. A great attention given to a person who barely knows who he/she is outside of the admiration thrust upon them by their audience. In real life, beyond the big scream, they cry, they fart, they throw up and catch the flu. But on screen they are more than human, they are more than super human, they are GODS.
Somewhere in the human psyche we need to have these GODS, these DEITIES, who seem to give us this false sense of hope and a false sense of reality. We never see them sweat except as part of the act. We don’t see what it takes to get one scene together to fit the big screen. But alas, we are manipulated and mezmorized by their “bigger than life” persona.
Yet, by the same token we will walk over a homeless person lying in the gutter. Some of us will actually bring harm to them, as if they are not human and deserving of being treated as a living, breathing human manifestation of the Divine. We are also the same ones who will vote for the killing of thousands of children in other people’s homes. How is that possible? How do these two opposing beliefs come from the same species. Even in the animal kingdom you see a compassion that far outweighs what we tend to portray for one another, particularly in the more privileged side of the human family.
Robin Williams, brought us all a taste of a world beyond our own abilities to manifest in the sense that he could be all of us and none of us at the same time. He could be almost any character and make it so real, we really believed it. Yet who was he, and did he hurt every time he heard that another Palestinian home had been bombed and another 50 children killed in an areal assault? Did he pay attention to what was happening in the world outside of his fame? I tend to believe he did, but that could simply be a personal bias.
My point is this… Here we are mourning the likes of a ROBIN WILLIAMS, another human being who had the opportunity to make us laugh so hard, we’d better stop before we damage our hearts, yet, we are divorced from the sadness, the grief, the despair, the depression of others who are not on the Big Screen.
What gives them carte-blanche to our sympathies? What makes their pain bigger than any one else’s and what makes them so important, even more important than the thousands of Yazidi fleeing into war torn Syria. What kind of world is this? Imagine just for a moment what that must feel like, when 20 members of your immediate family is killed in an instance and you are the only one who survives. Would you consider the fact that this lone survivor could give into the deepest darkest despair and kill himself or become a suicide bomber? Would his suicide make headline news??

Why are we so divorced from the chemical, electro-magnetic impact that death and destruction has on all of us, in every single corner of this globe. Is one death and its reason more significant than the death of an old man who gave up after being shut away in an old folks’ home for 20 years where no one came to visit him? How is it, that Robin’s depression is a clarion call for folks to focus on remedies for it, and questions about it and how can we avoid it in others….?? How is that possible when we are constantly bombarded with all types of violence against one another and others we don’t even know? How in the same breath, we weep and cry and wish we knew before it was too late, and then say that Israel’s disproportionate force against Gaza is justifiable? How do we support the arming of rebels around the globe who have no compassion at all for their victims and their families as they slaughter, maimed and behead them. What type of mind do we as a human family have that we can go so deep into the mirror over a superficial SUPER STARwho told us himself that“NO MOVIES ARE REAL!” yet we are lacking in our ability to comprehend, respond or change the conditions of our world where distress, pain and misery lie.
Seriously, is the fact that Robin Williams was depressed more of a headline than the deep despair that Liberian Mother feels whose child succumbed to Ebola? Or the Ferguson’s mother whose son was shot several times and killing all his chances to go to college this coming September? How displaced is our attention, concern and adulations when it comes to a so-called Hollywood Celebrity than for our family and neighbors who live in our midst? How displaced is our concern when we spend ours and dollars on Pop Culture and ignore the pain of those who are on the other side of the globe, who are awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night to the rhythmic sequence of bombs falling on their neighborhood, a neighborhood they could not escape. What about their despair, what about their depression, grief and feelings of loss?
And finally, how can we avoid it? Sometimes, I think the Universe let’s it happen to us so we can see what it feels like and maybe, just maybe we will have more empathy for others. I wonder how effective that method is however. It seems we get more self gratification weighing in on our favorite celeb, sports start or politician than we do on the real issues. We are all one human family sharing one home, Earth, and surely, whatever is happening anywhere in the world is happening everywhere. 
We hear so much about honoring the dead, honoring their families, giving the families of these famous deceased folks their privacy, etc., etc. ad infanitum, yet, who honors those that are killed by our tax dollars and warmongering Politicians? Who stops and places a yellow ribbon on their hearts for them. Who refuses to participate in their annihilation? If it meant that the way we could save Robin from his ill fated demise meant that we stop supporting the industry that killed him, would we do it. Would we release ourselves from the joys of his mania and allow him, the artist to live in peace?  Would we rally around programs that brought peace into his life if it meant he would make no more movies for our gawking eyes and selfish idol worship to enjoy? Would we stop if it meant that we would have to find something else to entertain us or find a way to entertain ourselves without destroying the idol of our worship? Would we? Could we? Are we all crying out loud because we cannot live without Robin Williams, our major distraction from what is really happening in the real world????
Yes, another IDOL  has succumbed to the ravishes of an industry that kills it. And to what does that mean? Save we shall simply find another distraction and move ever more from reality and deeper into the matrix of mind control.

I hope that Robin is doing well, wherever he is. I hope he realizes that our worshipping of him was a sickness as much as his desire to be worshipped and that if he comes back he will love himself, more than any mass of emotionally starved and derranged human beings could ever love him. Rest In Power, Robin Williams, and all those who preceeded you and all those who follow and particularly the forgotten ones whose physical bodies are wasting away under the rubble of human ignorance and cruelty. 

Opinion

Alan Alda: A Niagaraof Wit Falls Silent
Aug. 12, 2014Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?

Within minutes we were telling one another he was gone. His genius, that had burned so hot, was cold, and the whole country felt the chill at once.
For years, we had watched with awe as a Niagara of wit poured from his unconscious. Where did that manic waterfall of funny have its source?
And where did his fearlessness come from? The night that he and Jane Fonda and I hosted the Academy Awards show together, he kept coming up with outrageous jokes in the wings. But before he went out on stage, he seemed to be using me as his taste monitor. He would think of a line and say, “Is that too tasteless?” Invariably, I’d say, “Yes, it’s too tasteless,” and invariably he’d go on stage, say the line and kill with it.
Unfortunately, sometimes the mind that runs so fast it can’t keep up with itself also has its down time. I didn’t know he suffered from depression, although it doesn’t surprise me. But it makes me want to dosomething.
I hope it makes us all want to do something.
While the whole country, and much of the world, feels this moment of sadness at his death, can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?
Can we educate one another to recognize the early signs of depression? Can we make it clear to one another how dangerous it is? We all know now that drunk driving kills. But, when I looked up the numbers, I was astonished. Each year there are more than twice as many suicides attributed to depression as deaths on the road due to alcohol.
Maybe our grief can be transformed into an awakening. The man who enriched our lives could be the focus of saving countless other lives. Robin Williams could be with us a little longer.

Category:

Alan Alda, bombs, cult, death, deities, despair, ebola, Ferguson, Gaza, Gods, idols, industry, Israel, Liberia, Robin Williams, suicide, super star, Syria, worship